"Mrs. Thurston—" Maggie began, hesitating.
"You may not know," said Amy Warlock, "that I have retained my maiden name. Sit down, won't you? It is good of you to have come."
The voice was a little more genial than it had been in the old days. Nevertheless this was still the old Amy Warlock, stiff, masculine, impenetrable.
"I hope your aunt is better," she said.
"My aunt is dead," answered Maggie.
"Dear me, I'm sorry to hear that. She was a good woman and did many kind actions in her time."
There was something very unpleasant about that room, with the yellow light, the hissing gas, and the immobile figure on the sofa. Maggie looked in the direction of old Mrs. Warlock.
"You needn't mind mother," said Amy Warlock. "For some time now she's been completely paralysed. She can't speak or move. But she likes to be downstairs, to see the world a bit. It's sad after the way that she used to enjoy life. Father's death was a great shock to her."
It was sad. Maggie remembered how fond she had been of her food. Like a waxen image! Like a waxen image! The whole room was ghoulish and unnatural.
"I've asked you to come and see me, Mrs. Trenchard," continued Miss Warlock, "not because we can have any wish to meet, I am sure. We have never liked one another. But I have something on my conscience, and I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you. I don't suppose you have heard that very shortly I intend to enter a nunnery at Roehampton."
"And your mother?" asked Maggie.
"Mother will go into a Home," answered Miss Warlock.
There was a strange little sound from the sofa like a rat nibbling behind the wainscot.
"I must tell you," said Miss Warlock, speaking apparently with some difficulty, "that I have done you a wrong. Shortly after my father's death my brother wrote to you from Paris."
"Wrote to me?" repeated Maggie.
"Yes—wrote to you through me. I destroyed the letters. He wrote then five times in rather swift succession. I destroyed all the letters."
Maggie said nothing.
"I destroyed the letters," continued Amy Warlock, "because I did not wish you and my brother to come together. I did not wish you to, simply out of hatred for you both. I thought that my brother killed my father—whom—whom—I loved. I knew that the one human being whom Martin had ever loved beside his father was yourself. He did love you, Mrs. Trenchard, more truly than I had believed it in his power to love any one. I think you could have made him happy—therefore I did not wish you to meet again."
There was a pause. Maggie said at last:
"Were there no other letters?"
"Yes," said Miss Warlock. "One this summer. For more than a year there was nothing; then this summer, a little one. I destroyed that too."
"What did it say?" asked Maggie.
"It said that the woman to whom he had been married was dead. He said that if you didn't answer this letter he would understand that you would not want to hear from him any more. He had been very ill."
"Where did he write that?"
"In Paris."
"And where is he now?"
"I don't know. I have heard from him no more."
Maggie got up and stood, her head raised as though listening for something.
"You've been very cruel, Miss Warlock," she said.
"Perhaps I have," said Miss Warlock. "But you cannot judge until you know with what reason I hated my brother. It is a very old story. However, now I hate no one. I will not apologise for what I have done. I do not want your forgiveness. I had to absolve my conscience."
"And you have no idea where he is now?"
"I have no idea. He may be dead for all I know."
Maggie shivered. "If you have any more information you will give it me?"
"I will give it you."
"This is my address." Maggie gave her a card.
They said good-day, looking for one moment, face to face, eye to eye.
Then Maggie turned and went. Her eyes were dim so that she stumbled on the stairs. In the street she walked, caring nothing of her direction, seeing only Martin.
Grace, during the days that Maggie was in London, regained something of her old tranquillity. It was wonderful to her to be able to potter about the house once more mistress of all that she surveyed and protected from every watching eye. She had had, from her very earliest years, a horror of being what she called "overlooked."
She had a habit of stopping, when she had climbed halfway upstairs, of suddenly jerking her head round to see whether any one were looking at her. You would have sworn, had you seen her, that she was deeply engaged upon some nefarious and underhand plot; yet it was not so-she was simply going to dust some of her hideous china treasures in her bedroom.
Always after breakfast there was this pleasant ritual. She would plod all round the house, duster in hand, picking things up, giving them a little flick and putting them back again, patting treasures that she especially loved, sighing heavily with satisfaction at the pleasant sight of all her possessions tranquilly in their right places. As she looked around the ugly sitting-room and saw the red glazed pots with the ferns, the faded football-groups, the worsted mats and the china shepherdesses, a rich warm feeling rose in her heart and filled her whole body. It was like a fine meal to a hungry man: every morning at half-past nine she was hungry in this fashion, and every morning by eleven o'clock she was satisfied. Her thick body thus promenaded the house; she was like a stolid policeman in female attire, going his rounds to see that all was well. From room to room she went, pausing to pant for breath on the stairs, stumbling always because of her short sight at the three dark little steps just outside Paul's bedroom, always sitting down on her bed "to take a breath" and to get a full gaze at the crucifix of bright yellow wood, that hung just under her mother's picture. Tramp, tramp, tramp round the house she went.
It was incredible how deeply Maggie had interfered with this ritual. She had certainly not intended to do so. After that first effort to change certain things in the house she had retired from the battle, had completely capitulated. Nevertheless she had interfered with all Grace's movements and, as the terror of her grew, it seemed to pervade every nook and corner of the house, so that Grace felt that she could go nowhere without that invasion. Oh, how she resented it, and how afraid she was! After Paul and Maggie returned from that summer holiday she saw that Paul too felt Maggie's strangeness. To Grace, from the beginning of that autumn, every movement and gesture of Maggie's was strange. The oddity of her appearance, her ignorance of everything that seemed to Grace to be life, her strange, half-mocking, half-wondering attitude to the Church and its affairs ("like a heathen in Central Africa"), her dislike of the Maxses and the Pynsents and her liking for the Toms and Caroline Purdie, her odd silences and still odder speeches, all these things increased the atmosphere that separated her from the rest of the world.
Then came the day when Grace, dusting in Maggie's bedroom, discovered the bundle of letters. She read them, read them with shame at her own dishonesty and anger at Maggie for making her dishonest. To her virgin ignorance the passion in them spoke of illicit love and the grossest immorality. Her heart burnt with a strange mingling of envy, jealousy, loneliness, shame, and eagerness to know more ...
Then came Uncle Mathew's visit; then Caroline Purdie's disgrace. The count was fully charged. Maggie, that strange girl found in the heart of London's darkness, alone, without friends or parents, was a witch, a devilish, potion-dealing witch, who might, at any time, fly through the night-sky on a broom-stick as surely as any mediaeval old hag. These visions might be exaggerated for many human beings, not so for Grace. Having no imagination she was soaked in superstition. She clung to a few simple pictures, and was exposed to every terror that those pictures could supply.
Maggie now haunted her day and night. Everywhere she could feel Maggie's eyes piercing her. A thousand times an hour she looked up to see whether Maggie were not there in the room watching her. She hated her now with terror that was partly fear for her own safety, partly love and jealousy for Paul, partly outraged modesty and tradition, partly sheer panic.
She had, as yet, said very little to Paul. She waited the right moment. Maggie's absence showed her how deep and devastating this fear had been. She saw that it embraced the whole life of Paul and herself in Skeaton. She had grown fond of Skeaton; she was a woman who would inevitably care for anything when she had become thoroughly accustomed to its ways and was assured that it would do her no harm.
She liked the shops and the woods, the sand and the sea. Above all, she adored the Church. During a large part of every day she was there, pottering about, talking to the caretaker, poking her nose into the hymn-books to see whether the choir-boys had drawn pictures in them, rubbing the brasses, making tidy the vestry. The house too she loved, and the garden and the bottles on the wall. She might have known that she was not popular in the place, she cannot have failed to realise that she had no woman friend and that she was seldom invited to dinner. This did not matter to her. Her affections—and they were very real and genuine—were all for her brother. Had she Paul she wanted no one else. That was enough.
And now it might be that they would have to leave the place. Already the talk about Maggie was intolerable. Grace heard it on every side. After Mathew Cardinal's visit the talk rose to a shriek. Grace knew that those sudden silences on her entrance into the room meant lively and excited discussion. "How terrible for the poor rector!" "Such an odd girl—taken out of the slums." "Yes, quite drunk. He knocked Mrs. Maxse down." "Oh I assure you that she went to see Caroline Purdie the very day after. She did indeed ..."
Yes. Grace knew all about it. Unless things changed Paul would have to go. His life was ruined by this girl.
Nevertheless for a whole happy week the world seemed to sink back into its old accustomed apathy. The very house seemed to take on its old atmosphere. Paul came out of his study and went about paying calls. That hour, from six to seven, when he was at home to his parishioners seemed once again to be crowded with anxious old women and men out of work and girls in trouble. He took Grace with him on his rounds. Every one was very friendly. Grace was able to reassume some of her old importance.
Her old flow of conversation—checked recently by the sense of Maggie's strangeness—returned to her. In the morning she would stand by her brother's study-table, duster in hand, and pour out her heart.
"You know, Paul, it's all very well, you may say what you like, but if Mrs. Maxse thinks she's going to have the whole of that second pew she's mistaken. It's only for a week or two that she's got the Broadbents staying with her, and I know what she's after. Just fancy! What she wants is to put the Broadbents in that second seat the two Sundays they're here and then stick to it after they're gone. Just fancy what Miss Beats and Miss Hopwood will feel about it! What I mean is that they've had that seat for nearly eight years and now to be turned out! But I assure you, Paul, from what Linda Maxse said to me yesterday I believe she intends that, I do indeed. She thinks Miss Beats and Miss Hopwood will get used to sitting somewhere else after two Sundays. 'I'm sure they won't mind—poor old things,' she said only yesterday. 'Poor old things.' Just fancy! Why, Mary Beats is very little older than I. You'll have to put your foot down about it, you will, indeed, Paul. Yes, you will. Give Linda Maxse an inch and she takes a mile, I always said—and this is just the kind of thing ..."
So happily Grace ran on and Paul looked up from his desk at her, digging his fingers into his white hair, smiling at her in just the old confidential way that he used to have before Maggie came.
She revived, too, her old habit of talking to herself. This had always been an immense relief to her—it had helped her to feel reassurance. Lately she had felt that Maggie was overhearing her and was laughing at her; this had checked her and made her suspicious. Now as she began to mount the stairs she would murmur to herself: "It might be better to tell Jenny to go to Bartletts. After all, it's quicker that way, and she'll be able to tell the boy to bring the things back. She needn't wait. All the same she's stupid, she'll make a muddle of it as likely as not. And Womball's boy is livelier than Bartletts'. That's something after all. But if she goes out at two-thirty she'll never be back by four—unless she went by Smith's lane of course—she might do that ... Oh, dear, these stairs are a trial ... yes, she might do that, and then she'd only be an hour altogether. I'll suggest that ..."
Her murmur was a cheerful monotonous sound accompanying her as she went. She would stop and rub the side of her nose with her thumb, considering. In the house, when there was no fear of callers, she wore large loose slippers that tap-tapped as she went. In the evenings she sat in Paul's study all amongst the Cornhills, The Temple Bars, and The Bible Concordances. They were very cosy and happy, and she talked incessantly. For some reason she did not dare to ask him whether he were not happier now that Maggie was away. She did not dare. There was not the complete confidence that there had been. Paul was strange a little, bewitched by Maggie's strangeness ... There was something there that Grace did not understand. So she said nothing, but she tried to convey to him, in the peculiar warmth of her good-night kiss, what she felt.
Then Maggie returned. She came back in her black clothes and with her pale face. Her aunt had died. She was more alone even than before. She was very quiet, and agreed to everything that Grace said. Nevertheless, although she agreed, she was more antagonistic than she had been. She had now something that intensely preoccupied her. Grace could see that she was always thinking about something that had nothing to do with Skeaton or Paul or the house. She was more absent-minded than ever, forgot everything, liked best to sit in her bedroom all alone.
"Oh, she's mad!" said Grace. "She's really mad! Just fancy if she should go right off her head!" Grace was now so desperately frightened that she lay awake at night, sweating, listening to every sound. "If she should come and murder me one night," she thought. Another thought she had was: "It's just as though she sees some one all the time who isn't there."
Then came 13th March, that dreadful day that would be never forgotten by Grace so long as she lived. During the whole of the past week Skeaton had been delivered up to a tempest of wind and rain. The High Street, emptied of human beings, had glittered and swayed under the sweeping storm. The Skeaton sea, possessing suddenly a life of its own, had stormed upon the Skeaton promenade, and worried and lashed and soaked that hideous structure to within an inch of its unnatural life. Behind the town the woods had swayed and creaked, funeral black against the grey thick sky. Across the folds the rain fell in slanting sheets with the sibilant hiss of relentless power and resolve.
After luncheon, on this day the 13th, Maggie disappeared into the upper part of the house and Grace settled down on the drawing-room sofa to a nice little nap. She fell asleep to the comforting patter of rain upon the windows and the howling of the storm down the chimney. She dreamt, as she often did, about food.
She was awakened, with a sudden start, by a sense of apprehension. This happened to her now so often that there was nothing strange in it, but she jumped up, with beating heart, from the sofa, crying out: "What's happened? What's the matter?"
She realised that the room had grown darker since she fell asleep, and although it was early still there was a sort of grey twilight that stood out against a deeper dusk in the garden beyond.
"What is it?" she said again, and then saw that Jenny, the maid, was standing in the doorway.
"Well, Jenny?" she asked, trying to recover some of her dignity.
"It's a man, mum," said the little girl. (Grace had got her cheap from an orphanage.) "A gentleman, mum. He's asking for Mrs. Trenchard. 'E give me 'is card. Oh, mum, 'e is wet too!"
She had scarcely finished, and Grace had only taken the card, when Mathew Cardinal came forward out of the hall. He was a dim and mysterious figure in that half-light, but Grace could see that he was more battered and shabby than on his last visit. His coat collar was turned up. She could only very vaguely see his face, but it seemed to her strangely white when before it had been so grossly red.
She was struck by his immobility. Partly perhaps because she had been roused from sleep and was yet neither clear nor resolved, he seemed to her some nightmare figure. This was the man who was responsible for all the trouble and scandal, this was the man who threatened to drive Paul and herself from her home, this was the blackguard who had not known how to behave in decent society. But behind that was the terror of the mystery that enveloped Maggie—the girl's uncle, the man who had shared in her strange earlier life, and made her what she now was. As he stood there, motionless, silent, the water dripping from his clothes, Grace was as frightened as though he had already offered her personal violence or held a pistol to her head.
"What do you want?" she asked hoarsely, stepping back to the sofa. Jenny had left the room.
"I want to see my niece," he answered, still without moving. She recognised then, strangely, in his voice a terror akin to her own. He also was afraid of something. Of what? It was not that his voice shook or that his tongue faltered. But he was terrified ... She could feel his heart thumping behind the words.
"I'm sorry," she said. "You can't see her. She's upstairs resting."
She did not know whence the resolution had come that he was not, in any case, to see Maggie; she did not know what catastrophe she anticipated from their meeting. She was simply resolved, as though acting under the blind orders of some other power, that Maggie should not see him and that he should leave the house at once.
"I must see her," he said, and the desperate urgency in his voice would have touched any one less terrified than Grace. "I must."
"I'm sorry," she answered. The fear in his voice seemed now to give her superiority over him. "It's impossible."
"Oh no," he said. "If she's here it can't be impossible. She'd want to see me. We have things ... I must ... You don't understand, Miss Trenchard."
"I only know," said Grace, "that after what occurred on your last visit here, Mr. Cardinal, Maggie said that she would never see you again."
"That's a lie!" he said.
She made no answer. Then at last he said pitifully:
"She didn't really say that, did she?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. But you can understand after what occurred—"
He came suddenly forward, the water trickling from him on to the carpet.
"You swear that's true?"
She could see now his face and realised that he was, indeed, desperate—breathless as though he had been running from some one.
"Yes, that's true," she answered.
"Maggie said that."
"Those were Maggie's words."
"Oh, well, I'm done ..." He turned away from her as though her announcement had settled something about which he had been in doubt. "It isn't like Maggie ... But still she hasn't written. She saw I was hard up last time. All I deserve ... All I deserve." He turned round to Grace again. "I can't quite believe it, Miss Trenchard. It doesn't sound like Maggie, but perhaps you've influenced her ... That's likely. If she should change her mind I'm at the 'Sea Dog.' Not much of a place. Quiet though. Yes, well. You might tell her not to bother. I'm finished, you see, Miss Trenchard. Yes, down. You'll be glad to hear it, I've no doubt. Well, I mustn't stay talking. I wish Maggie were happier though. She isn't happy, is she?"
The question was so abrupt that Grace was startled.
"I should hope so—Mr. Cardinal," she said.
"Oh, no, she isn't. I know. Always this religion she gets into. If it isn't one sort it's another. But she's a good girl. Don't you forget that. Well, I must be going. Good day. Good day."
He was actually gone, leaving a little pool of water on the carpet behind him. Grace sat down on the sofa again. What a horrible man! What a horrible man! But she had been wrong to say that about Maggie. Yes, she had. But he had taken her by surprise. Oh dear! How her heart was beating! And how strange he had looked. She could scarcely breathe. She sat there lost in stupefied wonder. At last tea came in, and with it Paul and Maggie. Grace felt ashamed and frightened. Why was Maggie always making her do things of which she was ashamed? It was as though the girl had power over her ... absurd, of course. Nevertheless, as she poured out the tea she was haunted by that man's eyes. Yes, he had undoubtedly been very unhappy. Yes, in great trouble.
Maggie sat quietly there. Paul was preoccupied with a letter that must, he had decided, be written to The Church Times. It was a letter about Churchwardens and their growing independence. He finished his tea hurriedly, but before he left the room, looking at Maggie rather wistfully, suddenly he bent down and kissed her. She glanced up at him, smiling.
"Is there anything I can do for you, Grace?" she asked.
Then, as it were without her own desire, Grace was compelled to speak. "There's something I ought to tell you—" she began awkwardly. Then she stopped. Maggie was troubled. She knew that when Grace was uncomfortable every one else was uncomfortable.
"What have I done now?" she said rather sharply.
"It's nothing that you've done," answered Grace also sharply. "I'm sure I don't know, Maggie, why you should always think that I'm scolding you. No, I don't indeed. It's nothing that you've done. Your uncle came to see you this afternoon."
"Uncle Mathew?" Maggie jumped up from her chair. "Came here?"
"Yes."
"And wanted to see me? Oh, Grace, why didn't you tell me?"
"I have told you ... There's nothing to make a fuss about, Maggie. Really, you needn't look like that—as though I were always doing something wrong. I only did it for your sake."
"For my sake? But why? I wanted to see him. I was trying to see him in London. Oh, Grace, what did he say?"
"What did he say? Well, fancy! As though I could remember. He said he'd come to see you, and when I said he couldn't, he went away again."
"Said he couldn't? But why couldn't he?"
"Really, Maggie, your tone is extraordinary. Fancy what Paul would say if he heard you. He wouldn't like it, I'm sure. I said that after the way he'd behaved last time he came here you didn't want to see him again."
"You said that? Oh, Grace! How did you dare!" "Now, Maggie, don't you look like that. I've done nothing, I'm sure."
"Did you say that I'd said that I didn't want to see him again?"
Grace shrank back behind the tea-things.
"Yes, I did ... Maggie, you frighten me."
"I hope I do ... You're wicked, you're wicked. Yes, you are. Where is he now?"
"He's at the 'Sea Dog.' That dirty public house on the sea-front—near Tunstalls—Where are you going?"
"I'm going to him of course." Maggie turned and looked at Grace. Grace was fascinated as a rabbit is by a snake. The two women stared at one another.
"How strange you are, Grace," Maggie said. "You seem to like to be cruel!" Then she went out. When the door was closed Grace found "that she was all in a perspiration." Her hand trembled so that when she tried to pour herself another cup of tea—just to fortify herself—she poured it into the saucer. And the tea was cold—no use now.
When she rose at last to go in and seek consolation from Paul her knees were trembling so that she staggered across the floor. This couldn't go on. No, it could not. To be frightened in one's own house! Absurd ... Really the girl had looked terrible ... Murder ... That's what it had looked like. Something must be done.
Murmuring aloud to herself again and again "Something must be done" as she crossed the hall, she walked slowly, her hand to her heart, ponderously, as though she were walking in the dark. Then, as soon as she had opened the study door she began, before she could see her brother: "Oh, Paul, I'm so frightened. It's Maggie. She's very angry. Fancy what she said."
Maggie meanwhile had gone straight up to her bedroom and found her black hat and her waterproof. Her one thought now was lest he should have caught the five o'clock train and gone back to London. Oh! how hurt he would be with her, how terribly hurt! The thought of the pain and loneliness that he would feel distressed her so bitterly that she could scarcely put on her hat, she was so eager to run and find him. She felt, at the thought of his fruitless journey through the rain, the tenderest affection for him, maternal and loving, so that she wanted to have him with her at once and to see him in warm clothes beside the fire, drinking whisky if he liked, and she would give him all the money she possessed.
She had still touched very little of her own three hundred pounds. He should have as much of that as he liked. The death of Aunt Anne had shown her how few people in the world there were for her to love. After all, the aunts and Uncle Mathew had needed her as no one else had done. She made little plans; she would, perhaps, go back with him to London for a little time. There was, after all, no reason why she should remain in this horrible place for ever. And Paul now seemed not to care whether she went or stayed.
She ran out into the wind and the rain. She was surprised by the force and fury of it. It would take time and strength to battle down the High Street. Poor Uncle Mathew! To walk all the way in the rain and then to be told that she would not see him! She could imagine him turning away down the drive, bitterly disappointed ...
Probably he had come to borrow money, and she had promised that she would not fail him. When she reached the High Street she was soaked. She felt the water dripping down her neck and in her boots. At the corner of the High Street by the bookseller's she was forced to pause, so fiercely did the wind beat up from the Otterson Road, that runs openly to the sea. Maggie had not even in Glebeshire known so furious a day and hour when the winds tossed and raged but never broke into real storm. It was the more surprising. She had to pause for a moment to remember where Turnstall's the butcher was, then, suddenly recalling it, she turned off the High Street and found her way to the mean streets that ran behind the Promenade. Still she met no one. It might have been a town abandoned by all human life and given over to the wind and rain and the approaching absorption of the sea. It was now dark and the lamp at the end of the street blew gustily and with an uncertain flare.
Maggie found Turnstall's, its shop lit and Mr. Turnstall himself, stout and red-faced, behind his bloody counter. She went in and asked him where "The Sea Dog" might be. He explained to her that it was close at hand, on the right, looking over the Promenade. She found it at last because it had an old-fashioned creaking wooden sign with a blue sailor painted on it. Timidly she stepped into the dark uneven passage. To the right of her she could see a deserted room with wooden trestles and a table. The bar must be near because she could hear voices and the clinking of glasses, but, in spite of those sounds the house seemed very dead. Through the walls and rooms she could hear the pounding beat of the sea. She walked to the end of the passage and there found an old wrinkled man in riding breeches and a brightly-coloured check shirt.
"Can you tell me where a gentleman, Mr. Cardinal, is staying?" she asked.
He was obviously very deaf; she had to shout. She repeated her question, adding. "He came from London to-day."
A stout middle-aged woman appeared. "What is it?" she asked. "The old man's stone deaf. He can't hear at all."
"I was wondering," said Maggie, "whether you could tell me where I could find a Mr. Cardinal. He came down from London to-day and is staying here."
"Cardinal ... Cardinal?" The woman thought, scratching her head. "Was it Caldwell you meant?"
"No," said Maggie. "Cardinal."
"I'll go and see." The woman disappeared, whilst the old man brushed past Maggie as though she were a piece of furniture; he departed on some secret purpose of his own.
"What a horrible place!" thought Maggie. "Uncle must be in a bad way if he comes here. I never should sleep for the noise of the sea."
The woman returned. "Yes. 'E's here. No. 5. Come this afternoon. Up the stairs and second door on the right."
The stairs to which she pointed offered a gulf of darkness. The woman was gone. The noises from the bar had ceased. The only sound in the place was the thundering of the sea, roaring, as it seemed, at the very foot of the house.
Maggie climbed the stairs. Half-way up she was compelled to pause. The darkness blinded her; she had lost the reflection from the lamp below and, above her, there was no light at all. She advanced slowly, step by step, feeling her way with a hand on the rickety bannisters. At the top of the stair there was a gleam of light and, turning to the right, she knocked on the second door. There was no answer and she knocked again. Listening, the noise of the sea was now so violent that she fancied that she might not have heard the answer so she turned the handle of the door and pushed it open. She was met then by a gale of wind, a rush of the sea that seemed as imminent as though she were on the shore itself and a dim grey light that revealed nothing in the room to her but only shapes and shadows.
She knew at once that the windows must be wide open; she could hear some papers rustling and something on the wall tapped monotonously.
"Uncle Mathew!" she whispered, and then she called more loudly.
"Uncle Mathew! Uncle Mathew!"
There was no answer and suddenly a strange, quite unreasoning terror caught her by the throat. It was all that she could do not to cry out and run down to the gas-lit passage. She held herself there by sheer force; the smell of the sea was now very strong; there was a tang of rotten seaweed in it.
As she remained there she could see more clearly, but it seemed that the room was full of some dim obscuring mist. She moved forward into the room, knocked her knee against a table, and then as the panic gained upon her called more loudly, "Uncle... Uncle. Are you in? Where are you? It's I, Maggie."
"Oh well... of course he isn't here," she said to herself. "He's downstairs." And yet, strangely, something seemed to persuade her that he was there; it was as though he were maliciously hiding from her to tease her.
Feeling her way cautiously, her hands before her face, she moved forward to close the windows, thinking that she must shut out that abominable sound of the sea and the stale stink of the seaweed. She was suddenly caught by a sweep of rain that wetted her hair and face and neck. She started back and touched a piece of damp cloth. She turned, and there, very close to her but above her and staring over her head, was Uncle Mathew's face. It was so close to her that she could have touched it by putting up her hand. It was white-grey and she would not have seen it at all had she not been very near to it.
She realised nothing, but she felt that her knees were trembling and that she would fall if she did not steady herself. She put out her hand and clutched damp heavy thick cloth, cloth that enwrapped as it seemed some weighty substance like stone or brick.
She passed her hand upwards and suddenly the damp cloth gave way beneath her fingers, sinking inwards against something soft and flabby. She sprang away. She stood for one shuddering moment, then she screamed again and again, shrieking and running, as it were for her life, out of the room, down the passage. She could not find the staircase. Oh! she could not find the staircase! She stood there, leaning against the damp wall, crying: "Oh help! Help! Quickly!"
There were steps and voices, then the woman whom she had seen before appeared at the turn of the stair holding a lamp.
"What is it?" she asked, raising the light high. Maggie did not answer, only leaning there and staring down.
"You'd better come, Bill," the woman said. "There's something wrong up 'ere."
The woman came up the stairs followed by two men; they moved cautiously as though, they expected to find something terrible round the next corner.
"What is it?" said the woman again when she came up to Maggie. But Maggie made no answer. They pushed past her and went into the room. Maggie followed them. She saw the room obscured by mist; she heard some whispering and fumbling, then a match was struck; there was a bead-like flare followed suddenly by the flaming of a candle. In the quick light the room was bright. Maggie saw her uncle hanging from some projection in the rough ceiling. A chair was overturned at his feet. His body was like a bag of old clothes, his big boots turning inwards towards one another. His face was a dull grey and seemed cut off from the rest of his body by the thick blue muffler that encircled his neck. He was grinning at her; the tip of his tongue protruded at her between his teeth. She noticed his hands that hung heavily like dead fish.
After that she knew no more save that the sea seemed to rush in a great flood, with a sudden vindictive roar, into the room.
Nothing so horrible had ever happened to Paul before, nothing ...
He felt as though he had committed a murder; it was as though he expected arrest and started at every knock on the door. Nothing so horrible ...
It was, of course, in all the Skeaton papers. At the inquest it appeared that Mathew Cardinal had imitated the signature of a prosperous City friend; had he not chosen his own way out he would have discovered the arduous delights of hard labour. But he had chosen suicide and not "while of unsound mind." Yes, the uncle of the Rector's wife ... Yes, The Rector's Wife's Uncle ... Yes, The Rector's Wife's Uncle!
Sho discovered him, bumped right into him in the dark. What a queer story—like a novel. Oh, but she had always been queer—Trenchard had picked her up somewhere in a London slum; well, perhaps not a slum exactly but something very like it. Why did he marry her? Perhaps he had to. Who knows? These clergymen are sly dogs. Always the worst if the truth were known ...
So it went on. For nine whole days (and nights) it was the only topic in Skeaton. Paul caught the fringe of it. He had never known very much about his fellow-beings. He had always taken the things that they said to him as the true things, when they smiled he had thought that they meant their smiles. And why not? ... since he always meant his. He had always been too lazy to dislike people, and his digestion had been too good and his ambition too slender to urge him towards spite and malice. He had believed that he was on excellent terms with all the world.
Now that was changed. He was watched, he knew, with curious, inquisitive, critical glances. Through no fault of his own he was soiled and smirched. That hearty confident laugh of his must be checked. He was afraid. Yes, he was afraid. He sat in his study and trembled at the thought of meeting his congregation. He had done nothing and yet his reputation was no longer clean. But he was afraid, also, of something else. He saw, desperately against his will, the central picture. He saw the body hanging in the dark room, Maggie tumbling against it, the cries, the lights, the crowd ... He saw it all, hour after hour. He was not an imaginative man, but it seemed to him that he had actually been present at this scene. He had to attend the inquest. That had been horrible. With all eyes upon him he stood up and answered their detestable questions. He had trembled before those eyes. Suddenly the self-confidence of all his life had left him. He had stammered in his replies, his hands had trembled and he had been forced to press them close to his sides. He had given his answers as though he were a guilty man.
He came then slowly, in the silence of his study, to the consideration of Grace and Maggie. This would kill Grace. She had altered, in a few days, amazingly; she would meet nobody, but shut herself into her bedroom. She would not see the servants. She looked at Paul as though she, like the rest of the world, blamed him. Paul loved Grace. He had not known before how much. They had been together all their lives and he had taken her protection and care of him too much for granted. How good she had been to him and for how many years! When they were happy it seemed natural that she should look after him, but now, in the middle of this scandal he saw that it should have been he who looked after her. He had not looked after her. Of course, now they would have to leave Skeaton and he knew what that departure would mean to Grace. She was suspicious of new places and new people. Strange to think now that almost the only person of whom she had not been suspicious was Maggie.
Maggie! His mind slowly wheeled round to her. He rose from his chair and began clumsily to parade the room. He walked up and down the study as though with closed eyes, his large body bumping against corners of tables and chairs. Maggie! He looked back, as of late he had often done, to those days in his cousin's house in London. What had happened to the Maggie whom he had known there?
He saw her again, so quiet, so ready to listen and learn, so modest, and yet with a humour and sense of appreciation that had promised well for the future. A child—an ignorant, charming, uneducated child, that is what she had seemed. He admitted now that his heart, always too soft and too gentle perhaps, had been touched beyond wisdom. She had seemed to need just the protection and advice that he had been fitted to give her. Then, as though in the darkness of the night, the change had been made; from the moment of entering into Skeaton there had been a new Maggie. He could not tell himself, because he was not a man clever at psychology, in what the change consisted. Had he been pressed he would have said perhaps that he had known the old Maggie intimately, that nothing that she could say or do astonished him, but that this new Maggie was altogether a stranger. Time had not altered that; with the passing months he had known her less and less. Why, at their first meeting long ago in Katherine's house he had known her better than he knew her now. He traced the steps of their history in Skeaton; she had eluded him always, never allowing him to hold her for more than a moment, vanishing and appearing again, fantastic, in some strange lighted distance, hurting him and disappointing him ... He stopped in his walk, bewildered. He saw, with a sudden flash, that she had never appeared so fascinating to him as when she had been strangest. He saw it now at the moment when she seemed more darkly strange, more sinister and dangerous than ever before.
He realised, too, at the same sharp moment the conflict in which he was engaged. On the one side was all his life, his sloth and ease and comfort, his religion, his good name, his easy intercourse with his fellow-men, Grace, intellectual laziness, acceptance of things as they most easily are, Skeaton, regular meals, good drainage, moral, physical and spiritual, a good funeral and a favourable obituary in The Skeaton Times. On the other hand unrest, ill-health, separation from Grace, an elusive and never-to-be-satisfied pursuit, scandal and possible loss of religion, unhappiness ... At least it was to his credit that he realised the conflict; it is even further to his credit that he grasped and admitted the hopelessness of it. He knew which way he would go; even now he was tired with the thought of the struggle; he sank into his shabby chair with a sigh of weariness; his hand stretched out instinctively for an easy volume. But oh, Maggie! how strange and fascinating at that moment she appeared to him, with her odd silences, her flashes of startled surprise, her sense of being half the day in another world, her kindness to him and then her sudden terror of him, her ignorance and then the conviction that she gave suddenly to him that she knew more than he would ever know, above all, the way that some dark spirit deep down in him supported her wild rebellions, her irreverences, her irreligion, her scorn of tradition. Oh! she was a witch! Grace's word for her was right, but not Grace's sense of it. The more Grace was shocked the more tempting to him the witch became. It had seemed to him, that day in Katherine's drawing-room, so slight a thing when she had said that she did not love him, he had no doubt but that he could change that. How could a child, so raw and ignorant, resist such a man? And yet she had resisted. That resistance had been at the root of the trouble. Whichever way things went now, he was a defeated man.
The door opened and Grace came in. Looking at her he realised that she would never understand the struggle through which he had been timorously wading, and saw that she was further away from him than she had ever been before. He blamed her too. She had had no right to refuse that man to Maggie. Had she allowed Maggie to see him none of this might have occurred. The man was a forger and would, had he lived, have gone to prison, but there would not then have been the same open scandal. No, he blamed Grace. It might be that their old absolutely confident intimacy would never be renewed. He felt cold and lonely. He bent forward, putting some coal on the fire, breaking it up into a cheerful blaze. Then he looked up at her, and his heart was touched. She looked to-day an old woman. Her hair was untidy and her face was dull grey in colour. Her eyes moved restlessly round the room, wandering from picture to picture, from the mantelpiece to the chairs, from the chairs to the book-shelves, as though she sought in the sight of these well-remembered things some defence and security.
"Is your head better?" he asked her, not meeting her eyes, because the dull pain in them disturbed him.
"Not much," she said. "It's very bad, my head. I've taken aspirin. I didn't eat anything yesterday. Nothing at all except some bread and milk, and very little of that ... I couldn't finish it. I felt I'd be sick. I said to Emily, 'Emily, if I eat any more of that I'll be sick,' and Emily advised me not to touch it. What I mean is that if I'd eaten any more I'd have been really sick—at least that's what I felt like."
Her restless eyes came suddenly to a jerking pause as though some one had caught and gripped them. She was suddenly dramatic. "Oh. Paul, what are we going to do?" she cried.
Paul was irritated by that. He hated to be asked direct questions as to policy.
"What do you mean what are we going to do?" he asked.
"Why, about this—about everything. We shall have to leave Skeaton, you know. Fancy what people are saying!"
Suddenly, as though the thought of the scandal was too much for her, her knees gave way and she flopped into a chair.
"Well, let them say!" he answered vigorously. "Grace, you're making too much of all this. You'll be ill if you aren't careful. Pull yourself together." "Of course we've got to go," she answered. "If you think that we can go on living here after all that's happened—"
"Well, why not?" he interrupted. "We haven't done anything. It's only—"
"I know what you're going to say." (It was one of Grace's most irritating habits that she finished other people's sentences for them in a way that they had not intended) "that if they look at it properly they'll see that it wasn't our fault. But will they look at it properly? Of course they won't. You know what cats they are. They're only waiting for a chance. What I mean is that this is just the chance they've been waiting for."
"How can you go on and every time you preach they'll be looking up at you and saying 'There's a brother of a murderer'? Why, fancy what you'd feel!"
Paul jumped in his chair. "What do you mean, Grace? The brother of a murderer?"
"What else am I?" Grace began to warm her podgy hands. "It came out at the inquest that I wouldn't see the man, didn't it? Maggie thinks me a murderer. I see it in her eyes every time. What I mean to say, Paul, is, What are you going to do about Maggie?"
Grace's voice changed at that question. It was as though that other trouble of the scandal were nothing to her compared with this matter of Maggie's presence. Paul turned and looked at her. She dropped her voice to a whisper and went on:
"I won't stay with Maggie any more. No, no, no! You must choose, Paul, between Maggie and me. What I mean is that it simply isn't safe in the same house with her. You may not have noticed it yourself, but I've seen it coming on a long time. I have indeed. She isn't right in her head, and she hates me. She's always hated me. She'd like to do me an injury. She follows me round the house. She's always watching me, and now that she thinks that I killed her uncle it's worse. I'm not safe, Paul, and that's the truth. She hides in my room behind the curtains waiting for me. It's my safety you've got to consider. It's me or her. I know she's your wife, but what I mean is that there'll be something awful happening if you aren't careful."
Grace, as she spoke, was a woman in the very heart of a desperate panic. Her whole body trembled; her face was transfixed as though she saw Maggie standing in front of her there with a knife. No one looking at her could deny that she was in mortal terror—no affectation here. And Paul loved her. He came over to her and put his arm round her; she caught hold of his hand, clutched it desperately. When he felt the trembling of her body beneath his hand his love for her and protective care of her overwhelmed him.
"Grace, dear, it's all right," he said. "You're exaggerating all this. Maggie wouldn't hurt a fly—indeed, she wouldn't. She has her faults, perhaps, but cruelty isn't one of them. You must remember that she's had a bad time lately losing her aunt and then finding her uncle in that horrible way. After all, she's only a child. I know that you two haven't got on well together, and I daresay that it has been very largely my fault; but you mustn't be frightened like that. No harm shall come to you so long as I am alive—no harm whatever."
But she stared in front of her, like a woman in a dream, repeating—
"No, no, Paul. Either she goes or I go. She's your wife. She must stay. Then I must go. I can't stand it; I can't indeed. I'm not sleeping; I'm not indeed. It isn't fair to ask it. What I mean is that it isn't fair to me."
Although he had known Grace for years he still believed her threats and promises. "My sister's an obstinate woman," he would say, although had he looked truly into his experience he must have seen that she changed her mind more frequently by far than she changed her clothes. He thought that now she meant what she said; indeed, on his own side he really did not see how in the future Maggie and Grace could continue to live in the same house. But, as Grace had said, he was married to Maggie and therefore it was Grace that must go. Then when he confronted the fact of Grace's departure he could not endure it. No, he could not. Had Maggie been everything to him that she might have been, bad she been his true wife, had she loved him, had she—oh! a thousand things she might have been!—then perhaps life would be possible without Grace. But now! ... at the thought of being alone for ever with Maggie a strange passion, mingled of fascination and fear, affection and sensuality, cowardice and excitement, pervaded him. What would their life together be? Then he turned to Grace as the very rock of his safety.
"Oh, Grace, you mustn't go—you mustn't think of going. Whatever should I do without you?"
A dull flush of gratification coloured her cheeks.
"Either she goes or I," she repeated. "It can't go on. You must see that it can't. Fancy what people must be thinking!"
As always, he postponed the issue. "We'll settle something. Don't you worry, dear. You go and lie down. That's what you want—a thorough good rest."
She plodded off. For himself he decided that fresh air was what he needed. He went for a stroll. As soon as he was in the Charleston Road that led to the High Street he was pleased with the day. Early spring; mild, faint haze, trees dimly purple, a bird clucking, the whisper of the sea stirring the warm puddles and rivulets across the damp dim road. Warm, yes, warm and promising. Lent ... tiresome. Long services, gloomy sermons. Rebuking people, scolding them—made them angry, did them no good. Then Easter. That was better. Jolly hymns. "Christ is risen! Christ is risen!" Jolly flowers—primroses, crocuses—(no, they were earlier). They'll have forgotten about Maggie's uncle by then. Live it down—that's the thing. Give them a good genial sermon this Sunday. Show them he wasn't caring ... If only the women would get on together. Women—women. How difficult they were! Yes, Sunday would be difficult—facing them all. He knew what they'd be thinking. He wanted to be jolly again. Jolly. That was the thing. Joking with Grace, jolly even with Maggie. Jolly with his congregation. Jolly with God. Why wasn't he left alone? Had been until Maggie came. Maggie like a stone flung into a frosty pool! Broke everything up, simply because she was unlike other people. He'd married her because he thought he could make her into what he pleased. Well, it had been the other way. Oh, she was queer, queer, queer.
He stopped, his large boots in a warm puddle. He felt the warm sun hot through the damp mist. He wanted to take her into his arms, to hug her, above all to feel her response. To feel her response, that was what, for years now, he had been wanting, and never once had she responded. Never once. She let him do as he pleased, but she was passive. She didn't love him. Grace loved him, but how dull Grace was! Dull—it was all dull! Grace was dull, Skeaton was dull, the church was dull—God was dull! God? Where was God? He looked around. There was no God. To what had he been praying all these years? He had not been praying. His congregation had not been praying. They were all dead and God was dead too.
He looked up and saw that his boots were in a puddle. He walked on. For a moment, the mists of sloth and self-indulgence that had for years obscured his vision had shifted and cleared, but even as he moved they settled down and resolved themselves once more. The muscles of Paul's soul were stiff with disuse. Training is a lengthy affair and a tiresome business to the stout and middle-aged.
The hedges gave way to houses; he was in the High Street. He saw then, plastered at intervals on the hoardings, strange phenomena. It was the colour that first attracted him—a bright indecent pink with huge black lettering. Because it was the offseason in Skeaton other announcements were few. All the more prominent then the following:
THE KINGSCOTE BEETHEEN WILL HOLD A RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL IN THE TOWNOF SKEATON-ON-SEA FROM APRIL 10 TO 16.——-SERVICES 10 A.M., 3 P.M. SPECIAL SONG SERVICE, 7.30 P.M. DAILY All are Cordially Invited. ADDRESSES BY REV. JOHN THURSTON. REV. WILLIAM CRASHAW. SISTER AVIES.
Paul stared at this placard with horror and disgust in his soul. For the moment Maggie and Grace and all the scandal connected with them was forgotten. This was terrible. By temperament, tradition, training, he loathed and feared every phase of religion known to him as "Methodistic." Under this term he included everything that was noisy, demonstrative, ill-bred and melodramatic. Once when an undergraduate at Cambridge he had gone to some meeting of the kind. There had been impromptu prayers, ghastly pictures of hell-fire, appeals to the undergraduates to save themselves at once lest it be too late, confessions and appeals for mercy. The memory of that evening still filled him with physical nausea. It was to him as though he had seen some gross indecent act in public or witnessed some horrible cruelty.
Maggie had told him very little about the Chapel and its doings, and he had shrunk from asking her any questions, but everything that was odd and unusual in her behaviour he attributed to her months under that influence. As he stared at the flaunting pink sheet he felt as though it were a direct personal assault on himself and his church.
And yet he knew that he could do nothing. Once before there had been something of the kind in Skeaton and he had tried with others to stop it. He had failed utterly; the civic authorities in Skeaton seemed almost to approve of these horrors. He looked at the thing once more and then turned back towards home. Something must be done... Something must be done ... but, as on so many earlier occasions in his life, he could face no clear course of action.
That Saturday evening he tried to change his sermon. He had determined to deliver a very fine address on "Brotherly Love" and then, most fortunately, he had discovered a five-years' old sermon that would, with a little adaptation, exactly fit the situation.
To-night he was sick of his adaptation. The sermon had not been a good one at the first, and now it was a tattered thing of shreds and patches. He tried to add to it some sentences about the approaching "Revival." No sentences would come. What a horrible fortnight it had been! He looked back upon his district visiting, his meetings, his choir-practices with disgust. Something had come in between himself and his people. Perhaps the relationship had never been very real? Founded on jollity. An eagerness to accept anybody's mood for one's own if only that meant jollity. What had he thought, standing in the puddle that afternoon? That they were all dead, he and his congregation and God, all dead together? He sank into his chair, picked up the Church Times, and fell asleep.
Next morning as he walked into the choir this extraordinary impression that his congregation was dead persisted. As he recited the "Confession" he looked about him. There was Mr. Maxse, and there Miss Purves. Every one was in his and her appointed place; old Colonel Rideout with the purple gills not kneeling because of his gout; young Edward Walter, heir to the sugar factory, not kneeling because he was lazy; sporting Mr. Harper, whose golf handicap was +3, not kneeling because to do so would spoil the crease of his trousers; old Mrs. Dean with her bonnet and bugles, the worst gossip in Skeaton, her eyes raised to heaven; the Quiller girls with their hard red colour and their hard bright eyes; Mr. Fortinum, senior, with his County Council stomach and his J.P. neck; the dear old Miss Fursleis who believed in God and lived accordingly; young Captain Trent, who believed in his moustache and lived accordingly ... Oh yes, there they all were—and there, too, were Grace and Maggie kneeling side by side.
Maggie! His eyes rested upon her. Her face suddenly struck him as being of extraordinary beauty. He had never thought her beautiful before; very plain, of course. Every one knew that she was plain. But to-day her face and profile had the simplicity, the purity, the courage of a Madonna in one of the old pictures—or, rather, of one of those St. John the Baptist boys gazing up into the face of the Christ—child as it lay in its mother's arms. He finished the "Confession" hurriedly—Maggie's face faded from his view; he saw now only a garden of hats and heads, the bright varnished colour of the church around and about them all.
He gave out the psalms; there was a rustle of leaves, and soon shrill, untrained voices of the choir-boys were screaming the chant like a number of baby steam-whistles in competition.
When he climbed into the pulpit he tried again to discover Maggie's face as he had already seen it. He could not; it had been, perhaps, a trick of light and, in any case, she was hidden now behind the stout stolidity of Grace. He looked around at the other faces beneath him and saw them settle themselves into their customary expressions of torpor, vacuity and expectation. Very little expectation! They knew well enough, by this time, the kind of thing to expect from him, the turn of phrase, the rise and fall of the voice, the pause dramatic, the whisper expostulatory, the thrust imperative, the smile seductive.
He had often been told, as a curate, that he was a wonderful preacher. His round jolly face, his beaming smile, a certain dramatic gift, had helped him. "He is so human," he had heard people say. For many years he had lived on that phrase. For the first time in his life, this morning he distrusted his gift. He was out of touch with them all—because they were dead, killed by forms and repetitions and monotony. "We're all dead, you know, and I'm dead too. Let's close the doors and seal this church up. Our day is over." He said of course nothing of the kind. His sermon was stupid, halting and ineffective.
"Naturally," as Colonel Rideout said over his port at lunch, "when a feller's wife's uncle has just hung himself in public, so to speak, it does take the wind out of you. He usen't to preach badly once. Got stale. They all do."
As Paul dismissed the congregation with the Blessing he felt that everything was over. He was more completely miserable than he had ever been. He had in fact never before been really miserable except when he had the toothache. And now, also, the custom of years made it impossible for him to be miserable for long. He had had no real talk with Maggie since the inquest. Maggie came into his study that afternoon. Their conversation was very quiet and undemonstrative; it happened to be one of the most important conversations in both their lives, and, often afterwards, Paul looked back to it, trying to retrace in it the sentences and movements with which it had been built up. He could never recover anything very much. He could see Maggie sitting in a way that she had on the edge of her chair, looking at him and looking also far beyond him. He knew afterwards that this was the last moment in his life that he had any contact with her. Like a witch, like a ghost, she had come into his life; like a witch, like a ghost, she went out of it, leaving him, for the remainder of his days, a haunted man.
As he looked at her he realised that she had aged in this last fortnight. Yes, that horrible affair had taken it out of her. She seemed to have recovered self-control at some strange and unnatural cost—as though she had taken some potion or drug.
She began by asking Grace's question:
"Paul, what are we going to do?"
But she did not irritate him as Grace had done. His one idea was to help her; unfortunately he had himself thought out nothing clearly.
"Well, Maggie," he answered, smiling, "I thought you might help me about that. I want your advice. I thought—well, as a matter of fact I hadn't settled anything—but I thought that I might get a locum for a month or two and we might go abroad for a trip perhaps. To Paris, or Venice, or somewhere."
"And then come back?" she asked.
"For a time—yes—certainly," he answered.
"I don't think I can ever come back to Skeaton," she said in a whisper, as though speaking to herself. He could see that she was controlling herself and steadying her voice with the greatest difficulty. "Of course I must come, Paul, if you want me to. It's been all my fault from the very beginning——"
"Oh no," he broke in, "it hasn't."
"Yes, it has. I've just spoilt your life and Grace's. You were both very happy until I came. I had no right to marry you when I didn't love you. I didn't know then all I know now. But that's no excuse. I should have known. I was younger than most girls are, though."
Paul said:
"But Maggie, you're not to blame yourself at all. I think if we were somewhere else than Skeaton it would be easier. And now after what has happened—"
Maggie broke in: "You couldn't leave Skeaton, Paul. You know you couldn't. It would just break your heart. All the work of your life has been here—everything you've ever done. And Grace too."
"No, no, you're wrong," said Paul vigorously. "A change is probably what I need. I've been too long in the same place. Time goes so fast that one doesn't realise. And for Grace, too, I expect a change will be better."
"And do you think," said Maggie, "that Grace will ever live with me now in the same house when she knows that I've driven you from Skeaton? Grace is quite right. She's just to feel as she does about me."
"Then Grace must go," said Paul firmly, looking at Maggie and feeling that the one thing that he needed was that she should be in his arms and he kissing her. "Maggie, if we go away, you and I, right away from all of this, perhaps then you can—you will—" he stopped.
She shook her head. "Never, Paul. Never. Do you know what I've seen this last week? That I've left all those who really wanted me. My aunts, very much they needed me, and I was selfish and wouldn't give them what they wanted, and tried to escape from them. You and Grace don't need me. Nobody wants anything here in Skeaton. You're all full. It isn't my fault, Paul, but everything seems to me dead here. They don't mean anything they say in Church, and the Church doesn't mean anything either. The Chapel was wrong in London too, but it was more right than the Church here is. I don't know what religion is or where it is: I don't know anything now except that one ought to be with the people who want one and not with the people who don't. Aunt wanted me and I failed her. Uncle wanted me and I—I—I—"
She broke down, crying, her head in her arms. He went over to her and put his arms around her. At his touch she shrank a little, and when he felt that he went away from her and stood, silently, not knowing what to do.
"Maggie, don't—don't, Maggie. I can't bear to hear you cry."
"I've done all wrong—I've done all wrong," she answered him. "I've been wrong always."
His helplessness was intolerable. He knew that she would not allow him to touch her. He went out closing the door softly behind him.