Maradick at Forty: A Transition

by Hugh Walpole

They were not meant to keep them. They had made their mistake, and now they must pay for it; but it was better to break with those bonds now, to have done with them once and for all, than to go on for ever in hypercritical mockery, pretending what they could not feel, acting a lie before God and man.

But now, if they could escape now, away from this stupid country with its stupid conventions, away to some place where they would be happy together for ever until death . . . and so on, and so on; and the leaves and the paths and the dark sky were held together, motionless, by the iron hand of God.

And then some one had in a moment interrupted them; some fool from the hotel. Maradick’s fingers itched to be about his throat. “What a close night! Yes, a storm must be coming up. They’d heard very distant thunder; how solemn the sea sounded . . .” and so they had gone into the hotel.

The rain had ceased. The streets stretched in dreary wet lines before him, the skies were leaden grey; from some room the discordant jingle of a piano came down to him, a cart bumped past him through the mud and dirt.

And then suddenly the tower in the market-place sprung upon him. It was literally that, a definite springing out from all the depths of greyness and squalor behind it to meet him. On shining days, when the sky was very blue and the new smart hotel opposite glittered in all its splendour, the tower put on its most sombre cloak of grey and hid itself.

That was no time or place for it when other things could look so brilliant, but now, in the absolutely deserted market-place, when the cobbles glittered in the wet and the windows, like so many stupid eyes, gave back the dead colour of the sky, it took its rightful place.

It seemed to be the one thing that mattered, with its square and sturdy strength, its solidity that bid defiance to all the winds and rains of the world. Puddles lay about its feet and grey windy clouds tugged at its head, but it stood confidently resolute, while the red hotel opposite shrunk back, with its tawdry glitter damped and torn and dishevelled.

So Maradick stood alone in the market-place and looked at it, and suddenly realised it as a symbol. He might have his room from which he looked out and saw the world, and he held it to be good; Tony had shown him that. He might have his freedom, so that he might step out and take the wonderful things that he had seen; Punch had shown him that. But he must also have—oh! he saw it so clearly—his strength, the character to deal with it all, the resolution to carve his own actions rather than to let his actions carve him; and the tower had shown him that!

As he looked at it, he almost bowed his head before it. Foolish to make so much of an old thing like that! Sentimental and emotional with no atom of common-sense in it, but it had come out to meet him just when he wanted it most. It needed all his resolution to persuade himself that it had not a life of its own, that it did not know, like some old, sober, experienced friend, what danger he was running.

He passed out into the country. Although the rain had ceased and the grass was scenting the air with the new fragrance that the storm had given it, the sky was dark and overcast, grey clouds like Valkyries rushed furiously before the wind, and the sea, through the mist, broke into armies of white horses. As far as the eye could reach they kept charging into the grey dun-coloured air and fell back to give way to other furious riders.