The Cathedral Part 14

"I knew, of course," said Davray. "I've seen you about." He spoke with great swiftness, the words tumbling over one another, not with eagerness, but rather with a kind of supercilious carelessness. "Beastly hole, isn't this? Wonder why one comes here. Must do something in this rotten town.

I've drunk enough of this filthy beer. What do you say to moving out?"

Falk looked up at him.

"What do you say?" he asked.

"Let's move out of this. If you're walking up the town I'll go with you."

Falk was not conscious of the man, but it was quite true that he wanted to get out of the place now that his job in it was done. He got up without a word and began to push through the room. He was met near the door by Hogg.

"Goin', Mr. Brandon? Like to settle now or leave it to another day?"

"What's that?" said Falk, stopping as though some one had touched him on the shoulder. He seemed to see the large smiling man suddenly in front of him outlined against a s.h.i.+fting wall of mist.

"Payin' now or leavin' it? Please yourself, Mr. Brandon."

"Oh--paying!" He fumbled in his pocket, produced half-a-crown, gave it to Hogg without looking at him and went out. Davray followed, slouching through the room and pa.s.sage with the conceited over-careful walk of a man a little tipsy.

Outside, as they went down the street still obscured with the wet mist, Davray poured out a flow of words to which he seemed to want no answer.

"I hope you didn't mind my speaking to you like that--a bit unceremonious. But to tell you the truth I'm lonely sometimes. Also, if you want to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I'm a bit tipsy too. Generally am. This air makes one feel queer after that stinking hole, doesn't it? If you can call this air. I've seen you there a lot lately and often thought I'd like to talk to you. You're the only decent- looking fellow in the whole of this town, if you'll forgive my saying so.

Isn't it a b.l.o.o.d.y hole? But of course you think so too. I can see it in your face. I suppose you go to that pub after that girl. I saw you talking to her. Well, each man to his taste. I'd never interfere with any man's pleasure. I loathe women myself, always have. They never appealed to me a little bit. In Paris the men used to wonder what I was after. I was after Ambition in those days. Funny thing, but I thought I was going to be a great painter once. Queer what one can trick oneself into believing--so I might have been if I hadn't come to this beastly town. Hope I'm not boring you...."

He stopped as though he had suddenly realised that his companion had not said a word. They were pus.h.i.+ng now up the hill into the market-place and the mist was now so thick that they could scarcely see one another's face.

Falk was thinking. "To-morrow evening.... What do I want? What's going to happen? What do I want?"

The silence made him conscious of his companion.

"What do you say?" he asked.

"Hope I'm not boring you."

"No, that's all right. Where are we?"

"Just coming into the market."

"Oh, yes."

"If I talk a lot it's because I haven't had any one to talk to for weeks.

Not that I want to talk to any one. I despise the lot of them. Conceited set of ignorant parrots.... Whole place run by women and what can you expect? You're not staying here, I suppose. I heard you'd had enough of Oxford and I don't wonder. No place for a man, beautiful enough but spoilt by the people. _d.a.m.n_ people--always coming along and spoiling places. Now there's the Cathedral, most wonderful thing in England, but does any one know it? Not a bit of it. You'd think they fancied that the Cathedral _owes_ them something--about as much sense of beauty as a c.o.c.kroach."

They were pressing up the High Street now. There was no one about. It was a town of ghosts. By the Arden Gate Falk realised where he was and halted.

"Hullo! we're nearly home.... Well...good afternoon, Mr. Davray."

"Come into the Cathedral for a moment," Davray seemed to be urgent about this. "Have you ever been up into the King Harry Tower? I bet you haven't."

"King Harry Tower?..." Falk stared at the man. What did the fellow want him to do? Go into the Cathedral? Well, why not? Stupid to go home just now--nothing to do there but think, and people would interrupt.... Think better out of doors. But what was there to think about? He was not thinking, simply going round and round.... Who was this fellow anyway?

"As you like," he said.

They crossed the Precincts and went through the West door into the Cathedral. The nave was full of dusky light and very still. Candles glimmered behind the great choir-screen and there were lamps by the West door. Seen thus, in its half-dark, the nave bore full witness to the fact that Polchester has the largest Cathedral in Northern Europe. It is certainly true that no other building in England gives the same overwhelming sense of length.

In full daylight the nave perhaps, as is the case with all English Cathedrals, lacks colour and seems cold and deserted. In the dark of this spring evening it was full of mystery, and the great columns of the nave's ten bays, rising unbroken to the roof groining, sprang, it seemed, out of air, superbly, intolerably inhuman.

The colours from the tombs and the bra.s.ses glimmered against the grey, and the great rose-coloured circle of the West window flung pale lights across the cold dark of the flags and pillars.

The two men were held by the mysterious majesty of the place. Falk was lifted right out of his own preoccupied thoughts.

He had never considered the Cathedral except as a place to which he was dragged for services against his will, but to-night, perhaps because of his own crisis, he seemed to see it all for the first time. He was conscious now of Davray and was aware that he did not like him and wished to be rid of him--"an awful-looking tout" he thought him, "with his greasy long hair and his white long face and his spindle legs."

"Now we'll go up into King Harry," Davray said. But at that moment old Lawrence came bustling along. Lawrence, over seventy years of age, had grown stout and white-haired in the Cathedral's service. He was a fine figure in his purple gown, broad-shouldered, his chest and stomach of a grand protuberance, his broad white flowing beard a true emblem of his ancient dignity. He was the most autocratic of Vergers and had been allowed now for many years to do as he pleased. The only thorn in his flesh was Cobbett, the junior Verger, who, as he very well realised, was longing for him to die, that he might step into his shoes. "I do believe,"

he was accustomed to say to Mrs. Lawrence, a little be-bullied woman, "that that man will poison me one of these fine days."

His autocracy had grown on him with the size and the whiteness of his beard, and there were many complaints--rude to strangers, sycophantic to the aristocracy, greedy of tips, insolent and conceited, he was an excellent example of the proper spirit of the Church Militant. He had, however, his merits. He loved small children and would have allowed them to run riot on the Cathedral greens had he not been checked, and he had a pride in the Cathedral that would drive him to any sacrifice in his defence of it.

It was natural enough that he should hate the very sight of Davray, and when that gentleman appeared he hung about in the background hoping that he might catch him in some crime. At first he thought him alone.

"Oh, Verger," Davray said, as though he were speaking to a beggar who had asked of him alms. "I want to go up into King Harry. You have the key, I think."

"Well, you can't, sir," said Lawrence, with considerable satisfaction.

"'Tis after hours." Then he saw Falk.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Brandon, sir. I didn't realise. Do you want to go up the Tower, sir?"

"We may as well," said Falk.

"Of course for you, sir, it's different. Strangers have to keep certain hours. This way, sir."

They followed the pompous old man across the nave, up the side aisle, past "tombs and monuments and gilded knights," until they came to the King Harry Chapel. This was to the right of the choir, and before the screen that railed it off from the rest of the church there was a notice saying that this Chapel had been put aside for private prayer and it was hoped that no one would talk or make any noise, were some one meditating or praying there. The little place was infinitely quiet, with a special air of peace and beauty as though all the prayers and meditations that had been offered there had deeply sanctified it; Lawrence pushed open the door of the screen and they crossed the flagged floor. Suddenly into the heart of the hush there broke the Cathedral chimes, almost, as it seemed, directly above their heads, booming, echoing, dying with lingering music back into the silence. At the corner of the Chapel there was a little wooden door; Lawrence unlocked it and pushed it open. "Mind how you go, sir," he said, speaking to Falk as though Davray did not exist. "'Tis a bit difficult with the winding stair."

The two men went forward into the black darkness, leaving the dusky light behind them. Davray led the way and Falk followed, feeling with his arms the black walls on either side of him, knocking with his legs against the steps above him. Here there was utter darkness and no sound. He had suddenly a half-alarmed, half-humorous suspicion that Davray was suddenly going to turn round upon him and push him down the stair or stick a knife into him--the fear of the dark. "After all, what am I doing with this fellow?" he thought. "I don't know him. I don't like him. I don't want to be with him."

"That's better," he heard Davray say. There was a glimmer, then a shadow of grey light, finally they had stepped out into what was known as the Whispering Gallery, a narrow railed platform that ran the length of the Chapel and beyond to the opposite Tower. They did not stop there. They pushed up again by more winding stairs, black for a s.p.a.ce, then lit by a window, then black again. At last, after what had seemed a long journey, they were in a little, spare, empty room with a wooden floor. One side of this little room was open and railed in. Looking down, the floor of the nave seemed a vast distance below. You seemed here to be flying in glory.

The dim haze of the candles just touched the misty depth with golden colour. Above them the great roof seemed close and menacing. Everywhere pillars and b.u.t.tresses rose out of s.p.a.ce. The great architect of the building seemed here to have his true kingdom, so vast was the depth and the height and the grandeur. The walls and the roof and the pillars that supported it were alive with their own greatness, scornful of little men and their little loves. The hush was filled with movement and stir and a vast business....

The two men leaned on the rails and looked down. Far below, the white figured altar, the bra.s.s of the Black Bishop's tomb, the glitter of Saint Margaret's screen struck in little points of dull gold like stars upon a grey inverted sky.

Davray turned suddenly upon his companion. "And it's men like your father," he said, "who think that this place is theirs.... Theirs!

Presumption! But they'll get it in the neck for that. This place can bide its time. Just when you think you're its master it turns and stamps you out."

Falk said nothing. Davray seemed irritated by his silence. "You wait and see," he said. "It amuses me to see your governor walking up the choir on Sundays as though he owned the place. Owned it! Why, he doesn't realise a stone of it! Well, he'll get it. They all have who've tried his game.

Owned it!"

"Look here," said Falk, "don't you say anything about my father--that's none of your business. He's all right. I don't know what the devil I came up here for--thinking of other things."

Davray too was thinking of other things.

"You wonderful place!" he whispered. "You beautiful place! You've ruined me, but I don't care. You can do what you like with me. You wonder! You wonder!"