Cathedral — Bk 2 The Whispering Gallery: Ch 7 Brandon Puts On His Armour

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.