Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  Katherine laughed. “That’s Blotch End,” she said. “One turn and we’re at the bottom.” The carriage wheeled round, crossed a brown bridge and had started down the road to Rafiel.... On one side of the road was a stream that, hurrying down from the valley, hastened past them to the sea; on the other side of them a wooded hill, with trees like sentinels against the sky — then the village street began, ugly at first, as are the streets of so many Glebeshire villages, the straight, uniform houses, with their grey slate roofs, now and then hideous-coloured glass over the doorways, and, ugliest of all, the Methodist chapel with ‘1870’ in white stone over the door. But even with such a street as this Rafiel could do something: the valley stream, hidden sometimes by houses, revealed itself suddenly in chuckling, leaping vistas. Before the houses there were little gardens, thick now with daffodils and primroses and hyacinths: through the deep mouth of the forge fires flamed, and a sudden curve of the street brought a bridge, a view of the harbour and a vision of little houses rising, tier on tier, against the rock, as though desperately they were climbing to avoid some flood. This contrast of the wild place itself, with the ugly patches of civilisation that had presented themselves first, was like the voice of the place chuckling at its visitors’ surprise.

  First the row of villas, the tailor’s shop with a pattern picture in the window, the sweet shop, the ironmonger’s — now this sudden huddle of twisted buildings, wildly climbing to the very sky, a high, rugged peak guarding the little bay, two streams tossing themselves madly over the harbour ridges, the boats of the fleet rocking as though dancing to some mysterious measure, a flurry of gulls, grey and white, flashing, wheeling, like waves and foam against the sky, the screaming of the birds, the distant thud of the sea ... this was Rafiel.

  They left the carriage and turned to go back to the schools, where the tea had already begun. Katherine slipped her arm into Philip’s: he knew that she was waiting for him to speak about the place, and he knew, too, that she was not expecting his praise as confidently as she would have expected it three weeks ago. A little of her great trust in him was shadowed by her surprise that he had not surrendered to Glebeshire more completely. Now he could tell her that it was to the Trenchards and not to Glebeshire that he had refused to surrender.

  She could not tell, of course, that all his attention now was fixed on his determination to tell her everything as soon as he was alone. Walking with him up the road was that secret figure who attends us all — the fine, cherished personality whom we know ourselves to be.

  To Philip, more than many others, was the preservation of that secret personality essential. He was, this afternoon, determined to live up to the full height of it.

  In the schools, at two long tables, the whole village was feeding: the room was steaming with heat: huge urns at the ends of the tables were pouring out tea with a fierce, scornful indifference, as though they would show what they could do but despised their company. The fishermen, farmers, their wives and families, shining with soap, perspiration and excitement, sat, packed so tightly together that eating seemed an impossibility: there were plates of bread and butter, saffron buns, seed-cake piled up and running over: there were the ladies of the village, who said: “Now, Mr. Trefusis, do try another,” or “Mary’s rather tired, I think, Mrs. Maxwell. Shall I lift her down?” or “Well, Mrs. Pascoe, out and about again, I see,” or “How’s the new cottage, Henry? Better than the old one, I expect.”

  From the other side of the world came: “Aw, thank ‘ee, Ma’am — not so bad, thank ‘ee. Up to Glossen’s Farm they ‘ad it praper wild, so they tell me”— “Yes ... true enough. All over spots ‘er arms was, poor worm”— “Didn’t worry we, thank ‘ee, Miss. Marnin’ or evenin’ all the same to we ... Ah, yes, poor Mr. Izards— ’e did suffer terrible, poor dear....”

  Philip perceived with a sense of irritated isolation how instantly and how easily the other members of his party were swallowed up by the Ceremony. He himself was introduced to a prim young woman in a blue hat, who flung remarks to him over a tea-tray and seemed to regard his well-cut clothes with contempt. The fishermen did not look happy in their stiff Sunday clothes, but he liked their faces. They reminded him more of Russian peasants than any people whom he had seen since his landing in England. No, he must not think about that ... Russia was banished for ever.

  Uncle Timothy, Millie, even Lady Seddon were warmly welcomed, but Katherine was adored. He understood, perhaps for the first time, what that place must mean to her. They called her ‘Miss Kathie’, they shouted to her across the room, they cracked jokes with her; an old man, with a long white beard like a prophet, stood up and put his hand on her shoulder as he talked to her. Once she broke away from them and came to him.

  “Phil, I want you to come and be introduced to a great friend of mine,” she said.

  He followed her, feeling that all eyes watched him, with criticism and even with hostility. A large, immensely broad man, in a navy blue suit, with a red, laughing face, hair cut very close to his head, and eyes of the honestest, stood up as they came across. He looked at Katherine with the devotion and confidence of a faithful dog.

  “This is Mr. Richard Curtis,” Katherine said. “He used to pick up shells for me when I was three. He has a boat here with his brother. He’s always in good spirits, aren’t you, Dick, even when you scald your arm with boiling water?”

  This was an allusion to some confidence between them, and as their eyes met, Philip felt a pang of ridiculous jealousy. The man’s face was flaming, and his eyes were more devoted than ever. He held out a large, horny hand to Philip. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I’m proud to shake ‘ands with the man wot Miss Katherine is goin’ to marry. We thought, once on a time, p’raps as she’d always be ’ere, along with we, but wot we want most is fer ‘er to be ‘appy — and that we knows now she will be. I ‘ope you’ll be often down — along, sir, in time to come — that is, sir, if you’re not goin’ to take ‘er right away from us.”

  “Why, of course not, Dick,” said Katherine. “When we’re married we’re going to live quite close. You’ve only got to find us a house.”

  Philip knew that he should say something pleasant; he could think of nothing; he muttered a few words and then turned away, confused, irritated, embarrassed. What had happened to him? He was always so pleasant with everyone, especially with strangers; now, at every turn, he seemed compelled by someone stronger than he to show his worst side. “Oh, if I can only get Katherine out of all this,” he thought passionately, “even for a little time. Then I’ll come back another man. To have her to myself. Everything’s coming between us. Everything’s coming between us....”

  At last he had his desire. They had left the others. She had led him, out past the row of white cottages, to a rock on the side of the hill, high over the sea, with the harbour below them, the village, curved like a moon in the hills’ hollow, behind the harbour, and a little cluster of trees at the hill top striking the blue night sky: opposite them was the Peak rock, black and jagged, lying out into the water like a dragon couchant. They could see the plateau above the Peak where the bonfire was to be, they could see the fish-market silver grey in the evening light, and the harbour like a green square handkerchief with the boats painted upon it. The houses, like an amphitheatre of spectators, watched and waited, their lights turning from pale yellow to flame as the evening colours faded; crying, singing, laughing voices came up to their rock, but they were utterly, finally remote. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and they sat there in silence.

  At last, half-dreamily, gazing forward into the sea that, stirred by no wind, heaved ever and again, with some sigh, some tremor born of its own happiness, she talked. “You can see the bonfire and the figures moving around it. Soon the moon will be right above the Peak.... Isn’t everything quiet? I never knew last year how different this one would be from any that I had ever known before.” She turned half towards him, caught his hand and held it. “Phil, you must be very patient with m
e. I’ve felt so much that you were part of me that I’ve expected you to see things always as I do. Of course that was ridiculous of me. You can’t love this place quite as I do — it must take time.... You aren’t angry with me, are you?”

  “Angry?” he laughed.

  “Because the closer I get to you — the longer we’re engaged, the less, in some ways, I seem to know you. I never realised until you came how shut up as a family we’ve been, how wrapt up in ourselves. That must be hard for you to understand....”

  “There it goes!” he broke in suddenly.

  The bonfire leapt into fire: instantly the village glowed with flame, a golden pool burnt beneath the Peak, the houses that had been blue-grey in the dusk now reflected a rosy glow, and whirling, dancing sparks flew up to join the stars. Little black figures were dancing round the blaze; down on the fish-market other figures were moving, and the faint echo of a fiddle and a horn was carried across the water.

  Something said to Philip, ‘Tell her — now.’

  He plunged with the same tightening of the heart that he would have known had he sprung from their rock into the pools of the sea below them. He put his arm more tightly around her, and there was a desperate clutch in the pressure of his fingers, as though he were afraid lest she should vanish and he be left with sky, land and sea flaming and leaping beneath the fire’s blaze.

  “Katie, I’ve something I must tell you,” he said. He felt her body move under his arm, but she only said, very quietly: “Yes, Phil?” Then in the little fragment of silence that followed she said, very cosily and securely: “So long as it isn’t to tell me that you don’t love me any more, I don’t mind what it is?”

  “No — it isn’t that. It’s something I should have told you, I suppose, long ago. I would have told you, only it was all so over and done with for me that I couldn’t imagine its mattering to anyone. I told your father that there was no complication in my life, and that’s true — there is none. There’s nothing I have nor think nor do that isn’t yours.”

  She said very quietly: “You were in love with someone before you knew me?”

  He was surprised and immensely reassured by the quietness and tranquillity of her voice.

  “That’s it — That’s it,” he said, eagerly, his heart bounding with relief and happiness. “Look here, Katie. I must tell you everything — everything, so that there can’t be anything between us any more that you don’t know. You see, when I went to Russia first I was very young — very young for my age too. Russia isn’t much of a place when you don’t know the language and the weather’s bad — and I’d gone expecting too much. I’d heard so much about Russia’s hospitality and kindness, but I was with English people at first, and most of them were tired to death of Russia, and only saw its worst side and didn’t paint it very cheerfully. Then the Russians I did meet had to struggle along in bad French or English (it’s all rot about Russians being great linguists), and if a Russian isn’t spontaneous he isn’t anything at all. Then when I did go to their houses their meals simply killed me. They make one eat such a lot and drink such a lot and sit up all night — I simply couldn’t stand it. So at first I was awfully lonely and unhappy — awfully unhappy.”

  She sighed in sympathy and pressed closer to him.

  “I’m not the sort of man,” Philip went on, “to stand being lonely. It’s bad for me. Some men like it. It simply kills me. But after about six months or more I knew a little Russian, and I got to know one or two Russians individually. There’s one thing I can tell you — that until you know a Russian personally, so that he feels that he’s got some kind of personal part in you, you simply don’t know him at all. It’s so easy to generalise about Russians. Wait until you’ve made a friend.... I made a friend, several friends. I began to be happier.”

  Katherine pressed his hand. The bonfire was towering steadily now in a great golden pillar of smoke and flame to heaven. The music of the fiddle and the horn, as though they were its voice, trembled dimly in the air: all the stars were shining, and a full moon, brittle like glass, flung a broad silver road of light across the black Peak and the sea. There was no breeze, but the scent of the flowers from the gardens on the rocks mingled with the strong briny odour of the sea-pinks that covered the ground at their feet.

  “The spring came all in a moment, like a new scene at the play. I was introduced to some theatre people, who had a house in the country near Moscow. You’ve no idea of the slackness and ease of a Russian country house. People just come and go — the doors are all open, meals are always going on — there’s always a samovar, and sweets in little glass dishes, and cold fish and meat and little hot pies. In the evening there was dancing, and afterwards the men would just sleep about anywhere. I met a girl there, the first Russian woman who had attracted me. Her name was Anna Mihailovna, and she was a dancer in the Moscow Ballet.”

  He paused, but Katherine said nothing nor did she move.

  “She attracted me because she had never known an Englishman before, and I was exactly what she had always thought an Englishman would be. That pleased me then — I wanted, I even felt it my duty, to be the typical Englishman. It wasn’t that she admired the typical Englishman altogether: she laughed at me a great deal, she laughed at my having everything so cut and dried, at my dogmatising so easily, at my disliking Russian unpunctuality and lack of method.

  “She thought me rather ridiculous, I fancy, but she felt motherly to me, and that’s what most Russian women feel to most men. I was just beginning to love Russia then. I was beginning to dream of its wonderful secrets, secrets that no one ever discovers, secrets the pursuit of which make life one long, restless search. Anna fascinated me — she let me do always as I pleased. She seemed to me freedom itself: I fell madly in love with her.”

  Katherine’s hand gave then a sudden leap in his; he felt the ends of her fingers pressing against his palm. Some of his confidence had left him: some of his confidence not only in himself but in his assurance of the remoteness of his story and the actors in it. He felt as though some hand were dragging him back into scenes that he had abandoned, situations that had been dead. The fire and the sea were veiled, and his eyes, against their will, were fastened upon other visions.

  “That year was a very wonderful one for me. We took a flat together, and life seemed to be realised quite completely for me. This, I thought, was what I had always desired ... and I grew slack and fat and lazy — outside my business — I always worked at that decently. Early in the next year we had a boy. Anna took him with the same happy indifference that she had taken me: she loved him, I know, but she was outside us all, speculating about impossibilities, then suddenly coming to earth and startling one with her reality. I loved her and I loved Moscow — although sometimes too I hated it — but we used also to have the most awful quarrels; I was angry with her, I remember, because I thought that she would never take me seriously, and she would laugh at me for wanting her to. I felt that Russia was doing me no good. Our boy died, quite suddenly, of pneumonia, and then I begged her to marry me and come and live in England. How she laughed at the idea! She didn’t want to be married to anyone. But she thought that perhaps England would be better for me. She did not seem to mind at all if I went. That piqued me, and I stayed on, trying to make myself essential to her. I did not care for her then so much as for my idea of myself, that she would break her heart if I went. But she knew that — how she would laugh as she looked at me.... She refused to take me seriously. Russia was doing me harm — I got slack, sleepy, indifferent. I longed for England. The chance came. Anna said that she was glad for me to go, and laughed as she said it. I took my chance.... I’ve told you everything,” he suddenly ended.

  He waited. The tune across the water went: ‘La-la-la, la, la-la-la-la, la, la.’ Many, many little black figures were turning on the fish-market. The blaze of the bonfire was low and its reflection in the sea smoking red.

  When he had finished Katherine had very gently drawn her hand away from his, the
n suddenly, with a little fierce gesture, pushed it back again.

  “What was your boy’s name?” she asked, very quietly.

  “Paul.”

  “Poor little boy. Did you care for him very much?”

  “Yes, terribly.”

  “It must have been dreadful his dying.”

  He felt then a sudden dismay and fear. Perhaps, after all she was going to dismiss him; he fancied that she was retreating from him — he felt already that she was farther away from him than she had ever been, and, with a desperate urgency, his voice trembling, his hand pressing her arm, he said:

  “Katie — Katie — You’re disgusted with me. I can feel it. But you must go on loving me — you must, you must. I don’t care for anything but that. All men have had affairs with women. It’s all dead with me, as though it had been another man. There’s no one in the world but you. I — I—”

  His hand shook; his eyes, if she could have seen them, were strained with terror.

  She turned to him, put her arms round his neck, drew his head towards her, kissed him on his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks.

  “Phil — Phil,” she whispered. “How little you understand. My dear — my dear.”

  Then raising her eyes away from him and staring again in front of her, she said:

  “But I want to know, Phil. I must know. What was she like?”

  “Like?” he repeated, puzzled.

  “Yes. Her appearance, her clothes, her hair, everything. I want to be able to see her — with my own eyes — as though she were here....”

  He stared at her for a moment — then, very slowly, almost reluctantly, he began his description....