by Hugh Walpole
It was indeed marvellous how isolated her life had been; she knew simply nothing about the world at all.
She could not pretend that she was sorry that her father had died; and yet she missed him because she knew very well that she was now no one’s business, that she was utterly and absolutely alone in the universe. It might be said that she could not be utterly alone when she had her Uncle Mathew, but, although she was ignorant of life, she knew her Uncle Mathew ... Nevertheless, he did something to remove the sharp alarm of her sudden isolation. Upon the day after her father’s death he was at his very best, his kindest, and most gentle. He was rather pathetic, having drunk nothing out of respect to the occasion; he felt, somewhere deep down in him, a persistent exaltation that his brother Charles was dead, but he knew that it was not decent to allow this feeling to conquer him and he was truly anxious to protect and comfort his niece so well as he was able. Early in the afternoon he suggested that they should go for a walk. Everything necessary had been done. An answer to their telegram had been received from his sister Anne that she could not leave London until that night but would arrive at Clinton St. Mary station at half-past nine to-morrow morning. That would be in good time for the funeral, a ceremony that was to be conducted by the Rev. Tom Trefusis, the sporting vicar of Cator Hill, the neighbouring parish.
The house now was empty and silent. They must escape from that figure, now decent, clean, and solemn, lying upon the bed upstairs. Mathew took his niece by the hand and said:
“My dear, a little fresh air is the thing for both of us. It will cheer you up.”
So they went out for a walk together. Maggie knew, with a deep and intimate experience, every lane and road within twenty miles’ radius of St. Dreot’s, There was the high-road that went through Gator Hill to Clinton and then to Polwint; here were the paths across the fields to Lucent, the lanes that led to the valley of the Lisp, all the paths like spiders’ webs through Rothin Wood, from whose curve you could see Polchester, grey and white, with its red-brown roofs and the spires of the Cathedral thrusting like pointing fingers into the heaven. It was the Polchester View that she chose to-day, but as they started through the deep lanes down the St. Dreot’s hill she was startled and disturbed by the strange aspect which everything wore to her. She had not as yet realised the great shock her father’s death had been; she was exhausted, spiritually and physically, in spite of the deep sleep of the night before. The form and shape of the world was a little strained and fantastic, the colours uncertain, now vivid, now vanishing, the familiar trees, hedges, clouds, screens, as it were, concealing some scene that was being played behind them. But beyond and above all other sensations she was conscious of her liberty. She struggled against this; she should be conscious, before everything, of her father’s loss. But she was not. It meant to her at present not so much the loss of a familiar figure as the sudden juggling, by an outside future, of all the regular incidents and scenes of her daily life, as at a pantomime one sees by a transformation of the scenery, the tables, the chairs, and pictures the walls dance to an unexpected jig. She was free, free, free — alone but free. What form her life would take she did not know, what troubles and sorrows in the future there might be she did not care — to-morrow her life would begin.
Although unsentimental she was tender-hearted and affectionate, but now, for many years, her life with her father had been a daily battle of ever-increasing anger and bitterness. It may be that once he had loved her; that had been in those days when she was not old enough to love him ... since she had known him he had loved only money. She would have loved him had he allowed her, and because he did not she bore him no grudge. She had always regarded her life, sterile and unprofitable as it was, with humour until now when, like a discarded dress, it had slipped behind her. She did not see it, even now, with bitterness; there was no bitterness for anything in her character.
As they walked Uncle Mathew was considering her for the first time. On the other occasions when he had stayed in his brother’s house he had been greatly occupied with his own plans — requests for money (invariably refused) schemes for making money, plots to frighten his brother out of one or other of his possessions. He had been frankly predatory, and that plain, quiet girl his niece had been pleasant company but no more. Now she was suddenly of the first importance. She would in all probability inherit a considerable sum. How much there might be in that black box under the bed one could not say, but surely you could not be so relentless a miser for so long a period without accumulating a very agreeable amount. Did the girl realise that she would, perhaps, be rich? Uncle Mathew licked his lips with his tongue. So quiet and self-possessed was she that you could not tell what she was thinking. Were she only pretty she might marry anybody. As it was, with that figure ... But she was a good girl. Uncle Mathew felt kind and tender-hearted towards her. He would advise her about life of which he had had a very considerable experience, and of which, of course, she knew nothing. His heart was warm, although it would have been warmer still had he been able to drink a glass of something before starting out.
“And what will you do now, my dear, do you think?” he asked.
They had left the deep lanes and struck across the hard-rutted fields. A thin powder of snow lay upon the land, and under the yellow light of the winter sky the surface was blue, shadowed with white patches where the snow had fallen more thickly. The trees and hedges were black and hard against the white horizon that was tightly stretched like the paper of a Japanese screen. The smell of burning wood was in the air, and once and again a rook slowly swung its wheel, cutting the air as it flew. The cold was so pleasantly sharp that it was the best possible thing for Uncle Mathew, who was accustomed to an atmosphere of hissing gas, unwashen glasses, and rinds of cheese.
Maggie did not answer his question but herself asked one.
“Uncle Mathew, do you believe in religion?”
“Religion, my dear?” answered her uncle, greatly startled at so unusual a question. “What sort of religion?”
“The kind of religion that father preached about every Sunday — the Christian religion.”
“To tell you the truth, my dear,” he answered confidentially, “I’ve never had much time to think about it. With some men, you see, it’s part of their lives, and with others — well, it isn’t. My lines never ran that way.”
“Was father very religious when he was young?”
“No, I can’t say that he was. But then we never got on, your father and I. Our lines didn’t run together at all. But I shouldn’t have called him a religious man.”
“Then all this time father has been lying?”
Her uncle gazed at her apprehensively. He did not wish to undermine her faith in her father on the very day after his death, but he was so ignorant about her, her thoughts and beliefs and desires, that he did not know what her idea of her father had been. His idea of him had always been that he was a dirty, miserly scoundrel, but that was not quite the thing for a daughter to feel, and there was an innocence and simplicity about Maggie that perplexed him.
“I can’t truly say that I ever knew what your father’s private feelings were. He never cared for me enough to tell me. He may have been very religious in his real thoughts. We never discussed such things.”
Maggie turned round upon him.
“I know. You’re pretending. You’ve said to yourself, ‘I mustn’t tell her what I think about her father the very day after his death, that isn’t a pleasant thing to do.’ We’ve all got to pretend that he was splendid. But he wasn’t — never. Who can know it better than I? Didn’t he worry mother until she died? Didn’t he lead me an awful life always, and aren’t I delighted now that he’s dead? It’s everything to me. I’ve longed for this day for years, and now we’ve got to pretend that we’re sorry and that it would be a good thing if he were alive. It wouldn’t be a good thing — it would be a bad thing for every one. He was a bad man and I hated him.”
Then, quite suddenly, she cried. Turning a
way from her uncle she folded her face in her arms like a small child and sobbed. Standing, looking at her bent shoulders, her square, ugly figure, her shabby old hat with its dingy black ribbon, pushed a little to the side of her head, Uncle Mathew thought that she was a most uncomprehensible girl. If she felt like that about her father why should she cry; and if she cried she must surely have some affection for his memory. All he could say was:
“There, there, my dear — Well, well. It’s all right.” He felt foolish and helpless.
She turned round at last, drying her eyes. “It’s such a shame,” she said, still sobbing, “that that’s what I shall feel about him. He’s all I had and that’s what I feel. But if you knew — if you knew — all the things he did.”
They walked on again, entering Rothin Wood. “He never tried to make me religious,” she went on. “He didn’t care what I felt. I sat in the choir, and I took a Sunday-school class, and I visited the villagers, but I, myself — what happened to me — he didn’t care. He never took any trouble about the church, he just gabbled the prayers and preached the same old sermons. People in the village said it was a scandal and that he ought to be turned out but no one ever did anything. They’ll clean everything up now. There’ll be a new clergyman. They’ll mend the holes in the kitchen floor and the ceiling of my bedroom. It will be all new and fresh.”
“And what will you do, Maggie?” said her uncle, trying to make his voice indifferent as though he had no personal interest in her plans.
“I haven’t thought yet,” she said.
“I’ve an idea,” he went on. “What do you say to your living with me? A nice little place somewhere in London. I’ve felt for a long time that I should settle down. Your father will have left you a little money — not much, perhaps, but just enough for us to manage comfortably. And there we’d be, as easy as anything. I can see us very happy together.”
But he did not as yet know his niece. She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I’m going to live with Aunt Anne and Aunt Elizabeth. We wouldn’t be happy, Uncle, you and I. Our house would always be in a mess and there are so many things that I must learn that only another woman could teach me. I never had a chance with father.”
He had entered upon this little walk with every intention of settling the whole affair before their return. He had had no idea of any opposition — her ignorance of the world would make her easy to adapt. But now when he saw that she had already considered the matter and was firmly resolved, his arguments deserted him.
“Just consider a moment,” he said.
“I think it will be best for me to live with the aunts,” she answered firmly. “They have wished it before. Of course then it was impossible but now it will do very well.”
He had one more attempt.
“You won’t be happy there, my dear, with all their religion and the rest of it — and two old maids. You’ll see no life at all.”
“That depends upon myself,” she answered, “and as to their religion at least they believe in it.”
“Yes, your Aunt Anne is a very sincere woman,” Uncle Mathew answered grimly.
He was angry and helpless. She seemed suddenly some one with whom it was impossible to argue. He had intended to be pathetic, to paint delightful pictures of uncle and niece sheltering snugly together defended by their affection against a cold and hostile London. His own eyes had filled with tears as he thought of it. What a hard, cold-hearted girl she was! Nevertheless for the moment he abandoned the subject.
That she should go and live with her aunts was not for Maggie in any way a new idea. A number of years ago when she had been a little girl of thirteen or fourteen years of age her father had had a most violent quarrel with his sister Anne. Maggie had never known the exact cause of this although even at that period she suspected that it was in some way connected with money. She found afterwards that her father had considered that certain pieces of furniture bequeathed to the family by a defunct relation were his and not his sister’s. Miss Anne Cardinal, a lady of strong character, clung to her sofa, cabinet, and porcelain, bowls, and successfully maintained her right. The Reverend Charles forbade the further mention of her name by any member of his household. This quarrel was a grievous disappointment to Maggie who had often been promised that when she should be a good girl she should go and stay with her aunts in London. She had invented for herself a strange fascinating picture of the dark, mysterious London house, with London like a magic cauldron bubbling beyond it. There was moreover the further strangeness of her aunt’s religion. Her father in his anger had spoken about “their wicked blasphemy,” “their insolence in the eyes of God,” “their blindness and ignorant conceit.” Maggie had discovered, on a later day, from her uncle that her aunts belonged to a sect known as the Kingscote Brethren and that the main feature of their creed was that they expected the second coming of the Lord God upon earth at no very distant date.
“Will it really happen, Uncle Mathew?” she asked in an awe-struck voice when she first heard this.
“It’s all bunkum if you ask me,” said her uncle. “And it’s had a hardening effect on your aunts who were kind women once, but they’re completely in the hands of the blackguard who runs their chapel, poor innocents. I’d wring his neck if I caught him.”
All this was very fascinating to Maggie who was of a practical mind with regard to the facts immediately before her but had beyond them a lively imagination. Her life had been so lonely, spent for the most part so far from children of her own age, that she had no test of reality. She did not see any reason why the Lord God should not come again and she saw every reason why her aunts should condemn her uncle. That London house swam now in a light struck partly from the wisdom and omniscience of her aunts, partly from God’s threatened descent upon them.
Aunt Anne’s name was no longer mentioned in St. Dreot’s but Maggie did not forget, and at every new tyranny from her father she thought to herself— “Well, there is London. I shall be there one day.”
As they walked Maggie looked at her uncle. What was he really? He should be a gentleman and yet he didn’t look like one. She remembered things that he had at different times said to her.
“Why, look at myself!” he had on earlier days, half-maudlin from “his drop at the ‘Bull and Bush,’” exclaimed to Maggie, “I can’t call myself a success! I’m a rotten failure if you want to know, and I had most things in my favour to start with, went to Cambridge, had a good opening as a barrister. But it wasn’t quick enough for me. I was restless and wanted to jump the moon — now look at me! Same with your father, only he’s put all his imagination into money — same as your aunts have put theirs into religion. We’re not like ordinary people, us Cardinals.”
“And have I got a lot of imagination too?” Maggie had asked on one occasion.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” her uncle had answered her. “You don’t look to me like a Cardinal at all — much too quiet. But you may have it somewhere. Look out for a bad time if you have.”
Today Maggie’s abrupt checking of his projects had made him sulky and he talked but little. “Damn it all!” he had started out with the most charming intentions towards the girl and now look at her! Was it natural conduct in the day after she had lost her only protector? No, it was not. Had she been pretty he might have, even now, forgiven her, but today she looked especially plain with her pale face and shabby black dress and her obstinate mouth and chin. He was uneasy, too, about the imminent arrival of his sister Anne, who always frightened him and made him think poorly of the world in general. No hope of getting any money out of her, nor would Charles have left him a penny. It was a rotten, unsympathetic world, and Uncle Mathew cursed God as he strutted sulkily along. Maggie also had fallen into silence.
They came at last out of the wood and stood at the edge of it, with the pine trees behind them, looking down over Polchester. On this winter’s afternoon Polchester with the thin covering of snow upon its roofs sparkled like a city under glas
s. The Cathedral was dim in the mist of the early dusk and the sun, setting behind the hill, with its last rays caught the windows so that they blazed through the haze like smoking fires. Whilst Maggie and her uncle stood there the bells began to ring for Evensong, and the sound like a faint echo seemed to come from behind them out of the wood. In the spring all the Polchester orchards would be white and pink with blossom, in the summer the river that encircled the city wall would run like a blue scarf between its green sloping hills — now there was frost and snow and mist with the fires smouldering at its heart. She gazed at it now as she had never gazed at it before. She was going into it now. Her life was beginning at last. When the sun had left the windows and the walls were grey she turned back into the wood and led the way silently towards home.
The house that night was very strange with her father dead in it. She sat, because she thought it her duty, in his bedroom. He lay on his bed, with his beard carefully combed and brushed now, spread out upon the sheet. His closed eyes and mouth gave him a grave and reverend appearance which he had never worn in his life. He lay there, under the flickering candle-light, like some saint who at length, after a life of severe discipline, had entered into the joy of his Lord. Beneath the bed was the big black box.