AFTERNOON AND EVENING OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH—MARADICK GOES TO CHURCH AND AFTERWARDS PAYS A
VISIT TO MORELLI
 
As he came out of the station and looked at the little road that ran down the hill, at the grey banks of cloud, at the white and grey valley of the sea, he felt curiously, uncannily alone. It was as though he had suddenly, through some unknown, mysterious agency been transported into a new land, a country that no one ever found before. He walked the hill with the cautious adventurous sense of surprise that some explorer might have had; he was alone in the world of ghosts.
When he came to the bottom of the road he stopped and tried to collect his thoughts. Where was he? What was he going to do? What were the thoughts that were hovering, like birds of prey, about his head, waiting for the moment of descent to come? He stood there quite stupidly, as though his brain had been suddenly swept clear of all thought; it was an empty, desolate room. Everything was empty, desolate. Two plane trees waved mournfully; there were little puddles of rain-water at his feet reflecting the dismal grey of the sky; a very old bent woman in a black cloak hobbled slowly up the hill. Then suddenly his brain was alive again, suddenly he knew. Tony was gone. Tony was gone and he must see people and explain.
The thought of the explanations troubled him very little; none of those other people really mattered. They couldn’t do very much; they could only say things. No, they didn’t matter. He didn’t mind about them, or indeed about anyone else in the world except Tony. He saw now a thousand little things that Tony had done, ways that Tony had stood, things that Tony had said, little tricks that he had; and now he had gone away.
Things could never be quite the same again. Tony had got some one else now. Everyone had got some one else, some one who especially belonged to them; he saw the world as a place where everyone—murderer, priest, king, prostitute—had his companion, and only he, Maradick, was alone. He had been rather proud of being alone before; he had rather liked to feel that he was quite independent, that it didn’t matter if people died or forgot, because he could get on as well by himself! What a fool he had been! Why, that was simply the only thing worth having, relationships with other people, intimacy, affection, giving anything that you had to some one else, taking something in return from them. Oh! he saw that now!
He had been walking vaguely, without thought or purpose. Now he saw that his feet had led him back into the town and that he was in the market-place, facing once more the town. He was determined not to go back to the hotel until he had seen Morelli, and that he could not do before the evening; but that would be the next thing. Meanwhile he would walk—no matter where—but he would get on to the road, into the air, and try and straighten out all the tangled state of things that his mind was in.
For a moment he stood and looked at the tower. It gave him again that sense of strength and comfort. He was, after all, not quite alone, whilst the world was the place that it was. Stocks and stones had more of a voice, more of a personal vital activity than most people knew. But he knew! He had known ever since he came to this strange town, this place where every tree and house and hill seemed to be alive.
And then, with the thought of the place, Mrs. Lester came back to him. He had forgotten her when he was thinking of Tony. But now that Tony was gone, now that that was, in a way, over, the other question suddenly stepped forward. Mrs. Lester with her smile, her arms, the curve of her neck, the scent that she used, the way that her eyes climbed, as it were, slowly up to his just before she kissed him. . . . Mrs. Lester . . . and it must be decided before to-night.
He started walking furiously, and soon he was out on the high road that ran above the sea. The rain had stopped; the sun was not actually shining, but there was a light through the heavy clouds as though it were not very far away, and the glints of blue and gold, not actually seen, but, as it were, trembling on the edge of visible appearance, seemed to strike the air. Everything shone and glittered with the rain. The green of trees and fields was so bright against the grey of sea and sky that it was almost dazzling; its brightness was unnatural, even a little cruel. And now he was caught up in the very heat of conflict. The battle seemed suddenly to have burst upon him, as though there were in reality two visible forces fighting for the possession of his soul. At one moment he seemed calm, resolute; Tony, Janet, his wife (and this was curious, because a few days before she would not have mattered at all), Punch, the tower, all kinds of queer bits of things, impressions, thoughts, and above all, a consciousness of some outside power fighting for him—all these things determined him. He would see Mrs. Lester to-night and would tell her that there must be nothing more; they should be friends, good friends, but there must be no more of that dangerous sentiment, one never knew where it might go. And after all, laws were meant to be kept. A man wasn’t a man at all if he could injure a woman in that sort of way. And then he had been Lester’s friend. How could he dishonour his wife?
And then suddenly it came from the other side, fierce, hot, wild, so that his heart began to beat furiously, his eyes were dim. He only saw her, all the rest of the world was swept away. They should have this one adventure, they must have their one adventure. After all they were no longer children. They had neither of them known what life was before; let them live it now, their great experience. If they missed it now they would regret it all their lives. They would look back on the things that they might have done, the things that they might have known, and see that they had passed it all simply because they had not been brave enough, because they had been afraid of convention, of old musty laws that had been made thousands of years ago for other people, people far less civilised, people who needed rules. And then the thought of her grew upon him—details, the sense of holding her, keeping her; and then, for an instant, he was primitive, wild, so that he would have done anything to seize her in the face of all the world.
But it passed; the spirit left him, and again he was miserable, wretched, penitent. He was that sort of man, a traitor to his wife, to his friends, to everything that was decent. He was walking furiously, his hair was blown by the wind, his eyes stared in front of him, and the early dusk of a grey day began to creep about his feet.
It all came to this. Was there one ethical code for the world, or must individuals make each their law for their individual case?
There were certain obvious things, such as doing harm to your neighbours, lying, cruelty, that was bad for the community and so must be forbidden to the individual; but take an instance of something in which you harmed no one, did indeed harm yourself by denying it, was that a sin even if the general law forbade it? What were a man’s instincts for? Why was he placed so carefully in the midst of his wonderful adventurous life if he were forbidden to know anything of it? Why these mists? This line of marble foam far below him? This hard black edge of the rocks against the sky? It was all strong, remorseless, inevitable; and he by this namby-pamby kind of virtue was going contrary to nature.
He let the wind beat about his face as he watched the mists in great waves and with encircling arms sweep about the cove. There came to him as he watched, suddenly, some lines from end of “To Paradise.” He could not remember them exactly, but they had been something like this:
To Tressiter, as to every other human being, there had come suddenly his time of revelation, his moment in which he was to see without any assistance from tradition, without any reference to things or persons of the past. He beheld suddenly with the vision of some one new-born, and through his brain and body into the locked recesses of his soul there passed the elemental passions and movements of the world that had swayed creation from the beginning. The great volume of the winds, the tireless beating of waves upon countless shores, the silent waters of innumerable rivers, the shining flanks of a thousand cattle upon moorlands that stretch without horizon to the end of time—it was these things rather than any little acts of civilisation that some few hundred years had seen that chimed now with the new life that was his. He had never seen before, he had never known before. He saw now with unprejudiced eyes, he knew now with a knowledge that discounted all man-made laws and went, like a child, back to Mother Earth. . . . But with this new knowledge came also its dangers. Because some laws seemed now of none effect it did not mean that there must be no laws at all. That way was shipwreck. Only, out of this new strength, this new clarity of vision, he must make his strength, his restraint, his discipline for himself, and so pass, a new man, down the other side of the hill. . . . This is the “middle-age” that comes to every man. It has nothing to do with years, but it is the great Rubicon of life. . . .
And so Lester. Fine talk and big words, and a little ludicrous, perhaps, if one knew what Lester was, but there was something in it. Oh! yes! there was something in it!
And now this time, this “middle-age,” had come upon him.
He found that his steps had led him back again to the little church where he had been already that day. He thought that it might be a good place to sit and think things out, quiet and retired and in shelter, if the rain came on again.
The dusk was creeping down the little lane, so that the depths of it were hidden and black; but above the dark clumps of trees the sky had begun to break into the faintest, palest blue. Some bird rejoiced at this return of colour and was singing in the heart of the lane; from the earth rose the sweet clean smell that the rain leaves. From behind the little blue windows of the church shone a pale yellow light, of the same pallor as the faint blue of the sky, seeming in some intimate, friendly way, to re-echo it. The body of the church stood out grey-white against the surrounding mists. It seemed to Maradick (and this showed the way that he now credited everything with vitality) to be bending forward a little and listening to the very distant beating of the sea; its windows were golden eyes.
The lights seemed to prophesy company, and so he was surprised, on pushing the door softly back and entering, to find that there was no one there. But there were two large candles on the altar, and they waved towards him a little with the draught from the door as though to greet him. The church seemed larger now in the half light. The great box-like family pew was lost in the dark corners by the walls; it seemed to stretch away into infinite space. The other seats had an air of conscious waiting for some ceremony. On one of them was still an open prayer-book, open at the marriage service, that had been left there that afternoon. And at the sight of it the memories of Tony and Janet came back to him with a rush, so that they seemed to be there with him. Already it seemed a very, very long time since they had gone, another lifetime almost. And now, as he thought of it, perhaps, after all, it was better that they had gone like that.
He thought over the whole affair from the beginning. The first evening in Treliss, that first night when he had quarrelled with her, and then there had been Tony. That dated the change in him. But he could not remember when he had first noticed anything in her. There had been the picnic, the evening in their room when he had nearly lost control of himself and shaken her. . . . Yes, it was after that. That placed it. Well, then, it was only, after all, because he had shown himself firm, because, for once, he had made her afraid of him. Because, too, no doubt, she had noticed that people paid him attention. For the first time in their married life he had become “somebody,” and that perhaps had opened her eyes. But then there had been that curious moment the other night when she had spoken to him. That had been extraordinarily unpleasant. He could feel again his uncomfortable sensation of helplessness, of not in the least knowing how to deal with her. That was the new Mrs. Maradick. He had therefore some one quite new to reckon with.
And then he saw suddenly, there in the church, the right thing to do. It was to go back. To go back to Epsom, to go back to his wife, to go back to the girls. He saw that she, Mrs. Maradick, in her own way, had been touched by the Admonitus Locorum—not that he put it that way; he called it the “rum place” or “the absurd town.” She was going to try (she had herself told him so) to be better, more obliging. He could see her now, sitting there on the end of the bed, looking at him so pathetically.
The shadows gathered about the church, creeping along the floor and blotting out the blue light from the windows, and only there was a glow by the altar where the candles seemed to increase in size, and their light, like a feathery golden mist, hung in circles until it lost itself in the dusky roof.
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.
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 rushe............