by Hugh Walpole
The evening light was over the market-place; the sun, peering through a pillar of cloudless blue, cut sharply between the straight walls of the Town Hall and a neighbouring chimney, flung itself full upon the tower.
It caught the stones and shot them with myriad lights; it played with the fruit on the stall at the tower’s foot until the apples were red as rubies and the oranges shone like gold. It bathed it, caressed it, enfolded it, and showed the modern things on every side that old friends were, after all, the best, and that fine feathers did not always make the finest birds.
The rest of the market-place was in shadow, purple in the corners and crevices, the faintest blue in the higher air, a haze of golden-grey in the central square. It was full of people standing, for the most part, discussing the events of the day; in the corner by the tower there was a Punch and Judy show, and Maradick could hear the shrill cries of Mr. Punch rising above the general chatter. Over everything there was a delicious scent of all the best things in the world — ripe orchards, flowering lanes, and the sharp pungent breath of the sea; in the golden haze of the evening everything seemed to be waiting, breathlessly, in spite of the noise of voices, for some great moment.
Maradick had never felt so perfectly in tune with the world.
He passed across to the Punch and Judy show, and stood in a corner by the fruit stall under the tower and watched Mr. Punch. That gentleman was in a very bad temper to-night, and he banged with his stick at everything that he could see; poor Judy was in for a bad time, and sank repeatedly beneath the blows which should have slain an ox. Toby looked on very indifferently until it was his turn, when he bit furiously at Mr. Punch’s trousers and showed his teeth, and choked in his frill and behaved like a most ferocious animal. Then there came the policeman, and Mr. Punch was carried, swearing and cursing, off to prison, but in a moment he was back again, as perky as before, and committing murders at the rate of two a minute.
There was a fat baby, held aloft in its mother’s arms, who watched the proceedings with the closest attention; it was intensely serious, its thumb in its mouth, its double chin wrinkling with excitement. Then a smile crept out of its ears and across its cheeks; its mouth opened, and suddenly there came a gurgle of laughter. It crowed with delight, its head fell back on its nurse’s shoulder and its eyes closed with ecstasy; then, with the coming of Jack Ketch and his horrible gallows, it was solemn once more, and it watched the villain’s miserable end with stern approval. There were other babies in the crowd, and bottles had to be swiftly produced in order to stay the cries that came from so sudden an ending. The dying sun danced on Punch’s execution; he dangled frantically in mid-air, Toby barked furiously, and down came the curtain.
The old lady at the fruit stall had watched the performance with great excitement. She was remarkable to look at, and had been in the same place behind the same stall for so many years that people had grown to take her as part of the tower. She wore a red peaked hat, a red skirt, a man’s coat of black velvet, and black mittens; her enormous chin pointed towards her nose, which was hooked like an eagle; nose and chin so nearly met that it was a miracle how she ever opened her mouth at all. She nodded at Maradick and smiled, whilst her hands clicked her needles together, and a bit of grey stocking grew visibly before his eyes.
“It’s a fine show,” she said, “a fine show, and very true to human nature.” Then suddenly looking past him, she screamed in a voice like the whistle of a train: “A-pples and O-ranges — fine ripe grapes!”
Her voice was so close to his ear that it startled him, but he answered her.
“It is good for the children,” he said, shadowing his eyes with his hand, for the sun was beating in his face.
She leaned towards him and waved a skinny finger. “I ought to know,” she said, “I’ve buried ten, but they always loved the Punch . . . and that’s many a year back.”
How old was she, he wondered? He seemed, in this town, to be continually meeting people who had this quality of youth; Tony, Morelli, Punch, this old woman, they gave one the impression that they would gaily go on for ever.
“People live to a good old age here,” he said.
“Ah! it’s a wonderful town,” she said. “There’s nothing like it. . . . Many’s the things I’ve seen, the tower and I.”
“The tower!” said Maradick, looking up at its grey solemnity now flushing with the red light of the sun.
“I’ve been near it since I was a bit of a child,” she said, leaning towards him so that her beak of a nose nearly touched his cheek and her red hat towered over him. “We lived by it once, and then I moved under it. We’ve been friends, good friends, but it wants some considering.”
“What wants considering mother?” said a voice, and Maradick turned round; Punch was at his elbow. His show was packed up and leant against the wall; by his side was Toby, evidently pleased with the world in general, for every part of his body was wagging.
“Good evening, sir,” said Punch, smiling from ear to ear. “It’s a beautiful evening — the sea’s like a pome — what wants considering mother? and I think I’ll have an apple, if you don’t mind — one of your rosiest.”
She chose for him an enormous red one, which with one squeeze of the hand he broke into half. Toby cocked an ear and raised his eyes; he was soon munching for his life. “What wants considering mother?” he said again.
“Many things,” she answered him shortly, “and it’ll be tuppence, please.” Her voice rose into a shrill scream— “A-pples and O-ranges and fine ripe grapes.” She sat back in her chair and bent over her knitting, she had nothing more to say.
“I’ve been watching your show,” Maradick said, “and enjoyed it more than many a play I’ve seen in town.”
“Yes, it went well to-night,” Punch said, “and there was a new baby. It’s surprisin’ what difference a new baby makes, even Toby notices it.”
“A new baby?” asked Maradick.
“Yes. A baby, you know, that ‘asn’t seen the show before, leastways in this world. You can always tell by the way they take it.” Then he added politely, “And I hope you like this town, sir.”
“Enormously,” Maradick answered. “I think it has some quality, something that makes it utterly different from anywhere else that I know. There is a feeling — —”
He looked across the market-place, and, through the cleft between the ebony black of the towering walls, there shone the bluest of evening skies, and across the space floated a pink cushion of a cloud; towards the bend of the green hill on the horizon the sky where the sun was setting was a bed of primroses. “It is a wonderful place.”
“Ah, I tell you sir,” said Punch, stroking one of Toby’s ears, “there’s no place like it. . . . I’ve been in every town in this kingdom, and some of them are good enough. But this!”
He looked at Maradick a moment and then he said, “Forgive my mentioning it, sir, but you’ve got the feeling of the place; you’ve caught the spirit, as one might say. We watch, folks down here, you strangers up there at the ‘Man at Arms.’ For the most part they miss it altogether. They come for the summer with their boxes and their bags, they bathe in the sea, they drive on the hill, and they’re gone. Lord love you, why they might have been sleepin’.” He spat contemptuously.
“But you think that I have it?” said Maradick.
“You’ve got it right enough,” said Punch. “But then you’re a friend of young Mr. Gale’s, and so you couldn’t help having it; ‘e’s got it more than anyone I ever knew.”
“And what exactly is — It?” asked Maradick.
“Well, sir,” said Punch, “it’s not exactly easy to put it into words, me bein’ no scholar.” He looked at the old woman, but she was intent over her knitting. The light of the sun had faded from the tower and left it cold and grey against the primrose sky. “It’s a kind of Youth; seeing things, you know, all freshly and with a new colour, always caring about things as if you’d met ’em for the first time. It doesn’t come of the aski
ng, and there are places as well as people that ‘ave got it. But when a place or a person’s got it, it’s like a match that they go round lighting other people’s candles with.” He waved his arm in a comprehensive sweep. “It’s all here, you know, sir, and Mr. Gale’s got it like that . . . ‘e’s lit your candle, so to speak, sir, if it isn’t familiar, and now you’ve got to take the consequences.”
“The consequences?” said Maradick.
“Oh, it’s got its dangers,” said Punch, “specially when you take it suddenly; it’s like a fever, you know. And when it comes to a gentleman of your age of life and settled habits, well, it needs watchin’. Oh, there’s the bad and good of it.”
Maradick stared in front of him.
“Well, sir, I must be going,” said Punch. “Excuse me, but I always must be talking. Good night, sir.”
“Good night,” said Maradick. He watched the square, stumpy figure pass, followed by the dog, across the misty twilight of the market-place. Violet shadows lingered and swept like mysterious creeping figures over the square. He said good night to the old woman and struck up the hill to the hotel.
“Consequence? Good and bad of it?” Anyhow, the man hadn’t expressed it badly. That was his new view, that strange new lightness of vision as though his pack had suddenly been rolled from off his back. He was suddenly enjoying every minute of his life, his candle had been lighted. For a moment there floated across his mind his talk with his wife that afternoon. Well, it could not be helped. If she would not join him he must have his fun alone.
At the top of the hill he met Mrs. Lester. He had seen something of her during the last two days and liked her. She was amusing and vivacious; she had something of Tony’s quality.
“Hullo, Mr. Maradick,” she cried, “hurrying back like me to dinner? Isn’t it wicked the way that we leave the most beautiful anything for our food?”
“Well, I must confess,” he answered, laughing, “that I never thought of dinner at all. I just turned back because things had, as it were, come to an end. The sun set, you know.”
“I heard it strike seven,” she answered him, “and I said Dinner. Although I was down on the beach watching the most wonderful sea you ever saw, nothing could stop me, and so back I came.”
“Have you been down here before?” he asked her. “To stay, I mean.”
“Oh yes. Fred likes it as well as anywhere else, and I like it a good deal better than most. He doesn’t mind so very much, you know, where he is. He’s always living in his books, and so real places don’t count.” She gave a little sigh. “But they do count with me.”
“I’m enjoying it enormously,” he said, “it’s flinging the years off from me.”
“Oh, I know,” she answered, “but I’m almost afraid of it for that very reason. It’s so very — what shall I say — champagney, that one doesn’t know what one will do next. Sometimes one’s spirits are so high that one positively longs to be depressed. Why, you’d be amazed at some of the things people, quite ordinary respectable people, do when they are down here.”
As they turned in at the gate she stopped and laughed.
“Take care, Mr. Maradick,” she said, “I can see that you are caught in the toils; it’s very dangerous for us, you know, at our time of life.”
And she left him, laughing.
CHAPTER VIII. THEY ALL EAT CHICKEN IN THE GORSE AND
FLY BEFORE THE STORM
“It’s the most ripping rag,” said Tony, as he watched people climb into the wagonette. “Things,” he added, “will probably happen.” Lady Gale herself, as she watched them arrange themselves, had her doubts; she knew, as very few women in England knew, how to make things go, and no situation had ever been too much for her, but the day was dreadfully hot and there were, as she vaguely put it to herself, “things in the air.” What these things were, she could not, as yet, decide; but she hoped that the afternoon would reveal them to her, that it would, indeed, show a good deal that this last week had caused her to wonder about.
The chief reasons for alarm were the Maradicks and Mrs. Lawrence, without them it would have been quite a family party; Alice, Rupert, Tony, and herself. She wondered a little why she had asked the others. She had wanted to invite Maradick, partly because she liked the man for himself and partly for Tony’s sake; then, too, he held the key to Tony now. He knew better than any of the others what the boy was doing; he was standing guard.
And so then, of course, she had to ask Mrs. Maradick. She didn’t like the little woman, there was no question about that, but you couldn’t ask one without the other. And then she had to give her some one with whom to pair off, and so she had asked Mrs. Lawrence; and there you were.
But it wasn’t only because of the Maradicks that the air was thundery; the Lesters had quarrelled again. He sat in the wagonette with his lips tightly closed and his eyes staring straight in front of him right through Mrs. Maradick as though she were non-existent. And Mrs. Lester was holding her head very high and her cheeks were flushed. Oh! they would both be difficult.
She relied, in the main, on Tony to pull things through. She had never yet known a party hang fire when he was there; one simply couldn’t lose one’s temper and sulk with Tony about the place, but then he too had been different during this last week, and for the first time in his life she was not sure of him. And then, again, there was Alice. That was really worrying her very badly. She had come down with them quite obviously to marry Tony; everyone had understood that, including Tony himself. And yet ever since the first evening of arrival things had changed, very subtly, almost imperceptibly, so that it had been very difficult to realise that it was only by looking back that she could see how great the difference had been. It was not only, she could see, that he had altered in himself, but that he had altered also with regard to Alice. He struck her as being even on his guard, as though he were afraid, poor boy, that they would drive him into a position that he could not honourably sustain. Of this she was quite sure, that whereas on his coming down to Treliss he had fully intended to propose to Alice within the fortnight, now, in less than a week after his arrival, he did not intend to propose at all, was determined, indeed, to wriggle as speedily as might be out of the whole situation. Now there could be only one possible explanation of such a change: that he had, namely, found some one else. Who was it? When was it? Maradick knew and she would trust him.
And what surprised her most in the whole affair was her feeling about it all, that she rather liked it. That was most astonishing, because, of course, Tony’s marriage with Alice was from every point of view a most suitable and admirable business; it was the very thing. But she had looked on it, in spite of herself, as a kind of chest into which Tony’s youth and vitality were inevitably going; a splendid chest with beautiful carving and studded with golden nails, but nevertheless a chest. Alice was so perfectly right for anybody that she was perfectly wrong for Tony; Lady Gale before the world must approve and even further the affair, but Lady Gale the mother of Tony had had her doubts, and perhaps this new something, whatever it might be, was romantic, exciting, young and adventurous. Mr. Maradick knew.
But it is Mrs. Maradick’s view of the drive that must be recorded, because it was, in fact, round her that everything revolved. The reason for her prominence was Rupert, and it was he who, quite unconsciously and with no after knowledge of having done anything at all, saved the afternoon.
He was looking very cool and rather handsome; so was Mrs. Maradick. She was indeed by far the coolest of them all in very pale mauve and a bunch of carnations at her breast and a broad grey hat that shaded her eyes. He had admired her from the first, and to-day everyone else seemed hot and flustered in comparison. Neither Alice nor Mrs. Lester were at their best, and Mrs. Lawrence was obviously ill at ease, but Mrs. Maradick leaned back against the cushions and talked to him with the most charming little smile and eyes of the deepest blue. He had expected to find the afternoon boring in the extreme, but now it promised to be amusing, very amusing.
Mrs. Maradick had come out in the spirit of conquest. She would show these people, all of them, what they had missed during these last two weeks. They should compare her husband and herself, and she had no fear of the result; this was her chance, and she meant to seize it. She never looked at him, and they had not, as yet, spoken, but she was acutely conscious of his presence. He was sitting in a grey flannel suit, rather red and hot, next to Mrs. Lester. He would probably try and use the afternoon as the means for another abject apology.
She was irritated, nevertheless, with herself for thinking about him at all; she had never considered him before. Why should she do so now? She glanced quickly across for a moment at him. How she hated that Mrs. Lester! There was a cat for you, if ever there was one!
They had climbed the hill, and now a breeze danced about them; and there were trees, tall and shining birch, above their heads. On their right lay the sea, so intensely blue that it flung into the air a scent as of a wilderness of blue flowers, a scent of all the blue things that the world has ever known. No breeze ruffled it, no sails crossed its surface; it was so motionless that one would have expected, had one flung a pebble, to have seen it crack like ice. Behind them ran the road, a white, twisting serpent, down to the town.
The town itself shone like a jewel in a golden ring of corn; its towers and walls gleamed and flashed and sparkled. The world lay breathless, with the hard glazed appearance that it wears when the sun is very hot. The colour was so intense that the eye rested with relief on a black clump of firs clustered against the horizon. Nothing moved save the carriage; the horses crawled over the brow of the hill.
“Well, that’s awfully funny,” said Mrs. Maradick, leaning over and smiling at Rupert. “Because I feel just as you do about it. We can’t often come up, of course, and the last train to Epsom’s so dreadfully late that unless it’s something really good, you know — —”