by Hugh Walpole
Tony sat at her feet, one hand in hers. He stared straight before him into the fire. She had noticed during these last three days a delightful tenderness towards her. His attitude to her had always been charming, courteous, affectionate and yet companionable; but now he seemed to want to do everything that he could to show her that he loved her. And yet though she valued and treasured this it also frightened her. It was a little as though he were preparing for some departure, at any rate some change, that might hurt her.
Well, they were going at the end of the week, only a few more days.
He took her fingers and stroked them. His hand stopped at the wedding ring and he passed his thumb across it.
“I say, mother,” he looked up in her face with a little laugh, “I suppose you’d say that you’d rather lose anything in the world than that.”
“Yes, dear, it’s very precious;” but she sighed.
“I suppose it is. It must be ripping having something that is just yours and nobody else’s, that you simply don’t share with anyone. It must be ripping having somebody that belongs to you and that you belong to; just you two.”
“Yes, But that ring means more to me than that. It means you and Rupert as well as your father. It means all those hours when you screamed and kicked, and the day when you began to talk, and the first adventurous hours when you tried to cross the nursery floor. And yes, a thousand things besides.”
“Dear old mater,” he said softly. “It’s been just ripping having you. You’ve always understood so splendidly. Some chaps’ mothers I’ve seen, and they don’t know their sons in the very least. They do all the things that are most likely to drive them wild, and they never seem to be able to give them a bit what they want.”
“Yes, but it works both ways,” she answered. “A son’s got to try and understand his mother too. It’s no use their leaving it all to her, you know.”
“No, of course not.” Then he turned his body round and looked her in the face. “But you do understand so splendidly. You always have understood. You see, you trust a fellow.” Then he added quickly, “You’re trusting me now, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she answered, looking at him steadily, “perfectly. Only, just these last few days, perhaps I’ve been a little tiny bit worried. You haven’t been looking happy, and then I’m always worried; it’s so seldom that you’re not all right.”
“But you’d rather not know — what’s going on, I mean. It’s all right, perfectly right, and if it wasn’t — if it wasn’t right for you, I mean, as well as for me — I wouldn’t go on with it for a moment. Only it’s dreadfully important.”
“Yes, dear, I know. And if Mr. Maradick knows about it — —”
“He’s a brick, isn’t he?” Tony interrupted eagerly. “You know, so few middle-aged men can understand the point of view of a chap who’s only about twenty-five. They are either fatherly and patronising or schoolmasterly and bossing, or kind of wise and beneficent; but Maradick’s most awfully young really, and yet he’s wise too. He’s a ripper.”
He stopped. They neither of them spoke for some minutes. “It will be quite all right, mother,” he said, “very soon. Just now things are a little difficult, but we’ll pull through.”
He got up and stood looking down at her. “You are a brick to trust me and not to ask,” he said. “It would make things so awfully difficult if you asked.” He bent down and kissed her. “It’s a bit of luck having you,” he said.
But as soon as he had left the room his face was serious again. He passed Mrs. Lester on the stairs and smiled and hurried on. It was all very well; she was there, of course, real enough and all that sort of thing, but she simply didn’t count for him at that moment, she didn’t exist, really, any more than the hotel or the garden did. Nothing existed except that house in the town with Janet somewhere in it waiting for him to set her free.
That was the one point on which his eyes were now fixed. In his earlier days it had, perhaps, been one of his failings — that he had run rather too eagerly after too many interests, finding in everything so immediate an excitement that he forgot the purpose of yesterday in the purpose of to-day. It had always been the matter with him that he had too many irons in the fire. Life was so full and such fun! — that had been the excuse. Now it was deadly earnest.
But it was the first time that the world had so resolved into one single point for him. He was already years older; these last days had made him that, the uncertainties, the indecisions, the fluctuating enthusiasms, the passing from wonder to wonder. All these had solidified into one thing, and one thing only — Janet, how to get her out, how to marry her, how to have her for always; the rest of the world was in shadow.
To-day was Monday; Tuesday, Wednesday, and then Thursday, Thursday the 27th. That was the day on which everything must be done. He was thinking it all out, they had got that one chance. If they missed it Morelli would be back, and for ever. They must not miss it.
But he was perfectly calm about it. His agitation seemed curiously to have left him. He was cold and stern and absolutely collected. He and Maradick were going to pull it through.
He could not find Maradick. He searched for him in the dining-room, the passages, the billiard-room.
No. The servants hadn’t seen him. Mrs. Maradick was with Mrs. Lawrence in one of the drawing-rooms; no, they hadn’t see him, he had disappeared after lunch.
Mrs. Maradick smiled. “Find Mrs. Lester” was the advice that she would have given him. She went back to her novel with tightly closed mouth and refused to talk to Mrs. Lawrence.
And then Tony suddenly remembered. Of course, he would be up in that old room where he so often went, the room with the gallery. Tony found him there.
The rain was beating furiously against the panes, and there was a very dismal light that struggled across the floor and lost itself hopelessly in the dark corners under the gallery. Maradick was sitting close up against the window, reading in the rather feeble light. He looked up when he saw Tony and put his book down.
“Ah, Tony, I was coming down to find you; Sir Richard’s decision at lunch pretty well settles things, doesn’t it? We must move at once.”
He looked up at the boy and saw the age in his face.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re going to pull it through all right.”
“Oh, I’m not worrying,” Tony answered shortly. “It’s too damned serious, and besides, there’s no time.” He paused as though he were collecting his thoughts, and then he went on. “Look here, I’ve thought it all out. I’ve been able to write to Janet and have had several letters from her. She’s plucky, my word, you can’t think! Anyhow, that beast’s all right for the moment, it seems, only he keeps looking at her as though he was meaning to do something, and she’s terribly frightened, poor little girl. But he’s going on Thursday all right, and that’s when we’ve got to do the trick.”
“Yes,” said Maradick. “I’m absolutely at your service.” Their positions had changed. Tony was taking the lead.
“Yes,” said Tony, very solemnly and speaking rather quickly. “It’s all got to be Thursday. I want you to go off this afternoon, if you don’t very much mind, to that parson I was telling you of — the parson at Tremnan. He knows me and he’s a real sportsman. He must do the trick. You can tell him, 1.30 Thursday. Then there’s the licence to be got. I’ll see to that. I’ve been here three weeks now, so that’s all right. Then it only remains to think about that, I’m going to get ’em — the family, I mean — to go for an expedition on Thursday. Mother will understand if I ask her, and that will get them out of the way. Then we just take a cab, you and I and Janet and Miss Minns.”
“Miss Minns?” broke in Maradick.
“Yes,” said Tony, still very seriously. “The poor woman’s frightened out of her life, and Janet’s taken her into her confidence. We’re going to take her away with us. She’s going to live with us. That’ll be all right. She’s got more sense than you think. Well, we four drive out to the ch
urch and there the thing’s done. Then we get back and catch the three o’clock up to town. Then off to Paris that same night; and there you are!”
He stopped and looked at Maradick for a moment.
“The only thing,” he said, “is about you.”
“About me?” Maradick looked up, smiling.
“Yes. What are we going to do about you? Of course you can come off with us, too, if you like, but then there’s your wife and the girls. You couldn’t do that very well, I suppose?”
“No,” said Maradick, “I couldn’t.”
“Well, but, you know, if you’re left, why then, everybody’s got you, so to speak — Morelli, my people, everybody. There’s only you to turn on; you’ll have a pretty rotten time. It isn’t fair. And even now, you know, if you’d rather get out of it I expect I’ll manage.”
Maradick said nothing.
“I hadn’t really seen how damned selfish it all was until just now. I asked you to come and didn’t see it really a bit, what it would all lead to, I mean, and especially for you.”
Maradick looked up, laughing.
“My dear boy, do you suppose I, at any rate, haven’t seen? Why, from the beginning, from that first night of all when we talked about it, I was responsible; responsible to your mother at any rate, and she’s the only person who really matters. As to Morelli, he can do nothing. When I see a girl look as Janet looked the other night, why, then it was time some steps were taken by somebody to get her away.”
He put his hand on Tony’s arm. “And besides, whatever happened to me, do you suppose that I could ever cease to be grateful for all that you’ve done for me, your being with me, your showing me a new kind of life altogether? I’d be a bit of a cur if I wasn’t ready to help you after that. Nothing that I can do can quite repay you.”
“That’s all right, then,” said Tony. He was a little impatient, just then, of Maradick’s approach to sentiment. It was off the mark; it hadn’t anything at all to do with Janet, and besides, it was all rot, anyway, to talk about all that he’d done. He’d done nothing. But he didn’t, in the least, want to be ungracious. “But that’s most awfully good of you, really, and I don’t suppose, as a matter of fact, they’ll do very much. They can’t, anyhow. I’m over age, and I shan’t have to go to the governor for money. Besides, it will be all right in a week or two. The governor’s like that; I know him, and once the thing’s over he’ll get over it, because he loathes things being uncomfortable; besides, mother will manage him. Anyhow, are you sure you don’t mind going off to the parson? I’d come, too, but I think it would be safer for me on the whole to hang round here this afternoon.”
No, Maradick didn’t mind. Maradick would like to go; Maradick would do anything. And, as a matter of fact, he wanted to get out and away — away from the house and the people in it, where he could think undisturbed.
He left Tony and started down to the town. His brain was still on fire with his meeting with Mrs. Lester on the evening before. During these last three days they had had very few opportunities of meeting, but the affair had nevertheless advanced with extraordinary rapidity. Then, last night, he had been alone with her, after dinner, in the garden. It had been terribly hot and oppressive, a prelude to the storm that came a few hours later.
There was not a breath of wind; the world might have been of carved stone, so motionless was it. He had had her in his arms; her hands had crept round his neck and had pulled his head down until it rested on her breast. He had been on fire — the world had been on fire — and he had poured into her ear, in fierce hurried words, passion such as it seemed to him no man had ever known before. He had told her the old, old arguments; things that seemed to him absolutely new and fresh. Their marriages had been, both of them, absurd. They had been joined, each of them, to persons who did not understand them, people who did not even care to understand them. After all, what were marriage vows? A few words spoken hurriedly when they could not possibly tell whether there was even a chance of their being able to keep them.
They were not meant to keep them. They had made their mistake, and now they must pay for it; but it was better to break with those bonds now, to have done with them once and for all, than to go on for ever in hypercritical mockery, pretending what they could not feel, acting a lie before God and man.
But now, if they could escape now, away from this stupid country with its stupid conventions, away to some place where they would be happy together for ever until death . . . and so on, and so on; and the leaves and the paths and the dark sky were held together, motionless, by the iron hand of God.
And then some one had in a moment interrupted them; some fool from the hotel. Maradick’s fingers itched to be about his throat. “What a close night! Yes, a storm must be coming up. They’d heard very distant thunder; how solemn the sea sounded . . .” and so they had gone into the hotel.
The rain had ceased. The streets stretched in dreary wet lines before him, the skies were leaden grey; from some room the discordant jingle of a piano came down to him, a cart bumped past him through the mud and dirt.
And then suddenly the tower in the market-place sprung upon him. It was literally that, a definite springing out from all the depths of greyness and squalor behind it to meet him. On shining days, when the sky was very blue and the new smart hotel opposite glittered in all its splendour, the tower put on its most sombre cloak of grey and hid itself.
That was no time or place for it when other things could look so brilliant, but now, in the absolutely deserted market-place, when the cobbles glittered in the wet and the windows, like so many stupid eyes, gave back the dead colour of the sky, it took its rightful place.
It seemed to be the one thing that mattered, with its square and sturdy strength, its solidity that bid defiance to all the winds and rains of the world. Puddles lay about its feet and grey windy clouds tugged at its head, but it stood confidently resolute, while the red hotel opposite shrunk back, with its tawdry glitter damped and torn and dishevelled.
So Maradick stood alone in the market-place and looked at it, and suddenly realised it as a symbol. He might have his room from which he looked out and saw the world, and he held it to be good; Tony had shown him that. He might have his freedom, so that he might step out and take the wonderful things that he had seen; Punch had shown him that. But he must also have — oh! he saw it so clearly — his strength, the character to deal with it all, the resolution to carve his own actions rather than to let his actions carve him; and the tower had shown him that!
As he looked at it, he almost bowed his head before it. Foolish to make so much of an old thing like that! Sentimental and emotional with no atom of common-sense in it, but it had come out to meet him just when he wanted it most. It needed all his resolution to persuade himself that it had not a life of its own, that it did not know, like some old, sober, experienced friend, what danger he was running.
He passed out into the country. Although the rain had ceased and the grass was scenting the air with the new fragrance that the storm had given it, the sky was dark and overcast, grey clouds like Valkyries rushed furiously before the wind, and the sea, through the mist, broke into armies of white horses. As far as the eye could reach they kept charging into the grey dun-coloured air and fell back to give way to other furious riders.
The mist crept forward like live things, twisting and turning, forming into pillars and clouds, and then rent by the screaming wind into a thousand tatters.
The road was at a high level, and he could see the coast for some miles bending round until it reached the headland; a line of white foam stretched, with hard and clear outline, from point to point. This was a new Cornwall to him, this grey mysterious thing, hinting at so much, with a force and power almost terrible in its ominous disregard of human individuality. He had thought that the right light for Cornwall was on a day of gold and blue, now he knew that he had not seen half the wonder and fascination; it was here, with this crawling foam, the sharp rocks, the screaming wind and
the turning, twisting mist, that she was rightly to be seen.
The wind tore at his coat and beat him about the face. It was incredible that only yesterday there should have been heat and silence and dazzling colour. He pressed forward.
His thought now was that he was glad Mrs. Maradick did not know. Until this morning he had not considered her at all. After all, she had given him a bad twenty years of it, and she had no right to complain. Other men did it with far less excuse.
But there had been something when she had met him at breakfast this morning that he had not understood. She had been almost submissive. She had spoken to him at breakfast as she had never spoken to him in their married life before. She had been gentle, had told Annie not to jingle her teaspoon because it worried father, and had inquired almost timidly what were his plans for the day.
He had felt yesterday that he rather wanted her to see that Mrs. Lester was fond of him; she had driven it into him so often that he was only accepted by people as her husband, that he had no value in himself at all except as a payer of bills. She had even chaffed him about certain ladies of whom she had ironically suggested that he was enamoured. And so it had seemed in its way something of a triumph to show her that he wasn’t merely a figurehead, a person of no importance; that there was somebody who found him attractive, several people, indeed. But now he was ashamed. He had scarcely known how to answer her when she had spoken to him so gently. Was she too under influence of the place?
In fact, he did not know what he was going to do. He was tired, worn out; he would not think of it at all. He would see how things turned out.
The character of the day had changed. The mists were still on the sea, but behind them now was the shining of the sun, only as a faint light vaguely discerned, but the water seemed to heave gently as though some giant had felt the coming of the sun and was hurrying to meet it.
The light was held back by a wall of mist, but in places it seemed to be about to break through, and the floor of the sea shone with all the colours of mother of pearl.