Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated)

by William Somerset Maugham

  Angelina meanwhile would live with her widowed mother.

  But things did not pass exactly as they had expected. Edwin found it more difficult than he thought to make a fortune. It was hard enough to keep himself from sheer starvation, and only Angelina’s love and her tender letters gave him the heart to go on. The three years passed which he had given himself, and he was no more able to marry than before. Angelina’s mother lived still, and it was impossible for the dutiful daughter to leave her. They must put aside all thought of marriage for the present. And so the years passed slowly; and Edwin’s hair grew grey, and Angelina became grim and haggard. Hers was the harder lot, for she could do nothing but wait. The cruel glass showed such charms as she had once possessed slip away from her one by one, and at last she discovered that youth, with a mocking laugh and a pirouette, had left her for good; her sweetness grew bitter from long tending of a querulous invalid; her mind was narrowed by the society of the small manufacturing town in which she lived. Her friends married and had children; but she remained a solitary prisoner.

  Often she despaired. She wondered if Edwin still loved her. She wondered if he would ever come back. Ten years went by, and fifteen, and twenty. At last Edwin wrote to say that his affairs were settled, he had made enough for them to live on at their ease, and if she were still willing to marry him he would return at once. When they met after the long separation Angelina saw with dismay that Edwin, apparently no older, was as handsome as ever; the good-looking youth was become a good-looking man, and that was all. He was in the flower of his age. She felt suddenly very old. She was conscious of her narrowness compared with the breadth long sojourn in foreign countries had given him. He was joyous and breezy as of old, but all her spirit was crushed. The bitterness of life had warped her soul. She could not do otherwise than offer him his release; it seemed monstrous to bind that charming creature to her by a promise twenty years old. For a moment he thought she had ceased to care for him, and she saw the utter dismay of his face. She realised on a sudden — O rapture! — that to him, too, she was just the same as she had ever been. He had thought of her always as she was; her portrait had been, as it were, stamped on his heart, so that now, when the real woman stood before him, he did not see her. To him she was still eighteen. So Edwin and Angelina were married.

  “I’m sure it’s all true,” Miss Ley said to herself. “And I’m convinced they’ll live happily to the end of their days. Their love was founded on illusion, perhaps, but since it had to them all the appearances of reality, what did it matter?”

  Now Miss Ley’s greatest friend was Frank Hurrell, a man of half her age, who was assistant physician at St. Luke’s Hospital; and when he suggested coming to see her on Whit Sunday she was very willing to forego for a while the delights of solitude. He arrived in time for luncheon, and they discussed, with pleasure at seeing one another again after a week’s separation, the many interests they had in common. Frank was amused with Miss Ley’s rural attitude, and asked her, smiling, how on earth she occupied her time. Miss Ley immediately gave him a catalogue of the various pursuits which filled the day, and she did not omit to mention her interest in the Craigs. She told him the story which she had invented to account for their middle-aged affection, and bore with equanimity his laughter. But while they were talking of him Miss Ley was able to point out Edwin in the flesh, for, apparently having finished his luncheon, he came out to smoke a pipe in the garden. Miss Ley and Frank were sitting on the verandah and had a full view of their neighbour’s lawn.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever seen him in the garden without Angelina hanging on his arm,” smiled Miss Ley. Frank looked at him carelessly, but in a moment his glance grew more intent.

  “I seem to know his face,” he said.

  “If you say he’s a widower with seventeen children and this is his second wife, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “I can’t remember anything about him. I’m convinced I’ve seen the man somewhere, but I can’t put a name to him.”

  Then the nurse brought the baby out, and the happy father’s face lit up.

  “Come along, youngster,” he said, as he took it from the nurse’s arms.

  He began to lift it as high as he could in the air, while the baby crowed gleefully; and when it had the chance, tugged at his moustache.

  “He has such kind, good eyes,” said Miss Ley. “I’m sure he’s a perfectly charming creature.”

  Presently she proposed that they should take a stroll, and they wandered along the tow path, watching the gay crowds on the river. They talked of many things. But at last Miss Ley, looking at her watch, suggested that they should turn back. They had not gone far when she espied suddenly Edwin and Angelina walking towards them. It was the obvious walk for a Sunday afternoon, and it was not strange that the Craigs had chosen it as well as themselves.

  “Now you’ll be able to see her,” said Miss Ley, quite interested in her little romance. “Their devotion is all the more touching because the poor thing’s so plain.”

  They came closer, and Frank watched them with smiling eyes. In a moment they were face to face. Frank uttered a low exclamation, but it was enough to attract to him the glance of the happy couple. They stared at him for a moment. Then an extraordinary thing happened. They stood stock still and instinctively came close together, as though seeking for mutual protection. The man’s red face was suddenly darkened by a purple flush, his eyes appeared almost to start out of his head; he seemed to have a difficulty to get his breath. All the colour fled from Mrs. Craig’s sallow cheeks; her face in a moment grew drawn and haggard. And her eyes, too, were filled with indescribable terror. A convulsive trembling seized them, and Frank thought the woman would faint. He had never seen such frightful dread expressed on a human countenance.

  They lost all semblance of mankind; they wore the look of hunted beasts. It was horrible to behold them. Suddenly, with a jerk, Craig seized his wife’s arm and dragged her on. Miss Ley walked a few steps, filled with blank amazement. When she looked back she saw that Angelina had fainted.

  “Won’t you go to her?” she asked Frank.

  “Goodness, no! She doesn’t want me. Besides, the man’s a doctor. He’ll do all that’s necessary.”

  “What on earth does it mean?” asked Miss Ley.

  “Well, I do know them. As soon as I saw the woman I recognised her, and it’s obvious enough that they recognised me.”

  “And who are they?”

  Frank gave a grim little laugh.

  “I’m afraid the story you made up about them is rather far from the truth. Do you remember the Wingfield murder?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you were abroad at the time. It stirred the whole country.” Frank paused a moment. “Miss Wingfield was a rich spinster of mature age, who lived in the country with a companion. Presently she died and was buried. It was found that she had left everything to this companion. She had been a strong, healthy woman, and no one expected her death. Various rumours were spread abroad, and at last the authorities ordered the body to be exhumed. The result of this was that the companion was arrested and charged with poisoning her employer. I was one of the medical experts called in by the prosecution. The chief witness in her favour was Miss Wingfield’s doctor, a man called Brownley. The things that came out during the trial are indescribable. The accused woman must have been a monster of wickedness and cruelty. Personally I had no doubt about her guilt, but she was cleverly defended, and the jury disagreed. A new trial was ordered.

  “In the meanwhile, the police gathered fresh evidence, and next time Dr. Brownley was put beside her in the dock. The prosecution sought to prove that the companion and the doctor were madly in love with one another, and had done the poor old lady to death so that they might marry on the fortune which the companion had caused to be left to her. The whole case hung together in such a way that it seemed impossible they should get off, and the judge summed up dead against them. But they were defended by the same m
an — that trial made his name for him, and he’ll be Lord Chief Justice before he dies — and he managed somehow to instil a doubt in the jury’s minds. I shall never forget the suspense of waiting for the verdict. I was so interested in the case that I remained in court. At last the jury came in, and to the consternation of everyone, said that again they couldn’t agree. The authorities decided not to prosecute a third time and the scoundrels — for that’s what they are — were let out. A week afterwards an evening paper got hold of the news that they had been married that morning.”

  Frank stopped, and a shiver passed through Miss Ley.

  “The real names of Edwin and Angelina are Dr and Mrs. Brownley, and I haven’t the shadow of a doubt that they committed between them a particularly cruel and heartless murder.”

  “But — good Heavens! How can they be so happy?” said Miss Ley.

  “I don’t think they’re very happy at this moment,” said Frank, quietly.

  The friends returned to the cottage, and in the evening Frank went back to London. Miss Ley saw nothing of her neighbours. The night was beautiful and warm, but they did not appear as usual on their lawn; and the windows of the house were kept shut. Miss Ley wondered what they were feeling.

  Next day her maid came to her in great excitement. The neighbouring cottage was empty. Its inhabitants had disappeared in the night, without a sound, without a word to anyone. They had fled like thieves, but nothing in the furnished house was missing. Their boxes were gone, heaven only knew how they had been taken away, and there was no trace of them. A pile of tradesmen’s books had been left on a table, with money to pay them. No one had heard them go. No one had seen them. They had vanished like persons in a dream. And that for Miss Ley was the end of Edwin and Angelina.

  THE PACIFIC

  THE Pacific is inconstant and uncertain like the soul of man. Sometimes it is grey like the English Channel off Beachy Head, with a heavy swell, and sometimes it is rough, capped with white crests, and boisterous. It is not so often that it is calm and blue. Then, indeed, the blue is arrogant. The sun shines fiercely from an unclouded sky. The trade wind gets into your blood and you are filled with an impatience for the unknown. The billows, magnificently rolling, stretch widely on all sides of you, and you forget your vanished youth, with its memories, cruel and sweet, in a restless, intolerable desire for life. On such a sea as this Ulysses sailed when he sought the Happy Isles. But there are days also when the Pacific is like a lake. The sea is flat and shining. The flying fish, a gleam of shadow on the brightness of a mirror, make little fountains of sparkling drops when they dip. There are fleecy clouds on the horizon, and at sunset they take strange shapes so that it is impossible not to believe that you see a range of lofty mountains. They are the mountains of the country of your dreams. You sail through an unimaginable silence upon a magic sea. Now and then a few gulls suggest that land is not far off, a forgotten island hidden in a wilderness of waters; but the gulls, the melancholy gulls, are the only sign you have of it. You see never a tramp, with its friendly smoke, no stately bark or trim schooner, not a fishing boat even: it is an empty desert; and presently the emptiness fills you with a vague foreboding.

  ENVOI

  WHEN your ship leaves Honolulu they hang leis round your neck, garlands of sweet smelling flowers. The wharf is crowded and the band plays a melting Hawaiian tune. The people on board throw coloured streamers to those standing below, and the side of the ship is gay with the thin lines of paper, red and green and yellow and blue. When the ship moves slowly away the streamers break softly, and it is like the breaking of human ties. Men and women are joined together for a moment by a gaily coloured strip of paper, red and blue and green and yellow, and then life separates them and the paper is sundered, so easily, with a little sharp snap. For an hour the fragments trail down the hull and then they blow away. The flowers of your garlands fade and their scent is oppressive. You throw them overboard.

  RAIN

  It was nearly bed–time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a wound that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to settle down quietly at Apia for twelve months at least, and he felt already better for the journey. Since some of the passengers were leaving the ship next day at Pago–Pago they had had a little dance that evening and in his ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical piano. But the deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a long chair talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he had very red hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled skin which accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face, precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very low, quiet voice.

  Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there had arisen the intimacy of shipboard, which is due to propinquity rather than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval they shared of the men who spent their days and nights in the smoking–room playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs Macphail was not a little flattered to think that she and her husband were the only people on board with whom the Davidsons were willing to associate, and even the doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciously acknowledged the compliment. It was only because he was of an argumentative mind that in their cabin at night he permitted himself to carp.

  ‘Mrs Davidson was saying she didn’t know how they’d have got through the journey if it hadn’t been for us,’ said Mrs Macphail as she neatly brushed out her transformation. ‘She said we were really the only people on the ship they cared to know.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought a missionary was such a big bug that he could afford to put on frills.’

  ‘It’s not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn’t have been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot in the smoking– room.’

  ‘The founder of their religion wasn’t so exclusive,’ said Dr Macphail with a chuckle.

  ‘I’ve asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,’ answered his wife. ‘I shouldn’t like to have a nature like yours, Alec. You never look for the best in people.’

  He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not reply. After many years of married life he had learned that it was more conducive to peace to leave his wife with the last word. He was undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled down to read himself to sleep.

  When he came on deck next morning they were close to land. He looked at it with greedy eyes. There was a thin strip of silver beach rising quickly to hills covered to the top with luxuriant vegetation. The coconut trees, thick and green, came nearly to the water’s edge, and among them you saw the grass houses of the Samoans; and here and there, gleaming white, a little church. Mrs Davidson came and stood beside him. She was dressed in black and wore round her neck a gold chain, from which dangled a small cross. She was a little woman, with brown, dull hair very elaborately arranged, and she had prominent blue eyes behind invisible pince–nez. Her face was long, like a sheep’s, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflexion; it fell on the ear with a hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless clamour of the pneumatic drill.

  ‘This must seem like home to you,’ said Dr Macphail, with his thin, difficult smile.

  ‘Ours are low islands, you know, not like these. Coral. These are volcanic. We’ve got another ten days’ journey to reach them.’

  ‘In these parts that’s almost like being in the next street at home,’ said Dr Macphail facetiously.

  ‘Well, that’s rather an exaggerated way of putting it, but one does look at distances differently in the South Seas. So far you’re ri
ght.’

  Dr Macphail sighed faintly.

  ‘I’m glad we’re not stationed here,’ she went on. ‘They say this is a terribly difficult place to work in. The steamers’ touching makes the people unsettled; and then there’s the naval station; that’s bad for the natives. In our district we don’t have difficulties like that to contend with. There are one or two traders, of course, but we take care to make them behave, and if they don’t we make the place so hot for them they’re glad to go.’

  Fixing the glasses on her nose she looked at the green island with a ruthless stare.

  ‘It’s almost a hopeless task for the missionaries here. I can never be sufficiently thankful to God that we are at least spared that.’

  Davidson’s district consisted of a group of islands to the North of Samoa; they were widely separated and he had frequently to go long distances by canoe. At these times his wife remained at their headquarters and managed the mission. Dr Macphail felt his heart sink when he considered the efficiency with which she certainly managed it. She spoke of the depravity of the natives in a voice which nothing could hush, but with a vehemently unctuous horror. Her sense of delicacy was singular. Early in their acquaintance she had said to him:

  ‘You know, their marriage customs when we first settled in the islands were so shocking that I couldn’t possibly describe them to you. But I’ll tell Mrs Macphail and she’ll tell you.’