Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  Two children and a cottage in the country might after all be worth more than literary criticism. She was beginning to wonder about many things for the first time in her life. . . .

  I have outlined these ladies in some detail because for the past year and a half Henry had worshipped at their shrines. How he had revelled in Grace Talbot’s cynical judgments, in Jane Ross’s epigrams, in Martha Proctor’s measured comparisons! To-night for the first time a new vision was upon him. He could only see them, as he stared at them through the smoke, with physical eyes — Grace Talbot’s languid indifference, white hands and faint blue eyes. Jane Ross’s sallow complexion and crinkled black hair; Martha Proctor’s pince-nez and large brown boots.

  Then, as his short-sighted eyes penetrated yet more clearly he saw —— Could it be? Indeed it was. His heart beat quickly. There seated uncomfortably upon an orange chair from Heal’s was no less a person than the great K. Wiggs himself. Henry had seen him on two other occasions, had once indeed spoken to him.

  That earlier glorious moment was strong with him now, the thrill of it, the almost passionate excitement of touching that small podgy hand, the very hand that had written Mr. Whippet and Old Cain and Abel and The Slumber Family.

  What then to-night had happened to Henry? Why was it that with every longing to recover that earlier thrill he could not? Why was it that again, as just now with the Three Graces, he could see only Mr. Wiggs’s physical presence and nothing at all of his splendid and aspiring soul? Mr. Wiggs certainly did not look his best on an orange chair with a stiff back.

  And then surely he had fattened and coarsened, even since Henry’s last vision of him? His squat figure perched on the chair, his little fat legs crossed, his bulging stomach, his two chins, his ragged moustache, his eyes coloured a faint purple, his thin whispy hair — these things did not speak for beauty. Nor did the voice that penetrated through the clamour to Henry’s corner, with its shrill piping clamour, give full reassurance.

  It was not, no alas, it was not the voice of a just soul; there was, moreover, a snuffle behind the pipe — that spoke of adenoids — it is very hard to reconcile adenoids with greatness.

  And yet Wiggs was a great man! You knew that if only by the virulence with which certain sections of the press attacked him whenever he made a public appearance.

  He was a great man. He is a great man. Henry repeated the words over to himself with a desperate determination to recover the earlier rapture. He had written great books; he was even then writing them. He was, as Henry knew, a kindly man, a generous man, a man with noble and generous ambitions, a man honest in his resolves and courageous in his utterances. Why then did he look like that and why was Henry so stupidly conscious of his body and of his body only? Could it be that the adventure of the afternoon had filled his young soul with so high and splendid an ideal of beauty that everything else in the world was sordid and ugly? He moved restlessly. He did not want to think life sordid and ugly. But was this life? Or at any rate was it not simply a very, very small part of life? Was he moving at last from a small ante-room into a large and spacious chamber? (I have said before that picturesque images occurred to him with the utmost frequency.)

  He caught fragments of conversation. A lady quite close to him was saying— “But there’s no Form in the thing — no Form at all. He hadn’t thought the thing out — it’s all just anyhow. . . .”

  Somewhere else he heard a man’s deep bass voice— “Oh, he’s no good. He’ll always be an amateur. Of course it’s obvious you miss truth the moment you go outside the narrator’s brain. Now Truth . . .”

  And Wigg’s shrill pipe— “Ow, no. That isn’t History. That’s fable. What do facts matter?”

  There was a little stir by the door. Henry turned and found Peter Westcott standing at his side.

  He was instantly delighted to perceive that the change that had crept over him since the afternoon did not include Peter. His feeling for Peter was the same that it had ever been, intensified if possible. He loved Peter as he stood there, strong, apart, independent, resolute. That was the kind of independence that Henry himself must achieve so that he would not be swayed by every little emotional and critical wind that blew.

  “Hallo, Peter,” he said, “I was looking for you.”

  “You haven’t been looking very hard,” said Peter. “I’ve been here a long time.”

  “There’s so much smoke,” said Henry.

  “Yes, there is. And I’ve had enough of it. And I’m going.”

  “I’m going too,” said Henry. “Mrs. Hunter has looked at me twice and I don’t believe that she’s the least idea who I am.”

  “You’re going?” said Westcott astonished. “Why, you love these parties. I expected you to be here all night.”

  “I don’t love it to-night,” said Henry solemnly. “It all seems silly. Let’s go.”

  They went down into the Hall, found their coats and passed into the serenity and peace of Barton Street.

  “Do you mind walking a bit?” asked Henry.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Westcott, “I’m going to walk all the way home. I’ll take you up through Coventry Street if you like and drop you at your Palace.”

  “I only went there to-night to see you,” said Henry. “I’ve got something very important to tell you.”

  They walked in silence into Whitehall. Henry found it difficult to begin and Westcott never spoke unless he had something that he really wanted to say — a reason sufficient for the reputation of sulkiness that many people gave him. The beauty of the night too kept them silent. After that hot, over-coloured room London was like some vast, gently moving lake upon whose bosom floated towers and lamps and swinging barges — myriads of stars were faint behind a spring mist that veiled, revealed and veiled again an orange moon.

  Only the towers of the Houses of Parliament were sharp and distinct and they too seemed to move with the gentle rhythm as though they were the bulwarks of some giant ship sailing towards some certain destination.

  So quiet was the world that all life seemed to be hypnotized into wondering expectation.

  “Well now, Henry, what is it?” asked Peter at last.

  “It’s the most extraordinary thing,” said Henry. “I suppose you’ll laugh at me. Anybody would. But I just couldn’t help myself. It didn’t seem like myself doing it.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Why, before I knew I was following them. And I hadn’t any reason to follow them. That’s the funny thing. Only I’d just fallen down.”

  Peter turned upon him. “For God’s sake, Henry, get it straight, whom were you following and where? And where did you fall down?”

  “In Piccadilly Circus. I was just staring around and some one pushed me and I fell on to my knees and when I’d picked myself up again they’d got half-way across — —”

  “They? Who?”

  “Why the woman and her daughter. At least of course I didn’t know she was her daughter then. It was only afterwards — —”

  Peter was irritable. “Look here, if you don’t straighten everything out and tell me it all quite simply from the beginning with names and dates and everything I leave you instantly and never see you again.”

  Henry tried again and, staring in front of him so that he stumbled and walked like a man in a dream, he recovered it all, seeing freshly as though he were acting in it once more and giving it to Westcott with such vivid drama that they had arrived outside the door in Panton Street as though they had been carried there on a magic carpet. “And after that,” finished Henry, “I just came home and I’ve been thinking about her ever since.”

  The street was very quiet. Within the theatre rows and rows of human beings were at that moment sitting, their mouths open and their knees pressed together while “The Ruined Lady” went through incredible antics for their benefit. Outside the theatre a few cars were standing, a man or two lounged against the wall, and the stars and the orange moon released now from their entangling mist, sho
ne like lights through a tattered awning down upon the glassy surface of the street. Peter put his hand upon Henry’s shoulder; the boy was trembling.

  “Take my advice,” he said, “and drop it.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Henry fiercely.

  “Of course you won’t follow my advice, but I’m older than you are. You asked me to advise you and I’m going to. Don’t you see what those two women are? If you don’t you’re even more of an ass than I know you to be.”

  “What do you mean?” said Henry again.

  “Well, just ask yourself, what kind of a woman is it who when a strange man bursts in through her window smiles and asks him to tea?”

  “If she’s like that,” said Henry angrily, “then all the more I’ve got to get the girl out of it.”

  Peter shrugged his shoulders, “I bet the girl knows what she’s about,” he said.

  Henry laughed scornfully. “That’s the worst of you, Peter,” he said. “You’re a cynic. You don’t believe in anybody or in anything. You always see things at their worst.”

  Peter smiled. “That’s as may be,” he said. “I believe in you anyway. You know quite well that if you get in a mess I’ve got to pull you out of it. I’m only warning you. If you like, I’ll go with you next time and see the girl.”

  Henry looked up at the moon. “I know I’m an ass about some things,” he said. “But I’m not an ass about this. I’ll save her if I die for it.”

  Peter was touched.

  “You’re bewitched,” he said, “I was once. I don’t want to wake you up. The only trouble with these things is that the enchantment doesn’t last but the things we do under the enchantment do.

  “However, it’s better to have been enchanted, whatever comes of it, than never to have been enchanted at all. Will you promise me one thing?”

  “What’s that?” asked Henry.

  “To tell me everything, exactly, truthfully.”

  “Yes, if you don’t laugh at me.”

  “No, I won’t — unless you can laugh as well. But you’re going to get into a mess over this as sure as you’re Henry Trenchard, and if I don’t know all about it, I shan’t be able to help you when the time comes that you need me.”

  “I’ll tell you everything,” said Henry fervently.

  “When do you go to your old Baronet?”

  “The day after to-morrow.”

  “Well, I’ll come in and see you here that afternoon about five and get your news. Is that all right?”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “Isn’t it a wonderful night? I think I’ll walk about a bit.”

  “You’re going to look up at her window?”

  Henry blushed, a thing he did very easily. “You can’t see her window from the street,” he said. “It’s quite true I might go round that way.”

  Westcott went off laughing. The moon and Henry were left alone together.

  CHAPTER III

  MILLIE

  Millicent Trenchard was at this time twenty-five years of age.

  She had been pretty at eighteen, she was beautiful now, beautiful in the real sense of that terribly abused word, because she aroused interest as well as admiration in the beholder. The questions asked about her would be always different ones, depending for their impulse on the private instincts and desires of the individual.

  Her eyes were large, dark, her figure slender, her colouring fair, her hair (she had a mass of it) dark brown with some shadow of dull gold in its threads, her neck and shoulders lovely with a pure healthy whiteness of colour and form that only youth could give her, her chin strong and determined but not exaggerated — all this catalogue is useless. Her beauty did not lie in these things, but in the vitality, the freedom, the humour, the wildness of her spirit. Her eyes, the dimple in her cheek, the high, clear forehead spoke of kindness, generosity, love of her fellowmen, but it was the quality behind those things, the quality of a soul absolutely free and independent but not selfish, open-minded and honest but neither dogmatic nor impertinent, young and ignorant perhaps but ready for any discovery, fearless and excited but tender and soft-hearted, unsentimental but loyal-hearted, that finally told. Although her means were so slender she dressed admirably, liking bright colours, crimson and purple and orange, but never looking so well as when she was in the simplest black.

  She knew everything about dress by natural instinct, could make clothes out of nothing at all (not so difficult in 1920), was able to buy things in the cheapest way at the smartest shops, and really spent less time and thought over all these things than most of the clumsily dressed girls of her acquaintance. She was always neat; her gloves and her shoes and her stockings were as fine as those of any lady in the land. She was never extravagant in the fashion of the moment nor was she outside it; when women of sixty wore skirts that belonged more properly to their granddaughters, she who might with pride have been short-skirted was not.

  And, just at this time, she was so happy that it made you afraid to watch her. Mary Cass, her friend, was often afraid.

  Miss Cass was five years older than Millicent and had seen a great deal of life. She had driven an ambulance in France, and it was afterwards, when nursing in a hospital in Boulogne, that she and Millicent had made friends. She had nursed with the same quiet capacity with which she had driven her ambulance, and now she was studying at the Women’s College of Medicine and at the end of her five years’ course was going to be one of the most efficient women surgeons in Europe. That was what she set in front of her, and the things that she set in front of her she obtained. She was a little, insignificant, mild-eyed mouse of a woman with a very determined chin; she had none of Millicent’s gaiety and wild zest for life. Life seemed to her rather a poor thing at best; she had no great expectations of it, but, on the other hand, bore no one a grudge because she was in the midst of it. So long as she was working at something she was happy; she was fond of Millicent but not extravagant about her.

  Her work was more to her than any human being, and she would have liked Millicent to look on work with a deeper seriousness. This was their one deep difference of opinion, that to Mary Cass work was more than human nature and that to Millicent people were everything. “I’d rather live with people I love than write the greatest book in the world,” Millicent said. “I believe, Mary, that you only make a friend because you hope one day to be able to cut his or her leg off.”

  “I’d do it very nicely,” said Mary gravely.

  There was a further little trouble between them that Mary was rather impatient of Henry. She thought him untidy, careless, inaccurate, clumsy and sentimental; he was undoubtedly all of these things — Millicent, of course, adored Henry and would not hear a word against him from anybody.

  “He’s only careless because he’s a genius,” she said.

  “When’s he going to begin his genius?” asked Mary. “He’s twenty-six now.”

  “He has begun it. He’s written ten chapters of a novel.”

  “What’s it about?” asked Mary, with an irritating little sniff that she used on occasions.

  “It’s about the Eighteenth Century,” said Millie, “and a house in a wood — —”

  “People want something more real nowadays,” said Mary.

  “He hasn’t got to think of what people want,” answered Millie hotly. “He’s got to write what he feels.”

  “He’s got to make his bread and butter,” said Miss Cass grimly.

  Nevertheless it may be suspected that she liked Henry more than she allowed; only her fingers itched to be at him, at his collar and his socks and his boots and his tie. But she believed about this, as she did about everything else, that her day would come.

  On the morning that Millie was to go to Miss Platt’s for the first time she dressed with the greatest care. She put on a plain black dress and designed to wear with it a little round red hat. She also wore a necklace of small pearls that her father had once given her in a sudden swiftly vanishing moment of emotion at her surprising beauty. When sh
e came into the little sitting-room to breakfast she was compelled to confess to herself that she was feeling extremely nervous, and this amazed her because she so seldom felt nervous about anything. But it would be too awful if this Platt affair went wrong! To begin all over again with those advertisements, those absurd letters, that sudden contact with a world that seemed to be entirely incapacitated and desperately to need help without in the least being willing to pay for it!

  That was the real point about Miss Platt, that she was willing to pay. The brief interview had shown Millicent a middle-aged, rather stout woman, with a face like a strawberry that is afraid that at any moment it may be eaten, over-dressed, nervous and in some as yet undefined way, a little touching. She had taken, it seemed, to Millicent at once, calling her “my dear” and wanting to pay her anything in reason. “I’m so tired,” she said, “and I’ve seen so many women. They are all so pale. I want some one bright about the house.”