Brandon Puts on His Armour
Brandon was not surprised when, on the morning after Falk's escape, his
son was not present at family prayers. That was not a ceremony that Falk
had ever appreciated. Joan was there, of course, and just as the
Archdeacon began the second prayer Mrs. Brandon slipped in and took her
place.
After the servants had filed out and the three were alone, Mrs. Brandon,
with a curious little catch in her voice, said:
"Falk has been out all night; his bed has not been slept in."
Brandon's immediate impulse, before he had even caught the import of his
wife's words, was: "There's reason for emotion coming; see that you show
none."
He sat down at the table, slowly unfolding the _Glebeshire Morning
News_ that always waited, neatly, beside his plate. His hand did not
tremble, although his heart was beating with a strange, muffled agitation.
"I suppose he went off somewhere," he said. "He never tells us, of course.
He's getting too selfish for anything."
He put down his newspaper and picked up his letters. For a moment he felt
as though he could not look at them in the presence of his wife. He
glanced quickly at the envelopes. There was nothing there from Falk. His
heart gave a little clap of relief.
"At any rate, he hasn't written," he said. "He can't be far away."
"There's another post at ten-thirty," she answered.
He was angry with her for that. How like her! Why could she not allow
things to be pleasant as long as possible?
She went on: "He's taken nothing with him. Not even a hand-bag. He hasn't
been back in the house since luncheon yesterday."
"Oh! he'll turn up!" Brandon went back to his paper. "Mustard, Joan,
please." Breakfast over, he went into his study and sat at the long
writing-table, pretending to be about his morning correspondence. He could
not settle to that; he had never been one to whom it was easy to control
his mind, and now his heart and soul were filled with foreboding.
It seemed to him that for weeks past he had been dreading some
catastrophe. What catastrophe? What could occur?
He almost spoke aloud. "Never before have I dreaded...."
Meanwhile he would not think of Falk. He would not. His mind flew round
and round that name like a moth round the candle-light. He heard half-past
ten strike, first in the dining-room, then slowly on his own mantelpiece.
A moment later, through his study door that was ajar, he heard the letters
fall with a soft stir into the box, then the sharp ring of the bell. He
sat at his table, his hands clenched.
"Why doesn't that girl bring the letters? Why doesn't that girl bring the
letters?" he was repeating to himself unconsciously again and again.
She knocked on the door, came in and put the letters on his table. There
were only three. He saw immediately that one was in Falk's handwriting. He
tore the envelope across, pulled out the letter, his fingers trembling now
so that he could scarcely hold it, his heart making a noise as of tramping
waves in his ears.
The letter was as follows:
NORTH ROAD STATION, DRYMOUTH,
_May_ 23, 1897.
MY DEAR FATHER--I am writing this in the waiting-room at North Road before
catching the London train. I suppose that I have done a cowardly thing in
writing like this when I am away from you, and I can't hope to make you
believe that it's because I can't bear to hurt you that I'm acting like a
coward. You'll say, justly enough, that it looks as though I wanted to
hurt you by what I'm doing. But, father, truly, I've looked at it from
every point of view, and I can't see that there's anything else for it but
this. The first part of this, my going up to London to earn my living, I
can't feel guilty about.
It seems to me, truly, the only thing to do. I have tried to speak to you
about it on several occasions, but you have always put me off, and, as far
as I can see, you don't feel that there's anything ignominious in my
hanging about a little town like Polchester, doing nothing at all for the
rest of my life. I think my being sent down from Oxford as I was gave you
the idea that I was useless and would never be any good. I'm going to
prove to you you're wrong, and I know I'm right to take it into my own
hands as I'm doing. Give me a little time and you'll see that I'm right.
The other thing is more difficult. I can't expect you to forgive me just
yet, but perhaps, later on, you'll see that it isn't too bad. Annie Hogg,
the daughter of Hogg down in Seatown, is with me, and next week I shall
marry her.
I have so far done nothing that you need be ashamed of. I love her, but am
not her lover, and she will stay with relations away from me until I marry
her. I know this will seem horrible to you, father, but it is a matter for
my own conscience. I have tried to leave her and could not, but even if I
could I have made her, through my talk, determined to go to London and try
her luck there. She loathes her father and is unhappy at home. I cannot
let her go up to London without any protection, and the only way I can
protect her is by marrying her.
She is a fine woman, father, fine and honourable and brave. Try to think
of her apart from her father and her surroundings. She does not belong to
them, truly she does not. In all these months she has not tried to
persuade me to a mean and shabby thing. She is incapable of any meanness.
In all this business my chief trouble is the unhappiness that this will
bring you. You will think that this is easy to say when it has made no
difference to what I have done. But all the same it is true, and perhaps
later on, when you have got past a little of your anger with me, you will
give me a chance to prove it. I have the promise of some literary work
that should give me enough to live on. I have taken nothing with me;
perhaps mother will pack up my things and send them to me at 5 Parker
Street, St. John's Wood.
Father, give me a chance to show you that I will make this right.--Your
loving son,
FALK BRANDON.
* * * * *
In the little morning-room to the right at the top of the stairs Joan and
her mother were waiting. Joan was pretending to sew, but her fingers
scarcely moved. Mrs. Brandon was sitting at her writing-table; her ears
were straining for every sound. The sun flooded the room with a fierce
rush of colour, and through the wide-open windows the noises of the town,
cries and children's voices, and the passing of feet on the cobbles came
up. As half-past ten struck the Cathedral bells began to ring for morning
service.
"Oh, I can't bear those bells," Mrs. Brandon cried. "Shut the windows,
Joan."
Joan went across and closed them. The bells were suddenly removed, but
seemed to be the more insistent in their urgency because they were shut
away.
The door was suddenly flung open, and Brandon stood there.
"Oh, what is it?" Mrs. Brandon cried, starting to her feet.
He was a man convulsed with anger; she had seen him in these rages before,
when his blue eyes stared with an emptiness of vision and his whole body
seemed to be twisted as though he were trying to climb to some height
whence he might hurl himself down and destroy utterly that upon which he
fell.
The letter tumbled from his hand. He caught the handle of the door as
though he would tear it from its socket, but his voice, when at last it
came, was quiet, almost his ordinary voice.
"His name is never to be mentioned in this house again."
"What has he done?"
"That's enough. What I say. His name is never to be mentioned again."
The two women stared at him. He seemed to come down from a great height,
turned and went, very carefully closing the door behind him.
He had left the letter on the floor. Mrs. Brandon went and picked it up.
"Oh, mother, what has Falk done?" Joan asked.
The bells danced all over the room.
Brandon went downstairs, back into his study, closing his door, shutting
himself in. He stayed in the middle of the room, saying aloud:
"Never his name again.... Never his name again." The actual sound of the
words echoing back to him lifted him up as though out of very deep water.
Then he was aware, as one is in the first clear moment after a great
shock, of a number of things at the same time. He hated his son because
his son had disgraced him and his name for ever. He loved his son, never
before so deeply and so dearly as now. He was his only son, and there was
none other. His son had gone off with the daughter of the worst publican
in the place, and so had shamed him before them all. Falk (he arrived in
his mind suddenly at the name with a little shiver that hurt horribly)
would never be there any more, would never be about the house, would never
laugh and be angry and be funny any more. (Behind this thought was a long
train of pictures of Falk as a boy, as a baby, as a child, pictures that
he kept back with a great gesture of the will.) In the town they would all
be talking, they were talking already. They must be stopped from talking;
they must not know. He must lie; they must all lie. But how could they be
stopped from knowing when he had gone off with the publican's daughter?
They would all know.... They would laugh...They would laugh. He would
not be able to go down the street without their laughter.
Dimly on that came a larger question. What had happened lately so that his
whole life had changed? He had been feeling it now for weeks, long before
this terrible blow had fallen, as though he were surrounded by enemies and
mockers and men who wished him ill. Men who wished him ill! Wished HIM
ill! He who had never done any one harm in all his life, who had only
wanted the happiness of others and the good of the place in which he was,
and the Glory of God! God!...His thoughts leapt across a vast gulf. What
was God about, to allow this disaster to fall upon him? When he had served
God so faithfully and had had no thought but for His grandeur? He was in a
new world now, where the rivers, the mountains, the roads, the cities were
new. For years everything had gone well with him, and then, suddenly, at
the lifting of a finger, all had been ill....
Through the mist of his thoughts, gradually, like the sun in his strength,
his anger had been rising. Now it flamed forth. At the first it had been
personal anger because his son had betrayed and deceived him--but now, for
a time, Falk was almost forgotten.
He would show them. They would laugh at him, would they? They would point
at him, would they, as the man whose son had run away with an innkeeper's
daughter? Well, let them point. They would plot to take the power from his
hands, to reduce him to impotence, to make him of no account in the place
where he had ruled for years. He had no doubt, now that he saw farther
into it, that they had persuaded Falk to run away with that girl. It was
the sort of weapon that they would be likely to use, the sort of weapon
that that man, Ronder....
At the sudden ringing of that now hated name in his ears he was calm. Yes,
to fight that enemy he needed all his control. How that man would rejoice
at this that had happened! What a victory to him it would seem to be!
Well, it should not be a victory. He began to stride up and down his
study, his head up, his chest out. It was almost as though he were a great
warrior of old, having his armour put on before he went out to the fight--
the greaves, the breastplate, the helmet, the sword....
He would fight to the last drop of blood in his body and beat the pack of
them, and if they thought that this would cause him to hang his head or
hide or go secretly, they should soon see their mistake.
He suddenly stopped. The pain that sometimes came to his head attacked him
now. For a moment it was so sharp, of so acute an agony, that he almost
staggered and fell. He stood there, his body taut, his hands clenched. It
was like knives driving through his brain; his eyes were filled with blood
so that he could not see. It passed, but he was weak, his knees shook so
that he was compelled to sit down, holding his hands on his knees. Now it
was gone. He could see clearly again. What was it? Imagination, perhaps.
Only the hammering of his heart told him that anything was the matter. He
was a long while there. At last he got up, went into the hall, found his
hat and went out. He crossed the Green and passed through the Cathedral
door.
He went out instinctively, without any deliberate thought, to the
Cathedral as to the place that would most readily soothe and comfort him.
Always when things went wrong he crossed over to the Cathedral and walked
about there. Matins were just concluded and people were coming out of the
great West door. He went in by the Saint Margaret door, crossed through
the Vestry where Rogers, who had been taking the service, was disrobing,
and climbed the little crooked stairs into the Lucifer Room. A glimpse of
Rogers' saturnine countenance (he knew well enough that Rogers hated him)
stirred some voice to whisper within: "He knows and he's glad."
The Lucifer Room was a favourite resort of his, favourite because there
was a long bare floor across which he could walk with no furniture to
interrupt him, and because, too, no one ever came there. It was a room in
the Bishop's Tower that had once, many hundreds of years ago, been used by
the monks as a small refectory. Many years had passed now since it had
seen any sort of occupation save that of bats, owls and mice. There was a
fireplace at the far end that had long been blocked up, but that still
showed curious carving, the heads of monkeys and rabbits, winged birds, a
twisting dragon with a long tail, and the figure of a saint holding up a
crucifix. Over the door was an old clock that had long ceased to tell the
hours; this had a strangely carved wood canopy. Two little windows with
faint stained glass gave an obscure light. The subjects of these windows
were confused, but the old colours, deep reds and blues, blended with a
rich glow that no modern glass could obtain. The ribs and bosses of the
vaulting of the room were in faded colours and dull gold. In one corner of
the room was an old, dusty, long-neglected harmonium. Against the wall
were hanging some wooden figures, large life-sized saints, two male and
two female, once outside the building, painted on the wood in faded
crimson and yellow and gold. Much of the colour had been worn away with
rain and wind, but two of the faces were still bright and stared with a
gentle fixed gaze out into the dim air. Two old banners, torn and thin,
flapped from one of the vaultings. The floor was worn, and creaked with
every step. As Brandon pushed back the heavy door and entered, some bird
in a distant corner flew with a frightened stir across to the window.
Occasionally some one urged that steps should be taken to renovate the
place and make some use of it, but nothing was ever done. Stories
connected with it had faded away; no one now could tell why it was called
the Lucifer Room--and no one cared.
Its dimness and shadowed coloured light suited Brandon to-day. He wanted
to be where no one could see him, where he could gather together the
resistance with which to meet the world. He paced up and down, his hands
behind his back; he fancied that the old saints looked at him with kindly
affection.
And now, for a moment, all his pride and anger were gone, and he could
think of nothing but his love for his son. He had an impulse that almost
moved him to hurry home, to take the next train up to London, to find
Falk, to take him in his arms and forgive him. He saw again and again that
last meeting that they had had, when Falk had kissed him. He knew now what
that had meant. After all, the boy was right. He had been in the wrong to
have kept him here, doing nothing. It was fine of the boy to take things
into his own hands, to show his independence and to fight for his own
individuality. It was what he himself would have done if--then the thought
of Annie Hogg cut across his tenderness and behind Annie her father, that
fat, smiling, red-faced scoundrel, the worst villain in the town. At the
sudden realisation that there was now a link between himself and that man,
and that that link had been forged by his own son, tenderness and
affection fled. He could only entertain one emotion at a time, and
immediately he was swept into such a fury that he stopped in his walk,
lifted his head, and cursed Falk. For that he would never forgive him, for
the public shame and disgrace that he had brought upon the Brandon name,
upon his mother and his sister, upon the Cathedral, upon all authority and
discipline and seemliness in the town.
He suffered then the deepest agony that perhaps in all his life he had
ever known. There was no one there to see. He sank down upon the wooden
coping that protruded from the old wall and hid his face in his hands as
though he were too deeply ashamed to encounter even the dim faces of the
old wooden figures.
There was a stir in the room; the little door opened and closed; the bird,
with a flutter of wings, flew back to its corner. Brandon looked up and
saw a faint shadow of a man. He rose and took some steps towards the door,
then he stopped because be saw that the man was Davray the painter.
He had never spoken to this man, but be had hated everything that he had
ever heard about him. In the first place, to be an artist was, in the
Archdeacon's mind, synonymous with being a loose liver and an atheist.
Then this fellow was, as all the town knew, a drunkard, an idler, a
dissolute waster who had brought nothing upon Polchester but disgrace. Had
Brandon had his way he would, long ago, have had him publicly expelled and
forbidden ever to return. The thought that this man should be in the
Cathedral at all was shocking to him and, in his present mood, quite
intolerable. He saw, dim though the light was, that the man was drunk now.
Davray lurched forward a step, then said huskily:
"Well, so your fine son's run away with Hogg's pretty daughter."
The sense that he had had already that his son's action, had suddenly
bound him into company with all the powers of evil and destruction rose to
its full height at the sound of the man's voice; but with it rose, too,
his self-command. The very disgust with which Davray filled him
contributed to his own control and dignity.
"You should feel ashamed, sir," he said quietly, standing still where be
was, "to be in that condition in this building. Or are you too drunk to
know where you are?"
"That's all right, Archdeacon," Davray said, laughing. "Of course I'm
drunk. I generally am--and that's my affair. But I'm not so drunk as not
to know where I am and not to know who you are and what's happened to you.
I know all those things, I'm glad to say. Perhaps I am a little ahead of
yourself in that. Perhaps you don't know yet what your young hopeful has
been doing."
Brandon was as still as one of the old wooden saints.
"Then if you are sober enough to know where you are, leave this place and
do not return to it until you are in a fit state."
"Fit! I like that." The sense that he was alone now for the first time in
his life with the man whom he had so long hated infuriated Davray. "Fit?
Let me tell you this, old cock, I'm twice as fit to be here as you're ever
likely to be. Though I have been drinking and letting myself go, I'm
fitter to be here than you are, you stuck-up, pompous fool."
Brandon did not stir.
"Go home!" he said; "go home! Recover your senses and ask God's
forgiveness."
"God's forgiveness!" Davray moved a step forward as though he would
strike. Brandon made no movement. "That's like your damned cheek. Who
wants forgiveness as you do? Ask this Cathedral--ask it whether I have not
loved it, adored it, worshipped it as I've worshipped no woman. Ask it
whether I have not been faithful, drunkard and sot as I am. And ask it
what it thinks of you--of your patronage and pomposity and conceit. When
have you thought of the Cathedral and its beauty, and not always of
yourself and your grandeur?...Why, man, we're sick of you, all of us
from the top man in the place to the smallest boy. And the Cathedral is
sick of you and your damned conceit, and is going to get rid of you, too,
if you won't go of yourself. And this is the first step. Your son's gone
with a whore to London, and all the town's laughing at you."
Brandon did not flinch. The man was close to him; he could smell his
drunken breath--but behind his words, drunken though they might be, was a
hatred so intense, so deep, so real, that it was like a fierce physical
blow. Hatred of himself. He had never conceived in all his life that any
one hated him--and this man had hated him for years, a man to whom he had
never spoken before to-day.
Davray, as was often his manner, seemed suddenly to sober. He stood aside
and spoke more quietly, almost without passion.
"I've been waiting for this moment for years," he said; "you don't know
how I've watched you Sunday after Sunday strutting about this lovely
place, happy in your own conceit. Your very pride has been an insult to
the God you pretend to serve. I don't know whether there's a God or no--
there can't be, or things wouldn't happen as they do--but there _is_
this place, alive, wonderful, beautiful, triumphant, and you've dared to
put yourself above it....
"I could have shouted for joy last night when I heard what your young
hopeful had done. 'That's right,' I said; 'that'll bring him down a bit.
That'll teach him modesty.' I had an extra drink on the strength of it.
I've been hanging about all the morning to get a chance of speaking to
you. I followed you up here. You're one of us now, Archdeacon. You're down
on the ground at last, but not so low as you will be before the Cathedral
has finished with you."
"Go," said Brandon, "or, House of God though this is, I'll throw you out."
"I'll go. I've said my say for the moment. But we'll meet again, never
fear. You're one of us now--one of us. Good-night."
He passed through the door, and the dusky room was still again as though
no one had been there....
There is an old German tale, by De la Motte Fouqué, I fancy, of a young
traveller who asks his way to a certain castle, his destination. He is
given his directions, and his guide tells him that the journey will be
easy enough until he reaches a small wood through which he must pass. This
wood will be dark and tangled and bewildering, but more sinister than
those obstacles will be the inhabitants of it who, evil, malign, foul and
bestial, devote their lives to the destruction of all travellers who
endeavour to reach the castle on the hill beyond. And the tale tells how
the young traveller, proud of his youth and strength, confident in the
security of his armour, nevertheless, when he crosses the dark border of
the wood, feels as though his whole world has changed, as though
everything in which he formerly trusted is of no value, as though the very
weapons that were his chief defence now made him most defenceless. He has
in the heart of that wood many perilous adventures, but worst of them all,
when he is almost at the end of his strength, is the sudden conviction
that he has himself changed, and is himself become one of the foul,
gibbering, half-visioned monsters by whom he is surrounded.
As Brandon left the Cathedral there was something of that strange sense
with him, a sense that had come to him first, perhaps, in its dimmest and
most distant form, on the day of the circus and the elephant, and that
now, in all its horrible vigour and confidence, was there close at his
elbow. He had always held himself immaculate; he had come down to his
fellow-men, loving them, indeed, but feeling that they were of some other
clay than his own, and that through no especial virtue of his, but simply
because God has so wished it. And now he had stood, and a drunken wastrel
had cursed him and told him that he was detested by all men and that they
waited for his downfall.
It was those last words of Davray's that rang in his ears: "You're one of
us now. You're one of us." Drunkard and wastrel though the man was, those
words could not be forgotten, would never be forgotten again.
With his head up, his shoulders back, he returned to his house.
The maid met him in the hall. "There's a man waiting for you in the study,
sir."
"Who is it?"
"Mr. Samuel Hogg, sir."
Brandon looked at the girl fixedly, but not unkindly.
"Why did you let him in, Gladys?"
"He wouldn't take no denial, sir. Mrs. Brandon was out and Miss Joan. He
said you were expecting him and 'e knew you'd soon be back."
"You should never let any one wait, Gladys, unless I have told you
beforehand."
"No, sir."
"Remember that in future, will you?"
"Yes, sir. I'm sure I'm sorry, sir, but----"
Brandon went into his study.
Hogg was standing beside the window, a faded bowler in his hand. He turned
when he heard the opening of the door; he presented to the Archdeacon a
face of smiling and genial, if coarsened, amiability.
He was wearing rough country clothes, brown knickerbockers and gaiters,
and looked something like a stout and seedy gamekeeper fond of the bottle.
"I'm sure you'll forgive this liberty I've taken, Archdeacon," he said,
opening his mouth very wide as he smiled--"waiting for you like this; but
the matter's a bit urgent."
"Yes?" said Brandon, not moving from the door.
"I've come in a friendly spirit, although there are men who might have
come otherwise. You won't deny that, considering the circumstances of the
case."
"I'll be grateful to you if you'll explain," said Brandon, "as quickly as
possibly your business."
"Why, of course," said Hogg, coming away from the window. "Why, of course,
Archdeacon. Now, whoever would have thought that we, you and me, would be
in the same box? And that's putting it a bit mild considering that it's my
daughter that your son has run away with."
Brandon said nothing, not, however, removing his eyes from Hogg's face.
Hogg was all amiable geniality. "I know it must be against the grain,
Archdeacon, having to deal with the likes of me. You've always counted
yourself a strike above us country-folk, haven't you, and quite natural
too. But, again, in the course of nature we've both of us had children and
that, as it turns out, is where we finds our common ground, so to speak--
you a boy and me a lovely girl. _Such_ a lovely girl, Archdeacon, as
it's natural enough your son should want to run away with."
Brandon went across to his writing-table and sat down.
"Mr. Hogg," he said, "it is true that I had a letter from my son this
morning telling me that he had gone up to London with your daughter and
was intending to marry her as soon as possible. You will not expect that I
should approve of that step. My first impulse was, naturally enough, to go
at once to London and to prevent his action at all costs. On thinking it
over, however, I felt that as he had run away with the girl the least that
he could now do was to marry her.
"I'm sure you will understand my feeling when I say that in taking this
step I consider that he has disgraced himself and his family. He has cut
himself off from his family irremediably. I think that really that is all
that I have to say."
Behind Hogg's strange little half-closed eyes some gleam of anger and
hatred passed. There was no sign of it in the geniality of his open smile.
"Why, certainly, Archdeacon, I can understand that you wouldn't care for
what he has done. But boys will be boys, won't they? We've both been boys
in our time, I daresay. You've looked at it from your point of view, and
that's natural enough. But human nature's human nature, and you must
forgive me if I look at it from mine. She's my only girl, and a good girl
she's been to me, keepin' herself _to_ herself and doing her work and
helping me wonderful. Well, your Young spark comes along, likes the look
of her and ruins her...."
The Archdeacon made some movement----
"Oh, you may say what you like, Archdeacon, and he may tell you what
_he_ likes, but you and I know what happens when two young things
with hot blood gets together and there's nobody by. They may _mean_
to be straight enough, but before they knows where they are, nature's took
hold of them, and there they are.... But even supposin' that 'asn't
happened, I don't know as I'm much better off. That girl was the very prop
of my business; she's gone, never to return, accordin' to her own account.
As to this marryin' business, that may seem to you, Archdeacon, to improve
things, but I'm not so sure that it does after all. You may be all very
'igh and mighty in your way, but I'm thinkin' of myself and the business.
What good does my girl marryin' your son do to me? That's what I want to
know."
Brandon's hands were clenched upon the table. Nevertheless he still spoke
quietly.
"I don't think, Mr. Hogg," he said, "that there's anything to be gained by
our discussing this just now. I have only this morning heard of it. You
may be assured that justice will be done, absolute justice, to your
daughter and yourself."
Hogg moved to the door.
"Why, certainly, Archdeacon. It is a bit early to discuss things. I
daresay we shall be havin' many a talk about it all before it's over. I'm
sure I only want to be friendly in the matter. As I said before, we're in
the same box, you and me, so to speak. That ought to make us tender
towards one another, oughtn't it? One losing his son and the other his
daughter.
"Such a good girl as she was too. Certainly I'll be going, Archdeacon;
leave you to think it over a bit. I daresay you'll see my point of view in
time."
"I think, Mr. Hogg, there's nothing to be gained by your coming here. You
shall hear from me."
"Well, as to that, Archdeacon," Hogg turned from the half-opened door,
smiling, "that's as may be. One can get further sometimes in a little talk
than in a dozen letters. And I'm really not much of a letter-writer. But
we'll see 'ow things go on. Good-evenin'."
The talk had lasted but five minutes, and every piece of furniture in the
room, the chairs, the table, the carpet, the pictures, seemed to have upon
it some new stain of disfigurement. Even the windows were dimmed.
Brandon sat staring in front of him. The door opened again and his wife
came in.
"That was Samuel Hogg who has just left you?"
"Yes," he said.
He looked across the room at her and was instantly surprised by the
strangest feeling. He was not, in his daily life, conscious of "feelings"
of any sort--that was not his way. But the events of the past two days
seemed to bring him suddenly into a new contact with real life, as though,
having lived in a balloon all this time, he had been suddenly bumped out
of it with a jerk and found Mother Earth with a terrible bang. He would
have told you a week ago that there was nothing about his wife that he did
not know and nothing about his own feelings towards her--and yet, after
all, the most that he had known was to have no especial feelings towards
her of any kind.
But to-day had been beyond possible question the most horrible day he had
ever known, and it might be that the very horror of it was to force him to
look upon everything on earth with new eyes. It had at least the immediate
effect now of showing his wife to him as part of himself, as some one,
therefore, hurt as he was, smirched and soiled and abused as he, needing
care and kindness as he had never known her to need it before. It was a
new feeling for him, a new tenderness.
He greeted and welcomed it as a relief after the horror of Hogg's
presence. Poor Amy! She was in as bad a way as he now--they were at last
in the same box.
"Yes," he said, "that was Hogg."
Looking at her now in this new way, he was also able to see that she
herself was changed. She figured definitely as an actor now with an odd
white intensity in her face, with some mysterious purpose in her eyes,
with a resolve in the whole poise of her body that seemed to add to her
height.
"Well," she said, "what train are you taking up to London?"
"What train?" he repeated after her.
"Yes, to see Falk."
"I am not going to see Falk."
"You're not going up to him?"
"Why should I go?"
"Why should you go? _You_ can ask me that?...To stop this terrible
marriage."
"I don't intend to stop it."
There was a pause. She seemed to summon every nerve in her body to her
control.
The twitching of her fingers against her dress was her only movement.
"Would you please tell me what you mean to do? After all, I am his
mother."
The tenderness that he had felt at first sight of her was increasing so
strangely that it was all he could do not to go over to her. But his
horror of any demonstration kept him where he was.
"Amy, dear," he said, "I've had a dreadful day--in every way a terrible
day. I haven't had time, as things have gone, to think things out. I want
to be fair. I want to do the right thing. I do indeed. I don't think
there's anything to be gained by going up to London. One thing only now
I'm clear about. He's got to marry the girl now he's gone off with her. To
do him justice he intends to do that. He says that he has done her no
harm, and we must take his word for that. Falk has been many things--
careless, reckless, selfish, but never in all his life dishonourable. If I
went up now we should quarrel, and perhaps something irreparable would
occur. Even though he was persuaded to return, the mischief is done. He
must be just to the girl. Every one in the town knows by now that she went
with him--her father has been busy proclaiming the news even though there
has been no one else."
Mrs. Brandon said nothing. She had made in herself the horrible discovery,
after reading Falk's letter, that her thoughts were not upon Falk at all,
but upon Morris. Falk had flouted her; not only had he not wanted her, but
he had gone off with a common girl of the town. She had suddenly no
tenderness for him, no anger against him, no thought of him except that
his action had removed the last link that held her.
She was gazing now at Morris with all her eyes. Her brain was fastened
upon him with an intensity sufficient almost to draw him, hypnotised,
there to her feet. Her husband, her home, Polchester, these things were
like dim shadows.
"So you will do nothing?" she said.
"I must wait," he said, "I know that when I act hastily I act badly...."
He paused, looked at her doubtfully, then with great hesitation went on:
"We are together in this, Amy. I've been--I've been--thinking of myself
and my work perhaps too much in the past. We've got to see this through
together."
"Yes," she answered, "together." But she was thinking of Morris.