MARADICK LEARNS THAT “GETTING A VIEW” MAY HAVE ITS DANGERS AS WELL AS ITS REWARDS
 
Two days after the arrival of the Lesters Lady Gale arranged a picnic; a comprehensive, democratic picnic that was to include everybody. Her motives may be put down, if you will, to sociability, even, and you involve a larger horizon, to philanthropy. “Everybody,” of course, was in reality only a few, but it included the Lesters, the Maradicks, and Mrs. Lawrence. It was to be a delightful picnic; they were to drive to the top of Pender Callon, where there was a wonderful view, then they were to have tea, and then drive back in the moonlight.
Dear Mrs. Maradick (the letter went)—
It would give me such pleasure if you and your husband could come with us for a little Picnic at Pender Callon to-morrow afternoon, weather permitting, of course. The wagonette will come round about two-thirty.
I do hope you will be able to come.
Yours sincerely,
Beatrice Gale.
Mrs. Maradick considered it a little haughtily. She was sitting in the garden. Suddenly, as she turned the invitation over in her mind, she saw her husband coming towards her.
“Oh!” she said, as he came up to her, “I wanted to talk to you.”
He was looking as he always did—big, strong, red and brown. Oh! so healthy and stupid!
She did feel a new interest in him this morning, certainly. His avoiding her so consistently during the week was unlike him, was unusually strong. She even felt suddenly that she would like him to be rude and violent to her again, as he had been that other evening. Great creature! it was certainly his métier to be rude and violent. Perhaps he would be.
She held Lady Gale’s invitation towards him.
“A picnic.” she said coldly. “To-morrow; do you care to go?”
“Are you going?” he said, looking at her.
“I should think that scarcely matters,” she answered scornfully, “judging by the amount of interest you’ve taken in me and my doings during the last week.”
“I know,” he said, and he looked down at the ground, “I have been a brute, a cad, all these days, treating you like that. I have come to apologise.”
Oh! the fool! She could have struck him with her hand! It was to be the same thing after all, then. The monotonous crawling back to her feet, the old routine of love and submission, the momentary hope of strength and contradiction strangled as soon as born.
She laughed a little. “Oh, you needn’t apologise,” she said, “and, in any case, it’s a little late, isn’t it? Not that you need mind about me. I’ve had a very pleasant week, and so have the girls, even though their father hasn’t been near them.”
But he broke in upon her rapidly. “Oh! I’m ashamed of myself,” he said, “you don’t know how ashamed. I think the place had something to do with it, and then one was tired and nervy a bit, I suppose; not,” he hastily added, “that I want to make excuses, for there really aren’t any. I just leave it with you. I was a beast. I promise never to break out again.”
How could a man! she thought, looking at him, and then, how blind men were. Why couldn’t they see that it wasn’t the sugar and honey that women were continually wanting, or, at any rate, the right sort of woman!
She glanced at him angrily. “We’d better leave the thing there,” she said. “For heaven’s sake spare us any more scenes. You were rude—abominably—I’m glad you’ve had the grace at last to come and tell me so.”
She moved as though she would get up, but he put out his hand and stopped her.
“No, Emmy, please,” he said, “let’s talk for a moment. I’ve got things I want to say.” He cleared his throat, and stared down the white shining path. Mrs. Lawrence appeared coming towards them, then she saw them together and turned hurriedly back. “I’ve been thinking, all these days, about the muddle that we’ve made. My fault very largely, I know, but I have so awfully wanted to put it right again. And I thought if we talked——”
“What’s the use of talking?” she broke in hastily; “there’s nothing to say; it’s all as stale as anything could be. You’re so extraordinarily dull when you’re in the ‘picking up the pieces’ mood; not content with behaving like a second-rate bricklayer and then sulking for a week you add to it by a long recital, ‘the virtues of an obedient wife’—a little tiresome, don’t you think?”
Her nerves were all to pieces, she really wasn’t well, and the heat was terrible; the sight of him sitting there with that pathetic, ill-used look on his face, drove her nearly to madness. To think that she was tied for life to so feeble a creature.
“No, please,” he said, “I know that I’m tiresome and stupid. But really I’ve been seeing things differently these last few days. We might get along better. I’ll try; I know it’s been largely my fault, not seeing things and not trying——”
“Oh!” she broke in furiously, “for God’s sake stop it. Isn’t it bad enough and tiresome enough for me already without all this stuff! I’m sick of it, sick of it, I tell you. Sick of the whole thing. You spoke your mind the other night, I’ll speak mine now. You can take it or leave it.” She rose from her chair and stood looking out to sea, her hands clenched at her sides. “Oh! these years! these years! Always the same thing. You’ve never stuck up to anything, never fought anything, and it’s all been so tame. And now you want us to go over the same old ground again, to patch it up and go on as if we hadn’t had twenty long dreary years of it and would give a good deal not to have another.” She stopped and looked at him, smiling curiously. “Oh! James! My poor dear, you’re such a bore. Try not to be so painfully good; you might even be a little amusing!”
She walked slowly away towards the girls. She passed, with them, down the path.
He picked up the broken pieces of his thoughts and tried to put them slowly together. His first thought of her and of the whole situation was that it was hopeless, perfectly hopeless. He had fancied, stupidly, blindly, that his having moved included her moving too, quite without reason, as he now thoroughly saw. She was just where they had both been a week ago, she was even, from his neglect of her during these last days, a little farther back; it was harder than ever for her to see in line. His discovery of this affected him very little. He was very slightly wounded by the things that she had said to him, and her rejection of his advances so finally and completely distressed him scarcely at all. As he sat and watched the colours steal mistily across the sea he knew that he was too happy at all the discoveries that he was making to mind anything else. He was setting out on an adventure, and if she would not come too it could simply not be helped; it did not in the least alter the adventure’s excitement.
It was even with a new sense of freedom that he went off, late that afternoon, to the town; he was like a boy just out of school. He had no very vivid intention of going anywhere; but lately the town had grown before him so that he loved to stand and watch it, its life and movement, its colour and romance.
He loved, above all, the market-place with its cobbled stones over which rattled innumerable little carts, its booths, its quaint and delightful chatter, its old grey tower. It was one of the great features of his new view that places mattered, that, indeed, they were symbols of a great and visible importance; stocks and stones seemed to him now to be possessed of such vitality that they almost frightened him, they knew so much and had lived so long a time.
The evening light was over the market-place; the sun, peering through a pillar of cloudless blue, cut sharply between the straight walls of the Town Hall and a neighbouring chimney, flung itself full upon the tower.
It caught the stones and shot them with myriad lights; it played with the fruit on the stall at the tower’s foot until the apples were red as rubies and the oranges shone like gold. It bathed it, caressed it, enfolded it, and showed the modern things on every side that old friends were, after all, the best, and that fine feathers did not always make the finest birds.
The rest of the market-place was in shadow, purple in the corners and crevices, the faintest blue in the higher air, a haze of golden-grey in the central square. It was full of people standing, for the most part, discussing the events of the day; in the corner by the tower there was a Punch and Judy show, and Maradick could hear the shrill cries of Mr. Punch rising above the general chatter. Over everything there was a delicious scent of all the best things in the world—ripe orchards, flowering lanes, and the sharp pungent breath of the sea; in the golden haze of the evening everything seemed to be waiting, breathlessly, in spite of the noise of voices, for some great moment.
Maradick had never felt so perfectly in tune with the world.
He passed across to the Punch and Judy show, and stood in a corner by the fruit stall under the tower and watched Mr. Punch. That gentleman was in a very bad temper to-night, and he banged with his stick at everything that he could see; poor Judy was in for a bad time, and sank repeatedly beneath the blows which should have slain an ox. Toby looked on very indifferently until it was his turn, when he bit furiously at Mr. Punch’s trousers and showed his teeth, and choked in his frill and behaved like a most ferocious animal. Then there came the policeman, and Mr. Punch was carried, swearing and cursing, off to prison, but in a moment he was back again, as perky as before, and committing murders at the rate of two a minute.
There was a fat baby, held aloft in its mother’s arms, who watched the proceedings with the closest attention; it was intensely serious, its thumb in its mouth, its double chin wrinkling with excitement. Then a smile crept out of its ears and across its cheeks; its mouth opened, and suddenly there came a gurgle of laughter. It crowed with delight, its head fell back on its nurse’s shoulder and its eyes closed with ecstasy; then, with the coming of Jack Ketch and his horrible gallows, it was solemn once more, and it watched the villain’s miserable end with stern approval. There were other babies in the crowd, and bottles had to be swiftly produced in order to stay the cries that came from so sudden an ending. The dying sun danced on Punch’s execution; he dangled frantically in mid-air, Toby barked furiously, and down came the curtain.
The old lady at the fruit stall had watched the performance with great excitement. She was remarkable to look at, and had been in the same place behind the same stall for so many years that people had grown to take her as part of the tower. She wore a red peaked hat, a red skirt, a man’s coat of black velvet, and black mittens; her enormous chin pointed towards her nose, which was hooked like an eagle; nose and chin so nearly met that it was a miracle how she ever opened her mouth at all. She nodded at Maradick and smiled, whilst her hands clicked her needles together, and a bit of grey stocking grew visibly before his eyes.
“It’s a fine show,” she said, “a fine show, and very true to human nature.” Then suddenly looking past him, she screamed in a voice like the whistle of a train: “A-pples and O-ranges—fine ripe grapes!”
Her voice was so close to his ear that it startled him, but he answered her.
“It is good for the children,” he said, shadowing his eyes with his hand, for the sun was beating in his face.
She leaned towards him and waved a skinny finger. “I ought to know,” she said, “I’ve buried ten, but they always loved the Punch . . . and that’s many a year back.”
How old was she, he wondered? He seemed, in this town, to be continually meeting people who had this quality of youth; Tony, Morelli, Punch, this old woman, they gave one the impression that they would gaily go on for ever.
“People live to a good old age here,” he said.
“Ah! it’s a wonderful town,” she said. “There’s nothing like it. . . . Many’s the things I’ve seen, the tower and I.”
“The tower!” said Maradick, looking up at its grey solemnity now flushing with the red light of the sun.
“I’ve been near it since I was a bit of a child,” she said, leaning towards him so that her beak of a nose nearly touched his cheek and her red hat towered over him. “We lived by it once, and then I moved under it. We’ve been friends, good friends, but it wants some considering.”
“What wants considering mother?” said a voice, and Maradick turned round; Punch was at his elbow. His show was packed up and leant against the wall; by his side was Toby, evidently pleased with the world in general, for every part of his body was wagging.
“Good evening, sir,” said Punch, smiling from ear to ear. “It’s a beautiful evening—the sea’s like a pome—what wants considering mother? and I think I’ll have an apple, if you don’t mind—one of your rosiest.”
She chose for him an enormous red one, which with one squeeze of the hand he broke into half. Toby cocked an ear and raised his eyes; he was soon munching for his life. “What wants considering mother?” he said again.
“Many things,” she answered him shortly, “and it’ll be tuppence, please.” Her voice rose into a shrill scream—“A-pples and O-ranges and fine ripe grapes.” She sat back in her chair and bent over her knitting, she had nothing more to say.
“I’ve been watching your show,” Maradick said, “and enjoyed it more than many a play I’ve seen in town.”
“Yes, it went well to-night,” Punch said, “and there was a new baby. It’s surprisin’ what difference a new baby makes, even Toby notices it.”
“A new baby?” asked Maradick.
“Yes. A baby, you know, that ’asn’t seen the show before, leastways in this world. You can always tell by the way they take it.” Then he added politely, “And I hope you like this town, sir.”
“Enormously,” Maradick answered. “I think it has some quality, something that makes it utterly different from anywhere else that I know. There is a feeling——”
He looked across the market-place, and, through the cleft between the ebony black of the towering walls, there shone the bluest of evening skies, and across the space floated a pink cushion of a cloud; towards the bend of the green hill on the horizon the sky where the sun was setting was a bed of primroses. “It is a wonderful place.”
“Ah, I tell you sir,” said Punch, stroking one of Toby’s ears, “there’s no place like it. . . . I’ve been in every town in this kingdom, and some of them are good enough. But this!”
He looked at Maradick a moment and then he said, “Forgive my mentioning it, sir, but you’ve got the feeling of the place; you’ve caught the spirit, as one might say. We watch, folks down here, you strangers up there at the ‘Man at Arms.’ For the most part they miss it altogether. They come for the summer with their boxes and their bags, they bathe in the sea, they drive on the hill, and they’re gone. Lord love you, why they might have been sleepin’.” He spat contemptuously.
“But you think that I have it?” said Maradick.
“You’ve got it right enough,” said Punch. “But then you’re a friend of young Mr. Gale’s, and so you couldn’t help having it; ’e’s got it more than anyone I ever knew.”
“And what exactly is—It?” asked Maradick.
“Well, sir,” said Punch, “it’s not exactly easy to put it into words, me bein’ no scholar.” He looked at the old woman, but she was intent over her knitting. The light of the sun had faded from the tower and left it cold and grey against the primrose sky. “It’s a kind of Youth; seeing things, you know, all freshly and with a new colour, always caring about things as if you’d met ’em for the first time. It doesn’t come of the asking, and there are places as well as people that ’ave got it. But when a place or a person’s got it, it’s like a match that they go round lighting other people’s candles with.” He waved his arm in a comprehensive sweep. “It’s all here, you know, sir, and Mr. Gale’s got it like that . . . ’e’s lit your candle, so to speak, sir, if it isn’t familiar, and now you’ve got to take the consequences.”
“The consequences?” said Maradick.
“Oh, it’s got its dangers,” said Punch, “specially when you take it suddenly; it’s like a fever, you know. And when it comes to a gentleman of your age of life and settled habits, well, it needs watchin’. Oh, there’s the bad and good of it.”
Maradick stared in front of him.
“Well, sir, I must be going,” said Punch. “Excuse me, but I always must be talking. Good night, sir.”
“Good night,” said Maradick. He watched the square, stumpy figure pass, followed by the dog, across the misty twilight of the market-place. Violet shadows lingered and swept like mysterious creeping figures over the square. He said good night to the old woman and struck up the hill to the hotel.
“Consequence? Good and bad of it?” Anyhow, the man hadn’t expressed it badly. That was his new view, that strange new lightness of vision as though his pack had suddenly been rolled from off his back. He was suddenly enjoying every minute of his life, his candle had been lighted. For a moment there floated across his mind his talk with his wife that afternoon. Well, it could not be helped. If she would not join him he must have his fun alone.
At the top of the hill he met Mrs. Lester. He had seen something of her during the last two days and liked her. She was amusing and vivacious; she had something of Tony’s quality.
“Hullo, Mr. Maradick,” she cried, “hurrying back like me to dinner? Isn’t it wicked the way that we leave the most beautiful anything for our food?”
“Well, I must confess,” he answered, laughing, “that I never thought of dinner at all. I just turned back because things had, as it were, come to an end. The sun set, you know.”
“I heard it strike seven,” she answered him, “and I said Dinner. Although I was down on the beach watching the most wonderful sea you ever saw, nothing could stop me, and so back I came.”
“Have you been down here before?” he asked her. “To stay, I mean.”
“Oh yes. Fred likes it as well as anywhere else, and I like it a good deal better than most. He doesn’t mind so very much, you know, where he is. He’s always living in his books, and so real places don’t count.” She gave a little sigh. “But they do count with me.”
“I’m enjoying it enormously,” he said, “it’s flinging the years off from me.”
“Oh, I know,” she answered, “but I’m almost afraid of it for that very reason. It’s so very—what shall I say—champagney, that one doesn’t know what one will do next. Sometimes one’s spirits are so high that one positively longs to be depressed. Why, you’d be amazed at some of the things people, quite ordinary respectable people, do when they are down here.”
As they turned in at the gate she stopped and laughed.
“Take care, Mr. Maradick,” she said, “I can see that you are caught in the toils; it’s very dangerous for us, you know, at our time of life.”
And she left him, laughing.