by Hugh Walpole
She saw him as a desirable companion; she thought that he would make a most interesting friend; she would like to make her experiences of life with him at her side. She would be free and he would be free, but they would exchange confidences.
And then because she was very simple and had learnt nothing of the difference between the things that decent girls might do and the things they might not she began to consider the easiest way of meeting him. She intended to go to him simply as one human being to another and tell him that she liked him and hoped that they would often see one another. There were no confused issues nor questions of propriety before Maggie. Certainly she was aware that men took advantage of girls’ weakness — but that was, as in the case of Uncle Mathew, when they had drunk too much — and it was the fault of the girls, too, for not looking after themselves. Maggie felt that she could look after herself anywhere. She was more afraid, by far, of her Aunt Anne than of any man.
It happened on the very day after that conversation with Mr. Magnus that Aunt Anne said at luncheon:
“I think, Maggie dear, if you don’t mind, that you and I will pay a call on Mrs. Warlock this afternoon. You have not been there yet. To-day will be a very good opportunity.”
Maggie’s mind flew at once to her clothes. She had been with Caroline Smith to that young lady’s dressmaker, a thin and sharp-faced woman whose black dress gleamed with innumerable pins. Maggie had been pinched and measured, pulled in here and pulled out there. Then there had been afternoons when she had been “fitted” under Caroline’s humorous and critical eye. Finally the dress had been delivered, only two days ago, in a long card-board box; it waited now for the great occasion.
The great occasion had, in the guise of the Warlock family, surely arrived. Maggie’s heart beat as she went up to her room. When at last she was wearing the dress, standing before her mirror, her cheeks were red and her hands shook a little.
The dress was very fine — simple of course and quite plain, but elegant as no dress of Maggie’s had ever been elegant. There surely could not anywhere be a more perfect black dress, and yet, as Maggie gazed, she was aware that there was something not quite right. She was always straightforward with herself; yes, the thing that was not quite right was her own stupid shape. Her figure was too square, her back was too short, her hands too large. She had a moment of acute disgust with herself so that she could have torn the dress from her and rushed into her old obscure and dingy black again. Of what use to dress her up? She would always look wrong, always be awkward and ungainly ... tears of disappointment gathered slowly in her eyes. Then her pride reasserted itself; she raised her head proudly and laughed at her anxious gaze. There was still her new hat. She took it from the bed and put it on, sticking big pins into it, moving back from the mirror, then forward again, turning her back, standing on her toes, suddenly bowing to herself and waving her hand.
She was caught thus, laughing into the mirror, by old Martha, who pushed her sour face through the door and said: “They’ve been waiting this long time for you, Miss.”
“All right, Martha,” Maggie answered sharply, annoyed that she should be found, posturing and bowing, by the woman. “Why didn’t you knock?”
“I did knock, Miss. You were that occupied you didn’t hear me.” The old woman was grinning.
Maggie went downstairs, her heart still beating, her cheeks still flushed. She did hope that Aunt Anne would be pleased. Aunt Anne, although she never said anything about clothes, must, of course, notice such things, and if she loved Maggie as Mr. Magnus said she did, then she would “show her approval.” The girl stood for a moment on the bottom step of the staircase looking at her aunt who was waiting for her in the little dark hall.
“Well, dear — I’m waiting,” she said.
The burning eyes of Thomas the cat watched from the deep shadows.
“I’m so sorry. I was dressing,” said Maggie.
Her aunt said nothing more and they left the house.
Maggie, as always when she walked with Aunt Anne, was aware that they made a strange couple, she so short and the other so tall, she with her sturdy masculine walk, her aunt with her awkward halting movement. They went in silence.
Maggie longed for a word of approval; a short sentence such as “How nice you’re looking, Maggie,” or “I like your dress, Maggie,” or “That’s a new dress, dear — I like it,” would be enough. After that Maggie felt that she could face a multitude of wild and savage Warlocks, that she could walk into the Warlock drawing-room with a fine brave carriage, above all, that she would feel a sudden warm affection for her aunt that would make all their future life together easy.
But Aunt Anne said nothing. She looked exactly as she had looked upon her first appearance at St. Dreots, so thin and tall, with her pale tapering face and her eyes staring before her as though they saw nothing.
Maggie, as they turned up into Garrick Street, said:
“I hope you like my new dress, aunt.”
Aunt Anne turned to her for a moment, smiled gently and then vaguely, as though her mind were elsewhere, answered:
“I liked your old dress better, dear.”
Maggie’s face flamed; her temper flared into her eyes. For a moment she had wild thoughts of breaking into open rebellion. She hated her dress, she hated London, above all, she hated Aunt Anne. That lady’s happy unconsciousness that anything had occurred drove the girl into furious irritation. Well, it was hopeless then, Mr. Magnus could say what he pleased, her aunt did not care for her — she would not mind did she fall dead in the street before her. The words in Maggie’s mind were: “You don’t look at me. I’m not a human being to you at all. But I won’t live with you. I’ll go my own way. You can’t keep me if you never speak to me nor think of me.” But in some dark fashion that strange impassivity held her. Aunt Anne had her power ...
They climbed the dim crooked staircase behind the antiquary’s wall. They rang the Warlock bell and were admitted. Maggie did not know what it was that she had expected, but it was certainly not the pink, warm room of Mrs. Warlock.
The heavy softly closing door hemmed them in, the silent carpet folded about their steps; the canary twittered, the fire spurted and crackled. But at once the girl’s heart went out to old Mrs. Warlock; she looked so charming in her white cap and blue bow, her eyes were raised so gently to Maggie’s face and her little hand was so soft and warm.
The meeting between Anne Cardinal and Mrs. Warlock was very gracious. Aunt Anne gravely pressed the old lady’s hand, looked at her with her grave distant eyes, then very carefully and delicately sat down.
Amy Warlock came in; Maggie had met her before and disliked her. Conversation dealt decently and carefully with the weather, the canary and Maggie’s discovery of London. Maggie was compelled to confess that she was afraid that she had not discovered London at all. She felt Amy Warlock’s sharp eyes upon them all and, as always when she was in company that was, she thought, suspicious of her, she became hot and uncomfortable, she frowned and spoke in short, almost hostile, sentences.
“They’re laughing at my new clothes,” she thought, “I wish I’d worn my old ones ... and anyway these hurt me.” She sat up very stiffly, her hands on her lap, her eyes staring at the little bright water-colour on the wall opposite. Mrs. Warlock, like a trickling, dancing brook, continued her talk:
“Of course there’s the country. I was brought up as a girl just outside Salisbury ... So many, many years ago — I always tell my boy that I’m such an old woman now that I don’t belong to his world at all. Just to sit here and see the younger generation go past. Don’t regret your youth, Miss Cardinal. You’ll want it back again one day. I said to Martin only yesterday ...”
Neither Aunt Anne nor Amy Warlock had anything to say, so that quite suddenly on the entrance of tea, conversation dropped. They all sat there and looked at one another. There was a large silver tray with silver tea-things upon it and a fat swelling china dish that held hot buttered toast. There was a standin
g wicker pyramid containing bread and butter, plates of little yellow and red cakes, shortbread and very heavy plum cake black with currants.
Mrs. Warlock had ceased all conversation, her eyes were fixed upon the preparations for tea. The door opened and John Warlock and his son came in.
Maggie’s eyes lighted when she saw Martin Warlock. She behaved as she might have done had she been in her own room at St. Dreots. She sprang up from her chair and stood there, smiling, waiting for him. First his father shook hands with her, then Martin came and stood beside her, laughing.
His face was flushed and he seemed excited about something, but she felt nothing save her pleasure at meeting him, and it was only when he had moved on to her aunt that she was conscious once more of Amy Warlock’s eyes, and wondered whether she had behaved badly in jumping up to meet him.
As she considered this her anger and her confusion at her anger increased. She saw that Martin was talking to her aunt and did not look at her. Perhaps he also had thought her forward; of course that horrid sister of his would think everything that she did wrong. But did he? Surely he understood. She wanted to ask him and then wanted to go home and leave them all. She saw that her teacup was trembling in her hand. She steadied it upon her knee and then her knee began to quiver, and all the time Amy Warlock watched her. She thought then that she must assert herself and show that she was not confused nor timid, so she began in a high-strained voice to talk to Mrs. Warlock. She told Mrs. Warlock that she found Harrods’ a confusing place, that she had not yet visited Westminster Abbey, that her health was quite good, that she had no brothers and no sisters, that she could not play the piano, and that she was afraid that she never read books.
It was after the last of these interesting statements that she was suddenly aware of the sound of her own voice, as though it had been a brazen gong beating stridently in the vastness of a deserted Cathedral. She saw the old lady take two pieces of buttered toast from the china dish, hold them tenderly in her hand and fling them a swift, bird-like glance before she devoured them; during that moment’s vision Maggie discovered what so many people of vaster experience both of life and of Mrs. Warlock had never discovered; namely, that the old lady cared more for her food than her company. Maggie was suddenly less afraid of the whole family. She looked up then at Martin as though she thus would prove her new courage and, he glancing across at the same moment, they smiled. He left his father’s side and, coming over to her, sat down close to her. He dropped his voice in speaking to her.
“I’ve been wanting to see you,” he said.
“Why?” she asked him.
“Well,” he answered, smiling at her as though he wanted to tell her something privately. “I feel as though we’d got a lot to tell one another ... I’m a stranger here really quite as much as you.”
“No, you’re not,” she said. “You can’t be so MUCH a stranger anywhere because you’ve been all over the world and are ready for anything.”
“And you?”
“I don’t seem to manage the simplest things. Aunt Elizabeth and I get lost the moment we move outside the door ... Do you like my dress?” she asked him.
“Why!” he said, obviously startled by such a question. “It’s — it’s splendid!”
“No, you know it isn’t,” she answered quickly, dropping her voice into a confidential statement. “It’s all wrong. I thought you’d know why as you’ve been everywhere. Caroline Smith helped me to choose it, and it looked all right until I wore it. It’s me ... I’m hopeless to fit. Caroline says so. I don’t care about clothes — if only I looked just like anybody else I’d never bother again — but it’s so tiresome to have taken so much trouble and then for it to be all wrong.”
Martin was then aware of many things — that this was a strange unusual girl, that she reassured him as to her interest, her vitality, her sincerity as no girl had ever done before, that his sister was aware of their intimate conversation and that she resented it, and that he must see this girl again and as soon as possible. He was as liable as any young man in the world to the most sudden and most violent enthusiasms, but they had been enthusiasms for a pretty face, for a sensual appeal, for a sentimental moment. Here there was no prettiness, no sensuality, no sentiment. There was something so new that he felt like Cortez upon his peak in Darien.
“It’s all right,” he reassured her urgently. “It’s all right. I promise you it is. The great thing is to look yourself. And you’ll never be the least like any one else.” He meant that to be the first open declaration of his own particular discovery of her, but he was aware that his sentence could have more than one interpretation. Uncomfortably conscious then of his sister’s regard of them, he looked up and said:
“Amy, Miss Cardinal’s been telling me how confusing London is to her. You’ve got as good an idea of London as any one in the world. You should take her to one or two places and show her things.”
Amy Warlock, every line of her stiff body firing at them both her hostility, answered:
“Oh, I don’t think Miss Cardinal would care for me as a guide. I shouldn’t be able to show her interesting things. We have scarcely, I should fancy, enough in common. Miss Cardinal’s interests are, I imagine, very different from my own.”
The tone, the words, fell into the sudden silence like a lighted match into water. Maggie, her head erect, her voice, in spite of herself, trembling a little, answered:
“Why, Miss Warlock, I shouldn’t think of troubling you. It’s very kind of your brother, but one must make one’s discoveries for oneself, mustn’t one? ... I am already beginning to find my way about.”
After that the tea-party fell into complete disruption. Maggie, although she did not look, could feel Martin’s anger like a flame beside her. She was aware that Aunt Anne and Mr. Warlock were, like some beings from another world, distant from the general confusion. Her one passionate desire was to get up and leave the place; to her intense relief she heard Aunt Anne’s clear voice:
“I think, Mrs. Warlock, we must be turning homewards. Shall I send you those papers about the Perteway’s Mission? ... Such splendid work. I think it would interest you.”
It was as though a hole had suddenly opened in the floor of the neat little drawing-room and they were all hurrying to leave without, if possible, tumbling into it. There was a general shaking of hands.
Mrs. Warlock said kindly to Maggie:
“Do come soon again, dear. It does an old lady good to see young faces.”
Martin was near the door. He almost crushed Maggie’s hand in his: “I must see you — soon,” he whispered.
Free from the house Maggie and her aunt walked home in complete silence. Maggie’s heart was a confusion of rage, surprise, loneliness and pride. No one had ever behaved like that to her before. And what had she done? What was there about her that people hated? ... Why? ... Why? She felt as though, in some way, it had all been Aunt Anne’s fault. Why did not Aunt Anne speak? Well, if they all hated her she would go on her own way. She did not care.
But alone in her room, her face, indignant, proud, quivering, surprising her in the long mirror by its strangeness, and causing her to feel, because it did not seem to belong to her, more lonely than ever, she burst out:
“I can’t stand it. I CAN’T stand it. I’ll get away ... so soon as ever I can!”
CHAPTER III
MAGGIE AND MARTIN
That moment in her bedroom altered for Maggie the course of all her future life. She had never before been, consciously, a rebel; she had, only a week before, almost acquiesced in the thought that she would remain in her aunts’ house for the rest of her days; now Mr. Magnus, the Warlocks, and her new dress had combined to fire her determination. She saw, quite suddenly, that she must escape at the first possible moment.
The house that had been until now the refuge into which she had escaped became the jumping-off place for her new adventure.
Until now the things in the house had been there to receive her as one of th
emselves; from this moment they were there to prevent, if possible, her release. She felt everything instantly hostile. They all — Thomas the cat, Edward the parrot, the very sofas and chairs and cushions — were determined not to let her go.
She saw, more than ever before, that her aunts were preparing some religious trap for her. They were very quiet about it; they did not urge her or bully her, but the subtle, silent influence went on so that the very stair-carpet, the very scuttles that held the coal, became secret messengers to hale her into the chapel and shut her in there for ever. After her first visit there the chapel became a nightmare to her — because, at once, she had felt its power. She had known — she had always known and it had not needed Mr. Magnus to tell her — that there was something in this religion — yes, even in the wretched dirt and disorder of her father’s soul — but with that realisation that there was indeed something, had come also the resolved conviction that life could not be happy, simple, successful unless one broke from that power utterly, refused its dictates, gave no hearing to its messages, surrendered nothing — absolutely nothing — to its influence. Had not some one said to her once, or was it not in her little red A Kempis, that “once caught one might never escape again”?
She would prove that, in her own struggle and independence, to be untrue. The chapel should not have her, nor her father’s ghost, nor the dim half-visualised thoughts and memories that rose like dark shadows in her soul and vanished again. She would believe in nothing save what she could see, listen to nothing that was not clear and simple before her. She was mistress of her own soul.