Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  These ladies and gentlemen put very plainly before him the business side of his profession. Their conversation was all of agents, publishers, the sums that one of their number obtained and how lucky to get so much so soon, and the sums that another of their number did not obtain and what a shame it was that such good work was rewarded by so little. It was all — this conversation — in the most generous strain. Jealousy never raised its head. They read — these precious people — the works of one another with an eager praise and a tender condemnation delightful to see. It was a warm bustling society that received Peter.

  These tea-parties and fireside discussions had not, perhaps, been always so friendly and large-hearted but in the time when Peter first encountered them they were influenced and moulded by a very remarkable woman — a woman who succeeded in combining humour, common sense and imagination in admirably adjusted qualities. Her humour made her tolerant, her common sense made her wise, and her imagination made her tender — her name was Mrs. Launce.

  She was short and broad, with large blue eyes that always, if one watched them, showed her thoughts and dispositions. Some people make of their faces a disguise, others use them as a revelation — the result to the observer is very much the same in either case. But with Mrs. Launce there was no definite attempt at either one thing or the other — she was so busily engaged in the matter in hand, so absorbed and interested, that the things that her face might be doing never occurred to her. Her hair was drawn back and parted down the middle. She liked to wear little straw coal-scuttle bonnets; she was very fond of blue silk, and her frocks had an inclination to trail. On her mother’s side she was French and on her father’s English; from her mother she got the technique of her stories, the light-hearted boldness of her conversation and her extraordinary devotion to her family. She was always something of a puzzle to English women because she was a great deal more domestic than most of them and yet bristled with theories about morals and life in general that had nothing whatever in common with domesticity. Some one once said of her that “she was a hot water bottle playing at being a bomb....”

  She belonged to all the London worlds, although she found perhaps especial pleasure in the society of her fellow writers. This was largely because she loved, beyond everything else, the business side of her profession. There was nothing at all that she did not know about the publishing and distribution of a novel. Her capacity for remembering other people’s prices was prodigious and she managed her agent and her publisher with a deftness that left them gasping. There were very few persons in her world who had not, at one time or another, poured their troubles into her ear. She had that gift, valuable in life beyond all others, of giving herself up entirely to the person with whom she was talking. When the time came to give advice the combination of her common sense and her tenderness made her invaluable. There was no crime black enough, no desertion, no cruelty horrible enough to outspeed her pity. She hated and understood the sin and loved and comforted the sinner. With a wide and accurate knowledge of humanity she combined a deep spiritual belief in the goodness of God.

  Everything, however horrible, interested her ... she adored life.

  This little person in the straw bonnet and the blue dress gave Peter something that he had never known before — she mothered him. He sat next to her at some dinner-party and she asked him to come and have tea with her. She lived in a little street in Westminster in a tiny house that had her children on the top floor, a beautiful copy of the Mona Lisa and a very untidy writing-table on the second, and a little round hall and a tiny dining-room on the ground floor. Her husband and her family — including an adorable child of two — were all as amiable as possible.

  Peter told her most things on the first day that he had tea with her and everything on the second. He told her about his boyhood — Treliss, Scaw House, his father, Stephen. He told her about Brockett’s and Bucket Lane. He told her, finally, about Clare Rossiter.

  He always remembered one thing that she said at this time. They were sitting at her open window looking down into the blue evening that is in Westminster quieter even than it is at Chelsea. Behind the faint green cloud of trees the Abbey’s huge black pile soared into space.

  “You think you’ve made a tremendous break?” she said.

  “Yes — this is an entirely new life — new in every way. I seem too to be set amongst an entirely new crowd of people. The division seems to me sharper every day. I believe I’ve left it all behind.”

  She looked at him sharply. “You’re afraid of all that earlier time,” she said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “It made you write ‘Reuben Hallard.’ Perhaps this life here in London...”

  “It’s safer,” he caught her up.

  “Don’t,” she answered him very gravely, “play for safety. It’s the most dangerous thing in the world.” She paused for a moment and then added: “But probably they won’t let you alone.”

  “I hope to God they will,” he cried.

  III

  He saw Clare Rossiter twice during this time and, on each occasion, it seemed to him that she was trying to make up to him for his awkwardness at their first meeting. On the first of these two occasions she had only a few words with him, but there was a note in her voice that he fancied, wildly, unreasonably, was different from the tone that she used to other people. She looked so beautiful with her golden hair coiled above her head. It was the most wonderful gold that he had ever seen. He could only, in his excitement, think of marmalade and that was a sticky comparison. “The Lady with the Marmalade Hair” — how monstrous! but that did convey the colour. Her eyes seemed darker now than they had been before and her cheeks whiter. The curve of her neck was so wonderful that it hurt him physically. He wanted so terribly to kiss her just beneath her ear. He saw how he would do it, and that he would have to move away some of the shiny hair that strayed like sunlight across the white skin.

  She did not seem to him quite so tiny when she smiled; it was exactly as water ripples when the sun suddenly bursts dark clouds. He had a thousand comparisons for her, and then sometimes she would be, as it were, caught up into a cloud and he would only see a general radiance and be blinded by the light.

  He wished very much that he could think of something else — something other than marmalade — that had that quality of gold. He often imagined what it would be like when she let it all down — like a forest of autumn trees — no, that spoke of decay — like the sunlight on sand towards evening — like the fires of Walhalla in the last act of Gotterdämmerung — like the lights of some harbour seen from the farther shore — like clouds that are ready to burst with evening sunlight. Perhaps, after all, amber was the nearest....

  “Peter, ask Miss Rossiter if she will have some more tea....” Oh! What a fool he is! What an absolute ass!

  On the second of these two meetings she had read “Reuben Hallard.” She loved it! She thought it astounding! The most wonderful first novel she had ever read. How had he been able to make one feel Cornwall so? She had been once to Cornwall, to Mullion and it had been just like that! Those rocks! it was like a poem! And then so exciting!

  She had not been able to put it down for a single minute. “Mother was furious with me because there I sat until I don’t know how early in the morning reading it! Oh! Mr. Westcott, how wonderful to write like that!”

  Her praise inflamed him like wine. He looked at her with exultation.

  “Oh! you feel like that!” he said, drawing a great breath, “I did want you to like it so!” He was enraptured — the world was heaven! He did not realise that some young woman at a tea-party the day before had said precisely these same things and he had said: “Of all the affected idiots!”...

  IV

  This might all be termed a period of preparation — that period was fixed for Peter with its sign and seal on a certain evening of spring when an enormous orange moon was in the sky, scents were in all the Chelsea gardens, and the Chelsea streets were like glass in the s
ilver luminous light.

  Peter was walking home after a party at the Rossiters’. It was the first time that he had been invited to their house and it had been a great success. Dr. Rossiter was a little round fat man with snow-white hair, red cheeks and twinkling eyes. He cured his patients and irritated his relations by his good temper. Mrs. Rossiter, Peter thought, had a great resemblance to Bobby’s mother, Mrs. Galleon, senior. They were, both of them, massive and phlegmatic. They had both acquired that solemn dignity that comes of living up to one’s husband’s reputation. They both looked on their families — Mrs. Rossiter on Clare and Mrs. Galleon on Millicent, Percival and Bobby — with curiosity, tolerance and a mild soft of wonder. They were both massively happy and completely unimaginative. They were, indeed, old friends, having been at school together, they were Emma and Jane to one another and Mrs. Rossiter could never forget that Mrs. Galleon came to school two years after herself and was therefore junior still; whilst Mrs. Galleon had stayed two years longer than Mrs. Rossiter, and was a power there when Mrs. Rossiter was completely forgotten; they were fond of each other as long as they were allowed to patronise one another.

  Peter had spent a delicious evening. He had had half an hour in the garden with Clare. They had spoken in an undertone. He had told her his ambitions, she had told him her aspirations. Some one had sung in the garden and there had been one wonderful moment when Peter had touched her hand and she had not taken it away. At last they were both silent and the garden flowed about them, on every side of them, with the notes and threads that can only be heard at night.

  Mrs. Rossiter, heavily and solemnly, brought her daughter a shawl. There was some one to whom she would like to introduce Mr. Westcott. Would he mind? Eden was robbed of its glories....

  But he had had enough. He thought at one moment that already she was beginning to care for him, and at another, that a lover’s fancy made signs out of the wind and portents out of the running water.

  But he was happy with a mighty exultation, and then, as he turned down on to the Embankment and felt the breeze from the river as it came towards him, he met Henry Galleon.

  The old man, in an enormous hat that was like a top hat only round at the brim and brown in colour, was trotting home. He saw Peter and stopped. He spoke to him in his slow tremendous voice and the words seemed to go on after they had left him, rolling along the Embankment.

  “I am glad to see you, Mr. Westcott. I have thought that I would like to have a chat with you. I have just finished your book.”

  This was indeed tremendous — that Henry Galleon should have read “Reuben Hallard.” Peter trembled all over.

  “I wonder whether you would care to come and have a chat with me. I have some things you might care to see. What time like the present? It is early hours yet and you will be doing an old man who sleeps only poorly a kindness.”

  What a night of nights! Peter, trembling with excitement, felt Henry Galleon put his arm in his, felt the weight of the great man’s body. They walked slowly along and the moon and the stars and the lights on the river and the early little leaves in the trees and the stones of the houses and the little “tish-tish” of the water against the Embankment seemed to say— “Oh! Peter Westcott’s going to have a chat with Henry Galleon! Did you ever hear such a thing!”

  Peter was sorry that his Embankment was deserted and that there was no one to see them go into the house together. He drew a great breath as the door closed behind them. The house was large and dark and mysterious. The rest of the family were still out at some party. Henry Galleon drew Peter into his own especial quarters and soon they were sitting in a lofty library, its walls covered with books that stretched to the ceiling. Peter meanwhile buried in a huge arm-chair and feeling that Henry Galleon’s eyes were piercing him through and through.

  The old man talked for some time about other things — talked wonderfully about the great ones of the earth whom he had known, the great things that he had seen. It was amazing to Peter to hear the gods of his world alluded to as “poor old S —— poor fellow!... Yes, indeed. I remember his coming into breakfast one day...” or “You were asking about T —— Old Wallie, as we used to call him — poor fellow, poor fellow — we lived together in rooms for some time. That was before I married — and perilously, dangerously — I might almost say magnificently near starvation we were too....”

  Peter already inflamed with that earlier half-hour in the garden now breathed a portentous air. He was with the Gods ... there on the Olympian heights he drank with them, he sang songs with them, with mighty voices they applauded “Reuben Hallard.” He drank in his excitement many whiskies and sodas and soon the white room with its books was like the inside of a golden shell. The old man opposite him grew in size — his face was ever larger and larger, his shirt front bulged and bulged — his hand raised to emphasise some point was tremendous as the hand of a God. Peter felt that he himself was growing smaller and smaller, would soon, in the depths of that mighty arm-chair disappear altogether but that opposite him two mighty burning eyes held him. And always like thunder the voice rolled on.... “My son tells me that this book of yours is a success ... that they are emptying their purses to fill yours. That may be a dangerous thing for you. I have read your book, it has many faults; it is not written at all — it is loose and lacking in all construction. You know nothing, as yet, about life — you do not know what to use or what to reject. But the Spirit is there, the right Spirit. It is a little flame — it will be very easily quenched and nothing can kill it so easily as success — guard it, my son, guard it.”

  Peter felt as Siegfried must have felt when confronted by Wotan.

  His poor little book was dwindling now before his eyes. He was conscious of a great despair. How useless of him to attempt so impossible a task....

  The voice rolled on:

  “I am an old man now and only twice before in my time nave I seen that spirit in a young man’s eyes. You may remember now an old man’s words — for I would urge you, I would implore you to keep nothing before you but the one thing that can bring Life into Art. I will not speak to you of the sacredness of your calling. Many will laugh at you and tell you that it is pretentious to name it so. Others will come to you and will advise how this is to be done and that is to be done. Others will talk to you of schools, they will tell you that once it was in that manner and that now it is in this manner. Some will tell you that you have no style — others will tell you that you have too much. Some again will tempt you with money and money is not to be despised. Again you will be tested with photographs and paragraphs, with lectures and public dinners.... Worst of all there will come to you terrible hours when you yourself know of a sure certainty that your work is worthless. In your middle age a great barrenness will come upon you. You have been a little teller of little tales, and on every side of you there will be others who have striven for other prizes and have won them. Sitting alone in your room with your poor strands of coloured silk that had once been intended to make so beautiful a pattern, poor boy, you will know that you have failed. That will be a very dreadful hour — the only power that can meet it is a blind and deaf courage. Courage is the only thing that we are here to show ... the hour will pass.”

  The old man paused. There was a silence. Then he said very slowly as though he were drawing in front of him the earliest histories of his own past life....

  “Against all these temptations, against these voices of the World and the Flesh, against the glory of power and the swinging hammer of success, you, sitting quietly in your room, must remember that a great charge has been given you, that you are here for one thing and one thing only ... to listen. The whole duty of Art is listening for the voice of God.

  “I am not speaking in phrases. I am not pressing upon you any sensational discoveries, but here at the end of my long life, I, with all the things that I meant to do and have failed to do heavy upon me, can give you only this one word. I have hurried, I have scrambled, I have fought and cursed and s
triven, but as an Artist only those hours that I have spent listening, waiting, have been my real life.

  “So it must be with you. You are here to listen. Never mind if they tell you that story-telling is a cheap thing, a popular thing, a mean thing. It is the instrument that is given to you and if, when you come to die you know that, for brief moments, you have heard, and that what you have heard you have written, Life has been justified.

  “Nothing else can console you, nothing else can comfort you. There must be restraint, austerity, discipline — words must come to you easily but only because life has come to you with so great a pain ... the Artist’s life is the harshest that God can give to a man. Make no mistake about that. Fortitude is the artist’s only weapon of defence....”

  Henry Galleon came over to Peter’s chair and put his hand upon the boy’s arm.

  “I am at the end of my work. I have done what I can. You are at the beginning of yours. You will do what you can. I wish you good fortune.”

  A vision came to Peter. Through the open window, against the sheet of stars, gigantic, was the Rider on the Lion.

  He could not see the Rider’s face.

  A great exultation inflamed him.

  At that instant he was stripped bare. His history, the people whom he knew, the things that he had done, they were all as though they had never been.

  His soul was, for that great moment, naked and alone before God.

  “The whole duty of Art is listening for the voice of God....”

  A sound, as though it came to him from another world, broke into the room.