Maradick at Forty: A Transition

by Hugh Walpole

The mist crept forward like live things, twisting and turning, forming into pillars and clouds, and then rent by the screaming wind into a thousand tatters.

The road was at a high level, and he could see the coast for some miles bending round until it reached the headland; a line of white foam stretched, with hard and clear outline, from point to point. This was a new Cornwall to him, this grey mysterious thing, hinting at so much, with a force and power almost terrible in its ominous disregard of human individuality. He had thought that the right light for Cornwall was on a day of gold and blue, now he knew that he had not seen half the wonder and fascination; it was here, with this crawling foam, the sharp rocks, the screaming wind and the turning, twisting mist, that she was rightly to be seen.

The wind tore at his coat and beat him about the face. It was incredible that only yesterday there should have been heat and silence and dazzling colour. He pressed forward.

His thought now was that he was glad Mrs. Maradick did not know. Until this morning he had not considered her at all. After all, she had given him a bad twenty years of it, and she had no right to complain. Other men did it with far less excuse.

But there had been something when she had met him at breakfast this morning that he had not understood. She had been almost submissive. She had spoken to him at breakfast as she had never spoken to him in their married life before. She had been gentle, had told Annie not to jingle her teaspoon because it worried father, and had inquired almost timidly what were his plans for the day.

He had felt yesterday that he rather wanted her to see that Mrs. Lester was fond of him; she had driven it into him so often that he was only accepted by people as her husband, that he had no value in himself at all except as a payer of bills. She had even chaffed him about certain ladies of whom she had ironically suggested that he was enamoured. And so it had seemed in its way something of a triumph to show her that he wasn’t merely a figurehead, a person of no importance; that there was somebody who found him attractive, several people, indeed. But now he was ashamed. He had scarcely known how to answer her when she had spoken to him so gently. Was she too under influence of the place?

In fact, he did not know what he was going to do. He was tired, worn out; he would not think of it at all. He would see how things turned out.

The character of the day had changed. The mists were still on the sea, but behind them now was the shining of the sun, only as a faint light vaguely discerned, but the water seemed to heave gently as though some giant had felt the coming of the sun and was hurrying to meet it.

The light was held back by a wall of mist, but in places it seemed to be about to break through, and the floor of the sea shone with all the colours of mother of pearl.

The little church stood back from the cliff; it stood as though it had faced a thousand years of storm and rain, as an animal stands with its feet planted wide and its ears well back ready for attack. Its little tower was square and its stone was of weather-beaten grey, only the little windows with deep blue glass caught the haze from the sea and shone like eyes through the stone and across the grass.