by Hugh Walpole
They came out of the theatre into lights and shadows and mists cabs and omnibuses and crowds of people ... Maggie clung to Martin’s arm. It seemed to her, dazzled for an instant, that a great are of white piercing light cut the black street and that in the centre of this arc a tree, painted green, stood, and round the tree figures, dark shapes, and odd shadows danced. She shaded her eyes with her hand. The long shining line of Shaftesbury Avenue ran out, from her feet, into thick clusters of silver lights. The tree had vanished and now there were policemen and ladies in hats and strange mysterious houses. She caught above it all, between the roofs, the pale flat river of the evening sky and in this river stars like golden buttons floated. The moon was there too, a round amber coin with the laughing face stamped upon it.
“What time is it?” she asked Martin.
“Half-past five,” he said. “How early the moon rises. It’s only climbing now. See the chimney’s tossing it about.”
“I must get home.”
“No, no.” He held her arm fiercely. “You must come to tea. That’s part of the programme. We have plenty of time before seven o’clock.” She knew that she ought to return. Something seemed to tell her, as she stood there, that now was the moment to break this off. But when his hand was on her arm, when he was so close to her, she could not leave him. She would have one hour more ... He took her across the street, down into darkness, up into light. Then they went into a shop, up some stairs, and were suddenly in a little room with a table with a cloth, a window looking out into the lamp-lit square, cherry-coloured curtains and gay hunting pictures on the walls. Martin pushed a bell in the wall and a stout waiter, perspiring, smiling, a napkin in his hand, came to the door. “Tea,” said Martin, and he vanished. “It’s all right,” he said, drawing her to a creaking wicker armchair near the empty fireplace. “No one will interrupt us. They know me here. I ordered the room yesterday.” Tea came, but she could not eat anything. In some strange way that moment in the theatre when he had pressed her hand had altered everything. She recognised in herself a new Maggie; she was excited with a thick burning excitement, she was almost sleepy with the strain of it and her cheeks were hot, but her throat icy cold. When she told him that she wasn’t hungry, he said, “I’m not either.” Then he added, not looking at her, “That fellow won’t be back for an hour.” He came and stood by her looking down on her. He bent forward over the chair and put his hands under her chin and pressed her face up towards his. But he did not kiss her. Then he took her hands and pulled her gently out of the chair, sat down on it himself, then, still very tenderly, put his arms round her and drew her down to him. She lay back against him, her cheek against his, his arms tight around her. He whispered to her again and again, “Darling ... Darling ... Darling.” She felt now so terribly part of him that she seemed to have lost all her own identity. His hands, softly, tenderly passed up and down her body, stroking her hair, her cheeks, her arms. Her mouth was against his cheek and she was utterly motionless, shivering a little sometimes and once her hand moved up and caught his and then moved away again. At last, as it seemed from an infinite distance, his voice came to her, speaking to her. “Maggie, darling,” he said, “don’t go back till late to-night. You can say that those people asked you to stay to dinner. Your aunts can’t do anything. Nothing can happen. Stay with me here and then later we’ll go and have dinner at a little place I know ... and then come back here ... come back here ... like this. Maggie, darling, say you will. You must. We mayn’t have another chance for so long. You’re coming to me afterwards. What does it matter, a week or two earlier? What does it matter, Maggie? Stay here. Let us love one another and have something to think about ... to remember ... to remember ... to remember ...” His voice seemed to slip away into infinity as voices in a dream do. She could not say anything because she was in a dream too. She could only feel his hand stroking her face. He seemed to take her silence for consent. He suddenly kissed her furiously, pressing her head back until it hurt. That woke her. She pushed his arms back and sprang up. Her hands were trembling. She shook her head. “No, Martin. No, not now.” “Why not?” He looked at her angrily from the chair. His face was altered, he was frowning, his eyes were dark. “I’m not going to stay now.” Her voice shook in spite of herself. With shaking hands she patted her dress. “Why not?” he asked again. “I’m not. I promised the aunts. Not now. It would spoil everything.” “Oh, very well.” He was furious with her. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Not now.” She felt that she would cry; tears flooded her eyes. “It’s been so lovely ... Martin ... Don’t look like that. Oh, I love you too much!” She broke off. With a sudden movement she fell at his feet; kneeling there, she drew his hands to her face, she kissed them, the palms of his hands over and over again. His anger suddenly left him. He put his arms round her and kissed her, first her eyes, then her cheeks, then, gently, her mouth. “All right,” he said. “Only I feel somehow ... I feel as though our time had come to an end.” “But it shan’t?” He turned upon her fiercely, held her hands, looked in her face. “Maggie, do you swear that you’ll love me always, whatever I am, whatever I do?” “I swear,” she answered, gazing into his eyes, “that I’ll love you always, whatever you are, whatever you do.” Then she went away, leaving him by the table, staring after her. In the street she saw that her chrysanthemum was in pieces, torn and scattered and destroyed. She slipped off the ring and put it into her pocket, then, with forebodings in her heart, as though she did indeed know that her good time was over, she turned towards home. She was right. Her good time was over. That night she was left alone. Martha let her in and, regarding her darkly, said nothing. The aunts also said nothing, sitting all the evening under the green shade of the lamp in the drawing-room, Aunt Anne reading a pamphlet, Aunt Elizabeth sewing. Maggie pretended to read but she saw no words. She saw only the green lamp like a dreadful bird suspended there and Aunt Anne’s chiselled sanctity. Over and over again she reasoned with herself. There was no cause for panic. Nothing had happened to change things — and yet — and yet everything was changed. Everything had been changed from that moment when Martin pressed her hand in the theatre. Everything! ... Danger now of every sort. She could be brave, she could meet anything if she were only sure of Martin. But he too seemed strange to her. She remembered his dark look, his frown when she had refused him. Oh, this loneliness, this helplessness. If she could be with him, beside him, she would fear nothing. That night, the first faint suspicion of jealousy, of doubt, an agonising dart of pain at the knowledge of what it would mean to her now if he left her, stirred in her breast. This room was stifling. She got up from her chair, went to the window, looked out between the thick curtains at the dark deserted street. “What is it, Maggie?” “Nothing, Aunt Anne.” “You’re very restless, dear.” “It’s close. May I open the door?” “A little, dear.” She opened the door and then sat there hearing the Armed Men sway ever so slightly, tap, tap, against the wall in the passage. That night she scarcely slept at all, only tumbling into sudden nightmare dreams when something had her by the throat and Martin was not there. In the morning as soon as she could escape she hurried to Piccadilly. Martin was waiting for her. When she saw him she realised at once that her good time was indeed over. His face was white and strained. He scarcely looked at her but stared anxiously up and down the street.
“What is it?” she asked breathlessly. “Look here, Maggie,” he began, still scarcely looking at her. “I must get back at once. I only came to tell you that we must drop our meetings for the next day or two — until it’s blown over.”
“Until what’s blown over,” she asked him.
“It’s my father. I don’t know what exactly has happened. They’ll none of them tell me, damn them. It’s Caroline Smith. She’s been talking to Amy about you and me. I know that because of what Amy said about you at breakfast this morning.”
“What did she say?”
“She wouldn’t speak out. She hinted. But she admitted that Caroline Smith had told her somet
hing. But she doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except father. He mustn’t be excited just now. His heart’s so bad. Any little thing ... We must wait.”
She saw that he was scarcely realising her at all. She choked down all questions that concerned themselves. She simply agreed, nodding her head.
He did look at her then, smiling as he used to do.
“It’s awfully hard on us. It won’t be for more than a day or two. But I must put things right at home or it will be all up. I don’t care for the others, of course, but if anything happened to father through me ...” He told her to write to the Charing Cross post-office. He would do the same. In a day or two it would be all right. He pressed her hand and was gone.
When she looked about her the street seemed quite empty although it was full of people. She threw up her head. She wouldn’t be beaten by anybody ... only, it was lonely going back to the house and all of them ... alone ... without Martin.
She cried a little on her way home. But they were the last tears she shed.
CHAPTER IX
THE INSIDE SAINTS
Maggie, when she was nearly home, halted suddenly. She stopped as when on the threshold of a room that should be empty one sees waiting a stranger. If at the end of all this she should lose Martin! ...
There was the stranger who had come to her now and would not again depart. She recognised the sharp pain, the almost unconscious pulling back on the sudden edge of a dim pit, as something that would always be with her now — always. One knows that in the second stage of a great intimacy one’s essential loneliness is only redoubled by close companionship. One asks for so much more, and then more and more, but that final embrace is elusive and no physical contact can surrender it. But she was young and did not know that yet. All she knew was that she would have to face these immediate troubles alone, that she would not see him for perhaps a week, that she would not know what his people at home were doing, and that she must not let any of these thoughts come up into her brain. She must keep them all back: if she did not, she would tumble into some foolish precipitate action.
When she reached home she was obstinate and determined. At once she found that something was the matter. During luncheon the two aunts sat like statues (Aunt Elizabeth a dumpy and squat one). Aunt Anne’s aloofness was coloured now with a very human anger. Maggie realised with surprise that she had never seen her angry before. She had been indignant, disapproving, superior, forbidding, but never angry. The eyes were hard now, not with religious reserve but simply with bad temper. The mist of anger dimmed the room, it was in the potatoes and the cold dry mutton, especially was it in the hard pallid knobs of cheese. And Aunt Elizabeth, although she was frightened by her sister’s anger on this occasion, shared in it. She pursed her lips at Maggie and moved her fat, podgy hand as though she would like to smack Maggie’s cheeks.
Maggie was frightened — really frightened. The line of bold independence was all very well, but now risks were attached to it. If she swiftly tossed her head and told her aunts that she would walk out of the house they might say “Walk!” and that would precipitate Martin’s crisis. She knew from the way he had looked at her that morning that his thoughts were with his father, and it showed that she had travelled through the first stage of her intimacy with him, that she could not trust him to put her before his own family troubles. At all costs she must keep him safe through these next difficult weeks, and the best way to keep him safe was herself to remain quietly at home.
Of all this she thought as she swallowed the hostile knobs of cheese and drank the tepid, gritty coffee.
She followed her aunts upstairs, and was not at all surprised when Aunt Elizabeth, with an agitated murmur, vanished into higher regions. She followed Aunt Anne into the drawing-room.
Aunt Anne sat in the stiff-backed tapestry chair by the fire. Maggie stood in front of her. She was disarmed at that all-important moment by her desperate sensation of defenceless loneliness. It was as though half of herself — the man-half of herself — had left her. She tried to summon her pluck but there was no pluck there. She could only want Martin, over and over again inside herself. Had any one been, ever so hopelessly ALONE before?
“Maggie, I am angry,” said Aunt Anne. She said it as though she meant it. Amazing how human this strange aloof creature had become. As though some coloured saint bright with painted wood and tinsel before whom one stood in reverence slipped down suddenly and with fingers of flesh and blood struck one’s face. Her cheeks were flushed, her beautiful hands were no longer thin but were hard and active.
“What have I done, aunt?” asked Maggie.
“You have not treated us fairly. My sister and I have done everything for you. You have not made it especially easy for us in any way, but we have tried to give you what you wanted. You have repaid is with ingratitude.”
She paused, but Maggie said nothing. She went on:
“Lately — these last three weeks — we have given you complete liberty. I advised that strongly against my sister’s opinion because I thought you weren’t happy. You didn’t make friends amongst our friends, and I thought you should have the chance of finding some who were younger and gayer than we were. Then I thought we could trust you. You have many faults, but I believed that you were honest.”
“I am honest!” Maggie broke in. Her aunt went on:
“You have used the liberty we gave you during these weeks to make yourself the talk of our friends. You have been meeting Mr. Martin Warlock secretly every day. You have been alone with him in the Park and at the theatre. I know that you are young and very ignorant. You could not have known that Martin Warlock is a man with whom no girl who respects herself would be seen alone—”
“That is untrue!” Maggie flamed out.
“ — and,” went on Aunt Anne, “we would have forgiven that. It is your deceit to ourselves that we cannot forget. Day after day you were meeting him and pretending that you went to your other friends. I am disappointed in you, bitterly disappointed. I saw from the first that you did not mean to care for us, now, as well, you have disgraced us—”
Maggie began: “Yes, I have been seeing Martin. I didn’t think it wrong — I don’t now. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid that you would stop me—”
“Then that shows that you knew it was wrong.”
“No, Aunt Anne — only that you would think it was wrong. I can only go by myself, by what I feel is wrong I mean. I’ve always had to, all my life. It would have been no good doing anything else at home, because father—”
She pulled herself up. She was not going to defend herself or ask for pity. She said, speaking finally:
“Yes, I have been out with Martin every day. I went to the theatre with him, too, and also had tea with him.”
Maggie could see Aunt Anne’s anger rising higher and higher like water in a tube. Her voice was hard when she spoke again — she pronounced judgment:
“We see now that you were right when you said that you had better leave us. You are free to go as soon as you wish. You have, of course, your money, but if you care to stay with us until you have found some work you must now obey our rules. While you remain with us you must not go out unless my sister or I accompany you.” Then her voice changed, softening a little. She suddenly raised her hands in a gesture of appeal: “Oh, Maggie, Maggie, turn to God. You have rebelled against Him. You have refused to listen to His voice. The end of that can be only misery. He loves, but He also judges. Even now, within a day, a week, He may come with judgment. Turn to Him, Maggie, not because I tell you but because of the Truth. Pray with me now that He may help you and give you strength.”
Because she felt that she had indeed treated them badly and must do just now what they wished, she knelt down on the drawing-room carpet. Aunt Anne also knelt down, her figure stiff like iron, her raised hands once again delicate and ghost-like.
“O Lord God,” she prayed, “this Thy servant comes to Thee and prays that Thou wilt give her strength in her struggle with the E
vil One. She has been tempted and is weak, but Thou art strong to save and wilt not despise the least of these Thy children.”
“Come, O Lord the Father, and take Thy daughter into Thy loving care, and when Thou comest, in all Thy splendour, to redeem the world, I pray that Thou wilt find her waiting for Thee in holiness and meekness of heart.”
They rose. Maggie’s knees were sore with the stiff carpet. The family group watched her from the wall ironically.
She saw that in spite of the prayer Aunt Anne had not forgiven her. She stood away from her, and although her voice now was not so hard, it had lost altogether the tender note that it used to have.
“Now, Maggie, you must promise us that you will not see Martin Warlock again.”
Maggie flushed. “No, aunt, I can’t promise that.”
“Then we must treat you as a prisoner whilst you are with us.”
“If he wants to see me I must see him.”
They looked at one another. Aunt Anne was like a man just then.
“Very well. Until you give us your promise we must see ourselves that you do not disgrace us.”
There was no more to be said. It was as though a heavy iron door had rolled to.
Aunt Anne passed Maggie and left the room.
Well, then, there was the situation. As she remained in the empty room she felt relief because now she knew where she was.
If only she could keep in touch with Martin then nothing else at all mattered. But that must be, otherwise she felt that she would rush at them all and tread them down and break doors and windows to get at him.