by Hugh Walpole
“Badly.”
“Dear me, I’m sorry for that. But there are better things in the world than writing, believe me. I dare say, my boy, you thought me unkind in those old days but it was all for your best — oh dear me, yes, entirely for your best.”
Here, for an instant, his father’s voice sounded so like his old grandfather’s that Peter jumped.
“Married?” said his father.
“My wife has left me—”
“Dear me, I am sorry to hear that.” Mr. Westcott finished the toast and wiped his fingers on a very old and dirty red handkerchief. “Women — bless them — angels for a time, but never to be depended on. Poor boy, I’m sorry. Children?”
“I had a son. He died.”
“Well now, I am indeed sorry, I’d have liked a grandson too. Don’t want the old Westcott stock to die out. Dear me, that is a pity.”
It was at this point that Peter was aware, although he could not have given any reasonable explanation of his certainty, that his father had been perfectly assured beforehand of all the answers to these questions. Peter looked at the man, but the eyes were almost closed, and the smile that played about the weak lips — once so stern and strong — told one nothing.
It was dark now. Mr. Westcott got, somewhat unsteadily, to his feet.
“Come,” he said, “I’ll show you the house, my boy. Not changed much since you were here, I’m sure. Wanted a woman’s care since your dear mother died of course — and your poor old grandfather—”
He whispered over again to himself as he shuffled across the room— “your poor old grandfather—”
It had seemed to grow very suddenly dark. Outside in the hall, under the spluttering lamp, Mr. Westcott found a candle. The house was intensely silent.
As they climbed the stairs, lighted only by the flickering candle-light, Peter’s feelings were a curious mixture of uneasiness and a strange unthinking somnolence. Some part of him, somewhere, was urging him to an active unrest— “Norah ... what does she want interfering? I’ll just go and see her and come back.... No, I won’t, I’ll just stay here ... never to bother again ... never to bother again....”
He was also, in some undefined way, expecting that at any moment his father would change. The crimson dressing-gown swayed under the flickering candle-light. Let it turn round and what would one see inside it? His father never stopped talking for an instant — his thick wandering voice was the only sound in the deserted house.
The rooms were all empty. They smelt as though the windows had not been opened for years. It was in the little room that had once been his bedroom that the apples were stored — piles upon piles of them and most of them rotten. The smell was all over the house.
Mr. Westcott, standing with the apples on every side of him, flung monstrous shadows upon the wall— “This used to be your room. I remember I used to whip you here when you were disobedient. The only way to bring up your child. The Westcotts have always believed in it. Dear me, how long ago it all seems ... you can have this room again if you like. Any room in the house you please. We’ll be very good company for one another....”
All about Peter there was an atmosphere of extraordinary languor — just to sit here and let the days slip by, the years pass. Just to stay here with no one to hurt one, no need for courage....
They were out in the long passage. Mr. Westcott came and placed his hand upon Peter’s arm. The whole house was a great cool place where one slept. Mr. Westcott smiled into Peter’s face ... the house was silent and dark and oh! so restful. The candle swelled to an enormous size — the red dressing-gown seemed to enfold Peter.
In another moment he would have fallen asleep there where he stood. With the last struggle of a drowning man he pulled back his fading senses.
“I must go back to the hotel and fetch my things.” He could see his father’s eyes that had been wide open disappear.
“We can send for them.”
“No, I must go for them myself—”
For a moment they faced one another. He wondered what his father intended to do. Then — with a genial laugh, Mr. Westcott said: “Well, my boy, just as you please — just as you please. I know you’ll come back to your old father — I know you’ll come back—”
He blew the candle out and put his arm through his son’s and they went downstairs together.
CHAPTER III
NORAH MONOGUE
I
Peter found, next morning, Miss Monogue sitting by her window. She gave him at once the impression of something kept alive by a will-power so determined that Death himself could only stand aside and wait until it might waver.
She was so thin that sitting there in the clear white colours of the sky beyond her window she seemed like fine silk, something that, at an instant’s breath, would be swept like a shadow, into the air. She wore something loose and white and over her shoulders there was a grey shawl. Her grey hair was as untidy as of old, escaping from the order that it had been intended to keep and falling over her beautiful eyes, so that continually she moved her hand — so thin and white with its deep purple veins — to push it back. In this still white figure the eyes burnt with an amazing fire. What eyes they were!
One seemed, in the old days, to have denied them their proper splendour, but now in this swiftly fading body they had gathered more life and vigour, showing the soul that triumphed over so slender a mortality.
She seemed to Peter, as he came into the room, to stand for so much more than he had ever hitherto allowed her. Here, in her last furious struggle to keep a life that had given to her nothing worth having, he saw suddenly emblazoned about him, the part that she had played in his life, always from the first moment that he had known her — a part that had been, by him, so frequently neglected, so frequently denied.
As she turned and saw him he was ashamed at the joy that his coming so obviously brought her. He felt her purity, her unselfishness, her single-heartedness, her courage, her nobility in that triumphant welcome that she gave him. That she should care so much for any one so worthless, so fruitless as he had proved himself to be!
He had come to her with some dim sense that it was kind of him to visit her; he advanced to her now across the room with a consciousness that she was honouring him by receiving him at all.
That joy, with which she had at first greeted him, had in it also something of surprise. He had forgotten how greatly these last terrible days must have altered his appearance — he told much more than he knew, and the little sad attempt that he made, as he came to her, to present as careless and happy an appearance as he had presented in the old Brockett days was more pathetic and betraying than anything he could have done.
But she just closed both her burning hands about his cold one, made him sit down in a chair by her side and, trembling with the excited joy of having him with her, forced him to determine that, whatever came of it, he would keep his troubles from her, would let her know nothing of his old chuckling father and the shadowy welcome that Scaw House had flung over him, would be still the Peter that he had been when he had seen her last in London.
“Peter! How splendid to have you here! When Mr. Bannister told me last night I could have cried for happiness, and he, dear little man, was surely as pleased to see me happy as though I’d been his own sister.”
“I’d just come down—” Peter began, trying to smile and conscious with an alarm that surprised him, of her fragility and the way that her hand went now and again to her breast, as though to relieve some pain there. “Are you sure—” he broke off, “that I’m not doing you harm coming like this — not agitating you too much, not exciting you?”
“Harm! Why, Peter,” she was smiling but he noticed too that her eyes were searching his face, as though to find some clue to the change that they saw there— “Why it’s all the good in the world. It’s what I’ve been wanting all this time. Some change, a little excitement, for I’ve been here, you know, quite a number of weeks alone — and that it should be you �
�� you! of all people in this lovely exciting surprising world.”
“How did it happen?” he asked, “your coming down?”
“After I saw you last — I was very bad. My stupid old heart.... And the doctor said that I must get away, to the sea or somewhere. Then — what do you think? — the dears, all of them in Brockett’s put their heads together and got me quite a lot of money.... Oh! the darlings, and they just as poor as church mice themselves. Of course I couldn’t insult them by not taking it. They’d have been hurt for ever — so I just pocketed my pride and came down here.”
“Why Treliss?” asked Peter.
“Well, hadn’t you so often talked about it? Always, I’d connected you with it in my mind and thought that one day I’d come down and see it. I suggested it to the doctor — he said it was the very place. I used to hope that one day you’d be with me here to explain it, but I never expected it... not so soon... not like this.”
Her voice faltered a little and her hand held his more tightly.
They were silent. The sounds of the world came, muffled, up to their window, but they were only conscious of one another.
Peter knew that, in another instant, he would tell her everything. He had always told her everything — that is what she had been there for, some one, like an elder sister, to whom he might go and confess.
At last it came. Very softly she asked him:
“Peter, what’s the matter? Why are you here? What’s happened?”
Staring before him out of the window, seeing nothing but the high white light of the upper sky, his heart, as it seemed to him, lying in his hands like a stone to be tossed lightly out there into space, he told her:
“Everything’s happened. Clare has run off with my best friend.... It has just happened like that. I don’t blame her, she liked him better — but I — didn’t know — it was going... to happen.”
He didn’t look at her, but he heard her catch her breath sharply and he felt her hand tighten on his. They were silent for a long time and he was dimly aware in some unanalysed way that this was what she had expected ever since he had come into the room.
“Oh!” she said at last, holding his hand very tightly, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
He had seen, of course, from the beginning that this business must be told her, but his one desire was to hurry through it, to get it done and banished, once and for all, from their conversation.
“It happened,” he went on gruffly, “quite suddenly. I wasn’t in any way prepared for it. She just went off to Paris, after leaving a letter. With the death of the boy and the failure of my book — it just seemed the last blow — the end.”
“The end — at thirty?” she said softly, almost to herself, “surely, no — with the pluck that you’ve got — and the health. What are you going to do — about it all?”
“To do?” he smiled bitterly. “Do you suppose that I will ask her to come back to me? Do you suppose that I want her back? No, that’s all done with. All that life’s finished.” Then he added slowly, not looking at her as he spoke— “I’m going to live with my father.”
He remembered, clearly enough, that he had told her many things about his early life at Scaw House. He knew that she must now, as he flung that piece of information at her, have recalled to herself all those things that he had told her. He felt rather than perceived, the agitation that seized her at those last words of his. Her hand slowly withdrew from his, it fell back on to her lap and he felt her whole body draw, as it were, into itself, as though it had come into contact with some terror, some unexplained alarm.
But she only said:
“And what will you do at home, Peter?”
He answered her with a kind of bravado— “Oh, write, I suppose. I went up to see the old man yesterday. Changed enormously since the old days. I found him quite genial, seemed very anxious that I should come. I expect he’s a bit lonely.”
She did not answer this and there was a long awkward pause. He knew, as they sat there, in troubled silence that his conscience was awake. It had seemed to be so quiescent through his visit yesterday; it had been drugged and dimmed all these last restless days. But now it was up again. He was conscious that it was not, after all, going to be so easy a thing to abandon all his energies, his militancies, the dominant vigorous panoply of his soul. He knew as he sat there, that this sick shadow of a woman would not let him go like that.
He said good-bye to her for the moment, but, as he left the room he knew that Scaw House would not see him again until he had done everything for her that there was to be done.
II
That evening he saw the doctor who attended on her. He was a nice young fellow, intelligent, eager, with a very real individual liking for his patient. “Ah! she’s splendid — brave and plucky beyond anything I’ve ever seen; so full of fun that you’d think that she’d an idea that another three weeks would see her as well as ever again — whereas she knows as well as I do that another three weeks may easily see her out of the world altogether!”
“There’s no hope then?” asked Peter.
“None whatever. There’s every kind of complication. She must have always had something the matter with her, and if she’d been cared for and nursed when she was younger she might have pulled out of it. Instead of that she’s always worn herself to a thread — you can see that. She isn’t one of those who take life easily. She ought to have gone before this, but she holds on with her pluck and her love of it all.... Lord! when one thinks of the millions of people who just ‘slug’ through life — not valuing it, doing nothing with it — one grudges the waste of their hours when a woman like Miss Monogue could have done so much with them.”
“Am I doing her any harm, going in to see her?”
“No — doing her good. Don’t excite her too much — otherwise the company’s the best thing in the world for her.”
The days then, were to be dedicated to her service. He knew, of course, that at the end of it — and the end could not be far distant — he would go to Scaw House and remain there; meanwhile the thing was postponed. He would not think about it.
But on his second meeting with Norah Monogue he saw that he was not to be allowed to dismiss it. He found her sitting still by her window; she was flushed now with a little colour, her eyes burning with a more determined fire than ever, her whole body expressing a dauntless energy.
The sight of her showed him that there was to be battle and, strangely enough, he found that there was something in himself that almost welcomed it. Before he knew where he was he found that he was “out” to defend his whole life.
The first thing that she did was to draw from him a minute, particular account of all that had happened during these last months. It developed into a defence of his whole married life, as though he had been pleading before a jury of Clare’s friends and must fight to prove himself no blackguard.
“Ah! don’t I know that I’ve made a mess of it all? Do you think that I’m proud of myself?” he pleaded with her. “Honestly I cannot see where, as far as Clare is concerned, I’m to blame. She didn’t understand — how could she ever have understood? — the way that my work mattered to me. I wanted to keep it and I wanted to keep her too, and every time I tried to keep her it got in the way and every time I tried to keep it she got in the way. I wasn’t clever enough to run both together.”
Norah nodded her head.
“But there was more than that. Life has always been rough for me. Rough from the beginning when my father used to whip me, rough at school, rough when I starved in London, roughest of all when young Stephen died. I’d wanted to make something out of it and I suppose the easiest way seemed to me to make it romantic. This place, you know, was always in my bones. That Tower down in the Market Place, old Tan’s curiosity shop, the sea — these were the things that kept me going. Afterwards in London it was the same. Things were hard so I made them into a story — I coloured them up. Nothing hurt when everything was romance. I made Clare romance too — t
hat was the way, you see, that all my life was bound up so closely together. She was an adventure just as everything else had been. And she didn’t like it. She couldn’t understand the Adventure point of view. It was, to her, immoral, indecent. I went easily along and then, one day, all the romance went out of it — clean — like a pricked bubble. When young Stephen died I suddenly saw that life was real — naked — ugly, not romantic a bit. Then it all fell to pieces like a house of cards. It’s easy enough to be brave when you’re attacking a cardboard castle — it’s when you’re up against iron that your courage is wanted. It failed me. I’ve funked it. I’m going to run away.”
He could see that Norah Monogue’s whole life was in the vigour with which she opposed him —
“No, no, no. To give it up now. Why, you’re only thirty — everything’s in front of you. Listen. I know you took Clare crookedly, I saw it in the beginning. In the first place you loved her, but you loved her wrong. You’ve been a boy, Peter, all the time, and you’ve always loved like a boy. Don’t you know that there’s nothing drives a woman who loves a man more to desperation than that that man should give her a boy’s love? She’d rather he hated her. Clare could have been dealt with. To begin with she loved you — all the time. Oh! yes, I’m as certain of it as I can be of anything. I know her so well. But the unhappiness, the discomfort — all the things, the ugly things, that her mother was emphasising to her all the time — frightened her. Knowing nothing about life she just felt that things as they were were as bad as things could be. It seems extraordinary that any one so timid as she should dare to take so dangerous a plunge as running off to another man.
“But it was just because she knew so little about Life that she could do it. This other man persuaded her that he could give her the peace and comfort that you couldn’t. She doesn’t know — poor thing, poor thing — what it will mean, that plunge. So, out of very terror, she took it. And now — Oh! Peter, I’m as certain as though I could see her, she’s already longing for you — would give anything to get back to you. This has taught her more than all the rest of her life put together. She was difficult — selfish, frightened at any trouble, supersensitive — but a man would have understood her. You wanted affection, Peter — from her, from me, from a lot of people — but it was always because of the things that it was going to bring to you, never because of the things that you were going to give out. You’d never grown up — never. And now, when suddenly the real world has come to you, you’re going to give it up.”