by Hugh Walpole
“So died Reuben Hallard, a fool and a gentleman!” His excitement was tremendous; his cheeks were flaming, his eyes glittering, his heart beating. Here was a book written! — so many pages covered with so much writing, his claim to be somebody, to have done something, justified and, most wonderful of all, live, exciting people created by him, Peter Westcott. He did not think now of publication, of money, of fame — only, after sharing for three years in the trials and adventures of dear, beloved souls, now, suddenly, he emerged cold, breathless ... alone ... into the world again.
Exciting! Why, furiously, of course. He could have sung and shouted and walked, right over the tops of the roofs, with the rain beating and cooling his body, out into the mist of the horizon. His book, “Reuben Hallard!” London was swimming in thick brown mud, and the four lamps coming out in Bennett Square in a dim, sickly fashion and he, Peter Westcott, had written a book....
The Signor — the same Signor, some seven years older, a little shabbier, but nevertheless the same Signor — came to summon him to supper.
“I have finished it!”
“What! The book?”
“Yes!”
Their voices were awed whispers. The whole house had during the last three years shared in the fortunes of the book. Peter had come to dinner with a cloud upon his brow — the book therefore has gone badly — even Mrs. Brockett is disturbed and Mrs. Lazarus is less chirpy than usual. Peter comes to dinner with a smile — the book therefore has gone well and even Mrs. Monogue is a little less selfish than ordinary. The Signor now gazed round the little room as though he might find there the secret of so great an achievement. On Peter’s dressing-table the manuscript was piled— “You’ll miss it,” the Signor said, gloomily. “You’ll miss it very much — you’re bound to. You’ll have to get it typewritten, and that’ll cost money.”
“Never mind, it’s done,” said Peter, shaking his head as a dog shakes himself when he leaves the water. “There they are, those people — and now I’m going to wash.”
He stripped to the waist, and the Signor watched his broad back and strong arms with a sigh for his own feeble proportions. He wondered how it was that being in a stuffy bookshop for seven years had done Peter no harm, he wondered how he could keep the back of his neck so brown as that in London and his cheeks as healthy a colour and his eyes as clear.
“I’m amazingly unpleasant to look at,” the Signor said at last. “I often wonder why my wife married me. I’m not surprised that every one finds me uninteresting. I am uninteresting.”
“Well, you are not uninteresting to me, I can tell you,” said Peter. He had put on a soft white shirt, a black tie, and a black coat and trousers, the last of these a little shiny perhaps in places, but neat and well brushed, and you would really not guess when you saw him, that he only possessed two suits in the wide world.
“I think you’re absorbing,” Peter said, a little patronisingly perhaps.
“Ah, that proves nothing,” the Signer retorted. “You only care for fools and children — Mrs. Brockett always says so.”
They went downstairs — Peter was, of course, not hungry at all, but the conventions had to be observed. In the sitting-room, round about the green settee, the company was waiting as it had waited seven years ago; there were one or two unimportant additions and Mrs. Monogue had died the year before and Mrs. Lazarus was now very old and trembling, but in effect there was very little change.
“He has finished it,” the Signor announced in a wondering whisper. A little buzz rose, filled the air for a moment and then sank into silence again. Mrs. Lazarus was without her orange because she had to wear mittens now, and that made peeling the thing difficult. “I’m sure,” she said, in a voice like that of a very excited cricket, “that Mr. Westcott will feel better after he’s had something to eat. I always do.”
This remark left conversation at a standstill. The rain drove against the panes, the mud rose ever higher against the walls, and dinner was announced. Mrs. Brockett made her remarks to each member of the company in turn as usual. To Peter she said:
“I hear that you have finished your book, Mr. Westcott. We shall all watch eagerly for its appearance, I’m sure.”
He felt his excitement slipping away from him as the moments passed. Suddenly he was tired. Instead of elation there was wonder, doubt. What if, after all, the book should be very bad? During all these years in London he had thought of it, during all these years he had known that it was going to succeed. What, if now he should discover suddenly that it was bad?... Could he endure it? The people of his book seemed now to stand very far away from him — they were unreal — he could remember scenes, things that they had said and done, absurd, ignorant things.
He began to feel panic. Why should he imagine that he was able to write? Of course it was all crude, worthless stuff. He looked at the dingy white pillars and heavy green curtains with a kind of despair ... of course it was all bad. He had been hypnotised by the thing for the time being. Then he caught Norah Monogue’s eyes and smiled. He would show it to her, and she would tell him what it was worth.
Poor Mrs. Tressiter’s baby had died last week and now, suddenly, she burst out crying and had to leave the room. There was a little twitter of sympathy. How good they all were to one another, these people, stupid and odd perhaps in some ways, but so brave for themselves and so generous to one another. It was no mean gathering of souls that Mrs. Brockett’s dingy gas illuminated.
Every now and again the heavy curtains blew forward in the wind and the gas flared. There was no conversation, and the wind could be heard driving the rain past the windows.
III
Peter, that evening, took the manuscript of “Reuben Hallard” into Miss Monogue’s room. Since her mother died Norah Monogue had had a bed sitting-room to herself. The bed was hidden by a high screen, the wall paper was a dark green, and low bookshelves, painted white, ran round the room. There were no pictures (she always said that until she could have good ones she wouldn’t have any at all). There were some brown pots and vases on the shelves and a writing-table with a typewriter by the window.
When Peter came in, Norah Monogue was sitting in a low chair over a rather miserable fire; a little pool of light above her head came from two candles on the mantelpiece — otherwise the room was in darkness.
“Shall I turn on the gas?” she said, when she saw who it was.
“No, leave it as it is, I like it.” He sat down in a chair near her and put a pile of manuscript on the floor beside him. “I’ve brought it for you to read,” he said, “I’m frightened about it. I suddenly think it is the most rotten thing that ever was written.” He had become very intimate with her during these seven years. At first he had admired her because she behaved so splendidly to her abominable mother — then she had obviously been interested in him, had talked about the things that he was reading and his life at the bookshop. They had speedily become the very best of friends, and she understood friendship he thought in the right way — as though she had herself been a man. And yet she was with that completely feminine, a woman who had known struggle from the beginning and would know it to the end; but her personality — humorous, pathetic, understanding — was felt in her presence so strongly that no one ever forgot her after meeting her. Some one once said of her, “She’s the nicest ugly woman to look at I’ve ever seen.”
She cared immensely about her appearance. She saved, through blood and tears, to buy clothes and then always bought the wrong ones. She had perfect taste about everything except herself, and as soon as it touched her it was villainous. She was untidy; her hair — streaked already with grey — was never in its place; her dress was generally undone at the back, her gloves had holes.
Her mother’s death had left her some fifty pounds a year and she earned another fifty pounds by typewriting. Untidy in everything else, in her work she was scrupulously neat. She had had a story taken by The Green Volume. Her friends belonged (as indeed just at this time so many people belo
nged) to the Cult of the Lily, repeated the witticisms of Oscar Wilde and treasured the art of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley. Miss Monogue believed in the movement and rejected the affectations. In 1895, when the reaction began, she defended her old giants, but looked forward eagerly to new ones. She worked too hard to have very many friends, and Peter saved her from hours of loneliness. To him she was the last word in Criticism, in Literature. He would have liked to have fashioned “Reuben Hallard” after the manner of The Green Volume, but now thought sadly that it was as unlike that manner as possible; that is why he was afraid to bring it to her.
“You won’t like it,” he said. “I thought for a moment I had done something fine when I finished it this afternoon, but now I know that it’s bad. It’s all rough and crude. It’s terribly disappointing.”
“That’s all right,” she answered quietly. “We won’t say any more about it until I have read it — then we’ll talk.”
They were silent for a little. He was feeling unhappy and, curiously enough, frightened. He would have liked to jump up suddenly and shout, “Well, what’s going to happen now?” — not only to Norah Monogue, but to London, to all the world. The work at the book had, during these years, upheld him with a sense of purpose and aim. Now, feeling that that work was bad, his aim seemed wasted, his purpose gone. Here were seven years gone and he had done nothing — seen nothing, become nothing. What was his future to be? Where was he to go? What to do? He had reasoned blindly to himself during these years, that “Reuben Hallard” would make his fortune — now that seemed the very last thing it would do.
“I knew what you’re feeling,” she said, “now that the book’s done, you’re wondering what’s coming next.”
“It’s more than that. I’ve been in London seven years. Instead of writing a novel that no one will want to read I might have been getting my foot in. I might at any rate have been learning London, finding my way about. Why,” he went on, excitedly, “do you know that, except for a walk or two and going into the gallery at Covent Garden once or twice and the Proms sometimes and meeting some people at Herr Gottfried’s once or twice I’ve spent the whole of my seven years between here and the bookshop—”
“You mustn’t worry about that. It was quite the right thing to do. You must remember that there are two ways of learning things. First through all that every one has written, then through all that every one is doing. Up to now you’ve been studying the first of those two. Now you’re ready to take part in all the hurly-burly, and you will. London will fling you into it as soon as you’re ready, you can be sure.”
“I’ve been awfully happy all this time,” he went on, reflectively. “Too happy I expect. I never thought about anything except reading and writing the book, and talking to you and Gottfried. Now things will begin I suppose.”
“What kind of things?”
“Oh, well, it isn’t likely that I’m going to be let alone for ever. I’ve never told you, have I, about my life before I came up to London?”
She hesitated a little before she answered. “No, you’ve never told me anything. I could see, of course, that it hadn’t been easy.”
“How could you see that?”
“Well, it hadn’t been easy for either of us. That made us friends. And then you don’t look like a person who would take things easily — ever. Tell me about your early life before you came here,” Norah Monogue said.
She watched his face as he told her. She had found him exceedingly good company during the seven years that she had known him. They had slipped into their friendship so easily and so naturally that she had never taken herself to task about it in any way; it existed as a very delightful accompaniment to the day’s worries and disappointments. She suddenly realised now with a little surprised shock how bitterly she would miss it all were it to cease. In the darkened room, with the storm blowing outside, she felt her loneliness with an acute wave of emotion and self-pity that was very unlike her. If Peter were to go, she felt, she could scarcely endure to live on in the dreary building.
Part of his charm from the beginning had been that he was so astoundingly young, part of his interest that he could be, at times, so amazingly old. She felt that she herself could be equal neither to his youth nor his age. She was herself so ordinary a person, but watching him made the most fascinating occupation, and speculating over his future made the most wonderful dreams. That he was a personality, that he might do anything, she had always believed, but there had, until now, been no proof of it in any work that he had done ... he had had nothing to show ... now at last there lay there, with her in the room, the evidence of her belief — his book.
But the book seemed now, at this moment, of small account and, as she watched him, with the candle-light and the last flicker of the fire-light upon his face, she saw that he had forgotten her and was back again, soul and spirit, amongst the things of which he was speaking.
His voice was low and monotonous, his eyes staring straight in front of him, his hands, spread on his knees, gripped the cloth of his trousers. She would not admit to herself that she was frightened, but her heart was beating very fast and it was as though some stranger were with her in the room. It may have been the effect of the candlelight, blowing now in the wind that came through the cracks in the window panes, but it seemed to her that Peter’s face was changed. His face had lines that had not been there before, his mouth was thinner and harder and his eyes were old and tired ... she had never seen the man before, that was her impression.
But she had never known anything so vivid. Quietly, as though he were reciting the story to himself and were not sure whether he were telling it aloud or no, he began. As he continued she could see the place as though it was there with her in the room, the little Inn that ran out into the water, the high-cobbled street, the sea road, the grim stone house standing back amongst its belt of trees, the Grey Hill, the coast, the fields ... and then the story — the night of the fight, the beating, the school-days, that day with his mother (here he gave her actual dialogue as though there was no word of it that he had forgotten), the funeral — and then at last, gradually, climbing to its climax breathlessly, the relation of father and son, its hatred, then its degradation, and last of all that ludicrous scene in the early morning ... he told her everything.
When he had finished, there was a long silence between them: the fire was out and the room very cold. The storm had fallen now in a fury about the house, and the rain lashed the windows and then fell in gurgling stuttering torrents through the pipes and along the leads. Miss Monogue could not move; the scene, the place, the incidents were slowly fading away, and the room slowly coming back again. The face opposite her, also, gradually seemed to drop, as though it had been a mask, the expression that it had worn. Peter Westcott, the Peter that she knew, sat before her again; she could have believed as she looked at him, that the impressions of the last half-hour had been entirely false. And yet the things that he had told her were not altogether a surprise; she had not known him for seven years without seeing signs of some other temper and spirit — controlled indeed, but nevertheless there, and very different from the pleasant, happy Peter who played with the Tressiter children and dared to chaff Mrs. Brockett.
“You’ve paid me a great compliment, telling me this,” she said at last. “Remember we’re friends; you’ve proved that we are by coming like this to-night. I shan’t forget it. At any rate,” she added, softly, “it’s all right now, Peter — it’s all over now.”
“Over! No, indeed,” he answered her. “Do you suppose that one can grow up like that and then shake it off? Sometimes I think ... I’m afraid ...” he stopped, abruptly biting his lips. “Oh, well,” he went on suddenly in a brighter tone, “there’s no need to bother you with all that. It’s nothing. I’m a bit done up over this book, I expect. But that’s really why I told you that little piece of autobiography — because it will help you to understand the book. The book’s come out of all that, and you mightn’t have believed that it was me at all
— unless I’d told you these things.”
He stood facing her and a sudden awkwardness came over both of them. The fire was dead (save for one red coal), and the windows rattled like pistol-shots. He was feeling perhaps that he had told her too much, and the reserve of his age, the fear of being indiscreet, had come upon him. And with her there was the difficulty of not knowing exactly what comfort it was that he wanted, or whether, indeed, any kind of comfort would not be an insult to him. And, with all that awkwardness, there was also a knowledge that they had never been so near together before, an intimacy had been established that night that would never again be broken.
Into their silence there came a knock on the door. When Miss Monogue opened it the stern figure of Mrs. Brockett confronted her.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Monogue, but is Mr. Westcott here?”
Peter stepped forward.
“Oh, I’m sure I’m sorry to have to disturb you, Mr. Westcott, but there’s a man outside on the steps who insists on seeing you.”
“Seeing me?”
“Yes — he won’t come in or go away. He won’t move until he’s seen you. Very obstinate I’m sure — and such a night! Rather late, too—”
Mrs. Brockett was obviously displeased. Her tall black figure was drawn up outside the door, as a sentry might guard Buckingham Palace. There was a confusion of regality, displeasure, and grim humour in her attitude. But Peter was a favourite of hers. With a hurried goodnight to Miss Monogue he left the two women standing on the stairs and went to the hall-door.
When he opened it the wind was blowing up the steps so furiously that it flung him back into the hall again. Outside in the square the world was a wild tempestuous black, only, a little to the right, the feeble glow of the lamp blew hither and thither in the wind. The rain had stopped but all the pipes and funnels of the city were roaring with water. The noise was that of a thousand chattering voices, and very faintly through the tumult the bells of St. Matthews in Euston Square tinkled the hour.