Maradick at Forty: A Transition

by Hugh Walpole

At first they moved slowly. The road was, by this time, thick with mud, and there were little trenches of water on both sides. They bumped along this for a little way. And then suddenly the aged man became seized, as it were, by a devil. They were on the top of the hill; the wind blew right across him, the rain lashed him to the skin. Suddenly he lifted up his voice and sang. It was the sailor’s chanty that Maradick had heard on the first day of his coming to Treliss; but now, through the closed windows of the cab, it seemed to reach them in a shrill scream, like some gull above their heads in the storm.

Wild exultation entered into the heart of the ancient man. He seemed to be seized by the Furies. He lashed his horse wildly, the beast with all its cranky legs and heaving ribs, darted madly forward, and the rain came down in torrents.

The ancient man might have seemed, had there been a watcher to note, the very spirit of the moor. His eyes were staring, his arms were raised aloft; and so they went, bumping, jolting, tumbling along the white road.

Inside the cab there was confusion. At the first movement Miss Minns had been flung violently into Maradick’s lap. At first he clutched her wildly. The bugles on her bonnet hit him sharply in the eyes, the nose, the chin. She pinched his arm in the excitement of the moment. Then she recovered herself.

“Oh! Mr. Maradick!” she began, “I——” but, in a second, she was seized again and hurled against the door, so that Tony had to clutch her by the skirt lest the boards should give and she should be hurled out into the road. But the pace of the cab grew faster and faster. They were now all four of them hurled violently from one side of the vehicle to the other. First forward, then backwards, then on both sides at once, then all in a tangled heap together in the middle; and the ancient man on the top of the box, the water dripping from his hat in a torrent, screamed his song.

Then terror suddenly entered into them all. It seemed to strike them all at the same moment that there was danger. Maradick suddenly was afraid. He was bruised, his collar was torn, he ached in every limb. He had a curious impulse to seize Miss Minns and tear her to pieces, he was wild with rage that she should be allowed to hit and strike him like that. He began to mutter furiously. And the others felt it too. Janet was nearly in tears; she clung to Tony and murmured, “Oh! stop him! stop him!”

And Tony, too. He cried, “We must get out of this! We must get out of this!” and he dragged furiously at the windows, but they would not move; and then his hand broke through the pane, and it began to bleed, there was blood on the floor of the carriage.

And they did not know that it was the place that was casting them out. They were going back to their cities, to their disciplined places, to their streets and solemn houses, their inventions, their rails and lines and ordered lives; and so the place would cast them out. It would have its last wild game with them. The ancient man gave a last shrill scream and was silent. The horse relapsed into a shamble; they were in the dark, solemn streets. They climbed the hill to the station.

They began to straighten themselves, and already to forget that it had been, in the least, terrible.

“After all,” said Tony, “it was probably a good thing that we came at that pace. We might have missed the train.”