by Hugh Walpole
On the best of days Seatown was not beautiful. I have read in books romantic descriptions of Glebeshire coves, Glebeshire towns with the romantic Inn, the sanded floor, fishermen with gold rings in their ears and strange oaths upon their lips. In one book I remember there was a fine picture of such a place, with beautiful girls dancing and mysterious old men telling mysterious tales about ghosts and goblins, and, of course, somewhere in the distance some one was singing a chanty, and the moon was rising, and there was a nice little piece of Glebeshire dialect thrown in. All very pretty.... Seatown cannot claim such prettiness. Perhaps once long ago, when there were only the Cathedral, the Castle, the Rock, and a few cottages down by the river, when, at night-tide, strange foreign ships came up from the sea, when the woods were wild forest and the downs were bare and savage, Seatown had its romance, but that was long ago. Seatown, in these latter days, was a place of bad drainage, bad drinking, bad living and bad dying. The men who haunted its dirty, narrow little streets were loafers and idlers and castaways. The women were, most of them, no better than they should be, and the children were the most slatternly and ill-bred in the whole of Glebeshire. Small credit to the Canons and the Town Councillors and the prosperous farmers that it was so, but in their defence it might be urged that it needed a very valiant Canon and the most fearless of Town Councillors to disturb that little nest. And the time came when it was disturbed....
Even the Pol, a handsome river enough out beyond the town in the reaches of the woods, was no pretty sight at low tide when there was nothing to see but a thin, sluggish grey stream filtering through banks of mud to its destination, the sea. At high tide the river beat up against the crazy stone wall that bordered Pennicent Street; and on the further side there were green fields and a rising hill with a feathery wood to crown it. From the river, coming up through the green banks, Seatown looked picturesque, with its disordered cottages scrambling in confusion at the tail of the rock and the Cathedral and Castle nobly dominating it. That distant view is the best thing to be said for Seatown.
To-day, in the drizzling mist, the place was horribly depressing. Falk plunged down into Bridge Street as into a damp stuffy well. Here some of the houses had once been fine; there were porticoes and deep-set doors and bow-windows, making them poor relations of the handsome benevolent Georgian houses in Orange Street. The street, top-tilting down to the river, was slovenly with dirt and carelessness. Many of the windows were broken, their panes stuffed with paper; washing hung from house to house. The windows that were not broken were hermetically sealed and filled with grimy plants and ferns, and here and there a photograph of an embarrassed sailor or a smiling married couple or an overdressed young woman placed face outward to the street. Bridge Street tumbled with a dirty absent- mindedness into Pennicent Street. This, the main thoroughfare of Seatown, must have been once a handsome cobbled walk by the river-side. The houses, more than in Bridge Street, showed by their pillared doorways and their faded red brick that they had once been gentlemen’s residences, with gardens, perhaps, running to the river’s edge and a fine view of the meadows and woods beyond. To-day all was shrouded in a mist that was never stationary, that seemed alive in its shifting movement, revealing here a window, there a door, now a chimney-pot, now steps that seemed to lead into air, and the river, now at full tide and lapping the stone wall, seemed its drunken bewildered voice.
“Bally pawns, that’s what we are,” Falk muttered again. It seemed to be the logical conclusion of the thoughts that had worried him, like flies, during his walk. Some one lurched against him as he stayed for a moment to search for the inn. A hot spasm of anger rose in him, so sudden and fierce that he was frightened by it, as though he had seen his own face in a mirror. But he said nothing. “Sorry,” said a voice, and shadow faded into shadow.
He found the “Dog and Pilchard” easily enough. Just beyond it the river was caught into a kind of waterfall by a ridge of stone that projected almost into mid-stream. At high tide it tumbled over this obstruction with an astonished splash and gurgle. Even when the river was at its lowest there was a dim chattering struggle at this point. Falk always connected this noise with the inn and the power or enchantment of the inn that held him— “Black Enchantment,” perhaps. He was to hear that struggling chatter of the river until his dying day.
He pushed through the passage and turned to the right into the bar. A damp day like this always served Hogg’s trade. The gas was lit and sizzled overhead with a noise as though it commented ironically on the fatuity of the human beings beneath it. The room was full, but most of the men — seamen, loafers, a country man or two — crowded up to the bar. Falk crossed to a table in the corner near the window, his accustomed seat. No one seemed to notice him, but soon Hogg, stout and smiling, came over to him. No one had ever seen Samuel Hogg out of temper — no, never, not even when there had been fighting in the place and he had been compelled to eject men, by force of arms, through the doors and windows. There had not been many fights there. Men were afraid of him, in spite of his imperturbable good temper. Men said of him that he would stick at nothing, although what exactly was meant by that no one knew.
He had a good word for every one; no crime or human failing could shock him. He laughed at everything. And yet men feared him. Perhaps for that very reason. The worst sinner has some kind of standard of right and wrong. Himself he may not keep it, but he likes to see it there. “Oh, he’s deep,” was Seatown’s verdict on Samuel Hogg, and it is certain that the late Mrs. Hogg had not been, in spite of her husband’s good temper, a happy woman.
He came up to Falk now, — smiling, and asked him what he would have. “Nasty day,” he said. Falk ordered his drink. Dimly through the mist and thickened air the Cathedral chimes recorded the hour. Funny how you could hear them in every nook and corner of Polchester.
“Likely turn to rain before night,” Hogg said, as he turned back to the bar. Falk sat there watching. Some of the men he knew, some he did not, but to-day they were all shadows to him. Strange how, from the moment that he crossed the threshold of that place, hot, burning excitement and expectation lapped him about, swimming up to him, engulfing him, swamping him body and soul. He sat there drowned in it, not stirring, his eyes fixed upon the door. There was a good deal of noise, laughter, swearing, voices raised and dropped, forming a kind of skyline, and above this a voice telling an interminable tale.
Annie Hogg came in, and at once Falk’s throat contracted and his heart hammered in the palms of his hands. She moved about, talking to the men, fetching drinks, unconcerned and aloof as she always was. Seen there in the mist of the overcrowded and evil-smelling room, there was nothing very remarkable about her. Stalwart and resolute and self-possessed she looked; sometimes she was beautiful, but not now. She was a woman at whom most men would have looked twice. Her expression was not sullen nor disdainful; in that, perhaps, there was something fine, because there was life, of its own kind, in her eyes, and independence in the carriage of her head.
Falk never took his eyes from her. At that moment she came down the room and saw him. She did not come over to him at once, but stopped and talked to some one at another table. At last she was beside him, standing up against his table and looking over his head at the window behind him.
“Nasty weather, Mr. Brandon,” she said. Her voice was low and not unpleasant; although she rolled her r’s her Glebeshire accent was not very strong, and she spoke slowly, as though she were trying to choose her words.
“Yes,” Falk answered. “Good for your trade, though.”
“Dirty weather always brings them in,” she said.
He did not look at her.
“Been busy to-day?”
“Nothing much this morning,” she answered. “I’ve been away at my aunt’s, out to Borheddon, these last two days.”
“Yes. I saw you were not here,” he said. “Did you have a good time?”
“Middling,” she answered. “My aunt’s been terrible bad with bronchitis this winter.
Poor soul, it’ll carry her off one of these days, I reckon.”
“What’s Borheddon like?” he asked.
“Nothing much. Nothing to do, you know. But I like a bit of quiet just for a day or two. How’ve you been keeping, Mr. Brandon?”
“Oh, I’m all right. I shall be off to London to look for a job one of these days.”
He looked up at her suddenly, sharply, as though he wanted to catch her interest. But she showed no emotion.
“Well, I expect this is slow for you, a little place like this. Plenty going on in London, I expect.”
“Yes. Do you ever think you’d like to go there?”
“Daresay I shall one of these days. Never know your luck. But I’m not terrible anxious.... Well, I must be getting on.”
He caught her eyes and held them.
“Come back for a moment when you’re less busy. I’ve got something I want to say to you.”
Very slightly the colour rose in her dark cheek.
“All right,” she said.
When she had gone he drew a deep breath, as though he had surmounted some great and sudden danger. He felt that if she had refused to come he would have risen and broken everything in the place. Now, as though he had, by that little conversation with her, reassured himself about her, he looked around the room. His attention was at once attracted by a man who was sitting in the further corner, his back against the wall, opposite to him.
This was a man remarkable for his extreme thinness, for the wild lock of black hair that fell over his forehead and almost into his eyes, and for a certain sort of threadbare and dissolute distinction which hung about him. Falk knew him slightly. His name was Edmund Davray, and he had lived in Polchester now for a considerable number of years. He was an artist, and had arrived in the town one summer on a walking tour through Glebeshire. He had attracted attention at once by the quality of his painting, by the volubility of his manner, and by his general air of being a person of considerable distinction. His surname was French, but no one knew anything with any certainty about him. Something attracted him in Polchester, and he stayed. He soon gave it out that it was the Cathedral that fascinated him; he painted a number of remarkable sketches of the nave, the choir, Saint Margaret’s Chapel, the Black Bishop’s Tomb. He had a “show” in London and was supposed to have done very well out of it. He disappeared for a little, but soon returned, and was to be found in the Cathedral most days of the week.
At first he had a little studio at the top of Orange Street. At this time he was rather popular in Polchester society. Mrs. Combermere took him up and found him audacious and amusing. His French name gave a kind of piquancy to his audacity; he was unusual; he was striking. It was right for Polchester to have an artist and to stick him up in the very middle of the town as an emblem of taste and culture. Soon, however, he began to decline. It was whispered that he drank, that his morals were “only what you’d expect of an artist,” and that he was really “too queer about the Cathedral.” One day he told Miss Dobell that the amount that she knew about literature would go inside a very small pea, and he was certainly “the worse for liquor” at one of Mrs. Combermere’s tea-parties. He did not, however, give them time to drop him; he dropped himself, gave up his Orange Street studio, lived, no one knew where, neglected his appearance, and drank quite freely whenever he could get anything to drink. He now cut everybody, rather than allowed himself to be cut.
He was in the Cathedral as often as ever, and Lawrence and Cobbett, the Vergers, longed to have an excuse for expelling him, but he always behaved himself there and was in nobody’s way. He was finally regarded as “quite mad,” and was seen to talk aloud to himself as he walked about the streets.
“An unhappy example,” Miss Dobell said, “of the artistic temperament, that wonderful gift, gone wrong.”
Falk had seen him often before at the “Dog and Pilchard,” and had wondered at first whether Annie Hogg was the attraction. It was soon clear, however, that there was nothing in that. He never looked at the girl nor, indeed, at any one else in the place. He simply sat there moodily staring in front of him and drinking.
To-day it was clear that Falk had caught his attention. He looked across the room at him with a queer defiant glance, something like Falk’s own. Once it seemed that he had made up his mind to come over and speak to him.
He half rose in his seat, then sank back again. But his eyes came round again and again to the corner where Falk was sitting.
The Cathedral chimes had whispered twice in the room before Annie returned.
“What is it you’re wanting?” she asked.
“Come outside and speak to me.”
“No, I can’t do that. Father’s watching.”
“Well, will you meet me one evening and have a talk?”
“What about?”
“Several things.”
“It isn’t right, Mr. Brandon. What’s a gentleman like you want with a girl like me?”
“I only want us to get away a little from all this noise and filth.”
Suddenly she smiled.
“Well, I don’t mind if I do. After supper’s a good time. Father goes up the town to play billiards. After eight.”
“When?”
“What about to-morrow evening?”
“All right. Where?”
“Up to the Mill. Five minutes up from here.”
“I’ll be there,” he said.
“Don’t let father catch ‘ee — that’s all,” she smiled down at him. “You’m a fule, Mr. Brandon, to bother with such as I.” He said nothing and she walked away. Very shortly after, Davray got up from his seat and came over to Falk’s corner. It was obvious that he had been drinking rather heavily. He was a little unsteady on his feet.
“You’re young Brandon, aren’t you?” he asked.
In ordinary times Falk would have told him to go to the devil, and there would have been a row, but to-day he was caught away so absolutely into his own world that any one could speak to him, any one laugh at him, any one insult him, and he would not care. He had been meditating for weeks the advance that he had just taken; always when one meditates for long over a risk it swells into gigantic proportions. So this had been; that simple sentence asking her to come out and talk to him had seemed an impossible challenge to every kind of fate, and now, in a moment, the gulf had been jumped...so easy, so strangely easy....
From a great distance Davray’s words came to him, and in the dialogue that followed he spoke like a somnambulist.
“Yes,” he said, “my name’s Brandon.”
“I knew, of course,” said Davray. “I’ve seen you about.” He spoke with great swiftness, the words tumbling over one another, not with eagerness, but rather with a kind of supercilious carelessness. “Beastly hole, isn’t this? Wonder why one comes here. Must do something in this rotten town. I’ve drunk enough of this filthy beer. What do you say to moving out?”
Falk looked up at him.
“What do you say?” he asked.
“Let’s move out of this. If you’re walking up the town I’ll go with you.”
Falk was not conscious of the man, but it was quite true that he wanted to get out of the place now that his job in it was done. He got up without a word and began to push through the room. He was met near the door by Hogg.
“Goin’, Mr. Brandon? Like to settle now or leave it to another day?”
“What’s that?” said Falk, stopping as though some one had touched him on the shoulder. He seemed to see the large smiling man suddenly in front of him outlined against a shifting wall of mist.
“Payin’ now or leavin’ it? Please yourself, Mr. Brandon.”
“Oh — paying!” He fumbled in his pocket, produced half-a-crown, gave it to Hogg without looking at him and went out. Davray followed, slouching through the room and passage with the conceited over-careful walk of a man a little tipsy.
Outside, as they went down the street still obscured with the wet mist, Davray poured out a flow of w
ords to which he seemed to want no answer.
“I hope you didn’t mind my speaking to you like that — a bit unceremonious. But to tell you the truth I’m lonely sometimes. Also, if you want to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I’m a bit tipsy too. Generally am. This air makes one feel queer after that stinking hole, doesn’t it? If you can call this air. I’ve seen you there a lot lately and often thought I’d like to talk to you. You’re the only decent- looking fellow in the whole of this town, if you’ll forgive my saying so. Isn’t it a bloody hole? But of course you think so too. I can see it in your face. I suppose you go to that pub after that girl. I saw you talking to her. Well, each man to his taste. I’d never interfere with any man’s pleasure. I loathe women myself, always have. They never appealed to me a little bit. In Paris the men used to wonder what I was after. I was after Ambition in those days. Funny thing, but I thought I was going to be a great painter once. Queer what one can trick oneself into believing — so I might have been if I hadn’t come to this beastly town. Hope I’m not boring you....”
He stopped as though he had suddenly realised that his companion had not said a word. They were pushing now up the hill into the market-place and the mist was now so thick that they could scarcely see one another’s face. Falk was thinking. “To-morrow evening.... What do I want? What’s going to happen? What do I want?”
The silence made him conscious of his companion.
“What do you say?” he asked.
“Hope I’m not boring you.”
“No, that’s all right. Where are we?”
“Just coming into the market.”
“Oh, yes.”
“If I talk a lot it’s because I haven’t had any one to talk to for weeks. Not that I want to talk to any one. I despise the lot of them. Conceited set of ignorant parrots.... Whole place run by women and what can you expect? You’re not staying here, I suppose. I heard you’d had enough of Oxford and I don’t wonder. No place for a man, beautiful enough but spoilt by the people. Damn people — always coming along and spoiling places. Now there’s the Cathedral, most wonderful thing in England, but does any one know it? Not a bit of it. You’d think they fancied that the Cathedral owes them something — about as much sense of beauty as a cockroach.”