by Hugh Walpole
“Good-bye.”
Mrs. Sampson’s nose, that would take on a blue colour on a cold day, quivered, her thin mouth shut with a snap, and she was gone.
“But I wasn’t afraid of her!” She was almost frightened at this new spirit that had come to her, and, feeling rather that in another moment she would be punished for her piratical audacity, she turned up the steps into the Circulating Library.
It was the custom in those days that far away from the dust of the grimy shelves, in the very middle of the room, there was a table with all the latest works of fiction in their gaudy bindings, a few volumes of poetry and a few memoirs. Close to this table Miss Milton sat, wrapped, in the warmest weather, in a thick shawl and knitting endless stockings. She hated children, myself in particular. She was also a Snob of the Snobs, and thanked God on her knees every night for Lady St. Leath, Mrs. Combermere and Mrs. Sampson, by whose graces she was left in her present position.
Joan was still too near childhood to be considered very seriously, and it was well known that her father did not take her very seriously either. She was always, therefore, on the rare occasions when she entered the Library, snubbed by Miss Milton. It must be confessed that to-day, in spite of her success with Mrs. Sampson, she was nervous. She was nervous partly because she hated Miss Milton’s red-rimmed eyes, and never looked at them if she could help it, but, in the main, because she knew that her mother was returning the Library books too quickly, and had, moreover, insisted that she should ask for Mr. Barrie’s Sentimental Tommy and Mr. Seton Merriman’s The Sowers, both of them books that had been asked for for weeks and as steadily and persistently refused.
Joan knew what Miss Milton would say, “That they might be in next week, but that she couldn’t be sure.” Was Joan strong enough now, in her new- found glory, to fight for them? She did not know.
She advanced to the table smiling. Miss Milton did not look up, but continued to knit one of her horrible stockings.
“Good-morning, Miss Milton. Mother has sent back these books. They were not quite what she wanted.”
“I’m sorry for that.” Miss Milton took the books into her chilblained protection. “It’s a little difficult, I must say, to know what Mrs. Brandon prefers.”
“Well, there’s Sentimental Tommy,” began Joan.
But Miss Milton was an old general.
“Oh, that’s out, I’m afraid. Now, here’s a sweetly pretty book — Roger Varibrugh’s Wife, by Adeline Sergeant. It’a only just out....”
“Or there’s The Sowers,” said Joan, caught against her will by the red-rimmed eyes and staring at them.
“Oh, that’s out, I’m afraid. There are several books here—”
“You promised mother,” said Joan, “that she should have Sentimental Tommy this week. You promised her a month ago. It’s about time that mother had a book that she cares for.”
“Really,” said Miss Milton, wide-eyed at Joan’s audacity. “You seem to be charging me with some remissness, Miss Brandon. If you have any complaint, I’m sure the Library Committee will attend to it. It’s to them I have to answer. When the book is in you shall have it. I can promise no more. I am only human.”
“You have said that now for three months,” said Joan, beginning, to her own surprised delight, to be angry. “Surely the last reader hasn’t been three months over it. I thought subscribers were only allowed to keep a book a week.”
Miss Milton’s crimson colouring turned to a deep purple.
“The book is out,” she said. “Both books are out. They are in great demand. I have no more to say.”
The Library door opened, and a young man came in. Joan was still too young to wish for scenes in public. She must give up the battle for to-day. When, however, she saw who it was she blushed. It was young Lord St. Leath — Johnny St. Leath, as he was known to his familiars, who were many and of all sorts and conditions. Joan hated herself for blushing, especially before the odious Miss Milton, but there was a reason. One day in last October after morning service Joan and her mother had waited in the Cloisters to avoid a shower of rain. St. Leath had also waited and very pleasantly had talked to them both. There was nothing very alarming in this, but as the rain cleared and Mrs. Brandon had moved forward across the Green, he had suddenly, with a confusion that had seemed to her charming, asked Joan whether one day they mightn’t meet again. He had given her one look straight in the eyes, tried to say something more, failed, and turned away down the Cloisters.
Joan had never before been asked by any young man to meet him again. She had told herself that this was nothing but the merest, most obvious politeness; nevertheless the look that he had given her remained.
Now, as she saw him advancing towards her, there was the thought, was it not on that very morning that her new courage and self-confidence had come to her? The thought was so absurd that she flung it at Miss Milton. But the blush remained.
Johnny was an ungainly young man, with a red face, freckles, a large mouth, and a bull-terrier — a conventional British type, I suppose, saved, nevertheless, from conventionality by his affection for his three plain sisters, his determination to see things as they were, and his sense of humour, the last of these something quite his own, and always appearing in unexpected places. The bull-terrier, in spite of the notice on the Library door that no dogs were admitted, advanced breathlessly and dribbling with excitement for Miss Milton’s large black felt slippers.
“Here, Andrew, old man. Heel! Heel!” said Johnny. Andrew, however, quite naturally concluded that this was only an approval of his intentions, and there might have followed an awkward scene had his master not caught him by the collar and held him suspended in mid-air, to his own indignant surprise and astonishment.
Joan laughed, and Miss Milton, quivering between indignation, fear and snobbery, dropped the stocking that she was knitting.
Andrew burst from his master’s clutches, rushed the stocking into the farthest recesses of the Library, and proceeded there to enjoy it.
Johnny apologised.
“Oh, it’s quite all right, Lord St. Leath,” said Miss Milton. “What a fine animal!”
“Yes, he is,” said Johnny, rescuing the stocking. “He’s as strong as Lucifer. Here, Andrew, you devil, I’ll break every bone in your body.”
During this little scene Johnny had smiled at Joan, and in so pleasant a way that she was compelled to smile back at him.
“How do you do, Miss Brandon?” He had recalled Andrew now, and the dog was slobbering happily at his feet. “Jolly day, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Joan, and stood there awkwardly, feeling that she ought to go but not knowing quite how to do so. He also seemed embarrassed, and turned abruptly to Miss Milton.
“I say, look here.... Mother asked me to come in and get that book you promised her. What’s the name of the thing?...I’ve got it written down.”
He fumbled in his pocket and produced a bit of paper.
“Here it is. Sentimental Tommy, by a man called Barrie. Silly name, but mother’s always reading the most awful stuff.”
Joan turned towards Miss Milton.
“How funny!” she said. “That’s the book I’ve just been asking for. It’s out.”
Miss Milton’s face was a curious purple.
“Well, that’s odd,” said Johnny. “Mother told me that you’d sent her a line to say it was in whenever she sent for it.”
“It’s been out three months,” said Joan, staring now straight into Miss Milton’s angry eyes.
“I’ve been keeping...” said Miss Milton. “That is, there’s a special copy.... Lady St. Leath specially asked — —”
“Is it in, or isn’t it?” asked Johnny.
“There is a copy, Lord St. Leath — —” With confused fingers Miss Milton searched in a drawer. She produced the book.
“You told me,” said Joan, forgetting now in her anger St. Leath and all the world, “that there wouldn’t he a copy for weeks. If you’d told me you were keeping one for St. Leath
, that would have been different. You shouldn’t have told me a lie.”
“Do you mean to say,” said Johnny, opening his eyes very widely indeed, “that you refused this copy to Miss Brandon?”
“Certainly,” said Miss Milton, breathing very hard as though she had been running a long distance. “I was keeping it for your mother.”
“Well, I’m damned,” said Johnny. “I beg your pardon, Miss Brandon,...but I never heard such a thing. Does my mother pay a larger subscription than other people?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then what right had you to tell Miss Brandon a lie?”
Miss Milton, in spite of long training in the kind of warfare attaching, of necessity, to Circulating Libraries, was very near to tears — also murder. She would have been delighted to pierce Joan’s heart with a bright stiletto, had such a weapon been handy. She saw the softest, easiest, idlest job in the world slipping out of her fingers; she saw herself, a desolate and haggard virgin, begging her bread on the Polchester streets. She saw...but never mind her visions. They were terrible ones. She had recourse to her only defence.
“If I have misunderstood my duty,” she said in a trembling voice, “there is the Library Committee.”
“Oh, never mind,” said Joan whose anger had disappeared. “It doesn’t matter a bit. We’ll have the book after Lady St. Leath.”
“Indeed you won’t,” said Johnny, seizing the volume and forcing it upon Joan. “Mother can wait. I never heard of such a thing.” He turned fiercely upon Miss Milton. “My mother shall know exactly what has happened. I’m sure she’d be horrified if she understood that you were keeping books from other subscribers in order that she might have them.... Good afternoon.”
He strode from the room. At the door he paused.
“Can I — Shall we — Are you going down the High Street, Miss Brandon?”
“Yes,” said Joan. They went out of the room and down the Library steps together.
In the shiny, sunny street they paused. The dark cobwebs of the Library hung behind Joan’s consciousness like the sudden breaking of a mischievous spell.
She was so happy that she could have embraced Andrew, who was, however, already occupied with the distant aura of a white poodle on the other side of the street.
Johnny was driven by the impulse of his indignation down the hill. Joan, rather breathlessly, followed him.
“I say!” said Johnny. “Did you ever hear of such a woman! She ought to be poisoned. She ought indeed. No, poisoning’s too good for her. Hung, drawn and quartered. That’s what she ought to be. She’ll get into trouble over that.”
“Oh no,” said Joan. “Please, Lord St. Leath, don’t say any more about it. She has a difficult time, I expect, everybody wanting the same books. After all a promise is a promise.”
“But she’d promised your mother — —”
“No, she never really did. She always said that it would be in in a day or two. She never properly promised. I expect we’d have had it next.”
“The snob, the rotten snob!” Johnny paused and raised his stick. “I hate women like that. No, she’s not doing her job properly. She oughtn’t to be there.”
So swift had been their descent that they arrived in a moment at the market.
Because to-day was market-day there was a fine noise, confusion and splendour — carts rattling in and out, sheep and cows driven hither and thither, the wooden stalls bright with flowers and vegetables, the dim arcades looming behind the square filled with mysterious riches. They could not talk very much here, and Joan was glad. She was too deeply excited to talk. At one moment St. Leath took her arm to guide her past a confused mob of bewildered sheep. The Glebeshire peasant on marketing-day has plenty of conversation. Old wrinkled women, stout red-faced farmers, boys and girls all shouted together, and above the scene the light driving clouds flung their transparent shadows, like weaving shuttles across the sun.
“Oh, do let’s stop here a moment,” said Joan, peering into one of the arcades. “I’ve always loved this one all my life. I’ve never been able to resist it.”
This was the Toy Arcade, now, I’m afraid, gone the way of so many other romantic things. It had been to all of us the most wonderful spot in Polchester from the very earliest days, this partly because of the toys themselves, partly because it was the densest and darkest of all the Arcades, never utterly to be pierced by our youthful eyes, partly because only two doors away were the sinister rooms of Mr. Dawson, the dentist. Here not only was there every kind of toy — dolls, soldiers, horses, carts, games, tops, hoops, dogs, elephants — but also sweets — chocolates, jujubes, caramels, and the best sweet in the whole world, the Polchester Bull’s- eye.
They went in together. Mrs. Magnet, now with God, an old woman like a berry, always in a bonnet with green flowers, smiled and bobbed. The colours of the toys jumbled against the dark walls were like patterns in a carpet.
“What do you say, Miss Brandon?” said Johnny. “If I give you a toy will you give me one?”
“Yes,” said Joan, afraid a little of Mrs. Magnet’s piercing black eye.
“You’re not to see what I get. Turn your back a moment.”
Joan turned around. As she waited she could hear the “Hie!...Hie! Woah!” of the market-cries, the bleating of the sheep, the lowing of a cow.
“Here you are, then.” She turned. He presented her with a Japanese doll, gay in a pink cotton frock, his waist girdled with a sash of gold tissue.
“Now you turn your back,” she said.
In a kind of happy desperation she seized a nigger with bold red checks, a white jacket and crimson trousers.
Mrs. Magnet wrapped the presents up. They paid, and walked out into the sun again.
“I’ll keep that doll,” said Johnny, “just as long as you keep yours.”
“Good-bye,” said Joan hurriedly. “I’ve got to call at a house on the other side of the market.... Good-bye.”
She felt the pressure of his hand on hers, then, clutching her parcel, hurried, almost ran, indeed, through the market-stalls. She did not look back.
When she had crossed the Square she turned down into a little side street. The plan of Polchester is very simple. It is built, as it were, on the side of a rock, running finally to a flat top, on which is the Cathedral. Down the side of the rock there are broad ledges, and it is on one of these that the market-place is built. At the bottom of the rock lies the jumble of cottages known most erroneously as Seatown, and round the rock runs the river Pol, slipping away at last through woods and hills and valleys into the sea. At high tide you can go all the way by river to the sea, and in the summer, this makes a pleasant and beautiful excursion. It is because of this that Seatown has, perhaps, some right to its name, because in one way and another sailors collect in the cottages and at the “Dog and Pilchard,” that pleasant and democratic hostelry of which, in 1897, Samuel Hogg was landlord. Many visitors have been known to declare that Seatown was “too sweet for anything,” and that “it would be really wicked to knock down the ducks of cottages,” but “the ducks of cottages” were the foulest and most insanitary dwelling-places in the south of England, and it has always been to me amazing that the Polchester Town Council allowed them to stand so long as they did. In 1902, as all the Glebeshire world knows, there was the great battle of Seatown, ending in the cottages’ destruction. In 1897 those evil dwelling-places gloried in their full magnificence of sweet corruption, nor did the periodical attacks of typhoid alarm in the least the citizens of the Upper Town. Once and again gentlemen from other parts paid mysterious official visits, but we had ways, in old times, of dealing with inquisitive meddlers from the outside world.
Because the market-place was half-way down the Rock, and because the Rectory of St. James’ was just below the market-place, the upper windows of that house commanded a wonderful view both of the hill, High Street and Cathedral above it, and of Seatown, river and woods below it. It was said that it was up this very rocky street from th
e river, through the market, and up the High Street that the armed enemies of the Black Bishop had fought their way to the Cathedral on that great day when the Bishop had gone to meet his God, and a piece of rock is still shown to innocent visitors as the place whence some of his enemies, in full armour, were flung down, many thousand feet, to the waters of the Pol.
Joan had often longed to see the view from the windows of St. James’ Rectory, but she had not known old Dr. Burroughs, the former Rector, a cross man with gout and rheumatism. She walked up some steps and found the house the last of three all squeezed together on the edge of the hill. The Rectory, because it was the last, stood square to all the winds of heaven, and Joan fancied what it must be in wild wintry weather. Soon she was in the drawing-room shaking hands with Miss Burnett, who was Mr. Morris’ sister-in-law, and kept house for him.
Miss Burnett was a stout negative woman, whose whole mind was absorbed in the business of housekeeping, prices of food, wickedness and ingratitude of servants, maliciousness of shopkeepers and so on. The house, with all her managing, was neither tidy nor clean, as Joan quickly saw; Miss Burnett was not, by temperament, methodical, nor had she ever received any education. Her mind, so far as a perception of the outside world and its history went, was some way behind that of a Hottentot or a South Sea Islander. She had, from the day of her birth, been told by every one around her that she was stupid, and, after a faint struggle, she had acquiesced in that judgment. She knew that her younger sister, afterwards Mrs. Morris, was pretty and accomplished, and that she would never be either of those things. She was not angry nor jealous at this. The note of her character was acquiescence, and when Agatha had died of pleurisy it had seemed the natural thing for her to come and keep house for the distressed widower. If Mr. Morris had since regretted the arrangement he had, at any rate, never said so.
Miss Burnett’s method of conversation was to say something about the weather and then to lapse into a surprised and distressed stare. If her visitor made some statement she crowned it with, “Well, now, that was just was I was going to say.”