by Hugh Walpole
At that instant they came in — Sir Richard, Rupert, Alice Du Cane, and Mrs. Lester.
It was obvious at once that Sir Richard was angry. Rupert was amused and a little bored. Alice was excited, and Mrs. Lester tired and white under the eyes.
“What’s this?” said Sir Richard, coming forward. “They tell me that Tony hasn’t been in all night. That he’s gone or something.”
Then he caught sight of Maradick.
“Ha! Maradick — Morning! Do you happen to know where the boy is?”
Maradick thought that he could discern through the old man’s anger a very real anxiety, but it was a difficult moment.
Lady Gale spoke. “Mr. Maradick has just been telling me — —” she began.
“Perhaps Alice and I — —” said Mrs. Lester, and moved back to the door. Then Maradick took hold of things.
“No, please don’t go. There’s nothing that anyone needn’t know, nothing. I have just been telling Lady Gale, Sir Richard, that your son was married yesterday at two o’clock at the little church outside the town, to a Miss Janet Morelli. They are now in Paris.”
There was silence. No one spoke or moved. The situation hung entirely between Sir Richard and Maradick. Lady Gale’s eyes were all for her husband; the way that he took it would make a difference to the rest of their married lives.
Sir Richard breathed heavily. His face went suddenly very white. Then in a low voice he said —
“Married? Yesterday?” He seemed to be collecting his thoughts, trying to keep down the ungovernable passion that in a moment would overwhelm him. For a moment he swallowed it. Holding himself very straight he looked Maradick in the face.
“And why has my dutiful son left the burden of this message to you?”
“Because I have, from the beginning, been concerned in the affair. I have known about it from the first. I was witness of their marriage yesterday, and I saw them off at the station.”
Sir Richard began to breathe heavily. The colour came back in a flood to his cheeks. His eyes were red. He stepped forward with his fist uplifted, but Rupert put a hand on his arm and his fist fell to his side. He could not speak coherently.
“You — you — you”; and then “You dared? What the devil have you to do with my boy? With us? With our affairs? What the devil is it to do with you? You — you — damn you, sir — my boy — married to anybody, and because a — —”
Rupert again put his hand on his father’s arm and his words lingered in mid-air.
Then he turned to his wife.
“You — did you know about this — did you know that this was going on?”
Then Maradick saw how wise she had been in her decision to keep the whole affair away from her. It was a turning-point.
If she had been privy to it, Maradick saw, Sir Richard would never forgive her. It would have remained always as a hopeless, impassable barrier between them. It would have hit at the man’s tenderest, softest place, his conceit. He might forgive her anything but that.
And so it was a tremendous clearing of the air when she raised her eyes to her husband’s and said, without hesitation, “No, Richard. Of course not. I knew nothing until just now when Mr. Maradick told me.”
Sir Richard turned back from her to Maradick.
“And so, sir, you see fit, do you, sir, to interfere in matters in which you have no concern. You come between son and father, do you? You — —”
But again he stopped. Maradick said nothing. There was nothing at all to say. It was obvious that the actual affair, Tony’s elopement, had not, as yet, penetrated to Sir Richard’s brain. The only thing that he could grasp at present was that some one — anyone — had dared to step in and meddle with the Gales. Some one had had the dastardly impertinence to think that he was on a level with the Gales, some one had dared to put his plebeian and rude fingers into a Gale pie. Such a thing had never happened before.
Words couldn’t deal with it.
He looked as though in another moment he would have a fit. He was trembling, quivering in every limb. Then, in a voice that could scarcely be heard, he said, “My God, I’ll have the law of you for this.”
He turned round and, without looking at anyone, left the room.
There was silence.
Rupert said “My word!” and whistled. No one else said anything.
And, in this interval of silence, Maradick almost, to his own rather curious surprise, entirely outside the whole affair, was amused rather than bothered by the way they all took it, although “they,” as a matter of strict accuracy, almost immediately resolved itself down to Mrs. Lester. Lady Gale had shown him, long ago, her point of view; Sir Richard and Rupert could have only, with their limited conventions, one possible opinion; Alice Du Cane would probably be glad for Tony’s sake and so be indirectly grateful; but Mrs. Lester! why, it would be, he saw in a flash, the most splendid bolstering up of the way that she was already beginning to look on last night’s affair. He could see her, in a day or two, making his interference with the “Gale pie” on all fours with his own brutal attack on her immaculate virtues. It would be all of a piece in a short time, with the perverted imagination that she would set to play on their own “little” situation. It would be a kind of rose-coloured veil that she might fling over the whole proceeding. “The man who can behave in that kind of way to the Gales is just the kind of man who would, so horribly and brutally, insult a defenceless woman.”
He saw in her eyes already the beginning of the picture. In a few days the painting would be complete. But this was all as a side issue. His business, as far as these people were concerned, was over.
Without looking at anyone, he too left the room.
It had been difficult, but after he had had Lady Gale’s assurance the rest didn’t matter. Of course the old man was bound to take it like that, but he would probably soon see it differently. And at any rate, as far as he, Maradick, was concerned, that — Sir Richard’s attitude to him personally — didn’t matter in the very least.
But all that affair seemed, indeed, now of secondary importance. The first and only vital matter now was his relations with his wife. Everything must turn to that. Her clasp of his hand had touched him infinitely, profoundly. For the first time in their married lives she wanted him. Sir Richard, Mrs. Lester, even Tony, seemed small, insignificant in comparison with that.
But he must tell her everything — he saw that. All about Mrs. Lester, everything — otherwise they would never start clear.
She was just finishing her dressing when he came into her room. She turned quickly from her dressing-table towards him.
“I’m just ready,” she said.
“Wait a minute,” he answered her. “Before we go in to the girls there’s something, several things, that I want to say.”
His great clumsy body moved across the floor, and he sat down hastily in a chair by the dressing-table.
She watched him anxiously with her sharp little eyes. “Yes,” she said, “only hurry up. I’m hungry.”
“Well, there are two things really,” he answered slowly. “Things you’ve got to know.”
She noticed one point, that he didn’t apologise in advance as he would have done three weeks ago. There were no apologies now, only a stolid determination to get through with it.
“First, it’s about young Tony Gale. I’ve just been telling his family. He married a girl yesterday and ran off to Paris with her. You can bet the family are pleased.”
Mrs. Maradick was excited. “Not really! Really eloped? That Gale boy! How splendid! A real elopement! Of course one could see that something was up. His being out so much, and so on; I knew. But just fancy! Really doing it! Won’t old Sir Richard —— !”
Her eyes were sparkling. The romance of it had obviously touched her, it was very nearly as though one had eloped oneself, knowing the boy and everything!
Then he added, “I had to tell them. You see, I’ve known about it all the time, been in it, so to speak. Helped them to ar
range it and so on, and Sir Richard had a word or two to say to me just now about it.”
“So that’s what you’ve been doing all this time. That’s your secret!” She was just as pleased as she could be. “That’s what’s changed you. Of course! One might have guessed!”
But behind her excitement and pleasure he detected also, he thought, a note of disappointment that puzzled him. What had she thought that he had been doing?
“I have just been telling them — the Gales. Sir Richard was considerably annoyed.”
“Of course — hateful old man — of course he’d mind; hurt his pride.” Mrs. Maradick had clasped her hands round her knees and was swinging a little foot. “But you stood up to them. I wish I’d seen you.”
But he hurried on. That was, after all, quite unimportant compared with the main thing that he had to say to her. He wondered how she would take it. The new idea that he had of her, the new way that he saw her, was beginning to be so precious to him, that he couldn’t bear to think that he might, after all, suddenly lose it. He could see her, after his telling her, return to the old, sharp, biting satire. There would be the old wrangles, the old furious quarrels; for a moment at the thought of it he hesitated. Perhaps, after all, it were better not to tell her. The episode was ended. There would never be a recrudescence of it, and there was no reason why she should know. But something hurried him on; he must tell her, it was the decent thing to do.
“But there’s another thing that I must tell you, that I ought to tell you. I don’t know even that I’m ashamed of it. I believe that I would go through it all again if I could learn as much. But it’s all over, absolutely over. I’ve fancied for the last fortnight that I was in love with Mrs. Lester. I’ve kissed her and she’s kissed me. You needn’t be afraid. That’s all that happened, and I’ll never kiss her again. But there it is!”
He flung it at her for her to take it or leave it. He hadn’t the remotest idea what she would say or do. Judging by his past knowledge of her, he expected her to storm. But it was a test of the new Mrs. Maradick as to whether, indeed, it had been all his imagination about there being any new Mrs. Maradick at all.
There was silence. He didn’t look at her; and then, suddenly, to his utter amazement she broke into peals of laughter. He couldn’t believe his ears. Laughing! Well, women were simply incomprehensible! He stared at her.
“Why, my dear!” she said at last, “of course I’ve seen it all the time. Of course I have, or nearly all the time. You don’t suppose that I go about with my eyes shut, do you? Because I don’t, I can tell you. Of course I hated it at the time. I was jealous, jealous as anything. First time I’ve been jealous of you since we were married; I hated that Mrs. Lester anyhow. Cat! But it was an eye-opener, I can tell you. But there’ve been lots of things happening since we’ve been here, and that’s only one of them. And I’m jolly glad. I like women to like you. I’ve liked the people down here making up to you, and then you’ve been different too.”
Then she crossed over to his chair and suddenly put her arm around his neck. Her voice lowered. “I’ve fallen in love with you while we’ve been down here, for the first time since we’ve been married. I don’t know why, quite. It started with your being so beastly and keeping it up. You always used to give way before whenever I said anything to you, but you’ve kept your end up like anything since you’ve been here. And then it was the people liking you better than they liked me. And then it was Mrs. Lester, my being jealous of her. And it was even more than those things — something in the air. I don’t know, but I’m seeing things differently. I’ve been a poor sort of wife most of the time, I expect; I didn’t see it before, but I’m going to be different. I could kiss your Mrs. Lester, although I do hate her.”
Then when he kissed her she thought how big he was. She hadn’t sat with her arms round him and his great muscles round her since the honeymoon, and even then she had been thinking about her trousseau.
And breakfast was quite an extraordinary meal. The girls were amazed. They had never seen their father in this kind of mood before. They had always rather cautiously disliked him, as far as they’d had any feeling for him at all, but their attitude had in the main been negative. But now, here he was joking, telling funny stories, and mother laughing. Cutting the tops off their eggs too, and paying them quite a lot of attention.
He found the meal delightful, too, although he realised that there was still a good deal of the old Mrs. Maradick left. Her voice was as shrill as ever; she was just as cross with Annie for spreading her butter with an eye to self-indulgence rather than economy. She was still as crude and vulgar in her opinion of things and people.
But he didn’t see it any longer in the same way. The knowledge that there was really the other Mrs. Maradick there all the time waiting for him to develop, encourage her, made the things that had grated on him at one time so harshly now a matter of very small moment. He was even tender about them. It was a good thing that they’d both got their faults, a very fortunate thing.
“Now, Annie, there you go, slopping your tea into your saucer like that, and now it’ll drop all over your dress. Why can’t you be more careful?”
“Yes, but mother, it was so full.”
“I say,” this from Maradick, “what do you think of our all having this afternoon down on the beach or somewhere? Tea and things; just ourselves. After all, it’s our last day, and it’s quite fine and warm. No more rain.”
Everyone thought it splendid. Annie, under this glorious new state of things, even found time and courage to show her father her last French exercise with only three mistakes. The scene was domestic for the next half-hour.
Then he left them. He wanted to go and make his farewell to the place; this would be the last opportunity that he would have.
He didn’t expect to see the Gales again. After all, there was nothing more for him to say. They had Tony’s address. It only remained for Sir Richard to get over it as quickly as he could. Lady Gale would probably manage that. He would like to have spoken to her once more, but really it was as well that he shouldn’t. He would write to her.
He discovered before he left the house that another part of the affair was over altogether. As he reached the bottom of the stairs Mrs. Lester crossed the hall, and, for a moment, they faced each other. She looked through him, past him, as though she had never seen him before. Her eyes were hard as steel and as cold. They passed each other silently.
He was not surprised; he had thought that that was the way that she would probably take it. Probably with the morning had come fierce resentment at his attitude and fiery shame at her own. How she could! That would be her immediate thought, and then, very soon after that, it would be that she hadn’t at all. He had led her on. And then in a week’s time it would probably be virtuous resistance against the persuasions of an odious sensualist. Of course she would never forgive him.
He passed out into the air.
As he went down the hill to the town it struck him that the strange emotional atmosphere that had been about them during these weeks seemed to have gone with the going of Tony. It might be only coincidence, of course, but undoubtedly the boy’s presence had had something to do with it all. And then his imagination carried him still further. It was fantastic, of course, but his struggle with Morelli seemed to have put an end to the sort of influence that the man had been having. Because he had had an influence undoubtedly. And now to-day Morelli didn’t seem to go for anything at all.
And then it might be, too, that they had all at last got used to the place; it was no longer a fresh thing, but something that they had taken into their brains, their blood. Anyhow, that theory of Lester’s about places and people in conjunction having such influence, such power, was interesting. But, evolve what theories he might, of one thing he was certain. There had been a struggle, a tremendous straggle. They had all been concerned in it a little, but it had been his immediate affair.
He turned down the high road towards the town. The day was
a “china” day; everything was of the faintest, palest colours, delicate with the delicacy of thin silk, of gossamer lace washed by the rain, as it were, until it was all a symphony of grey and white and a very tender blue. It was a day of hard outlines. The white bulging clouds that lay against the sky were clouds of porcelain; the dark black row of trees that bordered the road stood out from the background as though they had been carved in iron; the ridge of back-lying hills ran like the edge of a sheet of grey paper against the blue; the sea itself seemed to fling marble waves upon a marble shore.
He thought, as he paused before he passed into the town, that he had never seen the sea as it was to-day. Although it was so still and seemed to make no sound at all, every kind of light, like colours caught struggling in a net, seemed to be in it. Mother of pearl was the nearest approach to the beauty of it, but that was very far away. There was gold and pink and grey, and the faintest creamy yellow, and the most delicate greens, and sometimes even a dark edge of black; but it never could be said that this or that colour were there, because it changed as soon as one looked at it and melted into something else; and far away beyond the curving beach the black rocks plunged into the blue, and seemed to plant their feet there and then to raise them a little as the sea retreated.
He passed through the market-place and saluted the tower for the last time. There were very few people about and he could make his adieux in privacy. He would never forget it, its grey and white stone, its immovable strength and superiority to all the rest of its surroundings. He fancied that it smiled farewell to him as he stood there. It seemed to say: “You can forget me if you like; but don’t forget what I’ve taught you — that there’s a spirit and a courage and a meaning in us all if you’ll look for it. Good-bye; try and be more sensible and see a little farther than most of your silly fellow-creatures.” Oh yes! there was contempt in it too, as it stood there with its white shoulders raised so proudly against the sky.