by Hugh Walpole
Maggie saw that she was agitated, passionately moved. The sun catching the hoar-frost on the frozen soil turned the world to crystal, and in every field were little shallows of blue light; the St. Dreot Woods were deep black with flickering golden stars.
She tried to speak. She could not. Tears were in her eyes. “It is so long ... since I ... London,” she smiled at Maggie. Then Maggie heard her say:
The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing.
He shall feed me in a green pasture; and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.
He shall convert my soul, and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness, for His Name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me, they rod and thy staff comfort me.
Thou shalt prepare a table before me against them that trouble me: thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall be full.
But thy loving — kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
There was a pause — then Maggie said timidly, “Won’t you take off your bonnet? It will be more comfortable.” “Thank you, my dear.” She took off her bonnet and laid it on the bed. Then she resumed her stand at the window, her eyes lost in the sunny distance. “I did wrong,” she said, as though she were speaking to herself. “I should not have allowed that quarrel with your father. I regret it now very deeply. But we always see too late the consequences of our proud self-will.” She turned then.
“Come here, dear,” she said.
Maggie came to her. Her aunt looked at her and Maggie was deeply conscious of her shabby dress, her rough hands, her ugly boots. Then, as always when she was self-critical, her eyes grew haughty and her mouth defiant.
Her aunt kissed her, her cool, firm fingers against the girl’s warm neck.
“You will come to us now, dear. You should have come long ago.”
Maggie wanted to speak, but she could not.
“We will try to make you happy, but ours is not an exciting life.”
Maggie’s eyes lit up. “It has not,” she said, “been very exciting here always.” Then she went on, colour in her cheeks, “I think father did all he could. I feel now that there were a lot of things that I should have done, only I didn’t see them at the time. He never asked me to help him, but I wish now that I had offered — or — suggested.”
Her lips quivered, again she was near tears, and again, as it had been on her walk with Uncle Mathew, her regret was not for her father but for the waste that her life with him had been. But there was something in her aunt that prevented complete confidence. She seemed in something to be outside small daily troubles. Before they could speak any more there was a knock on the door and Uncle Mathew came in. He stood there looking both ashamed of himself and obstinate.
He most certainly did not appear at his best, a large piece of plaster on his right cheek showing where he had cut himself with his razor, and a shabby and tight black suit (it was his London suit, and had lain crumpled disastrously in his hand-bag) accentuating the undue roundness of his limbs; his eyes blinked and his mouth trembled a little at the corners. He was obviously afraid of his sister and flung his niece a watery wink as though to implore her silence as to his various misdemeanours.
Brother and sister shook hands, and Maggie, as she watched them, was surprised to feel within herself a certain sympathy with her uncle. Aunt Anne’s greeting was gentle and kind but infinitely distant, and had something of the tenderness with which the Pope washes the feet of the beggars in Rome.
“I’m so glad that you were here,” she said in her soft voice. “It must have been such a comfort to Maggie.”
“He has been, indeed, Aunt Anne,” Maggie broke in eagerly.
Her uncle looked at her with great surprise; after his behaviour of last night he had not expected this. Reassured, he began a voluble explanation of his movements and plans, rubbing his hands together and turning one boot against the other.
He had a great deal to say, because he had seen neither of his sisters for a very long time. Then he wished to make a good impression because Maggie, the heiress, would be of importance now. What an idiot he had been last night. What had he done? He could remember nothing. It was evident that it had been nothing very bad — Maggie bore him no grudge — good girl, Maggie. He felt affectionate towards her and would have told her so had her aunt not been present. These thoughts underlay his rambling history. He was aware suddenly that his audience was inattentive. He saw, indeed, that his sister was standing with her back half-turned, gazing on to the shining country beyond the window. He ceased abruptly, gave his niece a wink, and when this was unsuccessful, muttering a few words, stumbled out of the room.
The whole village attended the funeral, not because it liked the Rev. Charles, but because it liked funerals. Maggie was, in all probability, the only person present who thought very deeply about the late Vicar of St. Dreot’s. The Rev. Tom Trefusis who conducted the ceremony was a large red-faced man who had played Rugby football for his University and spent most of his energy over the development of cricket and football clubs up and down the county. He could not be expected to have cared very greatly for the Rev. Charles, who had been at no period of his life and in no possible sense of the word a sportsman. As he conducted the service his mind speculated as to the next vicar (the Rev. Tom knew an excellent fellow, stroke of the Cambridge boat in ‘12, who would be just the man) the possibility of the frost breaking in time for the inter-county Rugby match at Truxe, the immediate return of his wife from London (he was very fond of his wife), and, lastly, a certain cramp in the stomach that sometimes “bowled him over” and of which the taking of a funeral— “here to-day and gone to-morrow” — always reminded him.
“Wonder how long I’ll last,” he thought as he stood over the grave of the Rev. Charles and let his eyes wander over the little white gravestones that ran almost into the dark wall of St. Dreot Woods as though they were trying to hide themselves. “Wish the frost ‘ud break — ground’ll be as hard as nails.” The soil fell, thump, thump upon the coffin. Rooks cawed in the trees; the bell tolled its cracked note. The Rev. Charles was crammed down with the soil by the eager spades of the sexton and his friend, who were cold and wanted a drink.
Maggie, meanwhile, watched the final disappearance of her father with an ever-growing remorse. Ever since her declaration to her uncle during their walk yesterday this new picture of her father had grown before her eyes. She had already forgotten many, many things that might now have made her resentful or at least critical. She saw him as a figure most disastrously misunderstood. Without any sentimentality in her vision she saw him lonely, proud, reserved, longing for her sympathy which she denied him. His greed for money she saw suddenly as a determination that his daughter should not be left in want. All those years he had striven and his apparent harshness, sharpness, unkindness had been that he might pursue his great object.
She did not cry (some of the villagers curiously watching her thought her a hard-hearted little thing), but her heart was full of tenderness as she stood there, seeing the humped grey church that was part of her life, the green mounds with no name, the dark wood, the grey roofs of the village clustered below the hill, hearing the bell, the rooks, the healthy voice of Mr. Trefusis, the bark of some distant dog, the creak of some distant wheel.
“I missed my chance,” she thought. “If only now I could have told him!”
Her aunt stood at her side and once again Maggie felt irritation at her composure. “After all, he was her brother,” she thought. She remembered the feeling and passion with which her aunt had repeated the Twenty-third Psalm. She was puzzled.
A moment of shrinking came upon her as she thought of the coming London life.
Then the service was over. The villagers, with that inevitable disappointment that always lingers after a funeral, went to their homes. The children remained until night, un
der the illusion that it was Sunday.
Maggie spent the rest of the day, for the most part, alone in her room and thinking of her father. Her bedroom, an attic with a sloping roof, contained all her worldly possessions. In part because she had always been so reserved a child, in part because there had been no one in whom she might confide even had she wished it, she had always placed an intensity of feeling around and about the few things that were hers. Her library was very small, but this did not distress her because she had never cared for reading. Upon the little hanging shelf above her bed (deal wood painted white, with blue cornflowers) were The Heir of Redclyffe, a shabby blue-covered copy, Ministering Children, Madame How and Lady Why, The Imitation of Christ, Robinson Crusoe, Mrs. Beeton’s Cookery Book, The Holy Bible, and The Poems of Longfellow. These had been given her upon various Christmasses and birthdays. She did not care for any of them except The Imitation of Christ and Robinson Crusoe. The Bible was spoilt for her by incessant services and Sunday School classes; The Heir of Redclyffe and Ministering Children she found absurdly sentimental and unlike any life that she had ever known; Mrs. Beeton she had never opened, and Longfellow and Kingsley’s Natural History she found dull. For Robinson Crusoe she had the intense human sympathy that all lonely people feel for that masterpiece. The Imitation pleased her by what she would have called its common sense. Such a passage, for example: “Oftentimes something lurketh within, or else occurreth from without, which draweth us after it. Many secretly seek themselves in what they do, and know it not.”
“They seem also to live in good peace of mind, when things are done according to their will and opinion; but if things happen otherwise than they desire, they are straightway moved and much vexed.”
And behind this common sense she did seem to be directly in touch with some one whom she might find had she more time and friends to advise her. She was conscious in her lonely hours, that nothing gave her such a feeling of company as did this little battered red book, and she felt that that friendliness might one day advance to some greater intimacy. About these things she was intensely reserved and she spoke of them to no human being.
Even for the books for whose contents she did not care she had a kindly feeling. So often had they looked down upon her when she sat there exasperated, angry at her own tears, rebellious, after some scene with her father. No other place but this room had seen these old agonies of hers. She would be sorry after all to leave it.
There were not many things beside the books. Two bowls of blue Glebeshire pottery, cheap things but precious, a box plastered with coloured shells, an amber bead necklace, a blue leather writing-case, a photograph of her father as a young clergyman with a beard and whiskers, a faded daguerreotype of her mother, last, but by no means least, a small black lacquer musical-box that played two tunes, “Weel may the Keel row” and “John Peel,” — these were her worldly possessions.
She sat there; as the day closed down, the trees were swept into the night, the wind rose in the dark wood, the winter’s moon crept pale and cold into the sky, snow began to fall, at first thinly, then in a storm, hiding the moon, flinging the fields and roads into a white shining splendour; the wind died and the stars peeped between the flakes of whirling snow.
She sat without moving, accusing her heart of hardness, of unkindness. She seemed to herself then deserving of every punishment. “If I had only gone to him,” she thought again and again. She remembered how she had kept apart from him, enclosed herself in a reserve that he should never break. She remembered the times when he had scolded her, coldly, bitterly, and she had stood, her face as a rock, her heart beating but her body without movement, then had turned and gone silently from the room. All her wicked, cold heart that in some strange way cared for love but could not make those movements towards others that would show that it cared. What was it in her? Would she always, through life, miss the things for which she longed through her coldness and obstinacy?
She took her father’s photograph, stared at it, gazed into it, held it in an agony of remorse. She shivered in the cold of her room but did not know it. Her candle, caught in some draught, blew out, and instantly the white world without leapt in upon her and her room was lit with a strange unearthly glow. She saw nothing but her father. At last she fell asleep in the chair, clutching in her hand the photograph.
Thus her aunt found her, later in the evening. She was touched by the figure, the shabby black frock, the white tired face. She had been honestly disappointed in her niece, disappointed in her plainness, in her apparent want of heart, in her silence and moroseness. Mathew had told her of the girl’s outburst to him against her father, and this had seemed to her shocking upon the very day after that father’s death. Now when she saw the photograph clenched in Maggie’s hand tears came into her eyes. She said, “Maggie! dear Maggie!” and woke her. Maggie, stirring saw her aunt’s slender figure and delicate face standing in the snowlight as though she had been truly a saint from heaven.
Maggie’s first impulse was to rise up, fling her arms around her aunt’s neck and hug her. Had she done that the history of her life might have been changed. Her natural shyness checked her impulse. She got up, the photograph dropped from her hand, she smiled a little and then said awkwardly, “I’ve been asleep. Do you want me? I’ll come down.”
Her aunt drew her towards her.
“Maggie, dear,” she said, “don’t feel lonely any more. Think of me and your Aunt Elizabeth as your friends who will always care for you. You must never be lonely again.”
Maggie’s whole heart responded. She felt its wild beating but she could do nothing, could say nothing. Her body stiffened. In spite of herself she withdrew herself. Her face reddened, then, was pale.
“Thank you, aunt,” was all she could say.
Her aunt moved away. Silently they went downstairs together.
At about ten the next morning they were seated in the dining-room — Aunt Anne, Uncle Mathew, Maggie, and Mr. Brassy. Mr. Brassy was speaking:
“I’m afraid, Miss Cardinal, that there can be no question about the legality of this. It has been duly witnessed and signed. I regret extremely ... but as you can well understand, I was quite unable to prevent. With the exception of a legacy of 300 Pounds Sterling to Miss Maggie Cardinal everything goes to Miss Ellen Harmer, ‘To whom I owe more than I can ever possibly—’”
“Thank you,” interrupted Aunt Anne. “This is, I think, the woman who has been cook here during the last four years?”
“About five, I think,” said Mr. Brassy softly.
Uncle Mathew was upon his feet, trembling.
“This is monstrous,” he stuttered, “absolutely monstrous. Of course an appeal will be made — undue influence — the most abominable thing.”
Maggie watched them all as though the whole business were far from herself. She sat there, her hands folded on her lap, looking at the mantelpiece with the ugly marble clock, the letter clip with old soiled letters in it, the fat green vase with dusty everlastings. Just as on the night when her uncle had come into her room she had fancied that some one spoke to her, so now she seemed to hear:
“Ah, that’s a nasty knock for you — a very nasty knock.”
Her father had left all his money, with the exception of 300, Pounds Sterling to Ellen the cook; Maggie did not, for a moment, speculate as to the probable total amount. Three hundred pounds seemed to her a very large sum — it would at any rate give her something to begin life upon — but the thing that seized and held her was the secret friendship that must have existed between her father and Ellen — secret friendship was the first form that the relationship assumed for her. She saw Ellen, red of face with little eyes and a flat nose upon which flies used to settle, a fat, short neck, the wheezings and the pantings, the stumping walk, the great broad back. And she saw her father — first as the tall, dirty man whom she used to know, with the shiny black trousers, the untidy beard, the frowning eyes, the nails bitten to the quick, the ragged shirt-cuffs — then as that vei
led shape below the clothes, the lift of the sheet above the toes, the loins, the stomach, the beard neatly brushed, the closed yellow eyelids, the yellow forehead, the rats with their gleaming eyes. In a kind of terror as though she were being led against her will into some disgusting chamber where the skulls were stale and the sights indecent, she saw the friendship of those two — Ellen the cook and her father.
Young, inexperienced though she was, she was old already in a certain crude knowledge of facts. It could not be said that she traced to their ultimate hiding-place the relations of her father and the woman, but in some relation, ugly, sordid, degraded, she saw those two figures united. Many, many little things came to her mind as she sat there, moments when the cook had breathlessly and in a sudden heat betrayed some unexpected agitation, moments when her father had shown confusion, moments when she had fancied whispers, laughter behind walls, scurrying feet. She entwined desperately her hands together as pictures developed behind her eyes.
Ah! but she was ashamed, most bitterly ashamed!
The rest of the interview came to her only dimly. She knew that Uncle Mathew was still upon his feet protesting, that her aunt’s face was cold and wore a look of distressed surprise as though some one had suddenly been rude to her.
From very, very far away came Mr. Brassy’s voice: “I was aware that this could not be agreeable, Miss Cardinal. But I am afraid that, under the circumstances, there is nothing to be done. As to undue influence I think that I should warn you, Mr. Cardinal, that there could be very little hope ... and of course the expense ... if I may advise you ...”
The voice sank away again, the room faded, the air was still and painted; like figures on a stage acting before an audience of one Maggie saw those grotesque persons ...
She did not speak one word during the whole affair.
After a time she saw that Mr. Brassy was not in the room. Her aunt was speaking to her: