Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  She saw the impossibility of it so plainly that it was a relief to her and she washed her face and brushed her hair and plucked up courage to regard herself normally once more. “I’m not different,” she said to the looking-glass. “There’s no reason for Grace to make faces.” She saw that the breach between herself and Grace had become irreparable, and that whatever else happened in the future at least it was certain that they would never be friends again.

  She went downstairs prepared to do battle ...

  Next morning she paid her visit to Caroline. It was a strange affair. The girl was sitting alone in her over-gorgeous house, her hands on her lap, looking out of the window, an unusual position for her to be in.

  Caroline was at first very stiff and haughty, expecting that Maggie had come to scold her. “I just looked in to sec how you were,” said Maggie.

  “You might have come before,” answered Caroline. “It’s years since you’ve been near me.”

  “I didn’t like all those people you had in your house,” said Maggie. “I like it better now there’s no one in it.”

  That was not, perhaps, very tactful of her. Caroline flushed.

  “I could have them all here now if I wanted to ask them,” she answered angrily.

  “Well, I’m very glad you’d rather be without them,” said Maggie. “They weren’t worthy of you, Caroline.”

  “Oh! What’s the use going on talking like this!” Caroline broke out. “Of course you’ve heard all about everything. Every one has. I can’t put my nose outside the door without them all peering at me. I hate them all — all of them — and the place too, and every one in it.”

  “I expect you do—” said Maggie sympathetically.

  “Nasty cats! As though they’d never done anything wrong all their days. It was mostly Alfred’s fault too. What does he expect when he leaves me all alone here week after week eating one’s heart out. One must do something with one’s time. Just like all men! At first there’s nothing too good for you, then when they get used to it they can’t be bothered about anything. I wonder what a man thinks married life is? Then to listen to Alfred, you’d think we were still living in the days of the Good Queen Victoria — you would indeed. Wouldn’t let me go up to London alone! There’s a nice thing for you. And all because he did let me go once and I meant to stay with mother and mother was away. So I had to sleep at a hotel. Why shouldn’t I sleep at a hotel! I’m not a baby. And now he keeps me here like a prisoner. Just as though I were in jail.”

  “Is he unkind to you?” asked Maggie.

  “No, he isn’t. It’s his horrible kindness I can’t stand. He won’t divorce me, he won’t let me go away, he just keeps me here and is so kind and patient that I could kill him. I shall one day. I know I shall.” She stood for a moment, pouting and looking out of the window. Then suddenly she turned and, flinging her arms around Maggie, burst into tears.

  “Oh, Maggie! I’m so miserable ... I’m so miserable, Maggie! Why did I ever come here? Why did I ever marry? I was so happy at home with mother.”

  Maggie comforted her, persuading her that all would soon be well, that people very quickly forgot their little pieces of scandal, and that so long as she did not run away or do anything really desperate all would come right. Maggie discovered that Caroline had escaped from her crisis with an increased respect and even affection for her husband. She was afraid of him, and was the sort of woman who must be afraid of her husband before her married life can settle into any kind of security.

  “And I thought you’d altogether abandoned me!” she ended.

  “I wasn’t coming while all those people were about,” said Maggie.

  “You darling!” cried Caroline, kissing her. “Just the same as you used to be. I was angry I can tell you when month after month went by and you never came near me. I used to tell people when they asked me that you were odd. ‘She’s not a bit like other people,’ I would say; ‘not a bit and it’s no use expecting her to be. She’s always been queer. I used to know her in London.’ They do think you odd here, darling. They do indeed. No one understands you. So odd for a clergyman’s wife. Well, so you are, aren’t you? I always tell them you had no bringing up.”

  Caroline in fact very quickly recovered her flow. As soon as she found that Maggie was not shocked she reasserted her old superiority. Before the visit was over she had rather despised Maggie for not being shocked. At Maggie’s departure, however, she was very loving.

  “You will come soon again, darling, won’t you? It’s no use asking you to dinner because, of course, your husband won’t come. But look in any afternoon — or we might go for a drive in the motor. Good-bye — good-bye.”

  Maggie, on her return, found Grace looking at the mid-day post in the hall. She always did this in a very short-sighted way, taking up the letters one by one, holding each very close to her eyes, and sniffing at it as though she were trying to read through the envelope. This always irritated Maggie, although her own letters were not very many. To-night, when she heard the hall door open, she turned and dropped the letters, giving that especial creaking little gasp that she always did when she was startled.

  “Oh, it’s you, Maggie, is it? Where’ve you been?”

  “I’ve been to see Mrs. Purdie,” Maggie said defiantly.

  Grace paused as though she were going to speak, then turned on her heel. But just as she reached the sitting-room door she said, breathing heavily:

  “There’s a telegram for you there.”

  Maggie saw it lying on the table. She picked it up and hesitated. A wild beating of the heart told her that it must be from Martin. She didn’t know what told her this except that now for so long she had been expecting to see a telegram lying in just this way on the table, waiting for her. She took it up with a hand that trembled. She tore it open and read:

  “Come at once. Your aunt dying. Wishes to see you. Magnus.”

  No need to ask which aunt. When one aunt was mentioned it was Aunt Anne — of course. Oh, poor Aunt Anne! Maggie longed for her, longed to be with her, longed to be kind to her, longed to comfort her. And Mr. Magnus and Martha and Aunt Elizabeth and the cat — she must go at once, she must catch a train after luncheon.

  She went impetuously into her husband’s study.

  “Oh, Paul!” she cried. “Aunt Anne’s dying, and I must go to her at once.”

  Paul was sitting in his old armchair before the fire; he was wearing faded brown slippers that flapped at his heels; his white hair was tangled; his legs were crossed, the fat broad thighs pressing out against the shiny black cloth of his trousers. He was chuckling over an instalment of Anthony Trollope’s “Brown Jones and Robinson” in a very ancient Cornhill.

  He looked up, “Maggie, you know it’s my sermon-morning — interruptions—” He had dropped the Cornhill, but not fast enough to hide it from her.

  She looked around at the dirty untidiness of the study. “It’s all my fault, this,” she thought. “I should have kept him clean and neat and keen on his work. I haven’t. I’ve failed.”

  Then her next thought was: “Grace wouldn’t let me—”

  The study, in fact, was more untidy than ever, the pictures were back in their places whence Maggie had once removed them.

  Husband and wife looked at one another. If she felt: “I’ve not managed my duty,” he felt perhaps: “What a child she is after all!” But between them there was the gulf of their past experience.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, yawning. “Is she an old lady?”

  “No, she’s not,” said Maggie, breathing very quickly. “I love her very much. I’ve been thinking, Paul, I’ve not been good about my relations all this time. I ought to have seen them more. I must go up to London at once.”

  “If your aunt’s bad and wants you, I suppose you must,” he answered. He got up and came over to her. He kissed her suddenly.

  “You’ll be wanting some money,” he said. “Don’t be long away. I’ll miss you.”

  Sh
e caught the 2.30 train. It seemed very strange to her to be sitting in it alone after the many months when she had been always either with Grace or Paul. An odd sense of adventure surrounded her, and she felt as though she were now at last approaching the climax to which the slow events of the last two years had been leading. When she had been a little girl one of the few interesting books in the house had been The Mysteries of Udulpho. She could see the romance now, with its four dumpy volumes, the F’s so confusingly like S’s, the faded print, and the yellowing page.

  She could remember little enough of it, but there had been one scene near the beginning of the story when the heroine, Emily, looking for something in the dusk, had noticed some lines pencilled on the wainscot; these mysterious pencilled lines had been the beginning of all her troubles, and Maggie, as a small girl, had approached sometimes in the evening dusk the walls of her attic to see whether there too verses had been scribbled. Now, obscure in the corner of her carriage, she felt as though the telegram had been a pencilled message presaging some great event that would shortly change her life.

  It was a dark and gloomy day, misty with a gale of wind that blew the smoke into curls and eddies against the sky. There seemed to be a roar about the vast London station that threatened her personally, but she beat down her fears, found a taxi, and gave the driver the well-remembered address.

  As they drove along she felt how much older, how much older she was then than when she was last in London. Then she had been ignorant of all life and the world, now she felt that she was an old, old woman with an infinite knowledge of marriage and men and women and the way they lived. She looked upon her aunts and indeed all that world that had surrounded the Chapel as something infinitely childish, and for that reason rather sweet and touching. She could be kind and friendly even to Amy Warlock she thought. She wished that she had some excuse so that she might stay in London a week or two. She felt that she could stretch her limbs and breathe again now that she was out of Grace’s sight.

  And she would find out Uncle Mathew’s address and pay him a surprise visit ... She laughed in the cab and felt gay and light-hearted until she remembered the cause of her visit. Poor, poor Aunt Anne! Oh, she did hope that she would be well enough to recognise her and to show pleasure at seeing her. The cab had stopped in the well-remembered street before the same old secret-looking house. Nothing seemed to have changed, and the sight of it all brought Martin back to her with so fierce a pang that for a moment breath seemed to leave her body. It was just near here, only a few steps away, that he had suddenly appeared, as though from the very paving-stones, when she had been with Uncle Mathew, and then had gone to supper with him. It was from this door that he had run on that last desperate day. She looked up at the windows; the blinds were not down; her aunt was yet alive; she paid the taxi and rang the bell.

  The door was opened by Martha, who seemed infinitely older and more wrinkled than on the last occasion, her old face was yellow like drawn parchment and her thin grey hairs were pasted back over her old skull; she was wearing black mittens.

  “Miss Maggie!” and there was a real welcome in her voice. Maggie was drawn into the dark little hall that smelt of cracknel biscuits and lamp oil, there was the green baize door, and then suddenly the shrill cry of the parrot, and then, out of the dark, the fiery eyes of Thomas the cat.

  “Oh, Miss Maggie!” said Martha. “Or I suppose I should say ‘Mrs.’ now. It’s a long, long time ...”

  “Yes, it is,” said Maggie. “How is my aunt?”

  “If she lives through the night they’ll be surprised,” Martha answered, wheezing and sighing. “Yes, the doctor says—’ If Miss Cardinal sees morning,’ he says—” Then as Maggie hesitated at the bottom of the staircase. “If you’d go straight to the drawing-room, Miss, Mum, Mr. Magnus is waiting tea for you there.”

  Maggie went up, past the Armed Men into the old room. She could have kissed all the things for their old remembered intimacy and friendliness, the pictures, the books, the old faded carpet, the fire-screen, the chairs and wall-papers. There, too, was Mr. Magnus, looking just as he used to look, with his spectacles and his projecting ears, his timid smile and apologetic voice. He did seem for a moment afraid of her, then her boyish air, her unfeigned pleasure and happiness at being back there again, and a certain childish awkwardness with which she shook hands and sat herself behind the little tea-table reassured him:

  “You’re not changed at all,” he told her. “Isn’t that dreadful?” she said; “when all the way in the cab I’ve been telling myself how utterly different I am.”

  “I suppose you feel older?” he asked her.

  “Older! Why, centuries!”

  “You don’t look a day,” he said, smiling at her.

  “That’s my short hair,” she answered, smiling back at him, “and not being able to wear my clothes like a grown woman. It’s a fact that I can’t get used to long skirts, and in Skeaton it’s bad form to cross your knees. I try and remember—” she sighed. “The truth is I forget everything just as I used to.”

  “How is Aunt?” she asked him. He looked very grave, and behind his smiles and welcome to her she saw that he was a tired and even exhausted man.

  “They don’t think she can live through the night,” he answered her, “but, thank God, she’s out of all pain and will never suffer any more. She’s tranquil in her mind too, and the one thing she wanted to put her quiet was to see you. She’s been worrying about you for months. Why didn’t you come up to see us all this time, Maggie? That wasn’t kind of you.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Maggie. “But I didn’t dare.”

  “Didn’t dare?” he asked, astonished.

  “No, there were things all this would have reminded me of too badly. It wasn’t safe to be reminded of them.”

  “Haven’t you been happy, then, there?” he asked her almost in a whisper.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she didn’t look up at him. “I made a mistake in doing it. It was my fault, not theirs. No, I haven’t been happy if you want to know. And I shan’t be. There’s no chance. It’s all wrong; they all hate me. I seem to them odd, mad, like a witch they used to burn in the old days. And I can’t alter myself. And I don’t want to.”

  It was amazing what good it did her to bring all this out. She had said none of it to any one before.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” sighed Mr. Magnus. “I hadn’t known. I thought it was all going so well. But don’t tell your aunt this. When she asks you, say you’re very, very happy and it’s all going perfectly. She must die at peace. Will you, my dear, will you?”

  His almost trembling anxiety touched her.

  “Why, dear Mr. Magnus, of course I will. And I am happy now that I’m back with all of you. All I want is for people to be fond of me, you know, but there’s something in me—” She jumped up and stood in front of him. “Mr. Magnus! You’re wise, you write books, you know all about things, tell me — tell me the absolute truth. Am I odd, am I queer, am I like a witch that ought to be burnt at the stake?”

  He was deeply touched. He put his hands on her shoulders, then suddenly drew her to him and kissed her.

  “I don’t find you odd, my dear, but then, God forgive me, I’m odd myself. We’re all rather odd in this house, I’m afraid. But don’t you worry, Maggie. You’re worth a wagon-load of ordinary people.”

  She drew slowly away. She sighed.

  “I wish Paul and Grace only thought so,” she said.

  They had a quiet little tea together; Maggie was longing to ask Mr. Magnus questions about himself, but she didn’t dare to do so. He wrapped himself in a reserved friendly melancholy which she could not penetrate. He looked so much older, so much more faded, as though the heat and fire had gradually stolen away from him and left him only the grey ghost of what he had been.

  “Are you writing any books, Mr. Magnus?” she asked him.

  “Any books?” he answered smiling. “Surely one would be enough, my dear. I have one half-finished as
a matter of fact, but it’s not satisfactory. If it weren’t for the bread and butter I don’t think I’d ever tackle it again. Or rather the bread, I should say. It’s precious little butter it brings in.”

  “What’s it called?” she asked.

  “‘The Toad in the Hole,’” he said.

  “What a funny name! What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “It meant something when I began it, but the meaning doesn’t seem important now.”

  In a little while he left her, saying: “Now if I were you I’d take a little nap, and later on I’ll wake you and we’ll go and see your aunt.”

  She slept, lying back in the blue armchair in front of the fire, with only the leaping flames as light to the room. Strange and dim but unspeakably sweet were her dreams. It seemed that she had escaped for ever from Paul and Grace and Skeaton, and that in some strange way Martin was back with her again, the same old Martin, with his laugh and the light in his eyes and his rough red face. He had come into the room — he was standing by the door looking at her; she ran to him, her hands stretched out, cries of joy on her lips, but oven as she reached him there was a cry through the house: “Your Aunt Anne is dead! Your Aunt Anne is dead!” and all the bells began to toll, and she was in the Chapel again and great crowds surged past her. Aunt Anne’s bier borne on high above them all. She cried aloud, and woke to find Mr. Magnus standing at her side; one glance at him told her that he was in terrible distress.

  “You must come at once,” he said. “Your aunt may have only a few minutes to live.”

  She followed him, still only half-awake, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles, and feeling as though she were continuing that episode when Martha had led her at the dead of night into her aunt’s bedroom.

  The chill of the passages however woke her fully, and then her one longing and desire was that Aunt Anne should be conscious enough to recognise her and be aware of her love for her.