by Hugh Walpole
“Peter, old man, I’m dreadfully landed. There’s something that ought to be done and I don’t know what it is. I never do know. It’s Christina of course. I’ve just had the most awful scene with her mother; she’s cursed me like a fishwife and forbidden me to come near the house again. Of course I knew that this was coming, but Christina warned me that when it did come it would mean that her mother had finally made up her mind to something and wasn’t going to waste any time about it. . . . Well, where’s Christina, and how am I to get at her? I don’t know what’s happening. They may be torturing her or anything. That woman’s capable of. . . .”
He broke off, his eyes widening. The door from the inner room opened and a woman came out.
“Henry,” said Peter, “let me introduce you. This is my wife.”
Henry’s first thought was: “Now I must show no surprise at this. I mustn’t hurt Peter’s feelings.” And his second: “Oh dear! Poor thing! How terribly ill she looks!”
His consciousness of her was at once so strong that he forgot himself and Peter. He had never seen any one in the least like her before: this was not Peter’s wife come back to him, but some one who had peered up for a moment out of a world so black and tragic that Henry had never even guessed at its existence. Not his experiences in the War, not his mother’s death, nor Duncombe’s tragedy, nor Christina and her horrible parent were real to him as was suddenly this little woman with her strange yellow hair, her large angry eyes, her shabby black dress. What a face! — he would never forget it so long as life lasted — with its sickness and anger and disgust and haggard rebellion.
Yes, there were worse things than the War, worse things than assaults on the body, than maiming and sudden death. His young inexperience took a shoot into space at that instant when he first saw Clare Westcott.
She stared at him scornfully, then she suddenly put her hand to her throat and sat down on the sofa with pain in her eyes and a stare of rebellious anger as though she were saying:
“I’ll escape you yet. . . . But you’re damned persistent. . . . Leave me, can’t you?”
Peter came to her. “Clare, this is Henry Trenchard — my best friend.”
Henry came across holding out his hand:
“How do you do? I’m very glad to meet you?”
She gave him her hand, it was hot and dry.
“So you’re one of Peter’s friends?” she said, still scornfully. “You’re much younger than he is.”
“Yes, I am,” he said. “But that doesn’t prevent our being splendid friends.”
“Do you write too?” she asked, but with no curiosity, wearily, angrily, her eyes moving like restless candles lighting up a room that was dark for her.
“I hope to,” he answered, “but it’s hard to get started — harder than ever it was.”
“Peter didn’t find it hard when he began. Did you, Peter?” she asked, a curious note of irony in her voice. “He began right away — with a great flourish. Every one talking about him. . . . Didn’t quite keep it up though,” she ended, her voice sinking into a mutter.
“Never mind all that now,” Peter said, trying to speak lightly.
“Why not mind it?” she broke in sharply. “That young man’s your friend, isn’t he? He ought to know what you were like when you were young. Those happy days. . . .” She laughed bitterly. “Oh! I ruined his work, you know,” she went on. “Yes, I did. All my fault. Now see what he’s become. He’s grown fat. You’ve grown fat, Peter, got quite a stomach. You hadn’t then or I wouldn’t have married you. Are you married?” she said, suddenly turning on Henry.
“No,” he answered.
“Well, don’t you be. I’ve tried it and I know. Marriage is just this: If you’re unhappy it’s hell, and if you’re happy it makes you soft. . . .”
She seemed then suddenly to have said enough. She leant back against the cushion, not regarding any more the two men, brooding. . . .
There was a long silence.
Peter said at last: “Are you tired, dear? Would you like to go and lie down?”
She came suddenly up from the deep water of her own thoughts.
“Oh, you want to get rid of me. . . .” She got up slowly. “Well, I’ll go.”
“No,” he answered eagerly. “If you’ll lie down on this sofa I’ll make it comfortable for you. Then Harry shall tell us what he’s been doing.”
She stood, her hands on her hips, her body swaying ever so slightly.
“Tum-te-tiddledy . . . Tum-te-tiddledy. Poor little thing —— ! Was it ill? Must it be fussed over and have cushions and be made to lie down? If you’re ever ill,” she said to Henry, “don’t you let Peter nurse you. He’ll fuss the life out of you. He’s a regular old woman. He always was. He hasn’t changed a bit. Fuss, fuss — fuss, fuss, fuss. Oh! he’s very kind, Peter is, so thoughtful. Well, why shouldn’t I stay? I haven’t seen so many new faces in the last few days that a new one isn’t amusing. When did you first meet Peter?”
“Oh some while ago now,” said Henry.
“Have you read his books?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like them?”
“Yes, I do.”
She suddenly lay back on the sofa and, to Henry’s surprise, without any protest allowed Peter to wrap a rug round her, arrange the cushions for her. She caught his shoulder with her hand and pressed it.
“I used to like to do that,” she said, nodding to Henry. “When we were married years ago. Strong muscles he’s got still. Haven’t you, Peter? Oh, we’ll be a model married couple yet.”
She looked at Henry, more gently now and with a funny crooked smile.
“Do you know how long we’ve been married? Years and years and years. I’m over forty you know. You wouldn’t think it, would you? . . . Say you wouldn’t think it.”
“Of course I wouldn’t,” said Henry.
“That’s very nice of you. Why, he’s blushing! Look at him blushing, Peter! It’s a long time since I’ve done any blushing. Are you in love with any one?”
“Yes,” said Henry.
“When are you going to be married?”
“Never,” said Henry.
“Never! Why! doesn’t she like you?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t want to be married.”
“That’s wise of her. It’s hard on Peter my coming back like this, but I’m not going to stay long. As soon as I’m better I’m going away. Then he can divorce me.”
“Clare dear, don’t — —”
“Just the same as you used to be.”
“Clare dear, don’t — —”
“Clare, dear, you mustn’t. . . . Oh, men do like to have it their own way. So long as you love a man you can put up with it, but when you don’t love him any more then it’s hard to put up with. How awful for you, Peter darling, if I’m never strong enough to go away — if I’m a permanent invalid on your hands for ever —— Won’t that be fun for you? Rather amusing to see how you’ll hate it — and me. You hate me now, but it’s nothing to the way you’ll hate me after a year or two. . . . Do you know Chelsea?”
“I’ve been there once or twice,” said Henry.
“That’s where we used to live — in our happy married days. A dear little house we had — the house I ran away from. We had a baby too, but that died. Peter was fond of that baby, fonder than he ever was of me.”
She turned on her side, beating the cushions into new shapes. “Oh, well, that’s all over long ago — long, long ago.” She forgot the men again, staring in front of her.
Henry waited a little, then said a word to Peter and went.
CHAPTER III
A DEATH AND A BATTLE
Yes, life was now crowding in upon Henry indeed, crowding him in, stamping on him, treading him down. No sooner had he received one impact than another was upon him —— Such women as Clare, in regular daily life, in the closest connection with his own most intimate friend! As he hurried away down Marylebone High Street his great thought was that he want
ed to do something for her, to take that angry tragedy out of her eyes, to make her happy. Peter wouldn’t make her happy. They would never be happy together. He and Peter would never be able to deal with a case like Clare’s, there was something too naïve, too childish in them. How she despised both of them, as though they had been curates on their visiting-day in the slums.
Oh, Henry understood that well enough. But didn’t all women despise all men unless they were in love with them or wanted to be in love with them or had helped to produce them?
And then again, when you thought of it, didn’t all men despise all women with the same exceptions? Clare’s scorn of him tingled in his ears and made his eyes smart. And what she must have been through to look like that!
He dreamt of her that night; he was in thick jungle and she, tiger-shaped, was hunting him and some one shouted to him: “Look to yourself! Climb into yourself! The only place you’re safe in!”
But he couldn’t find the way in, the door was locked and the window barred: he knew it was quiet in there and cool and secure, but the hot jungle was roaming with tigers and they were closer and closer. . . .
He woke to Mary Cass’s urgent call on the telephone.
Then, when Millie was in his arms all else was forgotten by him — Clare, Christina, Duncombe, work, all, all forgotten. He was terrified, that she should suffer like this. It was worse, far worse, than that he should suffer himself. All the days of their childhood, all the tiniest things — were now there between them, holding and binding them as nothing else could hold and bind.
Now that tears could come to her she was released and free, the strange madness of that night and day was over and she could tell him everything. Her pride came back to her as she told him, but when he started up and wanted to go at once and find Baxter and drag him through the streets of London by the scruff of his neck and then hang him from the top of the Tower she said: “No, Henry dear, it’s no use being angry. Anger isn’t in this. I understand how it was. He’s weak, Bunny is, and he’ll always be weak, and he’ll always be a trouble to any woman who loves him, but in his own way he did love me. But I’m not clear yet. It’s been my fault terribly as well as his. I shouldn’t have listened to Ellen, or if I did, should have gone further. I would take him back, but I haven’t any right to him. If he’d told me everything from the beginning I could have gone and seen his mother, I could have found out how it really was. Now I shall never know. But what I do know is that somehow he thought he’d slip through, and that if there was a way, he’d leave that girl to her unhappiness. If he could have found a way he wouldn’t have cared how unhappy she was. He would be glad for her to die. I can’t love him any more after that. I can’t love him, but I shall miss all that that love was . . . the little things. . . .”
By the evening of that day she was perfectly calm. For three days he scarcely left her side — and he was walking with a stranger. She had grown in the space of that night so much older that she was now ahead of him. She had been a child; she was now a woman.
She told him that Baxter had written to her and that she had answered him. She went back to Victoria. She was calm, quiet — and, as he knew, most desperately unhappy.
He had a little talk with Mary.
“She’ll never get over it,” he said.
“Oh yes, she will,” said Mary. “How sentimental you are, Henry!”
“I’m not sentimental,” said Henry indignantly. “But I know my sister better than you know her.”
“You may know your sister,” Mary retorted, “but you don’t know anything about women. They must have something to look after. If you take one thing away, they’ll find something else. It’s their only religion, and it’s the religion they want, not the prophets.”
She added: “Millie is far more interested in life than I am. She is enchanted by it. Nothing and nobody will stop her excitement about it. Nobody will ever keep her back from it. She’ll go on to her death standing up in the middle of it, tossing it around ——
“You’re like her in that, but you’ll never see life as it really is. She will. And she’ll face it all — —”
“What a lot you think you know,” said Henry.
“Yes, I know Millie.”
“But she’s terribly unhappy.”
“And so she will be — until she’s found some one more unhappy than herself. But even unhappiness is part of the excitement of life to her.”
After a dreamless night he awoke to a sudden consciousness that Millie, Clare Westcott and Christina were in his room. He stirred, raising his head very gently and seemed to catch the shadow of Christina’s profile in the grey light of the darkened window.
He sat up and, bending over to his chair where his watch lay, saw that it was nine o’clock. As he sprang out of bed, King entered with breakfast and an aggrieved expression. “Knocked a hour ago, sir, and you hanswered,” he said.
“Must have been in my sleep then,” said Henry yawning, then suddenly conscious of his shabby and faded pyjamas.
“Can’t say, I’m sure, sir . . . knocked loud enough for anything. No letters this morning, sir.”
Henry was still at the innocent and optimistic age when letters are an excitement and a hope. He always felt that the world was deliberately, for malicious and cruel reasons of its own, forgetting him when there were no letters.
He was splashing in his tin bath, his bony and angular body like a study for an El Greco, when he remembered. Tuesday — nine o’clock. Why? . . . What! . . . Duncombe’s operation.
He hurried then as he had never hurried before, gulping down his tea, choking over his egg, flinging on his clothes, throwing water on his head and plastering it down, tumbling down the stairs into the street.
A clock struck the half-hour as he hastened into Berkeley Square. He had now no thought but for his beloved master; every interest in life had faded before that. He seemed to be with him there in the nursing home. He could watch it all, the summoning, the procession into the operating theatre, the calm, white-clad surgeon, the nurses, the anaesthetic. . . . His hand was on the Hill Street door bell. He hesitated, trembling. The street was so still in the misty autumn morning, a faint scent in the air of something burning, of tar, of fading leaves. A painted town, a painted sky and some figures in the foreground, breathlessly waiting.
The old butler opened the door. He turned back as Henry entered, pointing to the dark and empty hall as though that stood for all that he could say.
“Well?” said Henry. “Is there any news yet?”
“Sir Charles died under the operation. . . . Her ladyship has just been rung up — —”
The old man moved away.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I can’t believe it. . . . It isn’t natural! Such a few good ones in the world. It isn’t right.” He stood as though he were lost, fingering the visiting-cards on the table. He suddenly raised dull imperceptive eyes to Henry! “They can say what they like about new times coming and all being equal. . . . There’ll be masters all the same and not another like Sir Charles. Good he was, good all through.” He faded away.
Henry went upstairs. He was so lost that he stood in the library looking about him and wondering who that was at the long table. It was Herbert Spencer with his packets of letters and his bright red tape.
“Sir Charles is dead,” Henry said.
The books across that wide space echoed: “Sir Charles is dead.”
Herbert Spencer looked at the letters in his hand, let them drop, glanced up.
“Oh, I say! I’m sorry! . . . Oh dear!” he got up, staring at the distant bookshelves. “After the operation?”
“During it.”
“Dear, dear. And I thought in these days they were clever enough for anything.” He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “Not much use going on working to-day, I suppose?”
Henry did not hear.
“Not much use going on working to-day, I suppose?” he repeated.
“No, none,” s
aid Henry.
“You’ll be carrying the letters on, I suppose?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Henry answered.
“Well, you see, it’s like this. I’ve got my regular work I’ll have to be getting back to it if this isn’t going on. I was put on to this until it was finished, but if it isn’t going to be finished, then I’d like to know you see — —”
“Of course it’s going to be finished,” said Henry suddenly.
“Well then — —” said Herbert Spencer.
“And I’ll tell you this,” said Henry, suddenly shouting, “it’s going to be finished splendidly too. It’s going to be better than you can imagine. And you’re going to work harder and I’m going to work harder than we’ve ever done in our lives. It’s going to be the best thing that’s ever been. . . . It’s all we can do,” he added, suddenly dropping his voice.
“All right,” said Herbert Spencer calmly. “I’ll come to-morrow then. What I mean to say is that it isn’t any use my staying to-day.”
“It’s what he cared for more than anything,” Henry cried. “It’s got to be beautiful.”
“I’ll be here to-morrow then,” said Spencer, gathered his papers together and went.
Henry walked round, touching the backs of the books with his hand. He had known that this would be. There was no surprise here. But that he would never see Sir Charles again nor hear his odd, dry, ironical voice, nor see his long nose raise itself across the table — that was strange. That was indeed incredible. His mind wandered back to that day when Duncombe had first looked at the letters and then, when Henry was expecting curses, had blessed him instead. That indeed had been a crisis in his life — a crisis like the elopement of Katherine with Philip, the outbreak of the War, the meeting with Christina — one of the great steps of the ladder of life. He felt now, as we all must feel when some one we love has gone, the burden of all the kindness undone, the courtesy unexpressed, the tenderness untended.
And then he comforted himself, still wandering, pressing with his hands the old leather backs and the faded gilding, with the thought that at least, out there at Duncombe, Sir Charles had loved him and had spoken out the things that were really in his heart, the things that he would not have said to any one for whom he had not cared. That last night in Duncombe, the candle lighting the old room, Sir Charles had kissed him as he might his own dearly loved son. And perhaps even now he had not gone very far away.