Maradick at Forty: A Transition

by Hugh Walpole

Then he seemed to lie for a long time in a strange lassitude. He was still sitting forward with his hands pressed tightly together, his eyes fixed on the altar, but his brain seemed to have ceased to work. He had that sensation of suddenly standing outside and above himself. He saw Maradick sitting there, he saw the dusky church and the dim gold light over the altar, and outside the sweep of the plain and the dark plunging sea; and he was above and beyond it all. He wondered a little that that man could be so troubled about so small an affair. He wondered and then pitied him. What a perspective he must have, poor thing, to fancy that his struggles were of so vast an importance.

He saw him as a baby, a boy, a man—stolid, stupid self-centred, ignorant. Oh! so dull a soul! such a lump of clay, just filling space as a wall fills it; but no use, with no share at all in the music that was on every side of him.

And then, because for an instant the flame has descended upon him and his eyes have been opened, he rushes at once to take refuge in his body. He is afraid of his soul, the light of it hurts him, he cowers in his dark corner groping for his food, wanting his sensuality to be satisfied; and the little spark that has been kindled is nearly out, in a moment it will be gone, because he did not know what to do with it, and the last state of that man is worse than the first.

And slowly he came back to himself. The candles had been extinguished. The church was quite dark. Only a star shone through the little window and some late bird was singing. He gathered himself together. It must be late and he must see Morelli. He stumbled out of the church.

He knew as he faced the wind and the night air that in some obscure way, as yet only very vaguely realised, he had won the moral victory over himself. He had no doubt about what he must do; he had no doubt at all about the kind of life that he must lead afterwards. He saw that he had been given something very precious to keep—his vie sacré, as it were—and he knew that everyone had this vie sacré somewhere, that it was something that they never talked about, something that they kept very closely hidden, and that it was when they had soiled it, or hurt it, or even perhaps for a time lost it, that they were unhappy and saw life miserably and distrusted their fellow beings. He had never had it before; but he had got it now, his precious golden box, and it would make all life a new thing.

But there was still his body. He had never felt so strong in his life before; the blood raced through his veins, he felt as though he would like to strip himself naked and fight and battle with anything furious and strong.

His sense of weariness had left him; he felt that he must have some vent for his strength immediately or he would commit some crime. For a few minutes he stood there and let the wind blow about his forehead. The storm had passed away. The sky was a very dark blue, and the stars had a wind-blown, misty look, as they often have after a storm. Their gold light was a little watery, as though they had all been dipped in some mysterious lake somewhere in the hills of heaven before they were out in the sky. In spite of the wind there was a great silence, and the bird on some dark wind-bent tree continued to sing. The trees on either side of the lane rose, dark walls, against the sky. Then in the distance there were cries, at first vague and incoherent, almost uncanny, and then, coming down the lane, he heard the bleating of innumerable sheep. They passed him, their bodies mysteriously white against the dark hedges; they pressed upon each other and their cries came curiously to him, hitting the silence as a ball hits a board; there were very many of them and their feet pattered away into distance. They seemed to him like all the confused and dark thoughts that had surrounded him all these weeks, but that he had now driven away. His head was extraordinarily clear; he felt as though he had come out of a long sleep.

The lights were beginning to come out in the town as he entered it. It must be, he thought, about eight o’clock, and Morelli had probably returned from Truro. It had not occurred to him until now to think of what he was going to say to Morelli. After all, there wasn’t really very much to say, simply that his daughter was gone and that she would never come back again, and that he, Maradick, had helped her to go. It hadn’t occurred to him until now to consider how Morelli would probably take his share in it. He wouldn’t like it, of course; there would probably be some unpleasantness.

And then Morelli was undoubtedly a queer person. Tony was a very healthy normal boy, not at all given to unnecessary terror, but he had been frightened by Morelli. And then there were a host of little things, none of them amounting to anything in themselves, but taken together—oh yes! the man was queer.

The street was quite empty; the lamplighter had not yet reached that part of the town and the top of the hill was lost in darkness. Maradick found the bell and rang it, and even as he did so a curious feeling of uneasiness began to creep over him. He, suddenly and quite unconsciously, wanted to run away. He began to imagine that there was something waiting for him on the other side of the door, and when it actually opened and showed him only Lucy, the little maid-of-all-work, he almost started with surprise.