Read Ebook: Maradick at Forty: A Transition by Walpole Hugh

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Ebook has 1598 lines and 93776 words, and 32 pages

IS CONCLUDED

PART II

PUNCH

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 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?

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 , Mary Devonshire , and Eleanor Simpson . 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.

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.

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