Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  CHAPTER VI. SUNDAY

  On no day of the year — spring, summer, autumn, or winter, did any inhabitant of Garth House rise before Rebekah. Grimly complete, starch and stiff and taciturn, she would be about the dim house, feeling nothing of the cold blackness of a winter morning, finding apparently no pleasure in the beauty of a summer dawn. Her business was with the House — human beings (yes, Trenchards as well as the rest) she despised — for Houses she could feel reverence ... they were stronger than she.

  Upon the Sunday morning that followed the “Feast” at Rafiel, very early indeed, she was moving about the passages. Looking out on to the lawn and bushes, wet with mist, she knew that it would be a bad day.... Weather mattered to her nothing: people (although the Trenchards might think otherwise) mattered to her nothing. Her business was with the House....

  That Sunday began badly for Aunt Aggie — and, therefore, for everyone else. Before she woke — in the dusty labyrinth of her half-waking dreams — she knew that her tooth was aching. In her dreams this tooth was of an enormous size, holding, although it was in form and figure a veritable tooth, a huge hammer that it brought down, with a regular beat, upon Aunt Aggie’s jaw. She screamed, struggled, fought, awoke — to find that the tooth had receded to its proper place and size, was still faintly beating, but not aching — only threatening. This threat was, in its way, more terrible than a savage ache. When would the ache begin? Ah, here it was!... no, only the throb.... Would hot or cold food irritate it? Would the wind?... She got out of bed and drew her blind. Her clock told her that the hour was seven. Why had Annie not called her? Annie had overslept herself — what was it to Annie if Aunt Aggie were late for Early Service? But it must be something to Annie. Annie must be warned. Annie ... Aunt Aggie was conscious that she had a headache, that the weather was abominable, and that crossing through the wood to the church would certainly start the tooth. But she was resolved. Very grimly, her mouth tightly closed, her heart beating because she was expecting that, at every moment, that tooth.... Aunt Aggie had her bath, dressed, informed Annie, who came, very greatly agitated, at half-past seven, that this would not be the last she heard of it, walked off to church. During the singing of the collection hymn her tooth leapt upon her.... It came to her like some malign and secret enemy, who would influence her not so deeply through actual pain as through his insistence on what, please God, he would do afterwards. She hurried home to breakfast through the wet, grey morning, saying to herself: “It shall not ache! I forbid it to ache! You hear me! You shall not!” and always that sinister whisper replied in her ear: “Wait. Just see what I’ll do to you in a moment.”

  In her bedroom some iodine, which she applied to her gum, reduced the inside of her mouth to sawdust; through the dried discomfort of it all her enemy still beat at her heart ironically.

  She was determined that the tooth should not alter her day. She knew how easily ordinary human beings succumbed — such weakness should not be hers. Nevertheless her love of honesty compelled her to admit that, this morning, the house looked horrible. It had, as she had often told Harriet, been always overcrowded with ‘things’ — with mats and jars and pots and photographs, old books, magazines, ink-bottles, china ornaments, stones and shells, religious emblems, old calendars, and again photographs, photographs, photographs.... It was not that the house was definitely untidy, but that once a thing was there, there it remained. The place looked like home, because it was filled with properties that any newcomer would instantly discard. Everything was dim and faded — carpets, curtains, books, pictures; Katherine, Millie, Henry could remember how the water-colour of “Rafiel Beach,” the photograph of Trezent Head, the dining-room marble clock, surmounted by the Goddess Diana minus her right leg, the book-case in the drawing-room, with rows and rows of the novels of Anthony Trollope (each in three volumes), the cuckoo clock in the dark corner on the first landing, the glass case with sea shells in the hall near the hat-rack, the long row of faded Trenchard and Faunder photographs in the drawing-room, the little corner cupboard with the Sunday games in it — Bible Lotto, puzzle map of Palestine, Bible Questions and Bible Answers — all these things had been “first there” since the beginning of time, even as the oak on the lawn, the rough grass meadows that ran to the very posts of the house, the little wood and the tennis lawn with the brown hole in the middle of it had always been ‘there.’ Aunt Aggie herself had grown profoundly accustomed to it all — in her heart she would not have had a shell nor a photograph removed from its place. Nevertheless, upon this grey Sunday morning she was oppressed, almost triumphantly, about her sense of the dinginess and confusion of the house. It was as though she said to herself: “There! it’s not my tooth at all that makes me feel out of sorts with things. It’s simply Harriet’s inability to put things straight.” She found then that everyone was very quiet at breakfast— ‘sulky’ one could be justified in calling it. Moreover, there were ‘sausages again!’ Harriet knew perfectly well that Aggie hated sausages — nevertheless she persisted, with the devotion of a blind slave to an august ritual, in having, always, sausages for Sunday breakfast. Aggie was, in spite of her tooth, hungry this morning, but when, with an unconscious self-consciousness, during a silence, she said: “No sausage for me, thanks. You know, Betty, that I never care for them.” No one said: “Have an egg, Aggie: it can be boiled in a moment.”

  Only Harriet, with her attention obviously elsewhere, remarked carelessly: “We can have the ham in, Aggie, if you like” — to which Aggie could only reply: “You know I dislike cold ham, Harriet.”

  But, indeed, Sunday breakfast was never a very jolly meal — how could it be? The hour was throbbing with a consciousness of the impending difficulties and problems of the day. There was Church, there was Sunday School, there were callers in the afternoon: there were meals, the very heavy midday meal with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, tea with a great deal of stiff conversation, something in the manner of Ollendorff, supper, when the chill on the food typified the exhausted spirits of the tired company. During too many years had Henry, Millie, Katherine, and still more Aggie, Betty and Mrs. Trenchard worn Sunday clothes, eaten Sunday meals, suffered Sunday restraint, known Sunday exhaustion for it to be possible for any of them to regard Sunday in a normal, easy fashion. Very right and proper that they should so regard it. I would only observe that if there is to be a thorough explosion of Trenchard, of Faunder tempers — if there is to be, in any kind of way, a “family scene” Sunday will be, almost certainly, the background selected for it. Aunt Aggie, looking around her, on this morning, at her assembled friends and relations, ‘thought them all very sulky indeed. Wrapped up entirely in their own selfish thoughts’.... The day began badly.

  Half an hour before church Rachel Seddon and Uncle Tim were alone together in the drawing-room. She was standing, prepared and waiting, staring through the windows at the wild meadow that seemed now soaked with moisture, bent before the dripping wind. She was thinking very deeply. She did not at first hear Uncle Tim, and when, turning suddenly, she saw him, she thought how exactly he suited the day. By his appearance he instantly justified the atrocious weather: he was wearing a rough grey suit and a low flannel collar: his heard and hair glistened, as though the damp had soaked through them, he carried a muddy trowel in his hand. He came hurriedly into the room, as though he were searching for something. Then when he saw Rachel he stopped, put the trowel down on one of the drawing-room chairs, smiled at her, and came across to her. She had never known him very well, but she had always liked him — his genial aloofness, the sense that he always gave of absolute independence, cheerful but never dogmatic, pleased her. Now she was troubled, and felt that he could help her.

  “What’s the matter with Katie?” she said, abruptly, looking at him with sharp but deeply honest eyes.

  He felt in his tumbled pockets for his pipe and tobacco, then slowly said:

  “I was just off for worms — I wanted Henry, but I suppose he’s going to church.... Katie?... Why?” />
  “I don’t know why. I want to know. It’s been these last few days — ever since — ever since — Saturday, Friday, Thursday — the day at Rafiel. She’s unhappy.”

  “The lovers have had a quarrel.”

  “If it were only that!... no, that’s not Katie, and you know it isn’t. Philip’s done something — told her something—”

  “Ah, you think that because you dislike him.”

  “I don’t know that I do — now. I certainly did at first, but now — here ... I don’t know. He’s so much younger than I’d expected, and he is really trying his best to suit himself to the family and the place. I’m sorry for him. I rather like him after all. But what is the matter with everyone? Why is the house so uncomfortable? Why can’t it all be just smooth and easy? Of course we all hated Katie being engaged at first — I suppose we thought that she might have done better. But now everyone ought to be used to it: instead of being used to it, it’s positively ‘nervy’ the atmosphere.”

  “It’s simply,” said Uncle Tim, pressing down his tobacco into his pipe, “the attack by a Young Man with Imagination upon a family without any. The Young Man’s weak of course — people with imagination always are — he’s weak and impatient, and insists upon everything being perfect. All the family wants is to be let alone — but it will never be let alone again. The break-up is beginning.”

  “The break-up?” said Rachel.

  “It’s like this. If Harriet catches me smoking here in the morning there’ll be a row.” He picked up the trowel and waved it. “Nearly the whole of our class in England has, ever since the beginning of last century, been happily asleep. It isn’t good for people to have a woman on the throne for sixty years — bless her all the same, and her making a success of it. So we’ve slept and slept and slept. The Old Lady died. There was the Boer War: there were motorcars, flying machines, telephones. Suddenly England was an island no longer. She’s got to pay attention to other people, other ideas, other customs. She’s got to look out of her window instead of just snoozing on the sofa, surrounded by her mid-Victorian furniture. Everything’s cracking: new classes are coming up, old classes are going down. Birth is nothing: autocracies are anachronisms.... A volcano’s coming. Everything will be blown sky-high. Then the folk who are left will build a new city — as bad, as stupid, as selfish as the old one, perhaps — but different ... as different as Garth from China and China from Paradise.”

  “And Katherine and Philip?” said Rachel.

  “Oh, young Mark’s just one of the advance-guard. He’s smashing up the Trenchards with his hammer — the same way that all the families like us up and down England are being smashed up. If it isn’t a young man from abroad, it’s a letter or a book or a telephone number or a photograph or a suicide or a Lyceum melodrama. It doesn’t matter what it is. The good old backbone of England has got spine disease. When your good grandmother died your lot went; now our lot is going.... When I say going I mean changing.”

  “There was a funny little man,” said Rachel, “whom Uncle John used to know. I forget his name, but he talked in the same way when grandmother died, and prophesied all kinds of things. The world hasn’t seemed very different since then, but grandmother was an impossible survival, and her lot went, all of them, long before she did. All the same, if you’ll forgive me, I don’t think that England and possible volcanoes are the point for the moment. It’s Katie I’m thinking about. If she’s unhappy now what will she be after she’s married to him? — If Katie were to make an unhappy marriage, I think it would be the greatest sorrow of my life. I know ... I’ve known ... how easily things can go wrong.”

  “Ah, things won’t go wrong.” Uncle Tim smiled confidently. “Young Mark’s a good fellow. He’ll make Katherine happy all right. But she’ll have to change, and changing hurts. She’s been asleep like the others.... Oh, yes! she has! There’s no one loves her better than I, but she’s had, in the past, as much imagination as that trowel there. Perhaps now Philip will give her some. She’ll lose him if she doesn’t wake up. He’s restive now under the heavy hands of my dear relations — He’ll be gone one fine morning if they don’t take care. Katie must look out....” He waved his trowel in the direction of the garden. “All this is like a narcotic. It’s so safe and easy and ordered. Philip knows he oughtn’t to be comfortable here. Katie, Millie and Henry are beginning to know it. Even Harriet, Aggie, Betty, George will get a tiny glimmering of it one day. But they’re too old to change. That’s their tragedy. All the same, you see, before this time next year George will be proposing to take Harriet for a trip abroad — Italy probably — a thing he’s never done since the day of his marriage.”

  And at that very moment George entered, very smart and big and red, with yellow gloves and a flower in his button-hole.

  “What’s that?” he cried, with his usual roar of laughter. “Who says I’ll do what?”

  “Take Harriet abroad before this time next year,” said Tim.

  “I?... Not much!... We know better than that. England’s good enough for us. There isn’t a spot in the world to touch this place in the summer — so why should we stir? You’ll be saying we ought to go to Russia next, ... smoking your beastly pipe in here too. Why don’t you dress decently and go to church?”

  A Church Invasion followed. The Invasion rustled and listened to the bell that called across the garden. ‘Com-ing?... Com-ing?... Com-ing?’... Then ‘Come! Come! Come!’ and said: “Where’s Katie?... It isn’t Litany to-day, so there’ll be time before lunch. Where’s Henry?... We’d better start, the bell’s stopping. Just hold my prayer-book a minute, Millie dear, whilst I do this....”

  Finally the Invasion called: “Katie! Katie! Katherine!... We’re going!” and a voice, very far away answered:

  “Yes.... I’ll catch you up! Go on!”

  The Invasion left, followed by Uncle Tim, smiling to himself, the trowel in his hand. The house was very still then, relapsing with a little sigh of content into its Sunday quiet: a bird was chattering gently to itself in the wet garden.

  Katherine hurried into the drawing-room, her cheeks flushed, buttoning her gloves, her prayer-book under her arm. Her black dress, a little open at the front, had a stiff black lace collar at the back, Elizabethan fashion; now, for the first time in her life, she was wearing something that she had herself thought about and planned. It was for Philip....

  She looked about the empty drawing-room, then hurried away through the little wood. How unlike her to be late! She was always the first of the party. But to-day she had been dreaming in her bedroom, sitting, with her hands in her lap, looking out of the window, wondering, longing to know ... No, she was not jealous. Her curiosity had no tinge of jealousy in it. Why should she be jealous? Was not the thing over, closed? Had not the woman herself dismissed him? That strange figure in that strange country! The wild town, as he had described it, like a village with towers and towers, gold and green and blue, and the carts with painted roofs and the strange writing on the shop-walls ... and the woman standing there, in the middle of it. This woman, who had known Philip better than Katherine knew him, whom Philip had madly loved, who had borne Philip a son. She was still living there, loving, now, perhaps someone else, looking back perhaps with some scorn and some pity and some affection to the days when Philip had kissed her, to the hour when their son had died, to that first meeting in the strange country house, where everyone might come and go as they pleased. No, there was no jealousy; but Katherine wanted to have her there, standing in front of her, so that she might study her clothes, her hair, her eyes. Here was a woman whom Philip had madly loved — and he had ceased to love her. Well, he might also cease to love Katherine. But that other woman had dismissed him. Fancy dismissing him! When one had shared with him such experiences how could one ever let him go?... Ah, what, what was she like? Was her voice soft or harsh? How did she look when Philip made love to her? When Philip made love to her.... Yes, there was pain in that.

  Katherine hurried under the l
ow porch of the church. She could hear the voice: ‘Wherefore I pray and beseech you, as many as are here present, to accompany me with a pure heart....’

  As the congregation knelt she slipped into a seat at the back of the church. She had always loved the shabby, ugly little place. It had, for one thing, nothing to boast about — had no fine carvings like the Rafiel Church, no splendid tombs like the two Dunstan St. Firths at Poloynt, no wonderful glass like the Porthcullin memorial window at Borhaze; frankly ugly, white-washed, with thin narrow grey glass in the side-walls and a hideous purple Transfiguration above the altar, with plain, ugly seats, a terrible modern lectern, a shabby nondescript pulpit, a font like an expensive white sweet, and the most shining and vulgar brass tablet commemorating the Garth heroes of the Boer War.

  No other church could ever mean so much to Katherine as this, her shabby friend. She was glad that it was no show place for inquisitive tourists to come tramping over with haughty eyes and scornful boasts. It was her own ... she loved it because strangers would always say: “How hideous!” because she could remember it on wonderful summer evenings when through the open doors the congregation could hear the tinkling sheep-bells and smell the pinks from the Rectory garden, on wild nights when the sea gales howled round its warm, happy security, on Christmases, on Easters, on Harvest Festivals: she loved it on the evenings when, with its lights covering its plainness, the Garth villagers would shout their souls away over “Onward, Christian soldiers” or “For all the Saints” or would sink into sentimental tenderness over “Abide with me” and “Saviour, again to Thy dear name”; she loved it because here she had been sad and happy, frightened and secure, proud and humble, victorious and defeated ... as this morning she sank on her knees, burying her face in her hands, she felt at first as though her Friend had found her, had encircled her with His arm, had drawn her into safety....