THEY ALL EAT CHICKEN IN THE GORSE AND
FLY BEFORE THE STORM
“It’s the most ripping rag,” said Tony, as he watched people climb into
the wagonette. “Things,” he added, “will probably happen.” Lady Gale
herself, as she watched them arrange themselves, had her doubts; she
knew, as very few women in England knew, how to make things go, and no
situation had ever been too much for her, but the day was dreadfully hot
and there were, as she vaguely put it to herself, “things in the air.”
What these things were, she could not, as yet, decide; but she hoped
that the afternoon would reveal them to her, that it would, indeed, show
a good deal that this last week had caused her to wonder about.
The chief reasons for alarm were the Maradicks and Mrs. Lawrence,
without them it would have been quite a family party; Alice, Rupert,
Tony, and herself. She wondered a little why she had asked the others.
She had wanted to invite Maradick, partly because she liked the man for
himself and partly for Tony’s sake; then, too, he held the key to Tony
now. He knew better than any of the others what the boy was doing; he
was standing guard.
And so then, of course, she had to ask Mrs. Maradick. She didn’t like
the little woman, there was no question about that, but you couldn’t ask
one without the other. And then she had to give her some one with whom
to pair off, and so she had asked Mrs. Lawrence; and there you were.
But it wasn’t only because of the Maradicks that the air was thundery;
the Lesters had quarrelled again. He sat in the wagonette with his lips
tightly closed and his eyes staring straight in front of him right
through Mrs. Maradick as though she were non-existent. And Mrs. Lester
was holding her head very high and her cheeks were flushed. Oh! they
would both be difficult.
She relied, in the main, on Tony to pull things through. She had never
yet known a party hang fire when he was there; one simply couldn’t lose
one’s temper and sulk with Tony about the place, but then he too had
been different during this last week, and for the first time in his life
she was not sure of him. And then, again, there was Alice. That was
really worrying her very badly. She had come down with them quite
obviously to marry Tony; everyone had understood that, including Tony
himself. And yet ever since the first evening of arrival things had
changed, very subtly, almost imperceptibly, so that it had been very
difficult to realise that it was only by looking back that she could see
how great the difference had been. It was not only, she could see, that
he had altered in himself, but that he had altered also with regard to
Alice. He struck her as being even on his guard, as though he were
afraid, poor boy, that they would drive him into a position that he
could not honourably sustain. Of this she was quite sure, that whereas
on his coming down to Treliss he had fully intended to propose to Alice
within the fortnight, now, in less than a week after his arrival, he did
not intend to propose at all, was determined, indeed, to wriggle as
speedily as might be out of the whole situation. Now there could be only
one possible explanation of such a change: that he had, namely, found
some one else. Who was it? When was it? Maradick knew and she would
trust him.
And what surprised her most in the whole affair was her feeling about it
all, that she rather liked it. That was most astonishing, because, of
course, Tony’s marriage with Alice was from every point of view a most
suitable and admirable business; it was the very thing. But she had
looked on it, in spite of herself, as a kind of chest into which Tony’s
youth and vitality were inevitably going; a splendid chest with
beautiful carving and studded with golden nails, but nevertheless a
chest. Alice was so perfectly right for anybody that she was perfectly
wrong for Tony; Lady Gale before the world must approve and even further
the affair, but Lady Gale the mother of Tony had had her doubts, and
perhaps this new something, whatever it might be, was romantic,
exciting, young and adventurous. Mr. Maradick knew.
But it is Mrs. Maradick’s view of the drive that must be recorded,
because it was, in fact, round her that everything revolved. The reason
for her prominence was Rupert, and it was he who, quite unconsciously
and with no after knowledge of having done anything at all, saved the
afternoon.
He was looking very cool and rather handsome; so was Mrs. Maradick. She
was indeed by far the coolest of them all in very pale mauve and a bunch
of carnations at her breast and a broad grey hat that shaded her eyes.
He had admired her from the first, and to-day everyone else seemed hot
and flustered in comparison. Neither Alice nor Mrs. Lester were at their
best, and Mrs. Lawrence was obviously ill at ease, but Mrs. Maradick
leaned back against the cushions and talked to him with the most
charming little smile and eyes of the deepest blue. He had expected to
find the afternoon boring in the extreme, but now it promised to be
amusing, very amusing.
Mrs. Maradick had come out in the spirit of conquest. She would show
these people, all of them, what they had missed during these last two
weeks. They should compare her husband and herself, and she had no fear
of the result; this was her chance, and she meant to seize it. She never
looked at him, and they had not, as yet, spoken, but she was acutely
conscious of his presence. He was sitting in a grey flannel suit, rather
red and hot, next to Mrs. Lester. He would probably try and use the
afternoon as the means for another abject apology.
She was irritated, nevertheless, with herself for thinking about him at
all; she had never considered him before. Why should she do so now? She
glanced quickly across for a moment at him. How she hated that Mrs.
Lester! There was a cat for you, if ever there was one!
They had climbed the hill, and now a breeze danced about them; and there
were trees, tall and shining birch, above their heads. On their right
lay the sea, so intensely blue that it flung into the air a scent as of
a wilderness of blue flowers, a scent of all the blue things that the
world has ever known. No breeze ruffled it, no sails crossed its
surface; it was so motionless that one would have expected, had one
flung a pebble, to have seen it crack like ice. Behind them ran the
road, a white, twisting serpent, down to the town.
The town itself shone like a jewel in a golden ring of corn; its towers
and walls gleamed and flashed and sparkled. The world lay breathless,
with the hard glazed appearance that it wears when the sun is very hot.
The colour was so intense that the eye rested with relief on a black
clump of firs clustered against the horizon. Nothing moved save the
carriage; the horses crawled over the brow of the hill.
“Well, that’s awfully funny,” said Mrs. Maradick, leaning over and
smiling at Rupert. “Because I feel just as you do about it. We can’t
often come up, of course, and the last train to Epsom’s so dreadfully
late that unless it’s something _really_ good, you know——”
“It’s dreadfully boring anyhow,” said Rupert, “turning out at night and
all that sort of rot, and generally the same old play, you know. . . .
Give me musical comedy—dancing and stuff.”
“Oh! you young men!” said Mrs. Maradick, “we know you’re all the same.
And I must say I enjoyed _‘The Girl and the Cheese_’ the other day,
positively the only thing I’ve seen for ages.”
From the other side Mrs. Lawrence could be heard making attack on Mr.
Lester. “It was really too awfully sweet of you to put it that way, Mr.
Lester. It was just what I’d been feeling, but couldn’t put into words;
and when I came across it in your book I said to myself, ‘There, that’s
just what I’ve been feeling all along.’ I simply love your book, Mr.
Lester. I feel as if it had been written specially for me, you know.”
Mr. Lester flushed with annoyance. He hated, beyond everything, that
people should talk to him about his books, and now this silly woman! It
was such a hot day, and he had quarrelled with his wife.
“But what I’ve really always so often wanted to ask you,” pursued Mrs.
Lawrence, “is whether you took Mrs. Abbey in ‘To Paradise’ from anyone?
I think you must have done; and I know some one so exactly like her that
I couldn’t help wondering—Mrs. Roland Temmett—she lives in Hankin
Street, No. 3 I think it is. Do you know her? If you don’t you must meet
her, because she’s the very image, exactly like. You know in that
chapter when she goes down to poor Mr. Elliot——”
But this was too much for Mr. Lester.
“I have never met her,” he said brusquely, and his lips closed as though
he never meant to open them again. Mrs. Lester watched them and was
amused. She knew how her husband hated it; she could even sympathise
with him, but it would punish him for having been so horrid to her.
She herself was rapidly recovering her temper. It was such a lovely day
that it was impossible to be cross for long, and then her husband had
often been cross and disagreeable before, it wasn’t as though it were
anything new. What a dreadful woman that Mrs. Maradick was! Why had Lady
Gale invited her? Poor Mr. Maradick! She rather liked him, his size and
strength and stolidity, but how dreadful to be tied to such a woman for
life! Even worse, she reflected, than to be tied for life to a man such
as her own special treasure! Oh! our marriage system.
She turned round to Maradick.
“It’s better, thank you,” she said.
“What is?” he asked her.
“My temper,” she answered. “It was just the Devil when we started. I was
positively fuming. You must have noticed——”
“You have been perfectly charming,” he said.
“Well, it’s very nice of you to say so, but I assure you it was through
my clenched teeth. My hubby and I had a tiff before we started, and it
was hot, and my maid did everything wrong. Oh! little things! but all
enough to upset me. But it’s simply impossible to stay cross with a view
and a day like this. I don’t suppose you know,” she said, looking up at
him, “what it is to be bad-tempered.”
“I?” He laughed. “Don’t I? I’m always in a bad temper all the year
round. One has to be in business, it impresses people; it’s the only
kind of authority that the office-boy understands.”
“Don’t you get awfully tired of it all?” she asked him. “Blotting-paper,
I mean, and pens and sealing-wax?”
“No. I never used to think about it. One lived by rule so. There were
regular hours at which one did things and always every day the same
regular things to do. But now, after this fortnight, it will, I think,
be hard. I shall remember things and places, and it will be difficult to
settle down.”
She looked at him critically. “Yes, you’re not the sort of man to whom
business would be enough. Some men can go on and never want anything
else at all. I know plenty of men like that, but you’re not one of
them.” She paused for a moment and then said suddenly, “But oh, Mr.
Maradick, why did you come to Treliss?”
“Why?” he said, vaguely echoing her.
“Yes, of all places in the world. There never was a place more
unsettling; whatever you’ve been before Treliss will make you something
different now, and if anything’s ever going to happen to you it will
happen here. However, have your holiday, Mr. Maradick, have it to the
full. I’m going to have mine.”
They had arrived. The wagonette had drawn up in front of a little
wayside inn, “The Hearty Cow,” having for its background a sweeping moor
of golden gorse; the little brown house stood like a humble penitent on
the outskirts of some royal crowd.
Everyone got down and shovelled rugs and baskets and kettles; everyone
protested and laughed and ran back to see if there was anything left
behind, and ran on in front to look at the view. At the turn of the brow
of the hill Maradick drew a deep breath. He did not think he had ever
seen anything so lovely before. On both sides and behind him the gorse
flamed; in front of him was the sea stretching, a burning blue, for
miles; against the black cliffs in the distance it broke in little waves
of hard curling white. They had brought with them a tent that was now
spread over their heads to keep off the sun, they crowded round the
unpacking of the baskets. Conversation was general.
“Oh, paté de foie gras, chicken, lobster salad, that’s right. No, Tony,
wait a moment. Don’t open them yet, they’re jam and things. Oh! there’s
the champagne. Please, Mr. Lester, would you mind?”
“So I said to him that if he couldn’t behave at a dance he’d better not
come at all—yes, look at the view, isn’t it lovely?—better not come at
all; don’t you think I was perfectly right, Mr. Gale? Too atrocious, you
know, to speak——”
“The bounder! Can’t stand fellows that are too familiar, Mrs. Maradick.
I knew a chap once——”
“Oh Lord! Look out! It’s coming! My word, Lester, you nearly let us have
it. It’s all right, mother, the situation’s saved, but it was a touch
and go. I say, what stuff! Look out, Milly, you’ll stick your boot into
the pie. No, it’s all right. It was only my consideration for your
dress, Milly, not a bit for the pie; only don’t put your foot into it.
Hullo, Alice, old girl, where have you been all this time?”
This last was Tony, his face red with his exertions, his collar off and
his shirt open at the neck. When he saw Alice, however, he stopped
unpacking the baskets and came over to her. “I say,” he said, bending
down to her, “come for a little stroll while they’re unpacking the
flesh-pots. There’s a view just round the corner that will fairly make
you open your eyes.”
They went out together. He put his arm through hers. “What is the
matter, Miss Alice Du Cane?” he said. Then as she gave no answer, he
said, “What’s up, old girl?”
“Oh! nothing’s up,” she said, looking down and digging her parasol into
the ground. “Only it’s hot and, well, I suppose I’m not quite the thing.
I don’t think Treliss suits me.”
“Oh! I say, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’d noticed these last few days
that you were a bit off colour. I’d been wondering about it.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, driving her parasol into the path still
more furiously. “Only—I hate Treliss. I hate it. You’re all awfully
good to me, of course, but I think I’d better go.”
“Go?” he said blankly.
“Yes, up to Scotland or somewhere. I’m not fit company for anyone as I
am.”
“Oh! I say, I’m sorry.” He looked at her in dismay. “You said something
before about it, but I thought it was only for the moment. I’ve been so
jolly myself that I’ve not thought about other people. But why don’t you
like the place?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you. I know it’s awfully ungrateful of me
to complain when Lady Gale has given me such a good time. . . . I’ve no
explanation at all. . . . It's silly of me."
She stared out to sea, and she knew quite well that the explanation was
of the simplest, she was in love with Tony.
When it had come upon her she did not know. She had certainly not been
in love with him when she had first come down to Treliss. The idea of
marrying him had been entertained agreeably, and had seemed as pleasant
a way of settling as any other. One had to be fixed and placed some
time, and Tony was a very safe and honourable person to be placed with.
There were things that she would have altered, of course; his very
vitality led him into a kind of indiscriminate appreciation of men and
things that meant change and an inability to stick to things, but she
had faced the whole prospect quite readily and with a good deal of
tolerance.
Then, within the week, everything had changed. She wondered, hating
herself for the thought, whether it had been because he had shown
himself less keen; he hadn’t sought her out in quite the way that he had
once done, he had left her alone for days together. But that could not
have been all; there was something else responsible. There was some
further change in him, something quite apart from his relation to her,
that she had been among the first to recognise. He had always had a
delightful youth and vitality that people had been charmed by, but now,
during the last week, there had been something more. It was as though he
had at last found the thing for which he had so long been looking. There
had been something or some one outside all of them, their set, that he
had been seeing and watching all the time; she had seen his eyes sparkle
and his mouth smile at some thought or vision that they most certainly
had not given him. And this new discovery gave him a strength that he
had lacked before; he seemed to have in her eyes a new grandeur, and
perhaps it was this that made her love him. But no, it was something
more, something that she could only very vaguely and mistily put down to
the place. It was in the air, and she felt that if she could only get
away from Treliss, with its sea and its view and its crooked town, she
would get straight again and be rid of all this contemptible emotion.
She had always prided herself on her reserve, on the control of her
emotions, on her contempt for animal passion, and now she could have
flung her arms round Tony’s neck and kissed his eyes, his hair, his
mouth. She watched him, his round curly head, his brown neck, the swing
of his shoulders, his splendid stride.
“Let’s sit down here,” he said; “they can’t see us now. I’m not going to
help ’em any more. They’ll call us when they’re ready.”
She sat down on a rock and faced the sweep of the sea, curved like a
purple bow in the hands of some mighty archer. He flung himself down on
to his chest and looked up at her, his face propped on his hands.
“I say, Alice, old girl,” he said, “this is the first decent talk we’ve
had for days. I suppose it’s been my fault. I’m awfully sorry, and I
really don’t know how the time’s gone; there’s been a lot to do,
somehow, and yet it’s hard to say exactly what one’s done.”
“You’ve been with Mr. Maradick,” she said almost fiercely.
He looked up at her, surprised at her tone. “Why, yes, I suppose I have.
He’s a good chap, Maradick. I have been about with him a good bit.”
“I can’t quite see,” she said slowly, looking down at the ground, “what
the attraction is. He’s nice enough, of course; a nice old man, but
rather dull.”
“Oh, I don’t know about old, Alice. He’s much younger than you’d think,
and he’s anything but dull. That’s only because you don’t know him. He
is quiet when other people are there; but he’s awfully true and
straight. And you know as one gets older, without being priggish about
it, one chooses one’s friends for that sort of thing, not for
superficial things a bit. I used to think it mattered whether they cared
about the same ideas and were—well, artistic, you know. But that’s all
rot; what really matters is whether they’ll stick to you and last.”
“One thing I always said about you, Tony,” she answered, “is that you
don’t, as you say, stick. It’s better, you know, to be off with the old
friends before you are on with the new.”
“Oh! I say!” He could scarcely speak for astonishment. “Alice! what’s
the matter? Why, you don’t think I’ve changed about you, do you? I
know—these past few days——”
“Oh, please don’t apologise, Tony,” she said, speaking very quickly.
“I’m not making complaints. If you would rather be with Mr. Maradick,
do. Make what friends you like; only when one comes down to stay, one
expects to see something of you, just at meals, you know.”
He had never seen her like this before. Alice, the most self-contained
of girls, reserving her emotions for large and abstract causes and
movements, and never for a moment revealing any hint of personal likes
or dislikes, never, so far as he had seen, showing any pleasure at his
presence or complaining of his absence; and now, this!
“Oh! I say!” he cried again, “I’m most awfully sorry. It’s only been a
few days—I know it was jolly rude. But the place has been so ripping,
so beautiful, that I suppose I didn’t think about people much. I’ve been
awfully happy, and that makes one selfish, I suppose. But I say,” he put
a hand on her dress, “please don’t be angry with me, Alice, old girl.
We’ve been chums for ages now, and when one’s known some one a jolly
long time it isn’t kind of necessary to go on seeing them every day, one
goes on without that, takes it on trust, you know. I knew that you were
there and that I was there and that nothing makes any difference.”
The touch of his hand made her cheeks flame. “I’m sorry,” she said,
almost in a whisper, “I don’t know why I spoke like that; of course
we’re chums, only I’ve been a bit lonely; rotten these last few days,
I’m sure I don’t know why.” She paused for a moment and then went on:
“What it really is, is having to change suddenly. Oh, Tony, I’m such a
rotter! You know how I talked about what I’d do if I were a man and the
way I could help and the way you ought to help, and all the rest of it;
well; that’s all gone suddenly—I don’t know why or when—and there’s
simply nothing else there. You won’t leave me quite alone the rest of
the time, Tony, please? It isn’t that I want you so awfully much, you
know, but there isn’t anyone else.”
“Oh! we’ll have a splendid time,” he said. “You must get to know
Maradick, Alice. He’s splendid. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s so
awfully genuine.”
She got up. “You don’t describe him very well, Tony; all the same,
genuine people are the most awful bores, you never know where you are.
Well, forgive my little bit of temper. We ought to get back. They’ll be
wondering where we are.”
But as they strolled back she was very quiet. She had found out what she
wanted to know. There _was_ some one else. She had watched his face as
he looked at the sea; of course that accounted for the change. Who was
she? Some fisher-girl in the town, perhaps some girl at a shop. Well,
she would be no rival to anyone. She wouldn’t fight over Tony’s body;
she had her pride. It was going to be a hard time for her; it would be
better for her to go away, but that would be difficult. People would
talk; she had better see it out.
“It’s simply too dreadfully hot in the sun,” Tony was conscious of Mrs.
Lawrence saying as he joined them. He took it as a metaphor that she was
sitting with her back to the sea and her eyes fixed upon the chicken. He
wanted to scream, “Look at the gorse, you fool!” but instead he took a
plate and flung himself down beside Mrs. Maradick.
She nodded at him gaily. “You naughty boy! You left us to unpack; you
don’t deserve to have anything.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Maradick, I stayed until I was in the way. Too many cooks,
you know.”
He watched everyone, and detected an air of cheerfulness that had
certainly not been there before. Perhaps it was the lunch; at any rate
he was hungry.
He talked, waving a piece of bread and butter. “You people don’t deserve
anything. You ought to go and see a view before eating; grace before
meat. Alice and I have done our duty and shall now proceed to enjoy our
food twice as much as the rest of you.”
“Well, I think it’s too bad, that gorse,” said Mrs. Maradick, with a
little pout and a flash of the eye towards Rupert Gale. “It puts all
one’s colours out.” She gave her mauve a self-satisfied pat.
“Oh! Emmy dear! You look perfectly sweet!” ecstatically from Mrs.
Lawrence.
Suddenly Mr. Lester spoke, leaning forward and looking at Mrs. Maradick
very seriously. “Have you thought, Mrs. Maradick, whether perhaps you
don’t put the gorse out?”
“Oh! Mr. Lester! How cruel! Poor little me! Now, Mr. Gale, do stand up
for me.”
Rupert looked at the gorse with a languid air. “It simply don’t stand a
chance,” he said.
“Talking about gorse,” began Mrs. Lawrence. She was always telling long
stories about whose success she was in great doubt. This doubt she
imparted to her audience, with the result that her stories always
failed.
This one failed completely, but nobody seemed to mind. The highest
spirits prevailed, and everyone was on the best of terms with everyone
else. Lady Gale was delighted. She had thought that it would go off all
right, but not quite so well as this.
Of course it was largely due to Tony. She watched him as he gathered
people in, made them laugh, and brought the best out of them. It was a
kind of “Open Sesame” that he whispered to everyone, a secret that he
shared with them.
But what Lady Gale didn’t recognise was that it was all very much on the
surface; nobody really had changed at all. She might have discovered
that fact from her own experience had she thought about it. For
instance, she didn’t care for Mrs. Maradick any more than before; she
liked her, indeed, rather less, but she smiled and laughed and said
“_Dear_ Mrs. Maradick.” Everyone felt the same. They would have embraced
their dearest enemies; it was in the air.
Mrs. Lester even addressed her husband—
“No, Ted dear, no more meringues. You know it’s bad for you, and you’ll
be sorry to-night.”
He looked at her rather gloomily, and then turned and watched the gorse.
Maradick suddenly leaned over and spoke to his wife.
“Emmy dear, do you remember that day at Cragholt? It was just like
this.”
“Of course I do,” she said, nodding gaily back at him. “There was that
funny Captain Bassett. . . . Such a nice man, dear Lady Gale. I wonder
if you know him. Captain Godfrey Bassett. . . . Such fun.”
“I wonder,” said Lady Gale, “if that is one of the Bassetts of
Hindhurst. There was a Captain Bassett——”
Maradick watched the golden curtain of gorse. The scent came to him;
bees hummed in the air.
“Well, I like being by the sea, you know. But to be _on_ it; I’ve
crossed the Atlantic seven times and been ill every time. There is a
stuff called—Oh! I forget—Yansfs. Yes, you can’t pronounce
it—You-are-now-secure-from-sea-sickness—it wasn’t any good as far as I
was concerned, but then I think you ought to take it before——”
_This_ was his wife.
Mrs. Lester suddenly spoke to him. “You are very silent, Mr. Maradick.
Take me for a stroll some time, won’t you? No, not now. I’m lazy, but
later.”
She turned away from him before he could reply, and leaned over to her
husband. Then he saw that Tony was at his elbow.
“Come down and bathe,” the boy said, “now. No, it isn’t bad for you,
really. That’s all tommy-rot. Besides, we mayn’t be able to get away
later.” They left the tent together.
“Is it champagne?” he asked.
“What?” asked Tony.
“All this amiability. I was as gruff as a—as my ordinary self—coming,
and then suddenly I could have played a penny whistle; why?”
“Oh! I don’t know!” said Tony, flinging his arms about. “I’m much too
happy to care. Maradick, I’ve been seeing her, here in the
gorse—wonderful—divine. We will go back to-morrow; yes, we must. Of
course you’ve got to come. As to everybody’s good temper, that doesn’t
mean anything. The spirits of the place have their games, you know, and
there we are. Everybody will be awfully cross at tea. And you know it
_is_ cheek! For us all to go and plant our tent and eat our chicken in
the middle of a view like this. And they’ll leave paper bags about, and
they’ll pop ginger-beer. I don’t mind betting that the gods play some
games before they’ve done with us.”
They climbed down the rocks to a little cove that lay nestling under the
brow of the hill. The sand was white, with little sparkles in it where
the sun caught the pebbles; everything was coloured with an intensity
that hurt the eye. The cove was hemmed in by brown rocks; a little bird
hopped along the sand, then rose with a little whirl of pleasure above
their heads and disappeared.
They flung off their clothes with an entire disregard of possible
observers. A week ago Maradick would have died rather than do such a
thing; a bathing-machine and a complete bathing-suit had been absolute
essentials, now they really never entered his head. If he had thought of
it at all, they would have seemed to him distinctly indecent, a kind of
furtive winking of the eye, an eager disavowal of an immorality that was
never there at all.
As Maradick felt the water about his body his years fell from him like
Pilgrim’s pack. He sank down, with his eyes for a moment on the burning
sky, and then gazing through depths of green water. As he cleaved it
with his arm it parted and curled round his body like an embrace; for a
moment he was going down and down and down, little diamond bubbles
flying above him, then he was up again, and, for an instant, the
dazzling white of the cove, the brown of the rocks, the blue of the sky,
encircled him. Then he lay on his back and floated. His body seemed to
leave him, and he was something utterly untrammelled and free; there
were no Laws, no Creeds, no Arguments, nothing but a wonderful peace and
contentment, an absolute union with something that he had been searching
for all his life and had never found until now.
“Obey we Mother Earth . . . Mother Earth.” He lay, smiling, on her
breast. Little waves came and danced beneath him, touching his body with
a caress as they passed him; he rose and fell, a very gentle rocking, as
of some mother with her child. He could not think, he could remember
nothing; he only knew that he had solved a riddle.
Then he struck out to sea. Before him it seemed to spread without end or
limit; it was veiled in its farthest distance by a thin purple haze, and
out of this curtain the blue white-capped waves danced in quick
succession towards him. He struck out and out, and as he felt his body
cut through the water a great exultation rose in him that he was still
so strong and vigorous. Every part of him, from the crown of his head to
the soles of his feet, seemed clean and sound and sane. Oh! Life! with
its worries and its dirty little secrets and its petty moralities! and
the miserable pessimistic sauntering in a melancholy twilight through
perpetual graveyards! Let them swim, let them swim!
He shouted to Tony, “It’s great. One could go on for ever!” He dived for
a moment downward, and saw the great white curve of his body from his
foot to the hip, the hard smooth strength of the flesh.
Then he turned slowly back. The white beach, the brown rocks, and the
blue sky held out hands to him.
“All those people,” he shouted to Tony, “up there, eating, sleeping,
when they might be in this!” Mrs. Lester, he knew, would have liked it.
He thought for a moment of his wife, the dresses she would need and the
frills. He could see her stepping delicately from the bathing-machine;
her little scream as her feet touched the water, “Oh Jim! it’s cold!” He
laughed as he waded back on to the beach. The pebbles burnt hot under
his feet, and the sand clung to his toes; he dug his legs deep into it.
The sun curled about his body and wrapped him, as it were, in a robe of
its own glorious colour. He could feel it burning on his back.
Tony joined him, panting. “Oh! my word! I’ve never had such a bathe,
never! I could have stayed in for ever! But they’d be coming to look for
us, and that wouldn’t do. I say, run round with me! I’ll beat you five
times round.”
They raced round the beach. The sun, the wind, and the waves seemed to
go with them; the water fell from them as they ran, and at last they
flung themselves dry and breathless on to the hot sand.
Whilst they dressed, Tony dealt with the situation more practically and
in detail.
“There are going to be a lot of difficulties, I’m afraid,” he said, as
he stood with his shirt flapping about his legs, and his hands
struggling with his collar. “In the first place, there’s mother. As I
told you, she’s not got to know anything about it, because the minute
she hears anything officially, of course, she’ll have to step in and ask
about it, and then there’ll be no end of trouble with the governor and
everybody. It’s not that she disapproves really, you know—your being
there makes that all right; but she hasn’t got to realise it until it’s
done. She won’t ask anything about it, but of course she can’t help
wondering.”
“Well, I hope it is all right,” said Maradick anxiously. “My being a
kind of moral danger-signal makes one nervous.”
“Oh! she trusts you,” said Tony confidently. “That’s why it’s so
perfectly splendid your being there. And then,” went on Tony, “they are
all of them wondering what we are at. You see, Treliss has that effect
on people, or at any rate it’s having that kind of effect on us here and
now. Everybody is feeling uneasy about something, and they are most of
them putting it down to me. Things always do happen when you jumble a
lot of people together in a hotel, the gods can’t resist a game; and
when you complicate it by putting them in Treliss! My word!”
“Well, what’s the immediate complication?” asked Maradick. The water had
made his hair curl all over his head, and his shirt was open at the neck
and his sleeves rolled up over his arms.
“Well, the most immediate one,” said Tony slowly, “is Alice, Miss Du
Cane. She was talking to me before lunch. It’s rather caddish to say
anything about it, but I tell you everything, you know. Well, she seemed
to think I’d been neglecting her and was quite sick about it. She never
is sick about anything, because she’s much too solid, and so I don’t
know what’s set her off this time. She suspects a lot.”
Maradick said nothing.
“But the funny thing is that they should worry at all. Before, when I’ve
done anything they’ve always said, ‘Oh! Tony again!’ and left it at
that. Now, when I’ve done nothing, they all go sniffing round.”
“Yes,” said Maradick, “that’s the really funny thing; that nothing has
been done for them to sniff at, yet. I suppose, as a matter of fact,
people have got so little to do in a hotel that they worry about nothing
just to fill up time.”
He stretched his arms and yawned.
“No,” said Tony, “it’s the place. Whom the gods wish to send mad they
first send to Treliss. It’s in the air. Ask that old fellow, Morelli.”
“Why Morelli?” Maradick asked quickly.
“Well, it’s absurd of me,” said Tony. “But I don’t mind betting that he
knows all about it. He’s uncanny; he knows all about everything. It’s
just as if he set us all dancing to his tune like the Pied Piper.” He
laughed. “Just think! all of us dancing; you and I, mother, father,
Alice, Rupert, the Lesters, Mrs. Maradick, Mrs. Lawrence—and Janet!” he
added suddenly.
“Janet,” he said, catching Maradick’s arm and walking up the beach.
“Can’t you see her dancing? that hair and those eyes! Janet!”
“I’m sleepy,” said Maradick unsympathetically. “I shall lie with my head
in the gorse and snore.”
He was feeling absolutely right in every part of his body; his blood ran
in his veins like a flame. He hummed a little tune as he climbed the
path.
“Why! that’s Morelli’s tune,” said Tony, “I’d been trying to remember
it; the tune he played that night,” and then suddenly they saw Mrs.
Lester.
She sat on a rock that had been cut into a seat in the side of the hill.
She could not see the beach immediately below because the cliff
projected in a spreading cloud of gorse, but the sea lay for miles in
front of her, and the gold of the hill struck sharp against the blue.
She herself sat perched on the stone, the little wind blowing her hair
about her face. She was staring out to sea and did not see them until
they were right upon her.
Tony shouted “Hullo, Milly,” and she turned.
“We have been bathing,” he said. “It was the most stupendous bathe that
there has ever been.” Then he added, “Why are you alone?”
“The rest went to see a church on a hill or something, but I didn’t want
anything except the view; but Lady Gale is still there, at the tent. She
told me to tell you if I saw you to come to her.”
“Right you are.” He passed singing up the hill. Maradick stood in front
of her, his cap in his hand, then she made room for him on her seat and
he sat beside her.
“A view like this,” she said, “makes one want very much to be good. I
don’t suppose that you ever want to be anything else.”
“There’s some difference between wanting and being,” he answered
sententiously. “Besides, I don’t suppose I’m anything real, neither good
nor bad, just indifferent like three-fourths of the human race.”
He spoke rather bitterly, and she looked at him. “I think you’re
anything but indifferent,” she said, nodding her head. “I think you’re
delightful. You’re just one of the big, strong, silent men of whom
novels are full; and I’ve never met one before. I expect you could pick
me up with one finger and hurl me into the sea. Women like that, you
know.”
“You needn’t be afraid that I shall do it,” he said, laughing. “I have
been bathing and am as weak as a kitten; and that also accounts for my
untidiness,” he added. He had been carrying his coat over his shoulder,
and his shirt was open at the neck and his sleeves rolled up over his
arms.
They did not speak again for several minutes. She was looking at the
view with wide-open, excited eyes.
Then she turned round and laid her hand upon his arm. “Oh! I don’t
expect you’ve needed it as I have done,” she said, “all this colour; I’m
drinking it in and storing it so that I can fill all the drab days that
are coming with it. Drab, dull, stupid days; going about and seeing
people you don’t want to see, doing things you don’t want to do, saying
things you don’t want to say.”
“Why do you?” he said.
“Oh! one has to. One can’t expect to be at Treliss for ever. It’s really
bad for one to come here, because it always makes one discontented and
unsettles one. Last year,” she smiled at the recollection, “was most
unsettling.”
“Well,” he answered, “I’ve got to go back to the office, you know. It
will do me good to have these days to remember.”
She was silent again; then the grasp on his arm tightened and she said—
“Oh! Mr. Maradick, I am so unhappy.”
He moved a little away from her. Here were more confidences coming! Why
had all the world suddenly taken it into its incautious head to trust
him with its secrets? He! Maradick! whom no one had ever dreamt of
trusting with anything before?
“No, I don’t want to bother you. It won’t bother you, will it? Only it
is such a rest and a comfort to be able to tell some one.” She spoke
with a little catch in her voice, but she was thinking of the year
before when she had trusted Captain Stanton, “dear old Reggie,” with
similar confidences; and there had been Freddie Stapylton before that.
Well, they had all been very nice about it, and she was sure that this
big man with the brown neck and the curly hair would be just as nice.
“No, but you will be a friend of mine, won’t you?” she said. “A woman
wants a friend, a good, sensible, strong friend to whom she can tell
things, and I have nobody. It will be such a comfort if I can talk to
you sometimes.”
“Please,” he said.
Providence seemed to have designed him as a kind of general nursemaid to
a lot of irresponsible children.
“Ah! that’s good of you.” She gave a little sigh and stared out to sea.
“Of course, I’m not complaining, other women have had far worse times, I
know that; but it is the loneliness that hurts so. If there is only one
person who understands it all it will make such a difference.”
Mrs. Lester was not at all insincere. She liked Maradick very much, and
her having liked Captain Stanton and Mr. Stapylton before him made no
difference at all. Those others had been very innocent flirtations and
no harm whatever had come of them, and then Treliss was such an exciting
place that things always did happen. It must also be remembered that she
had that morning quarrelled with her husband.
“You see,” she said, “I suppose I was always rather a romantic girl. I
loved colour and processions and flowers and the Roman Catholic Church.
I used to go into the Brompton Oratory and watch the misty candles and
listen to them singing from behind the altars and sniff the incense. And
then I read Gautier and Merimée and anything about Spain. And then I
went to Italy, and I thought I could never leave it with the dear
donkeys and Venice and carnivals, but we had to get back for Ascot. Oh!
I suppose it was all very silly and like lots of other girls, but it was
all very genuine, Mr. Maradick.”
He nodded his head.
“It’s so sweet of you to understand,” she said. “Well, like most girls,
I crowded all these dreams into marriage. That was going to do
everything for me. Oh! he was to be such a hero, and I was to be such a
wife to him. Dear me! How old it makes one feel when one thinks of those
girlish days!”
But Maradick only thought that she looked very young indeed, Tony’s age.
“Then I read some of Fred’s essays; Mr. Lester, you know. They used to
come out in the _Cornhill_, and I thought them simply wonderful. They
said all that I had been thinking, and they were full of that colour
that I loved so. The more I read them the more I felt that here was my
hero, the man whom I could worship all my days. Poor old Fred, fancy my
thinking that about him.”
Maradick thought of Mr. Lester trailing with bent back and languid eye
over the gorse, and wondered too.
“Well, then I met him at a party; one of those literary parties that I
used to go to. He was at his best that night and he talked wonderfully.
We were introduced, and—well, there it all was. It all happened in a
moment. I couldn’t in the least tell you how; but I woke one morning
and, like Mr. Somebody or other, a poet I think, found myself married.”
Here there was a dramatic pause. Maradick didn’t know what to say. He
felt vaguely that sympathy was needed, but it was difficult to find the
right words.
“That changed me,” Mrs. Lester went on in a low voice with a thrill in
it, “from an innocent warm-hearted girl into a woman—a suffering,
experienced woman. Oh! Mr. Maradick, you know what marriage is, the cage
that it can be; at least, if you haven’t experienced it, and I sincerely
hope you haven’t, you can imagine what it is. A year of it was enough to
show me how cruel life was.”
Maradick felt a little uncomfortable. His acquaintance with Mrs. Lester
had been a short one, and in a little time he was going back to have tea
with Mr. Lester; he had seemed a harmless kind of man.
“I am very sorry——” he began.
“Oh, please,” she went on quickly, “don’t think that I’m unhappy. I
don’t curse fate or do anything silly like that. I suppose there are
very few persons who find marriage exactly what they expect it to be. I
don’t complain. But oh! Mr. Maradick, never marry an author. Of course
you can’t—how silly of me!—but I should like you to understand a
little what I have felt about it all.”
He tried clumsily to find words.
“All of us,” he said, “must discover as we get on that things aren’t
quite what we thought they would be. And of marriage especially. One’s
just got to make up one’s mind to it. And then I think there’s a lot to
be grateful for if there’s only one person, man or woman, to whom one
matters; who, well, sticks to one and——”
“Oh! I know,” she sighed reminiscently.
“What I mean is that it doesn’t so much matter what that person is,
stupid or ugly or anything, if they really care. There isn’t so much of
that steady affection going about in the world that we can afford to
disregard it when it comes. Dear me!” he added with a laugh, “how
sentimental I am!”
“I know,” she said eagerly. “That’s just it; if Fred did care like that,
oh dear, how wonderful it would be! But he doesn’t. I don’t really exist
for him at all. He thinks so much about his books and the people in them
that real people aren’t there. At first I thought that I could help him
with his work, read to him and discuss it with him; and I know that
there were a lot of grammatical mistakes, but he wouldn’t let me do
anything. He shut me out. I was no use to him at all.”
She clenched her hands and frowned. As a matter of fact she got on with
him very well, but they had quarrelled that morning, over nothing at
all, of course. And then it made things more exciting if you thought
that you hated your husband, and Mr. Maradick was a fine-looking man.
And he thought how young she was and what a dreary stretch of years was
before her. He knew what his own married life had been: fifteen years of
disillusion and misunderstanding and sullen silence.
“I am so sorry,” he said, and he looked at her very sympathetically. “I
can understand a little how hard it is. We don’t all of us make lucky
shots, but then we have just got to grin and bear it; cold sort of
comfort, I know, and if it really does comfort you to feel that you have
a friend you may count on me.”
She liked his sympathy, the dear old strong thing! and at any rate she
would pull Fred pretty sharply out of his books for once. Captain
Stanton and Mr. Stapylton had had just that effect; she had never known
Fred so charming as he was after their final exit.
He looked down at her with a fatherly smile. “We’ll be friends,” he
said.
“It’s perfectly sweet of you,” she said, her voice trembling a little.
“I felt that you would understand. I cannot tell you how it has helped
me, this little talk of ours. Now I suppose we ought to be going back or
they’ll be wondering where we are.”
And he stood thanking God for a wonderful world. At last there were
people who wanted him, Tony and Mrs. Lester; and at the same time he had
begun to see everything with new eyes. It was his view! They talked of
life being over at forty; why, it had never begun for him until now!
They walked back to the tent, and he talked to her gravely about helping
others and the real meaning of life. “He can,” she thought, “be most
awfully dull, but he’s a dear old thing.”
The expedition in search of a church had scarcely been a success, and
when one considers the members of it there is little room to wonder.
Tony had been right about the gods. They had seen fit to play their
games round the tent on the gorse, and the smiles with which they had
regarded the luncheon-party speedily changed to a malicious twinkle.
Everyone had been too pleasant to be true, and, after the meal was over,
the atmosphere became swiftly ominous. For one thing, Tony had departed
with Maradick for a bathe, and his absence was felt. Lady Gale had a
sudden longing for sleep, and her struggles against this entirely
precluded any attempt at keeping her guests pleasantly humoured. Mrs.
Maradick was never at her best after a meal, and now all her former
irritation returned with redoubled force. She had been far too pleasant
and affable to these people; she could not think what had induced her to
chatter and laugh like that at lunch, she must be on her dignity. Mr.
Lester’s remark about her clothes and the gorse also rankled. What
impertinence! but there, these writing people always did think that they
could say anything to anybody! Novelist, forsooth! everyone was a
novelist nowadays. Mrs. Lawrence didn’t make things any better by an
interminable telling of one of her inconclusive stories. Mrs. Maradick
bristled with irritation as she listened. “. . . So there poor Lady
Parminter was, you know—dreadfully stout, and could scarcely walk at
all—with her black poodle and her maid and no motor and raining cats
and dogs. It was somewhere near Sevenoaks, I think; or was it
Canterbury? I think perhaps it was Canterbury, because I know Mr.
Pomfret said something about a cathedral; although it might have been
Sevenoaks, because there was a number in it, and I remember saying at
the time . . .”
Mrs. Maradick stiffened with annoyance.
Mr. Lester gloomily faced the sea and Mrs. Lester chatted rather
hysterically to Lady Gale, who couldn’t hear what she said because she
was so sleepy. Mr. Lester hated quarrelling, because it disturbed his
work so; he knew that there would be a reconciliation later, but one
never knew how long it would be.
It was eventually Rupert who proposed the church. He had found Mrs.
Maradick very amusing at lunch, and he thought a stroll with the little
woman wouldn’t be bad fun. So he interrupted Mrs. Lawrence’s story with
“I say, there’s a rotten old church somewhere kickin’ around. What d’you
say to runnin’ it to earth, what?”
Everyone jumped up with alacrity. Mrs. Lester shook her head. “I shall
stay and keep guard over the tent,” she said.
“No, Milly dear, you go,” said Lady Gale, “I’m much too sleepy to move.”
“Well, then, I’ll stay to keep guard over you as well,” said Mrs.
Lester, laughing; “I’m lazy.”
So Rupert, Alice Du Cane, Mr. Lester, Mrs. Maradick and Mrs. Lawrence
started off. The expedition was a failure. The church wasn’t found, and
in the search for it the tempers of all concerned were lost. It was
terribly hot, the sun beat down upon the gorse and there was very little
breeze. The gorse passed and they came to sand dunes, and into these
their feet sank heavily, their shoes were clogged with it. Nobody spoke
very much. It was too hot and everybody had their own thoughts; Mrs.
Lawrence attempted to continue her story, but received no encouragement.
“I vote we give up the church,” said Rupert, and they all trudged
drearily back again.
Mrs. Maradick was wondering why Mrs. Lester hadn’t come with them. It
didn’t make her wonder any the less when, on their arrival at the tent,
she saw Lady Gale and Tony in sole possession. Where was the woman?
Where was her husband? She decided that Rupert Gale was a nuisance. He
had nothing to say that had any sense in it, and as for Mr. Lester
. . .!
Tea was therefore something of a spasmodic meal. Everybody rushed
furiously into conversation and then fled hurriedly out again; an air of
restraint and false geniality hung over the teacups. Even Tony was
quiet, and Lady Gale felt, for once, that the matter was beyond her;
everyone was cross.
Then Mrs. Lester and Maradick appeared and there was a moment’s pause.
They looked very cheerful and contented, which made the rest of the
party only the more irritable and discontented. Why were they so happy?
What right had they to be so happy? They hadn’t got sand in their shoes
and a vague search after an impossible church under a blazing sun in
their tempers.
Mrs. Lester was anything but embarrassed.
“Oh! there you all are! How nice you all look, and I do hope you’ve left
something! No, don’t bother to move, Rupert. There’s plenty of room
here! Here you are, Mr. Maradick! Here’s a place; yes, we’ve had such a
nice stroll, Mr. Maradick and I. It was quite cool down by the beach.
. . . Thanks, dear, one lump and cream. Oh! don’t trouble, Tony, I can
reach it . . . yes, and did you see your church? Oh! what a pity, and
you had all that trouble for nothing. . . .”
“There’s going to be a storm!” said Mr. Lester gloomily.
A little wind was sighing, up and down, over the gorse. The sun shone as
brilliantly as ever, but on the horizon black, heavy clouds were
gathering. Then suddenly the little breeze fell and there was perfect
stillness. The air was heavy with the scent of the gorse. It was very
hot. Then, very faintly, the noise of thunder came across the sea.
“The gods are angry,” said Tony.
“Oh! my dear!” said Lady Gale. “And there isn’t a cover to the wagonette
thing! Whatever shall we do? We shall get soaked to the skin. I never
dreamt of its raining.”
“Perhaps,” said Maradick, “if we started at once we might get in before
it broke.”
The things were hurriedly packed and everyone hastened over the gorse.
They clambered into the wagonette. Across the sky great fleets of black
clouds were hurrying and the sound of the thunder was closer at hand.
Everything was still, with the immovability of something held by an
invisible hand, and the trees seemed to fling black pointing fingers to
the black gloomy sky.
For a mile they raced the storm, and then it broke upon them. The
thunder crashed and the lightning flared across their path, and then the
rain came in sheeted floods. What fun for the gods! They cowered back in
their seats and not a word was spoken by anyone; the driver lashed his
horses along the shining road.
Whilst they journeyed, each traveller was asking himself or herself a
question. These questions must be recorded, because they will all be
answered during the course of this history.
Lady Gale’s question. Why did everything go wrong?
Mrs. Maradick’s question. Why had a malevolent providence invented Mrs.
Lester, and, having invented her, what could James see in her?
Mrs. Lester’s question. At what hour that evening should she have her
reconciliation scene with her husband and for how long could she manage
to spin it out?
Alice Du Cane’s question. What was Tony keeping back?
Tony’s question. Was Janet afraid of thunder?
Maradick’s question. What did it all mean?
Mr. Lester’s question. What was the use of being alive at all?
Rupert’s question. Why take a new suit to a picnic when it always
rained?
Mrs. Lawrence’s question. Would the horses run away?
The only question that received an immediate answer was Mrs. Lawrence’s,
because they didn’t.
* * * * *
That evening, Maradick went for a moment to the room of the minstrels.
The storm was passing. On the horizon there stole a very faint band of
gold. Out of the black bank of cloud a star shone, and suddenly there
burst from the dark shadows of the fleeing storm a silver crescent moon.
The light of it fell on the boards of the floor and then touched faintly
the grinning face of the carved lion.
THE PROLOGUE IS CONCLUDED
PART II
PUNCH
CHAPTER IX
MORELLI BREAKS SOME CROCKERY AND PLAYS
A LITTLE MUSIC
Punch was in bed asleep, with the bedclothes drawn up to his ears. It
had just struck six, and round the corner of the open window the sun
crept, flinging a path of light across the floor. Presently it would
reach the bed and strike Punch’s nose; Toby, awake and curled up on a
mat near the door, watched the light travel across the room and waited
for the inevitable moment.
The room was of the simplest. Against the wall leant the Punch and Judy
show, on the mantelpiece was a jar that had once held plum jam and now
contained an enormous bundle of wild flowers. Two chairs, a bed, a chest
of drawers and a washstand completed the furniture. Against the wall was
pinned an enormous outline map of England. This Punch had filled in
himself, marking roads, inns, houses, even trees; here and there the
names of people were written in a tiny hand. This map was his complete
history during the last twenty years; nothing of any importance that had
happened to him remained unchronicled. Sometimes it would only be a
cross or a line, but he remembered what the sign stood for.
The sun struck his nose and rested on his hair, and he awoke. He said
“Ugh” and “Ah” very loudly several times, rubbed his eyes with his
knuckles, raised his arms above his head and yawned, and then sat up.
His eyes rested for a moment lovingly on the map. Parts of it were
coloured in chalk, red and yellow and blue, for reasons best known to
himself. The sight of it opened unending horizons: sharp white roads
curving up through the green and brown into a blue misty distance, the
round heaving shoulder of some wind-swept down over which he had tramped
as the dusk was falling and the stars came slowly from their
hiding-places to watch him, the grey mists rising from some deep valley
as the sun rose red and angry—they stretched, those roads and hills and
valleys, beyond his room and the sea, for ever and ever. And there were
people too, in London, in country towns, in lonely farms and tiny
villages; the lines and crosses on the map brought to his mind a
thousand histories in which he had played his part.
He looked at Toby. “A swim, old man,” he said; “time for a swim—out we
get!” Toby unrolled himself, rubbed his nose on his mat twice like an
Eastern Mahommedan paying his devotions, and strolled across to the bed.
His morning greeting to his master was always the same, he rolled his
eyes, licked his lips with satisfaction, and wagged an ear; then he
looked for a moment quite solemnly into his master’s face with a gaze of
the deepest devotion, then finally he leapt upon the bed and curled up
at his master’s side.
Punch (whose real name, by the way, was David Garrick—I don’t know why
I didn’t say so before—he hadn’t the slightest connexion with the
actor, because his family didn’t go back beyond his grandfather) stroked
a paw and scratched his head. “It’s time we got up and went for a swim,
old man. The sun’s been saying so hours ago.” He flung on an overcoat
and went out.
The cottage where he lived was almost on the beach. Above it the town
rose, a pile of red roofs and smoking chimneys, a misty cloud of pale
blue smoke twisted and turned in the air. The world was full of
delicious scents that the later day destroyed, and everything behaved as
though it were seeing life for the first time; the blue smoke had never
discovered the sky before, the waves had never discovered the sand
before, the breeze had never discovered the trees before. Very soon they
would lose that surprise and would find that they had done it all only
yesterday, but, at first, it was all quite new.
Punch and Toby bathed; as they came out of the water they saw Morelli
sitting on a rock. Punch sat down on the sand quite unconcernedly and
watched the sea. He hadn’t a towel, and so the sun must do instead.
Toby, having barked once, sat down too.
“Good morning, Mr. Garrick,” said Morelli.
Punch looked up for a moment. “A fine day,” he said.
Morelli came over to him. He was dressed in a suit of some green stuff,
so that against the background of green boughs that fringed the farther
side of the little cove he seemed to disappear altogether.
“Good morning, Mr. Garrick,” he said again. “A splendid day for a bathe.
I’d have gone in myself only I know I should have repented it
afterwards.”
“Yes, sir,” said Punch. “You can bathe ’ere all the year round. In point
of fact, it’s ’otter at Christmas than it is now. The sea takes a while
to get warm.”
“This fine weather,” said Morelli, looking at the sea, “brings a lot of
people to the place.”
“Yes,” said Punch, “the ‘Man at Arms’ is full and all the lodgings. It’s
a good season.”
“I suppose it makes some difference to you, Mr. Garrick, whether there
are people or no?”
“Oh yes,” said Punch, “if there’s no one ’ere I move. I’m staying this
time.”
“Do you find that the place changes?” said Morelli.
“No,” said Punch, “it don’t alter at all. Now there are places,
Pendragon for one, that you wouldn’t know for the difference. They’ve
pulled down the Cove and built flats, and there are niggers and what
not. It’s better for the trade, of course, but I don’t like the place.”
“Oh yes, I remember Pendragon,” said Morelli. “There was a house there,
the Flutes—Trojan was the name of the people—a fine place.”
“And ’e’s a nice man that’s there now,” said Punch, “Sir ’Enry; what I
call a man, but the place is rotten.”
Toby looked in his master’s face and knew that he was ill at ease. He
knew his master so well that he recognised his sentiments about people
without looking at him twice. His own feelings about other dogs were
equally well defined; if he was suspicious of a dog he was on his guard,
very polite of course, but sniffing inwardly; his master did the same.
“I can remember when there were only two or three houses in Pendragon,”
said Morelli; then suddenly, “You meet a great many people, Mr. Garrick.
Everyone here seems to know you. Do you happen to have met a young
fellow, Gale is his name? He is staying at the ‘Man at Arms.’”
“Yes,” said Punch. “I know Mr. Gale.” Why did Morelli want to know?
“A nice boy,” said Morelli. “I don’t often take to the people who come
here for the summer, they don’t interest me as a rule. But this boy——”
He broke off and watched Toby. He began to whistle very softly, as
though to himself. The dog pricked up his ears, moved as though he would
go to him, and then looked up in his master’s face.
“There’s another man,” continued Morelli, “that goes about with young
Gale. An older man, Maradick his name is, I think. No relation, it
seems, merely a friend.”
Punch said nothing. It was no business of his. Morelli could find out
what he wanted for himself. He got up. “Well,” he said, wrapping his
greatcoat about him, “I must be going back.”
Morelli came close to him and laid a hand on his arm. “Mr. Garrick,” he
said, “you dislike me. Why?”
Punch turned round and faced him. “I do, sir,” he said, “that’s truth. I
was comin’ down the high road from Perrota one evenin’ whistling to
myself, the dog was at my heels. It was sunset and a broad red light
over the sea. I came upon you suddenly sitting by the road, but you
didn’t see me in the dust. You were laughing and in your hands was a
rabbit that you were strangling; it was dusk, but I ’eard the beast cry
and I ’eard you laugh. I saw your eyes.”
Morelli smiled. “There are worse things than killing a rabbit, Mr.
Garrick,” he said.
“It’s the way you kill that counts,” said Punch, and he went up the
beach.
* * * * *
Meanwhile there is Janet Morelli.
Miss Minns was the very last person in the world fitted to give anyone a
settled education; in her early days she had given young ladies lessons
in French and music, but now the passing of years had reduced the one to
three or four conversational terms and the other to some elementary
tunes about which there was a mechanical precision that was anything but
musical. Her lessons in deportment had, at one time, been considered
quite the thing, but now they had grown a little out of date, and, like
her music, lost freshness through much repetition.
Her ideas of life were confined to the three or four families with whom
she had passed her days, and Janet had never discovered anything of
interest in any of her predecessors; Alice Crate (her father was Canon
Crate of Winchester Cathedral), Mary Devonshire (her father was a
merchant in Liverpool), and Eleanor Simpson (her father was a
stockbroker and lived in London). Besides, all these things had happened
a long while ago; Miss Minns had been with Janet for the last twelve
years, and fact had become reminiscence and reminiscence tradition
within that time. Miss Minns of the moment with which we have to do was
not a very lively person for a very young creature to be attached to;
she was always on the quiver, from the peak of her little black bonnet
to the tip of her tiny black shoes. When she did talk, her conversation
suffered from much repetition and was thickly strewn with familiar
proverbs, such as “All’s well that ends well” and “Make hay while the
sun shines.” She served no purpose at all as far as Janet was concerned,
save as an occasional audience of a very negative kind.
The only other person with whom Janet had been brought into contact, her
father, was far more perplexing.
She had accepted him in her early years as somebody about whom there was
no question. When he was amusing and played with her there was no one in
the world so completely delightful. He had carried her sometimes into
the woods and they had spent the whole day there. She remembered when he
had whistled and sung and the animals had come creeping from all over
the wood. The birds had climbed on to his shoulders and hands, rabbits
and hares had let him take them in his hands and had shown no fear at
all. She remembered once that a snake had crawled about his arm. He had
played with her as though he had been a child like herself, and she had
done what she pleased with him and he had told her wonderful stories.
And then suddenly, for no reason that she could understand, that mood
had left him and he had been suddenly angry, terribly, furiously angry.
She had seen him once take a kitten that they had had in his hands and,
whilst it purred in his face, he had twisted its neck and killed it.
That had happened when she was very small, but she would never forget
it. Then she had grown gradually accustomed to this rage and had fled
away and hidden. But on two occasions he had beaten her, and then,
afterwards, in a moment it had passed, and he had cried and kissed her
and given her presents.
She had known no other man, and so she could not tell that they were not
all like that. But, as the years had passed, she had begun to wonder.
She had asked Miss Minns whether everybody could make animals come when
they whistled, and Miss Minns had admitted that the gift was unusual,
that, in fact, she didn’t know anyone else who could do it. But Janet
was growing old enough now to realise that Miss Minns’ experience was
limited and that she did not know everything. She herself had tried to
attract the birds, but they had never come to her.
Her father’s fury had seemed to her like the wind or rain; something
that came to him suddenly, blowing from no certain place, and something,
too, for which he was not responsible. She learnt to know that they only
lasted a short time, and she used to hide herself until they were over.
With all this she did not love him. He gave her very little opportunity
of doing so. His affection was as strangely fierce as his temper and
frightened her almost as badly. She felt that that too was outside
himself, that he had no love for her personally, but felt as he did
about the animals, about anything young and wild. It was this last
characteristic that was strangest of all to her. It was very difficult
to put it into words, but she had seen that nothing made him so furious
as the conventional people of the town. She was too young to recognise
what it was about them that made him so angry, but she had seen him grow
pale with rage at some insignificant thing that some one had said or
done. On the other hand, he liked the wildest people of the place, the
fishermen and tramps that haunted the lower quarters of the town. All
this she grasped very vaguely, because she had no standard of
comparison; she knew no one else. But fear had made love impossible; she
was frightened when he was fond of her, she was frightened when he was
angry with her. Miss Minns, too, was a difficult person to bestow love
upon. She did not want it, and indeed resolutely flung it back with the
remark that emotion was bad for growing girls and interfered with their
education. When she lived at all she lived in the past, and Janet was
only a very dim shadowy reflexion of the Misses Crate, Devonshire, and
Simpson, who had glorified her earlier years.
Janet, therefore, had spent a very lonely and isolated childhood, and,
as she had grown, the affection that was in her had grown too, and she
had had no one to whom she might give it. At first it had been dolls,
and ugly and misshapen though they were they had satisfied her. But the
time came when their silence and immobility maddened her, she wanted
something that would reply to her caresses and would share with her all
her thoughts and ideas. Then Miss Minns came, and Janet devoted herself
to her with an ardour that was quite new to the good lady; but Miss
Minns distrusted enthusiasm and had learnt, whilst educating Miss
Simpson, to repress all emotion, so she gave it all back to Janet again,
carefully wrapped up in tissue paper. When Janet found that Miss Minns
didn’t want her, and that she was only using her as a means of
livelihood, she devoted herself to animals, and in a puppy, a canary and
a black kitten she found what she wanted. But then came the terrible day
when her father killed the kitten, and she determined never to have
another pet of any kind.
By this time she was about fifteen and she had read scarcely anything.
Her father never talked to her about books, and Miss Minns considered
most novels improper and confined herself to Mrs. Hemans and the
“Fairchild Family.” Janet’s ideas of the world were, at this time,
peculiar. Her father had talked to her sometimes strangely about places
that he had seen, but they had never attracted her: mountain heights,
vast unending seas, tangled forests, sun-scorched deserts; always things
without people, silent, cold, relentless. She had asked him about cities
and he had spoken sometimes about London, and this had thrilled her
through and through. What she longed for was people; people all round
her, friends who would love her, people whom she herself could help. And
then suddenly, on an old bookshelf that had remained untouched for many
years past, she had found “Kenilworth.” There was a picture that
attracted her and she had begun to read, and then a new world opened
before her. There were several on the shelf: Lytton’s “Rienzi” and “The
Last of the Barons,” George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” Trollope’s
“Barchester Towers,” and Miss Braddon’s “Lady Audley’s Secret.” There
were some other things; somebody’s “History of England,” a Geography of
Europe, a torn volume of Shakespeare, and the “Pickwick Papers.” Living,
hitherto a drab and unsatisfactory affair, became a romantic thrilling
business in which anything might happen, a tremendous bran pie into
which one was continually plunging for plums. She had no doubt at all
that there would be adventures for her in the future. Everyone, even the
people in “Middlemarch,” had adventures, and it was absurd to suppose
that she wouldn’t have them as well. She noticed, too, that all the
adventures that these people had rose from the same source, namely love.
She did not realise very thoroughly what this love was, except that it
meant finding somebody for whom you cared more than anyone else in the
world and staying with them for the rest of your life, and perhaps
after. She did not admire all the people of whom the heroines were
enamoured, but she realised that everyone thought differently about such
things, and that there was apt to be trouble when two ladies cared for
the same gentleman or _vice versa_.
Only you must, so to speak, have your chance, and that she seemed to be
missing. It was all very well to watch romance from your high window and
speculate on its possibilities as it passed down the street, but you
ought to be down in the midst of it if you were going to do anything. It
all seemed ridiculously simple and easy, and she waited for her knight
to come with a quiet and assured certainty.
At first she had attacked Miss Minns on the question, but had got little
response. Miss Minns was of the opinion that knights were absurd, and
that it did not do to expect anything in this world, and that in any
case young girls oughtn’t to think about such things, and that it came
of reading romances and stuff, with a final concession that it was “Love
that made the world go round,” and that “It was better to have loved and
lost than never to have loved at all.”
All this was to little purpose, but it was of trivial importance,
because Janet was quite settled in her mind about the whole affair. She
had no ideal knight; he was quite vague, hidden in a cloud of glory, and
she did not want to see his face; but that he would come she was sure.
But, afterwards, she gave her knight kingdoms and palaces and a
beautiful life in which she had some vague share, as of a worshipper
before a misty shrine. And he, indeed, was long in coming. She met no
one from one year’s end to another, and wistful gazing from her window
was of no use at all. She wished that she had other girls for company.
She saw them pass, sometimes, through the town, arm in arm;
fisher-girls, perhaps, or even ladies from the hotel, and she longed,
with an aching longing, to join them and tell them all that she was
thinking.
Her father never seemed to consider that she might be lonely. He never
thought very much about her at all, and he was not on sufficiently good
terms with the people of the place to ask them to his home; he would not
have known what to do with them if he had had them there, and would have
probably played practical jokes, to their extreme discomfiture.
And then Tony came. She did not see him with any surprise. She had known
that it was only a matter of waiting, and she had no doubt at all that
he was the knight in question. Her ignorance of the world prevented her
from realising that there were a great many other young men dressed in
the same way and with the same charming manners. From the first moment
that she saw him she took it for granted that they would marry and would
go away to some beautiful country, where they would live in the sunshine
for ever. And with it all she was, in a way, practical. She knew that it
would have to be a secret, that Miss Minns and her father must know
nothing about it, and that there would have to be plots and, perhaps, an
escape. That was all part of the game, and if there were no difficulties
there would be no fun. She had no scruples about the morality of
escaping from Miss Minns and her father. They neither of them loved her,
or if they did, they had not succeeded in making her love them, and she
did not think they would miss her very much.
She was also very thankful to Providence for having sent her so charming
a knight. She loved every bit of him, from the crown of his head to the
sole of his foot, his curly hair, his eyes, his smile, his mouth, his
hands. Oh! he would fit into her background very handsomely. And
charming though he was, it never entered her head for a moment that he
was not in love with her. Of course he was! She had seen it in his eyes
from the very first minute.
And so all the scruples, the maidenly modesty and the bashful surprise
that surround the love affairs of most of her sex were entirely absent.
It seemed to her like the singing of a lark in the sky or the murmur of
waves across the sand; something inevitable and perfectly, easily
natural. There might be difficulties and troubles, because there were
people like Miss Minns in the world, but they would pass away in time,
and it would be as though they had never existed.
The only thing that puzzled her a little was Maradick. She did not
understand what he was doing there. Was he always coming whenever Tony
came? He was old like her father, but she thought he looked pleasant.
Certainly not a person to be afraid of, and perhaps even some one to
whom one could tell things. She liked his size and his smile and his
quiet way of talking. But still it was a nuisance his being there at
all. There were quite enough complications already with Miss Minns and
father without another elderly person. And why was Tony with him at all?
He was an old man, one of those dull, elderly people who might be nice
and kind but couldn’t possibly be any use as a friend. She tried to get
Miss Minns to solve the problem, but that lady murmured something about
“Birds of a feather,” and that it was always proper to pay calls in
twos, which was no use at all.
So Janet gave up Maradick for the present with a sigh and a shake of the
head. But she was most blissfully happy. That country that had remained
so long without an inhabiter was solitary no longer, her dreams and
pictures moved before her now with life and splendour. She went about
her day with a light in her eyes, humming a little song, tender and
sympathetic with Miss Minns because she, poor thing, could not know how
glorious a thing it was, this love!
I do not know whether Miss Minns had her suspicions. She must have
noticed Janet’s pleasant temper and gaiety, but she said nothing. As to
Morelli, there was no telling what he noticed.
He returned to the house after his conversation with Punch in no
pleasant humour. Janet had been up since a very early hour; she never
could sleep when the sun was bright, and she was very happy. She had a
suspicion that Tony would come to-day. It was based on nothing very
certain, but she had dreamt that he would; and it was the right kind of
day for him to come on, when the sun was so bright and a butterfly had
swept through the window like the petal of a white rose blown by the
wind.
And so she met her father with a laugh when he came in and led the way
gaily to breakfast. But in a moment she saw that something was wrong,
and, at the thought that one of his rages was sweeping over him and that
she would not be able to escape, her face grew very white and her lips
began to tremble.
She knew the symptoms of it. He sat very quietly with his hands
crumbling the bread at his side; he was frowning, but very slightly, and
he spoke pleasantly about ordinary things. As a rule when he was like
this she crept away up to her room and locked her door, but now there
seemed no chance of escape.
But she talked gaily and laughed, although her heart was beating so
loudly that she thought that he would hear it.
“Miss Minns and I are going to walk over to Tregotha Point this
afternoon, father,” she said; “there are flowers there and we shall take
books. Only I shall be back for tea, and so we shall start early.”
He said nothing, but looked at the tablecloth. She looked round the room
as though for a means of escape. It was all so cheerful that it seemed
to mock her, the red-tiled fireplace, the golden globe of the lamp, the
shining strip of blue sky beyond the window.
“Tea, father?” The teapot trembled a little in her hand. She could not
talk; when the storm was approaching some actual presence seemed to come
from the clouds and place an iron grip upon her. It had been some while
since the last time and she had begun to hope that it might not happen
again, and now——She was afraid to speak lest her voice should shake.
The smile on her lips froze.
“Well,” he said, looking at her across the table, “talk to me.” The look
that she knew so well came into his face; there was a little smile at
the corners of his mouth and his eyes stared straight in front of him as
though he were looking past her into infinite distances.
“Well,” he said again, “why don’t you talk?”
“I—have nothing to say,” she stammered, “we haven’t done anything.”
And then suddenly the storm broke. He gave a little scream like a wild
animal, and, with one push of the hand, the table went over, crashing to
the ground. The crockery lay in shattered pieces on the blue carpet.
Janet crouched back against the wall, but he came slowly round the table
towards her. His back was bent a little and his head stretched forward
like an animal about to spring.
She was crying bitterly, with her hands pressed in front of her face.
“Please, father,” she said, “I haven’t done anything—I didn’t know—I
haven’t done anything.”
She said it again and again between her tears. Morelli came over to her.
“There was a man,” he said between his teeth, “a man whom I saw this
morning, and he said things. Oh! if I had him here!” He laughed. “I
would kill him, here, with my hands. But you see, you shall never speak
to him again, you don’t go near him.” He spoke with passion.
She did not answer. He shook her shoulder. “Well, speak, can’t you?” He
took her arm and twisted it, and then, apparently maddened by her
immobility and her tears, he struck her with his hand across the face.
He let her sink to the floor in a heap, then for a moment he looked down
on her. There was absolute silence in the room, a shaft of light fell
through the window, caught a gleaming broken saucer on the floor,
lighted the red tiles and sparkled against the farther wall. Janet was
sobbing very quietly, crouching on the floor with her head in her hands.
He looked at her for a moment and then crept silently from the room.
The stillness and peace and the twittering of a bird at the window
brought her to her senses. It had happened so often before that it did
not take her long to recover. She got up from her knees and wiped her
eyes; she pushed back her hair and put the pins in carefully. Then she
felt her cheek where he had struck her. It always happened like that,
suddenly, for no reason at all. She knew that it was due to no bitter
feeling against herself. Anything that came in his way at the time would
suffer, as Miss Minns had learnt. Doubtless she was up in her room now
with her door locked.
But this occasion was different from all the others. When it had
happened before, quite the worst part of it had been the loneliness. It
had seemed such a terribly desolate world, and she had seen infinite,
dreary years stretching before her in which she remained, defenceless
and without a friend, at the mercy of his temper. But now that her
knight had come she did not mind at all. It would not be long before she
escaped altogether, and, in any case, he was there to be sorry for her
and comfort her. She would, of course, tell him all about it, because
she would tell him everything. She felt no anger against her father. He
was like that; she knew what it felt like to be angry, she had screamed
and stamped and bit when she was a little girl in just that kind of way.
She was rather sorry for him, because she knew he was always sorry
afterwards. And then it was such a relief that it was over. The worst
part of it was that sickening terror at first, when she did not know
what he might do.
She set up the table again, collected the pieces of crockery from the
floor and carried them into the kitchen. She then wiped up the pool of
tea that had dripped on to the carpet. After this she realised that she
was hungry, that she had had nothing at all, and she sat down and made a
picnicky meal. By the end of it she was humming to herself as though
nothing had occurred.
Later, she took her work and sat in the window. Her thoughts, as indeed
was always the case now, were with Tony. She made up stories for him,
imagined what he was doing at the moment and what the people were like
to whom he was talking. She still felt sure that he would come and see
them that afternoon. Then the door opened, and she knew that her father
had returned. She did not turn round, but sat with her back to the door,
facing the window. She could see a corner of the street with its shining
cobbles, a dark clump of houses, a strip of the sky. The noise of the
market came distantly up to her, and some cart rattled round the corner
very, very faintly; the sound of the mining-stamp swung like a hammer
through the air.
She heard him step across the room and stand waiting behind her. She was
not afraid of him now; she knew that he had come back to apologise. She
hated that as much as the rage, it seemed to hurt just as badly. She
bent her head a little lower over her work.
“Janet,” he spoke imploringly behind her.
“Father!” She turned and smiled up at him.
He bent down and kissed her. “Janet! dear, I’m so sorry. I really can’t
think why I was angry. You know I do get impatient sometimes, and that
man had made me angry by the things he said.”
He stood away from her with his head hanging like a child who was
waiting to be punished.
“No, father, please don’t.” She stood up and looked at him. “You know it
is very naughty of you, and after you promised so faithfully last time
that you wouldn’t get angry like that again. It’s no use promising if
you never keep it, you know. And then think of all the china you’ve
broken.”
“Yes, I know.” He shook his head dolefully. “I don’t know what it is, my
dear. I never seem to get any better. And I don’t mean anything, you
know. I really don’t mean anything.”
But she doubted that a little as she looked at him. She knew that,
although his rage might pass, he did not forget. She had known him
cherish things in his head long after they had passed from the other
man’s memory, and she had seen him take his revenge. Who was this man
who had insulted him? A sudden fear seized her. Supposing . . .
“Father,” she said, looking up at him, “who was it said things to you
this morning that made you angry?”
“Ah, never mind that now, dear,” he said, his lip curling a little. “We
will forget. See, I am sorry; you have forgiven me?” He sat down and
drew her to him. “Look! I am just like a child. I am angry, and then
suddenly it all goes.” He stroked her hair with his hand, and bent and
kissed her neck. “Where was it that I hit her? Poor darling! There, on
the cheek? Poor little cheek! But look! Hit me now hard with your fist.
Here on the cheek. I am a brute, a beast.”
“No, father,” she laughed and pulled herself away from him, “It is
nothing! I have forgotten it already. Only, dear me! all the broken
china! Such expense!”
“Well, dear, never mind the expense. I have a plan, and we will have a
lovely day. We will go into the wood with our lunch and will watch the
sea, and I will tell you stories, and will play to you. What! now, won’t
that be good fun?”
His little yellow face was wreathed in smiles; he hummed a little tune
and his feet danced on the floor. He passed his hand through his hair so
that it all stood on end. “We’ll have such a game,” he said.
She smiled. “Yes, father dear, that will be lovely. Only, we will be
back this afternoon, because perhaps——”
“Oh! I know!” He laughed at her. “Callers! Why, yes, of course. We shall
be here if they come.” He chuckled to himself. “I am afraid, my dear,
you have been lonely all these years. I ought to have thought of it, to
give you companions.” Then he added after a little pause, “But he is a
nice young fellow, Mr. Gale.”
She gave a little sigh of relief; then it was not he who had quarrelled
with her father that morning. “That will be splendid. I’ll go and get
lunch at once.” She bent down and kissed him, and then went singing out
of the room.
He could, when he liked, be perfectly delightful, and he was going to
like that afternoon, she knew. He was the best fun in the world. Poor
thing! He would be hungry! He had no breakfast. And he sat in front of
the window, smiling and humming a little tune to himself. The sun
wrapped his body round with its heat, all the live things in the world
were calling to him. He saw in front of him endless stretches of
country, alive, shining in the sun. He stared in front of him.
It was market-day, and the market-place was crowded. Janet loved it, and
her cheeks were flushed as she passed through the line of booths. As
they crossed in front of the tower she saw that some one was leaning
over the stall talking to the old fruit woman. Her heart began to beat
furiously; he was wearing no cap, and she heard his laugh.
He turned round suddenly as though he knew who it was. The light
suddenly flamed in his eyes, and he came forward:
“Good morning, Mr. Morelli,” he said.
In all the crowded market-place she was the only thing that he saw. She
was dressed in a white muslin with red roses on it, and over her arm was
slung the basket with the lunch; her hair escaped in little golden curls
from under her broad hat.
But she found that she didn’t know what to say. This was a great
surprise to her, because when she had thought about him in her room,
alone, she had always had a great deal to say, and a great many
questions to ask.
But now she stood in the sun and hung her head. Morelli watched them
both.
Tony stammered. “Good-morning, Miss Morelli. I—I can’t take off my cap
because I haven’t got one. Isn’t it a ripping day?” He held out his hand
and she took it, and then they both laughed. The old woman behind them
in her red peaked hat screamed, “A-pples and O-ranges! Fine ripe
grapes!”
“We’re going out for a picnic, father and I,” said Janet at last. “We’ve
got lunch in this basket. It’s a day that you can’t be in doors,
simply!”
“Oh! I know,” he looked hungrily at the basket, as though he would have
loved to have proposed coming as well. “Yes, it’s a great day.” Then he
looked at her and started. She had been crying. She was smiling and
laughing, but he could see that she had been crying. The mere thought of
it made his blood boil; who had made her cry? He looked quickly at
Morelli; was it he? Perhaps it was Miss Minns? or perhaps she wasn’t
well, but he must know if she were unhappy; he would find out.
“I was thinking of coming to call this afternoon, Mr. Morelli,” he said,
“Maradick and I . . . but if you are going to spend the day in the
woods, another day——”
“Oh, no,” said Morelli, smiling, “we shall be back again by four. We are
only going to have lunch. We should be delighted to see you, and your
friend.” Then they said good-bye, and Tony watched them as they turned
out of the market-place. They didn’t talk very much as they passed
through the town, they had, each of them, their own thoughts. Janet was
very happy; he was coming to tea, and they would be able to talk. But
how silly she was, she could suddenly think of a hundred things that she
would like to have said to him. They turned off the hard white road that
ran above the sea and passed along a narrow lane. It was deeply rutted
with cart-tracks, and the trees hung so thickly over it that it was
quite dark. It wound up the sides of a green hill and then dived
suddenly into the heart of a wood. Here there were pine trees, and a
broad avenue over which they passed crushing the needles under their
feet. The trees met in a green tapestry of colours above their heads,
and through it the sun twinkled in golden stars and broad splashes of
light. The avenue dwindled into a narrow path, and then suddenly it
ended in a round green knoll humped like the back of a camel. The grass
was a soft velvety green, and the trees stood like sentinels on every
side, but in front they parted and there was a wonderful view. The knoll
was at the top of the hill, and you could see straight down, above and
beyond the trees of the wood, the sea. To the right there was another
clearing, and a little cove of white sand and brown rocks shone in the
sun. There was perfect stillness, save for a little breeze that rocked
the trees so that they stirred like the breathing of some sleeper.
Janet and her father always came to this place. Afterwards she was to
see a great many cities and countries, but this green wood always
remained to her the most perfect thing in the world. It was so still
that you could, if you held your breath, hear the tiny whisper of the
waves across the shingle and the murmur of the mining stamp. It was a
wonderful place for whispers; the trees, the sea, the birds, even the
flowers seemed to tell secrets, and Janet used to fancy that if she lay
there, silently, long enough, she would, like the man in the fairy tale,
hear what they were saying. She noticed that she always seemed to hear
more when she was with her father. She had gone there sometimes with
Miss Minns, and had wondered how she could be so fanciful. Nothing had
whispered at all, and Miss Minns had had a headache. But to-day
everything seemed to have a new meaning; her meeting with Tony had lent
it a colour, an intensity that it had not had before. It was as though
they all—the sea, the sky, the trees, the animals—knew that she had
got a knight and would like to tell her how glad they were.
Morelli sat perched on the highest peak of the knoll with his legs
crossed beneath him. He was at his very best; gay, laughing, throwing
the pine needles like a child into the air, singing a little song.
“Come here, my dear, and talk to me.” He made way for her beside him.
“Everything is singing to-day. There is a bird in a tree above us who
has just told me how happy he is. I hope you are happy, my dear.”
“Yes, father, very.” She gave a little sigh of satisfaction and lay back
on the grass at his side.
“Well, don’t be ashamed of showing it. Have your feelings and show them.
Never mind what they are, but don’t cover them as though you were afraid
that they would catch cold. Don’t mind feeling intensely, hurting
intensely, loving intensely. It is a world of emotion, not of sham.”
She never paid any very deep attention when he talked about rules of
life. Existence seemed to her, at present, such an easy affair that
rules weren’t necessary; people made such a bother.
She lay back and stared straight into the heart of the sky. Two little
clouds, like pillows, bulged against the blue; the hard sharp line of
the pines cut into space, and they moved together slowly like the soft
opening and closing of a fan.
“I knew a place once like this,” said Morelli. “It was in Greece. A
green hill overlooking the sea, and on it a white statue; they came to
worship their god there.”
“What is this talk of God?” she asked him, resting on one elbow and
looking up at him. “You have never told me, father, but of course I have
read and have heard people talk. Who is God?”
She asked it with only a very languid interest. She had never speculated
at all about the future. The world was so wonderful, and there were such
a number of things all around her to think about, that discussion about
something that would affect her at the end of her life, when all the
world was dark and she was old and helpless, seemed absurd. She would
want the end to come then, when she was deaf and blind and cold; she
would not spoil the young colour and intensity of her life by thinking
about it. But with the sudden entrance of Tony the question came forward
again. They would not live for ever; life seemed very long to her, but
the time must come when they would die. And then? Who was this God?
Would He see to it that she and Tony were together afterwards? If so,
she would worship Him; she would bring Him flowers, and light candles as
Miss Minns did. As she sat there and heard the woods and the sea she
thought that the answer must be somewhere in them. He must have made
this colour and sound, and, if that were so, He could not be unkind. She
watched the two clouds; they had swollen into the shape of bowls, their
colour was pale cream, and the sun struck their outer edges into a very
faint gold.
“Who is God?” she said again.
Morelli looked at her. “There were gods once,” he said. “People were
faithful in those days, and they saw clearly. Now the world is gloomy,
because of the sin that it thinks that it has committed, or because
pleasure has been acid to the taste. Then they came with their songs and
flowers to the hill, and, with the sky at their head and the sea at
their feet, they praised the God whom they knew. Now——” He stared
fiercely in front of him. “Oh! these people!” he said.
She did not ask him any more. She could not understand what he had said,
and she was afraid lest her questions should bring his fury back again.
But the question was there; many new questions were there, and she was
to spend her life in answering them.
So they had lunch whilst the two clouds divided into three and danced
with white trailing garments across the sun; then again they were swans,
and vanished with their necks proudly curved into space.
“Father,” said Janet, with an abstracted air, as though she was thinking
of some one else, “Do you think Mr. Gale handsome?”
“Yes, dear,” he answered. “He’s young, very young, and that is worth all
the looks in the world.”
“I think he is very handsome,” she said, staring in front of him.
“Yes, dear, I know you do.”
“You like him, father?”
“Of course.” Morelli smiled. “I like to see you together.”
“And Mr. Maradick, father? What do you think of him?”
“Poor Mr. Maradick!” Morelli laughed. “He is going to have a bad time;
life comes late to some people.”
“Yes, I like him,” said Janet, thoughtfully, “I know he’s kind, but he’s
old; he’s older than you are, father.”
“He’ll be younger before he’s left Treliss,” said Morelli.
After lunch he took his flute from his pocket.
She lay motionless, with her arms behind her head; she became part of
the landscape; her white dress lay about her like a cloud, her hair
spread like sunlight over the grass, and her eyes stared, shining, into
the sky. He sat, with his legs crossed under him, on the swelling grass,
and stared at the tops of the trees and the sweep of the sea. No part of
him moved except his fingers, which twinkled on the flute; the tune was
a little gay dance that sparkled in the air and seemed to set all the
trees in motion, even the three little clouds came back again and lay
like monstrous white birds against the sky.
The two figures were absorbed into the surrounding country. His brown
face and sharp nose seemed to belong to the ground on which he sat; the
roses on her dress seemed to grow about her, and her hair lay around her
like daffodils and primroses. The gay tune danced along, and the sun
rose high above their heads; a mist rose from the sea like a veil and,
shot with colour, blue and green, enveloped the woods.
Then there were stealthy movements about the two figures. Birds,
thrushes, chaffinches, sparrows, hopped across the grass. A pigeon cooed
softly above his head; two rabbits peeped out from the undergrowth. They
grew bolder, and a sparrow, its head on one side, hopped on to Janet’s
dress.
More rabbits came, and the pigeon, with a soft whirr of its wings, swept
down to Morelli’s feet. The grass was soon dotted with birds, a squirrel
ran down a tree-trunk and stayed, with its tail in the air, to listen.
The birds grew bolder and hopped on to Morelli’s knee; a sparrow stood
for a moment on Morelli’s head and then flew away.
Janet showed no astonishment at these things. She had often seen her
father play to the animals before, and they had come. Suddenly he piped
a shrill, discordant note, and with a whirr of their wings the birds had
vanished and the rabbits disappeared.
He put his flute into his pocket.
“It’s nearly four o’clock,” he said.
“Father,” she said as they went down the hill, “can other people do
that? Make the birds and animals come?”
“No,” he said.
“Why not? What is it that you do?”
“It’s nothing that I do,” he said. “It’s what I am. Don’t you worry your
head about that, my dear. Only don’t say that anything’s impossible.
‘There’s more in Heaven and earth than is dreamed of in the philosophy’
of those folks who think that they know such a lot. Don’t ever
disbelieve anything, my dear. Everything’s true, and a great deal more
as well.”
Meanwhile Tony dragged a reluctant Maradick to tea. “They don’t want
me,” he said, “you’ll be making me hideously unpopular, Tony, if you
keep dragging me there.”
“I told them you were coming,” said Tony resolutely. “And of course you
are. There are simply heaps of reasons. The plot’s thickening like
anything, and it’s absurd of you to pretend that you are not in it,
because you are, right up to your neck. And now I’ll give you my
reasons. In the first place there’s mother. At the picnic yesterday
Alice spotted that there was some one else; of course she will speak to
mother, probably has spoken already. As I have told you already, she has
perfect confidence in you, and as long as you are there it’s perfectly
right, but if you leave me she’ll begin to worry her head off. Then
again, there’s Janet herself. I want her to get to know you and trust
you. She’ll want some one older just as much as I do, probably more,
because she’s a girl and a frightful kid. Oh! rot! I’m no use at
explaining, and the situation’s jolly difficult; only how can she
possibly trust you and the rest of it, if she never sees you? And last
of all, there’s me. I want you to see how the thing’s going so that we
can talk about it. There’s something ‘up,’ I know, I could see this
morning that she’d been crying. I believe Morelli’s beastly to her or
something. Anyhow, you’re bound and pledged and everything, and you’re a
ripping old brick to be so decent about it,” at the end of which Tony,
breathless with argument and excitement seized Maradick by the arm and
dragged him away.
But Maradick had a great deal to think about, and it was as much for
this reason as for any real reluctance to visit the Morellis that he
hesitated.
And the tea-party was a great success. Everyone was in the very best of
humours, and the restraint that had been there a little on the first
occasion had now quite passed away. The sun poured into the room, and
shone so that everything burnt with colour. Maradick felt again how
perfect a setting it made for the two who were its centre, the
blue-tiled fireplace, the fantastic blue and white china on the walls,
the deep blue of the carpet set the right note for a background. On the
table the tea-things, the old silver teapot and milk jug, old red and
white plates and an enormous bowl of flaming poppies, gave the colour.
Then against the blue sky and dark brown roofs beyond the window was
Janet, with her golden hair and the white dress with the pink roses.
Miss Minns was the only dark figure in the room and she scarcely seemed
to matter. The only words that she spoke were to Maradick, “In for a
penny in for a pound,” she suddenly flung at him à propos of some story
of Epsom expenses, and then felt apparently that she had said too much
and was quiet for the rest of the afternoon.
Morelli was at his pleasantest, and showed how agreeable a companion he
could be. Maradick still felt the same distrust of him, but he was
forced to confess that he had never before met anyone so entertaining.
His knowledge of other countries seemed inexhaustible; he had been
everywhere, and had a way of describing things and places that brought
them straight with him into the room, so vivid were they.
His philosophy of life in general appeared, this afternoon pleasant and
genial. He spoke of men who had failed with commiseration and a very
wide charity; he seemed to extend his affection to everyone, and said
with a smile that “It was only a question of knowing people; they were
all good fellows at heart.”
And yet, through it all, Maradick felt as though he were, in some
unexplained way, playing at a game. The man was rather like a child
playing at being grown-up and talking as he had heard his elders do. He
had an impulse to say, “Look here, Morelli, it’s boring you dreadfully
talking like this, you’re not a bit interested, really and truly, and
we’re only playing this game as a background for the other two.”
And, in fact, that was what it all came to; that was Maradick’s
immediate problem that must be answered before any of the others. What
was Morelli’s idea about his daughter and Tony? Morelli knew, of course,
perfectly well what was going on. You could see it in their eyes. And,
apparently, as far as Maradick could see, he liked it and wanted it to
continue. Why? Did he want them to marry? No, Maradick didn’t think that
he did. He watched them with a curious smile; what was it that he
wanted?
And they, meanwhile, the incredible pair with their incredible youth,
were silent. It was through no constraint, but rather, perhaps, because
of their overflowing happiness. Tony smiled broadly at the whole world,
and every now and again his eyes fastened on her face with a look of
assured possession, in the glance with which she had greeted him he had
seen all that he wanted to know.
Then she turned round to him. “Oh, Mr. Gale, you haven’t seen the
garden, our garden. You really must. It’s small, but it’s sweet. You
will come, Mr. Maradick?”
Her father looked up at her with a smile. “You take Mr. Gale, dear.
We’ll follow in a moment.” And so they went out together. He thought
that he had never seen so sweet a place. The high walls were old red
brick, the lawn stretched the whole length, and around it ran a brown
gravelled path. In one corner was an enormous mulberry leaning heavily
to one side, and supported by old wooden stakes and held together by
bands of metal. Immediately beneath the wall, and around the length of
the garden, was a flower bed filled with pansies and hollyhocks and
nasturtiums; it was a blaze of colour against the old red of the wall
and behind the green of the lawn.
Underneath the mulberry tree was a seat, and they sat down close enough
to make Tony’s heart beat very hard indeed.
“Oh, it’s perfect!” he said with a sigh.
“Yes, it’s very lovely, isn’t it? I’ve never known any other garden, and
now you don’t know how nice it is to have some one to show it to. I’ve
never had anyone to show it to before.”
The old house looked lovely from the garden. Its walls bulged towards
them in curious curves and angles, it seemed to hang over the lawn like
a protecting deity. The light of the sun caught its windows and they
flamed red and gold.
“You like having me to show it to?” he said.
“Of course,” she answered.
They were both suddenly uncomfortable. Everything around and about them
seemed charged with intensest meaning. They began, each of them, to be
more uncertain about the other. Perhaps after all they had read the
signs wrongly. Janet suddenly reflected that she had known no other
young men, and, after all, they might all have that habit of smiling and
looking pleasant. It might be merely politeness, and probably meant
nothing at all. She had been much too hasty; she took a stolen glance at
him and fancied that he looked as though he were a little bored.
“It’s much nicer,” she said a little coldly, “in the summer than the
winter.”
He looked at her for a moment, and then burst out laughing. “I say,” he
said, “don’t let’s start being polite to each other, we’re friends. You
know we made a compact the other day. We’ve got such a lot to talk about
that we mustn’t waste time.”
“Oh! I’m so glad,” she sighed with relief; “you see I know so few people
that I didn’t a bit know whether I was doing the right sort of thing.
You looked a very little bit as though you were bored.”
“By Jove!” he said. “I should think not. Do you know, it’s the
rippingest thing in the world coming and talking to you, and I’d been
wondering ever since last time how soon it would be before I could come
and talk to you again. And now, if you like my coming, it’s simply
splendid.”
“Well, please come often,” she said, smiling. “I haven’t got many
friends, and we seem to think the same about such lots of things.”
“Well, I love this place and this garden and everything, and I expect
that I shall come often.”
“Oh! I think you’re wonderful!” she said.
“No, please don’t.” He bent towards her and touched her hand. “That’s
only because you haven’t seen other people much. I’m most awfully
ordinary, quite a commonplace sort of chap. I’d be awfully sick with
myself really if I had time to think about it, but there’s such a lot
going on that one simply can’t bother. But you’ll do me a lot of good if
you’ll let me come.”
“_I!_” She opened her eyes wide. “How funny you are! I’m no use to
anybody.”
“We’re both most fearfully modest,” he said, smiling, “and when people
say how rotten they are they generally mean just the opposite. But I
don’t, really. I mean it absolutely.” Then he lowered his voice. “We’re
friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” she said, very softly.
“Always?”
“Yes, always.”
His hand took hers very gently. At the touch of her fingers his heart
began suddenly to pound his breast so that he could not hear, a quiver
shook his body, he bent his head.
“I’m an awfully poor sort of fellow,” he said in a whisper.
The mulberry tree, the lawn, the shining windows, the flowers caught the
tone and for one moment fell like a burning cloud about the two, then
the light died away.
* * * * *