by Hugh Walpole
Maggie confronted a policeman.
“Please, can you tell me where the Marble Arch is?” she asked.
“Straight ahead, Miss,” he answered, pointing down the street, “you can’t miss it.”
And she could not. It soon gleamed white ahead of her against the thick folds of the sky. When she saw it her heart raced in front of her, like a pony, suddenly released, kicking its heels. And her thoughts were so strangely wild! The lovely night, yes, purple like Mrs. Mark’s curtains and scented oranges, chrysanthemums, boot-polish and candied sugar. — Oh yes! how kind they had been — nice clergyman, fat a little, but young in spite of his white hair, and Aunt Anne in bed under the crucifix struggling and Mr. Crashaw smiling lustfully at Caroline ... The long black streets, strips of silk and the lamps like fat buttons on a coat, there was a cat! Hist! Hist! A streak of black against black ... and the Chapel bell ringing and Thomas’ fiery eyes ...
Behind all this confusion there was Martin, Martin, Martin. Creeping nearer and nearer as though he were just behind her, or was it that she was creeping nearer and nearer to him? She did not know, but her heart now was beating so thickly that it was as though giants were wrapping cloth after cloth round it, hot cloths, but their hands were icy cold. No, she was simply excited, desperately, madly excited.
She had never been excited before, and now, with the excitement, there was mingled the strangest hot pain and cold pity. She noticed that now her knees were trembling and that if they trembled much more she would not be able to walk at all.
“Now, Maggie, steady your knees!” she said to herself. But look, the houses now were trembling a little too! Ridiculous those smart houses with their fine doors and white steps to tremble! No, it was her heart, not the houses ...
“Do I look queer?” she thought; “will people be looking at me?”
Ideas raced through her head, now like horses in the Derby.
“Woof! Poof! Off we go!” St. Dreot’s, that square piece of grass on the lawn with the light on it, her clothes, the socks that must be mended, Caroline’s silk and the rustle it made, shops, houses, rivers, seas, death — yes, Aunt Anne’s cancer ... and then, with a great upward surge like rising from the depths of the sea after a dive, Martin! Martin, Martin! ... For a moment then she had to pause. She had been walking too fast. Her heart jumped, then ran a step or two, then fell into a dead pause ... She went on, seeing now nothing but two lamps that watched her like the eyes of a giant.
She was there! This was a Marble Arch! All by itself in the middle of the road. She crossed to it, first went under it, then thought that he would not see her there so came out and stood, nervously rubbing her gloved hands against one another and turning her head, like a bird, swiftly from side to side. She didn’t like standing there. It seemed to make her so prominent. Men stared at her. He should have been there first. He might have known ... But perhaps Caroline never gave him the letter. At that thought her heart really did stop. She was terrified at once as though some one had told her disastrous news. She would not wait very long; then she would go home ...
She saw him. He stood only a little away from her staring about him, looking for her. She felt that she had not seen him for years; she drank in his sturdiness, his boyish face, his air of caring nothing for authority. She had not seen his dark blue overcoat before. He stood directly under a lamp, swaying ever so little on his heels, his favourite, most characteristic, movement. He stood there as though he were purposely giving her a portrait that she might remember for the rest of her days. She was too nervous to move and then she wanted that wonderful moment to last, that moment when she had realised that he had come to meet her, that he was there, amongst all those crowds, simply for her, that he was looking for her and wanting her, that he would be bitterly disappointed did she not come ...
She saw him give a little impatient jerk of the head, the same movement that she had seen him make in Chapel. That jerk set her in motion again, and she was suddenly at his side. She touched his arm; he turned and his eyes lit with pleasure. They smiled at one another and then, without a word, moved off towards the park. He took her arm and put it through his. She felt the warm thick stuff of the blue coat, and beneath that the steady firm beat of his heart. They walked closely together, his thigh pressed against hers, and once and again her hair brushed his cheek. She was so shy that, until they were through the gates of the park, she did not speak. Then she said:
“I was so afraid that Caroline would not give you the note.”
“Oh, she gave it me all right.” He pressed her arm closer to him. “But I expect that she read it first.”
“Oh, is she like that?”
“Yes, she’s like that ...”
There was another pause; they turned down the path to the right towards the trees that were black lumps of velvet against the purple sky. There were no stars, and it was liquidly dark as though they ploughed through water. Maggie felt suffocated with heat and persecuted by a strange weariness; she was suddenly so tired that it was all that she could do to walk.
“I’m tired ...” she murmured— “expecting you — afraid that you wouldn’t come.”
“I believe that I would have come,” he answered quite fiercely, “even if I hadn’t had the note — I was determined to see you to-night some way. But you know, Maggie, it had better be for the last time ...”
“No,” she said, whispering, “it’s the first time.”
“Let’s sit down here,” he said. “We’re alone all right.”
There was no seat near them. The trees made a cave of black above them, and in front of them the grass swept like a grey beach into mist. There was no sound save a distant whirr like the hum of a top that died to a whisper and then was lashed by some infuriated god to activity again.
They sat close together on the bench. She felt his arm move out as though he would embrace her, then suddenly he drew back.
“No,” he said, “until we’ve talked this out we’ve got to be like strangers. We can’t go on, you know, Maggie, and it’s no use your saying we can.”
She pressed her hands tightly together. “I can convince him better,” she thought to herself, “if I’m very quiet and matter-of-fact.” So, speaking very calmly and not looking at him, she went on:
“But, Martin, you promised last time that it would depend on me ... You said that if I didn’t mind your being married and was willing to take risks that we would go on together. Well, I’ve thought all about it and I know that I’d rather be miserable with you than happy with any one else. But then I shouldn’t be miserable. You seem to think you could make me miserable just as soon as you like. But that depends on myself. If I don’t want to be miserable nobody can make me be.” She paused. He moved a little closer and suddenly took her hand.
She drew it away and went on:
“Don’t think I’m inexperienced about this, Martin. You say I know nothing about men. Perhaps I don’t. But I know myself. I know what I want, and I can look after myself. However badly you treated me, it would be you that I was with all the time.”
“No, no, Maggie,” he answered, speaking rapidly and as though he were fiercely protesting against some one. “It isn’t that at all. You say you know yourself — but then I know myself. It isn’t only that I’m a rotten fellow. It is that I seem to bring a curse on every one I’m fond of. I love my father, and I’ve come back and made him miserable. It’s always like that. And if I made you miserable it would be the worst thing I ever did ... I don’t even know whether I love you. If I do it’s different from any love I’ve ever had. Other women I’d be mad about. I’d go for them whatever happened and got them somehow, and I wouldn’t care a bit whether they were happy or no. But I feel about you almost as though you were a man — not sensually at all, but that safe steady security that you feel for a man sometimes ... You’re so restful to be with. I feel now as though you were the one person in the world who could turn me into a decent human being. I feel as though we were just meant t
o move along together; but then some other woman would come like a fire and off I’d go ... Then I’d hate myself worse than ever and be really finished.”
Maggie looked at him.
“You don’t love me then, Martin?” she asked.
“Yes I do,” he answered suddenly, “I keep telling myself that I don’t, but I know that I do. Only it’s different. It’s as though I were loving myself, the better part of myself. Not something new and wildly exciting, but something old that I had known always and that had always been with me. If I went away now. Maggie, I know I’d come back one day — perhaps years afterwards — but I know I’d come back. It’s like that religious part of me, like my legs and my arms. Oh! it’s not of my own comfort I’m doubting, but it’s you! ... I don’t want to hurt you, Maggie darling, just as I’ve hurt every one I loved—”
“I’ll come with you, Martin,” said Maggie, “as long as you want me, and if you don’t want me, later you will again and I’ll be waiting for you.”
He put his arm round her. She crept up close to him, nestled into his coat and put her hand up to his cheek. He bent down his head and they kissed.
After that there could be no more argument. What had he not intended to press upon her? With what force arid power had he not planned to persuade her? How he would tell her that he did not love her, that he would not be faithful to her, that he would treat her cruelly. Now it was all gone. With a gesture of almost ironic abandonment he flung away his scruples. It was always so; life was stronger than he. He had tried, in this at least, to behave like a decent man. But life did not want him to be decent ...
And how he needed that rest that she gave him! As he felt her close up against him, folded into him with that utterly naif and childish trust that had allured and charmed him on the very first occasion, he felt nothing but a sweet and blessed rest. He would not think of the future. He would not ... HE WOULD NOT. And perhaps all would be well. As he pressed her closer to him, as he felt her lips suddenly strike through the dark, find his check and then his mouth, as he felt her soft confident hand find his and then close and fold inside it like a flower, he wondered whether this once he might not force things to be right. It was time he took things in hand. He could. He must ...
He began to whisper to her:
“Maggie darling ... It mayn’t be bad. I’ll find out where this other woman is and she shall divorce me. I’ll arrange it all. And we’ll go away somewhere where I can work, and we won’t allow anybody to interfere. After all, I’m older now. The mess I’ve been in before is because I always make wrong shots ...”
His words ceased. Their hearts were beating too tumultuously together for words to be possible. Maggie did not wish to speak, she could not. She was mingled with him, her heart his, her lips his, her check his ... She did not believe that words would come even though she wished for them. She was utterly happy — so utterly that she was, as it were, numb with happiness. They murmured one another’s names.
“Martin.”
“Maggie! ...”
At last, dreaming, scarcely knowing what they did, like two children in a dark wood, they wandered towards home.
CHAPTER VIII
PARADISE
Maggie had never really been happy before. She had of course not known this; her adventures in introspection had been very few, besides she had not known what happiness looked like; her father, her uncle, and her aunts were not exactly happy people ...
Now she flung herself without thought or care into a flood of happiness, and as sometimes occurs in life, she was granted by the gods, beneficent or ironic as you please, a period of security when everything menacing or dangerous withdrew and it seemed as though the whole world were in a conspiracy to cheat her into confidence. She was confident because she did not think; she simply did not think at all. She loved Martin and Martin loved her; cased in that golden armour, she confronted her aunts and the house and the world behind the house with a sublime and happy confidence. She loved her aunts now, she loved Martha and the parrot and the cat, and she could not believe that they did not all love her. Because Martin loved her the rest of the world must also do so, and if they did not she would compel them.
For three whole weeks the spell lasted, for three marvellous golden weeks. When she looked back afterwards she wondered that she had not seen many things, warnings, portents, whatever you please to call them. But for three weeks she saw nothing but Martin, and for three weeks he saw nothing but Maggie.
She began her career of defiance at once by informing Aunt Anne that she was now going out every morning to do her shopping. Considering the confinement to the house that her life had always been, this was such a declaration of independence as those walls had never encountered before. But Aunt Anne never turned one of her shining neatly ordered hairs. “Shopping, my dear?” she asked. “Yes,” said Maggie, looking her full in the face. “What sort of shopping, dear?” “Oh, I don’t know,” said Maggie. “There’s always something every day.”
Maggie had an uncomfortable feeling that her aunt had in some way mysteriously defeated her by this sudden abandonment of all protest, and for a moment the mysterious house closed around her, with its shadows and dim corners and the little tinkling Chapel hell in the heart of it. But the thought of Martin dissolved the shadows, and off she went.
They agreed to meet every morning at eleven o’clock outside Hatchards, the bookseller’s, in Piccadilly. They chose that place because you could look into a bookseller’s window for quite a long time without seeming odd, and there were so many people passing that no one noticed you. Their habit then was to walk to the corner of the Green Park and there climb on to the top of a motor omnibus and go as far as they could within the allotted time. Maggie never in after life found those streets again. They had gone, she supposed, to Chelsea, to St. John’s Wood, to the heart of the city, to the Angel, Islington, to Westminster and beyond, but places during those three weeks had no names, streets had no stones, houses no walls, and human figures no substantiality. They tried on one or two occasions to go by Tube, but they missed the swing of the open air, the rush of the wind, and their independence of men and women. Often he tried to persuade her to stay with him for luncheon and the afternoon, but she was wiser than he.
“No,” she said, “everything depends on keeping them quiet. A little later on it will be lovely. You must leave that part of it to me.”
She promised him definitely that soon they should go to a matinee together, but she would not give her word about a whole evening. In some strange way she was frightened of the evening, although she had already pledged her word to him on something much more final: “No,” she thought to herself, “when the moment comes for me to leave everything, I will go, but he shall know that I am not doing it cheaply, simply for an evening’s fun.” He felt something of that too, and did not try to persuade her. He hugged his unselfishness; for the first time in his life it seemed to him that he wanted to follow somebody else’s will; with the other women it had been so different, if they had not wanted to obey him he had left them. But indeed all through these three weeks they were discovering themselves and one another, and, as though it were part of the general conspiracy, only the best part of themselves. On the top of the ‘bus, as they sat close together, their hands locked under his overcoat, the world bumping and jolting, and jogging about their feet, as though indeed public houses and lamp-posts and cinemas and town halls and sweet-shops were always jumping up tiptoe to see whether they couldn’t catch a glimpse of the lovers, Martin and Maggie felt that they were really divine creatures, quite modestly divine, but nevertheless safe from all human ravages and earthly failings, wicked and cowardly thoughts, and ambitions and desires.
Indeed, during those three weeks Maggie saw nothing of Martin’s weaknesses, his suspicions and dreads, his temper and self-abasement. The nobility that Martin had in him was true nobility, his very weaknesses came from his sharp consciousness of what purity and self-sacrifice and asceticism really
were, and that they were indeed the only things for man to live by. During those weeks he saw so truly the sweetness and fidelity and simplicity of Maggie that his conscience was killed, his scruples were numbed. He did not want during those weeks any sensual excitement, any depravity, any license. A quiet and noble asceticism seemed to him perfectly possible. He burst out once to Maggie with: “I can’t conceive, Maggie, why I ever thought life complicated. You’ve straightened everything out for me, made all the troubles at home seem nothing, shown me what nonsense it was wanting the rotten things I was always after.”
But Maggie had no eloquence in reply — she could not make up fine sentences; it embarrassed her dreadfully to tell him even that she loved him, and when he was sentimental it was her habit to turn it off with a joke if she could. She wanted terribly to ask him sometimes what he had meant when he said that he didn’t love her as he had loved other women. She had never the courage to ask him this. She wondered sometimes why it had hurt her when he had said he loved her as though she were a man friend, without any question of sex. “Surely that’s enough for me,” she would ask herself, “it means that it’s much more lasting and safe.” And yet it was not enough.
Nevertheless, during these weeks she found his brotherly care of her adorable, he found her shyness divine.
“Every other woman I have ever been in love with,” he told her once, “I have always kept asking them would they ever change, and would they love me always, and all that kind of nonsense. A man always begins like that, and then the time comes when he wishes to God they would change, and they won’t. But you’re not like that, Maggie, I know you’ll never change, and I know that I shall never want you to.” “No, I shall never change,” said Maggie.
At the very beginning of the three weeks a little incident occurred that was trivial enough at the time, but appeared afterwards as something significant and full of meaning. This incident was a little talk with poor Mr. Magnus. Maggie always thought of him as “poor Mr. Magnus.” He seemed so feckless and unsettled, and then he wrote novels that nobody wanted to buy. He always talked like a book, and that was perhaps one reason why Maggie had avoided him during these last months. Another reason had been that she really could not be sure how far he was in the general conspiracy to drive her into the Chapel. He would not do that of his own will she was sure, but being in love with Aunt Anne he might think it his sacred duty, and Maggie was terrified of “sacred duties.” Therefore when, three days after that great evening in the park, he caught her alone in the drawing-room, her first impulse was to run away; then she looked at him and found that her love for the world in general embraced him too “if only he won’t talk like a book,” she thought to herself.