Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  “Come on, Henry, my boy, time to begin,” said his father.

  Henry, because he was the youngest, stepped forward, his present in his hand. His parcel was very ill-tied and the paper was creased and badly folded. He was greatly ashamed as he laid it upon the table. Blushing, he made his little speech, his lips together, speaking like an awkward schoolboy. “We’re all very glad, Grandfather, that we’re all — most of us — here to — to congratulate you on your birthday. We hope that you’re enjoying your birthday and that — that there’ll be lots more for you to enjoy.”

  “Bravo, Henry,” came from the back of the room. Henry stepped back still blushing. Then Grandfather Trenchard, with trembling hands, slowly undid the parcel and revealed a purple leather blotting-book with silver edges.

  “Thank you, my boy — very good of you. Thank you.”

  Then came Katherine. Katherine was neither very tall nor very short, neither fat nor thin. She had some of the grave placidity of her mother and, in her eyes and mouth, some of the humour of her father. She moved quietly and easily, very self-possessed; she bore herself as though she had many more important things to think about than anything that concerned herself. Her hair and her eyes were dark brown, and now as she went with her present, her smile was as quiet and unself-conscious as everything else about her.

  “Dear Grandfather,” she said, “I wish you many, many happy returns—” and then she stepped back. Her present was an old gold snuff-box.

  “Thank you, my dear,” he said. “Very charming. Thank you, my dear.”

  Then came Aunt Aggie, her eyes nervous and a little resentful as though she had been treated rather hardly but was making the best of difficult circumstances. “I’m afraid you won’t like this, Father,” she said. “I felt that you wouldn’t when I got it. But I did my best. It’s a silly thing to give you, I’m afraid.”

  She watched as the old man, very slowly, undid the parcel. She had given him a china ink-stand. It had been as though she had said: “Anything more foolish than to give an old man who ought to be thinking about the grave a china ink-stand I can’t imagine.”

  Perhaps her father had felt something of this in her voice — he answered her a little sharply ——

  “Thank ‘ye — my dear Aggie — Thank ‘ye.”

  Very different Aunt Betty. She came forward like a cheerful and happy sparrow, her head just on one side as though she wished to perceive the complete effect of everything that was going on.

  “My present is handkerchiefs, Father. I worked the initials myself. I hope you will like them,” and then she bent forward and took his hand in hers and held it for a moment. As he looked across at her, a little wave of colour crept up behind the white mask of his cheek. “Dear Betty — my dear. Thank ‘ye — Thank ‘ye.”

  Then followed Mrs. Trenchard, moving like some fragment of the old house that contained her, a fragment anxious to testify its allegiance to the head of the family — but anxious — as one must always remember with Mrs. Trenchard — with no very agitated anxiety. Her slow smile, her solid square figure that should have been fat but was only broad, her calm soft eyes — cow’s eyes — from these characteristics many years of child-bearing and the company of a dreamy husband had not torn her.

  Would something ever tear her?... Yes, there was something.

  In her slow soft voice she said: “Father dear, many happy returns of the day — many happy returns. This is a silk muffler. I hope you’ll like it, Father dear. It’s a muffler.”

  They surveyed one another calmly across the shining table. Mrs. Trenchard was a Faunder, but the Faunders were kin by breeding and tradition to the Trenchards — the same green pastures, the same rich, packed counties, the same mild skies and flowering Springs had seen the development of their convictions about the world and their place in it.

  The Faunders.... The Trenchards ... it is as though you said Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Mrs. Trenchard looked at her father-in-law and smiled, then moved away.

  Then came the men. Uncle Tim had a case of silver brushes to present and he mumbled something in his beard about them. George Trenchard had some old glass, he flung back his head and laughed, gripped his father by the hand, shouted something down Aunt Sarah’s trumpet. Aunt Sarah herself had given, at an earlier hour, her offering because she was so deaf and her brother’s voice so feeble that on earlier occasions, her presentation, protracted and embarrassing, had affected the whole evening. She sat there now, like an ancient Boadicea, looking down grimly upon the presents, as though they were so many spoils won by a raid.

  It was time for the old man to make a Speech: It was— “Thank ‘ye, Thank ‘ye — very good of you all — very. It’s pleasant, all of us together — very pleasant. I never felt better in my life and I hope you’re all the same.... Thank ‘ye, my dears. Thank ‘ye.”

  The Ceremony was thus concluded; instantly they were all standing about, laughing, talking, soon they would be all in the hall and then they would separate, George and Timothy and Bob to talk, perhaps, until early hours in the morning.... Here is old Rocket to wheel grandfather’s chair along to his bedroom.

  “Well, Father, here’s Rocket come for you.”

  “All right, my dear, I’m ready....”

  But Rocket had not come for his master. Rocket, perplexity, dismay, upon his countenance, was plainly at a loss, and for Rocket to be at a loss!

  “Hullo, Rocket, what is it?”

  “There’s a gentleman, sir — apologises profoundly for the lateness of the hour — wouldn’t disturb you but the fog — his card....”

  VI

  Until he passes away to join the glorious company of Trenchards who await him, will young Henry Trenchard remember everything that then occurred — exactly he will remember it and to its tiniest detail. It was past ten o’clock and never in the memory of anyone present had the Ceremony before been invaded.... Astonishing impertinence on the part of someone! Astonishing bravery also did he only realise it!

  “It’s the fog, you know,” said Henry’s mother.

  “What’s the matter!” screamed Aunt Sarah.

  “Somebody lost in the fog.”

  “Somebody what?”

  “Lost in the Fog.”

  “In the what?”

  “In the Fog!”

  “Oh!... How did you say?”

  “Fog!”

  George Trenchard then returned, bringing with him a man. The man stood in the doorway, confused (as, indeed, it was only right for him to be), blushing, holding his bowler hat nervously in his hand, smiling that smile with which one seeks to propitiate strangers.

  “I say, of all things,” cried George Trenchard. “What do you think, all of you? Of all the coincidences! This is Mr. Mark. You know, mother dear (this to Mrs. Trenchard, who was waiting calmly for orders), son of Rodney Mark I’ve so often told you of.... Here’s his son, arrived in London yesterday after years’ abroad, out to-night, lost his way in the fog, stopped at first here to enquire, found it of all remarkable things ours where he was coming to call to-morrow!... Did you ever!”

  “I really must apologise—” began Mr. Mark, smiling at everyone.

  “Oh no! you mustn’t,” broke in George Trenchard— “Must he, mother? He’s got to stop the night. Of course he has. We’ve got as much room as you like. Here, let me introduce you.”

  Mr. Mark was led round. He was, most certainly, (as Aunt Betty remarked afterwards upstairs) very quiet and pleasant and easy about it all. He apologised again to Mrs. Trenchard, hadn’t meant to stop more than a moment, so struck by the coincidence, his father had always said first thing he must do in London....

  Rocket was summoned— “Mr. Mark will stop here to-night.” “Certainly — of course — anything in the world—”

  Grandfather was wheeled away, the ladies in the hall hoped that they would see Mr. Mark in the morning and Mr. Mark hoped that he would see them. Good-night — good-night....

  “Come along now,” cried George Trenchar
d, taking his guest’s arm. “Come along and have a smoke and a drink and tell us what you’ve been doing all these years!... Why the last time I saw you!...”

  Mrs. Trenchard, unmoved by this ripple upon the Trenchard waters, stopped for a moment before leaving the drawing-room and called Henry —

  “Henry dear. Is this your book?” She held up the volume with the yellow Mudie’s label.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “I hope it’s a nice book for you, dear.”

  “A very nice book, Mother.”

  “Well I’m sure you’re old enough to know for yourself now.”

  “Good-night, Mother.”

  “Good-night, dear.”

  Henry, with the book under his arm, went up to bed.

  CHAPTER II. THE WINTER AFTERNOON

  Extracts from a letter written by Philip Mark to Mr. Paul Alexis in Moscow: —

  “... because, beyond question, it was the oddest chance that I should come — straight out of the fog, into the very house that I wanted. That, mind you, was a week ago, and I’m still here. You’ve never seen a London fog. I defy you to imagine either the choking, stifling nastiness of it or the comfortable happy indifference of English people under it. I couldn’t have struck, if I’d tried for a year, anything more eloquent of the whole position — my position, I mean, and theirs and the probable result of our being up against one another....

  “This will be a long letter because, here I am quite unaccountably excited, unaccountably, I say, because it’s all as quiet as the grave — after midnight, an old clock ticking out there on the stairs. Landseer’s ‘Dignity and Impudence’ on the wall over my bed and that old faded wall-paper that you only see in the bedrooms of the upper middles in England, who have lived for centuries and centuries in the same old house. Much too excited to sleep, simply I suppose because all kinds of things are beginning to reassert themselves on me — things that haven’t stirred since I was eighteen, things that Anna and Moscow had so effectually laid to rest. All those years as a boy I had just this wall-paper, just this ticking-clock, just these faded volumes of ‘Ivanhoe,’ ‘Kenilworth’, ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and Lytton’s ‘Night and Morning’ that I see huddled together in the window. Ah, Paul, you’ve never known what all that means — the comfort, the safety, the muffled cosiness, the gradual decline of old familiar things from shabbiness to shabbiness, the candles, and pony-traps and apple-lofts and going to country dances in old, jolting cabs with the buttons hopping off your new white gloves as you go ... it’s all back on me to-night, it’s been crowding in upon me all the week — The Trenchards are bathed, soaked, saturated with it all — they ARE IT!... Now, I’ll tell you about them, as I’ve seen them so far.

  “Trenchard, himself, is fat, jolly, self-centred, writes about the Lake Poets and lives all the morning with Lamb, Hazlitt and De Quincey, all the afternoon with the world as seen by himself, and all the evening with himself as seen by the world. He’s selfish and happy, absent-minded and as far from all reality as any man could possibly be. He likes me, I think, because I understand his sense of humour, the surest key to the heart of a selfish man. About Mrs. Trenchard I’m not nearly so sure. I’ve been too long out of England to understand her all in a minute. You’d say right off that she’s stupider than any one you’d ever met, and then afterwards you’d be less and less certain.... Tremendously full of family (she was a Faunder), muddled, with no power over words at all so that she can never say what she means, outwardly of an extremely amiable simplicity, inwardly, I am sure, as obstinate as a limpet ... not a shadow of humour. Heaven only knows what she’s thinking about really. She never lets you see. I don’t think she likes me.

  “There are only two children at home, Henry and Katherine. Henry’s at ‘the awkward age’. Gauche, shy, sentimental, rude, frightfully excitable from the public school conviction that he must never show excitement about anything, full of theories, enthusiasms, judgments which he casts aside, one after the other, as fast as he can get rid of them — at the very crisis of his development — might be splendid or no good at all, according as things happen to him. He’s interested in me but isn’t sure of me.

  “Then there’s Katherine. Katherine is the clue to the house — know Katherine and you know the family. But then Katherine is not easy to know. She is more friendly than any of them — and she is farther away. Very quiet with all the calm security of someone who knows that there are many important things to be done and that you will never be allowed, however insistent you may be, to interfere with those things. The family depends entirely upon her and she lives for the family. Nor is she so limited as that might seem to make her. She keeps, I am sure, a great many things down lest they should interfere, but they are all there — those things. Meanwhile she is cheerful, friendly, busy, very, very quiet — and distant — miles. Does she like me? I don’t know. She listens to all that I have to say. She has imagination and humour. And sometimes when I think that I have impressed her by what I have said I look up and catch a glimpse of her smiling eyes, as though she thought me, in spite of all my wisdom, the most awful fool. The family do more than depend upon her — they adore her. There is no kind of doubt — they adore her. She alone in all the world awakes her father’s selfish heart, stirs her mother’s sluggish imagination, reassures her brother’s terrified soul. They love her for the things that she does for them. They are all — save perhaps Henry — selfish in their affection. But then so are the rest of us, are we not? You, Paul, and I, at any rate....

  “And, all this time, I have said nothing to you about the guardians of the House’s honour. Already, they view me with intense suspicion. There are two of them, both very old. An aged, aged man, bitter and sharp and shining like a glass figure, and his sister, as aged as he. They are, both of them, deaf and the only things truly alive about them are their eyes. But with these they watch everything, and above all, they watch me. They distrust me, profoundly, their eyes never leave me. They allow me to make no advances to them. They cannot imagine why I have been admitted — they will, I am sure, take steps to turn me out very soon. It is as though I were a spy in a hostile country. And yet they all press me to stay — all of them. They seem to like to have me. What I have to tell them interests them and they are pleased, too, to be hospitable in a large and comfortable manner. Trenchard was deeply attached to my father and speaks of him to me with an emotion surprising in so selfish a man. They like me to stay and yet, Paul, with it all I tell you that I am strangely frightened. Of what? Of whom?... I have no idea. Isn’t it simply that the change from Russia and, perhaps, also Anna is so abrupt that it is startling? Anna and Miss Trenchard — there’s a contrast for you! And I’m at the mercy — you know, of anyone — you have always said it and it is so — most unhappily. Tell Anna from me that I am writing.

  “Because I couldn’t, of course, explain to her as I do to you the way that these old, dead, long-forgotten things are springing up again in me. She would never understand. But we were both agreed — she as strongly as I — that this was the right thing, the only thing.... You know that I would not hurt a fly if I could help it. No, tell her that I won’t write. I’ll keep to my word. Not a line from either of us until Time has made it safe, easy. And Stepan will be good to her. He’s the best fellow in the world, although so often I hated him. For his sake, as well as for all the other reasons, I will not write.... Meanwhile it is really true enough that I’m frightened for, perhaps, the first time in my life....”

  Suspicion was the key-note of young Henry Trenchard at this time. He was so unsure of himself that he must needs be unsure of everyone else. He was, of course, suspicious of Philip Mark. He was suspicious and he also admired him. On the day after Mark had sat up writing his letter ‘half the night because he was excited’, on the afternoon of that day they were sitting in the green dim drawing-room waiting for tea. Mark was opposite Henry, and Henry, back in the shadow, as he liked to sit, huddled up but with his long legs shooting out in front of him as tho
ugh they belonged to another body, watched him attentively, critically, inquisitively. Mark sat with a little pool of electric light about him and talked politely to Mrs. Trenchard, who, knitting a long red woollen affair that trailed like a serpent on to the green carpet, said now and then such things as:

  “It must be very different from England” or “I must say I should find that very unpleasant,” breaking in also to say: “Forgive me a moment. Henry, that bell did ring, didn’t it?” or “Just a little more on the fire, Henry, please. That big lump, please.” Then, turning patiently to Mark and saying: “I beg your pardon, Mr. Mark — you said?”

  Henry, having at this time a passion for neatness and orderly arrangements, admired Mark’s appearance. Mark was short, thick-set and very dark. A closely-clipped black moustache and black hair cut short made him look like an officer, Henry thought. His thick muscular legs proved him a rider, his mouth and ears were small, and over him from head to foot was the air of one who might have to be ‘off’ on a dangerous expedition at any moment and would moreover know exactly what to do, having been on many other dangerous expeditions before. Only his eyes disproved the man of action. They were dreamy, introspective, wavering eyes — eyes that were much younger than the rest of him and eyes too that might be emotional, sentimental, impetuous, foolish and careless.

  Henry, being very young, did not notice his eyes. Mark was thirty and looked it. His eyes were the eyes of a boy of twenty.... From Henry his dark neat clothes, his compact and resourceful air compelled envy and admiration — yes, and alarm. For Henry was, now, entirely and utterly concerned with himself, and every fresh incident, every new arrival was instantly set up before him so that he might see how he himself looked in the light of it. Never before, within Henry’s memory, had anyone not a relation, not even the friend of a relation, been admitted so intimately into the heart of the house, and it seemed to Henry that now already a new standard was being set up and that, perhaps, the family by the light of this dashing figure, who knew Russia like an open book and could be relied upon at the most dangerous crisis, might regard himself, Henry, as something more crudely shabby and incompetent than ever. Moreover he was not sure that Mark himself did not laugh at him....