Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  “Yes I expect having a lot of money suddenly is a trouble,” she said. “I must be getting on with my work.”

  She moved into the little room; Ellen Platt followed her as though determined to fire her last shot at close quarters.

  “Victoria’s had five secretaries in the last month,” she said. “And they’ve none of them been able to stand it a week, and they were older women than you,” then she went out, banging the door behind her.

  “What an unpleasant woman,” thought Millie, then buried herself again in her work.

  Her other interruption came half an hour later. The door opened and there came in a man of medium height, bald and with a bushy moustache so striking that it seemed as though he should have either more hair on his head or less over his mouth. He had twinkling eyes and was dressed in grey. He came across the room without seeing Millie, then started with surprise.

  “Good heavens!” he said. “A girl!”

  “I’m Miss Platt’s new secretary,” she said.

  “And I’m Miss Platt’s family physician,” he said through his moustache. “My name’s Brooker.” He added smiling, “You seem in a bit of a mess there.”

  She must have looked in a mess, the papers lying in tangled heaps on every side of her; to herself she seemed at last to be evoking order.

  “I’m not in so much of a mess as I was an hour ago,” she said.

  “No, I daresay.” He nodded his head. “You look more efficient than the last secretary who cried so often that all Miss Platt’s correspondence looked as though it had been out in the rain.”

  “What did she cry about?” asked Millie.

  “Homesickness and indigestion and general confusion,” he answered. “You don’t look as though you’ll cry.”

  “I’m much more likely to smash Eve,” said Millie. “Don’t you think I might ask Miss Platt to have her moved back a little this afternoon? It’s so awful feeling that she’s watching everything you do.”

  “There’s nowhere very much to have her moved back to,” said the Doctor. “She’s back as far as she will go now. You’re very young,” he added quite irrelevantly.

  “I’m not,” said Millie. “I’m twenty-five.”

  “You don’t look that. I don’t want to be inquisitive, but — did you know anything about these people before you came here?”

  “No,” said Millie. “No more than one knows from a first impression. Why? You look concerned about me. Have I made a mistake?”

  The doctor laughed. “Not if you have a sense of humour and plenty of determination. The last four ladies lacked both those qualities. Mind you, I’m devoted to the family. Their father, poor old Joe, was one of my greatest friends.”

  “Why do you pity him?” asked Millie quickly.

  “Because he was one of those most unfortunate of human beings — a man who had one great ambition in life, worked for it all his days, realized it before he died and found it dust in the mouth. The one thing he wanted from life was money. He was a poor man all his days until the War — then he made a corner in rum and made so much money he didn’t know what to do with himself. The confusion and excitement of it all was too much for him and he died of apoplexy.

  “Only the day before he died he said to me: ‘Tom, I’ve put my money on the wrong horse. I’ve been a fool all my life.’”

  “And he left his money to his daughters?” asked Millie.

  “To Victoria, always his favourite. And he left it to her to do just as she liked with and to behave as she pleased to her sisters.”

  He had never cared about Clarice and Ellen. He was disappointed because they weren’t boys.

  “So Victoria’s King of the Castle and knows she is, too, for all that she’s a good, kind-hearted woman. Are you interested in human beings, Miss —— ?”

  “Trenchard,” said Millie. “I am.”

  “Well if you really are you’ve come to the right place. You won’t find anything more interesting in the whole of London. Here you have right in front of your nose that curious specimen of the human family, the New Rich, and you have it in its most touching and moving aspect — frightened, baffled, confused, bewildered and plundered.

  “Plundered! My God! you’ll have plenty of opportunity of discovering the Plunderers in the next few weeks if you stay. There are some prime specimens here. If you’re a good girl — and you don’t look a bad one — you’ll have a chance of saving Victoria. Another year like the one she’s just gone through and I think she’ll be in an asylum!”

  “Oh, poor thing!” cried Millie. “Indeed I’m going to do my very best.”

  “Mind you,” he went on, “she’s foolish — there never was a more foolish woman. And she can be a tyrant too. Clarice and Ellen have a hard time of it. But they take her the wrong way. They resent it that she should hold the purse and they show her that they resent it. You can do anything you like with her if you make her fond of you. There never was a warmer-hearted woman.”

  He went over to Millie’s desk and stood close to her. “I’m telling you all this, Miss Trenchard,” he said, “because I like the look of you. I believe you’re just what’s needed in this house. You’ve got all the enchantment of youth and health and beauty if you’ll forgive my saying so. The Enchanted Age doesn’t last very long, but those who are in it can do so much for those who are outside, and generally they are so taken up with their own excitement that they’ve no time to think of those others. You’ll never regret it all your life if you do something for this household before you leave it.”

  Millie was deeply touched. “Of course I will,” she said, “if I can. And you really think I can? I’m terribly ignorant and inexperienced.”

  “You’re not so inexperienced as they are.” He held out his hand. “Come to me if you’re disheartened or bewildered. There’ll be times when you will be. I’ve known these women since they were babies so I can help you.”

  They shook hands on it.

  CHAPTER IV

  HENRY’S FIRST DAY

  Meanwhile Henry’s plunge into a cold and hostile world was of quite another kind.

  One of the deep differences between brother and sister was that while Millie was realistic Henry was romantic. He could not help but see things in a coloured light, and now when he started out for his first morning with his Baronet London was all lit up like a birthday cake. He had fallen during the last year under the spell of the very newest of the Vers Librists, and it had become a passion with him to find fantastic images for everything that he saw. Moreover, the ease of it all fascinated him. He was, God knows, no poet, but quite simply, without any trouble at all, lines came tumbling into his head:

  The chimneys, like crimson cockatoos, Fling their grey feathers Wildly.

  or

  The washing Billowing — Frozen egg-shells Crimson pantaloons Skyline Flutter.

  or

  The omnibuses herd together In the dirty autumn weather Elephants in jungle town Monkey-nuts come pattering down.

  and so on and so on. . . .

  He got deep pleasure from these inspirations; he had sent three to an annual anthology Hoops, and one of them, “Railway-Lines — Bucket-shop,” was to appear in the 1920 volume.

  But the trouble with Henry was that cheek by jowl with this modern up-to-date impulse ran a streak of real old-fashioned, entirely out-of-date Romance. It was true, as Millie had informed Miss Platt, that he had written ten chapters of a story, The House in the Lonely Wood.

  How desperately was he ashamed of his impulse to write this romance and yet how at the same time he loved doing it! Was ever young literary genius in a more shameful plight! A true case of double personality! With the day he pursued the path of all the young 1920 Realists, believing that nothing matters but “the Truth, the calm, cold, unaffected Truth,” thrilling to the voices of the Three Graces, loving the company of the somewhat youthful editor of Hoops, reading every word that fell from the pen of the younger realistic critics.

  And then at ni
ght out came the other personality and Henry, hair on end, the penny bottle of ink in front of him, pursued, alas happily and with the divine shining behind his eyelids, the simple path of unadulterated, unashamed Romance!

  What would the Three Graces say, how would the editor of Hoops regard him, did they know what he did night after night in the secrecy of his own chamber, or rather of Mr. King’s chamber? Perhaps they would not greatly care — they did not in any case consider him as of any very real importance. Nevertheless he could not but feel that he was treating them to double-dealing.

  And then his trouble was suddenly healed by the amazing, overwhelming adventure of Piccadilly Circus. As he had discovered at the Hunters’ party, nothing now mattered but the outcome of that adventure. He worked at his Romance with redoubled vigour; it did not seem to him any longer a shameful affair, simply because he had now in his own experience a Romance greater and wilder than any fancy could give him. Also images and similes occurred to him more swiftly than ever, and they were no longer modern, no longer had any connection with Hoops or the new critics, but were simply the attempts that his own soul was making to clothe Her and everything about Her, even Her horrible mother, with all the beauty and colour that his genius could provide. (Henry did not really, at this time, doubt that he had genius — the doubting time was later.)

  It will be seen then that he started for Sir Charles Duncombe’s house in a very romantic spirit.

  The address was No. 13 Hill Street, Berkeley Square, so that Henry had a very little way to go from his Panton Street room. Hill Street is a bright, cheerful place enough with a sense of dignity and age about it and a consciousness that it knows only the very best people. Even the pillar-boxes and the lamp-posts call for decorum and are accustomed, you can see, to butlers, footmen and very superior ladies’-maids. But it cannot be denied that many of the Hill Street houses are dark inside and No. 13 is no exception to that rule. Unlike most of the Hill Street houses which all often change masters, No. 13 had been in the possession of the Duncombe family for a great many years, ever since the days of Queen Anne, in fact, the days of the famous Richard Duncombe who, being both the most desperate gambler and the astutest brain for a bargain in all London, made and lost fortunes with the greatest frequency.

  Henry on this first morning knew nothing about the family history of the Duncombes, but if he had known he might have readily believed that so far as the hall and the butler went no change whatever had been made since those elegant polished Queen Anne days. The hall was so dark and the butler so old that Henry dared neither to move, lest he should fall over something, nor to speak lest it should seem irreverent. He stood, therefore, rooted to the stone floor and muttered something so inaudibly that the old man courteously waiting could not hear at all.

  “Henry Trenchard,” he said at last, looking wildly about him. How the cold seemed to strike up through the stone flags into his very marrow!

  “Quite so, sir,” said the old man. “Sir Charles is expecting you.”

  Up an enormous stone staircase they went, Henry’s boots making a great clatter, his teeth against his will chattering. Portraits looked down upon him, but so dark it was that you could only catch a glimmer of their old gold frames.

  To Henry, modern though he might endeavour to be, there would recur persistently that picture — the most romantic picture perhaps in all his childish picture-gallery — of Alan Fairford, sick and ill, dragged by Nanty Ewart through the dying avenues of Fairladies, having at long last that interview with the imperious Father Bonaventure in the long gallery of the crumbling house — the interview, the secret letter, the mysterious lady “whose step was that of a queen.” “Whose neck and bosom were admirably formed, and of a dazzling whiteness” — the words still echoed in Henry’s heart calling from that far day when a tiny boy in his attic at Garth he read by the light of a dipping candle the history of Redgauntlet from a yellowing closely-printed page.

  Here, in the very heart of London was Fairladies once again and who could tell? . . . Might not the spring in the wall be touched, a bookcase step aside and a lady, “her neck and bosom of a startling whiteness,” appear? For shame! He had now his own lady. The time had gone by for dreams. He came to reality with a start, finding himself in a long dusky library so thickly embedded with old books that the air was scented with the crushed aroma of old leather bindings. A long oak table confronted him and behind the table, busily engaged with writing, was his new master.

  The old man muttered something and was gone. Sir Charles did not look up and Henry, his heart beating fast, was able to study his surroundings. The library was all that the most romantic soul could have wished it. The ceiling was high and stamped with a gold pattern. A gallery about seven feet from the ground ran round the room, and a little stairway climbed up to this; except for their high diamond-paned windows on one side of the room the bookcases completely covered the walls; thousands upon thousands of old books glimmered behind their gold tooling, the gold running like a thin mist from wall to wall.

  Above the wide stone fireplace there was a bust of a sharp-nosed gentleman in whig and stock, very supercilious and a little dusty.

  With all this Henry also took surreptitious peeps at Sir Charles, and what he saw did not greatly reassure him. He was a very thin man, dressed in deep black and a high white collar that would in other days have been called Gladstonian, bald, tight-lipped and with the same peaked bird-like nose as the gentleman above the fireplace. He gave an impression of perfect cleanness, neatness and order. Everything on the table, letter-weight, reference-books, paper knife, silver ink-bottle, pens and sealing-wax, was arranged so definitely that these things might have been stuck on to the table with glue. Sir Charles’s hands were long, thin and bird-shaped like his nose. Henry, as he snatched glimpses of this awe-inspiring figure, was acutely conscious of his own deficiencies; he felt tumbled, rumpled, and crumpled. Whereas, only a quarter of an hour ago walking down Hill Street, he had felt debonair, smart and fashionable (far of course from what he really was), so unhappily impressionable was he.

  Suddenly the hand was raised, the pen laid carefully down, the nose shot out across the table.

  “You are Mr. Trenchard?” asked a voice that made Henry feel as though he were a stiff sheet of paper being slowly cut by a very sharp knife.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Very well. . . . We have only corresponded hitherto. Mr. Mark is your cousin, I think?”

  “My brother-in-law, sir.”

  “Quite. A very able fellow. He should go far.”

  Henry had never cared for Philip who, in his own private opinion, should have never gone any distance at all, but on the present occasion he could only offer up a very ineffective “Yes.”

  “Very well. You have never been anybody’s secretary before?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And you understand that I am giving you a month’s trial entirely on your brother-in-law’s recommendation?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what” — here the nose shot out and forward in most alarming fashion— “do you understand a secretary’s duties to be?”

  Henry smiled rather to give himself confidence than for any other very definite reason. “Well, sir, I should say that you would want to me to write letters to your dictation and keep your papers in order and, perhaps, to interview people whom you don’t wish to see yourself and — and, — possibly to entrust me with missions of importance.”

  “Hum. . . . Quite. . . . I understand that you can typewrite and that you know shorthand?”

  “Well, sir” — here Henry smiled again— “I think I had better be frank with you from the beginning. I don’t typewrite very well. I told Philip not to lay much emphasis on that. And my shorthand is pretty quick, but I can’t generally read it afterwards.”

  “Indeed! And would you mind telling me why, with these deficiencies, you fancied that you would make me a good secretary?”

  Henry’s heart sank. H
e saw himself within the next five minutes politely ushered down the stone staircase, through the front door and so out into Hill Street.

  “I don’t think,” he said, “that I will make you a very good secretary, not in the accepted sense. I know that I shall make mistakes and be clumsy and forgetful, but I will do my very best and you can trust me, and — I am really not such a fool as I often look.”

  These were the very last words that Henry had intended to say. It was as though some one else had spoken them for him. Now he had ruined his chances. There was nothing for it but to accept his dismissal and go.

  However, Sir Charles seemed to take it all as the most natural thing in the world.

  “Quite,” he said. “Your brother-in-law tells me that you are an author.”

  “I’m not exactly one yet,” said Henry. “I hope to be one soon, but of course the war threw me back.”

  “And what kind of an author do you intend to be?”

  “I mean to be a novelist,” said Henry, feeling quite sure that this was the very last thing that Sir Charles would ever consider any one ought to be.

  “Exactly. And you will I suppose be doing your own work when you ought to be doing mine?”

  “No, I won’t,” said Henry eagerly. “I can’t pretend that I won’t sometimes be thinking of it. It’s very hard to keep it out of one’s head sometimes. But I’ll do my best not to.”

  “Quite. . . . Won’t you sit down?” Henry sat down on a stiff-backed chair.

  “If you will kindly listen I will explain to you what I shall wish you to do for me. As you have truly suggested I shall need some help with my letters; some typing also will be necessary. But the main work I have in hand for you is another matter. My grandfather, Ronald Duncombe, was a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century. He was a great letter-writer, and knew all the most interesting personalities of his time. You, doubtless, like all the new generation, despise your parents and laugh at your grandparents.” Sir Charles paused here as though he expected an answer to a question.