Maradick at Forty: A Transition

by Hugh Walpole

But he stared in front of him, seeing simply the two women, one on each side of him. He had forgotten everything else. They stood there waiting for him to make his choice. It was the parting of the ways.

And then suddenly he fell asleep. He did not know that his eyes closed; he seemed to be still stupidly staring at the two candles and the rings that they made, and the way that the altar seemed to slope down in front of him like the dim grey side of a hill. And it was a hill. He could see it stretch in front of him, up into the air, until the heights of it were lost. At the foot of the hill ran a stream, blue in the half-light, and in front of the stream a green plain stretching to his feet. Along the stream were great banks of rushes, green and brown, and away to the right and left were brown cliffs running sheer down into the sea.

And then in his dream he suddenly realised that he had seen the place before. He knew that beyond the plain there should be a high white road leading to a town, that below the cliffs there was a cove with a white sandy bay; he knew the place.

And people approached. He could not see their faces, and they seemed in that half light in which the blue hills and the blue river mingled in the grey of the dusk to be shadows such as a light casts on a screen. They were singing very softly and moving slowly across the plain. Then they passed away and there was silence again, only a little wind went rustling down the hill and the rushes all quivered for an instant. Then the rushes were parted, and a face looked out from between them and looked at Maradick and smiled. And Maradick recognised the smile. He had seen it for the first time in a public-house, thick with smoke, noisy with drinking and laughter. He could see it all again; the little man in brown suddenly at his table, and then that delightful charming laugh unlike anything else in the world—Morelli.

But this figure was naked, his feet were goats’ feet and on his head were horns; his body was brown and hairy and in his hand was a pipe. He began to play and slowly the shadowy figures came back again and gathered about him. They began to dance to his playing moving slowly in the half-light so that at times they seemed only mist; and a little moon like a golden eye came out and watched them and touched the tops of the blue hills with flame.

Maradick woke. His head had slipped forward on to the seat in front of him. He suddenly felt dreadfully tired; every limb in his body seemed to ache, but he was cold and the seat was very hard.

Then he was suddenly aware that there was some one else in the church. Over by the altar some one was kneeling, and very faintly there came to him the words of a prayer. “Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. . . . Thy will be done, . . . as it is in Heaven. . . . lead us not into temptation; But deliver us from evil. . . .” It was the old clergyman, the old clergyman with the white beard.

Maradick sat motionless in his seat. He made no movement, but he was praying, praying furiously. He was praying to no God that had a name, but to the powers of all honour, of all charity, of all goodness.

Love was the ultimate test, the test of everything. He knew now, with a clearness that seemed to dismiss all the shadows that had lingered for days about him, that he had never loved Mrs. Lester. It was the cry of sensuality, the call of the beast; it was lust.

“Deliver us from evil.” He said it again and again, his hands clenched, his eyes staring, gazing at the altar. The powers of evil seemed to be all about him; he felt that if he did not cling with all his strength to that prayer, he was lost. The vision of Mrs. Lester returned to him. She seemed to get between him and the old man at the altar. He tried to look beyond her, but she was there, appealing, holding out her arms to him. Then she was nearer to him, quite close, he could feel her breath on his cheek; and then again, with all the moral force that was in him, he pushed her away.