Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  “Well, Christopher?” said Brun. “Hot, isn’t it?”

  “My word — yes. Breton’s coming along presently.”

  “Good. I’ve asked Arkwright the explorer. Nice fellow.” They sat in silence for a little. Then Brun said:

  “Interested in writers, Christopher?”

  “Not very much. Why?”

  “Just been lunching with a young novelist, Westcott. What he said interested me. Of course, he’s very young, got no humour, takes himself dreadfully seriously, but he asked my advice — and it is as a sign of the times over here that I mention it.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “He tells me that a number of young novelists are going to band themselves into a kind of Artists’ Young Liberty movement — artists, poets, novelists, some thirty altogether — going to have a magazine, do all kinds of things. Some of the older men will scoff. At the same time — —”

  “Well?” said Christopher.

  “They’d asked him to join. He wanted my opinion.”

  “What did you say?”

  “He interested me — he was a kind of test case. It would mean that, commercially, from the popular point of view, it would put him back for years. Those young men will all be put down as conceited cranks. They will tilt at the successful popular men like Lawson and the others, will worship at the feet of the unsuccessful ‘Great’ men like Lester and Cotton. The papers will hate ’em, the public will be indifferent. The result will be that, in the end, they may do a big thing — at any rate they’ll have done a fine thing, but they’ll all die on the way, I expect.”

  Brun spoke with enthusiasm unusual for him.

  “How was this a test of Westcott?” asked Christopher.

  “Well — would he go or no? He’s at the kind of parting of the ways. I believe success is coming to him, if he wants it; but he’ll have to build another wall in front of his Tiger either before the success or after. If he joins this crowd of men, there’ll be no walls for him ever again.”

  Christopher knew that when Brun had some idea that he was pleasantly pursuing and had secured an audience nothing would stay or hinder him.

  He pushed a chair towards him.

  “What do you mean by your Tiger?” he asked.

  “My Tiger is what every man has within him — I don’t mean, you know, a nasty habit or a degrading passion or anything of necessity vicious — only my theory is that every man is given at the outset of life a Beast in the finest, noblest sense with whom through life he has got to settle. It may be an Ambition, or a Passion, or a Temptation, or a Virtue, what you will, but with that Beast he’s got to live. Now it’s according to his dealings with the Beast that the man’s great or no. If he faces the Beast — and the Beast is generally something that a man knows about himself that nobody else knows — the Beast can be used, magnificently used. If he’s afraid, pretends the Tiger isn’t there, builds up walls, hides in cities, does what you will, then he must be prepared for a life of incessant alarm, and he may be sure that at some moment or another the Tiger will make his spring — then there’ll be a crisis!

  “Over here in England you’re hiding your Tigers all the time. That’s why you’re muddled — about Art, Literature, Government, everything that matters — and an old woman like the Duchess of Wrexe — sharp enough herself, mind you — uses all of you.

  “No Beaminster has ever faced his or her Tiger yet, and they’re down, like knives, on everyone who does and everything that shows the Tiger’s bright eyes ——

  “But I see — oh, Lord! I see — a time coming, yes, here in England, when the Individual, the great man, is coming through, when the Duchess will be dead and the Beaminster driven from power and every man with his Tiger there in front of him, faced and trained, will have his chance —

  “More brain, more courage, no muddle — God help the day!”

  “You see things moving — everywhere?”

  “Everywhere. These fellows, Randall and the rest, are bringing their Tigers with ’em. They’re going to put them there for all the world to see. It’s only another party out against the Duchess, she wants all the Tigers hidden — only herself to know about them — then she can do her work. She’ll hate these fellows until they’ve made their stand and then she’ll try to adopt them in order to muzzle them the better in the end.

  “If Westcott hides his Tiger, forgets he’s there, his way’s plain enough. He’ll make money, the Duchess will ask him to tea. Let him join these fellows and his Tiger may tear all his present self to pieces.”

  “What about yourself, Brun?”

  “Oh, I’m nothing! I’m the one great exception. No Tiger thinks me worth while. I merely observe, I don’t feel — and you have to feel to keep your Tiger alive.”

  Brun’s little lecture was over. He suddenly drew his body together, clapped his mental hands to dismiss the whole thing and was drawing Westcott to the door.

  “But I talk — how I talk! You bear with me, Christopher, because I must go on, you know. It means nothing — absolutely nothing. But they will have arrived now, so down we go. I go on in my sleep, exactly the same. And now tea — and I will talk less because Breton talks a great deal and so does Arkwright, and so do you....”

  II

  Arkwright came, and after a little, Breton. But the meeting was not a success. Arkwright had heard a good deal about Breton’s reputation, and although, on the whole, he was tolerant of any backsliding in women, he made what he called his liking for “clean men” an excuse for much narrow-mindedness.

  It is quite a mistake to suppose that living in solitude and danger makes a human being tolerant. It has the precisely opposite effect. Arkwright was more frightened of a man who was not “quite right with society” than of any number of enraged natives. With natives one knew where one was. Whereas with a man like this ...

  Breton, anxious to please, made the mistake of showing his anxiety. Seeing an enemy round every corner he was a little theatrical, too demonstrative, too foreign. Arkwright disliked his beard and the movement of his hands. “He wouldn’t have come, had he known....”

  Breton had, of course, at once perceived this man’s hostility. Returning to England had involved, as he had known that it must, a life of battles, skirmishes, retreats, wounds, and every kind of hostility. People did not forget and even had they desired to do so, his relationship family history prevented Breton’s oblivion.

  He was ready for discourtesy, however eager he may have been for friendship. But what the Devil, he thought, is this fellow doing here at all? If Brun brought him in he must have told him just whom he was to meet, and if he came with that knowledge about him, why then should he not behave like a gentleman? Breton’s half timid advance towards friendliness now yielded to curt hostility.

  Brun maintained his silence and only watched the two men with an amusement just concealed. Conversation at last ceased and the heat beat, in waves, through the open windows and the air seemed now to be stiffened into bronze. Beyond the room all the city lay waiting for the cool of the evening.

  Christopher liked Arkwright and Arkwright liked Christopher.

  Christopher had read one of Arkwright’s books and spoke of it with praise and also intelligence, and nothing goes to an author’s heart like intelligent appreciation from an unbiassed critic. But Breton was not to be won over. He sat deep in his chair and replied in sulky monosyllables whenever he was addressed.

  Christopher soon gave him up and the three men talked amongst themselves.

  The heat of the afternoon passed and a little breeze danced into the room, and the hard brightness of the sky changed to a pale primrose that had still some echo of the blue in its faint colour.

  The city had uttered no sound through the heat of the day, but now voices came up to the windows: the distant crying of papers, the call of some man with flowers, then the bells of the Round Church began to ring for evensong.

  Breton sat there, wrapped in sulky discontent. In his heart he was wretched. Ch
ristopher had deserted him; these men would have nothing to do with him. As was his nature everything about him was exaggerated. He had come to Brun’s rooms that afternoon, feeling that men had taken him back to their citizenship again. Now he was more urgently assured of his ostracism than before. Who were these men to give themselves these airs? Because he had made one slip were they to constitute themselves his judges? These Beaminster virtues again — the trail of his family at every step, that same damnable hypocrisy, that same priggish assumption of the right to judge. Better to die in the society of those friends of his who had suffered as he had done, from the judgment of the world — no scorn of sinners there, no failure in all sense of true proportion.

  Christopher got up to go. He gave Arkwright his card. “Come in and dine one night and tell me all you’re doing — —”

  “Of course I’ll come,” Arkwright said. “Only you’re much too busy — —”

  “Indeed no,” said Christopher. “One day next week you’ll hear from me — —”

  Breton got up. “I’ll come with you,” he said to Christopher.

  The two men went away together.

  When they were gone Arkwright said to Brun, “Now that’s the kind of man I like — —”

  “Yes,” said Brun, laughing. “Better than the other fellow, eh?”

  Arkwright smiled. “More my sort, I must confess.”

  III

  Christopher and Breton did not speak until they reached Oxford Circus. Here everything, flower-women, omnibuses, grey buildings, grimy men and women — was drowned in purple shadow. It might be only a moment’s beauty, but now beneath the evening star, frosted silver and alone in a blue heaven, sound advanced and receded with the quiet rhythm of water over sand. For an instant a black figure of an omnibus stood against the blue and held all the swell, the glow, the stir at a fixed point — then life was once more distributed.

  Here, as they turned down Oxford Street Christopher broke silence. He put his arm through Breton’s:

  “Well, Frank? Sulks not over yet?”

  Breton broke away. “It’s all very well, but I suppose I’m to pretend that I like being insulted by any kind of fool who happens to turn up. Good God, Chris, you’d think I was a child by the way you talk to me.”

  “And so you are a child,” said Christopher impatiently, “and a thankless child too. Sometimes I wonder why I keep on bothering with you.”

  Christopher was, like other Scotchmen, a curious mixture of amiability and irascibility; his temper came from his pride and Breton had learnt, many years ago, to fear it. In fact, of all the things in life that he disliked doing, quarrelling with Christopher was the most agreeable. Then there were stubbornness and tenacity that were hard indeed to deal with. But to-day he was reckless; the heat of the afternoon and now the beauty of the evening had both, in their different ways, contributed to his ill-temper. He knew, even now, that afterwards he would regret every word that he uttered, but he let his temper go.

  “I wonder that you do bother,” he said. “Let me alone and let me find my own way.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Christopher answered. “There’s nothing in the world for us to quarrel about, only I can’t bear to see you giving such a wrong impression of yourself to strangers — sulking there as though you were five years old — —”

  “All very well,” retorted Breton; “you didn’t hear the way that fellow insulted me. I’ll wring his neck if I meet him again. I’ll — —”

  “Now, enough of that!” Christopher’s voice was stern. “You know quite well, Frank, that you’re hardly in a position to wring anyone’s neck. You remember the account I gave you of my little dispute with your grandmother — —”

  “Thank you,” said Breton fiercely. “You remind me rather frequently of the kind things you do for me.”

  And all the time something in him was whispering to him, “What a fool you are to talk like this!”

  Christopher’s voice now was cold: “That’s hardly fair of you. I’m turning up here — —” They paused. Breton looked away from him up into the quiet blue recesses of the side street. Christopher went on: “I only mean that if I were you I should drop hanging on to the skirts of a family who don’t want you. I should set about and get some work to do, cut all those rotten people you go about with, and behave decently to strangers when you meet them. That’s all. Good night.”

  And Christopher was gone.

  Breton stood there, for a moment, with the tide of his misery full upon him. Then he turned down Oxford Street and drove his way through the crowds of people who were coming up towards the Circus. He was alone, utterly alone in all the world. Everyone else had a home to go to, he alone had nowhere.

  Only a few weeks ago he had come back to England, with money enough to keep him alive and a fine burning passion of revenge. That family of his should lament the day of his birth, that old woman should be down on her knees, begging his mercy. Now how cold and wasted was that revenge! What a fool was he wincing at the ill-manners of a stranger, quarrelling with the best friend man ever had.

  How evilly could Life desert a man and kill him with loneliness.

  And then his mood changed; if Christopher and the rest intended to cast him off, let them. There were his old friends — men and women who had been ostracized by the world as he had been — they would know how to treat him.

  He turned into the silence and peace of Saxton Square and there met Miss Rand, who was also walking home. The statue was wrapped in blue mist, the trees were fading into grey and the evening star seemed to have taken Saxton Square under its special protection.

  “Good evening, Miss Rand.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Breton.”

  “Isn’t it a lovely evening?”

  “Yes. But hasn’t it been hot?”

  Miss Rand did not look as though she could ever, under any possible circumstances, be hot, so neat and cool was she, but she said yes it had been.

  “Isn’t it odd the way that as soon as it’s fine people begin to complain just as they do when it’s wet?”

  “It gives them something to talk about — just as it’s giving us something now,” said Miss Rand, laughing.

  Breton looked at her and liked her. She seemed so strong and wise and safe. She would surely always give one the kind of sensible encouragement that one needed. She would be a good person in whom to confide.

  They were on the top doorstep now.

  “No. I’ve got a key.” He let her pass him.

  They stood for a moment in the hall together.

  He spoke, as he always did, on the instant’s inspiration:

  “Miss Rand?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m alone such a lot — in my evenings I mean. I wonder — might I come down sometimes and just talk a little? You don’t know how bad thinking too much is for me, and if I might — —”

  “Why, of course, Mr. Breton — whenever you like.”

  Seeing her now, he thought, just now, with her sudden colour she looked quite pretty.

  “I expect you could advise me — help me in lots of ways — —”

  “If there’s anything mother or I can do, Mr. Breton, you’ve only got to ask — Good night — —”

  The door closed behind her.

  He went up to his room, a less miserable man.

  CHAPTER IX

  THE GOLDEN CAGE

  “She gives away because she overflows. She has her own feelings, her own standards; she doesn’t keep remembering that she must be proud.” — The Lesson of the Master.

  I

  Those weeks were, to Rachel, a golden time. She did not pretend to deny or examine their golden quality — they were far, far better than she had imagined anything could ever be, and that was enough. She had never, very definitely, imagined to herself this “coming out,” but it had been, at any rate, behind its possible glories, a period of terror. “All those people” was the way that, with frightened eyes, she had contemplated it.


  And now the kindness that there had been! All the London world had surely nothing to do but to pay her compliments, to surround her with courtesies, to flatter her every wish. Even Aunt Adela had under the general enthusiasm, blossomed a little into good-will, even Uncle Richard had remembered to wish her well, even the Duke had cracked applause, and as for Uncle John! ... he was like an amiable conjurer whose best (and also most difficult) trick had achieved an absolute triumph.

  And behind all this there was more. May, June and the early part of July showered such weather upon London as had surely never been showered before, and these brilliant days dressed, for Rachel, her brilliant success in cloth of gold and emblazoned robes. She felt the presence of London for the first time, as the hot weather came beating up the streets and the brilliant whites and blues and greens and reds flung back to the burning blue their contrast and splendour.

  She felt, for the first time, her own especial London, and now the grey cool cluster of buildings at one end of blazing Portland Place and the dark green of the hovering park at the other end had a new meaning for her, as though she had only just come to live here and was seeing it all for the first time. In the streets that hung about Portland Place she noticed little shops — little bakers and little shoemakers and little tailors and little sweetshops — and they were all furtive and dark and shabby.

  And these little shops led to the growth in her mind of an especial picture of her square of London life, Portland Place white and shining in the middle, with the Circus like a fair at one end of it, the park like a mystery at the other end of it, and, on either side, little secret shops and little dim squares hanging about it, and Harley Street sinister and ominous by its side.

  Every element of Life and Death was there, the whole History of Man’s Journey Through This World to the Next.

  Behind all the joy and overflowing happiness of these weeks this sudden setting of London about her was consciously present.

  II

  Since that meeting with Miss Rand on the day before the ball Rachel had often spoken to her. They met at first by accident and then Rachel had gone to Lizzie’s neat little sitting-room to ask for something and, after that, had looked in for five minutes or so, and they had talked very pleasantly about the hot weather and the theatres and the ways of the world.