Falk by the River
Upon that same evening when the conspirators met in Bentinck-Major's
handsome study Mrs. Brandon had a ridiculous fit of hysterics.
She had never had hysterics before; the fit came upon her now when she was
sitting in front of her glass brushing her hair. She was dressing for
dinner and could see her reflection, white and thin, in the mirror before
her. Suddenly the face in the glass began to smile and it became at that
same instant another face that she had never seen before.
It was a horrid smile and broke suddenly into laughter. It was as though
the face had been hit by something and cracked then into a thousand
pieces.
She laughed until the tears poured down her cheeks, but her eyes
protested, looking piteously and in dismay from the studied glass. She
knew that she was laughing with shrill high cries, and behind her horror
at her collapse there was a desperate protesting attempt to calm herself,
driven, above all, upon her agitated heart by the fear lest her husband
should come in and discover her.
The laughter ceased quite suddenly and was followed by a rush of tears.
She cried as though her heart would break, then, with trembling steps,
crossed to her bed and lay down. Very shortly she must control herself
because the dinner-bell would ring and she must go. To stay and send the
conventional excuse of a headache would bring her husband up to her, and
although he was so full of his own affairs that the questions that he
would ask her would be perfunctory and absent-minded, she felt that she
could not endure, just now, to be alone with him.
She lay on her bed shivering and wondering what malign power it was that
had seized her. Malign it was, she did not for an instant doubt. She had
asked, did ask, for so little. Only to see Morris for a moment every day.
To see him anywhere in as public a place as you please, but to see him, to
hear his voice, to look into his eyes, to touch his hand (soft and gentle
like a woman's hand)--that had been now for months an absolute necessity.
She did not ask more than that, and yet she was aware that there was no
pause in the accumulating force of the passion that was seizing her. She
was being drawn along by two opposite powers--the tenderness of protective
maternal love and the ruthlessness of the lust for possession.
She wanted to care for him, to watch over him, to guard him, to do
everything for him, and also she wanted to feel her hold over him, to see
him move, almost as though he were hypnotised, towards her.
The thought of him, the perpetual incessant thought of him, ruled out the
thought of every one else in the world--save only Falk. She scarcely now
considered her husband at all; she never for an instant wondered whether
people in the town were talking. She saw only Morris and her future with
Morris--only that and Falk.
Upon Falk now everything hung. She had made a kind of bargain. If Falk
stayed and loved her and cared for her she would resist the power that was
drawing her towards Morris. Now, a million times more than before she had
met Morris, she must have some one for whom she could care. It was as
though a lamp had been lit and flung a great track of light over those
dark, empty earlier years. How could she ever have lived as she did? The
hunger, the desperate, eager, greedy hunger was roused in her. Falk could
satisfy it, but, if he would not, then she would hesitate no longer.
She would seize Morris as a tiger seizes its prey. She did not disguise
that from herself. As she lay now, trembling, upon her bed, she never
hesitated to admit to herself that the thought of her domination over
Morris was her great glory. She had never dominated any one before. He
followed her like a man in a dream, and she was not young, she was not
beautiful, she was not clever....
It was her own personal, personal, personal triumph. And then, on that,
there swept over her the flood of her tenderness for him, how she longed
to be good to him, to care for him, to mend and sew and cook and wash for
him, to perform the humblest tasks for him, to nurse him and protect him.
She knew that the end of this might be social ruin for both of them!...
Ah, well, then, he would only need her the more! She was quieter now--the
trembling ceased. How strange the way that during these months they had
been meeting, so often without their own direct agency at all! She
recalled every moment, every gesture, every word. He seemed already to be
part of herself, moving within herself.
She sat up on her bed; moved back to her glass. She bathed her face,
slipped on her dress, and went downstairs.
They were a family party at dinner, but, of course, without Falk. He was
always out in the evening now.
Joan talked, chattered on. The meal was soon over. The Archdeacon went to
his study, and the two women sat in the drawing-room, Joan by the window,
Mrs. Brandon, hidden in a high arm-chair, near the fireplace. The clock
ticked on and the Cathedral bells struck the quarters. Joan's white dress,
beyond the circle of lamp-light was a dim shadow. Mrs. Brandon turned the
pages of her book, her ears straining for the sound of Falk's return.
As she sat there, so inattentively turning the pages of her book, the
foreboding sense of some approaching drama flooded the room. For how many
years had she lived from day to day and nothing had occurred--so long that
life had been unconscious, doped, inert. Now it had sprung into vitality
again with the sudden frantic impertinence of a Jack-in-the-Box. For
twenty years you are dry on the banks, half-asleep, stretching out lazy
fingers for food, slumbering, waking, slumbering again. Suddenly a wave
comes and you are swept off--swept off into what disastrous sea?
She did not think in pictures, it was not her way, but to-night, half-
terrified, half-exultant, in the long dim room she waited, the pressure of
her heart beating up into her throat, listening, watching Joan furtively,
seeing Morris, his eternal shadow, itching with its long tapering fingers
to draw her away with him beyond the house. No, she would be true with
herself. It was he who would be drawn away. The power was in her, not in
him....
She looked wearily across at Joan. The child was irritating to her as she
had always been. She had never, in any case, cared for her own sex, and
now, as so frequently with women who are about to plunge into some
passionate situation, she regarded every one she saw as a potential
interferer. She despised women as most women in their secret hearts do,
and especially she despised Joan.
"You'd better go up to bed, dear. It's half-past ten."
Without a word Joan got up, came across the room, kissed her mother, went
to the door. Then she paused.
"Mother," she said, hesitating, and then speaking timidly, "is father all
right?"
"All right, dear?"
"Yes. He doesn't look well. His forehead is all flushed, and I overheard
some one at the Sampsons' say the other day that he wasn't well really,
that he must take great care of himself. Ought he to?"
"Ought he what?"
"To take great care of himself."
"What nonsense!" Mrs. Brandon turned back to her book impatiently. "There
never was any one so strong and healthy."
"He's always worrying about something. It's his nature."
"Yes, I suppose so."
Joan vanished. Mrs. Brandon sat, staring before her, her mind running with
the clock--tick-tick-tick-tick--and then suddenly jumping at the mellow
liquid gurgle that it sometimes gave. Would her husband come in and say
good-night?
How she had grown, during these last weeks, to loathe his kiss! He would
stand behind her chair, bending his great body over her, his red face
would come down, then the whiff of tobacco, then the rough pressure on her
cheek, the hard, unmeaning contact of his lips and hers. His beautiful
eyes would stare beyond her, absently into the room. Beautiful! Why, yes,
they were famous eyes, famous the diocese through. How well she remembered
those years, long ago, when they had seemed to speak to her of every
conceivable tenderness and sweetness, and how, when he thus had bent over
her, she had stretched up her hand and found the buttons of his waistcoat
and pushed her fingers in, stroking his shirt and feeling his heart thump,
thump, and so warm beneath her touch.
Life! Life! What a cheat! What a cheat! She jumped from her chair, letting
the book drop upon the floor, and began to pace the room. And why should
not this, too, cheat her once again? With the tenderness, the poignancy
with which she now looked upon Morris so once she had looked upon Brandon.
Yes, that might be. She would cheat herself no longer. But she was older
now. This was the last chance to live--definitely, positively the last. It
was not the desire to be loved, this time, that drove her forward so
urgently as the desire to love. She knew that, because Falk would do. If
Falk would stay, would let her care for him and mother him and be with
him, she would drive Morris from her heart and brain.
Yes, she almost cried aloud in the dark room. "Give me Falk and I will
leave the other. Give me my own son. That's my right--every mother's
right. If I am refused it, it is just that I should take what I can get
instead."
"Give him to me! Give him to me!" One thing at least was certain. She
could never return to the old lethargy. That first meeting with Morris had
fired her into life. She could not go back and she was glad that she could
not....
She stopped in the middle of the room to listen. The hall-door closed
softly; suddenly the line of light below the door vanished. Some one had
turned down the hall-lamp. She went to the drawing-room door, opened it,
looked out, crying softly:
"Falk! Falk!"
"Yes, mother." He came across to her. He was holding a lighted candle in
his hand. "Are you still up?"
"Yes, it isn't very late. Barely eleven. Come into the drawing-room."
They went back into the room. He closed the door behind him, then put the
candle down on to a small round table; they sat in the candle-light, one
on either side of the table.
He looked at her and thought how small and fragile she looked and how
little, anyway, she meant to him.
How much most mothers meant to their sons, and how little she had ever
meant to him! He had always taken his father's view of her, that it was
necessary for her to be there, that she naturally did her best, but that
she did not expect you to think about her.
"You ought to be in bed," he said, wishing that she would release him.
For the first time in her life she spoke to him spontaneously, losing
entirely the sense that she had always had, that both he and his father
would go away and leave her if she were tiresome.
To-night he would _not_ go away--not until she had struck her bargain
with him.
"What have you been up to all these weeks, Falk?" she asked.
"Up to?" he repeated. Her challenge was unexpected.
"Yes; of course I know you're up to something, and you _know_ that I
know. You must tell me. I'm your mother and I ought to be told."
He knew at once as soon as she spoke that she was the very last person in
the world to whom he wished to tell anything. He was tired, dead tired,
and wanted to go to bed, but he was arrested by the urgency in her voice.
What was the matter with her? So intent had he been, for the past months,
on his own affairs that he had not thought of his mother at all. He looked
across the table at her--a little insignificant woman, colourless, with no
personality. And yet to-night something was happening to her. He felt all
the impatience of a man who is closely occupied with his own drama but is
forced, quite against his will, to consider some one else.
"There isn't anything to tell you, mother. Really there is not. I've just
been kicking my heels round this blasted town for the last few months and
I'm restless. I'll be going up to London very shortly."
"Why need you?" she asked him. The candle flame seemed to jump with the
sharpness of her voice.
"Why need I? But of course I must. I ask you, is this a place for _any
one_ to settle down in?"
"I don't know why it shouldn't be. I should have thought you could be very
happy here. There are so many things you could do."
"What, for instance?"
"You could be a solicitor, or go into business, or--or--why, you'd soon
find something."
He got up, taking the candle in his hand.
"Well, if that's your idea, mother, I'm sorry, but you can just put it out
of your head once and for all. I'd rather be buried alive than stay in
this hole. I _would_ be buried alive if I stayed."
She looked up at him. He was so tall, so handsome, _and so distant_--
some one who had no connection with her at all. She too got up, putting
her little hand on his arm.
"Then are we, all of us, to count for nothing at all?"
"Of course you count," he answered impatiently, irritated by the pressure
of her fingers on his coat. "You'll see plenty of me. But you can't
possibly expect me to live here. I've completely wasted my beautiful young
life so far--now apparently you want me to waste the rest of it."
"Then," she said, coming nearer to him and dropping her voice, "take me
with you."
"Take you with me!" He stepped back from her. He could not believe that he
had heard her correctly. "Take _you_ with me?"
"Yes."
"Take you with me?"
"Yes, yes, yes."
It was the greatest surprise of his life. He stared at her in his
amazement, putting the candle back upon the table.
"But why?"
"Why?...Why do you think?...Because I love you and want to be with you."
"Be with me? Leave this? Leave Polchester?...Leave father?"
"Yes, why not? Your father doesn't need me any longer. Nobody wants me
here. Why shouldn't I go?"
He came close to her, giving her now all his attention, staring at her as
though he were seeing her for the first time in his life.
"Mother, aren't you well?...Aren't you happy?"
She laughed. "Happy? Oh, yes, so happy that I'd drown myself to-night if
that would do any good."
"Here, sit down." He almost pushed her back into her chair. "We've got to
have this out. I don't know what you're talking about. You're unhappy?
Why, what's the matter?"
"The matter? Oh, nothing!" she answered. "Nothing at all, except for the
last ten years I've hated this place, hated this house, hated your
father."
"Hated father?"
He stared at her as though she had in a moment gone completely mad.
"Yes, why not?" she answered quietly. "What has he ever done that I should
feel otherwise? What attention has he ever paid to me? When has he ever
considered me except as a sort of convenient housekeeper and mistress whom
he pays to keep near him? Why shouldn't I hate him? You're very young,
Falk, and it would probably surprise you to know how many quiet stay-at-
home wives there are who hate their good, honest, well-meaning husbands."
He drew a deep breath.
"What's father ever done," he said, "to make you hate him?"
She should have realised then, from the sound in his voice, that she was,
in her preoccupation with her own affairs, forgetting one of the principal
elements in the whole case, his love for his father.
"It isn't what he's done," she answered. "It's what he hasn't done. Whom
has he ever considered but himself? Isn't his conceit so big that he can't
see any one but himself. Why should we go on pretending that he's so great
and wonderful? Do you suppose that any one can live for twenty years and
more with your father and not see how small and selfish and mean he is?
How he----"
"You're not to say that," Falk interrupted her angrily. "Father may have
his faults--so has every one--but we've got worse ones. He isn't mean and
he isn't small. He may seem conceited, but that's only because he cares so
for the Cathedral and knows what he's done for it. He's the finest man I
know anywhere. He doesn't see things as I do--I don't suppose that father
and son ever do see alike--but that needn't prevent me from admiring him.
Why, mother, what's come over you? You can't be well. Leave father! Why,
it would be terrible! Think of the talk there'd be! Why, it would ruin
father here. He'd never get over it."
She saw then the mistake that she had made. She looked across at him
beseechingly.
"You're right, Falk. I didn't mean that, I don't mean that. But I'm so
unhappy that I don't know what I'm saying. All I want is to be with you.
It wouldn't hurt father if I went up to London with you for a little. What
I really want is a holiday. I could come back after a month or two
refreshed. I'm tired."
Suddenly while she was speaking the ironical contrast hit him. Here was he
amazed at his mother for daring to contemplate a step that would do his
father harm, while he, he who professed to love his father, was about to
do something that would cause the whole town to talk for a year. But that
was different. Surely it was different. He was young and must make his own
life. He must be allowed to marry whom he would. It was not as though he
were intending to ruin the girl....
Nevertheless, this sudden comparison bewildered and shocked him.
He leant across the table to her. "You must never leave father--never," he
said. "You mustn't think of it. He wants you badly. He mayn't show it
exactly as you want it. Men aren't demonstrative as women are, but he'd be
miserable if you went away. He loves you in his own fashion, which is just
as good as yours, only different. You must _never_ leave him, mother,
do you hear?"
She saw that she was defeated, entirely and completely. She cried to the
Powers:
"You've refused me what I ask. I go my own way, then."
She got up, kissed him on the forehead and said: "I daresay you're right,
Falk. Forget what I've said. I didn't mean most of it. Good-night, dear."
She went out, quietly closing the door behind her.
Falk did not sleep at all that night. This was only one of many sleepless
nights, but it was the worst of them. The night was warm, and a faint dim
colour lingered behind the treetops of the garden beyond his open window.
First he lay under the clothes, then upon the top of his bed, then
stripped, plunging his head into a basin of water, then naked save for his
soft bedroom slippers, paced his room...His head was a flaming fire. The
pale light seemed for an instant to vanish, and the world was dark and
silent. Then, at the striking of the Cathedral clock, as though it were a
signal upon some stage, the light slowly crept back again, growing ever
stronger and stronger. The birds began to twitter; a cock crew. A bar of
golden light broken by the squares and patterns of the dark trees struck
the air.
The shock of his mother's announcement had been terrific. It was not only
the surprise of it, it was the sudden light that it flung upon his own
case. He had gone, during these last weeks, so far with Annie Hogg that it
was hard indeed to see how there could be any stepping back. They had
achieved a strange relationship together: one not of comradeship, nor of
lust, nor of desire, nor of affection, having a little of all these things
but not much of any of them, and finally resembling the case of two
strangers, shipwrecked, hanging on to a floating spar of wood that might
bring them into safety.
She was miserable; he was miserable; whether she cared for him he could
not tell, nor whether he cared for her. The excitement that she created in
him was intense, all-devouring, but it was not an excitement of lust. He
had never done more than kiss her, and he was quite ready that it should
remain so. He intended, perhaps, to marry her, but of that he could not be
sure.
But he could not leave her; he could not keep away from her although he
was seldom happy when he was with her. Slowly, gradually, through their
meetings there had grown a bond. He was more naturally himself with her
than with any other human being. Although she excited him she also
tranquillised him. Increasingly he admired and respected her--her honesty,
independence, reserve, pride. Perhaps it was upon that that their alliance
was really based--upon mutual respect and admiration. There had been
never, from the very first moment, any deception between them. He had
never been so honest with any one before--certainly not with himself. His
desire, beyond everything else in life, was to be honest: to pretend to no
emotion that he did not truly feel, to see exactly how he felt about life,
and to stand up before it unafraid and uncowed. Honesty seemed to him the
greatest quality in life; that was why he had been attracted to Ronder.
And yet life seemed to be for ever driving him into false positions. Even
now he was contemplating running away with this girl. Until to-night he
had fancied that he was only contemplating it, but his conversation with
his mother had shown him how near he was to a decision. Nevertheless, he
would talk to Ronder and to his father, not, of course, telling them
everything, but catching perhaps from them some advice that would seem to
him so true that it would guide him.
Finally, when the gold bar appeared behind the trees he forced himself
into honesty with his father. How could he have meant so sincerely that
his mother must not hurt his father when he himself was about to hurt him?
And this discovery had not lessened his determination to take the step.
Was he, then, utterly hypocritical? He knew he was not.
He could look ahead of his own affair and see that in the end his father
would admit that it had been best for him. They all knew--even his mother
must in her heart have known--that he was not going to live in Polchester
for ever. His departure for London was inevitable, and it simply was that
he would take Annie with him. That would be for a moment a blow to his
father, but it would not be so for long. And in the town his father would
win sympathy; he, Falk, would be condemned and despised. They would say:
"Ah, that young Brandon. He never was any good. His father did all he
could, but it was no use...." And then in a little time there would come
the news that he was doing well in London, and all would be right.
He looked to his talk with Ronder. Ronder would advise well. Ronder knew
life. He was not provincial like these others....
Suddenly he was cold. He went back to bed and slept dreamlessly.
* * * * *
Next evening, as half-past eight was striking, he was at his customary
post by the river, above the "Dog and Pilchard."
A heavy storm was mounting up behind the Cathedral, black clouds being
piled tier on tier as though some gigantic shopman were shooting out rolls
of carpet for the benefit of some celestial purchaser. The Cathedral shone
in the last flash of the fleeing light with a strange phantasmal silver
sheen; once more it was a ship sailing high before the tempest.
Down by the river the dusk was grey and sodden. The river, flowing
sullenly, was a lighter dark between the line of houses and the bending
fields. The air was so heavy that men seemed to walk with bending backs as
though the burden was more than they could sustain. This section of the
river had become now to Falk something that was part of himself. The old
mill, the group of trees beside it, the low dam over which the water fell
with its own peculiar drunken gurgle, the pathway with its gritty stony
surface, so that it seemed to grind its teeth in protest at every step
that you took, on the left the town piled high behind you with the
Cathedral winged and dominant and supreme, the cool sloping fields beyond
the river, the dark bend of the wood cutting the horizon--these things
were his history and he was theirs.
There were many other places to which they might have gone, other times
that they might have chosen, but circumstances and accident had found for
them always this same background. He had long ago ceased to consider
whether any one was watching them or talking about them. They were,
neither of them, cowards, although to Annie her father was a figure of
sinister power and evil desire. She hated her father, believed him capable
of infinite wickedness, but did not fear him enough to hesitate to face
him. Nevertheless, it was from him that she was chiefly escaping, and she
gave to Falk a curious consciousness of the depths of malice and vice that
lay hidden behind that smiling face, in the secret places of that fat
jolly body. Falk was certain now that Hogg knew of their meetings; he
suspected that he had known of them from the first. Hogg had his faults
but they did not frighten Falk, who was, indeed, afraid of no man alive
save only himself.
The other element in the affair that increased as the week passed was
Falk's consciousness of the strange spirit of nobility that there was in
Annie. Although she stirred him so deeply she did not blind him as to her
character. He saw her exactly for what she was--uneducated, ignorant,
limited in all her outlook, common in many ways, sometimes surly, often
superstitious; but through all these things that strain of nobility ran,
showing itself in many unexpected places, calling to him like an echo from
some high, far-distant source. Because of it he was beginning to wonder
whether after all the alliance that was beginning to spring up between
them might not be something more permanent and durable than at first he
had ever supposed it could be. He was beginning to wonder whether he had
not been fortunate far beyond his deserts....
On this thunder-night they met like old friends who had known one another
for many years and between whom there had never been anything but
comradeship. They did not kiss, but simply touched hands and moved up
through the gathering dark to the little bridge below the mill. From here
they felt the impact of the chattering water rising to them and falling
again like a comment on their talk.
"It'll not be many more times," Annie said, "we'll be coming here."
"Why?" Falk asked.
"Because I'm going up to London whether you come or no--and _soon_
I'm going."
He admired nothing in her more than the clear-cut decision of her mind,
which moved quietly from point to point, asking no advice, allowing no
regrets when the decision was once made.
"What has happened since last time?"
"Happened? Nothing. Only father and the 'Dog,' and drink. I'm through with
it."
"And what would you do in London if you went up alone?"
She flung up her head suddenly, laughing. "You think I'm helpless, don't
you? Well, I'm not."
"No, I don't--but you don't know London."
"A fearsome place, mebbe, but not more disgustin' than father."
There was irritation in his voice as he said:
"Then it doesn't matter to you whether I come with you or not?"
Her reply was soft. She suddenly put out her hand and took his.
"Of course it matters. We're friends. The best friend I'm likely to find,
I reckon. What would I be meeting you for all these months if I didn't
care for you? Just to be admiring the scenery?--shouldn't like."
She laughed softly.
She went on: "I'm ready to go with you or without you. If we go together
I'm independent, just as though I went without you. I'm independent of
every one--father and you and all. I'll marry you if you want me, or I'll
live with you without marrying, or I'll live without you and never see you
again. I won't say that leaving you wouldn't hurt. It would, after being
with you all these weeks; but I'd rather be hurt than be dependent."
He held her hand tightly between his two.
"Folks 'ud say," she went on, "that I had no right to be talkin' of going
away with you--that I'd be ruining your future and making people look down
on you, and all that. Well, that's for you to say. If you think it harms
your prospects being with me you needn't see me. I've my own prospects to
think of. I'm not going to have any man ashamed of me."
"You're right to speak of it, and we're right to think of it," said Falk.
"It isn't my prospects that I've got to think about, but it's my father I
wouldn't like to hurt. If we go away together there'll be a great deal of
talk here, and it will all fall on my father."
"Well, then," she said, tossing her head and taking her hand away from
his, "don't come. _I'm_ not asking you. As for your father, he's that
proud----" She stopped suddenly. "No. I'm saying nothing about that. You
care for him, and you're right to. As far as that goes, we needn't go
together; you can come up later and join me."
When she said that, he knew that he couldn't bear the thought of her going
alone, and that he had all along been determined in his thought that she
should not go alone.
"If you'd say you loved me," he said, suddenly bending towards her, "I'd
never let you out of my sight again."
"Oh, yes, you would," she said; "you don't know whether you _do_ love
me. Many's the time you think you don't. And I don't know whether I love
you. Sometimes I think I do. What's love, anyway? I dunno. I think
sometimes I'm not made to feel that way towards any one. But what I really
meant to say to-night is, that I'm dead sick of this hanging-on. I'm going
up to a cousin I've got Blackheath way a week from to-night. If you're
coming, I'm glad. If you're not--well, I reckon I'll get over it."
"A week from to-day--" He looked out over the water.
"Aye. That's settled."
Then, unexpected, as she so often was, she put her arms round his neck and
drew his head down to her bosom and let her hand rest on his hair.
"I like to feel you there," she said. "It's more a mother I feel to you
than a lover."
She would not let him kiss her, but suddenly moved away from him, into the
dark, leaving him where he stood.
When he was half-way home the storm that had been slowly, during the last
hour and a half, climbing up above the town, broke. As he was crossing the
market-place the rain came down in torrents, dancing upon the uneven
cobbles with a kind of excited frenzy, and thickening the air with a
curtain of mist. He climbed the High Street, his head down, feeling a
physical satisfaction in the fierce soaking that the storm was giving him.
The town was shining and deserted. Not a soul about. No sound except the
hissing, sneering, chattering whisper of the deluge. He went up to his
room and changed, putting on a dinner jacket, and came down to his
father's study. It was too late for dinner, but he was not hungry; he did
not know how long it was since he had felt hungry last.
He knocked and went in. He felt a desperate urgency that he must somehow
reconcile the interests and happiness of the two people who were then
filling all his thoughts--his father and Annie. There must _be_ a
way. He could feel still the touch of Annie's hand upon his head; he was
more deeply bound to her by that evening's conversation than he had ever
been before, but he longed to be able to reassure himself by some contact
with his father that he was not going to hurt the old man, that he would
be able to prove to him that his loyalty was true and his affection deep.
Small causes produce lasting results, and the lives of many people would
have been changed had Falk caught his father that night in another mood.
The Archdeacon did not look up at the sound of the closing door. He was
sitting at his big table writing letters, the expression of his face being
that of a boy who has been kept in on a fine afternoon to write out the
first fifty lines of the _Iliad_. His curly hair was ruffled, his
mouth was twisted with disgust, and he pushed his big body about in his
chair, kicked out his legs and drew them in as though beneath his
concentration on his letters he was longing to spring up, catch his enemy
by the throat, roll him over on to the ground and kick him.
"Hullo, governor!" Falk said, and settled down into one of the big leather
arm-chairs, produced a pipe from his pocket and slowly filled it.
The Archdeacon went on writing, muttering to himself, biting the end of
his quill pen. He had not apparently been aware of his son's entrance, but
suddenly he sprang up, pushed back his chair until it nearly fell over,
and began to stride up and down the room. He was a fine figure then,
throwing up his head, flinging out his arms, apostrophising the world.
"Gratitude! They don't know what it means. Do you think I'll go on working
for them, wearing myself to a shadow, staying up all night--getting up at
seven in the morning, and then to have this sort of return? I'll leave the
place. I'll let them make their own mistakes and see how they like that.
I'll teach them gratitude. Here am I; for ten years I've done nothing but
slave for the town and the Cathedral. Who's worked for them as I have?"
"What's the matter, father?" Falk asked, watching him from the chair.
Every one knows the irritation of coming to some one with matters so
urgent that they occupy the whole of your mind, and then discovering that
your audience has its own determined preoccupation. "Always thinking of
himself," Falk continued. "Fusses about nothing."
"The matter?" His father turned round upon him. "Everything's the matter.
Everything! Here's this Jubilee business coming on and everything going to
ruin. Here am I, who know more about the Cathedral and what's been done in
the Cathedral for the last ten years than any one, and they are letting
Ryle have a free hand over all the Jubilee Week services without another
word to anybody."
"Well, Ryle is the Precentor, isn't he?" said Falk.
"Of course he is," the Archdeacon answered angrily. "And what a Precentor!
Every one knows he isn't capable of settling anything by himself. That's
been proved again and again. But that's only one thing. It's the same all
the way round. Opposition everywhere. It'll soon come to it that I'll have
to ask permission from the Chapter to walk down the High Street."
"All the same, father," Falk said, "you can't be expected to have the
whole of the Jubilee on your shoulders. It's more than any one man can
possibly do."
"I know that. Of course I know that. Ryle's case is only one small
instance of the way the wind's blowing. Every one's got to do their share,
of course. But in the last three months the place is changed--the
Chapter's disorganised, there's rebellion in the Choir, among the Vergers,
everywhere. The Cathedral is in pieces. And why? Who's changed everything?
Why is nothing as it was three months ago?"
"Oh, Lord! what a bore the old man is!" thought Falk. He was in the last
possible mood to enter into any of his father's complaints. They seemed
now, as he looked across at him, to be miles apart. He felt, suddenly, as
though he did not care what happened to his father, nor whether his
feelings were hurt or no----
"Well, tell me!" said the Archdeacon, spreading his legs out, putting his
hands behind his back and standing over his son. "Who's responsible for
the change?"
"Oh, I don't know!" said Falk impatiently.
"You don't know? No, of course you don't know, because you've taken no
interest in the Cathedral nor in anything to do with it. All the same, I
should have thought it impossible for any one to be in this town half an
hour and _not_ know who's responsible. There's only one man, and that
man is Ronder."
Unfortunately Falk liked Ronder. "I think Ronder's rather a good sort," he
said. "A clever fellow, too."
The Archdeacon stared at him.
"You like him?"
"Yes, father, I do."
"And of course it matters nothing to you that he should be your father's
persistent enemy and do his best to hinder him in everything and every way
possible."
Falk smiled, one of those confident, superior smiles that are so justly
irritating to any parent.
"Oh, come, father," he said. "Aren't you rather exaggerating?"
"Exaggerating? Yes, of course you would take the other side. And what do
you know about it? There you are, lolling about in your chair, idling week
after week, until all the town talks about it----"
Falk sprang up.
"And whose fault is it if I do idle? What have I been wanting except to go
off and make a decent living? Whose fault----?"
"Oh, mine, of course!" the Archdeacon shouted. "Put it all down to me! Say
that I begged you to leave Oxford, that I want you to laze the rest of
your life away. Why shouldn't you, when you have a mother and sister to
support you?"
"Stop that, father." Falk also was shouting. "You'd better look out what
you're saying, or I'll take you at your word and leave you altogether."
"You can, for all I care," the Archdeacon shouted back. They stood there
facing one another, both of them red in the face, a curious family
likeness suddenly apparent between them.
"Well, I will then," Falk cried, and rushed from the room, banging the
door behind him.