Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  “We ‘ad a reelly thumpin’ meeting on Thursday — Town Hall — One for the women in the small ‘all hand one for the men in the Main Hall. Almost no opposition you might say, and when it came to the Hymn singing it fairly took the roof off. A lot of ’em stopped afterwards — one lad of eighteen or so is coming over to us ’ere. Butcher’s apprentice. Says ‘e’s felt the Lord pressing him a long way back but the flesh held him. Might work him up into a very useful lad with the Lord’s help. Thank you, Mrs. Warlock, I will try a bit more of that cold beef if you don’t mind. Pretty place, Putney. Ever been there, Mr. Warlock? Ah, you should go—”

  Amy Warlock listened with the greatest interest; otherwise, it must be confessed, Mr. Thurston’s audience was somewhat inattentive. Mr. Warlock’s mind was obviously elsewhere; he passed his hand through his beard, his eyes staring at the table-cloth. Mr. Thurston, noticing this, tried another topic.

  “What ‘ave you heard, Mrs. Warlock, about the new Miss Cardinal? I ‘aven’t seen her yet myself.”

  Mrs. Warlock, who had just given herself a little piece of beef, some potato and some spinach, and was arranging these delicacies with the greatest care upon her plate, just smiled without raising her eyes. Amy answered —

  “I’ve seen her. I was there this afternoon. I can’t say that I found her very interesting. Plain-ugly in fact. She never opened her mouth all the afternoon. Caroline Smith tells me that she knows nothing at all, seen nothing, been nowhere. Bad-tempered I should think.”

  “Dear, dear,” said Mr. Thurston with a gratified sigh, “is it so reelly?”

  Martin looked across at his sister indignantly. “Trust one woman about another,” he said. “Just because she doesn’t chatter like a magpie you concluded she’s got nothing to say. It’s even conceivable that she found you dull, Amy.”

  Amy looked at him with a strange penetrating glance that in some undefined way increased his irritation. “It’s quite possible,” she said quietly. “But I don’t think even you, Martin, can call her handsome. As to her intelligence, she never gave me a chance of judging.”

  “I’ve been there several times,” said Martin hotly. “I like her immensely.” He felt as soon as he had spoken that it had been a foolish thing to say. He saw Mr. Thurston smile. In the pause that followed he felt as though he had with a gesture of the hand flung a stone into a pool of chatter and scandal whose ripples might spread far beyond his control. At that moment he hated his sister.

  “I didn’t know you knew her so well, dear,” said his mother.

  “I don’t know her,” he said, “I’ve only seen her three times. But she ought to be given her chance. It can’t be much fun for her coming here where she knows no one — after her father suddenly dying. I believe she was all alone with him.”

  He had expected his father to defend her. He remembered that he had apparently liked her. But his father said nothing. There was an awkward and uncomfortable pause. After supper Mr. Thurston rubbed his hands, helped Amy Warlock into her cloak, said to the company in general:

  “Good night. Should be a very full meeting to-night ... Well, well ... Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Warlock, I’m sure.”

  The door was closed, Mrs. Warlock retired into her bedroom; the house was left to Martin and his father.

  Mr. Warlock’s room was hideous. It opened, somewhat ironically, out of Mrs. Warlock’s pink drawing-room. A huge and exceedingly ugly American roll-top desk took up much of the room. There were bookshelves into which books had been piled. Commentaries on the Bible, volumes of sermons, pamphlets, tattered copies of old religious magazines. A bare carpet displayed holes and rents. The fireplace was grim with dirty pieces of paper and untidy shavings. In the midst of this disorder there hung over the mantelpiece, against the faded grey wall-paper, a fine copy of Raphael’s “Transfiguration.” Mr. Warlock lighted a candle and the flame flickered with changing colours upon the picture’s surface. It had been given to John Warlock many years before by an old lady who heard him preach and had been, for a week, converted, but on his demand that she should give her wealth to the poor and fling aside her passion for Musical Comedy, left him with indignation. The picture had remained; it hung there now crooked on its cord.

  John Warlock was unconscious of the dust and disorder that surrounded him. His own passion for personal cleanliness sprang from the early days with his father, to whom bodily cleanliness had been part of a fanatical mysticism. Partly also by reason of that early training, sloth, drunkenness, immorality, had no power over him. And of the whole actual world that surrounded him he was very little conscious except that he hated towns and longed always for air and space.

  So that the windows were open one room was to him as another.

  He had often, during his work with the members of his community, been conscious of his ignorance of the impulses and powers that went up to make the ordinary sensual physical life of the normal man. His own troubles, trials, failures were so utterly of another kind that in this other world his imagination refused to aid him. This had often deeply distressed him and made him timid and shy in his dealings with men and women. It was this, more than anything else, that held him back from the ambition to proselytise. How could he go forth and challenge men’s souls when he could not understand nor feel their difficulties? More and more as his years advanced had he retired into himself, into his own mystical world of communion with a God who drew ever nearer and nearer to him. He humbled himself before men; he did not believe himself better than they because he had not yielded to their temptations; but he could not help them; his tongue was tied; he was a man cut off from his fellows and he knew it.

  He had never felt so impatient of his impotence as he did to-night. For ten years he had been waiting for this interview with his son, and now that it was come he was timid and afraid as though he had been opposed by a stranger. He had always known that Martin would return. It had been his one worldly ambition and prayer to have him at his side again. When he had thought and dreamt of the time that was coming, he had thought that it would be simple enough to win the boy back to the old allegiance and faith to which he had once been bound. Meanwhile the boy had grown into a man; here was a new Martin deep in experiences, desires, ambitions of which his father could have no perception. Even in the moment that he was aware of the possibility of losing his son he was aware also of the deep almost fanatical resolve to keep him, to hold him at all costs.

  This was to be the test of his whole earthly life. He seemed, as he sat there, looking across at his boy, to challenge God Himself to take him from him. It was as though he said:

  “This reward at least I have a right to ask. I demand it ...”

  Martin, on his side, was conscious of a profound discomfort. He had, increasingly as the years had passed, wished to take life easily and pleasantly. Suddenly now another world rose up before him. Yes, another world. He was not fool enough to dismiss it simply because it did not resemble his own. Moreover it had been once his, and this was increasingly borne in upon him. But it all seemed to him now incredibly old, childish and even fantastic, as though here, in the middle of London, he had suddenly stepped into a little wood with a witch, a cottage and a boiling cauldron. Such things could not frighten, of course — he was no longer a child — and yet because he had once been frightened some impression of alarm and dismay hovered over him.

  During all his normal years abroad he had forgotten the power of superstition, of dreams and omens; he knew now, as he faced his father, that the power was real enough.

  They talked for a little while of ordinary things; the candle flame jumped and fell, the shavings rustled strangely in the fireplace, the “Transfiguration” swung a little on its cord, the colour still lingering at its heart as the rest of the room moved restlessly under the ebb and flow of black shadows. Then the candle suddenly blew out.

  “A lamp will be better,” said Mr. Warlock.

  He left the room and Martin sat there, in the darkness, haunted by he knew
not what anticipations. The light was brought, they drew closer together, sitting in the little glossy pool, the room pitch dark around them.

  “Well, Martin,” at last Mr. Warlock said, “I want to hear so many things. Our first time together alone.”

  “There isn’t very much,” Martin tried to speak naturally and carelessly. “I wrote about most things in my letters. Pretty rotten letters I’m afraid.” He laughed.

  “And now — what do you intend to do now?”

  “Oh, I don’t know — Look around for a bit.”

  There was another long pause. Then Mr. Warlock began again. “When I ask about your life, my boy, I don’t mean where you’ve lived, how you’ve earned your living — I do know all that — you’ve been very good about writing. But your real life, what you’ve been thinking about things, how you feel about everything ...”

  “Well, father — I don’t know. One hadn’t much time for thinking, you know. No one did much thinking in Rio. When I was in the Bermudas there was a fellow ...”

  “Yes, but tell me about yourself.”

  Then, with a desperate effort, he broke out:

  “Father, you’ll be badly disappointed in me. I’ve been feeling it coming all the time. I can’t help it. I’m just like any one else. I want to have a good time. One’s only young once. I’m awfully sorry. I want to please you in any way I can, but — but — it’s all gone — all that early part. It’s simply one’s childhood that’s finished with.”

  “And it can’t come back?” his father said quietly.

  “Never!” Martin’s voice was almost a cry as though he were defying something.

  “We are very weak against God’s will,” his father said, still quietly as though it were not he that was speaking but some voice in the shadow behind him. “You are not your own master, Martin.”

  “I am my own master,” Martin answered passionately. “I have been my own master for ten years. I’ve not done anything very fine with my life, I know. I’m just like any one else — but I’ve found my feet. I can look after myself against anybody and I’m independent — of every one and of everything.”

  His father drew a little closer to him.

  “Of course,” he said, “I was not so foolish as to expect that you would come back to us just as you left us. I know that you must have your own life — and be free — so much as any of us are free at all ...” Then after a little pause. “What are your plans? What are you going to do?”

  “Well,” answered Martin, hesitating, “I haven’t exactly settled, you know. I might take a small share in some business, go into the City. Then at other times I feel I shouldn’t like being cooped up in a town after the life I’ve led. Sometimes, this last month, I’ve felt I couldn’t breathe. It was though, are you, all the chimneys were going to tumble in. When you’re out on a field you know where you are, don’t you? So I’ve thought it would be nice to have a little farm somewhere in the South, Devonshire or Glebeshire ... And then I’d marry of course, a girl who’d like that kind of life and wouldn’t find it dull. There’d be plenty of work — a healthy life for children right away from these towns ... That’s my sort of idea, father, but of course one doesn’t know ...”

  Martin trailed off into inconsequent words. It was as though his father were waiting for him to commit himself and would then suddenly leap upon him with “There! Now, you’ve betrayed yourself. I’ve caught you—” and he had simply nothing to betray, nothing to conceal.

  But anything was better than these pauses during which the threats and anticipations piled up and up, making a monstrous figure out of exactly nothing at all.

  It was not enough to tell himself that between every father and son there were restraints and hesitations, a division cleft by the remembrance of the time when one had commanded and the other obeyed. There were other elements here — for one the element of an old affection that had once been at the very root of the boy’s soul and was now in the strangest way creeping back to him, as an old familiar, but forgotten form might creep out of the dark and sit at his feet and clasp his knees.

  “Well,” said John Warlock. “That’s very pleasant. You must feel very grateful to your aunt Rachel, Martin; she’s given you the opportunity of doing what you like with your life. She spoke to me about it before she died.”

  “She spoke to you about it?”

  “Yes. She told me that she did it because she wanted to bring you back to me. She knew of my love for you. We often talked of you together. She was a faithful servant of God. She believed that God meant to bring you, through her, back into His arms.”

  “I might not have come,” Martin said with a sudden anger that surprised himself. “She made no conditions. I might have gone on with my life there abroad. I am free to lead my own life where and how I please.”

  “Quite free.” His father answered gently. “But she knew that you would come. Of course you are your own master, Martin—”

  “No, but it must be quite clear,” Martin cried, the excitement rising in him as he spoke. He leaned forward almost touching his father’s chair. “I’m not bound to any one by this money. It was awfully jolly of Aunt Rachel. I’ll never forget her — but I’m free. I haven’t got to say that I believe things when I don’t, or that I think things that she thought just because she did ... I don’t want to hurt you, father, but you know that it must have seemed to me pretty odd coming back after all these years and finding you, all in the same place, doing the same things, believing in the same things — just like years ago. I’ve seen the world a bit, I can tell you — Russia, China, Japan, America, North and South, India. You believe as far as you can see. What are you to think when, in every country that you come to, you see people believing in different things? They can’t all be right, you know.”

  His father said nothing.

  “But each thinks he’s right — and each hates the other. Then, when I came back and saw a fellow like that man Thurston preaching and laying down the law, well, it seemed odd enough that any one could be taken in by it. I hope I don’t hurt you, father ... only that’s what you want, isn’t it ... to have it out quite plainly? ...”

  His father, still very gently and hesitating as though he found it difficult to catch the words that he wished (his voice had still the remoteness of some one speaking, who was far from them both), said:

  “You’ll think it odd, Martin, when you know how often I have to preach and speak in public, that I should find it hard to talk — but I never, with any man alone, could find words easily. I know so little. It is God’s punishment for some selfish nervousness and shyness in me, that even now when I am an old man I cannot speak as one man to another. There was once, I remember, a young man who had heard me preach and was moved by my words and begged to see me in private. He came one evening; he was tempted to commit a terrible sin. He depended upon me to save him and I could say nothing. I struggled, I prayed, but it was incredible to me that any man could be tempted to such a thing. I spoke only conventional words that meant nothing. He went away from me, and his lost soul is now upon me and will always be ... but, Martin, what I would say beyond everything is — do not let us separate. Be free as you must be free, as you should be free — but stay with me — remain with me. I am an old man; I have longed for you as I think no other father can ever have longed for his son. They tell me that I cannot live many more years. God chooses His time. Be with me, Martin, for a little while even though I may seem old to you and foolish. Perhaps things will come back to you that you have long forgotten. You were once pledged and it was a vow that is not easily removed — but it is enough for the present if you will be with me a little, give me some of your time — give the old days a chance to come back.” He laid his hand upon his son’s.

  The sudden touch of the dry, hot, trembling skin filled Martin’s heart with the strangest confusion of affection, embarrassment and some familiar pathos. In just that way ten years before he had felt his father’s hand and had thought: “How old he’s
getting! ... How I shall miss him! ... I hope nothing happens to him!” In the very balance of his father’s sentences and the deliberate choice of words there had been something old-fashioned and remote from all the life and scramble of Martin’s recent years. Now he took his father’s hand in his own strong grasp and said gruffly:

  “That’s all right, father ... I’m not going while you want me ... You and I ... always ... it’s just the same now.”

  But even as he spoke he felt as though he were giving some pledge that was to involve him in far more than he could see before him. Then, with a happy sense that the sentimental part of the conversation was over, he began to talk about all kinds of things. He let himself go and even, after a while, began to feel the whole thing really jolly and pleasant. His father wanted waking up. He had been here so long, with all these awful frumps, brooding over one idea, never getting away from this Religion.

  Martin began to imagine himself very cleverly leading his father into a normal natural life, taking him to see things, making him laugh; it would do his health a world of good.

  Then, quite suddenly, the old man said:

  “And what do you remember, Martin, of the old days here, the days when you were quite small, when we lived in Mason Street?”

  What did Martin remember? He remembered a good deal. He was surprised when he began to think ... “Did he remember ...” his father suggested a scene, a day — yes, he remembered that. His father continued, as though it had been for his own pleasure.

  The scenes, the hours returned with a vividness and actuality that thronged the room.

  He could see Mason Street with its grocer’s shop at the corner, its Baths and Public Library, the sudden little black dips into the areas as the houses followed one another, the lamp-post opposite their window that had always excited him because it leaned inwards a little as though it would presently tumble. He remembered the fat short cook with the pink cotton dress who wheezed and blew so when she had to climb the stairs. He remembered the rooms that would seem bare enough to him now, he supposed, but were then filled with exciting possibilities — a little round brown table, his mother’s work-box with mother-of-pearl shells upon the cover, a stuffed bird with bright blue feathers under a glass case, a screen with coloured pictures of battles and horses and elephants casted upon it. He remembered the exact sound that the tinkling bell made when it summoned them to meals, he remembered the especial smell of beef and carpet that was the dining-room, he remembered a little door of coloured glass on the first landing, a cupboard that had in it sugar and apples, a room full of old books piled high all about the floor upon the dry and dusty boards ... a thousand other things came crowding around him.