Maradick at Forty: A Transition

by Hugh Walpole

“You silly old rotter, don’t look so sad about it, you don’t know what fun it will all be. And you are the biggest brick in the world, anyway. Janet and I will never forget you.” He bent down lower. “I say, you’re not sick with me, are you? Because, scold me like anything if I’ve done things. I always am doing things, you know.” He turned round and faced the shining path and the sky like glass. “I say! Isn’t it topping? But I must be off. I’ll come at once and tell you when I get back. But I’ll have to be in time for dinner to-night or the governor will keep me to my room on bread and water.” He was gone.

Maradick, looking back on it all afterwards, always saw that moment as the beginning of the second act. The first act, of course, had begun with that vision of Janet on the stairs with the candle in her hand. That seemed a long while ago now. Then had come all the other things, the picnic, the swim, the talk with Mrs. Lester, Tony’s proposal, his own talk with Punch that morning; all little things, but all leading the situation inevitably towards its climax. But they had all been in their way innocent, unoffending links in the chain. Now there was something more serious in it all, from that evening some other element mingled with the comedy.

He suddenly felt irritated with the sun and the colour and began to walk up and down the path. The uneasiness that he had felt all the afternoon increased; he began to wish that he had not allowed Tony to go down alone. Nothing, of course, could happen to the boy; it was absurd that he should imagine things, and probably it was due to the heat. Every now and again some sound came up from the town—a cry, a bell, the noisy rattle of a cart, and it seemed like an articulate voice; the town seemed to have a definite personality, some great animal basking there in the sun, and its face was the face of Morelli.

He sat down on one of the seats in the shadiest part of the garden; the trees hung over it in thick dark shadows, and at times a breeze pushed like a bird’s wing through their branches.

All around him the path was dark, beyond it was a broad belt of light. He must have gone asleep, because almost immediately he seemed to be dreaming. The shadows on the path receded and advanced as a door opens and shuts; the branches of the trees bent lower and lower. It seemed in his dream that he recognised something menacing in their movement, and he rose and passed through the garden and in a moment he was in the town. Here too it was dark, and in the market-place the tower stood, a black mass against the grey sky behind it, and the streets twisted like snakes up and down about the hill.

And then suddenly he was at Morelli’s house, he recognised the strange carving and the crooked, twisting shape of the windows. The door opened easily to his hand and he passed up the stairs. The house was quite dark; he had to grope to find his way. And then he was opposed by another door, something studded with nails—he could feel them with his hands—and heavily barred. He heard voices on the other side of the door, low, soft whispers, and then he recognised them, they were Tony and Morelli. He was driven by an impulse to beat the door and get at them; some fear clutched at his throat so that he felt that Tony was in terrible danger. In a minute he knew that he would be too late.

He knocked, at first softly and then furiously; for a moment the voices stopped, and then they began again. No one paid any attention to his knocking. He knew with absolute certainty that in a few minutes the door would open, but first something would happen. He began to beat on the door with his fists and to call out; the house was, for the rest, perfectly silent.

And then suddenly he heard Morelli’s laugh. There was a moment’s silence, and then Tony screamed, a terrified, trembling scream; the door began to open.

Maradick awoke to find himself on the garden seat with his head sunk on his breast and some one looking at him; in the hazy uncertainty of his waking his first thought was that it was Janet—he had scarcely recovered from his dream. He soon saw that it was not Janet, and, looking up confusedly, blushed on finding that it was Alice Du Cane. She was dressed in white, in something that clung about her and seemed to be made all in one piece. It looked to him very beautiful, and the great sweeping dark hat that she wore must have been delightfully shady, but it only had the effect of confusing him still more.

He knew Alice Du Cane very slightly, in fact he couldn’t really be said to know her at all. They said “good morning” and “good evening,” and it had occasionally happened that they had had to talk “just to keep the ball rolling” at some odd minute or other, but she had always given him the impression of being in quite “other worlds,” from which she might occasionally look down and smile, but into which he could never possibly be admitted. He had quite acquiesced in all of this, although he had no feeling of the kind about the rest of the party; but she belonged, he felt, to that small, mysterious body of people who, in his mind at any rate, “were the very top.” He was no snob about them, and he did not feel that they were any the better people for their high position, but he did feel that they were different. There were centuries of tradition behind them, that perhaps was really it, and there were the old houses with their lawns and picture galleries, and there were those wonderful ancestors who had ruled England from the beginning of time.