Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  He went about with a bemused, blinded expression. He was seeing himself for the first time. Hortons and everything in it had quite a new life for him: Mr.

  Nix, Fanny, Albert Edward — all these people were earning their living and earning it much more efficiently than he seemed to be able to do. All the time behind them seemed to stand that wistful figure of his father. “I’d like to do something for the old man,” he thought.

  Down in the City his experiences were very strange. The first three men whom he saw were very polite and jolly, and said “they’d let him know if anything turned up.” They asked him what business experience he had had, and then how much money he was prepared to put into a “concern”; and when he had answered them with a jolly laugh and said that he had had no experience, but had no doubt that he “would shake down all right,” and that he had no money, but “really would take his coat off and work,” they smiled, and said that “things were bad in the City just now, but they would let him know.”

  They all liked him, he felt, and he liked them, and that was as far as it went. But his experience with his fourth friend was different. Sir James Maradick, Bart, could scarcely be called a friend of his. He had met him once at someone’s house; Reggie Burr had given him a note to him. He was a big broad man somewhere near sixty, and he was as nice to Clive as possible, but he didn’t mince matters.

  He had been given his Baronetcy for some fine organising work that he had done in the war. Clive, who did not think much about men as a rule, liked him better than any man he’d ever met. “This fellow would do for me,” he thought.

  The question, however, was whether Clive would do for Maradick.

  “What have you done?” Maradick asked.

  “H’m. Eton and Oxford.... And what kind of job are you looking for?”

  Clive modestly explained — somewhere about six hundred a year. He wanted to help the governor through a stiff time.

  Maradick smiled. That was very nice. Would Clive mind Maradick speaking quite plainly? Not at all. That was what Clive wanted.

  Maradick then said that it was like a fairy-tale. He had had, during the last fortnight, four fellows who wanted jobs at anything from five hundred to a thousand a year. All of them very modest. Hadn’t had any experience, but thought they could drop into it. All of them done well in the war. All of them wanted to keep their parents... very creditable.

  But there was another side to the question. Did Clive know that there were hundreds of men ready to come in at three hundred a year and less, men who had been in the City since nine years old, men who had the whole thing at their fingers’ ends... hundreds of them...?

  “The world was made for you boys before the war. You won’t think me rude, will you? You went to Eton and Oxford and learnt nothing at all, and then waited for things to tumble into your hands. That’s why commercial Germany beat us all round the world. Well, it won’t be so any longer. The new world isn’t made for you boys. You’ve got to win your way into it.”

  ‘You’re quite right,” Clive blushed. “Thank you very much.”

  Maradick looked at him, and his heart warmed to him.

  “Take my tip and do a working-man’s job. What about house-painting, for instance, or driving a taxi? They’re getting big money. Just for a bit — to try your hand.”

  “Not a bad idea,” said Clive. They shook hands in a most friendly fashion. Maradick spoke to his partner (at lunch) about him. “Nice boy,” he said. “We’ll have him in here later.”

  Clive went back to Hortons and met there the temptation of his life in the shape of his mother.

  She was looking lovely in grey silk, Parma violets, and a little black hat. She was in one of her most sentimental moods. She cried a good deal and asked Clive what he intended to do. When she asked him that, what she really wanted was that he should say that he loved her. This he did in a hurried fashion, because he wanted to tell her about Maradick. She had, however, her own things that she wanted to say, and these were, in the main, that he was “her all,” that it was too awful about Dronda, that John (Lord Dronda) had simply been losing thousands over his stupid old agriculture, and, finally, that she had money of her own on which dear Clive should live to the end of his days. All this nonsense about his working, as though he hadn’t done enough already with his poor arm and everything. They should go away together and have a lovely time.

  Clive was tempted. For ten minutes there raged a fierce battle. He knew that what she said could be true enough. That they could go away together and spend money together, and that she would give him everything that she had, and only want him in return to say over and over again that he loved her. They would wander about, and probably he would find some rich girl who would marry him, and then he would live on her....

  While he thought this out, words poured from his mother’s lips in tattered confusion. No words used by his mother ever meant what she intended them to mean. Nevertheless, the last question held the substance of them all. “And you do really love me, Clive boy, don’t you?”

  The “Clive boy” really settled it, although I hope and believe that it would have been settled without that. But he could not wander about Europe as “Clive boy.”....

  So he said: “Thanks, mother. You’re a brick, wantin’ me to have everything and all that. But I really won’t. I’m going to settle down and work.”

  “Whatever at, you poor foolish darling?” asked his mother.

  “At anything I can get,” he replied.

  She left him at last, having cried just enough to show her real emotion without damaging her unreal complexion. Her Parma violets were also intact He was an unkind, ungrateful son, and her heart was broken, but at the same time he was “her all,” and would he lunch with her to-morrow at Claridge’s?

  This he said that he would do. “My last good meal,” he murmured to himself rather histrionically.

  His mother departed.

  He had a bad quarter of an hour after she had gone. The sacred precincts of Hortons contained at least one honest soul that afternoon. He saw himself exactly as he was — spoilt, useless, idle, and conceited. He swore to himself that he would find work of some kind before the day was done.

  He went out. It was a lovely afternoon early in May. Mr. Bottome, the newsagent, had fine copies of Colour showing in his window, the top of Duke Street gazed straight into the huge naked-looking statue of a horse in the courtyard of the Academy. Everything seemed to be having a spring cleaning.

  He turned back and down into Jermyn Street. Next to the Hamman Baths they were painting a house light green. A nice young fellow in overalls stepped off a ladder as Clive passed.

  He smiled at Clive. Clive smiled back.

  “Is that an easy job?” Clive asked him.

  “Oh yes, sir,” the young fellow answered.

  “Could you manage it with one arm?” Clive asked.

  “Why, yes,” the man said.

  “Could I pick it up quickly?”

  “Lord, yes!”

  “Will you teach me?”

  * * * * * * *

  A week later Mr. Nix, in a hurry as usual, was pattering up Duke Street. Bottome’s paper shop was having a new coat of paint. A young workman in yellow overalls perched on a ladder managed his brush adroitly with one arm.

  “Poor fellow!” said Mr. Nix, a compassionate man always, but doubly so now because he had lost his son in the war. “Left the other in France, I suppose.”

  The workman looked down, and revealed to the astonished countenance of Mr. Nix the laughing eyes of his late tenant, the Hon. Clive Torby.

  MISS MORGANHURST

  IT may be that in future years when critics and commentators look back upon the European War, one of the aspects of it that will seem to them strangest will be the attitude of complete indifference that certain people assumed during the course of it. Indifference! That is an inefficient word. It is not too strong to say that hundreds of men and women in London during those horrible years were comp
letely unconscious, save on the rare occasions when rationing or air-raids forced them to attend, that there was any war at all. There were men in clubs, women in drawing-rooms... old maids and old bachelors... old maids like Miss Morganhurst.

  How old Miss Morganhurst really was, for how long she had been raising her lorgnette to gaze scornfully at Society, for how many years now she had been sitting down to bridge on fine sunny afternoons with women like Anne Carteledge and Mrs. Mellish and Mrs. Porter, for how many more years she had lived in No. 30 flat at Hortons, she alone had the secret — even Agatha, her sour and confidential maid, could not tell.

  Ho one knew whence she came; years ago some young wag had christened her the “Morgue,” led to that diminutive by the strange pallor of her cheeks, the queer bone-cracking little body she had and her fashion of dressing herself up in jewellery and bright colours that gave her a certain sort of ghastliness. She had been for years an intimate of all sorts of sets in London: no one could call her a snob — she went just everywhere, and knew just everyone; she was after two things in life — scandal and bridge — and whether it were the old Duchess of Wrexe’s drawing-room (without the Duchess of course) or the cheapest sort of provincial tea-party, she was equally at home and satisfied. She was like a ferret with her beady eyes — a dressed-up ferret. Yes, and like the “Morgue” too, a sniff of corruption about her somewhere.

  People had said for many years that she was the best bridge-player in London, and that she lived by her winnings. That was, I daresay, true enough. Her pale face looked as though it fed on artificial light, and her over-decorated back was always bent a little, as though she were for ever stooping over a table.

  I’ve seen her play bridge, and it’s not a sight one’s likely to forget — bent almost double, her hooky fingers of a dull yellow loaded with rings pointing towards some card and her eyes literally flashing fire. Lord! how these women played! Life and death to them truly... no gentle card-game for them. She was a woman who hated sentiment; her voice was hard and dry, with a rasp in it like the movement of an ill-fitting gate. She boasted that she cared for no human being alive, she did not believe in human affection. Her maid, Agatha, she said, would cut her throat for twopence; but, expecting to be left something in the will, stayed on savagely hoping.

  It is hard, however, for even the dryest of human souls to he attached to nothing. Miss Morganhurst had her attachment — to a canine, fragment of skin and bone known as Tiny-Tee. Tiny-Tee was so small that it could not have been said to exist had not its perpetual misery given it a kind of spasmodic loveliness. It is the nature of these dogs to shiver and shake and tremble, but nothing ever lived up to its nature more thoroughly than Tiny-Tee. Miss Morganhurst (in her own fierce rasping way) adored this creature. It never left her, and sat on her lap during bridge shuddering and shivering amongst a multitude of little gold chains and keys and purses that jangled and rattled with every shiver.

  Then came the war, and it shook the world to pieces. It did not shake Miss Morganhurst.

  For one bad moment she fancied that bridge would be difficult and that it might not be easy to provide Tiny-Tee with her proper biscuits. She consulted with Mrs. Mellish and Mrs. Porter, and after looking at the thing from every side they were of opinion that it would be possible still to find a “four.” She further summoned up Mr. Nix from the “vasty deeps” of the chambers and endeavoured to probe his mind. This she did easily, and Mr. Nix became quite confidential. He thoroughly approved of Miss Morganhurst, partly because she knew such very grand people, which was good for his chambers, and partly because Miss Morganhurst had no kind of morals and you could say anything you liked. Mr. Nix was a kindly little man and a diplomatic, and he suited himself to his company; but he did like sometimes to be quite unbuttoned and not to have “to think of every word.”

  With Miss Morganhurst you needn’t think of anything. She found his love of gossip very agreeable indeed; she approved, too, of his honourable coda You were safe with him. Not a thing would he ever give away about any other inhabitant of Hortons. She asked him about the food for Tiny-Tee, and he assured her that he would do his best. And the little dinners for four?... She need not be anxious.

  After which she dismissed the war altogether from her mind. It would, of course, emphasise its more unagreeable features in the paper. That was unfortunate. But very soon the press cleverly discovered a kind of camouflage of phrase which covered up reality completely. “The honourable gentleman, speaking at Newcastle last night, said that we would not sheathe the sword until—”

  “Over the top! those are the words for which our brave lads are waiting—”

  “Our offensive in these areas inflicted very heavy losses on the Germans and resulted in the capture of important positions by the Allied troops.”

  It seemed that Miss Morganhurst read these phrases for a week or two, and easily persuaded herself that the war was non-existent. She was happy that it was so. It appears incredible that anyone could have dismissed the war so easily, but then Miss Morganhurst was surely impenetrable.

  I have heard different explanations given by people, who knew her well, of Miss Morganhurst’s impenetrability. Some said that it was a mask, assumed to cover and defeat feelings that were dangerous to liberate; others, that she was so selfish and egoistic that she really did not care about anybody. This is the interesting point about Miss Morganhurst. Did she banish the war entirely from her consciousness and give it no further consideration, or was she, in truth, desperately and with ever-increasing terror aware of it and unable to resist it?

  She gave no sign until the very end; but the nature of that end leads me to believe that the first of the two theories is the correct one. People who knew her have said that her devotion to that wretched little canine remnant proves that she had no heart, but only a fluent sentimentality. I believe it to have proved exactly the opposite. I believe her to have been the cynic she was because she had, at some time or other, been deeply disappointed. She had, I imagine, no illusions about herself, and saw that the only thing to be, if she were to fight at all, was ruthless, harsh, money-grubbing, and, above all, to bury herself in other people’s scandal. She was, I rather fancy, one of those women for whom life would have been completely changed, had she been given beauty or even moderate good looks. As life had not given her that, she would pay it back. And after all, life was stronger than she knew....

  She did not refuse to discuss the war, but she spoke of it as of something remotely distant, playing itself out in the sands of the Sahara, for instance. Nothing stirred her cynical humour more deeply than the heroics on both sides. When politicians or kings or generals got up and said before all the world how just their cause was and how keen they were about honour and truth and self-sacrifice, and how certain they were, after all, to win, Miss Morganhurst gave her sinister villainous chuckle.

  She became something of a power during the bad years, when the air-raids came and the casualties mounted higher and higher, and Roumania came in only to break, and the Russian revolution led to the sinister ghoulishness of Brest-Litovsk. People sought her company. “We’ll go and see the ‘Morgue,’” they said; “she never mentions the war.” She never did; she refused absolutely to consider it. She would not even discuss prices and raids and ration-books. Private history was what she cared for, and that generally on the scabious side, if possible. What she liked to know was who was sick of her, why so-and-so had left such-and-such a place, whether X — was really drinking, and why Z — had taken to cocaine. Her bridge got better and better, and it used to be a real trial of strength to go and play with her in the untidy, overfull, over-garish little flat. The arrival of the Armistice was, I believe now, her first dangerous moment She was suddenly forced to pause and consider; it was not so easy to shut her eyes and ears as it had been, and the things that she had, against her will, seen and heard were now, in the new silence, insistent She suddenly, as I remember noticing about this time, got to look incredibly old.

&nbs
p; Her nose seemed longer, her chin hookier, her hands bonier, and little brown spots like sickly freckles appeared on her forehead.

  Her dress got brighter and brighter. She especially affected a kind of purple silk, I remember.

  The Armistice seemed to disappoint her. It would have done us people a lot of good to get a thorough trouncing, I remember her saying. What would have happened to herself, and her bridge, had we had that trouncing I don’t think she reflected. So far as one could see, she regarded herself as an inevitable permanency. I wonder whether she really did. She developed, too, just about this time, an increased passion for her wretched little dog. It was as though, now that the war was really nearing its close, she was twice as frightened about that animal’s safety as she had been before? Of what was she afraid? Was it some ghostly warning? Was it some sense that she had that fate was surely going to get her somewhere, and that now that it had missed her through air-raids it must try other means? Or was it simply that she had more time now to spend over the animal’s wants and desires? In any case she would not let the dog out of her sight unless on some most imperative occasion. She trusted Agatha, but no one would take so much care as one would oneself. The dog itself seemed now to be restless and alarmed as though it smelt already its approaching doom. It got, so far as one could see, no pleasure from anything. There were no signs that it loved its mistress, only it did perhaps have a sense that she could protect it from outside disaster. Every step, every word, every breath of wind seemed to drive its little soul to the very edge of extinction — then, with shudderings and shiverings and tremblings, back it came again. They were a grim pair, those two.

  Christmas came and passed, and the world began to shake itself together again. That same shaking was a difficult business, attended with strikes and revolutions and murder and despair; but out of the chaos prophets might discern a form slowly rising, a shape that would, stand for a new world, for a better world, a kindlier, a cleaner, honester....