by Hugh Walpole
“But it does matter. It may be for years and years. You’ve got to marry, you can’t just stay unmarried because one day you may marry me.”
“Can’t I? You wait and see whether I can’t.”
“But you oughtn’t to, Johnny. Think of your family. Think of your mother. You’re the only son.”
“Mother can just think of me for once. It will be a bit of a change for her. It will do her good. I’ve told her whom I want to marry, and she must just get used to it. She admits herself that she can’t have anything against you personally, except that you’re too young. I asked her whether she wanted me to marry a Dowager of sixty.”
Joan moved away. She walked to the window and looked out at the grey mist sweeping like an army of ghostly messengers across the Cathedral Green. She turned round to him.
“No, Johnny, this time it isn’t a joke. I mean absolutely what I say. We’re not to meet alone or to write until — father doesn’t need me any more. I can’t think, I mustn’t think, of anything but father now. Nothing that you can say, or any one can say, will make me change my mind about that now.... And please go, Johnny, because it’s so hard while you’re here. And we must do it. I’ll never change, but you’re free to, and you ought to. It’s your duty to find some one more satisfactory than me.”
But Johnny appeared not to have heard her last words. He had been looking about him, at the walls, the windows, the ceiling — rather as a young dog sniffs some place new to him.
“Joan, tell me. Are you all right here? You oughtn’t to be all alone here like this, just with your father. Can’t you get some one to come and stay?”
“No,” she answered bravely. “Of course it’s all right. I’ve got Gladys, who’s been with us for years.”
“There’s something funny,” he said, still looking about him. “It feels queer to me — sort of unhappy.”
“Never mind that,” she said, hurriedly moving towards the door, as though she had heard footsteps. “You must go, Johnny. Kiss me once, the last time. And then no letters, no anything, until — until — father’s happy again.”
She rested in his arms, suddenly tranquil, safe, at peace. Her hands were round his neck. She kissed his eyes. They clung together, suddenly two children, utterly confident in one another and in their mutual faith.
A hand was on the door. They separated. The Archdeacon came in. He peered into the dusky room.
“Joan! Joan! Are you there?”
She came across to him. “Yes, father, here I am. And this is Lord St. Leath.”
“How do you do, sir?” said Johnny.
“How do you do? I hope your mother is well.”
“Very well, thank you, sir.”
“That’s good, that’s good. I have some business to discuss with her. Rather important business; I may come and see her to-morrow afternoon if she is disengaged; Will you kindly tell her?”
“Indeed I will, sir.”
“Thank you. Thank you. This room is very dark. Why are there no lights? Joan, you should have lights. There’s no one else here, is there?”
“No, father.”
Johnny heard their voices echoing in the empty hall as he let himself out.
Brandon shut his study door and looked about him. The lamp on his table was lit, his study had a warm and pleasant air with the books gleaming in their shelves and the fire crackling. (You needed a fire on these late summer evenings.) Nevertheless, although the room looked comfortable, he did not at once move into it. He stood there beside the door, as though he was waiting for something. He listened. The house was intensely quiet. He opened the door and looked into the passage. There was no one there. The gas hissed ever so slightly, like a whispering importunate voice. He came back into his room, closing the door very carefully behind him, went across softly to his writing-table, sat down, and took up his pen. His eyes were fixed on the door, and then suddenly he would jerk round in his chair as though he expected to catch some one who was standing just behind him.
Then began that fight that always now must be waged whenever he sat down at his desk, the fight to drive his thoughts, like sheep, into the only pen that they must occupy. He must think now only of one thing; there were others — pictures, ideas, memories, fears, horrors even — crowding, hovering close about him, and afterwards — after Pybus — he would attend to them. Only one thing mattered now. “Yes, you gibbering idiots, do your worst; knock me down. Come on four to one like the cowards that you are, strike me in the back, take my wife from me, and ruin my house. I will attend to all of you shortly, but first — Pybus.”
His lips were moving as he turned over the papers. Was there some one in the room with him? His head was aching so badly that it was difficult to think. And his heart! How strangely that behaved in these days! Five heavy slow beats, then a little skip and jump, then almost as though it had stopped beating altogether.
Another thing that made it difficult to work in that room was that the Cathedral seemed so close. It was not close really, although you could, so often, hear the organ, but now Brandon had the strange fancy that it had drawn closer during these last weeks, and was leaning forward with its ear to his house, listening just as a man might! Funny how Brandon now was always thinking of the Cathedral as a person! Stones and bricks and mortar and bits of glass, that’s what the Cathedral was, and yet lately it had seemed to move and have a being of its own.
Fancies! Fancies! Really Brandon must attend to his business, this business of Pybus and Forsyth, which in a week now was to be settled. He talked to himself as he turned the papers over. He had seen the Bishop, and Ryle (more or less persuaded), and Bentinck-Major (dark horse, never could be sure of him), Foster, Rogers...Foster? Foster? Had he seen Foster? Why did the mention of that name suddenly commence the unveiling for him of a scene upon which, he must not look? The crossing the bridge, up the hill, at the turnstile, paying your shilling...no, no, no farther. And Bentinck-Major! That man laughed at him! Positively he dared, when a year ago he would have bent down and wiped the dust off his shoes! Positively!
That man! That worm! That mean, sycophantic...He was beginning to get angry. He must not get angry. That’s what Puddifoot had said, that had been the one thing that old Puddifoot had said correctly. He must not get angry, not even with — Ronder.
At the mention of that name something seemed to stir in the room, some one to move closer. Brandon’s heart began to race round like a pony in a paddock. Very bad. Must keep quiet. Never get excited. Then for a moment his thoughts did range, roaming over that now so familiar ground of bewilderment. Why? Why? Why?
Why a year ago that, and now this? When he had done no one in the world any harm and had served God so faithfully? Why? Why? Why?
Back, back to Pybus. This wasn’t work. He had much to do and no time to lose. That enemy of his was working, you could be sure of that. Only a week! Only a week!
Was that some one moving in the room? Was there some one stealing behind him, as they had done once, as...? He turned sharply round, rising in his chair. No one there. He got up and began stealthily to pace the floor. The worst of it was that however carefully you went you could never be quite sure that some one was not just behind you, some one very clever, measuring his steps by yours. You could never be sure. How still the house was! He stopped by his door, after a moment’s hesitation opened it and looked out. No one there, only the gas whispering.
What was he doing, staring into the hall? He should be working, making sure of his work. He went back to his table. He began hurriedly to write a letter:
DEAR FOSTER — I cannot help feeling that I did not make myself quite clear when I was speaking to you yesterday about Forsyth as the best incumbent of the Pybus living. When I say best, I mean, of course, most suitable.
When he said best did he mean most suitable? Suitable was not perhaps exactly the word for Forsyth. It was something other than a question of mere suitability. It was a keeping out of the bad, as well as a bringing in of the good. Suitab
le was not the word that he wanted. What did he want? The words began to jump about on the paper, and suddenly out of the centre of his table there stretched and extended the figure of Miss Milton. Yes, there she was in her shabby clothes and hat, smirking.... He dashed his hand at her and she vanished. He sprang up. This was too bad. He must not let these fancies get hold of him. He went into the hall.
He called out loudly, his voice echoing through the house, “Joan! Joan!”
Almost at once she came. Strange the relief that he felt! But he wouldn’t show it. She must notice nothing at all out of the ordinary.
She sat close to him at their evening meal and talked to him about everything that came into her young head. Sometimes he wished that she wouldn’t talk so much; she hadn’t talked so much in earlier days, had she? But he couldn’t remember what she had done in earlier days.
He was very particular now about his food. Always he had eaten whatever was put in front of him with hearty and eager appreciation; now he seemed to have very little appetite. He was always complaining about the cooking. The potatoes were hard, the beef was underdone, the pastry was heavy. And sometimes he would forget altogether that he was eating, and would sit staring in front of him, his food neglected on his plate.
It was not easy for Joan. Not easy to choose topics that were not dangerous. And so often he was not listening to her at all. Perhaps at no other time did she pity him so much, and love him so much, as when she saw him staring in front of him, his eyes puzzled, bewildered, piteous, like those of an animal caught in a trap. All her old fear of him was gone, but a new fear had come in its place. Sometimes, in quite the old way, he would rap out suddenly, “Nonsense — stuff and nonsense!...As though he knew anything about it!” or would once again take the whole place, town and Cathedral and all of them, into his charge with something like, “I knew how to manage the thing. What they would have done without—” But these defiances never lasted.
They would fade away into bewilderment and silence.
He would complain continually of his head, putting his hand suddenly up to it, and saying, like a little child:
“My head’s so bad. Such a headache!” But he would refuse to see Puddifoot; had seen him once, and had immediately quarrelled with him, and told him that he was a silly old fool and knew nothing about anything, and this when Puddifoot had come with the noblest motives, intending to patronise and condole.
After dinner to-night Joan and he went into the drawing-room. Often, after dinner, he vanished into the study “to work” — but to-night he was “tired, very tired — my dear. So much effort in connection with this Pybus business. What’a come to the town I don’t know. A year ago the matter would have been simple enough...anything so obvious....”
He sat in his old arm-chair, whence for so many years he had delivered his decisive judgments. No decisive judgments tonight! He was really tired, lying back, his eyes closed, his hands twitching ever so slightly on his knees.
Joan sat near to him, struggling to overcome her fear. She felt that if only she could grasp that fear, like a nettle, and hold it tightly in her hand it would seem so slight and unimportant. But she could not grasp it. It was compounded of so many things, of the silence and the dulness, of the Precincts and the Cathedral, of whispering trees and steps on the stairs, of her father and something strange that now inhabited him like a new guest in their house, of her loneliness and of her longing for some friend with whom she could talk, of her ache for Johnny and his comforting, loving smile, but most of all, strangely, of her own love for her father, and her desire, her poignant desire, that he should be happy again. She scarcely missed her mother, she did not want her to come back; but she ached and ached to see once again that happy flush return to her father’s cheek, that determined ring to his voice, that buoyant confident movement to his walk.
To-night she could not be sure whether he slept or no. She watched him, and the whole world seemed to hold its breath. Suddenly an absurd fancy seized her. She fought against it for a time, sitting there, her hands tightly clenched. Then suddenly it overcame her. Some one was listening outside the window; she fancied that she could see him — tall, dark, lean, his face pressed against the pane.
She rose very softly and stole across the floor, very gently drew back one of the curtains and looked out. It was dark and she could see nothing — only the Cathedral like a grey web against a sky black as ink. A lamp, across the Green, threw a splash of orange in the middle distance — no other light. The Cathedral seemed to be very close to the house.
She closed the curtain and then heard her father call her.
“Joan! Joan! Where are you?”
She came back and stood by his chair. “I was only looking out to see what sort of a night it was, father dear,” she said.
He suddenly smiled. “I had a pleasant little nap then,” he said; “my head’s better. There. Sit down close to me. Bring your chair nearer. We’re all alone here now, you and I. We must make a lot of one another.”
He had paid so little attention to her hitherto that she suddenly realised now that her loneliness had, during these last weeks, been the hardest thing of all to bear. She drew her chair close to his and he took her hand.
“Yes, yes, it’s quite true. I don’t know what I should have done without you during these last weeks. You’ve been very good to your poor, stupid, old father!”
She murmured something, and he burst out, “Oh, yes, they do! That’s what they say! I know how they talk. They want to get me out of the way and change the place — put in unbelievers and atheists. But they shan’t — not while I have any breath in my body—” He went on more gently, “Why just think, my dear, they actually want to have that man Wistons here. An atheist! A denier of Christ’s divinity! Here worshipping in the Cathedral! And when I try to stop it they say I’m mad. Oh, yes! They do! I’ve heard them. Mad. Out-of-date. They’ve laughed at me — ever since — ever since... that elephant, you know, dear...that began it...the Circus....”
She leaned over him.
“Father dear, you mustn’t pay so much attention to what they say. You imagine so much just because you aren’t very well and have those headaches — and — and — because of other things. You imagine things that aren’t true. So many people here love you — —”
“Love me!” he burst out suddenly, starting up in his chair. “When they set upon me, five of them, from behind and beat me! There in public with the lights and the singing.” He caught her hand, gripping it. “There’s a conspiracy, Joan. I know it. I’ve seen it a long time. And I know who started it and who paid them to follow me. Everywhere I go, there they are, following me.
“That old woman with her silly hat, she followed me into my own house. Yes, she did! ‘I’ll read you a letter,’ she said. ‘I hate you, and I’ll make you cry out over this.’ They’re all in it. He’s setting them on. But he shan’t have his way. I’ll fight him yet. Even my own son — —” His voice broke.
Joan knelt at his feet, looking up into his face. “Father! Falk wants to come and see you! I’ve had a letter from him. He wants to come and ask your forgiveness — he loves you so much.”
He got up from his chair, almost pushing her away from him. “Falk! Falk! I don’t know any one called that. I haven’t got a son — —”
He turned, looking at her. Then suddenly put his arms around her and kissed her, holding her tight to his breast.
“You’re a good girl,” he said. “Dear Joan! I’m glad you’ve not left me too. I love you, Joan, and I’ve not been good enough to you. Oh, no, I haven’t! Many things I might have done, and now it’s too late...too late...”
He kissed her again and again, stroking her hair, then he said that he was tired, very tired — he’d sleep to-night. He went slowly upstairs.
He undressed rapidly, flinging off his clothes as though they hurt him. As though some one else had unexpectedly come into the room, he saw himself standing before the long glass in the dressing-room, naked
save for his vest. He looked at himself and laughed.
How funny he looked only in his vest — how funny were he to walk down the High Street like that! They would say he was mad. And yet he wouldn’t be mad. He would be just as he was now. He pulled the vest off over his head and continued to stare at himself. It was as though he were looking at some one else’s body. The long toes, the strong legs, the thick thighs, the broad hairless chest, the stout red neck — and then those eyes, surely not his, those strange ironical eyes! He passed his hand down his side and felt the cool strong marble of his flesh. Then suddenly he was cold and he hurried into his night-shirt and his dressing-gown.
He sat on his bed. Something deep down in him was struggling to come up. Some thought...some feeling...some name. Falk! It was as though a bell were ringing, at a great distance, in the sleeping town — but ringing only for him. Falk! The pain, the urgent pain, crept closer. Falk! He got up from his bed, opened his door, looked out into the dark and silent house, stepped forward, carefully, softly, his old red dressing-gown close about him, stumbling a little on the stairs, feeling the way to his study door.
He sat in his arm-chair huddled up. “Falk! Falk! Oh, my boy, my boy, come back, come back! I want you, I want to be with you, to see you, to touch you, to hear your voice! I want to love you!
“Love — Love! I never wanted love before, but now I want it, desperately, desperately, some one to love me, some one for me to love, some one to be kind to. Falk, my boy. I’m so lonely. It’s so dark. I can’t see things as I did. It’s getting darker.
“Falk, come back and help me....”
Chapter III
Prelude to Battle
That night he slept well and soundly, and in the morning woke tranquil and refreshed. His life seemed suddenly to have taken a new turn. As he lay there and watched the sunlight run through the lattices like strands of pale-coloured silk, it seemed to him that he was through the worst. He did what he had not done for many days, allowed the thought of his wife to come and dwell with him.