Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  But Miss Morganhurst was no prophet. Her sallow eyes were intent on her bridge-cards — so, at least they appeared to be.

  After the catastrophe, I talked with only one person who seemed to have expected what actually occurred. This was a funny old thing called Miss Williams, one of Miss Morganhurst’s more shabby friends — a gossip and a sentimentalist — the last person in the world, as I would have supposed, to see anything interesting.

  However, this old lady insisted that she had perceived, during this period, that Miss Morganhurst was “keeping something back.”

  “Keeping what back?” I asked. “A guilty secret?”

  “Oh, not at all,” said Miss Williams. “Dear me, no. Dahlia wouldn’t have minded anything of that kind. No, it’s my belief she was affected by the war long before any of us supposed it, and that she wouldn’t think of it or look at it because she knew what would happen if she did. She knew, too, that she was being haunted by it all the time, and that it was all piling up, ready, waiting for the moment.... I do hope you don’t think me fantastical —— —— —”

  I didn’t think her “fantastical” at all, but I must confess that when I look back I can see in the Miss Morganhurst of these months nothing but a colossal egotism and greed.

  However, I must not be cruel. It was towards the end of April that fate, suddenly tired of waiting, took her in hand, and finished her off.

  One afternoon when, arrayed in a bright pink tea-gown, she was lying on her sofa, taking some rest before dressing for dinner, Agatha came in and said that her brother was there and would like to see her. Now Miss Morganhurst had a very surprising brother — surprising, that is, for her. He was a clergyman who had been for very many years the rector of a little parish in Wiltshire. So little a parish was it that it gave him little work and less pay, with the result that he was, at his advanced age, shabby and moth-eaten and dim, like a poor old bird shut up for many months in a blinded cage and let suddenly into the light I don’t know what Miss Morganhurst’s dealings with her brother had been, whether she had been kind to him or unkind, selfish or unselfish; but I suspect that she had not seen very much of him. Their ways had been too different, their ambitions too separate. The old man had had one passion in his life, his son, and the boy had died in a German prison in the summer of 1918. He had been, it was gathered, in one of the more unpleasant German prisons. Mr. Morganhurst was a widower, and this blow had simply finished him — the thread that connected him with coherent life snapped, and he lived in a world of dim visions and incoherent dreams.

  He was not, in fact, quite right in his head.

  Agatha must have thought the couple a strange and depressing pair as they stood together in that becoloured and becrowded room, if, that is to say, she ever thought of anything but herself. Poor old Morganhurst was wearing an overcoat really green with age, and his squashy black hat was dusty and unbrushed.

  He wore large spectacles, and his chin was of the kind that seems always to have two days’ growth upon it. The bottoms of his trousers were muddy, although it was a dry day. He stood there uneasily twisting his hat round and round in his fingers and blinking at his sister.

  “Sit down, Frederick,” said his sister. “What can I do for you?”

  It seemed that he had come simply to talk to her. He was going down to Little Roseberry that evening, but he had an hour to spare. The fact was that he was besieged, invaded, devastated by horrors of which he could not rid himself.

  If he gave them to someone else might they not leave him? At any rate he would share them — he would share them with his sister. It appeared that an officer, liberated from Germany after the Armistice, had sought him out and given him some last details about his son’s death.

  These “details” were not nice. There are, as we all know, German prisons and German prisons. Young Morganhurst seemed to have been sent to one of the poorer sort He had been rebellious and had been punished; he had been starved, shut up for days in solitary darkness... at the end he had found a knife somewhere and had killed himself.

  The old man’s mind was like a haystack, and many details lost their way in the general confusion. He told what he could to his sister. It must have been a strange meeting: the shabby old man sitting in one of those gaudy chairs trying to rid himself of his horror and terror and, above all, of his loneliness. Here was the only relation, the only link, the only hope of something human to comfort him in his darkness; and he did not know her, could not see how to appeal to her or to touch her... she was as strange to him as a bird of paradise. She on her side, as I now can see, had her own horror to fight. Here at last was the thing that throughout the war she had struggled to keep away from her. She knew, and she alone, how susceptible she was! But she could not turn him away; he was her brother, and she hated him for coming — shabby old man — but she must hear him out.

  She sat there, the dog clutched, shivering to her skinny breast. I don’t suppose that she said very much, but she listened. Against her will she listened, and it must have been with her as it is with some traveller when, in the distance, he hears the rushing of the avalanche that threatens to overwhelm him. But she didn’t close her ears. From what she said afterwards one knows that she must have heard everything that he said.

  He very quickly, I expect, forgot that he had an audience at all. The words poured out. There was some German officer who had been described to him and he had grown, in his mind, to he the very devil himself. He was a brute, I daresay, but there are brutes in every country....

  “He had done simply nothing — just spoken back when they insulted him. They took his clothes off him — everything. He was quite naked. And they mocked him like that, pricking him with their swords.... They put him into darkness... a filthy place, no sanitation, nothing.... They twisted his arms. They made him imagine things, horrible things. When he had dysentery they just left him.... They made him drink... forced it down his throat.....”

  How much of it was true? Very little, I daresay. Even as the old man told it details gathered and piled up. “He had always been such a good boy. Very gentle and quiet — never any trouble at school.... I was hoping that he would be ordained, as you know, Dahlia. He always loved life... one of the happiest boys. What did they do it for? He hadn’t done them any harm. They must have made him very angry for him to say what he did — and he didn’t say very much.... And he was all alone. He hadn’t any of his friends with him. And they kept his parcels and letters from him. I’d just sent him one or two little things....”

  This, more than anything else, distressed the old man: that they’d kept the letters from the boy. It was the loneliness that seemed to him the most horrible of all.

  “He had always hated to be alone. Even as a very little boy be didn’t like to be left in the dark. He used to beg us.... Nightlights, we always left night-lights in his room.. . But what had he done? Nothing. He had never been a bad boy. There was nothing to punish him for.”

  The old man didn’t cry. He sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and once he brought out a dirty handkerchief. The thing that he couldn’t understand was why this had happened to the boy at all. Also he was persecuted by the thought that there was something still that he could do. He didn’t know what it might be, but there must be something. He had no vindictiveness. He didn’t want revenge. He didn’t blame the Germans. He didn’t blame anybody. He only felt that he should “make it up to his boy” somehow. “You know, Dahlia,” he said, “there were times when one was irritated by the boy. I haven’t a very equable temper. No, I never have had. I used to have my headaches, and he was noisy sometimes. And I’m afraid I spoke sharply. I’m sorry enough for it now — indeed, I am. Oh, yes! But, of course, one didn’t know at the time....”

  Then he went back to the horrors. They would not leave him, they buzzed about his brain like flies. The darkness, the smell... the smell, the filth, the darkness. And then the end! He could not forget that. What the boy must have suffered to come
to that! Such a happy boy!... Why had it happened? And what was to be done now?

  He stopped at last and said that he must go and catch his train. He was glad to have talked about it. It had done him good. It was kindly of Dahlia to listen to him. He hoped that Dahlia would come down one day and see him at Little Roseberry. It wasn’t much that he could offer her. It was a quiet little place, and he was alone, but he would be glad to see her. He kissed her, gave her a dim bewildered smile, and went.

  Soon after his departure Mrs. Mellish arrived. It is significant of Mrs. Mellish’s general egotism and ignorance that she perceived nothing odd in Miss Morganhurst! Just the same as she always was. They talked bridge the next afternoon. Bridge. Four women. What about Norah Pope? Poor player. That’s the worst of it. Doesn’t see properly and won’t wear glasses. Simply conceit. But still, who else is there? Tomorrow afternoon. Very difficult. Mrs. Mellish admits that on that particular day she was preoccupied about a dress that she couldn’t get back from the dressmakers. These days. What has come to the working-classes? They don’t care. THEY DON’T CASE. Money simply of no importance to them. That’s the strange thing. In the old days you could have done simply everything by offering them a little more.... But not now. Oh, dear no!... She admits that she was preoccupied about the dress, and wasn’t noticing Dahlia Morganhurst as she might have done. She saw nothing odd. It’s my belief that she’ll see nothing odd at the last trump. She went away.

  Agatha is the other witness. After Mrs. Mellish’s departure she came in to her mistress. The only thing that she remarked about her was that “she was very quiet.” Tired, I supposed, after talking to that Mrs.

  Mellish. And then her old brother and all. Enough to upset anyone.

  Miss Morganhurst sat on the edge of her gaudy sofa looking in front of her. When Agatha came in she said that she would not dress just yet. Agatha had better take the dog out for a quarter of an hour. The maid wondered at that because that was a thing that she was never allowed to do. She hated the animal. However, she pushed its monstrous little head inside its absurd little muzzle, put on her hat and went out.

  I don’t know what Miss Morganhurst thought about during that quarter of an hour, but when at the end of that time Agatha returned, scared out of her life with the dog dead in her arms, the old lady was sitting in the same spot as before. She can’t have moved. She must have been fighting, I fancy, against the last barrier — the last barrier that kept all the wild beasts back from leaping on her imagination.

  Well, that slaughtered morsel of skin and bone finished it. The slaughtering had been the most natural thing in the world. Agatha had put the creature on the pavement for a moment and turned to look in a shop window. Some dog from the other side of the street had enticed the trembling object. It had started tottering across, uttering tiny snorts of sensual excitement behind its absurd muzzle. A Rolls-Royce had done the rest. It had suffered very little damage, and laid out on Miss Morganhurst’s red lacquer table, it really looked finer than it had ever done. Agatha, of course, was terrified. She knew better than anyone how deeply her mistress had loved the poor trembling image. Sobbing, she explained. She was really touched, I think — quite truly touched for half a minute. Then, when she saw how quietly Miss Morganhurst took it, she regained her courage. Miss Morganhurst said nothing but “Yes.” Agatha regained, with her courage, her volubility. Words poured forth. She could needs tell madame how deeply, deeply she regretted her carelessness. She would kill herself for her carelessness if madame preferred that. How she could! Madame might do with her what she wished....

  But all that Miss Morganhurst said was “Yes.”

  Miss Morganhurst went into her bedroom to dress for dinner, and Tiny-Tee was left, at full length in all her glory, trembling no longer, upon the red lacquer table.

  Agatha went downstairs for something, spoke to Fanny, the portress, and returned. Outside the bedroom door, which was ajar, she heard a strange sound, like someone cracking nuts, she described it afterwards. She went in. Miss Morganhurst, her thin grey hair about her neck, clad only in her chemise, was sitting on her bed swinging her bare legs. At sight of Agatha she screeched like a parrot. As Agatha approached she sprang off the bed and advanced at her — her back bent, her fingers bent talon-wise. A stream of words poured from her lips. Every horror, every indecency, every violation of truth and honour that the war had revealed through the press, through books, through letters, seemed to have lodged in that brain. Every murder, every rape, every slaughter of innocent children, every violation of girls and old women — they were all there. She stopped close to Agatha and the words streamed out. At the end of every sentence, with a little sigh, she whispered— “I was there! I was there!... I’ve seen it.”

  Agatha, frozen with horror, remained; then, action coming back to her, she fled — Miss Morganhurst pursued her, her bare feet pattering on the carpet. She called Agatha by the name of some obscure German captain.

  Agatha found a doctor. When they returned Miss Morganhurst was lying on her face on the floor in the darkness, hiding from what she saw. “I was there, you know,” she whispered to the doctor as he put her to bed.

  She died next day. Perhaps, after all, many people have felt the war more than one has supposed......

  PETER WESTCOTT

  WESTCOTT’S astonishment when Edmund Robsart offered to lend his chambers rent free for two months was only equalled by his amazement when.. he discovered himself accepting that offer. Had you told him a week before that within seven days he would be sleeping in Robsart’s sumptuous bed closed in by the rich sanctities of Robsart’s sumptuous flat, he would have looked at you with that cool contempt that was one of Westcott’s worst features; for Westcott in those days was an arrogant man — arrogant through disgust of himself and disgust of the world — two very poor reasons for arrogance.

  This was the way of his accepting Robsart’s offer. He had been demobilised at the beginning of March and had realised, with a sudden surprise that seemed only to confirm his arrogance, that he had no one to go and see, no work to do, no place that needed him, no place that he needed. He took a bedroom in a dirty little street off the Strand. He knew that there were two men whom he should look up, Maradick and Galleon. He swore to himself that he would die before he saw either of them. Then, in the Strand, he met Lester, a man whom he had known in his old literary days before the war. Twenty years ago Lester had been a man of much promise, and his novel To Paradise had been read by everyone who wanted a short road to culture. Now the war had definitely dated him and he seemed to belong to the Yellow Book and the Bodley Head and all those days when names were so much more important than performance, and a cover with a Beardsley drawing on it hid a multitude of amateurs.

  Westcott did not mind whether or no Lester were dated; he was, for the matter of that, himself dated. It was long indeed since anyone had mentioned Reuben Hallard, or The Vines, or The Stone House. It seemed many ages since he himself had thought of them. He liked Lester, and being a man who, in spite of his loneliness and arrogance, responded at once to kindliness, he accepted Lester’s invitation to dinner. He dug up an old dinner jacket that was tight and unduly stretched across his broad shoulders and went to dinner in the Cromwell Road.

  Days of failure and disappointment had not suited Mrs. Lester, who had always lived for excitement and good society, and found neither in the Cromwell Road. There was only one other guest beside Westcott, and that was Edmund Robsart, the most successful of all modern novelists. For many years Robsart’s name had been a synonym for success. “It must be,” thought Westcott, looking at the man’s red face and superb chest and portly stomach, “at least thirty years since you published The Prime Minister’s Daughter and hit the nail at the very first time. What a loathsome fellow you are, what harm you’ve done to literature, and what a gorgeous time you must have had!”

  And the very first thing that Robsart said was: “You don’t mean to tell me that you’re Westcott, the author of Reuben Hallar
d!”

  “Now you’re a fool to be touched by that,” Westcott said to himself. But he was astonished, nevertheless — touched, it seemed, not so much for himself as in a kind of protective way for that poor little firstling who had been both begotten and produced in a London boarding-house and had held in his little hands so much promise, so many hopes, so much pride and ambition.

  Westcott was touched; he did not resent Robsart’s fatherly, patronising air as of one who held always in his chubby, gouty fist the golden keys to Paradise. He drank Lester’s wine and laughed at Robsart’s anecdotes and was sympathetic to Mrs. Lester’s complaints; he, Peter Westcott, who throughout the war had been held to be cold, conceited, overbearing, the most unpopular officer in his regiment. At the end of the evening Robsart asked him to come to lunch. “I live in Duke Street, Hortons. Everyone knows Hortons.” He gave him his number. “Tuesday, 1.30. Glad to see you.”

  Westcott cursed himself for a fool when he went back to his Strand lodging. What did he want with men of Robsart’s kidney? Had he not been laughing and mocking at Robsart for years? Had he not taken Robsart’s success as a sign of the contemptible character of the British Public; when men like Galleon and Lester had been barely able to live by their pens and Robsart rolled in money — rolled in money earned by tawdry fustian sentimentality like The Kings of the Earth and Love Laughs at Locksmiths.

  Nevertheless, he went and brushed his old blue suit and rolled up to Duke Street, looking, as he always did, like an able-bodied seaman on leave. Robsart’s flat was very much what he had expected it to be — quite sumptuous and quite lifeless. There was a little diningroom off what Robsart called the Library. This little dining-room had nothing in it save a round, shining gate-legged table with a glass top to it, a red Persian rug that must have been priceless, a Rodin bust of an evil-looking old woman who stuck her tongue out, and a Gauguin that looked to Westcott like a red apple and a banana, but was, in reality, a native woman by the seashore. In the Library there were wonderful books, the walls being completely covered by them.