by Hugh Walpole
But Sir Richard’s solemnity was imperturbable. “Where have you been?” he said coldly. “You know how strongly I dislike unpunctuality at meal-times, yes, unpunctuality. And this is not only unpunctuality, it is positively missing it altogether; I demand an explanation.”
This public scolding before all the assembled company seemed to Maradick in very bad taste, and he shifted uneasily in his chair, but Tony did not seem to mind.
“I know,” he said, looking up from his soup and smiling at his father, “I am most awfully careless. But it wasn’t all that, as a matter of fact. I rowed round the Point to Boulter’s Cove, and the tides are most awfully dicky and they played old Harry with us this evening, I simply couldn’t get along at all. It was like rowing against a wall. I knew it was most beastly late, but I couldn’t get any faster.”
“Us?” said Sir Richard. “Who were your companions?”
There was a slight movement round the table.
“Oh,” said Tony easily, “there are all sorts of old sailor Johnnies down there that one gets to know, and they’re awfully good sorts. There’s one fellow about eight foot and broad in proportion; the girls are simply mad about him, they — —”
But Lady Gale interrupted him. “You’d better be getting on with your meal, dear. It’s late. I don’t think we need wait. Shall we have coffee outside?”
“No, don’t you people wait,” said Tony, “I’ll come along in a minute.”
As Alice turned to go she stopped for a moment by his chair. “I saw you this afternoon,” she said.
“Oh! did you?” he answered, looking up at her. For a moment he seemed disturbed, then he laughed.
“Where and when?” he asked.
“This afternoon, somewhere after four; you were on the beach.” She looked at him for a moment, standing very straight and her head flung back. “I am glad you enjoyed your row,” she said with a laugh.
“I must talk to Maradick about it,” he said to himself. He was quite prepared for complications; of course, there were bound to be in such a situation. But at present the memory of the wonderful afternoon enwrapped him like a fire, so that he could not think of anything else, he could not see anything but her eyes and smile and golden hair. The empty room hung before his eyes, with the white cloths on innumerable tables gleaming like white pools in rows across the floor, and dark mysterious men, who might be perhaps, at more brightly lighted times, waiters, moved silently from place to place. But beyond, outside the room, there shone the white curve of the boat stealing like a ghost across the water, and behind it the dark band of hill, the green clump of trees, the dusky, trembling figures of the sheep. Oh! glorious hour!
A little waiter, with a waistcoat that was far too large for him and a tie that had crept towards his right ear, hung in the background. Tony pushed his plate away and looked round.
“I say,” he said, “are you in love with anyone?”
The waiter, who hailed from Walham Green, and, in spite of his tender years, was burdened with five children and a sick wife, coughed apologetically.
“Well, sir,” he said, “to be strictly truthful, I can’t say as I am, not just at present. And perhaps it’s just as well, seeing as how I’ve been a married man these fifteen years.” He folded a table-cloth carefully and coughed again.
“Well, isn’t it possible to be in love with your wife?” asked Tony.
The waiter’s mind crept timidly back to a certain tea of shrimps and buns on the Margate sands many, very many years ago. He saw a red sun and a blue sky and some nigger minstrels, white and black; but that was another lifetime altogether, before there were children and doctor’s bills.
“Well, sir,” he said, “it gets kind o’ casual after a time; not that it’s anyone’s fault exactly, only times ’is ‘ard and there’s the children and one thing and another, and there scarcely seems time for sentiment exactly.”
He coughed his way apologetically back into the twilight at the farther end of the room.
“There scarcely seems time for sentiment exactly!” Tony laughed to himself at the absurdity of it and stepped out into the garden. He didn’t want to see the family just at present. They would grate and jar. He could be alone; later, he would talk to Maradick.
And Lady Gale, for the first time in her life, avoided him. She did not feel that she could talk to him just yet; she must wait until she had thought out the new developments and decided on a course of action. The day had filled her with alarm, because suddenly two things had been shown to her. The first, that there was no one in the world for whom she really cared save Tony. There were other people whom she liked, friends, acquaintances; for her own husband and Rupert she had a protecting kindliness that was bound up intimately in her feeling for the family, but love! — no — it was Tony’s alone.
She had never realised before how deeply, how horribly she cared. It was something almost wild and savage in her, so that she, an old lady with white hair and a benevolent manner, would have fought and killed and torn his enemies were he in danger. The wildness, the ferocity of it frightened her so that she sat there in the dark with trembling hands, watching the lights of the ships at sea and, blindly, blindly praying.
She had known, of course, before, that he was everything to her, that without him life would lose all its purpose and meaning and beauty, but there had been other things that counted as well; now it seemed that nothing else mattered in the least.
And the second thing that she saw, and it was this second revelation that had shown her the first, was that she was in danger of losing him. The relationship of perfect confidence that had, she fondly imagined, existed until now between them, had never been endangered, because there had been nothing to hide. He had not told her everything, of course; there must have been things at Oxford, and even before, that he had not told her, but she had felt no alarm because they had been, she was sure, things that did not matter. And then he had, so often, come and told her, told her with his charming smile and those open eyes of his, so that there could be no question of his keeping anything back.
She had studied the relationship of mother and son so perfectly that she had had precisely the right “touch” with him, never demanding what he was not ready to give, always receiving the confidences that he handed her. But now for the first time he was keeping things back, things that mattered. When she had spoken so bravely to Maradick a fortnight ago, on that day when she had first caught sight of the possible danger, she had thought that she was strong enough and wise enough to wait, patiently, with perfect trust. But it was not possible, it could not be done. She could not sit there, with her hands folded, whilst some strange woman down there in that dark, mysterious town caught her boy away from her. Every day her alarm had grown; she had noticed, too, that their relationship had changed. It had been so wonderful and beautiful, so delicate and tender, that any alteration in its colour was at once apparent to her. He had not been so frank, there had been even a little artificiality in his conversations with her. It was more than she could bear.
But, although the uncertainty of it might kill her, she must not know. She saw that as clearly, as inevitably as ever. Let her once know, from his own confession, that he loved some girl down there in the town, and she would be forced to stop it. The horizon would widen, and bigger, louder issues than their own personal feelings would be concerned. The family would be called into the issue, and she could not be false to its claims. She could not be untrue to her husband and all the traditions. And yet it was only Tony’s happiness that she cared for; that must be considered above everything else. Maradick would know whether this girl were, so to speak, “all right.” If she were impossible, then he assuredly would have stopped it by now. Maradick was, in fact, the only clue to the business that she had got.
But it was partly because she was losing her trust in him that she was unhappy now. His guard over Tony had, for to-day at any rate, been miserably inadequate. He might feel, perhaps, that he had no right to spend his tim
e in hanging on to Tony’s coat-tails, it wasn’t fair on the boy, but he ought to have been with him more.
She was sitting now with Alice on the seat at the farther end of the garden overlooking the town. The place seemed hateful to her, as she stared down it acquired a personality of its own, a horrible menacing personality. It lay there with its dark curved back like some horrible animal, and the lights in the harbours were its eyes twinkling maliciously; she shuddered and leant back.
“Are you cold, dear?” It was the first time that Alice had spoken since they had come out. She herself was sitting straight with her head back, a slim white figure like a ghost.
“No, it’s stiflingly warm, as a matter of fact. I was thinking, and that’s about the only thing that an old woman can do.”
“You are worried.” Alice spoke almost sharply. “And I hate you to be worried. I’ve noticed during these last few days — —”
“Yes, I suppose I am a little,” Lady Gale sighed. “But then you’ve been worried too, dear, for the matter of that. It hasn’t been altogether a success, this place, this time. I don’t know what’s been wrong exactly, because the weather’s been beautiful.”
Alice put her hand on Lady Gale’s. “You won’t think me an utter pig, will you, dear, if I go up to Scotland at the end of the week? I think I had better, really. I’m not well down here, and it only makes it uncomfortable for the rest of you if I’m cross and absurd.”
Lady Gale sighed. “If you really want to go, dear,” she said, “of course you must. Do just what you like. Only, I shall miss you badly. You’re a great help to me, you know. Of course there’s Milly, but she’s been funny lately. She always gets excited down here.” Lady Gale put her arm round the girl. “Stay for a little, dear. I want you. We all want you.”
Alice drew herself up for a moment as though she would repel the caress; then she tried to say something, but the words would not come. With a little cry she buried her face in the other’s dress. For a few moments there was silence, then her shoulders heaved and she burst into passionate sobbing. Lady Gale said nothing — only, with her hand, she stroked her hair. The night was very still, so still that they could hear coming up from the town the distant chorus of some song.
At last Alice raised her head. “Please,” she said, “don’t worry about me.” But she clutched Lady Gale’s hand. “Oh! I’m ashamed of myself. I’m a fool to give way like this.” She suddenly drew her hand fiercely away. But Lady Gale took it in hers.
“Why,” she said, “I have been wanting you to speak to me all this time, and you wouldn’t; of course I knew what the matter was, you can’t keep that from his mother. We all seem to have been at cross-purposes, as it is in a play, when one word would put everything right, but everybody is afraid to say it. Why, I want to talk to you about it all. Do you suppose that I am not having a bad time too?”
Alice leaned towards her and kissed her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’ve been so selfish lately. I haven’t thought about anyone else. I hadn’t realised what you must feel about it. I ought to have known.”
She stopped for a moment, then she went on speaking in little gasps as though she had been running. “But I hadn’t meant to speak at all anything about it. I hate myself for having given way. I, who had always prided myself on my restraint and self-possession, to cry like a child for the moon.” She shrugged her shoulders and laughed bitterly. “I won’t give way again,” she said.
Lady Gale put her arm round her and drew her close. “Alice, dear, let me talk to you for a moment. You are going through a bad time, and it may be a crisis and alter your whole life. You are very young, my dear, and I am so old that I seem to have been through everything and to know it all from the beginning. So perhaps I can help you. I love you from the bottom of my heart, and this thing has drawn us together as nothing else in the world possibly could.”
Alice pressed close against her. “Oh! I’ve been so lonely these last days, you can’t know how bad it has been.”
“Yes, dear, of course I know. I saw at once when we came down here that something was wrong. I wanted to talk to you, but it’s no use forcing people’s confidence. I knew that you’d speak to me if you wanted to. But we’re together in this, we both love Tony.”
“Oh! I’m ashamed.” Alice spoke very low, it was almost a whisper. “And yet, do you know, in a way I’m glad. It showed me that I’ve got something that I was almost afraid wasn’t in me at all. In spite of my pride I have been sometimes suddenly frightened, and wondered whether it were really in me to care for anyone at all. And then all in a moment this has come. I would die for Tony; I would let him trample on me, kill me, beat me. Sometimes, when we are sitting, all of us, so quietly there in the drawing-room or in the garden, and he talking, oh, I want to get up and fling myself at him and hold him there before them all. I have been afraid during these last few days that I shall suddenly lose control. I have wondered once or twice whether I am not going mad. Now you see why I must go.”
She buried her face in her hands.
Lady Gale bent over her. “Alice dear, I understand, of course I understand. But let me try and show you, dear, why you must stay. Just for this next week or two. You can be of so much help to me and to Tony. I have been having rather a bad time too. It is like walking in the dark with things on every side of you that you cannot see. And I want you, dear.”
Alice did not speak. The bells in the distant town struck ten, first one and then another and then five or six at once. Five lights of boats at sea gleamed in a row like stars that had fallen into the water, through the dark mist of the trees a curved moon sailed.
“You see, dear, things are so difficult now, and they seem to grow worse every day. And really it comes to this. You and I and Mr. Maradick all love Tony. The others don’t count. Of course I’m not sure about Mr. Maradick, but I think he cares very much in his own way, and so we are, you see, a bodyguard for him. I mean to do as he wants to. Tony has always seen things perfectly clearly and has known what he wanted, but now there are other things that make it harder for him. I hoped when we came down here that he was going to marry you, dear, but perhaps after all it is better that he shouldn’t. The only thing that matters in the least in this world is love, getting it and keeping it; and if a man or a woman have secured that, there is nothing else that is of any importance. And so I always determined that Tony should have his own choice, that he should go when he wished to.”
She paused and took Alice’s hand and stroked it. “This is the first time that he has ever really been in love. Of course I know — I knew at once by the light in his eyes — and I want him to have it and to keep it and, whatever happens, not to miss it. But of course I must not know about it, because then his father would have to be told. Sir Richard thinks a great deal of the family. It is the only thing that matters to him very much. And of course there would be terrible scenes and I should have to go with the family. So, whatever happens, I must not know about it.”
“Yes,” said Alice, “I see that.”
“And so, you see, I put Mr. Maradick there as a guard. He is a worthy creature, a little dull, but very trustworthy, and I knew that he would do his best. But it is harder than I had thought it would be. Now Sir Richard is beginning to wonder where Tony goes, and I am afraid that in a day or two there will be some terrible scene and Tony will go, perhaps for ever. So I want you to be with me here. You can talk to Mr. Maradick, and if I see that you are satisfied then I shall know that it is all right. It will make all the difference in the world if I have you.”
“You are asking rather a lot,” Alice said. “I don’t think you quite realise what it is to me. It is like some strange spell, and if I were fanciful or absurd I should imagine that the place had something to do with it. Of course it hasn’t, but I feel as if I should be my normal self again if I could once get away.”
“No. You’ll never be quite the same person again. One never can get back. But look at it in this way, dear. Do you care enoug
h for Tony to be of real help to him, to do something for him that no one else can possibly do?”
“Do I care for him?” Alice laughed. “I care for him as no one has ever cared for anyone before.”
“Ah! That’s what we all think, my dear. I thought that once about Sir Richard. But you can do everything for him now, if you will.”
But Alice shrugged her shoulders. “As far as I understand it,” she said, “you want me to spy on Mr. Maradick.”
“No, not to spy, of course not. Only to behave to Tony as if nothing had happened, and to help me about Sir Richard. And then you can talk to Mr. Maradick, if you like; ask him right out about her.”
“Oh, then he’ll say, and quite rightly too, that it’s none of my business.”
“But it is. It’s all our business. A thing like that can’t happen to anybody without its interfering, like a stone and a pool, with everything around it. Of course it’s your business, yours more than anybody’s. And really, dear, I don’t think you’ll make things any better by going away. Things seem far worse when you’ve got to look over ever so many counties to see them at all. Stay here with Tony and live it down. It will pass, like the measles or anything else.”
She paused. Then she suddenly put her arms round the girl and held her close. “I want you, I want you, dear. I am very miserable. I feel that I am losing Tony, perhaps for always. He will never be the same again, and I can’t bear it. He has always been the centre of everything, always. I scarcely know how I could have faced some things if it hadn’t been for him. And now I’ve got to face them alone; but if you are here with me I shan’t be alone after all.”
And Alice let her face rest in Lady Gale’s dress and she promised. There was, as it happened, more in her promise than mere acquiescence. She had her own curiosity as to the way it was all going to turn out, and perhaps, deep in her heart, a hope that this girl down in the town would be nothing after all, and that Tony would return, when the two or three weeks were over, to his senses. But the real temptation that attacked her was terribly severe. It would be fatally easy to talk to Sir Richard, and, without saying anything either definite or circumstantial, to put him unmistakably on the track. The immediate issue would, of course, be instant marching orders for everybody, and that would be the last that Tony would see of his rustic. Her thoughts lingered around the girl. What was she like, she wondered? Coarse, with a face of beetroot red and flaxen hair; no, Tony had taste, he would know what to choose. She was probably pretty. Wild and uncouth, perhaps; that would be likely to catch him. And now she, Alice Du Cane, must stand quietly by and play the part of platonic friend. What fun life must be for the gods who had time to watch.