by Hugh Walpole
“And so, you see,” said Lester, “Plato still has the last word in the matter.”
“Yes,” said Maradick.
Mrs. Lawrence was being entirely tiresome at the tea-table. The strain of the situation was telling upon her. She had said several things to Sir Richard and he had made no answer at all.
He continued to look with unflinching gaze upon Tony. She saw from Lady Gale’s and Mrs. Lester’s curious artificiality of manner that they were extremely uneasy, and she was piqued at their keeping her, so resolutely, outside intimacy.
When she was ill at ease she had an irritating habit of eagerly repeating other people’s remarks with the words a little changed. She did this now, and Lady Gale felt that very shortly she’d be forced to scream.
“It will be such a nuisance,” said Mrs. Lester, still continuing the “flying” conversation, “about clothes. One will never know what to put on, because the temperature will always be so very different when one gets up.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Lawrence eagerly, “nobody will have the slightest idea what clothes to wear because it may be hot or cold. It all depends — —”
“Some one,” said Lady Gale, laughing, “will have to shout down and tell us.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Lawrence, “there’ll have to be a man who can call out and let us know.”
Tony felt his father’s eyes upon him. He had wondered why he had said nothing to him about his last night’s absence, but it had not really made him uneasy. After all, that was very unimportant, what his father or any of the rest of them did or thought, compared with what Morelli was doing. He was curiously tired, tired in body and tired in mind, and he couldn’t think very clearly about anything. But he saw Morelli continually before him. Morelli coming round the table towards him, smiling — Morelli . . . What was he doing to Janet?
He wanted to speak to Maradick, but it was so hard to get to him when there were all these other people in the room. The gaiety had gone out of his eyes, the laughter from his lips. Maradick was everything now; it all depended on Maradick.
“You’re looking tired,” Alice said. She had been watching him, and she knew at once that he was in trouble. Of course anyone could see that he wasn’t himself, but she, who had known him all his life, could see that there was more in it than that. Indeed, she could never remember to have seen him like that before. Oh! if he would only let her help him!
She had not been having a particularly good time herself just lately, but she meant there to be nothing selfish about her unhappiness. There are certain people who are proud of unrequited affection and pass those whom they love with heads raised and a kind of “See what I’m suffering for you!” air. They are incomparable nuisances!
Alice had been rather inclined at first to treat Tony in the same sort of way, but now the one thought that she had was to help him if only he would let her! Perhaps, after all, it was nothing. Probably he’d had a row with the girl last night, or he was worried, perhaps, by Sir Richard.
“Tony,” she said, putting her hand for a moment on his arm, “we are pals, aren’t we?”
“Why, of course,” pulling himself suddenly away from Janet and her possible danger and trying to realise the girl at his side.
“Because,” she went on, looking out of the window, “I’ve been a bit of a nuisance lately — not much of a companion, I’m afraid — out of sorts and grumpy. But now I want you to let me help if there’s anything I can do. There might be something, perhaps. You know” — she stopped a moment— “that I saw her down on the beach the other day. If there was anything — —”
She stopped awkwardly.
“Look here,” he began eagerly; “if you’re trying to find out — —” Then he stopped. “No, I know, of course you’re not. I trust you all right, old girl. But if you only knew what a devil of a lot of things are happening — —” He looked at her doubtfully. Then he smiled. “You’re a good sort, Alice,” he said, “I know you are. I’m damned grateful. Yes, I’m not quite the thing. There are a whole lot of worries.” He hesitated again, then he went on: “I tell you what you can do — keep the family quiet, you know. Keep them off it, especially the governor. They trust you, all of them, and you can just let them know it’s all right. Will you do that?”
He looked at her eagerly.
She smiled back at him. “Yes, old boy, of course. I think I can manage Sir Richard, for a little time at any rate. And in any case, it isn’t for very long, because we’re all going away in about a week; twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, I think Lady Gale said.”
Tony started. “Did she?” he said. “Are you sure of that, Alice? Because it’s important.”
“Yes. I heard Lady Gale discussing it with Sir Richard last night.”
“By Jove. I’m glad to know that. Well, anyhow, Alice, I’ll never forget it if you help us. We want it, by Jove.”
She noticed the “we.” “Oh, that’s all right,” she said, smiling back at him. “Count on me, Tony.”
At that moment a general move was made. The meal, to everyone’s infinite relief, was over. Mrs. Lester got up slowly from her chair, she turned round towards Maradick. For an instant her eyes met his; the corners of her mouth were raised ever so slightly — she smiled at him, then she turned back to his wife.
“Mrs. Maradick,” she said, “do come over and sit by the window. There’ll be a little air there. The sun’s turned the corner now.”
But Mrs. Maradick had seen the smile. Suddenly, in a moment, all her suspicions were confirmed. She knew; there could be no doubt. Mrs. Lester, Mrs. Lester and her husband — her husband, James. Dear, how funny! She could have laughed. It was quite a joke. At the same time, she couldn’t be well, because the room was turning round, things were swimming; that absurd carpet was rising and flapping at her.
She put her hand on the tea-table and steadied herself; then she smiled back at Mrs. Lester.
“Yes, I’ll bring my work over,” she said.
The rest of the company seemed suddenly to have disappeared; Maradick and Tony had gone out together, Lady Gale and Alice, followed by Sir Richard and Lester, had vanished through another door; only Mrs. Lawrence remained, working rather dismally at a small square piece of silk that was on some distant occasion to be christened a table-centre.
Mrs. Maradick sometimes walked on her heels to increase her height; she did so now, but her knees were trembling and she had a curious feeling that the smile on her face was fixed there and that it would never come off, she would smile like that always.
As she came towards the table where Mrs. Lester was another strange sensation came to her. It was that she would like to strangle Mrs. Lester.
As she smiled at her across the table her hands were, in imagination, stretching with long twisting fingers and encircling Mrs. Lester’s neck. She saw the exact spot; she could see the little blue marks that her fingers would leave. She could see Mrs. Lester’s head twisted to one side and hanging in a stupid, silly way over her shoulder. She would draw her fingers very slowly away, because they would be reluctant to let go. Of course it was a very stupid, primitive feeling, because ladies that lived in Epsom didn’t strangle other ladies, and there were the girls to be thought of, and it wouldn’t really do at all. And so Mrs. Maradick sat down.
“It is quite cool,” she said as she brought out her work, “and after such a hot day, too.”
Mrs. Lester enjoyed the situation very much. She knew quite well that Maradick had been watching her anxiously all the afternoon. She knew that he was waiting to see what she was going to do about yesterday. She had not been quite sure herself at first. In fact, directly after he had left her she had been furiously angry; and then she had been frightened and had gone to find Fred, and then had cried in her bedroom for half an hour. And then she had dried her eyes and had put on her prettiest dress and had come down to dinner intending to be very stiff and stately towards him. But he had not been there; no one had known where he was. Mrs. Maradick had more or le
ss conveyed that Mrs. Lester could say if she wanted to, but of course she wouldn’t.
However, she really didn’t know. The evening was stupid, tiresome, and very long. As the hours passed memories grew stronger. No one had ever held her like that before. She had never known such strength. She was crushed, gasping. There was a man! And after all, it didn’t matter; there was nothing wrong in that. Of course he oughtn’t to have done it. It was very presumptuous and violent; but then that was just like the man.
It was the kind of thing that he did, the kind of thing, after all, that he was meant to do! In the Middle Ages, of course, would have been his time. She pictured him with some beautiful maiden swung across the crupper, and the husband, fist in air but impotent — that was the kind of man.
And so she had smiled at him, to show him that, after all, she wasn’t very angry. Of course, she couldn’t be always having it; she didn’t even mean that she’d altogether forgiven him, but the whole situation was given an extra piquancy by the presence of Mrs. Maradick. She didn’t mean any harm to the poor little spectacle of a woman, but to carry him off from under her very nose! Well! it was only human nature to enjoy it!
“You must come and see us, dear Mrs. Maradick, both of you, when you’re back in town. We shall so like to see more of you. Fred has taken enormously to your husband, and it’s so seldom that he really makes a friend of anyone.”
“Thank you so much,” said Mrs. Maradick, smiling, “we’ll be sure to look you up. And you must come out to Epsom one day. People call it a suburb, but really, you know, it’s quite country. As I often say, it has all the advantages of the town and country with none of their disadvantages. A motor-van comes down from Harrods’ every day.”
“That must be delightful,” said Mrs. Lester.
“And Lord Roseberry living so near makes it so pleasant. He’s often to be seen driving; he takes great interest in the school, you know — Epsom College for doctors’ sons — and often watches their football!”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Lester.
Mrs. Maradick paused and looked out of the window. What was she going to do? What was she going to do? The great black elms outside the window swept the blue sky like an arch. A corner of the lawn shone in the sun a brilliant green, and directly opposite a great bed of sweet-peas fluttered like a swarm of coloured butterflies with the little breeze. What was she to do?
She was feeling now, suddenly, for the first time in her selfish, self-centred life utterly at a loss. She had never been so alone before. There had always been somebody. At Epsom there had been heaps of people; and, after all, if the worst came to the worst, there had always been James. She had never, in all these years, very actively realised that he was there, because she had never happened to want him; there had always been so many other people.
Now suddenly all these people had gone. Epsom was very, very far away, and, behold, James wasn’t there either!
She realised, too, that if it had been some one down in the town, a common woman as she had at first imagined it, it would not have hurt so horribly. But that some one like Mrs. Lester should care for James, should really think him worth while, seemed at one blow to disturb, indeed to destroy all the theories of life in general and of James in particular that had governed her last twenty years.
What could she see? What could any one of them see in him? she asked herself again and again.
Meanwhile, of course, it must all be stopped somehow. They must go away at once. Or perhaps it would be better to be quiet for a day or two and see. They would all be gone in a week or so. And then Epsom again, and everything as it had been and none of this — she called it “intrigue.”
“I’m so glad,” said Mrs. Lester, smiling, “that Tony Gale has taken so strong a liking to your husband. It’s so good for a boy of that age to have some one older. . . . He’s a charming boy, of course, but they always need some one at that age just to prevent them from doing anything foolish.”
This was fishing, Mrs. Maradick at once felt. She couldn’t see exactly what Mrs. Lester wanted, but she did want something, and she wasn’t going to get it. She had a sudden desire to prove to Mrs. Lester that she was a great deal more to her husband than appeared on the surface. A great deal more, of course, than any of the others were. For the first time in their married life she spoke of him with enthusiasm.
“Ah! James,” she said, “is splendid with young men. Only I could really tell the world what he has been to some of them. They take to him like anything. There’s something so strong and manly about him — and yet he’s sympathetic. Oh! I could tell you — —” She nodded her head sagaciously.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Lester; “I can’t tell you how I admire him, how we all do, in fact. He must be very popular in Epsom.”
“Well, as a matter of fact he rather keeps himself to himself there. They all like him enormously, of course; but he doesn’t want anything really except just the family — myself and the girls, you know. He’s a very domestic man, he always has been.”
“Yes, one can see that,” said Mrs. Lester, smiling. “It’s delightful when one sees that nowadays. It so seldom happens, I am afraid. You must be very proud of him.”
“I am,” said Mrs. Maradick.
The impulse to lean over and take Mrs. Lester’s head and slowly bend it back until the bones cracked was almost too strong to be resisted.
Mrs. Maradick pricked her finger and stopped the blood with her handkerchief. Both ladies were silent. The last rays of the sun as it left the corner of the lawn fell in a golden shower upon the sweet-peas.
Mrs. Lawrence could be heard counting her stitches.
Meanwhile Mrs. Lester’s smile had had its effect upon Maradick. He had waited, tortured, for the smile to come, but now it was all right. They were still friends. He could not see it any farther than that. After all, why should he trouble to look at it any more deeply? They were friends. He would be able to talk to her again; he would see her smile again. If she did not want him to behave like that, if she did not want him to hold her hand, he was ready to obey in anything. But they were still friends. She was not angry with him.
His depression took wings and fled. He put his arm on Tony’s shoulder as they went down the stairs. “Well, old chap,” he said, “I’m off to see Morelli now. You can bet that it will be all right. Things looked a bit funny last night. They always do when one’s tired and it’s dark. Last night, you see, you imagined things.”
But Tony looked up at him quietly with grave eyes.
“No,” he said, “there was nothing to imagine. It was just as I told you. Nothing happened. But I know now that there’s something in what the chaps in the town said. I believe in devils now. But my God, Maradick” — he clutched the other’s arm— “Janet’s down there. It isn’t for myself I care. He can do what he likes to me. But it’s her, we must get her away or there’s no knowing. . . . I didn’t sleep a wink last night, thinking what he might be doing to her. He may carry her away somewhere, where one can’t get at her; or he may do — God knows. But that’s what he said last night, just that! that she wasn’t for me or for anyone, that she was never for anyone — that he would keep her.” Tony broke off.
“I’m silly with it all, I think,” he said, “it’s swung me off my balance a bit. One can’t think; but it would be the most enormous help if you’d go and see. It’s the uncertainty that’s so awful. If I could just know that it’s all right . . . and meanwhile I’m thinking out plans. It’s all got to happen jolly soon now. I’ll talk when you come back. It’s most awfully decent of you. . . .”
Maradick left him pacing the paths with his head down and his hands clenched behind his back.
He found Morelli sitting quietly with Janet and Miss Minns in the garden. They had had tea out there, and the tea-things glittered and sparkled in the sun. It would have been difficult to imagine anything more peaceful. The high dark red brick of the garden walls gave soft velvet shadows to the lawn; the huge tree in the corner flung a
vast shade over the beds and paths; rooks swung slowly above their heads through the blue spacious silence of the summer evening; the air was heavy with the scent of the flowers.
Morelli came forward and greeted Maradick almost eagerly. “What! Have you had tea? Sure! We can easily have some more made, you know. Come and sit down. Have a cigar — a pipe? Right. I wondered when you were going to honour us again. But we had young Gale in yesterday evening for quite a long time.”
Janet, with a smile of apology, went indoors. Miss Minns was knitting at a distance. This was obviously the right moment to begin, but the words would not come. It all seemed so absurd in this delicious garden with the silence and the peace, and, for want of a better word, the sanity of it all; all the things that Maradick had been thinking, Tony’s story and the fantastic scene in the market-place last night, that and the ideas that had sprung from it, were all so out of line now. People weren’t melodramatic like that, only one had at times a kind of mood that induced one to think things, absurd things.
But Morelli seemed to be waiting for Maradick to speak. He sat gravely back in his chair watching him. It was almost, Maradick thought, as though he knew what he had come there for. It was natural enough that Morelli should expect him, but he had not imagined precisely that kind of quiet waiting for him. He had to clear all the other ideas that he had had, all the kind of picture that he had come with, out of his head. It was a different kind of thing, this sheltered, softly coloured garden with its deep shadows and high reds and browns against the blue of the sky. It was not, most emphatically it was not, melodrama.
The uncomfortable thought that the quiet eyes and grave mouth had guessed all this precipitated Maradick suddenly into speech. The peace and silence of the garden seemed to mark his words with a kind of indecency. He hurried and stumbled over his sentences.
“Yes, you know,” he said. “I thought I’d just come in and see you — well, about young Gale. He told me — I met him — he gave me to understand — that he was here last night.” Maradick felt almost ashamed.