The Cathedral: A Novel

by Hugh Walpole

Ronder coloured a little. "Not at all. Take every kind of risk if you think your happiness depends upon it. You're going to serve the world best by getting what you want and resting contented in it. It's the discontented and disappointed who hang things up."

Falk smiled. "You're pushing on to me the kind of philosophy that I'd like to follow," he said. "I don't believe in it for a moment nor do I believe it's what you really think, but I think I'm ready to cheat myself if you give me encouragement enough. I don't want to do any one any harm, but I must come to a conclusion about life and then follow it so closely that I can never have any doubt about any course of action again. When I was a small boy the Cathedral used to terrify me and dominate me too. I believed in God then, of course, and I used to creep in and listen, expecting to hear Him speak. That tomb of the Black Bishop seemed to me the place where He'd most likely be, and I used to fancy sometimes that He did speak from the heart of that stone. But I daresay it was the old Bishop himself.

"Anyway, I determined long ago that the Cathedral has a life of its own, quite apart from any of us. It has more immortality in one stone of its nave than we have in all our bodies."

"Don't be too sure of that," Ronder said. "We have our immortality--a tiny flame, but I believe that it never dies. Beauty comes from it and dwells in it. We increase it or diminish it as we live."

"And yet," said Falk eagerly, "you were urging, just now, a doctrine of what, if you'll forgive my saying so, was nothing but selfishness. How do you reconcile that with immortality?"

Ronder laughed. "There have only been four doctrines in the history of the world," he answered, "and they are all Pursuits. One is the pursuit of Unselfishness. 'Little children, love one another. He that seeks to save his soul shall lose it.' The second is the opposite of the first-- Individualism. 'I am I. That is all I know, and I will seek out my own good always because that at least I can understand.' The third is the pursuit of God and Mysticism. 'Neither I matter nor my neighbour. I give up the world and every one and everything in it to find God.' And the fourth is the pursuit of Beauty. 'Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty. That is all we need to know.' Every man and woman alive or dead has chosen one of those four or a mixture of them. I would say that there is something in all of them, Charity, Individualism, Worship, Beauty. But finally, when all is said and done, we remain ourselves. It is our own life that we must lead, our own goal for which we are searching. At the end of everything we remain alone, of ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves. Life is, finally, a lonely journey to a lonely bourne, let us cheat ourselves as we may."

Ronder sat back in his chair, his eyes half closed. There was nothing that he enjoyed more than delivering his opinions about life to a fit audience --and by fit he meant intelligent and responsive. He liked to be truthful without taking risks, and he was always the audience rather than the speaker in company that might be dangerous. He almost loved Falk as he looked across at him and saw the effect that his words had made upon him. There was, Heaven knew, nothing very original in what he had said, but it had been apparently what the boy had wanted to hear.

He jumped up from his chair: "You're right," he said. "We've got to lead our own lives. I've known it all along. When I've shown them what I can do, then I'll come back to them. I love my father, you know, sir; I suppose some people here think him tiresome and self-opinionated, but he's like a boy, you always know where you are with him. He's no idea what deceit means. He looks on this Cathedral as his own idea, as though he'd built it almost, and of course that's dangerous. He'll have a shock one of these days and see that he's gone too far, just as the Black Bishop did. But he's a fine man; I don't believe any one knows how proud I am of him. And it's much better I should go my own way and earn my own living than hang around him, doing nothing--isn't it?"

At that direct appeal, at the eager gaze that Falk fixed upon him, something deep within Ronder stirred.

Should he not even now advise the boy to stay? One word just then might effect much. Falk trusted him. He was the only human being in Polchester to whom the boy perhaps had come. Years afterwards he was to look back to that moment, see it crystallised in memory, see the books, piled row upon row, gleam down upon him, see the blue curtain and hear the crackling fire...a crisis perhaps to himself as well as to Falk.