Cathedral — Bk 2 The Whispering Gallery: Ch 5 Falk By The River
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.
