: Maradick at Forty: A Transition by Walpole Hugh - Cornwall (England : County) Fiction; England Social life and customs 20th century Fiction; Vacations Fiction

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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.

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