Delphi collected works o.., p.483
Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated), page 483
“It’s stealing.”
“I dare say it belongs to you, and, anyway, it will when your mother dies, so what does it matter? You are a baby!”
After Mary’s departure Sarah sat for a long while alone in her nursery. She thought to herself: “Mary will be going home now and she’ll be snuffling to herself all the way back, and she won’t tell the nurse anything, I know that. Now she’s in the hall. She’s upstairs now, having her things taken off. She’s stopped crying, but her eyes and nose are red. She looks very ugly. She’s gone to find Alice. She thinks something has happened to her. She begins to cry again when she sees her, and she begins to talk to her about it. Fancy talking to a cat....”
The room was swallowed in darkness, and when Hortense came in and found Sarah sitting alone there, she thought to herself that, in spite of the profits that she secured from her mistress she would find another situation. She did not speak to Sarah, and Sarah did not speak to her.
Once, during the night, Sarah woke up; she sat up in bed and stared into the darkness. Then she smiled to herself. As she lay down again she thought:
“Now I know that she will bring it.”
The next day was very fine, and in the glittering garden by the fountain, Sarah sat with Hortense, and waited. Soon Mary and her nurse appeared. Sarah took Mary by the hand and they went away down the leaf-strewn path.
“Well!” said Sarah.
Mary quite silently felt in her pocket at the back of her short, green frock, produced the ring, gave it to Sarah, and, still without a word, turned back down the path and walked to her nurse. She stood there, clutching a doll in her hand, stared in front of her, and said nothing. Sarah looked at the ring, smiled, and put it into her pocket.
At that instant the climax of the whole affair struck, like a blow from some one unseen, upon Sarah’s consciousness. She should have been triumphant. She was not. Her one thought as she looked at the ring was that she wished Mary had not taken it. She had a strange feeling as though Mary, soft and heavy and fat, were hanging round her neck. She had “got” Mary for ever. She was suddenly conscious that she despised Mary, and had lost all interest in her. She didn’t want the ring, nor did she ever wish to see Mary again.
She gazed about the garden, shrugged her thin, little, bony shoulders as though she were fifty at least, and felt tired and dull, as on the day after a party. She stood and looked at Mary and her nurse; when she saw them walk away she did not move, but stayed there, staring after them. She was greatly disappointed; she did not feel any pleasure at having forced Mary to obey her, but would have liked to have smacked and bitten her, could these violent actions have driven her into speech. In some undetermined way Mary’s silence had beaten Sarah. Mary was a stupid, silly little girl, and Sarah despised and scorned her, but, somehow, that was not enough; from all of this, it simply remained that Sarah would like now to forget her, and could not. What did the silly little thing mean by looking like that? “She’ll go and hug her Alice and cry over it.” If only she had cried in front of Sarah that would have been something.
Two days later Lady Charlotte was explaining to Sarah that so acute a financial crisis had arrived “as likely as not we shan’t have a roof over our heads in a day or two.”
“We’ll take an organ and a monkey,” said Sarah.
“At any rate,” Lady Charlotte said, “when you grow up you’ll be used to anything.”
Mrs. Kitson, untidy, in dishevelled clothing, and great distress, was shown in.
“Dear Lady Charlotte, I must apologise — this absurd hour — but I — we — very unhappy about poor Mary. We can’t think what’s the matter with her. She’s not slept for two nights — in a high fever, and cries and cries. The Doctor — Dr. Williamson — really clever — says she’s unhappy about something. We thought — scarlet fever — no spots — can’t think — perhaps your little girl.”
“Poor Mrs. Kitson. How tiresome for you. Do sit down. Perhaps Sarah — —”
Sarah shook her head.
“She didn’t say she’d a headache in the garden the other day.”
Mrs. Kitson gazed appealingly at the little black figure in front of her.
“Do try and remember, dear. Perhaps she told you something.”
“Nothing” said Sarah.
“She cries and cries,” said Mrs. Kitson, about whose person little white strings and tapes seemed to be continually appearing and disappearing.
“Perhaps she’s eaten something?” suggested Lady Charlotte.
When Mrs. Kitson had departed, Lady Charlotte turned to Sarah.
“What have you done to the poor child?” she said.
“Nothing,” said Sarah. “I never want to see her again.”
“Then you have done something?” said Lady Charlotte.
“She’s always crying,” said Sarah, “and she calls her kitten Alice,” as though that were explanation sufficient.
The strange truth remains, however, that the night that followed this conversation was the first unpleasant one that Sarah had ever spent; she remained awake during a great part of it. It was as though the hours that she had spent on that other afternoon, compelling, from her own dark room, Mary’s will, had attached Mary to her. Mary was there with her now, in her bedroom. Mary, red-nosed, sniffing, her eyes wide and staring.
“I want to go home.”
“Silly little thing,” thought Sarah. “I wish I’d never played with her.”
In the morning Sarah was tired and white-faced. She would speak to no one. After luncheon she found her hat and coat for herself, let herself out of the house, and walked to Mrs. Kitson’s, and was shown into the wide, untidy drawing-room, where books and flowers and papers had a lost and strayed air as though a violent wind had blown through the place and disturbed everything.
Mrs. Kitson came in.
“You, dear?” she said.
Sarah looked at the room and then at Mrs. Kitson. Her eyes said: “What a place! What a woman! What a fool!”
“Yes, I’ve come to explain about Mary.”
“About Mary?”
“Yes. It’s my fault that she’s ill. I took a ring out of that little table there — the gold ring with the red stone — and I made her promise not to tell. It’s because she thinks she ought to tell that she’s ill.”
“You took it? You stole it?” Before Mrs. Kitson’s simple mind an awful picture was now revealed. Here, in this little girl, whom she had preferred as a companion for her beloved Mary, was a thief, a liar, and one, as she could instantly perceive, without shame.
“You stole it!”
“Yes; here it is.” Sarah laid the ring on the table.
Mrs. Kitson gazed at her with horror, dismay, and even fear.
“Why? Why? Don’t you know how wrong it is to take things that don’t belong to you?”
“Oh, all that!” said Sarah, waving her hand scornfully. ‘“I don’t want the silly thing, and I don’t suppose I’d have kept it, anyhow. I don’t know why I’ve told you,” she added. “But I just don’t want to be bothered with Mary any more.”
“Indeed, you won’t be, you wicked girl,” said Mrs. Kitson. “To think that I — my grand-father’s — I’d never missed it. And you haven’t even said you’re sorry.”
“I’m not,” said Sarah quietly. “If Mary wasn’t so tiresome and silly those sort of things wouldn’t happen. She makes me — —”
Mrs. Kitson’s horror deprived her of all speech, so Sarah, after one more glance of amused cynicism about the room, retired.
As she crossed the Square she knew, with happy relief, that she was free of Mary, that she need never bother about her again. Would all the people whom she compelled to obey her hang round her with all their stupidities afterwards? If so, life was not going to be so entertaining as she had hoped. In her dark little brain already was the perception of the trouble that good and stupid souls can cause to bold and reckless ones. She would never bother with any one so feeble as Mary again, but, unless she did, how was she ever to have any fun again?
Then as she climbed the stairs to her room, she was aware of something else.
“I’ve caught you, after all. You have been soft. You’ve yielded to your better nature. Try as you may you can’t get right away from it. Now you’ll have to reckon with me more than ever. You see you’re not stronger than I am.”
Before she opened the door of her room she knew that she would find Him there, triumphant.
With a gesture of impatient irritation she pushed the door open.
CHAPTER IX
Young John Scarlett
I
That fatal September — the September that was to see young John take his adventurous way to his first private school — surely, steadily approached.
Mrs. Scarlett, an emotional and sentimental little woman, vibrating and taut like a telegraph wire, told herself repeatedly that she would make no sign. The preparations proceeded, the date — September 23rd — was constantly evoked, a dreadful ghost, by the careless, light-hearted family. Mr. Scarlett made no sign.
From the hour of John’s birth — nearly ten years ago — Mrs. Scarlett had never known a day when she had not been compelled to control her sentimental affections. From the first John had been an adorable baby, from the first he had followed his father in the rejection of all sentiment as un-English, and even if larger questions are involved, unpatriotic, but also from the first he had hinted, in surprising, furtive, agitating moments, at poetry, imagination, hidden, romantic secrets. Tom, May, Clare, the older children, had never been known to hint at anything — hints were not at all in their line, and of imagination they had not, between them, enough to fill a silver thimble — they were good, sturdy, honest children, with healthy stomachs and an excellent determination to do exactly the things that their class and generation were bent upon doing. Mrs. Scarlett was fond of them, of course, and because she was a sentimental woman she was sometimes quite needlessly emotional about them, but John — no. John was of another world.
The other children felt, beyond question, this difference. They deferred to John about everything and regarded him as leader of the family, and in their deference there was more than simply a recognition of his sturdy independence. Even John’s father, Mr. Reginald Scarlett, a K.C., and a man of a most decisive and emphatic bearing, felt John’s difference.
John’s appearance was unengaging rather than handsome — a snub nose, grey eyes, rather large ears, a square, stocky body and short, stout legs. He was certainly the most independent small boy in England, and very obstinate; when any proposal that seemed on the face of it absurd was made to him, he shut up like a box. His mouth would close, his eyes disappear, all light and colour would die from his face, and it was as though he said: “Well, if you are stupid enough to persist in this thing you can compel me, of course — you are physically stronger than I — but you will only get me like this quite dead and useless, and a lot of good may it do you!”
There were times, of course, when he could be most engagingly pleasant. He was courteous, on occasion, with all the beautiful manners that, we are told, are yielding so sadly before the spread of education and the speed of motor-cars — you never could foretell the guest that he would prefer, and it was nothing to him that here was an aunt, an uncle, or a grandfather who must be placated, and there an uninvited, undesired caller who mattered nothing at all. Mr. Scarlett’s father he offended mortally by expressing, in front of him, dislike for hair that grew in bushy profusion out of that old gentleman’s ears.
“But you could cut it off,” he argued, in a voice thick with surprised disgust. His grandfather, who was a baronet, and very wealthy, predicted a dismal career for his grandchild.
All the family realised quite definitely that nothing could be done with John. It was fortunate, indeed, that he was, on the whole, of a happy and friendly disposition. He liked the world and things that he found in it. He liked games, and food, and adventure — he liked quite tolerably his family — he liked immensely the prospect of going to school.
There were other things — strange, uncertain things — that lay like the dim, uncertain pattern of some tapestry in the back of his mind. He gave them, as the months passed, less and less heed. Only sometimes when he was asleep....
Meanwhile, his mother, with the heroism worthy of Boadicea, that great and savage warrior, kept his impulses of devotion, of sacrifice, of adoration, in her heart. John had no need of them; very long ago, Reginald Scarlett, then no K.C., with all the K.C. manner, had told her that he did not need them either. She gave her dinner parties, her receptions, her political gatherings — tremulous and smiling she faced a world that thought her a wise, capable little woman, who would see her husband a judge and peer one of these days.
“Mrs. Scarlett — a woman of great social ambition,” was their definition of her.
“Mrs. Scarlett — the mother of John,” was her own.
II
On a certain night, early in the month of September, young John dreamt again — but for the first time for many months — the dream that had, in the old days, come to him so often. In those days, perhaps, he had not called it a dream. He had not given it a name, and in the quiet early days he had simply greeted, first a protector, then a friend. But that was all very long ago, when one was a baby and allowed oneself to imagine anything. He had, of course, grown ashamed of such confiding fancies, and as he had become more confident had shoved away, with stout, determined fingers, those dim memories, poignancies, regrets. How childish one had been at four, and five, and six! How independent and strong now, on the very edge of the world of school! It perturbed him, therefore, that at this moment of crisis this old dream should recur, and it perturbed him the more, as he lay in bed next morning and thought it over, that it should have seemed to him at the time no dream at all, but simply a natural and actual occurrence.
He had been asleep, and then he had been awake. He had seen, sitting on his bed and looking at him with mild, kind eyes his old Friend. His Friend was always the same, conveying so absolutely kindness and protection, and his beard, his hands, the appealing humour of his gaze, recalled to John the early years, with a swift, imperative urgency. John, so independent and assured, felt, nevertheless, again that old alarm of a strange, unreal world, and the necessity of an appeal for protection from the only one of them all who understood.
“Hallo!” said John.
“Well?” said his Friend. “It’s many months since I’ve been to see you, isn’t it?”
“That’s not my fault,” said John.
“In a way, it is. You haven’t wanted me, have you? Haven’t given me a thought.”
“There’s been so much to do. I’m going to school, you know.”
“Of course. That’s why I have come now.”
Beside the window a dark curtain blew forward a little, bulged as though some one were behind it, thinned again in the pale dim shadows of a moon that, beyond the window, fought with driving clouds. That curtain would — how many ages ago! — have tightened young John’s heart with terror, and the contrast made by his present slim indifference drew him, in some warm, confiding fashion, closer to his visitor.
“Anyway, I’m jolly glad you’ve come now. I haven’t really forgotten you, ever. Only in the day-time — —”
“Oh, yes, you have,” his Friend said, smiling. “It’s natural enough and right that you should. But if only you will believe always that I once was here, if only you’ll not be persuaded into thinking me impossible, silly, absurd, sentimental — with ever so many other things — that’s all I’ve come now to ask you.”
“Why, how should I ever?” John demanded indignantly.
“After all, I was a help — for a long time when things were difficult and you had so much to learn — all that time you wanted me, and I was here.”
“Of course,” said John politely, but feeling within him that warning of approaching sentiment that he had learnt by now so fundamentally to dread.
Very well his friend understood his apprehension.
“That’s all. I’ve only come to you now to ask you to make me a promise — a very easy one.”
“Yes?” said John.
“It’s only that when you go off to school — before you leave this house — you will just, for a moment, remember me just then, and say good-bye to me. We’ve been a lot here in these rooms, in these passages, up and down together, and if only, as you go, you’ll think of me, I’ll be there.... Every year you’ve thought of me less — that doesn’t matter — but it matters more than you know that you should remember me just for an instant, just to say good-bye. Will you promise me?”
“Why, of course,” said John.
“Don’t forget! Don’t forget! Don’t forget!” And the kindly shadow had faded, the voice lingering about the room, mingling with the faint silver moonlight, passing out into the wider spaciousness of the rolling clouds.
III
With the clear light of morning came the confident certainty that it had all been the merest dream, and yet that certainty did not sweep the affair, as it should have done, from young John’s brain and heart. He was puzzled, perplexed, disturbed, unhappy. The “twenty-third” was approaching with terrible rapidity, and it was essential now that he should summon to aid all the forces of manly self-control and common-sense. And yet, just at this time, of all others, came that disturbing dream, and, in its train, absurd memories and fancies, burdened, too, with an urgent prompting of gratitude to some one or something. He shook it off, he obstinately rebelled, but he dreaded the night, and, with a sigh of relief, hailed the morning that followed a dreamless sleep.
Worst of all, he caught himself yielding to thoughts like these: “But he was kind to me — awfully decent” (a phrase caught from his elder brother). “I remember how He ...” And then he would shake himself. “It was only a silly old dream. He wasn’t real a bit. I’m not a rotten kid now that thinks fairies and all that true.”
