by Hugh Walpole
“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 pro
spects 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.