IN WHICH OUR HERO AND THE PLACE MEET ONCE AGAIN
The Maradicks had reserved four seats by the 10.45, and so really there
was no reason for arriving at Paddington a few minutes after ten. But,
as it happened, it was quite fortunate, because there were so many
people travelling that the porters seemed to have little scruple as to
whether you’d reserved something or not, and just went about pulling
pink labels off and sticking pink labels on in a way that was really
grossly immoral. But Mrs. Maradick, having discovered that her own pink
ticket was all right—“James Maradick, Esq.: Four seats by the 10.45.
Travelling to Treliss”—could afford to be complacent about other
people, and even a little triumphant over the quite amusing misfortunes
of a party of six who seemed to have no chance whatever of securing a
seat.
Mrs. Maradick always shut her mouth very tight indeed when going off for
a holiday. She entered the station with the air of one who had a very
sharp battle to fight and wasn’t going to be beaten under any
circumstances. She selected a porter with the confidence of a very old
general who could tell a man at a glance, and she marshalled him up and
down the platform with a completeness and a magnificent strategy that
left him at last breathless and confused, with scarcely energy enough to
show indignation at the threepence with which she rewarded his services.
But to-day things were finished sooner than usual, and by half-past ten,
with a quarter of an hour to spare, she was able to pay attention to her
friends.
Quite a number of them had come to see her off—Mrs. Martin Fraser,
Louie Denis, Mrs. Mackintosh, Maggie Crowder, and those silly girls, the
Dorringtons; and actually Tom Craddock—very short, very fat, very
breathless—a little bit of a bounder, perhaps, but a man who served her
husband with a quite pathetic devotion. Yes, of course, _he’d_ come to
say good-bye to James, so he didn’t count in quite the same way, but
still it was nice of him.
“Oh! the papers! James, I _must_ have papers! Oh! thank you, Mr.
Craddock. What? Oh, I think, perhaps, the _Lady’s Pictorial_ and the
_Queen_—and oh! if you wouldn’t mind, the _Daily Mail_ and the
_Mirror_, and—oh! James has the _Mail_, so perhaps the _Express_ would
be better—and yes, just something for the girls—what do you say, Annie
dear? The _Girl’s Realm_? Yes, please, the _Girl’s Realm_, Mr. Craddock,
and the _Girl’s Own Paper_ for Isabel. Rather a lot, isn’t it, Louie,
but it’s _such_ a long journey—hours and hours—and the girls get so
restless.”
The ladies gathered in a little phalanx round the carriage window. They
always felt this departure of Emmy Maradick’s; every year it was the
same. Epsom wasn’t a bit the same place whilst she was away, and they
really couldn’t see why she should go away at all. Epsom was at its very
nicest in August, and that was the month of the year when she could be
most useful. Everyone gave their tennis-parties then; and there were
those charming little summer dances, and there was no garden in Epsom
like the Maradicks’! Besides, they liked her for herself. Things always
seemed to go so well when she was there, she had such a—what was the
word?—a French phrase—_savoire-vivre_ or _savoir-faire_—yes, it
really was a pity.
“We shall miss you, dear.” This from Mrs. Mackintosh.
“That’s sweet of you, Katie darling. And I shall miss all of you, ever
so much. And a hotel’s never the same thing, is it? And the garden’s
just beginning to look lovely. You’ll go in, once or twice, won’t you,
Louie, and see that things are all right? Of course they ought to be;
but you never can tell, with quite a new gardener, too. I think he’s
steady enough—at least, he had excellent testimonials, and James heard
from Mr. Templeton, where he was before, you know, that he was quite a
reliable man; but you know what it is when one’s away, how everything
seems to go——Oh! no, it’s all right, Mr. Craddock, I don’t think it’s
going just yet. Sit down, Annie dear, and don’t lean against the door.”
The ladies then passed before the door, one after another, delivered
their little messages, and lined up on the other side. Thus Mrs.
Mackintosh—
“Well, dear, I _do_ hope you have the rippingest time. I’m sure you
deserve it after that old bazaar—all the worry——”
And Mrs. Martin Fraser—
“Mind, a postcard, dear—when you get there—just a line. We shall all
so want to know.”
And Louie Denis—
“Darling, don’t forget the sketch you promised. I shall have a frame all
ready—waiting.”
And Maggie Crowder—
“I hope it will be fine, dear—such a nuisance if it’s wet; and then
there’s our tennis dance next week, it won’t be a bit the same thing
if——”
Lastly the Dorrington girls together—
“Dear Mrs. Maradick—good-bye—ripping—awfully sorry——” the rest lost
in nervous laughter.
And then began that last dreadful minute when you do so wish in spite of
yourself that the train would go. You have said your last words, you
have given your last embrace, and you stare passionately down the
platform hoping for that final whistle and the splendid waving of a
green flag.
At last it came. The ladies surged forward in a body and waved their
handkerchiefs. Mrs. Maradick leaned for a moment out of the window and
waved hers. Tom Craddock shouted something hoarsely about James that no
one could hear, and Epsom was finally bereft of its glory.
Mrs. Maradick collected her bags with her rugs, and then considered her
girls. They were seated quietly, each in a corner, their faces bent
studiously over their magazines. They were very much alike, with
straight flaxen hair and pink and white complexions, light blue cotton
frocks, and dark green waistbands.
Yes, they were nice girls—they were dear girls. Then she thought of her
husband. James Maradick had stood in the background during the
farewells. He had, indeed, been busy up to the very last moment, but he
was a reserved and silent man, and he really hadn’t anything very much
to say. He was well over six feet, and broad in proportion. He was clean
shaven, with features very strongly marked, and a high forehead from
which the hair, closely cut and a little grey at the temples, was
brushed back and parted on the right side. His eyes were grey and, at
times, wonderfully expressive. Epsom said that he was a dreadful man for
looking you through. He wore a suit of dark brown excellently cut. He
was sitting now opposite his wife and looking out of the window. He was
thinking of Tom Craddock.
“James dear, where is my book? You know—that novel you gave me—‘Sir
Somebody or other’s heir’ or something. I just like to know where
everything is before I settle down. It was really awfully nice of Louie
Denis coming all that way to say good-bye—and of the others too. I
wonder Jack Hearne wasn’t there. He could have seen Louie back, and it
would have been a good chance; but perhaps he didn’t know she was
coming. It was nice of Mr. Craddock coming up, though of course he came
to see you.”
She paused for a denial, but he didn’t say anything, so she went
on—“But, poor fellow, he’s getting dreadfully fat. I wonder whether he
couldn’t take something for it—baths or something—though of course
exercise is the thing——”
Maradick looked up. “Yes, poor old Tom. He’s a good chap. But he’s
getting on—we’re all getting on. I shall be stout soon—not as young as
we were——”
“Nonsense, James. I’m sure you haven’t altered a bit since you were
twenty. Mr. Craddock was always stout.”
She leaned back and put her hand to her forehead. “This train does shake
most dreadfully. I’m going to have one of those horrible headaches
again. I can feel it coming. Just look for my smelling-salts, will you?
I think they are in that little black handbag.”
He, wise through much experience, soon found what she wanted, settled
cushions at her back, drew the blind down the window to keep the sun
from her eyes, and then sank back into his seat again and watched the
country flash past.
How many holidays had there been before exactly like this one? He could
not count them. There had always been people to see them off—people who
had said the same things, made the same jokes, smiled and laughed in the
same way. There had always been the same hurried breakfast, the agitated
drive, the crowded station, the counting of boxes. There had not, of
course, been always the girls; there had been a nurse, and they had
travelled in another carriage because the noise troubled his wife. His
wife! He looked at her now as she lay back against her cushions with her
eyes closed. She had changed very little during all those married years;
she was still the same dainty, pretty little woman—something delicate
and fragile—whom he had loved so passionately fifteen years before. He
thought of those years before he had met her. They had been exciting,
adventurous years. Whenever he went out, were it only to pay a call,
there had been always the thought that now, perhaps, at last, he was to
meet that wonderful Fate that was waiting somewhere for him. He had
often thought that he had met it. He remembered Miss Suckling, a pretty
girl, a parson’s daughter, and then Lucy Armes with her wonderful dark
hair and glorious eyes, and then little Rose Craven—yes, he had loved
her pretty badly, only some one else had stepped in and carried her off.
And then at last his Fate had come; there had been a delirious courting,
a glorious proposal, a rapturous engagement, and a wonderful wedding. It
was all so swift and so exciting that he had not had time to think about
it at all. The world had seemed a very wonderful, glowing place then,
and he had wondered why people thought that rapture faded and gave place
to other feelings—mistrust and criticism and then estrangement. He
remembered the wonderful letters that he had written, and the sealing of
them with great blots of red sealing-wax—every night he had written. On
looking back, it seemed that he had done most of the wooing; she had
been very charming and dainty and delightful, but she had taken things
very quietly and soberly.
And now? He looked at her again, and then out of the window. Nothing had
happened, of course. He could look to no definite act or event and point
to it as the dividing line. He had discovered very quickly that she had
nothing to give him, that there was no question, nor indeed could ever
be, of partnership or companionship. That, of course, had been at first.
He had put it down to his own stupidity, his ignorance, his blindness;
but he had tried her on every side, he had yielded her every allowance,
and there was nothing there, simply nothing at all.
Then he had discovered another thing. She had not married him for
himself, nor indeed, to do her justice, for his position or anything
material that he could give her, but simply that she might have
children. He did not know how he had discovered this, but he had known
it by the end of the first year of their life together, and then, as
their girls had grown, he had seen it increasingly plainly. Any other
man would have done equally well—some men might have done better—and
so he had done his duty.
Then, when he saw what had happened and that there was an end to his
dreams, he had set his teeth and given his soul for the making of money.
Whether it had been a fair exchange he did not know, but he had
succeeded. They had plenty—plenty for the present, plenty for the
future. He need not do another day’s work all his life unless he wished,
and he was only forty.
He smiled grimly as he looked out of the window. He did not whine or
complain. There were doubtless thousands and thousands of other people
in the same case—only, what a muddle! what a silly, hideous muddle.
He was forty, and in perfect health. He looked at his wife again. She
was happy enough; she had her house and her friends and her girls! She
did not want anything at all. And they would go on, of course, to the
end of things like that. For years now it had been the same thing. He
had played the game, and she had never guessed that he wanted anything;
she had probably never thought about him at all.
He was forty, and life was over—its adventures, its emotions, its
surprises, its vices, its great romance; he was a bird in a cage, and he
had put himself inside and locked the door. He looked at his girls; they
aroused no emotion whatever, he did not care for them at all. That was
wrong, of course, but it was quite true; and then it was equally true
that they didn’t care for him. His head began to nod, and at last he was
asleep. He was dreaming of the station and poor Tom Craddock—he grew
fatter and fatter—he filled the carriage—everyone had to squeeze
against the wall to get out of his way—Tom, Tom—this won’t do,
really—have some consideration. . . .
There was perfect silence in the carriage. The girls had not spoken a
word since the journey began. The shining landscape flew past them;
things darted up at the window; cows and trees and hedges and telegraph
wires leapt wildly up and down for no apparent reason whatever. At last
an official arrived and commanded them to take their places for lunch,
and there was instant confusion. Mrs. Maradick sailed into the
dining-car followed closely by her girls; Maradick brought up the rear.
Her sleep had refreshed her, and she was bright and amusing. “Now,
James, look your brightest. Well, Annie darling, and was the _Girl’s
Realm_ amusing? Yes? I’m so glad, and what was the thing that you liked
best?”
Annie spoke softly and deliberately. “There was a story, mother, about a
girl’s adventures in America that I liked rather, also an article on
‘How to learn the Violin’ was very good.” She folded her hands on her
lap and looked straight in front of her.
But Mrs. Maradick was deep in the menu. “It’s always roast mutton or
boiled lamb,” she exclaimed; “I never knew anything so monotonous—and
cheese _or_ sweet”—she dived into her soup with relish.
“It’s really not so bad,” she cried a little later. “And they do have
the things hot, which is so important. Think, girls, we’re half-way
already. We’ll be in splendid time for dinner. I wonder who’ll be there
this year. There were those nice Jacksons last year—you remember—that
Miss Jackson with the fuzzy hair and the short skirt—quite nice people,
they were. I don’t think you took to them much, James.”
“No, I didn’t care very much about them,” he replied grimly.
“No—such a pity. We so often like different people. And then there were
the Dalrymples—quite nice—and Lucy Dalrymple was such a good friend
for the girls; you remember Lucy, don’t you, dears?”
And so it was to be the same thing again—the same monotonous round that
it had been before. He had liked Treliss at first. It had been quaint,
romantic, interesting, and he had loved the sea. And then the hotel with
its quaint name, “The Man at Arms,” and its picturesque Elizabethan
architecture. If he could be there alone, just for a day!
They went back to their carriage, and found that the two extra seats,
tenanted hitherto by a man and his wife who were negligible from every
point of view, were now occupied by two very young people. A further
glance classified them as “honeymooners,” and Mrs. Maradick found them
no longer interesting. She sank into her novel, and there was absolute
stillness save for the soft whirr of the wheels beneath them and the
rush of the air outside the windows.
The couple opposite him were very quiet—sometimes there was a whisper
or a laugh as their eyes met. He knew that look in the eyes and that
clasp of the hand. He knew that they were, both of them, outside the
train, flying through space, without thought of time or any confining
boundaries. What fools they were; he would like to tell them so. He
would like to show them that he had been like that once, fifteen years
before. He had thought that there would never be an end to it, and it
had lasted barely a year.
And so they passed into Cornwall. Every year at that moment there came
the same strange thrill, the same emotion as of something ancient and
immutable crossing the very modern and changing texture of his own life.
Mrs. Maradick put down her novel and looked about her.
“It will soon be Truro,” she said; “and then there’ll be all that
troublesome changing at Trewth. It’s really too absurd that one should
have that all the time. Dear Louie! I wonder what she’s doing now—gone
to look at the garden, I expect, like the dear girl she is. I hope they
will give us the same rooms again this year. You wrote for them, didn’t
you?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Because you know last year they tried to put those stupid Jones’s in,
and if I hadn’t made quite a row about it they’d have turned us into the
east wing with that great dreary sweep of sea and not a glimpse of the
town in front.”
He remembered that he had rather envied those rooms in front; there had
been a magnificent view of the sea, and a little corner with an old
greystone pier and red fishing-boats.
Mrs. Maradick turned her attention to the girls.
“Now, dears, come and talk.” They moved towards her, and sat one on each
side, expectant. “I had your reports, dears, just before I left home,
and they were both most satisfactory. Miss Maynard says about your
French, Isabel, that you show some ability and great diligence. Which
was Miss Maynard, dear, at the prize-giving? That nice-looking girl with
that rather smart frock? I remember noticing her at the time.”
“No, mother, that was Miss Lane; Miss Maynard had pince-nez.”
“Oh, yes; and beat time to the songs, I remember. As for the
arithmetic——”
He watched them, and knew that he had been forgotten altogether. Were
other people’s children like that? He knew some little girls who climbed
on to their father’s knee, and pulled his moustache and clutched his
hand; but then, it must be largely his own fault, because he knew that
if his girls had tried to do that he would have prevented them. He
should not have known what to say!
There was a wonderful glow over the land as they came into Trewth.
Already he felt the breath of the sea and the salt sting in the air;
down the long platform the winds came laughing and screaming round the
boxes and the bundles and the absurd mortals who clung to their hats and
cloaks and neatly bound hair.
“Come, girls.” Mrs. Maradick collared her porter and shouted “Treliss!”
into his ear. “Don’t forget anything, James. Have you my green bag and
the little brown holdall? and—oh, yes—my black bag there on the seat.”
She hurried down the platform.
It was always at this moment that a general review took place, and you
discovered whether there was going to be anyone you knew at Treliss.
Everyone was waiting for the other train to come in, so that you had a
splendid time for inspection. Mrs. Maradick was an adept at the
difficult art of knowing all about people in half a minute without
looking anywhere near them.
“No, the Dalrymples aren’t there. I dare say they’ve come already. What
a wind! Really, it’s most annoying having to wait. James, have you got
all the boxes there? Twelve altogether, counting that portmanteau of
yours——”
She was looking very pretty indeed, her colour heightened by the wind,
her hair blowing in little golden whisps about her cheek, the light
green of her dress, and the little jingle of gold bracelets, and the
pearl necklace at her throat.
They walked up and down the platform silently until the train came in.
They never talked when they were together because there was nothing to
say. When other people were there they kept it up because they had to
play a game, but when they were alone it really wasn’t worth while. He
wondered sometimes whether she realised that he was there at all. He
would have liked to make her angry; he had tried once, but it was no
good, she only smiled and stared through him as though he had been a
brick wall.
They got into the train and sped on that fairy-journey to Treliss. It
was always the most magical thing in the world. The trains helped to add
to the romance of it—strange lumbering, stumbling carriages with a
ridiculous little engine that shrieked for no reason and puffed and
snorted in order to increase its own importance. They often stopped
suddenly while something was put right; and they would lie there, for
several minutes, in the heart of the golden sand with the blue sea
smiling below. He was often tempted to get out and strike across the
green dunes, and so down into the heart of the little town with its red
roofs and shining spires. He caught the gleam of the wet sand, and he
saw the red-brown outline of the rocks as they rounded the curve.
That platform was crowded, and he had some difficulty in securing a cab;
but they were settled at last, and turned the corner down the cobbled
street.
Mrs. Maradick lay back quite exhausted. “We’d never have got that cab if
I hadn’t held on to that man’s arm,” she said breathlessly. “It was
positively the last, and we should have had to wait at that station
hours before we got another. I call it regular bad management. It’s the
most important train in the day and they ought to have had plenty of
things to meet it.”
Treliss has not, as yet, been spoiled by the demands of modern
civilisation. “Touristy” it is in August, and the “Man at Arms” is one
of the most popular hotels in the West of England; but it has managed to
keep undefiled its delightfully narrow streets, its splendidly
insufficient shops, its defective lighting, and a quite triumphant lack
of competition. Its main street runs steeply up the hill, having its
origin in the wet, gleaming sands of the little bay and its triumphant
conclusion in the splendid portals and shining terraces of the “Man at
Arms.” The street is of cobbles, and the houses still hang over it with
crooked doorposts and bending gables, so that the Middle Ages stalks by
your side as you go, and you expect some darkly cloaked figure to point
menacingly with bony fingers up the dark alleys and twisting corners.
There are shops of a kind along the way, but no one has ever taken them
seriously. “You can buy nothing in Treliss” is the constant cry of all
visitors; and it is generally followed by the assertion that you have to
pay double West End prices all the same.
The ancient four-wheeler containing the Maradicks bumped slowly up the
hill, and at every moment it seemed as though the avalanche of boxes on
the top must come down with a rush and a roar and scatter their contents
over the cobbles.
Mrs. Maradick said nothing, her mind was fixed on the forthcoming
interview with her hotel manager. She would have to fight for those
rooms, she knew, but she would win her victory and give no quarter. The
charm of the place had caught Maradick once more in its arms. In the
dust and heat of the London year he had thought that he had lost it
altogether; but now, with a glimpse of the curving bay and the cobbled
street, with that scent of spray and onions and mignonette and
fishing-nets (it was compounded of all those things) in his nostrils,
his heart was beating excitedly, and he was humming a little tune that
he had heard the year before. What was the tune? He had forgotten it; he
had never thought of it in London, but now it was with him again. He had
heard a sailor sing it in an inn on the quay. He had stood outside in
the dusk and listened. He remembered the last line:—
And there’s gold in the creek and the sands of the sea,
So ho! for the smuggler’s cargo!
It meant nothing, of course—a kind of “Pirates of Penzance”
absurdity—but the little tune was beating in his brain.
Half-way up the hill there is the market-place, standing on a raised
plateau as it were, with the town-hall as its central glory.
They drove through with difficulty, because there was a fair that filled
the market and overflowed into the crooked streets up and down the hill.
They only caught a passing glimpse as they bumped and stumbled through:
a merry-go-round and rows of booths and shouting crowds of men and
girls, and a strange toothless old woman in a peaked hat seated on a
barrel and selling sweets.
“How they can allow it I don’t know!” Mrs. Maradick leant back from the
window. “One might as well—Whitechapel, you know, and all that sort of
thing.”
The last turn of the road to the hotel was very steep indeed, and the
weight of the boxes seemed to accumulate with every step; the horses
strained and tugged, and for a moment they hesitated and half slid
backward, then with a hoarse shout from the driver, a gigantic straining
of limb and muscle, they were through the hotel gates. For the hotel
stands in its own grounds, and, as you approach it up a drive of larch
and birch, its privacy is startling and unusual.
One hundred years before it had been the manor of the estate, the feudal
castle of a feudal town, ruling, like some Italian despot, the country
at its feet. Then its masters had fallen at the feet of the Juggernaut
of modern civilisation and improvement, and their tyranny had passed
into the hands of others. For some years the house had lain desolate and
threatened to fall into utter ruin and decay; its gardens had been
transformed into a wilderness, and its rooms had gathered dust and
mildew into their quarters. Then in 1850 or thereabouts young Mr.
Bannister of Manchester had seen his chance. Treliss, at that time, was
an obscure and minute village of no fame whatever; but it had fishing,
colour and bathing, so Mr. Bannister seized his opportunity.
He had large resources at his back and a very original brain at his
service, so he set to work and was immediately successful. He had no
intention of turning it into a modern watering-place—there was enough
of that (speaking now of 1860) to be done elsewhere—he had Pendragon
and Port Looth in his mind. No, he would let it keep its
character—indeed, he would force it to keep its character. For some
years there were other things to do and his plans were still in embryo;
then in 1870 (no longer young Mr. Bannister, but stout and prosperous
Mr. Bannister) he took the house in hand.
He interfered in no way with its original character. There were a great
many alterations, of course, but, through it all, it retained that
seventeenth-century charm and spaciousness—that air of surprise and
unexpected corners, the sudden visions of hidden gardens bordered by
close-clipped box and the broad depths of wide stone staircases and dark
oak panelling—a charm that was to be found in no other hotel in
England, a delicious survival that gave you seventeenth-century England
without any of its discomforts and drawbacks, sanitary or otherwise.
For now, in 1908, it had all the very latest improvements. There were
lifts, and the very best methods of ventilation; the electric light was
of a delicious softness, and carpets and chairs were so luxurious that
it was difficult to force oneself outside. But then, when you were
outside, you wondered how you could ever stay in; for there were lawns
with the most wonderful views of the sea and tennis and croquet and
badminton and—and now the Maradicks were at the door.
There were several people scattered about the grounds who watched them
with curiosity; but it was nearly dressing-time, and already the shadows
were lengthening over the lawns and the yews flung long fantastic shapes
over the roses and pinks. There was a little breeze in the tops of the
trees, and very faintly, like some distant solemn music, came the roll
of the sea.
The doors closed on the Maradicks.