Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  “His mother insists on this, and until I told her she had no idea that he was involved with any one else.”

  “A nice kind of story,” Bunny broke in furiously. “Just what any old maid would pick up if she went round with her nose in the village mud. It’s true, Millie, that I was engaged to this girl last year, and then Christmas-time we saw that we were quite unsuited to one another and we broke it off.”

  “Is it true,” asked Millie quietly, “that your mother says that you’re to marry her?”

  “My mother’s old-fashioned. She thinks that I’m pledged in some way. I’m not pledged at all.”

  “Is it true that the village thinks that you’re the father of this poor girl’s child?”

  “I don’t know what the village thinks. They all hate me there, anyway. They’d say anything to hurt me. Probably this woman’s been bribing them.”

  “Oh, poor girl! How old is she?”

  “I don’t know. Nineteen. Twenty.”

  “Oh, poor, poor girl! . . . Did you promise your mother that you would marry her?”

  “I had to say something. I haven’t a penny. My mother would cut me off absolutely if I didn’t promise.”

  “And you’ve known all this the whole summer?”

  “Of course I’ve known it.”

  “And not said a word to me?”

  “I’ve tried to tell you. It’s been so difficult. You’ve got such funny ideas about some things. I wasn’t going to lose you.”

  Something he saw in Millie’s face startled him. He came nearer to her. They had both completely forgotten Ellen. She gave Millie one look, then quietly left the room.

  “But you must understand, Millie,” he began, a new note of almost desperate urgency in his voice. “I’ve been trying to tell you all the summer. I don’t love this girl and she doesn’t love me. It would be perfectly criminal to force us to marry. She doesn’t want to marry me. I swear she doesn’t. I don’t know whose child this is — —”

  “Could it be yours?”

  “There’s another fellow — —”

  “Could it be yours?”

  “Yes, if you want to know, it could. But she hates me now. She says she won’t marry me — she does really. And this was all before I knew you. If it had happened after I knew you it would be different. But you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, you are truly. I’m not much of a fellow in many ways, I know, but you can make anything of me. And if you turn me down I’ll go utterly to pieces. There’s never been any one since I first saw you.”

  She interrupted him, looking past him at the shining window.

  “And that’s why I never met your mother? That poor girl . . . that poor girl . . . .”

  “But you’re not going to throw me over?”

  “Throw you over?” She looked at him, wide-eyed. “But you don’t belong to me — and I don’t belong to you. We’ve nothing to do with one another any more. We don’t touch anywhere.”

  He tried to take her hand. She moved back.

  “It’s no good, Bunny. It’s over. It’s all over.”

  “No — don’t — don’t let me go like this. Don’t — —” Then he looked at her face.

  “All right, then,” he said. “You’ll be sorry for this.”

  And he went.

  CHAPTER IX

  QUICK GROWTH

  He stayed beside the desk for a long time, turning the papers over and over, reading, as she long afterwards remembered, the beginning of one letter many times: “Dear Victoria — If you take the 3.45 from Waterloo that will get you to us in nice time for tea. The motor shall meet you at the station.”

  “The motor shall meet you at the station. . . . The motor shall meet you at the station. . . .”

  Well, and why shouldn’t it? How easy for motors to meet trains — that is, if you have a motor. But motors are expensive these days, and then there is the petrol — and the chauffeur must cost something. . . . But that’s all right if you can drive yourself — drive yourself. . . . She pulled herself up. Where was she? Oh, in Victoria’s sitting-room. How hot the room was! And the beginning of October. How hot and how empty! Then as though something cut her just beneath the heart, she started. She put her hand to her forehead. Her head was aching horribly. She would go home. She knew that Victoria would not mind.

  Her only dominant impulse then was to be out of that house, that house that reminded her with every step she took of something that she must forget — but what she must forget she did not know.

  In the hall she found her hat and coat. Beppo was there.

  “Beppo,” she said, “tell Miss Victoria that I have a headache and have gone home. She’ll understand.”

  “Yes, miss,” he said, grinning at her in that especially confidential way that he had with those whom he considered his friends.

  In the street she took a taxi, something very foreign to her economic habits. But she wanted to hide herself from everybody. No one must see her and stop her and ask her questions that she could not answer. And she must get home quickly so that she might go into her own room and shut her door and be safe.

  In the sitting-room she found Mary Cass sitting at the table with a pile of books in front of her, nibbling a pencil.

  “Hullo!” cried Mary. “You back already?”

  Then she jumped up, the book falling from her hand to the floor.

  “Darling, what’s the matter? . . . What’s happened?”

  “Why, do I look funny?” said Millie smiling. “There’s nothing the matter. I’ve got an awful headache — that’s all. I’m going to lie down.”

  But Mary had her arms around her. “Millie, what is it? You look awful. Are you feeling ill?”

  “No, only my headache.” Millie gently disengaged herself from Mary’s embrace. “I’m going into my room to lie down.”

  “Shall I get something for you? Let me — —”

  “Please leave me alone, Mary dear. I want to be left alone. That’s all I want.”

  She went into her bedroom, drew down the blinds, lay down on her bed, closing her eyes. How weak and silly she was to come home just for a headache, to give up her morning’s work without an effort because she felt a little ill! Think of all the girls in the shops and the typists and the girl secretaries and the omnibus girls and all the others, they can’t go home just because they have a headache — just because . . .

  Mary Cass had come in and very quietly had laid on her forehead a wet handkerchief with eau-de-cologne. Ah! That was better! That was cool. She faded away down into space where there was trouble and disorder and pain, trouble in which she had some share but was too lazy to inquire what.

  Then she awoke sharply with a jerk, as though some one had pushed her up out of darkness into light. The Marylebone church clock was striking. First the quarters. Then four o’clock very slowly. . . . She was wide awake now and realized everything. It was the middle of the afternoon and she had been asleep for hours. Her head was still aching very badly but it did not keep her back now as it had done.

  She knew now what had happened. She had seen the last of Bunny, the very, very last. She would never see him again, nor hear his voice again, nor feel his kiss on her cheek.

  And at first there was the strangest relief. The matter was settled then, and that confusing question that had been disturbing her for so many months. There would be no more doubts about Bunny, whether he were truthful or no, why he did not take her to his mother, whether he would write every day, and why a letter was suddenly cold when yesterday’s letter had been so loving, as to why they had so many quarrels. . . . No, no more quarrels, no more of that dreadful pain in the heart and wondering whether he would telephone or whether her pride would break first and she would speak to him. Relief, relief, relief —— Relief connected in some way with the little dancing circle of afternoon sunlight on the white ceiling, connected with the things on her dressing-table, the purple pin-cushion, the silver-backed brushes that Katherine had given her, the slanting
sheet of looking-glass that reflected the end of her bed and the chair and the piece of blue carpet. Relief. . . . She turned over, resting her head on her hand, looking at the pearl-grey wall-paper. Relief! . . . and she would never see him again, never hear his voice again! Some one in the room with her uttered a sharp, bitter cry. Who was it? She was alone. Then the knife plunged deep into her heart, plunged and plunged again, turning over and over. The pain was so terrible that she put her hand over her eyes lest she should see this other woman who was there with her suffering so badly. No, but it was herself. It was she who would never see Bunny again, never hear his voice.

  She sat up, her hands clenched, summoning control and self-command with all the strength that was in her soul. She must not cry, she must not speak. She must stare her enemy in the face, beat him down. Well, then. She and Bunny were parted. He did not belong to her. He belonged to that poor girl of whose baby he was the father.

  She fought then, for twenty minutes, the hardest battle of her life — the struggle to face the facts. The facts were, quite simply, that she could never be with Bunny any more, and worse than that, that he did not belong to her any more but to another woman.

  She had not arrived yet at any criticism of him — perhaps that would never be. When a woman loves a man he is a child to her, so simple, so young, so ignorant, that his faults, his crimes, his deceits are swallowed in his babyhood. Bunny had behaved abominably — as ill as any man could behave; she did not yet see his behaviour, but when it came to her she would say that she should have been there to care for him and then it would never have been. She was to remember later, and with a desperate, wounding irony, how years before, when she had been the merest child and Katherine had been engaged to Philip, Henry had discovered that Philip had once in Russia had a mistress who had borne him a child.

  Millie, when she had heard this, had poured indignant scorn upon the suggestion that Katherine should leave her lover because of this earlier affair. Had it not all had its history before Katherine had known Philip? How ironic a parallel here! Did not Millie’s indignant, brave, fearless youth rise up here to challenge her? No, that other woman had surrendered Philip long, long before. This woman . . . poor child —— Only nineteen and the village mocking her, waiting for her child with scorn and coarse gossip and taunting sneers!

  She got up, bathed her face, her eyes dry and hot, her cheeks flaming, brushed her hair and went into the sitting-room.

  No one was there, only the evening sun like a kindly spirit moving from place to place, touching all with gentle, tender fingers. Strange that she could have slept for so long! She would never sleep again — never. Always would she watch, untouched, unmoved, that strange, coloured, leaping world moving round and round before her, moving for others, for their delight, their pain, but only for her scorn.

  Mary Cass came in with her serious face and preoccupied air.

  “Hullo Mill! Head better?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “That’s good. Had a sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Splendid. . . . Lord, I’ve got plenty of work here. I don’t know what they think we’re made of. Talk about stuffing geese to get foie-gras! People say that’s wicked. Nothing to what they do to us. Had any tea?”

  “No.”

  “Want any?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Do your head good. But I daresay you’re right. I’m going to have some though.”

  She moved about busying herself in her calm efficient way, lighting the spirit lamp, getting out the cups, cutting the bread.

  “Sure you won’t have some?”

  “No thanks.”

  Tactful Mary was — none of that awful commiseration, no questions.

  A good pal, but how far away, what infinite distance!

  Millie took the book that was nearest to her, opened it and read page after page without seeing the words.

  Then a sentence caught her.

  “Nor is it altogether the remembrance of her cathedral stopping earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain. . . .”

  “The tearlessness of arid skies that never rain?” How strange a phrase! What was this queer book? She read on. “Thus when the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings of the festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings of the windrowed snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt!”

  The murmuring of the wonderful prose consoled her, lulled her. She read on and on. What a strange book! What was it about? She could not tell. It did not matter. About the Sea. . . .

  “What’s that you’re reading, Mill?”

  She looked back to the cover.

  “Moby-Dick.”

  “What a name! I wonder how it got here.”

  “Perhaps Henry left it.”

  “I daresay. He’s always reading something queer.”

  The comfortable little clock struck seven.

  “You’d better eat something, you know.”

  “No thank you, Mary.”

  “Look here, Mill — you won’t tell me what the trouble is?”

  “Not now. . . . Later on.”

  “All right. Sorry, old dear. But every trouble passes.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  She read on for an hour. The little clock struck eight. She put the book down.

  “I’ll go to bed now I think.”

  “Right oh! Nothing I can get you?”

  “No. I’m all right.”

  “Shall I come and sleep with you?”

  “Oh, no!”

  She crossed and kissed her friend, then quietly went to her room. She undressed, switched off the light, and lay on her back staring. A terrible time was coming, the worst time of all. She knew what it would be — Remembering Things. Remembering everything, every tiny, tiny little thing. Oh, if that would only leave her alone for to-night, until to-morrow when she would endure it more easily. But now. They were coming, creeping towards her across the floor, in at the window, in at the door, from under the bed.

  “I don’t want to remember! I don’t want to remember!” she cried.

  Then they came, in a long endless procession, crowding eagerly with mocking laughter one upon another! That first day of all when she had quarrelled with Victoria and she had come downstairs to find him waiting for her, when they had sat upon her boxes, his arm round her. When they had walked across the Park and he had given her tea. After their first quarrel which had been about nothing at all, and he had sent her flowers, when he had caught her eye across the luncheon-table at Victoria’s and they had laughed at their own joke, their secret joke, and Clarice had seen them and been so angry. . . . Yes, and moments caught under flashing sunlight, gathering dusk — moments at Cladgate, dancing in the hotel with the rain crackling on the glass above them, sudden movements of generosity and kindliness when his face had been serious, grave, involved consciously in some holy quest . . . agonizing moments of waiting for him, feeling sure that he would not come, then suddenly seeing him swing along, his eyes searching for her, lighting at the sight of her. . . . His hand seeking hers, finding it, hers soft against the cool strength of his . . . jokes, jokes, known only to themselves, nicknames that they gave, funny points of view they had, “men like trees walking,” presents, a little jade box that he had given her, the silver frame for his photograph, a tennis racket. . . .

  Oh, no, no, shut it out! I can’t hear it any longer! If you come to me still I must go to him, find him, tell him I love him whatever it is that he has done, and that I will stay with him, be with him, hear his voice. . . .

  She sat up, her hands to her head, the frenzy of another woman beating now in her brain. She did not know the hour nor the place; the world on every side of her was utterly still, you might hear the minutes like drops of water falling into the pool of silence. She saw it a vast inverted bowl gleaming white against the deep blue of the sky shredded with
stars. On the edge of this bowl she was walking perilously, as on a rope over space.

  She had slept — but now she was awake, clear-headed, seeing everything distinctly, and what she saw was that she must go to Bunny, must find him, must tell him that she would never leave him again.

  She was now so clear about it because the peril she saw in front of her was her loneliness. To go on, living for ever and ever in a completely empty world, walking round and round on that ridge above that terrible shining silence — could that be expected of any one? No. Seriously she spoke aloud, shaking her head: “I can’t be supposed to endure that.”

  She got out of bed and dressed very carefully, very cautiously, realizing quite clearly that she must not wake Mary Cass, who would certainly stop her from going to find Bunny. Time did not occur to her, only she saw that the moonlight was shining into her room throwing milky splashes upon the floor, and these she avoided as though they would contaminate her, walking carefully around them as she dressed. She went softly into the sitting-room, softly down the stairs, softly into the street. She was wearing her little crimson hat because that was one that he liked.

  She stayed for a moment in the street marvelling at its coolness and silence. The night breeze touched her cheek caressing her. Yes, the sky blazed with stars — blazed! And the houses were ebony black, like rocks over still deep water.

  Everything around her seemed to give, at regular intervals, little shudders of ecstasy — a quiver in which she also shared. She walked down the street with rapid steps, her face set with serious determination. The sooner to reach Bunny! No one impeded her. It seemed to her that as she advanced the rocks grew closer about her, hanging more thickly overhead and shutting out the stars.

  She was nearing the Park. There were trees, festoons above the water making dark patterns and yet darker shadows.