by Hugh Walpole
To a great deal that he said Maggie paid but little attention; it was, she felt, not intended for her. She had, in all her relations with him, to struggle against the initial disadvantage that she regarded all men who wrote books with pity. She was not so stupid as not to realise that there were a great many fine books in the world and that one was the better for reading them, but, just because there were, already, so many fine ones, why write more that would almost certainly be not so fine? He tried to explain, to her that some men were compelled to write and could not help themselves.
“I wrote my first book when I was nineteen. One morning I just began to write, and then it was very easy. Then everything else was easy. The first publisher to whom I sent it accepted it. It was published and had quite a success. I thought I was made for life. Anything seemed possible to one. After all, so far as one’s possibilities went one was on a level with any one — Shakespeare, Dante, any one you like. One might do anything... . I published a book a year, after that, for ten years — ten years ten books, and then awoke to the fact that I was nothing at all and would never be anything — that I would never write like Shakespeare, and, a matter of equal importance, would never sell like Mrs. Henry Wood. Not that I wished to write like any one else. I had a great idea of keeping to my own individuality, but I saw quite clearly that what I had in myself — all of it — was no real importance to any one. I might so well have been a butcher or baker for all that it mattered. I saw that I was one of those unfortunate people — there are many of them — just in between the artists and the shopkeepers. I was an artist all right, but not a good enough one to count; had I been a shopkeeper I might have sold my goods.”
“Well, then, here’s your question, Miss Cardinal. Why on earth did I go on writing? ... Simply because I couldn’t help myself. Writing was the only thing in the world that gave me happiness. I thought too that there might be people, here and there, unknown to me who cared for what I did. Not many of course — I soon discovered that outside the small library set in London no one had ever heard of me. When I was younger I had fancied that that to me fiery blazing advertisement: “New Novel by William Magnus, author of ...” must cause men to stop in the street, exclaim, rush home to tell their wives, ‘Do you know Magnus’ new novel is out?’ — now I realised that by nine out of every ten men and five out of every ten women the literary page in the paper is turned over with exactly the same impatience with which I turn over the betting columns. Anyway, why not? ... perfectly right. And then by this time I’d seen my old books, often enough, lying scattered amongst dusty piles in second-hand shops marked, ‘All this lot 6d.’ Hundreds and hundreds of six-shilling novels, dirty, degraded, ashamed ... I’d ask, sometimes, when I was very young, for my own works. ‘What’s the name? What? Magnus? — No, don’t stock him. No demand. We could get you a copy, sir...’ There it is. Why not laugh at it? I was doing perhaps the most useless thing in the world. A commonplace little water-colour, hung on a wall, can give happiness to heaps of people; a poor piece of music can do a thousand things, good and bad, but an unsuccessful novel — twenty unsuccessful novels! A whole row, with the same history awaiting their successors ... ‘We welcome a new novel by Mr. William Magnus, who our readers will remember wrote that clever story ... The present work seems to us at least the equal of any that have preceded it.’ ... A fortnight’s advertisement — Dead silence. Some one in the Club, ‘I see you’ve written another book, old man. You do turn ’em out.’ A letter from a Press Agency who has never heard of one’s name before, ‘A little sheaf of thin miserable cuttings.’ ... The Sixpenny Lot ... Ouf! And still I go on and shall go on until I die. Perhaps after all I’m more justified than any of them. I’m stripped of all reasons save the pleasure, the thrill, the torment, the hopes, the despairs of the work itself. I’ve got nothing else out of it and shall get nothing ... and therefore I’m justified. Now do you understand a little, Miss Cardinal?”
She half understood. She understood that he was compelled to do it just as some men are compelled to go to race meetings and just as Uncle Mathew was compelled to drink.
But she nevertheless thought it a dreadful pity that he was unable to stop and interest himself in something else. Then he could see it so plainly and yet go on! She admired and at the same time pitied him.
It seemed, this private history of Mr. Magnus, at first sight so far from Maggie’s immediate concerns, her new life, her aunts, the Chapel and the Chapel world. It was only afterwards, when she looked back, that she was able to see that all these private affairs of private people radiated inwards, like the spokes of a wheel, towards the mysterious inner circle — that inner circle of which she was already dimly aware, and of which she was soon to feel the heat and light. She was, meanwhile, so far impressed by Mr. Magnus’ confidences that she borrowed one of his novels from Caroline, who confided to her that she herself thought it the dullest and most tiresome of works. “To be honest, I only read a bit of it — I don’t know what it’s about. I think it’s downright silly.”
This book bore the mysterious title of “Dredinger.” It was concerned apparently with the experiences of a young man who, buying an empty house in Bloomsbury, discovered a pool of water in the cellar. The young man was called Dredinger, which seemed to Maggie an unnatural kind of name. He had an irritating habit of never finishing his sentences, and the people he knew answered him in the same inconclusive fashion. The pool in the cellar naturally annoyed him, but he did nothing very practical about it, allowed it to remain there, and discussed it with a Professor of Chemistry. Beyond this Maggie could not penetrate. The young man was apparently in love with a lady much older than himself, who wore pince-nez, but it was an arid kind of love in which the young man discovered motives and symptoms with the same dexterous surprise with which he discovered newts and tadpoles in the cellar-pond. Maggie bravely attacked Mr. Magnus.
“Why didn’t he have men in to clear up the pond and lay a new floor?” she asked.
“That was just the point,” said Mr. Magnus. “He couldn’t.”
“Why couldn’t he?”
“Weakness of character and waiting to see what would happen.”
“He talked too much,” she answered decisively. “But are there houses in London with ponds in them?”
“Lots,” said Mr. Magnus. “Only the owners of the houses don’t know it. There is a big pond in the Chapel. That’s what Thurston came out of.”
This was beyond Maggie altogether. An agreeable thing, however, about Mr. Magnus was that he did not mind when you disliked his work. He seemed to expect that you would not like it. He was certainly a very unconceited man.
A more important and more interesting theme was Mr. Magnus’ reason for being where he was. What was he doing here? What led him to the Chapel doors, he being in no way a religious man?
“It was like this,” he told her. “I was living in Golders Green, and suddenly one morning I was tired of the country that wasn’t country, and the butcher boy and the postman. So I moved as far into the centre of things as I could and took a room in St. Martin’s Lane close at hand here. Then one evening I was wandering about, a desolate Sunday evening when the town is given over to cats. I suddenly came across the Chapel. I like going into London churches by chance, there’s always something interesting, something you wouldn’t expect. The Chapel simply astonished me. I couldn’t imagine what they were all about, it wasn’t the ordinary London congregation, it was almost the ordinary London service and yet not quite; there was an air of expectation and even excitement which is most unusual in a London church. Then there was Warlock. Of course one could see at once that he was an extraordinary man, a kind of prophet all on his own; he was as far away from that congregation as Columbus was from his crew when he first sighted the Indies.”
“I’ve met one or two prophets in my time, and their concern has always been with their audience first, themselves second and their vision last. Warlock is the other way round. He should have been a hermit, not
the leader of a community. Well, it interested me. I came again and again ... I’m going to stay on now until the end.”
“The end?” asked Maggie.
“The end of myself or the Chapel, whichever comes first. I wrote a story once — a very bad one — about some merchants — why merchants I don’t know — who were flung on a desert island. It was all jungle and desolation, and then suddenly they came upon a little white Temple. It doesn’t matter what happened afterwards. I’ve myself forgotten most of it, but I remember that the sailors used the Temple in different ways to keep their hopes and expectations alive. Their expectations that one day a ship would come and save them ... and so far as I remember they became imaginative about the Temple, and fancied that the Unknown God of it would help them to regain their private affairs: one of them wanted to get back to his girl, another to his favourite pub, another to his money-making, another to his collection of miniatures. And they used to sit and look at the Temple day after day and expect something to happen. When the ship came at last they wouldn’t go into it because they couldn’t bear to think that something should happen at last and they not be there to see it. Oh yes, one of them went back, I remember. But his actual meeting with his girl was so disappointing in comparison with his long expectation of it in front of the Temple that he took the next boat back to the island ... but he never found it again. He travelled everywhere and died, a disappointed man, at sea.”
Mr. Magnus was fond of telling little stories, obscure and pointless, and Maggie supposed that it was a literary habit. On this occasion he continued to talk quite naturally for his own satisfaction. “Yes, one can make oneself believe in anything. I have believed in all sorts of things. In England, of course, people have believed in nothing except that things will always be as they always have been — a useful belief considering that things have never been as they always were. In the old days, when the Boer War hadn’t interfered with tradition, it must have seemed to any one who wasn’t a young man pretty hopeless, but now I don’t know. Imagination’s breaking in ... Warlock’s a prophet. I’ve got fascinated, sitting round this Chapel, as badly as any of them. Yes, one can be led into belief of anything.”
“And what do you believe in, Mr. Magnus?” asked Maggie.
“Well, not in myself anyway, nor Thurston, nor Miss Avies ... But in your Aunt perhaps, and Warlock. The only thing I’m sure of is that there’s something there, but what it is of course I can’t tell you, and I don’t suppose I shall ever know. The story of Sir Galahad, Miss Cardinal — it seems mid-Victorian to us now — but it’s a fine story and true enough.”
Maggie, who knew nothing of mid-Victorianism, was silent.
He ended with: “Mind you decide for yourself. That’s the great thing in life. Don’t you believe anything that any one tells you. See for yourself. And if there’s something of great value, don’t think the less of it because the people who admire it aren’t worth very much. Why should they be? And possibly after all it’s only themselves they’re admiring ... There’s a fearful lot of nonsense and humbug in this thing, but there’s something real too ...”
He changed his note, suddenly addressing himself intently to her as though he had a message to deliver.
“Don’t think me impertinent. But your Aunt Anne. See as much of her as you can. She’s devoted to you, Miss Cardinal. You mayn’t have seen it — she’s a reserved woman and very shy of her feelings, but she’s spoken to me ... I hope I’m not interfering to say this, but perhaps at first you don’t understand her. She loves you, you’re the first human being I do believe that she’s ever loved.”
What was there then in Maggie that started up in rebellion at this unexpected declaration? She had been sitting there, tranquil, soothed with a happy sense that her new life was developing securely for her in the way that she would have it. Suddenly she was alert, suspicious, hostile.
“What has she said to you?” she asked quickly, frowning up at him and drawing back as though she were afraid of him. He was startled at the change in her.
“Said?” he repeated, stammering a little. “Why only ... Nothing ... except that she cared for you and hoped that you would be happy. She was afraid that it would all be strange for you at first ... Perhaps I have been interfering ...”
“No,” Maggie interrupted quickly. “Not you. Only I must lead my own life. I must, mustn’t I? I don’t want to be selfish, but I can begin for myself now. I have a little money of my own — and I MUST make my own way. I don’t want to be selfish,” she repeated, “but I must be free. I don’t understand Aunt Anne. She never seems to care for me. I want to do everything for her I can, but I don’t want to be under any one ever any more.”
She was so young when she said this that he was suddenly moved to an affectionate fatherly tenderness — but he knew her now too well to show it.
“No, you mustn’t be selfish,” he answered her almost drily. “We can’t lead our lives quite alone, you know — every step we take we affect some one somewhere. Your aunt doesn’t want your liberty — she wants your affection.”
“She wants to make me religious,” Maggie brought out, staring at Mr. Magnus.
“Ah, if you see that, you don’t understand her,” he answered. “How should you — yet? She cares so deeply for her religion that she wishes naturally any one whom she loves to share it with her. But if you don’t—”
“If you don’t?” cried Maggie, springing up from her seat and facing him.
“I’m sure she would wish to influence no one,” he continued gravely. “You’ve seen for yourself how apart her life is. She is too conscious of the necessity for her own liberty—”
“It isn’t liberty, it’s slavery,” Maggie caught him up passionately. “Do you suppose I haven’t watched all these weeks? What does her religion do but shut her off from everything and everybody? Is she kind to Aunt Elizabeth? No, she isn’t, and you know it. Would she care if we were all of us buried in the ruins of this house to-morrow? Not for a single moment. And it’s her religion. I hate religion. I hate it! ... and since I’ve been in this house I’ve hated it more and more. You don’t know what it was like with father. I don’t think of it now or talk of it, but I know what it made of HIM. And now it’s the same here, only it takes them in a different way. But it’s the same in the end — no one who’s religious cares for any one. And they’d make the same of me. Aunt Anne would — the same as she’s made of Aunt Elizabeth. They haven’t said much yet, but they’re waiting for the right moment, and then they’ll spring it upon me. It’s in the house, it’s in the rooms, it’s in the very furniture. It’s as though father had come back and was driving me into it. And I want to be free, I want to lead my own life, to make it myself. I don’t want to think about God or Heaven or Hell. I don’t care whether I’m good or bad... . What’s the use of my being here in London and never seeing anything. I’ll go into a shop or something and work my fingers to the bone. They SHAN’T catch me. They SHAN’T ... If Uncle Mathew were here ...”
She broke off suddenly, breathless, staring at Mr. Magnus as though she had not been aware until now that he was in the room. To say that her outburst astonished him was to put it very mildly indeed. She had always been so quiet and restrained; she had seemed so happy and tranquil.
He blushed, pushed his spectacles with his fingers, then finally stammered:
“I’d no idea — that — that you hated it so much.”
She was quiet and composed again. “I don’t hate it,” she answered very calmly. “Only they shan’t tie me — no one shall. And in the house it’s as though some one were watching behind every door. It used to be just the same at home. When people think a lot about religion something seems to get into a place. Why, truly, Mr. Magnus, I’ve wondered once or twice lately, in spite of myself, whether they mayn’t be right after all and God’s going to come in a chariot and set the world on fire.”
“It sounds silly, but when you see the way Aunt Anne and Mr. Warlock believe things it almost
makes them true.”
Maggie finally added: “You mustn’t think me selfish. I’m very very grateful for all their kindness. I’m very happy. It’s all splendid compared with what life used to be at home — but I fancy sometimes that the aunts think I’m just going to settle down here for ever and be like them — and I’m not — I’m afraid of Aunt Anne.”
“Afraid of her?” said Mr. Magnus. “Ah, you mustn’t be that.”
“She has some plan in her head. I know she has—”
“No plan is set except for your good,” said Mr. Magnus.
“I don’t want any one to bother about my good,” answered Maggie. “I can look after that for myself.”
This little conversation revealed Maggie to Mr. Magnus in an entirely new light. He had thought her, until now, a good simple girl, entirely ignorant of life and eager to be taught. The sudden discovery of her independence distressed him. He left the house that afternoon with many new points to consider.
Meanwhile Maggie had kept from him the true root of the matter. She had said nothing of Martin Warlock. She had said nothing, even to herself, about him, and yet the consciousness of her meeting with him was always with her as a fire smoulders in the hold of a ship, burning stealthily through the thick heart of the place, dim and concealed, to burst suddenly, with a touch of the wind, into shining flame.
It was after her talk to Mr. Magnus that she suddenly saw that Martin Warlock was always in her thoughts, and then, because she was Maggie and had never been deceitful to herself or to any one else, she faced the fact and considered it. She knew that she was ignorant of the world and of life, that she knew nothing about men and, although she had many times fancied to herself what love must be like, she did not tell herself now that it was love that had come to her.