The Cathedral: A Novel

by Hugh Walpole

Mrs. Brandon hated her husband. No one in Polchester had the slightest suspicion of this; certainly her husband least of all. She herself had been first aware of it one summer afternoon some five or six years ago when, very pleasantly and in the kindest way, he had told her that she knew nothing about primroses. They had been having tea at the Dean's, and, as was often the case then, the conversation had concerned itself with flowers and ferns. Mrs. Brandon was quite ready to admit that she knew nothing about primroses--there were for her yellow ones and other ones, and that was all. The Archdeacon had often before told her that she was ignorant, and she had acquiesced without a murmur. Upon this afternoon, just as Mrs. Sampson was asking her whether she liked sugar, revelation came to her. That little scene was often afterwards vividly in front of her--the Archdeacon, with his magnificent legs spread apart in front of the fireplace; Miss Dobell trying to look with wisdom upon a little bundle of primulas that the Dean was showing to her; the sunlight upon the lawn beyond the window; the rooks in the high elms busy with their nests; the May warmth striking through the misty air--all was painted for ever afterwards upon her mind.

"My dear, you may as well admit at once that you know nothing whatever about primroses."

"No, I'm afraid I don't--thank you, Mrs. Sampson. One lump, please."

She had been coming to it. Of course, a very long time before this--very, very far away, now an incredible memory, seemed the days when she had loved him so passionately that she almost died with anxiety if he left her for a single night. Almost too passionate it had been, perhaps. He himself was not capable of passionate love, or, at any rate, had been quite satisfied to be not passionately in love with her. He pursued other things--his career, his religion, his simple beneficence, his health, his vigour. His love for his son was the most passionately personal thing in him, and over that they might have met had he been able to conceive her as a passionate being. Her ignorance of life--almost complete when he had met her--had been but little diminished by her time with him. She knew now, after all those years, little more of the world and its terrors and blessings than she had known then. But she did know that nothing in her had been satisfied. She knew now of what she was capable, and it was perhaps the thought that he had, by taking her, prevented her fulfilment and complete experience that caused her, more than anything else, to hate him.

She very quickly discovered that he had married her for certain things--to have children, to have a companion. He had soon found that the latter of these he was not to obtain. She had in her none of the qualities that he needed in a companion, and so he had, with complete good-nature and kindliness, ceased to consider her. He should have married a bold ambitious woman who would have wanted the things, that he wanted--a woman something like Falk, his son. On the rare occasions when he analysed the situation he realised this. He did not in any way vent his disappointment upon, her--he was only slightly disappointed. He treated her with real kindness save on the occasions of his violent loss of temper, and gave her anything that she wanted. He had, on the whole, a great contempt for women save when, as for instance with Mrs. Combermere, they were really men.

It was to her most humiliating of all, that nothing in their relations worried him. He was perfectly at ease about it all, and fancied that she was the same. Meanwhile her real life was not dead, only dormant. For some years she tried to change the situation; she made little appeals to him, endeavoured timidly to force him to need her, even on one occasion threatened to sleep in a separate room. The memory of that little episode still terrified her. His incredulity had only been equalled by his anger. It was just as though some one had threatened to deprive him of his morning tub....

Then, when she saw that this was of no avail, she had concentrated herself upon her children, and especially upon Falk. For a while she had fancied that she was satisfied. Suddenly--and the discovery was awful--she was aware that Falk's affection all turned towards his father rather than towards her. Her son despised her and disregarded her as his father had done. She did not love Falk the less, but she ceased to expect anything from him--and this new loss she put down to her husband's account.

It was shortly after she made this discovery that the affair of the primroses occurred.

Many a woman now would have shown her hostility, but Mrs. Brandon was, by nature, a woman who showed nothing. She did not even show anything to herself, but all the deeper, because it found no expression, did her hatred penetrate. She scored now little marks against him for everything that he did. She did not say to herself that a day of vengeance was coming, she did not think of anything so melodramatic, she expected nothing of her future at all--but the marks were there.

The situation was developed by Falk's return from Oxford. When he was away her love for him seemed to her simply all in the world that she possessed. He wrote to her very seldom, but she made her Sunday letters to him the centre of her week, and wrote as though they were a passionately devoted mother and son. She allowed herself this little gentle deception--it was her only one.