by Hugh Walpole
She did not seem, however, to Maggie unkindly, as she stood there, looking about the room rather short-sightedly. (She would not wear glasses. Could it have been vanity?) She was not hostile, nor scornful, nor even patronising ... but had Maggie been struck there, dead at her feet she would not have moved a step to help her. Her voice was ugly, with a crack in it, as though it needed oil. Maggie, as she looked at her, did not need to be told that she did not believe in Mr. Warlock’s mysticism. She came across and shook Maggie’s hand. Her touch was cold and stiff and a little damp like that of a wet stone.
“Sorry your Aunt’s out,” she said, “but I can talk to you for a while.” She looked at Maggie for a moment. Then she said:
“Why don’t you clear out of all this?”
The voice was so abrupt and the words so unexpected that Maggie jumped.
“Why don’t I?” she repeated.
“Yes, you,” said Miss Avies. “You’ve no place here in all this business. You don’t believe in it, do you?”
“No,” said Maggie.
“And you don’t want to use it for something you do believe in?”
“No,” said Maggie. “Well then, clear out.”
Maggie, colouring a little, said:
“My aunts have been very good to me. I oughtn’t to leave them.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Miss Avies. “Your life’s your own, not your aunts’.”
She sat down and stayed bolt upright and motionless near the fire; she flung a thin dark shadow like a stain on the wall. There was a long pause between them. After that abrupt opening there seemed to be nothing to say. Maggie’s thoughts also were elsewhere. She was wishing now passionately that she had not given that note to Caroline.
Suddenly Miss Avies said, “What do you do with yourself all day?”
Maggie laughed. “Try and make myself less careless, Miss Avies.”
Miss Avies replied, “You’ll never make yourself less careless. We are as we are.”
“But don’t you think,” said Maggie, “that one can cure one’s faults?”
“One gets rid of one only to make room for another ... But that doesn’t matter. The point is that one should have an ambition. What’s your ambition, child?”
Maggie didn’t answer. Her ambition was Martin, but she couldn’t tell Miss Avies so.
At last, after a long pause, as Miss Avies still seemed to be waiting, she answered:
“I suppose that I want to earn my living — to be independent.”
“Well, leave this place then,” said Miss Avies. “There’s no independence here.” Then added, as though to herself. “They think they’re looking for the face of God ... It’s only for themselves and their vanity they’re looking.”
Maggie said, to break another of the long pauses that seemed to be always forming between them:
“I think every one ought to earn their own living, don’t you?”
Miss Avies shook her head. “You’re very young — terribly young. I’ve got no advice to give you except to lead a healthy life somewhere away from these surroundings. We’re an unnatural lot here and you’re a healthy young creature ... Have you got a lover?”
Maggie smiled. “I’ve got a friend,” she said. Miss Avies sighed. “That’s more than I’ve got,” she said.
“Not that I’ve time for one,” she added. She got up. “I won’t wait for your aunt,” she said, “I’ve left a note downstairs ... You clear out as soon as you can, that’s my advice to you.”
She said good-bye, looking into Maggie’s clear eyes. She was suddenly less inhuman, the touch of her hand was warmer.
“Don’t you cheat yourself into believing in the Deity,” she said, and was gone.
When Friday arrived Maggie had not seen Caroline again, and she could not tell whether the note had been safely delivered or no. She was not sure what she had better do. Caroline might hare done anything with the note, torn it up, burnt it, lost it, forgotten it altogether. Well, that was a risk that Maggie must take. If he did not appear she would wait a little while and then come away. They must soon meet in any case. They had all their lives before them.
Aunt Anne was up again — very, very pale now and so thin that the light seemed to shine through her making her more of a stained window saint than ever.
Maggie told her about the visit, Aunt Anne looked at her curiously. She seemed so weak and frail that Maggie suddenly felt warm maternal love. Rather shyly she put her hand upon her aunt’s: “I won’t go away until you’re better—”
Aunt Anne nodded her head.
“I know you won’t, dear,” she said. “Don’t be out late to-day. We shall be anxious about you.”
Maggie had made a promise and was terrified when she thought of it. Suppose her aunt did not get better for years and years?
People often had long lingering illnesses with no apparent change in their condition. To Maggie a promise was an utterly final thing. She could not dream that one ever broke one’s word. She trembled now when she thought of what she had done. She had been entrapped after all and by her own free will.
In her little room as she was putting on her hat she suddenly prayed to a God, of whom she knew nothing, that her aunt might get better soon.
She started out on her great adventure with a strange self-assurance as though loving Martin had given her the wisdom of all the ages.
Turning down the street towards the Strand she found almost at once a taxi-cab drawn up, as though it had been waiting there especially for her like an eloping coach in a romantic tale. A fat red-faced fellow with a purple nose, a cloth cap and a familiar vague eye, as though he always saw further than he intended, waited patiently for her to speak.
Boldly, as though she had done such things all her life, she said, “Fourteen Bryanston Square.” Then she slipped in and was hidden from the gay world. She sat there, her hands on her lap staring at the three crimson rolls in the neck of her driver. She was thinking of nothing, nothing at all. Did she struggle to think? Only words would come, “Martin,” or “Bryanston Square,” or “cab,” again and again, words that did not mean anything but physical sensations. “Martin” hot fire at the throat, “Bryanston Square” an iron rod down the spine, and “cab” dust and ashes in the eyes.
She tried to look at herself in the little mirror opposite her, but she could only catch the corner of her cheek and half her hat. But she minded less about her appearance now. If Martin could love her it did not matter what others thought — nevertheless she pulled her hat about a little and patted her dress. The cab stopped and she felt desperately lonely. Did any one care about her anywhere? No, no one. She could have cried with pity at the thought of her own loneliness.
“One and sixpence, Miss,” said the cabman in so husky a voice.
She gave it to him.
“What’s this?” he asked, looking at it.
“One and sixpence,” she answered timidly, wondering at his sarcastic eye.
“Oh well, o’ course,” he said, looking her all over.
She knew instinctively that he demanded more. She found another sixpence. “Is that enough?” she asked.
He seemed ashamed.
“If I ‘adn’t a wife sick—” he began.
She ran up the high stone steps and rang a bell. The episode with the driver had disturbed her terribly. It had shown in what a foreign world she was. All her self-confidence was gone. She had to take a pull at herself and say: “Why, Maggie, you might be ringing the dentist’s bell at this moment.”
That helped her, and then the thought of Martin. She saw his boyish smile and felt the warm touch of his rough hand. When the maid was there instead of the green door, she almost said: “Is Martin in?”
But she behaved very well.
“Mrs. Mark?” she said in precisely the voice required.
The maid smiled and stood aside. And then into what a world she entered! A world of comfort and reassurance, of homeliness and kindliness, without parrots and fierce-eyed cats
and swaying pictures of armoured men — a world of urbanity and light and space. There was a high white staircase with brown etchings in dark frames on the white walls. There was a thick soft carpet and a friendly fat grandfather clock. Many doors but none of them mysterious, all ready to be opened.
She climbed the staircase and was shown into a room high and gaily coloured and full of flowers. She saw the deep curtains, blue silk shot with purple, the chairs of blue silk and a bowl of soft amber light hanging from the ceiling. A mass of gold-red chrysanthemums flamed against the curtains. Several people were gathered round a tea-table near the fire.
She stood lost on the thick purple carpet under the amber light, all too brilliant for her. She had come from a world of darkness, owl-like she must blink before the blaze. Some one came forward to her, some one so kind and comforting, so easy and unsurprised that Maggie suddenly felt herself steadied as though a friend had put an arm around her. Before she had felt: “This light — I am shabby.” Now she felt, “I am with friendly people.” She was surprised at the way that she was suddenly at her ease.
Mrs. Mark was not beautiful, but she had soft liquid eyes and her hand that held Maggie’s was firm and warm and strong.
“Let me introduce you,” said Mrs. Mark. “That is Miss Trenchard, and that Mr. Trenchard. This is my husband. Philip, this is Miss Cardinal.”
Miss Trenchard must be forty, Maggie thought. She was plump and thick-set, with a warm smile. Then Mr. Trenchard was a clergyman — he would be stout were he not so broad. His face was red, his hair snowy white, but he did not look old.
He smiled at Maggie as though he had known her all his life. Then there was Mr. Mark, who was stocky and thick, and reminded Maggie of Martin, although his face was quite different, he looked much cleverer and not such a boy; he was not, in fact, a boy at all. “I’m sure he thinks too hard,” decided Maggie, who had habits of making up her mind at once about people.
“Well, there’s no one to be frightened about here,” she decided. And indeed there was not! It was as though they had all some especial reason for being nice to her. Perhaps they saw that she was not in her own world here. And yet they did not make her feel that. She drank in the differences with great gulps of appreciation, but it was not they who insisted.
Here were light and colour and space above all — rest. Nothing was about to happen, no threat over their heads that the roof would fall beneath one’s feet, that the floor would sink. No sudden catching of the breath at the opening of a door, no hesitation about climbing the stairs, no surveillance by the watching Thomas, no distant clanging of the Chapel bell. How strange they all seemed, looking back from this safe harbour. The aunts, the Warlocks, Thurston, Mr. Crashaw, Caroline — all of them. There the imagination set fire to every twig — here the imagination was not needed, because everything occurred before your eyes.
She did not figure it all out in so many words at once, but the contrast of the two worlds was there nevertheless. Why had she been so anxious, so nervous, so distressed? There was no need. Had she not known that this other world existed? Perhaps she had not. She must never again forget it ...
Katherine Mark was so kind and friendly, her voice so soft and her interest so eager, that Maggie felt that she could tell her anything. But their talk was not to come just yet — first there must be general conversation.
The clergyman with the white hair and the rosy face laughed a great deal in a schoolboy kind of way, and every time that he laughed his sister, who was like a pippin apple with her sunburnt cheeks, looked at him with protecting eyes.
“She looks after him in everything,” said Maggie to herself. He was called Paul by them all.
“He’s my cousin, you know, Miss Cardinal,” said Mrs. Mark. “And yet I scarcely ever see him. Isn’t it a shame? Grace makes everything so comfortable for him ...”
Grace smiled, well pleased.
“It’s Paul’s devotion to his parish ...” she said in calm, happy, self-assured voice, as though she’d never had a surprise in her life.
“I’m sure it isn’t either of those things,” thought Maggie to herself. “He’s lazy.”
Lazy but nice. She had never seen a clergyman so healthy, so happy so clean and so kind. She smiled across the table at him.
“Do you know Skeaton?” he asked her. Skeaton! Where had she heard of the place? Why, of course, it was Caroline!
“Only yesterday I heard of it for the first time,” she said. “A friend of mine knows some one there.”
“Beastly place,” said Mr. Mark. “Sand always blowing into your eyes.”
Mr. and Mrs. Trenchard got up to go.
He stood a moment holding Maggie’s hand. “If ever you come to Skeaton, Miss Cardinal,” he said, “we shall be delighted ...” His eyes she noticed were light blue like a baby’s. She felt that he liked her and would not forget her.
“Come, Paul,” said Miss Trenchard, rather sharply Maggie fancied.
Soon afterwards Philip departed. “Must finish that beastly thing,” he assured his wife.
“It’s an article,” Katherine Mark explained. “He’s always writing about politics. I hate them, so he pretends to hate them too. But he doesn’t really. He loves them.”
“I know nothing about politics,” said Maggie with profound truth. “Your husband must be very clever.”
“He’s better than that,” said Katherine with pride; “I hate perfect people, don’t you?”
“Oh, indeed I do!” said Maggie from the bottom of her heart. They then came to her particular business.
“I would like to get some work to do,” said Maggie, “that would make me independent. I have three hundred pounds of my own.”
“What can you do?” asked Katherine.
“I don’t know,” said Maggie.
“Can you shorthand and type?”
“No, I can’t,” said Maggie; “but I’ll learn.”
“Must you be independent soon?” asked Katherine. “Are you unhappy where you are?”
Maggie paused.
“Don’t tell me anything you oughtn’t to,” said Katherine.
“No,” answered Maggie. “It isn’t that exactly. I’m not happy at home, but I think that’s my fault. My aunts are very good. But I want to be free. It is all very religious where I am, and they want me to believe in their religion. I’m afraid I’m not religious at all. Then I don’t want to be dependent on people. I’m very ignorant. I know nothing about anything, and so long as I am kept with my aunts I shall never learn.”
She stopped abruptly. She had thought suddenly of Martin. His coming had altered everything. How could she say what she wanted her life to be until her relation to him were settled? Everything depended on that.
This sense of Martin’s presence silenced her. “If I can feel,” she said at last, “that I can ask your advice. I have nobody ... We all seem ... Oh! how can I make you understand properly! You never will have seen anything like our house. It is all so queer, so shut-up, away from everything. I’m like a prisoner ...”
And that is perhaps what she was like to Mrs. Mark, sitting there in her funny ill-fitting clothes, her anxious old-fashioned face as of a child aged long before her time. Katherine Mark, who had had, in her life, her own perplexities and sorrows, felt her heart warm to this strange isolated girl. She had needed in her own life at one time all her courage, and she had used it; she had never regretted the step that she had then taken. She believed therefore in courage ... Courage was eloquent in every movement of Maggie’s square reliant body.
“She could be braver than I have ever been,” she thought.
“Miss Cardinal,” she said, “I want you to come here whenever you can. You haven’t seen our boy, Tim, yet — one and a half — and there are so many things I want to show you. Will you count yourself a friend of the house?”
Maggie blushed and twisted her hands together.
“You’re very good,” she said, “but ... I don’t know ... perhaps you won’t li
ke me, or what I do.”
“I do like you,” said Katherine. “And if I like any one I don’t care what they do.”
“All the same,” said Maggie, “I don’t belong ... to your world, your life. I should shock you, I know. You might be sorry afterwards that you knew me. Supposing I broke away ...”
“But I broke away myself,” said Katherine, “it is sometimes the only thing to do. I made my mother, who had been goodness itself to me, desperately unhappy.”
“Why did you do that?” asked Maggie.
“Because I wanted to marry my husband.”
“Well, I love a man too,” said Maggie.
“Oh, I do hope you’ll be happy!” said Katherine. “As happy as I am.”
“No,” said Maggie, shaking her head, “I don’t expect to be happy.”
She seemed to herself as she said that to be hundreds of miles away from Katherine Mark and her easy life, the purple curtains and her amber light.
“Not happy but satisfied,” she said.
She saw that it was five minutes past six. “I must go,” she said.
When they said good-bye Katherine bent forward and kissed her.
“If ever, in your life. I can help in any way at all,” she said, “come to me.”
“I’ll do that,” promised Maggie. She coloured, and then herself bent forward and kissed Katherine. “I shall like to think of you — and all this—” she said and went.
She was let out into the outer world by the smiling maid-servant. Bryanston Square was dark with purple colour as though the purple curtains inside the house had been snipped off from a general curtained world. There was a star or two and some gaunt trees with black pointing fingers, and here a lighted window and there a shining doorway; behind it all the rumble of a world that disregarded love and death and all the Higher Catechism.