Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  to and says you pull finely along. Hopin’ you really are better. But

  dear boy, if you find you can give me just a word on paper sayin’ that

  hear there is no course for worryin’ about your health, then I’m happy

  because, dear boy, you’m always in my thoughts and I love you fine and

  wish to God I could have made everything easier up along in thiccy

  Bucket Lane. I go from hear by road to Cornwall and Treliss. I’m

  expecting to find work there. Dear boy, don’t forget me and see me

  again one day and write a letter. They are getting too much into their

  bellies and making the devil’s own noise. There is Thunder coming the

  air is that still over the roof of the barn and the road’s dead white.

  Dear Boy, I am your friend,

  STEPHEN BRANT.

  The candles blew a little in the breeze from the open window and the lighted shadows ran flickering in silver lines, along the dark floor. Peter stood holding the letter in his hand, looking out on to the black square of sky; the lights of the barges swung down the river and he could hear, very faintly, the straining of ropes and the turning of some mysterious wheel.

  He saw Stephen — the great head, the flowing beard, the huge body — and then the inn with the thunder coming over the hill, and then, beyond that Treliss gleaming with its tiers of lights, above the breast of the sea. And from here, from this wide Embankment, down to that sea, there stretched, riding over hills, bending into valleys, always white and hard and stony, the road....

  For an instant he felt as though the studio, the lights, the comforts were holding him like a prison —

  “It’s a letter from Stephen Brant,” he said, turning back from the window. “He seems well and happy—”

  “Where is he?”

  “Eating bread and cheese at an inn somewhere — on the road down to Cornwall.”

  IV

  On the following Tuesday “Reuben Hallard” was published and on the Thursday afternoon Henry Galleon and Clare Rossiter were to come to tea. “Reuben Hallard” arrived in a dark red cover with a white paper label. The six copies lay on the table and looked at Peter as though he had had nothing whatever to do with their existence. He looked down upon them, opened one of them very tenderly, read half a page and felt that it was the best stuff he’d ever seen. He read the rest of the page and thought that the author, whoever the creature might be, deserved, imprisonment for writing such nonsense.

  The feeling of strangeness towards it all was increased by the fact that Bobby had, with the exception of the final proofs — these Peter had read down by the sea — done most of the proof-correcting. It was a task for which his practical common sense and lack of all imagination admirably fitted him. There, at any rate, “Reuben Hallard” was, ready to face all the world, to go, perhaps, to the farthest Hebrides, to be lost in all probability, utterly lost, in the turgid flood of contemporary fiction.

  There was a dedication “To Stephen”... How surprised Stephen would be! He looked at the chapter headings — An Old Man with a Lantern — the Road at Night.... Sun on the Western Moor — Stevenson — Tushery all of it! How they’d tear it to bits, those papers!

  He laughed to himself to think that there had once been a day when he had thought that the thing would make his fortune! And yet — he turned the pages over tenderly — there might be something to be said for it, Miss Monogue had thought well of it. These publishers, blasé, cynical fellows, surely believed in it.

  It was fat and red and comfortable. It had a worldly, prosperous look. “Reuben Hallard and His Adventures” ... Good Lord! What cheek.

  There were five copies to give away. One between Bobby and Mrs. Galleon, one for Stephen, one for Miss Monogue, one for Mrs. Brockett and one for Mr. Zanti. “Reuben Hallard and His Adventures,” by Peter Westcott. They would be getting it now at the newspaper offices. The Mascot would have a copy and the fat little chocolate consumer. It would stand with a heap of others, and be ticked off with a heap of others, for some youth to exercise his wit upon. As to any one buying the book? Who ever saw any one buying a six-shilling novel? It was only within the last year or so that the old three volumes with their thirty-one-and-six had departed this life. The publishers had assured Peter that this new six-shilling form was the thing. “Please have you got ‘Reuben Hallard’ by Peter Westcott?... Thank you, I’ll take it with me.”

  No, it was inconceivable.

  There poor Reuben would lie — deserted, still-born, ever dustier and dustier whilst other stories came pouring, pouring from endless presses, covering, crowding it down, stamping upon it, burying it.... “Here lies ‘Reuben Hallard.’...”

  Poor Peter!

  On Thursday, however, there was the tea-party — a Thursday never to be forgotten whilst Peter was alive. Bobby had told him the day before that his father might be coming. “The rest of the family will turn up for certain. They want to see you. They’re always all agog for any new thing — one of them’s always playing Cabot to somebody else’s Columbus. But father’s uncertain. He gets something into his head and then nothing whatever will draw him out — but I expect he’ll turn up.”

  The other visitor was announced to Peter on the very day.

  “By the way, Peter, somebody’s coming to tea this afternoon who’s met you before — met you at that odd boarding-house of yours — a Miss Rossiter. Clare’s an old friend of ours. I told you down at the sea about her and you said you remembered meeting her.”

  “Remembered meeting her!” Did Dante remember meeting Beatrice — did Petrarch remember Laura? Did Keats forget his Fanny Brawne? Did Richard Feverel forget his Lucy?

  On a level with these high-thinking gentlemen was Peter, disguising his emotions from Alice’s sharp eyes but silent, breathless, wanting some other place than that high studio in which to breathe. “Yes — she came to tea once with a Miss Monogue there — I liked her....”

  He was not there, but rather on some height alone with her and their hands touched over a photograph. “The Man on the Lion.” There was something worthy of his feeling for her!

  Meanwhile, for the first part of the afternoon one must put up with the Galleon family. Had Peter been sufficiently calm and sensible these appendages to a great author would have been worth his attention. Behold them in relation to “Henry Lessingham,” soaked in the works, bearing on their backs the whole Edition de Luxe, decking themselves with the little odds and ends of literary finery that they had picked up, bursting with the good-nature of assured self-consequence — harmless, foolish, comfortable. Mrs. Galleon was massive with a large flat face that jumped suddenly into expression when one least expected it. There was a great deal of silk about her, much leisurely movement and her tactics were silence and a slow, significant smile — these she always contributed to any conversation that was really beyond her. Had she not, during many years of her life, been married to a genius she would have been an intensely slow-moving but adequate housekeeper — as it was, her size and her silence enabled her to keep her place at many literary dinners. Peter, watching her, was consumed with wonder that Henry Galleon could ever have married her and understood that Bobby was the child of both his parents. Bobby had a brother and sister — Percival and Millicent. Percival was twenty-five and had written two novels that were considered promising by those who did not know that he was the son of his father. He was slim and dark with a black thread of a moustache and rather fine white fingers. His clothes were very well cut but his appearance was a little too elaborately simple. His sister, a girl of about eighteen, was slim and dark also; she had the eager appearance of one who has heard just enough to make her very anxious to hear a great deal more.

  One felt that she did not want to miss anything, but probably her determination to be her father’s daughter would prevent her from becoming very valuable or intelligent.

  Finally it was strange that Bobby had so completely escaped the shadow of his
father’s mantle. These people were intended, of course, to be the background of Peter’s afternoon and it was therefore more than annoying that that was the very last thing that they were. Millicent and Percival made a ball and then flung it backwards and forwards throughout the affair. Their mother watched them with appreciation and Alice Galleon, who knew them, gave them tea and cake and let them have their way. Into the midst of this Henry Galleon came — a little, round, fat man with a face like a map, the body of Napoleon and a trot round the room like a very amiable pony, eyes that saw everything, understood everything, and forgave everything, a brown buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, white spats and a voice that rolled and roared ... he was the tenderest, most alarming person in any kind of a world. He was so gentle that any sparrow would trust him implicitly and so terrific that an army would most certainly fly from before him. He ate tea-cake, smiled and shook hands with Peter, listened for half an hour to the spirited conversation of his two children and trotted away again, leaving behind him an atmosphere of gentle politeness and an amazing savoir-faire that one saw his children struggling to catch. They finally gave it up about half-past five and retreated, pressing Peter to pay them a call at the earliest opportunity.

  This was positively all that Peter saw, on this occasion, of Henry Galleon. It was quite enough to give him a great deal to think about, but it could scarcely be called a meeting.

  At quarter to six when Peter was in despair and Alice Galleon had ordered the tea-things to be taken away Clare Rossiter rushed in. She stood a whirlwind of flying colours in the middle of the Studio now sinking into twilight. “Alice dear, I am most terribly sorry but mother would stay. I couldn’t get her to leave and it was all so awkward. How do you do, Mr. Westcott? Do you remember — we met at Treliss — and now I must rush back this very minute. We are dining at seven before the Opera, and father wants that music you promised him — the Brahms thing. Oh! is it upstairs? Well, if you don’t mind....”

  Alice Galleon left them together. Peter could say nothing at all. He stood there, shifting from foot to foot, white, absolutely tongue-tied.

  She felt his embarrassment and struggled.

  “I hear that you’ve been very ill, Mr. Westcott. I’m so dreadfully sorry and I do hope that you’re better?”

  He muttered something.

  “Your book is out, isn’t it? ‘Reuben Hallard’ is the name. I must get father to put it down on his list. One’s first books must be so dreadfully exciting — and so alarming ... the reviews and everything — what is it about?”

  He murmured “Cornwall.”

  “Cornwall? How delightful! I was only there once. Mullion. Do you know Mullion?” She struggled along. The pain that had begun in his heart was now at his throat — his throat was full of spiders’ webs. He could scarcely see her in the dark but her pale blue dress and her dark eyes and her beautiful white hands — her little figure danced against the dark, shining floor like a fairy’s.

  He heard her sigh of relief at Alice Galleon’s return.

  “Oh! thank you, dear, so much. Good-bye, Mr. Westcott — I shall read the book.”

  She was gone.

  “Lights! Lights!” cried Alice Galleon. “How provoking of her not to come to tea properly. Well, Peter? How was it all?”

  He was guilty of abominable rudeness.

  He burst from the room without a word and banged, desperately, the door behind him.

  CHAPTER II

  A CHAPTER ABOUT SUCCESS I HOW TO WIN IT, HOW TO KEEP IT — WITH A NOTE AT THE END FROM HENRY GALLEON

  I

  The shout of applause with which “Reuben Hallard” was greeted still remains one of the interesting cases in modern literary history. At this time of day it all seems ancient and distant enough; the book has been praised, blamed, lifted up, hurled down a thousand times, and has finally been discovered to be a book of promise, of natural talent, with a great deal of crudity and melodrama and a little beauty. It does not stand of course in comparison with Peter Westcott’s later period and yet it has a note that his hand never captured afterwards. How incredibly bad it is in places, the Datchett incidents, with their flames and screams and murder in the dark, sufficiently betray: how fine it can be such a delight as The Cherry Orchard chapter shows, and perhaps the very badness of the crudities helped in its popularity, for there was nothing more remarkable about it than the fashion in which it captured every class of reader. But its success, in reality, was a result of the exact moment of its appearance. Had Peter waited a thousand years he could not possibly have chosen a time more favourable. It was that moment in literary history, when the world had had enough of lilies and was turning, with relief, to artichokes. There was a periodical of this time entitled The Green Volume. This appeared somewhere about 1890 and it brought with it a band of young men and women who were exceedingly clever, saw the quaintness of life before its reality and stood on tiptoe in order to observe things that were really growing quite close to the ground. This quarterly produced some very admirable work; its contributors were all, for a year or two, as clever as they were — young and as cynical as either. The world was dressed in a powder puff and danced beneath Chinese lanterns and was as wicked as it could be in artificial rose-gardens. It was all great fun for a year or two....

  Then The Green Volume died, people began to whisper about slums and drainage, and Swedish drill for ten minutes every morning was considered an admirable thing. On the edge of this new wave came “Reuben Hallard,” combining as it did a certain amount of affectation with a good deal of naked truth, and having the rocks of Cornwall as well as its primroses for its background. It also told a story with a beginning to it and an end to it, and it contained the beautiful character of Mrs. Poveret, a character that was undoubtedly inspired by that afternoon that Peter had with his mother..

  In addition to all this it must be remembered that the world was entirely unprepared for the book’s arrival. It had been in no fashion heralded and until a long review appeared in The Daily Globe no one noticed it in any way. Then the thing really began. The reviewers were glad to find something in a dead season, about which a column or two might possibly be written; the general public was delighted to discover a novel that was considered by good judges to be literature and that, nevertheless, had as good a story as though it weren’t — its faults were many and some of its virtues accidental, but it certainly deserved success as thoroughly as did most of its contemporaries. Edition followed edition and “Reuben Hallard” was the novel of the spring of 1896.

  The effect of all this upon Peter may easily be imagined. It came to him first, with those early reviews and an encouraging letter from the publishers, as something that did not belong to him at all, then after a month or so it belonged to him so completely that he felt as though he had been used to it all his life. Then slowly, as the weeks passed and the success continued, he knew that the publication of this book had changed the course of his life. Letters from agents and publishers asking for his next novel, letters from America, letters from unknown readers, all these things showed him that he could look now towards countries that had not, hitherto, been enclosed by his horizon. He breathed another air.

  And yet he was astonishingly simple about it all — very young and very naive. The two things that he felt about it were, first, that it would please very much his friends — Bobby and his wife, Mrs. Brockett, Norah Monogue, Mr. Zanti, Herr Gottfried and, above all, Stephen; and secondly, that all those early years in Cornwall — the beatings, his mother, Scaw House, even Dawson’s — had been of use to him. One remembers those extraordinary chapters concerning Reuben and his father — here Peter had, for the first time, allowed some expression of his attitude to it all to escape him.

  He felt indeed as though the success of the book placed for a moment all that other life in the background — really away from him. For the first time since he left Brockett’s he was free from a strange feeling of apprehension.... Scaw House was hidden.

  He gave himsel
f up to glorious life. He plunged into it....

  II

  He stepped, at first timidly, into literary London. It was, at first sight, alarming enough because it seemed to consist, so largely and so stridently, of the opposite sex. Bobby would have had Peter avoid it altogether. “There are some young idiots,” he said, “who go about to these literary tea-parties. They’ve just written a line or two somewhere or other, and they go curving and bending all over the place. Young Tony Gale and young Robin Trojan and my young ass of a brother ... don’t want you to join that lot, Peter, my boy. The women like to have ’em of course, they’re useful for handing the cake about but that’s all there is to it ... keep out of it.”

  But Peter had not had so many friends during the early part of his life that he could afford to do without possible ones now. He wanted indeed just as many as he could grasp. The comfort and happiness of his life with Bobby, the success of the book, the opening of a career in front of him, these things had made of him another creature. He had grown ten years younger; his cheeks were bright, his eye clear, his step buoyant. He moved now as though he loved his fellow creatures. One felt, on his entrance into a room, that the air was clearer, and that one was in the company of a human being who found the world, quite honestly and naturally, a delightful place. This was the first effect that success had upon Peter.

  And indeed they met him — all of them — with open arms. They saw in him that burning flame that those who have been for the first time admitted into the freemasonry of their Art must ever show. Afterwards he would be accustomed to that country, would know its roads and hills and cities and would be perhaps disappointed that they were neither as holy nor as eternal as he had once imagined them to be — now he stood on the hill’s edge and looked down into a golden landscape whose bounds he could not discern. But they met him too on the personal side. The fact that he had been found starving in a London garret was of itself a wonderful thing — then he had in his manner a rough, awkward charm that flattered them with his youth and inexperience. He was impetuous and confidential and then suddenly reserved and constrained. But, above it all, it was evident that he wanted friendliness and good fellowship. He took every one at the value that they offered to him. He first encouraged them to be at their most human and then convinced them that that was their natural character. He lighted every one’s lamp at the flame of his own implicit faith.