by Hugh Walpole
There was something in the air of Cladgate with its brass bands, its over-dressed women, its bridge and its dancing.
It is not to be supposed, however, that Millie worried herself very much. Only dimly behind her the sky had changed, thickening ever so slightly. Her sense of enchantment was not pierced.
Ellen arrived and was too sweet for any words.
In a letter to Henry, Millie wrote:
. . . and do you ever feel, I wonder, that our paths are crossing all the time? It is, I suppose, because we have always been so much together and have done everything together. But I see everything so vividly that it is exactly as though I had been there — Duncombe and the thick woods and the little chapel and the deserted rooms and the boxwood garden. All this here is the very opposite, of course, and yet simply the other half of a necessary whole perhaps. Aren’t I getting philosophical? Only I should hate to think that all that you are sharing in now is going out of the world and all this ugliness of mine remains. But of course it won’t, and it’s up to us, Henry, to see that it doesn’t.
Meanwhile, Ellen has arrived and is at present like one of those sugar mice that you buy at the toy-shop — simply too sweet for words. Poor thing, all she needs is for some one to love her passionately and she’ll never, never get it. She’s quite ready to love some one else passionately and to snatch what she can out of that, but she isn’t made for passion — she’s so bony and angular and suspicious, and is angry so easily.
I begged Victoria not to say anything about the engagement at present and she hasn’t, although it hurts her terribly to keep it in. Is’nt it silly to be afraid of Ellen? But I do so hate scenes. So many people seem to like them. Mother cured us of wanting them.
I’m dancing my legs off. Yesterday, I’m ashamed to say, I danced all a lovely afternoon. The Syncopated Orchestra here is heavenly, and Bunny says I two-step better than any one he’s ever known.
Meanwhile, under the dancing and the eating and the dressing-up, there’s the strangest feeling of unrest. Yesterday there was a Bolshevik meeting near the bandstand. Luckily there was a football match (very important — Cladgate v. Margate) and all the supposed Bolshies went to that instead. Aren’t we a funny country? Victoria’s very happy, dressing and undressing, taking people out in the car and buying things she doesn’t want. She plays bridge very badly and was showing signs of interest in Spiritualism. They have séances in the hotel every night, and Victoria went to one last evening and was fortunately frightened out of her life. Some one put a hand on her bare shoulder and she made such a fuss that they had to break up the séance. Give my love to Peter if you see him. He wrote me a sweet little letter about the engagement. . . .
That which Millie had said about her consciousness of Henry’s world was very true. It seemed to her that his life and experience was always intermingling with hers, and one could not possibly be complete without the other. Now, for instance, Ellen was the connecting link. Ellen, one could see at once, did not belong to Cladgate, with its materialism, snobbery and self-satisfaction. Cross old maid though you might call her, she had power and she had passion; moreover she was restless, in search of something that she would never find perhaps, but the search was the thing. That was Henry’s world — dear, pathetic, stumbling Henry, with his fairy princess straight out of Hans Andersen, and the wicked witch and the cottage built of sugar — all this, as Millie felt assured, to vanish with the crow of the cock, but to leave Henry (and here was what truly distinguished him from his fellows) with his vision captured, the vision that was more important than the reality. Ellen was one of the midway figures (and the world has many of them, discontented, aspiring, frustrated) who serve to join the Dream and the Business.
Unhappy they may be, but they have their important use and are not the least valuable part of God’s creation. See Ellen in her black, rather dingy frock striding about the corridors of the Cladgate hotel, and you were made uncomfortably to think of things that you would rather forget.
During her first days she was delighted with Cladgate and everything and everybody in it. Then the rain came back and danced upon the glass roofs and jazz bands screamed from floor to floor, and every one sat under the palms in pairs. There was no one to sit with Ellen; she did not play bridge, she did not dance. She was left alone. Millie tried to be kind to her when she remembered, but it was Ellen’s fate to be forgotten.
One evening, just as Millie was going to bed, Ellen came into the room. She stood by the door glowering.
“I’m going back to London to-morrow,” she announced.
“Oh, Ellen, why? I thought you were enjoying yourself so much.”
“I’m miserable here. Nobody wants me.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong. I — —”
She strode across to Millie’s dressing-table. “No, you don’t. Don’t lie about it. Do you think I haven’t eyes?”
Suddenly she sank on to the floor, burying her head in Millie’s lap, bursting into desperate crying.
“Oh, I’m so lonely — so miserable. Why did I ever come here? Nobody wants me. They’d rather I was dead. . . . They say work — find work, they say. What are you doing thinking about love with your plain face and ugly body? This is the Twentieth Century, they say, the time for women like you. Every woman’s free now. Free? How am I free? Work? What work can I do? I was never trained to anything. I can’t even write letters decently. When I work the others laugh at me — I’m so slow. I want some one to love — some one, something. I can’t keep even a dog because Victoria doesn’t like dogs. . . . Millie, be kind to me a little — let me love you a little, do things for you, run messages, anything. You’re so beautiful. Every one loves you. Give me a little. . . .”
Millie comforted her as best she might. She stroked her hair and kissed her, petted her, but, as before, in her youth and confidence she felt some contempt for Ellen.
“Get up,” she whispered. “Ellen, dear, don’t kneel like that. Please. . . . Please.”
Ellen got up.
“You do your best. You want to be kind. But you’re young. You can’t understand. One day, perhaps, you’ll know better,” and she went away.
Was it Ellen or the daily life of Cladgate that was beginning to throttle Millie? She should have been so happy, but now a cloud had come. She suddenly distrusted life, hearing whispers down the corridors, seeing heads close together, murmurs under that horrible, hateful band-music. . . .
Why was everyone conspiring towards ugliness? On a beautiful morning, after a night of bad and disturbed dreams, she awoke very early, and going down to the pebbled beach below the hotel she was amazed by the beauty on every side of her. The sea turned lazily over like a cat in the sun, purring, asking for its back to be scratched; a veil of blue mist hung from earth to heaven; the grey sea-wall, at midday so hard and grim, was softly purple; the long grass sward above her head sparkling in the dew was unsoiled by the touch of any human being; no sound at all save suddenly a white bird rising, floating like a sigh, outlined against the blue like a wave let loose into mid-air and the sea stroking the pebbles for love of their gleaming smiles.
She sat under the sea-wall longing for Bunny to be there, clutching her love with both hands and holding it out like a crystal bowl to the sea and air for them also to enjoy.
She had a perfect hour and returned into the hotel.
III
Then Ellen discovered. She faced Millie in Victoria’s sitting-room, her face graven and moulded like a mask.
“So you’re engaged to him after all?”
“Yes. I would have told you before only I knew that you wouldn’t like it — —”
“Wouldn’t like it?” With a short, “What does it matter what I like? All the same you’ve been kind to me once or twice, and for that I’m not going to see you ruining your life without making an effort.”
Millie flushed. She felt her anger rising as she had known that it would do. Foreseeing this scene she had told herself again and again that she mus
t keep her temper when it arrived, above all things keep her temper.
“Now, Ellen, please don’t. I know that you don’t like him, but remember that it’s settled now for good or bad. I’m very sorry that you don’t like him better, but when you know him — —”
“Know him! Know him? As though I didn’t. But I won’t let it pass. Even though you never speak to me again I’ll force such evidence under your nose that you’ll have to realize. Lord! the fools we women are! We talk of character and the things we say we admire, and we don’t admire them a bit. What we want is decent legs and a smooth mouth and soft hands. I thought you had some sense, a little wisdom, but you’re younger than any of us — I despise you, Millie, for this.”
Millie jumped up from the table where she had been writing.
“And what do I care, Ellen, whether you do despise me? Who are you to come and lecture me? I’ve had enough of your ill-temper and your scenes and all the rest of it. I don’t want your friendship. Go your own way and let me go mine.”
Within her a voice was saying: “You’ll be sorry for this afterwards. You know you will. You told me you were not going to lose your temper.”
Ellen tarried by the door. “You can say what you like to me, Millie. I’ll save you from this however much you hate me for it.” She went out.
“I despise you, Millie, for this.” The words rang in Millie’s head as she sat there alone, repeated themselves against her will. Well, what did it matter if Ellen did despise her? Yes it did matter. She had been laughing at Ellen all these weeks and yet she cared for her good opinion. Her vanity was wounded. She was little and mean and small.
And behind that there was something else. There had been more than anger and outraged sentiment in Ellen’s attitude. She had meant what she said. She had something serious in her mind about Bunny — something that she thought she knew . . . . something. . . .
“I’m contemptible!” Millie cried, “losing my temper with Ellen like a fishwife, then distrusting Bunny. I’m worthless.” She wanted to run after Ellen and beg her pardon but pride restrained her. Instead she was cross with Victoria all the morning.
Victoria’s affairs were especially agitating to herself at this time and made her uncertain in her temper and easily upset. Out of the mist in which her many admirers obscurely floated two figures had risen who were quite obviously suitors for her hand. When Millie had first begun to perceive this she doubted the evidence of her observation. It could not be possible that any one should want to marry Victoria, stout and middle-aged as she was. But on second thoughts it seemed quite the simple natural thing for any adventurer to attempt. There was Victoria’s money, with which she quite obviously did not know what to do. Why should not some one for whom youth was over, whose income was an uncertain quantity, decide to spend it for her?
Millie called both these men adventurers. There she was unjust. Major Miles Mereward was no adventurer; he was simply an honest soldier really attracted by Victoria. Honest, but Lord, how dull!
As he sat in Victoria’s room, the chair creaking beneath his fat body, his red hair rough and unbrushed, his red moustache untrimmed, his red hands clutching his old grey soft hat, he was the most uncomfortable, awkward, silent man Millie had ever met. He had nothing to say at all; he would only stare at Victoria, give utterance to strange guttural noises that were negatives and affirmatives almost unborn. He was poor, but he was honest. He thought Victoria the most marvellous creature in the world with her gay talk and light colour. He scarcely realized that she had any money. Far otherwise his rival Robin Bennett.
Mr. Bennett was a man of over forty, one who might be the grandson of Byron or a town’s favourite “Hamlet”— “Distinguished” was the word always used about him.
He dressed beautifully; he moved, Victoria declared, “like a picture.” Not only this; he was able to talk with easy fluency upon every possible subject — politics, music, literature, painting, he had his hand upon them all. Moreover, he was adaptable. He understood just why Victoria preferred the novels she did, and he was not superior to her because of her taste. He knew why tears filled her eyes when the band played “Pomp and Circumstance,” and thought it quite natural that on such an occasion she should want, as she said, “to run out and give sixpences to all the poor children in the place.” He did not pretend to her that her bridge-playing was good. That indeed was more than even his Arts could encompass, but he did assure her that she was making progress with every game she played. He even tempted her in the ballroom of the hotel into the One-Step and the Fox-Trot, and an amusing sight for every one it was to see Victoria’s flushed and clumsy efforts.
Nevertheless, it was obvious to the meanest intelligence that the man was an adventurer. Every one in the hotel knew it — Victoria was his third target that season; even Victoria did not disguise it altogether from herself.
It was here that Millie found her touching and appealing. Millie realized that this was the very first time in Victoria’s life that any one had made love to her; that it was her money to which Bennett was making love seemed at the moment to matter very little. The woman was knowing, at long last, what it meant to have eyes — fine, large, brown eyes — gazing into hers, what it was to have her lightest word listened to with serious attention, what it was would some one hasten to open the door, to push forward a chair for her, to pick up her handkerchief when she dropped it (a thing that she was always now doing). Mereward did none of these things for her — his brain moved too slowly to make the race a fair one. He was beaten by Bennett (who deeply despised him) every time.
But Victoria was only half a fool. “Millie mine,” she said, “don’t you find Major Mereward very restful? He’s a good man.”
“He is indeed,” said Millie.
“Of course he hasn’t Mr. Bennett’s brains. I said to Mr. Bennett last night, ‘I can’t think how it is with your brilliance that you are not in the Cabinet.’”
“And what did Mr. Bennett say?” asked Millie.
“Oh, that he had never cared about politics, that it wasn’t a gentleman’s game any longer — in which I’m sure he’s quite right. It seems a pity though. With his beautiful voice and fine carriage he might have done anything. He says his lack of means has always kept him back.”
“I expect it has,” said Millie.
She was however able to give only half a glance towards Victoria’s interesting problem because of the increasing difficulty and unexpectedness of her own.
From the very first, long before he had spoken to her on that morning in the Cromwell Road, she had made with her hands a figure of fair and lovely report. It might be true that also from the very first she had seen that Bunny, like Roderick Hudson, “evidently had a native relish for rich accessories, and appropriated what came to his hand,” or, like the young man in Galleon’s Widow’s Comedy, “believed that the glories of the world were by right divine his own natural property” — all this she had seen and it had but dressed the figure with the finer colour and glow. Bunny was handsome enough and clever enough and bright enough to carry off the accessories as many a more dingy mortal might not do. And so, having set up her figure, she proceeded to deck it with every little treasure and ornament that she could find. All the little kindnesses, the unselfish thoughts, the sudden impulses of affection, the thanks and the promises and the ardours she collected and arranged. At first there had been many of these; when Bunny was happy and things went well with him he was kind and generous.
Then — and especially since the little quarrel about Victoria’s money — these occasions were less frequent. It seemed that he was wanting something — something that he was in a hurry to get — and that he had not time now for little pleasantries and courtesies. His affection was not less ardent than it had been — it grew indeed with every hour more fierce — but Millie knew that he was hurrying her into insecure country and that she should not go with him and that she could not stop.
The whole situation now was unsatisfactory. H
is mother had been in London for some days but Bunny said nothing of going to see her. Millie was obliged to face the fact that he did not wish to tell his mother of their engagement. Every morning when she woke she told herself that to-day she would force it all into the daylight, would issue ultimatums and stand by them, but when she met him, fear of some horrible crisis held her back— “Another day — let me have another lovely day. I will speak to him to-morrow.”
She who had always been so proud and fearless was now full of fear. She knew that when he was not thwarted he was still charming, ardent, affectionate, her lover — and so she did not thwart him.
Nothing had yet occurred that was of serious moment, the things about which they differed were little things, and she let them go by. He was always telling her of her beauty, and for the first time in her life she knew that she was beautiful. Her beauty grew amazingly during those weeks. She carried herself nobly, her head high, her mouth a little ironical, her eyes sparkling with the pleasure of life and the vigour of perfect health, knowing that all the hotel world and indeed all Cladgate was watching her and paying tribute to her beauty.
No one disputed that she was the most beautiful girl in Cladgate that summer. She roused no jealousy. She was too young, too simple, too natural and too kindly-hearted.
All the world could very quickly see that she was absorbed by young Baxter and had no thoughts for any one but him. She had no desire to snatch other young men from their triumphant but fighting captors. She was of a true, generous heart; she would do any one a good turn, laugh with any one, play with any one, sympathize with any one.
She was not only the most beautiful, she was also the best-liked girl in the place.