by Hugh Walpole
“Rather a short acquaintance!” said Maradick. “We only spoke to him for a minute, and then he offered his card. One has to be a little careful.”
“Oh! you could tell he was all right,” said Tony; “look at his eyes. But what fun it’s all been. Aren’t you glad you came down?”
Maradick couldn’t honestly say that he was, but he answered in the affirmative. “Only, you know,” he said, laughing, “it’s an unusual evening for a man like myself. We run along on wheels and prefer sticking to the rails.”
They were climbing the hill. “Why, this is Trevenna Street!” cried Tony, catching sight of the name on one of the houses. “The man lives here.”
The street was quaint and picturesque, and on some of the walls there was ancient carving; heads leered at them from over the doors and window-ledges. Then it struck twelve from somewhere in the town, and immediately all the lights went out; the street was in darkness, for, at the moment, the clouds were over the moon.
“We’re in the provinces,” said Tony, laughing. “We ought to have link-boys.”
Suddenly above their heads there was a light. A window was flung up and some one was standing there with a candle. It was a girl; in the candle-light she stood out brilliantly against the black background. She leaned out of the window.
“Is that you, father?” she called.
Then some one spoke from inside the room. There was a petulant “Oh bother! Miss Minns!” and then the window closed.
Maradick had scarcely noticed the affair. He was hurrying up the hill, eager to reach the hotel.
But Tony stood where he was. “By Jove!” he cried. “Did you see her eyes? Wonderful! Why, you never in all your life —— !”
“Candle-light is deceptive,” said Maradick.
“She was wonderful! Glorious! Just for a moment like that out of the darkness! But this is indeed a city of miracles!” He looked back; the house was in absolute darkness.
“She doesn’t like Miss Minns,” he added, “I expect Miss Minns is a beast; I, too, hate Miss Minns.”
At last, in the dark, mysterious hall they parted. “Oh! for bed!” said Maradick.
“But what a night!” cried Tony. “By heaven! what a night!”
And the Admonitus Locorum smiled, very knowingly, from the head of the stairs.
CHAPTER V. MARADICK MAKES A PROMISE AND MEETS AN
ITINERANT OPTIMIST
The house was the cleverest in the world. There was nothing in Europe of its kind, and that was because its cleverness lay in the fact that you never thought it clever at all. It could, most amazingly, disappear so utterly and entirely that you never had any thoughts about it at all, and merely accepted it without discussion as a perfect background. And then, suddenly, on a morning or an evening, it would leap out at you and catch you by the throat; and the traveller wondered and was aghast at its most splendid adaptability.
It was, indeed, all things to all men; but it nevertheless managed to bring out the best parts of them. All those strange people that it had seen — painters and musicians, the aristocracy and old maids, millionaires and the tumbled wastrels cast out from a thousand cities — it gathered them all, and they left it, even though they had passed but a night in its company, altered a little. And it achieved this by its adaptability. In its rooms and passages, its gardens and sudden corners, its grey lights and green lawns, there was that same secret waiting for an immediate revelation. Some thought the house a tyranny, and others called it a surprise, and a few felt that it was an impossibility, but no one disregarded it.
For Maradick, in these strange new days into which he was entering, its charm lay in its age. That first view with the dark, widening staircase that passed into hidden lights and mysteries overhead and turned so nobly towards you the rich gleam of its dark brown oak, the hall with its wide fireplace and passages that shone, as all true passages should, like little cups of light and shadow, grey and blue and gold, before vanishing into darkness — this first glimpse had delighted him; it was a hall that was a perfect test of the arriving visitor, and Maradick had felt that he himself had been scarcely quite the right thing. It was almost as though he ought to have apologised for the colourless money-making existence that had hitherto been his; he had felt this vaguely and had been a little uncomfortable. But there were things higher up that were better still. There were rooms that had, most wisely, been untouched, and their dark, mysterious panelling, the wistful scent of dried flowers and the wax of dying candles; the suggestion — so that he held his breath sometimes to listen whether it were really so — of rustling brocades and the tiny click of shining heels on the polished floor, was of a quite unequalled magic for him. Of course there was imagination in it, and in the last few days these things had grown and extended their influence over him, but there must have been something there before, he argued, to impress so matter-of-fact and solid a gentleman.
There was one room that drew him with especial force, so that sometimes, before going to bed, he would enter with his candle raised high above his head, and watch the shadow on the floor and the high gloom of the carved ceiling. It contained a little minstrels gallery supported on massive pillars of gleaming oak, and round the bottom of the platform were carved the heads of grinning lions, reminding one of that famous Cremona violin of Herr Prespil’s. In the centre of the room was an old table with a green baize cloth, and against the wall, stiffly ranged and dusty from disuse, high-backed quaintly carved chairs, but for the rest no carpet and no pictures on the dark, thick walls.
It was sometimes used for dancing, and at times for a meeting or a sale of work; or perchance, if there were gentlemen musically inclined, for chamber music. But it was empty during half the year, and no one disturbed its dust; it reminded Maradick of that tower in the market-place. They were, both of them, melancholy survivals, but he applauded their bravery in surviving at all, and he had almost a personal feeling for them in that he would have liked them to know that there was, at least, one onlooker who appreciated their being there.
There were rooms and passages in the upper part of the house that were equally delightful and equally solitary. He himself had in his former year at Treliss thought them melancholy and dusty; there had been no charm. But now the room of the minstrels had drawn him frequently to its doors, partly by reason of its power of suggestion — the valuation, for him, of light and sound and colour, in their true and most permanent qualities — partly by the amazing view that its deep-set windows provided. It hung forward, as it were, over the hill, so that the intervening space of garden and tower and wood was lost and there was only the sea. It seemed to creep to the very foot of the walls, and the horizon of it was so distant that it swept into infinite space, meeting the sky without break or any division. The height of the room gave the view colour, so that there were deeper blues and greens in the sea, and in the sky the greys and whites were shot with other colours that the mists of the intervening air had given them.
In these last few days Maradick had watched the view with ever-increasing wonder. The sea had been to him before something that existed for the convenience of human beings — a means of transit, a pleasant place to bathe, sands for the children, and the pier for an amusing walk. Now he felt that these things were an impertinence. It seemed to him that the sea permitted them against its will, and would, one day, burst its restraint and pour in overwhelming fury on to that crowd of nurses and nigger-minstrels and parasols; he almost hoped that it would.
Loneliness was, however, largely responsible for this change of view. There had been no one this time at the hotel to whom he had exactly taken. There had been men last year whom he had liked, excellent fellows. They had come there for the golf and he had seen a good deal of them. There might be some of the same kind now, but for some reason, unanalysed and very mistily grasped, he did not feel drawn towards them.
The Saturday of the end of that week was a terribly hot day, and after lunch he had gone to his room, pulled down his blinds, and
slumbered over a novel. The novel was by a man called Lester; he had made his name several years before with “The Seven Travellers,” a work that had succeeded in pleasing both critics and public. It was now in its tenth edition. Maradick had been bored by “The Seven Travellers”; it had seemed effete and indefinite. They were, he had thought, always travelling and never getting there, and he had put it down unfinished. The man knew nothing of life at first hand, and the characters were too obviously concerned in their own emotions to arouse any very acute ones in the reader. But this one, “To Paradise,” was better. If the afternoon had not been so very hot it might even have kept him awake. The characters were still effete and indefinite, motives were still crudely handled and things were vague and obscure, but there was something in its very formlessness that was singularly pleasing. And it was beautiful, there was no doubt about that; little descriptions of places and people that were charming not only for themselves but also for the suggestions that they raised.
When he woke it was nearly four o’clock. He remembered that he had promised his wife to come down to tea. She had met the Gales the day before and they were coming to tea, and he had to be useful. There were a good many little drawing-rooms in the hotel, so that you could ask more people to tea than your own room would conveniently hold, and nevertheless be, to all intents and purposes, private.
He yawned, stretched his arms above his head, and left his room. Then he remembered that he had left a book in the room with the minstrels gallery that morning. He went upstairs to fetch it. The room itself lay in shadow, but outside, beyond the uncurtained windows, the light was so fierce that it hurt his eyes.
He had never seen anything to approach the colour. Sea and sky were a burning blue, and they were seen through a golden mist that seemed to move like some fluttering, mysterious curtain between earth and heaven. There was perfect stillness. Three little fishing-boats with brown sails, through which the sun glowed with the red light of a ruby, stood out against the staring, dazzling white of the distant cliffs.
He found his book, and stood there for a moment wondering why he liked the place so much. He had never been a man of any imagination, but now, vaguely, he filled the space around him with figures. He could not analyse his thoughts at all, but he knew that it all meant something to him now, something that had not been there a week ago.
He went down to tea.
The drawing-room was lying in shadow; the light and heat were shut out by heavy curtains. His wife was making tea, and as he came in at the door he realised her daintiness and charm very vividly. The shining silver and delicate china suited her, and there were little touches of very light blue about her white dress that were vague enough to seem accidental; you wondered why they had happened to be so exactly in precisely the right places. There were also there Lady and Sir Richard Gale, Alice Du Cane, Mrs. Lawrence, and in the background with a diminutive kitten, Tony.
“Something to eat, Miss Du Cane? What, nothing, really?” He sat down beside her and Tony. She interested him, partly because she was so beautiful and partly because she was perhaps going to marry Tony. She looked very cool now; a little too cool, he thought.
“Well? Do you like this place?” he said.
“I? Oh yes! It’s lovely, of course. But I think it would be better if one had a cottage here, quite quietly. Of course the hotel’s beautiful and most awfully comfortable, but it’s the kind of place where one oughtn’t to have to think of more than the place; it’s worth it. All the other things — dressing and thinking what you look like, and table d’hôte — they all come in between somehow like a wall. One doesn’t want anything but the place.”
That, he suddenly discovered, was why he liked the little room upstairs, because it was, so simply and clearly, the place. He looked at her gratefully.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s just what I’ve been feeling. I missed it last year somehow. It didn’t seem fine in quite the same way.”
But he saw that she was not really interested. She thought of him, of course, as a kind of middle-aged banker. He expected that she would soon try to talk to him about self and the table d’hôte and bridge. He was seriously anxious to show her that there were other things that he cared for.
“You’ve changed a lot since the other day, Alice,” said Tony suddenly. “You told me you didn’t like Treliss a bit, and now you think it’s lovely.”
“I do really,” said Alice, laughing. “That was only a mood. How could one help caring? All the same you know I don’t think it’s altogether good for one, it’s too complete a holiday.”
“That’s very strenuous, Miss Du Cane,” said Maradick. “Why shouldn’t we have holidays? It helps.”
“Ah, yes,” said Alice. “But then you work. Here am I doing nothing all the year round but enjoy myself; frankly, I’m getting tired of it. I shall buy a typewriter or something. Oh! if I were only a man!”
She looked at Tony. He laughed.
“She’s always doing that, Maradick — pitching into me because I don’t do anything; but that’s only because she doesn’t know in the least what I’m really doing. She doesn’t know — —”
“Please, Mr. Maradick,” she said, turning round to him, “make him start something seriously. Take him into your office. He can add, I expect, or be useful in some way. He’s getting as old as Methuselah, and he’s never done a day’s work in his life.”
Although she spoke lightly, he could see that she meant it very seriously. He wondered what it was that she wanted him to do, and also why people seemed to take it for granted that he had influence over Tony; it was as if Fate were driving him into a responsibility that he would much rather avoid. But the difficulty of it all was that he was so much in the dark. These people had not let him into things, and yet they all of them demanded that he should do something. He would have liked to have asked her to tell him frankly what it was that she wanted him to do, and, indeed, why she had appealed to him at all; but there was no opportunity then. At any rate he felt that some of her indifference was gone; she had let him see that there were difficulties somewhere, and that at least was partial confidence.
Mrs. Maradick interrupted: “Miss Du Cane, I wonder if you would come and make a four at bridge. It’s too hot to go out, and Sir Richard would like a game. It would be most awfully good of you.”
Alice moved over to the card-table. Sir Richard played continually but never improved. He sat down now with the air of one who condescended; he covered his mistakes with the assurance that it was his partner who was playing abominably, and he explained carefully and politely at the end of the game the things that she ought to have done. Mrs. Maradick and Mrs. Lawrence played with a seriousness and compressed irritation that was worthy of a greater cause.
Tony had slipped out of the room, and Lady Gale crossed over to Maradick by the window.
“How quickly,” she said, “we get to know each other in a place like this. We have only been here a week and I am going to be quite confidential already.”
“Confidential?” said Maradick.
“Yes, and I hope you won’t mind. You mustn’t mind, because it’s my way. It always has been. If one is going to know people properly then I resent all the wasted time that comes first. Besides, preliminaries aren’t necessary with people as old as you and I. We ought to understand by this time. Then we really can’t wait.”
He looked into her face, and knew that here at least there would be absolute honesty and an explanation of some kind.
“Forgive me, Lady Gale,” he said, “but I’m afraid I don’t understand. I’ve been in the dark and perhaps you’ll explain. Before I came down here I’d been living to myself almost entirely — a man of my age and occupations generally does — and now suddenly I’m caught into other people’s affairs, and it’s bewildering.”
“Well, it’s all very simple,” she answered. “Of course it’s about Tony. Everyone’s interested in Tony. He’s just at the interesting age, and he’s quite exciting enough to mak
e his people wonder what he’ll turn into. It’s the chrysalis into the — well, that just depends. And then, of course, I care a great deal more than the rest. Tony has been different to me from the rest. I suppose every mother’s like that, but I don’t think most of them have been such chums with their sons as I’ve been with Tony. We were alone in the country together for a long time and there was nobody else. And then the time came that I had prepared for and knew that I must face, the time when he had things that he didn’t tell me. Every boy’s like that, but I trusted him enough not to want to know, and he often told me just because I didn’t ask. Then he cared for all the right things and always ran straight; he never bent his brain to proving that black’s white and indeed rather whiter than most whites are, as so many people do. But just lately I’ve been a little anxious — we have all been — all of us who’re watching him. He ought to have settled down to something or some one by this time and one doesn’t quite know why he hasn’t; and he hasn’t been himself for the last six months. Things ought to have come to a head here. I don’t know what he’s been up to this week, but none of us have seen anything of him, and I can see that his thoughts are elsewhere all the time. It isn’t in the least that I doubt him or am unhappy, it is only that I would like some one to be there to give him a hand if he wants one. A woman wouldn’t do; it must be a man, and — —”
“You think I’m the person,” said Maradick.
“Well, he likes you. He’s taken to you enormously. That’s always been a difficulty, because he takes to people so quickly and doesn’t seem to mind very much whom it is; but you are exactly the right man, the man I have wanted him to care for. You would help him, you could help him, and I think you will.”
Maradick was silent.
“You mustn’t, please, think that I mean you to spy in any way,” she continued. “I don’t want you to tell me anything. I shall never ask you, and you need never say anything to me about it. It is only that I shall know that there is some one there if he gets into a mess and I shall know that he’s all right.” She paused again, and then went on gently —