Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  He smiled at her with confidence.

  “It’s quite all right, Lucy, dear. I understand perfectly. You’ll feel quite differently very soon. I surprised you. I shouldn’t have done it, but I was so anxious to see you — a lover’s privilege.

  “Now,” he ended with that happy optimistic air that he had developed so happily in the pulpit, “let us all have breakfast, shall we?”

  Lucy shook her head, and then turned and went back to her room.

  A strange day followed. She sat there until luncheon, alone, hearing the soft buzz of the traffic below her window, interrupted once by the maid, who, after her permission had been given, moved softly about the room, setting it to rights. It was not quite true, that she was thinking during that time — it could scarcely be called thought — it was rather that a succession of pictures passed before her brain — her parents in every attitude of alarm and remonstrance and command, the village and its gossips, long long imprisonment beneath those high downs, and finally her parents again. How strange it was that last night’s little incident should have illuminated everything in her life, and nothing more surely than her father and mother! How queer that a strange young man, with whom in all her life she had exchanged only one or two words, should haw told her more of her own people than all her living with them could!

  She faced her people for the first time — she knew them to be hard, narrow, provincial, selfish, intolerant. She loved them just as she had done before, because wit those other qualities, they were also tender, compassionate, loving, unselfish.

  But she saw now quite clearly what living with the would be.

  She intended to ruin the peace and prosperity of her future life because she had met a stranger (for a second) whom she would never see again! That was truth.... She accepted it without a tremor.

  It was also true that that stranger, by meeting her, had made her live for the first time.

  Better live uncomfortably or merely pretend to live, or to think you loved when you did not. Why, now she thought of it, nearly everyone in the world was dead!

  She was summoned to luncheon. It amused, and at the same time touched her, to see how Aunt Comstock and Simon covered up the morning’s mistake with a cheerful pretence that it had never occurred.

  Luncheon was all chatter — musical chatter, clerical chatter... hearty laughter. Lucy submitted to everything. She submitted to an afternoon drive.

  It was during the drive that she learned that on the very next morning, by the 10.15 train, Simon would lead her back to Hawkesworth. When she heard that her heart gave a wild leap of rebellion.

  She looked desperately about her. Could she not escape from the carriage, run and run until the distant streets hid her? She had no money; she had nothing. If only she could remain a few days longer in London she felt that she would be sure to meet her friend again. Maddening to be so near and then to miss! She thought of bursting out into some wild protest — one glance at their faces showed her how hopeless that would be!

  Hawkesworth! Prison!

  Then she felt her new life and vitality glow and sparkle in her veins. After all, Hawkesworth was not the end. The end? No, the beginning....

  That night they were, oh! so kind to her! — laughing, granting her anything that she might ask — oh! so tactful!

  “Poor Lucy,” she could hear them say, “she had a fit of hysteria this morning. This London has been bad for her. She mustn’t come here again — never again!”

  In the morning the taxi was there, the hags were packed.

  In the pretty green and white hall with the grandfather’s clock, when Lucy tipped Fanny, the Portress, she whispered to her, “I’m coming back. They don’t think I am — but I know I am. And if anyone — anyone — should ask for me, describe me, you know, so that you are sure it’s me, write to me at this address.”

  Fanny smiled and nodded. “Now, Lucy, dear,” cried Aunt Comstock, “the cab’s waiting.”

  She was sitting in it opposite to Simon, who looked clean, but ridiculous on one of these uncomfortable third-party seats. They started up Duke Street, and turned into Piccadilly.

  “I do hope you’ll have a nice journey, Lucy. It’s a fine day, and I’ve got some chocolate...

  Are not these things arranged by God?

  The cab was stopped by traffic just close to St. James’s Church. Lucy, truly captured now like a mouse in a trap, glanced with a last wild look through the windows. A moment later she had tumbled over Simon’s knees and burst open the door. She was in the street. As she ran she was conscious of whistles sounding, boys calling, the green trees of St. James’s blowing. She had touched him on the arm.

  “I saw you.... I couldn’t help it.... I had to speak....” She was out of breath. When he turned and the light of recognition flamed into his eyes, she could have died with happiness. He caught her hand. He stammered with joy.

  “Everywhere,” he said, “I’ve been looking.... hoping... I’ve walked about.... I’ve never thought of anything else....”

  “Quick,” she said. “I’ve no time. They’re in the cab there. It’s our last chance. Can you remember this without writing it down!”

  “Yes.”

  “Well — Lucy Moon, The Rectory, Hawkesworth, N. Yorkshire. KES... Yes.... Write at once....” Even in her agitation she noticed the strength and confidence of his smile.

  “I’ll write to-day,” he assured her. “You’re not married?”

  “No. It’s Miss.”

  “I’m not either.” He caught her hand. “I’ll find you before the week’s out.”

  She fled. She was in the cab. Aunt Comstock and Simon regarded her with terrified eyes.

  “Lucy, dear — How could you? What were you about? The train....”

  “Oh, it was a friend! I had to say good-bye. He didn’t know I was going so soon.”

  She felt that her happiness would stifle her. She flung open the other window. She looked at them both and felt the tenderest pity because they seemed so old, so cross, so dead.

  She bent over and kissed her aunt.

  “Here we are,” said that lady, with an air of intense relief. “Now you’ll be all right, Lucy darling. You’ll just have Mr. Laud to look after you.”

  “Yes!” cried Lucy. “Now I’m all right.... Come along, Simon, or we’ll miss the train.”

  MRS. PORTER AND MISS ALLEN

  ONE of the largest flats on the fourth floor of Hortons was taken in March, 1919, by a Mrs. Porter, a widow. The flat was seen, and all business in connection with it was done, by a Miss Allen, her lady companion. Mr. Nix, who considered himself a sound and trenchant judge of human nature, liked Miss Allen from the first; and then when he saw Mrs. Porter he liked her too. These were just the tenants for Hortons — modest, gentle ladies with ample means and no extravagant demands on human nature. Mrs. Porter was one of those old ladies, now, alas, in our turbulent times, less and less easy to discover— “something straight out of a book,” Mr. Nix called her. She was little and fragile, dressed in silver grey, forehead puckered a little with a sort of anticipation of being a trial to others, her voice cultured, soft, a little remote like the chime of a distant clock. She moved with gestures a little deprecatory, a little resigned, extremely modest — she would not disturb anyone for the world....

  Miss Allen was, of course, another type — a woman of perhaps forty years of age, refined, quiet, efficient, her dark hair, turning now a little grey, waved decorously from her high white forehead, pince-nez, eyes of a grave, considering brown, a woman resigned, after, it might be, abandoning young ambitions for a place of modest and decent labour in the world — one might still see, in the rather humorous smile that she bestowed once and again upon men and things, the hint of defiance at the necessity that forced abnegation.

  Miss Allen had not been in Mrs. Porter’s service for very long. Wearied with the exactions of a family of children whose idle and uninspiring intelligences she was attempting to governess, she answered, at the end of 1
918, an advertisement in the “Agony” column of The Times, that led her to Mrs. Porter. She loved Mrs. Porter at first sight.

  “Why, she’s a dear old lady,” she exclaimed to her ironic spirit— “dear old ladies” being in those days as rare as crinolines. She was of the kind for which Miss Allen had unconsciously been looking: generous, gentle, refined, and intelligent Moreover, she had, within the last six months, been left quite alone in the world — Mr. Porter had died of apoplexy in August, 1918. He had left her very wealthy, and Miss Allen discovered quickly in the old lady a rather surprising desire to see and enjoy life — surprising, because old ladies of seventy-one years of age and of Mrs. Porter’s gentle appearance do not, as a rule, care for noise and bustle and the buzz of youthful energy.

  “I want to be in the very middle of things, dear Miss Allen,” said Mrs. Porter, “right in the very middle. We lived at Wimbledon long enough, Henry and I — it wasn’t good for either of us. Find me somewhere within two minutes of all the best theatres.”

  Miss Allen found Hortons, which is, as everyone knows, in Duke Street, just behind Piccadilly and Fortnum and Mason’s, and Hatchard’s and the Hammam Turkish Baths and the Royal Academy and Scott’s hat-shop and Jackson’s Jams — how could you be more perfectly in the centre of London?

  Then Miss Allen discovered a curious thing — namely, that Mrs. Porter did not wish to keep a single piece, fragment, or vestige of her Wimbledon effects. She insisted on an auction — everything was sold. Miss Allen attempted a remonstrance — some of the things in the Wimbledon house were very fine, handsome, solid mid-Victorian sideboards and cupboards, and chairs and tables.

  “You really have no idea, Mrs. Porter,” said Miss Allen, “of the cost of furniture these days. It is quite terrible; you will naturally get a wonderful price for your things, but the difficulty of buying—”

  Mrs. Porter was determined. She nodded her bright bird-like head, tapped with her delicate fingers on the table and smiled at Miss Allen.

  “If you don’t mind, dear. I know it’s tiresome for you, but I have my reasons.” It was not tiresome at all for Miss Allen; she loved to buy pretty new things at someone else’s expense, but it was now, for the first time, that she began to wonder how dearly Mrs. Porter had loved her husband.

  Through the following weeks this became her principal preoccupation — Mr. Henry Porter. She could not have explained to herself why this was. She was not, by nature, an inquisitive and scandal-loving woman, nor was she unusually imaginative. People did not, as a rule, occur to her as existing unless she saw them physically there in front of her. Nevertheless she spent a good deal of her time in considering Mr. Porter.

  She was able to make the Horton flat very agreeable. Mrs. Porter wanted “life and colour,” so the sitting-room had curtains with pink roses and a bright yellow cage with two canaries, and several pretty watercolours, and a handsome fire-screen with golden peacocks, and a deep Turkish carpet, soft and luxurious to the feet. Not one thing from the Wimbledon house was there, not any single picture of Mr. Porter. The next thing that Miss Allen discovered was that Mrs. Porter was nervous.

  Although Hortons sheltered many human beings within its boundaries, it was, owing to the thickness of its walls and the beautiful training of Mr. Nix’s servants, a very quiet place. It had been even called in its day “cloistral.” It simply shared with London that amazing and never-to-be-overlauded gift of being able to offer, in the very centre of the traffic of the world, little green spots of quiet and tranquillity. It seemed, after a week or two, that it was almost too quiet for Mrs. Porter.

  “Open a window, Lucy dear, won’t you,” she said. “I like to hear the omnibuses.”

  It was a chill evening in early April, but Miss Allen threw up the window. They sat there listening. There was no sound, only suddenly, as though to accentuate the silence, St. James’s Church clock struck the quarter. Then an omnibus rumbled, rattled, and was gone. The room was more silent than before.

  “Shall I read to you?” said Miss Allen.

  “Yes, dear, do.” And they settled down to Martin Chuzzlewit.

  Mrs. Porter’s apprehensiveness became more and more evident She was so dear an old lady, and had won so completely Miss Allen’s heart, that that kindly woman could not bear to see her suffer. For the first time in her life she wanted to ask questions. It seemed to her that there must be some very strange reason for Mrs. Porter’s silences. She was not by nature a silent old lady; she talked continually, seemed, indeed, positively to detest the urgency of silence. She especially loved to tell Miss Allen about her early days. She had grown up as a girl in Plymouth, and she could remember all the events of that time — the balls, the walks on the Hoe, the shops, the summer visits into Glebeshire, the old dark house with the high garden walls, the cuckoo clock and the pictures of the strange old ships in which her father, who was a retired sea-captain, had sailed. She could not tell Miss Allen enough about these things, but so soon as she arrived at her engagement to Mr. Porter there was silence. London shrouded her married life with its thick, grey pall. She hated that Miss Allen should leave her. She was very generous about Miss Allen’s freedom, always begging her to take an afternoon or evening and amuse herself with her own friends; but Miss Allen had very few friends, and on her return from an expedition she always found the old lady miserable, frightened, and bewildered. She found that she loved her, that she cared for her as she had cared for no human being for many years, so she stayed with her and read to her and talked to her, and saw less and less of the outside world.

  The two ladies made occasionally an expedition to a theatre or a concert, but these adventures, although they were anticipated with eagerness and pleasure, were always in the event disappointing. Mrs. Porter loved the theatre — especially did she adore plays of sentiment — plays where young people were happily united — where old people sat cosily together reminiscing over a blazing fire, where surly guardians were suddenly generous, and poor orphan girls were unexpectedly given fortunes.

  Mrs. Porter started her evening with eager excitement. She dressed for the occasion, putting on her best lace cap, her cameo brooch, her smartest shoes. A taxi came for them, and they always had the best stalls, near the front, so that the old lady should not miss a word. Miss Allen noticed, however, that very quickly Mrs. Porter began to be disturbed. She would glance around the theatre and soon her colour would fade, her hands begin to tremble; then, perhaps at the end of the first act, perhaps later, a little hand would press Miss Allen’s arm:

  “I think, dear, if you don’t mind — I’m tired — shall we not go?”

  After a little while Miss Allen suggested the Cinema. Mrs. Porter received the idea with eagerness. They went to the West-End house, and the first occasion was a triumphant success. How Mrs. Porter loved it! Just the kind of a story for her — Mary Pickford in Daddy Long Legs. To tell the truth, Mrs. Porter cried her eyes out. She swore that she had never in her life enjoyed anything so much. And the music! How beautiful! How restful! They would go every week....

  The second occasion was, unfortunately, disastrous. The story was one of modem life, a woman persecuted by her husband, driven by his brutality into the arms of her lover. The husband was the customary cinema villain — broad, stout, sneering, and over-dressed. Mrs. Porter fainted and had to be carried out by two attendants. A doctor came to see her, said that she was suffering from nervous exhaustion and must be protected from all excitement.... The two ladies sat now every evening in their pretty sitting-room, and Miss Allen read aloud the novels of Dickens one after the other.

  More and more persistently, in spite of herself, did curiosity about the late Mr. Porter drive itself in upon Miss Allen. She told herself that curiosity itself was vulgar and unworthy of the philosophy that she had created for herself out of life. Nevertheless it persisted. Soon she felt that, after all, it was justified. Were she to help this poor old lady to whom she was now most deeply attached, she must know more. She could not give
her any real help unless she might gauge more accurately her trouble — but she was a shy woman, shy, especially, of forcing personal confidences. She hesitated; then she was aware that a barrier was being created between them. The evening had many silences, and Miss Allen detected many strange, surreptitious glances thrown at her by the old lady. The situation was impossible. One night she asked her a question.

  “Dear Mrs. Porter,” she said, her heart beating strangely as she spoke, “I do hope that you will not think me impertinent, but you have been so good to me that you have made me love you. You are suffering, and I cannot bear to see you unhappy. I want, oh, so eagerly, to help you! Is there nothing I can do?”

  Mrs. Porter said nothing. Her hands quivered; then a tear stole down her cheek. Miss Allen went over to her, sat down beside her and took her hand.

  “You must let me help you,” she said. “Dismiss me if I am asking you questions that I should not. But I would rather leave you altogether, happy though I am with you, than see you so miserable. Tell me what I can do.”

  “You can do nothing, Lucy dear,” said the old lady.

  “But I must be able to do something. You are keeping from me some secret—”

  Mrs. Porter shook her head....

  It was one evening in early May that Miss Allen was suddenly conscious that there was something wrong with the pretty little sitting-room, and it was shortly after her first consciousness of this that poor old Mrs. Porter revealed her secret. Miss Allen, looking up for a moment, fancied that the little white marble clock on the mantelpiece had ceased to tick.

  She looked across the room, and for a strange moment fancied that she could see neither the clock nor the mantelpiece — a grey dimness filled her sight. She shook herself, glanced down at her hands, looked up for reassurance, and found Mrs. Porter, with wide, terrified eyes, staring at her, her hands trembling against the wood of the table.