Читать книгу The Killer and the Slain - Hugh Walpole - Страница 7

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I have now reached the point of my marriage. I must say here, for I wish to be completely frank and honest in everything, that my wife was the first woman with whom I had intercourse. I knew no woman of any sort or kind before I knew her. I was twenty-five years of age when I married her. I had, of course, my temptations as every man must have, but I put them always resolutely behind me. I wished to keep myself for the woman I loved.

I think I should say in this place that prayer helped me very much in my struggle against temptation. I was not, I suppose, a very religious young man. I went to church on Sunday to please my dear mother, but the prayers and hymns in the Church of England service seemed to me very empty and hollow. But in my own private prayers I did undoubtedly find strength and assistance. George Meredith has said: 'Who rises from his knees a better man, his prayer is answered.' I felt a contact which may indeed have been but wish-fulfilment. It had nevertheless its actual concrete effect.

I had fancied myself once or twice in love and always, I can see now, with the same type of woman. We have all of us, I fancy, a type physically of especial attraction to us, but in my own case it must be a woman retiring, virginal, modest, of the kind that Burne-Jones once wonderfully painted. With this character I liked a woman to be also slender, with a face like the heroine of Browning's great poem.

I would lie sleepless, imagining her to myself, her noble brow, her sweet mouth so formed with smiling kindly tenderness, her white delicate hands, her slender virginal waist.

Unhappily, girls answering to this physical appearance had, I was sorry to discover, characters little in common with it, and I began cynically to wonder whether the more virginal the face the looser the character.

One misadventure I had of this kind is too shocking to mention, and I shrank yet further within myself.

Then one evening I was taking a solitary walk in Lower Town when I saw a female figure standing on the decrepit landing-stage looking down into the water. It was a grey misty evening and a very slight rain was falling.

I fancied for the moment that there was something desperate in her poise, and that even it might be that she would throw herself into the sea. So I approached her, but, on standing beside her, found that she was entirely composed and controlled. She was wearing a grey cloak and bonnet and, when she raised her face to mine, I knew at once that the love of my life had, in an instant of fiery ecstasy, been created. Her face was, for me, the loveliest I have ever seen or ever shall see. It was the face of my dreams, the features exquisitely formed, and the expression that of one of the Burne-Jones angels.

She did not seem in the least afraid of me, nor did she move away. She even smiled and said that she thought it would soon rain heavily. I have asked her since whether she was not afraid to speak to a strange young man in such a lonely place, but she said that I looked such a very innocent young man, and that in any case she was well able to look after herself.

So we talked for a little. I was trembling with anxiety lest she should move away and I lose her for ever. She has told me since that she knew from that very first moment that I was in love with her.

She showed, however, no intention of moving away, and told me that she was in Seaborne for a holiday, that she had a job as a stenographer in London. I ventured to ask her, breathlessly, whether she were married.

She said no, that she was an orphan, and lived with a sister in Chelsea. She also told me that she disliked her present employer and hoped to find some other job. She was taking her holiday alone, which she greatly preferred.

I told her something about myself, that I had an antique shop in the High Street, that my mother was still alive, and that I had published a novel. She seemed to be greatly interested when I told her about the antique shop. She said that it was her ambition to own a little business and that she was sure that she could make a good thing of it. I ventured, my heart beating in my throat, to say that she did not look like a business woman but something very much better. She smiled at that and even laughed.

Then, by the mercy of Providence, as it seemed to me, it began to rain heavily. I had an umbrella and she had not. I suggested that I should guard her under my umbrella as far as her door.

After I left her there I could not sleep. A totally new experience had come into my life. I told myself that, when I saw her again, the spell might be broken. But of course it was not. It was rather intensified. I called to see her on some pretext. She came and had tea with my mother and was very charming to her. She was charming to everybody with a quiet virginal tranquillity. Her interest in my antique shop, however, was more than virginal. She handled the articles--the brass, the china, the water-colours, the furniture--with an eagerness that surprised me.

Laughing, she said one day that she would stay and help me, and she remained all the afternoon. She sold a number of things and charmed the customers. I can see her now, standing there in her dove-grey costume with rose-coloured cuffs and collar. One voluble American lady liked her so much that she was ready to buy anything from her.

'I haven't enjoyed an afternoon so much,' Eve (that was her name--Eve Paling) said, 'for years and years.' Her pale cheeks were flushed and she was to me so beautiful, standing there with a cup with yellow flowers marked on it, that I could have fallen on my knees and worshipped her.

The night before she returned to London I asked her to marry me. She showed no surprise. She must have known from the very first that I loved her. She neither accepted nor refused me. How often afterwards was I to recall the words that she said then!

'I don't know, John.' She let her hand lie very quietly and passively in mine. 'I like you very much. I'm sure I could be happy with you. And I should enjoy immensely helping you to run the shop. All that is tempting to me. But is it fair--fair to you, I mean?'

'Fair to me!' I cried. 'Fair! Why, if you marry me you'll be doing me the greatest, most wonderful--'

'Yes, I know. So you think now. But, you see, I'm not in love with you. I know what it is, being in love. The kind of man for me physically is someone big and strong, a little violent perhaps. The kind of man,' she added, laughing, 'you read about in cheap novels, the cave-man. Now you're not a bit the cave-man, John. You'll give in to me and let me have my way. Even physically you're altogether too thin and too pale. You need fattening up.'

I had already made the discovery that she often said things that did not seem to belong to her virginal, other-worldly appearance. She had shown herself very practical indeed about the shop, and had said things once or twice about men that were not virginal at all.

'If you marry me,' I said, 'I'll get so fat from content that you won't know me.'

But she shook her head and looked at me anxiously.

'We've only known one another a fortnight. We don't really know one another at all. You're in love with me now, and later on, when you've got over that part of it, you may not like me. I'm not dreamy and imaginative as you are, John. I see only what is directly in front of me and what I see is very tempting, for I like you and admire you, I hate my present job and want to get out of it. And I think that together we could make a fine thing of the shop.'

I did go down on my knees then and laid my head on her lap. Then I looked up into her face and implored her--oh, how I implored her!--to take pity on me. I did not mind that she did not love me. That she liked me was enough. I would serve her, work for her . . .

'Yes,' she interrupted, 'that is just what I am afraid of. I want a man to master me, not to be my slave!'

Yes, I must always remember how frank and honest she was. All that has happened since has been my fault, not hers. She is in no way to blame--or only very little. She said that she would write to me.

A week later I received a letter saying that she would marry me. Oh, then I went mad with joy! I kissed my old mother again and again. I walked about the town like a madman; I went into Lower Town and stood on the very spot where I had first seen her. I remember that it was a sunny windy morning and that the ocean was covered with gleaming, glittering white-caps and that at my feet against the broken landing-stage the waves broke and splashed and the sun made their foam iridescent.

We were married on April 5th, 1928. We went for our brief honeymoon into Cornwall. We slept the first night at Penzance. I would have made a clumsy wooer but for her quiet, humorous command of me. She slept into the full sun of the morning with deep surrender, while I lay awake, thinking over and over again of my wonderful good fortune, but haunted by an odd little half-formed wish that she had not been quite so well-assured, so ready for my immature, inexperienced love-making.