by Hugh Walpole
She no longer hated Aunt Anne, but she did not intend to live with her any more. So soon as she was well enough she would go. That moment of physical contact when Aunt Anne had held her back made any more relation between them impossible. There was now a great gulf fixed.
The loneliness, the sense of desperate loss, above all the agonising longing for Martin, his step, his voice, his smile — she faced all these and accepted them as necessary companions now on her life’s journey, but she did not intend to allow them to impede progress. She wondered now about everybody. Her own experience had shown her what strange and wonderful things occur to all human beings, and, in the face of this, how could one hate or grudge or despise? She had a fellowship now with all humanity.
But she was as ignorant about life as ever. The things that now she wanted to know! About Aunt Anne, for instance. How had she been affected by Mr. Warlock’s death and the disappointment of her expectations? The Chapel now apparently was to be taken over by Thurston, who had married Amy Warlock and was full of schemes and enterprises. Maggie knew that the aunts went now very seldom to Chapel, and the Inside Saints were apparently in pieces. Was Aunt Anne utterly broken by all this? She did not seem to be so. She seemed to be very much as she had been, except that she was in her room now a great deal. Her health appeared, on the whole, to be better than it had been. And what was Aunt Elizabeth thinking? And Martha? And Miss Avies? And Caroline Smith? ...
No, she must get out into the world and discover these things for herself. She did not know how the way of escape would come, but she was certain of its arrival.
It arrived, and through her third visitor. Her third visitor was Mrs. Mark.
When Katherine Mark came in Maggie was writing to Uncle Mathew. She put aside her writing-pad with a little exclamation of surprise. Mrs. Mark, the very last person in all the world whom she had expected to see! As she saw her come in she had a swift intuition that this was Destiny now that was dealing with her, and that a new scene, involving every sort of new experience and adventure, was opening before her. More than ever before she realised how far Katherine Mark was from the world in which she, Maggie, had during all these months been living. Katherine Mark was Real — Real in her beautiful quiet clothes, in her assurance, her ease, the sense that she gave that she knew life and love and business and all the affairs of men at first hand, not only seen through a mist of superstition and ignorance, or indeed not seen at all.
“This is what I want,” something in Maggie called to her.
“This will make me busy and quiet and sensible — at last—”
When Katherine Mark sat down and took her hand for a moment, smiling at her in the kindliest way, Maggie felt as though she had known her all her life.
“Oh! I’m so glad you’ve come!” she cried spontaneously; and then, as though she felt she’d gone too far, she blushed and drew back.
But Katherine held her hand fast.
“I wrote,” she said, “some weeks ago to you, and your aunt answered the letter saying you were very ill. Then, as I heard nothing of you, I was anxious and came to see what had happened. You’ve not kept your word, Maggie, you know. We were to have been great friends, and you’ve never been near me.”
At the use of her Christian name Maggie blushed with pleasure.
“I couldn’t come,” she said. “I didn’t want to until — until — until some things had settled themselves.”
“Well — and they have?” asked Katherine.
“Yes — they have,” said Maggie.
“What’s been the matter?” asked Katherine.
“I was worried about something, and then I was ill,” said Maggie.
“And you’re not worried now?” said Katherine.
“I’m not going to give in to it, anyway,” said Maggie. “As soon as I’m well, I’m off. I’ll find some work somewhere.”
“I’ve got a plan,” said Katherine. “It came into my head the moment I saw you sitting there. Will you come and stay with us for a little?”
That sense that Maggie had had when she saw Katherine of fate having a hand in all of this deepened now and coloured her thoughts, so that she could feel no surprise but only a curious instinct that she had been through all this scene before.
“Stay with you!” she cried. “Oh, I should love to!”
“That’s good,” said Katherine. “Your aunts won’t mind, will they?”
“They can’t keep me,” said Maggie. “I’m free. But they won’t want to. Our time together is over—”
“I’ll come and fetch you to-morrow,” said Katherine. “You shall stay with us until you’re quite well, and then we’ll find some work for you.”
“Why are you good to me like this?” Maggie asked.
“I’m not good to you,” Katherine answered, laughing. “It’s simply selfish. It will be lovely for me having you with me.”
“Oh, you don’t know,” said Maggie, throwing up her head.
“No, I don’t think I’ll come. I’m frightened. I’m not what you think. I’m untidy and careless and can’t talk to strangers. Perhaps I’ll lose you altogether as a friend if I come.”
“You’ll never do that,” said Katherine, suddenly bending forward and kissing her. “I don’t change about people. It’s because I haven’t any imagination, Phil says.”
“I shall make mistakes,” Maggie said. “I’ve never been anywhere. But I don’t care. I can look after myself.”
The thought of her three hundred pounds (which were no longer three hundred) encouraged her. She kissed Katherine.
“I don’t change either,” she said.
She had a strange conversation with Aunt Anne that night, strange as every talk had always been because of things left unsaid. They faced one another across the fireplace like enemies who might have been lovers; there had been from the very first moment of this meeting a romantic link between them which had never been defined. They had never had it out with one another, and they were not going to have it out now; but Maggie, who was never sentimental, wondered at the strange mixture of tenderness, pity, affection, irritation and hostility that she felt.
“Aunt Anne, I’m going away to-morrow,” said Maggie.
“To-morrow!” Aunt Anne looked up with her strange hostile arrogance. “Oh no, Maggie. You’re not well yet.”
“Mrs. Mark,” said Maggie, “the lady I told you about, is coming in a motor to fetch me. She will take me straight to her house, and then I shall go to bed.”
Aunt Anne said nothing.
“You know that it’s better for me to go,” said Maggie. “We can’t live together any more after what happened. You and Aunt Elizabeth have been very very good to me, but you know now that I’m a disappointment. I haven’t ever fitted into the life here. I never shall.”
“The life here is over,” said Aunt Anne. “Everything is over — the house is dead. Of course you must go. If you feel anger with me now or afterwards remember that I have lost every hope or desire I ever had. I don’t want your pity. I want no one’s pity. I wanted once your affection, but I wanted it on my own terms. That was wrong. I do not want your affection any longer; you were never the girl I thought you. You’re a strange girl, Maggie, and you will have, I am afraid, a very unhappy life.”
“No, I will not,” said Maggie. “I will have a happy life.”
“That is for God to say,” said Aunt Anne.
“No, it is not,” said Maggie. “I can make my own happiness. God can’t touch it, if I don’t let Him.”
“Maggie, you’re blasphemous,” said Aunt Anne, but not in anger.
“I’m not,” said Maggie. “When I came here first I didn’t believe in God, but now — I’m not sure. There’s something strange, which may be God for all I know. I’m going to find out. If He has the doing of everything then He’s taken away all I cared for, and I’m not going to give Him the satisfaction of seeing that it hurt; if He didn’t do it, then it doesn’t matter.”
“You’ll bel
ieve in Him before you die, Maggie,” said Aunt Anne. “It’s in you, and you won’t escape it. I thought it was I who was to bring you to Him, but I was going too fast. The Lord has His own time. You’ll come to Him afterwards.”
“Oh,” cried Maggie. “I’m so glad I’m going somewhere where it won’t be always religion, where they’ll think of something else than the Lord and His Coming. I want real life, banks and motor-cars and shops and clothes and work ...”
She stopped suddenly.
Aunt Anne was doing what Maggie had never seen her do before, even in the worst bouts of her pain — she was crying ... cold solitary lonely tears that crept slowly, reluctantly down her thin cheeks.
“I meant to do well. In everything I have done ill ... Everything has failed in my hands—”
Once again, as long before at St. Dreot’s, Maggie could do nothing.
There was a long miserable silence, then Aunt Anne got up and went away.
Next day Katherine came in a beautiful motor-car to fetch Maggie. Maggie had packed her few things. Bound her neck next her skin was the ring with three pearls ...
She said good-bye to the house: her bedroom beneath which the motor-omnibuses clanged, the sitting-room with the family group, the passage with the Armed Men, the dark hall with the green baize door ... then good-bye to Aunt Elizabeth (two kisses), Aunt Anne (one kiss), Martha, Thomas the cat, the parrot ... all, everything, good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!
May I never see any of you again. Never, never, never, never! ...
She was helped into the car, rugs were wrapped round her, there was a warm cosy smell of rich leather, a little clock ticked away, a silver vase with red and blue flowers winked at her, and Katherine was there close beside her ...
Never again, never again! And yet how strange, as they turned the corner of the street down into the Strand, Maggie felt a sudden pang of regret, of pathos, of loneliness, as though she were leaving something that had loved her dearly, and leaving it without a word of friendliness.
“Poor dear!” She wanted to return, to tell it ... to tell it what? She had made her choice. She was plunging now into the other half of the world, and plunging not quite alone, because she was taking Martin with her.
“I do hope you won’t mind, dear,” said Katherine. “My cousin Paul — the clergyman you met once — is staying with us. He and his sister. No one else.”
“Oh, I shan’t mind,” said Maggie. Her fingers, inside her blouse, tightly clutched the little pearl ring.
CHAPTER II
PLUNGE INTO THE OTHER HALF
For a week Maggie was so comfortable that she could think of nothing but that. It must be remembered that she had never before known what comfort was, never at St. Dreot’s, never at Aunt Anne’s, and these two places had been the background of all her life.
She had never conceived of the kind of way that she now lived. Her bedroom was so pretty that it made her almost cry to look at it: the wall-paper scattered with little rosy trees, the soft pink cretonne on the chairs, the old bureau with a sheet of glass covering its surface that was her dressing-table, the old gold mirror — all these things were wonders indeed. She was ordered to have breakfast in bed; servants looked after her with a kindliness and ease and readiness to help that she had never dreamed of as possible. The food was wonderful; there was the motor ready to take her for a drive in the afternoon, and there was the whole house at her service, soft and cosy and ordered so that it seemed to roll along upon its own impulse without any human agency.
“I believe if every one went away and left it,” she thought, “it would go on in exactly the same way.”
Figures gradually took their places in front of this background. The principals at first were Katherine and Philip, Henry and Millicent, Katherine’s brother and sister, Mr. Trenchard senior, Katherine’s father, Lady Rachel Seddon, Katherine’s best friend, and Mr. Faunder, Katherine’s uncle. She saw at once that they all revolved around Katherine; if Katherine were not there they would not hold together at all. They were all so different — so different and yet so strangely alike. There was, for instance, Millicent Trenchard, whom Maggie liked best of them all after Katherine. Millie was a young woman of twenty-one, pretty, gay, ferociously independent, enthusiastic about one thing after another, with hosts of friends, male and female, none of whom she took very seriously. The love of her life, she told Maggie almost at once, was Katherine. She would never love any one, man or woman, so much again. She lived with her mother and father in an old house in Westminster, and Maggie understood that there had been some trouble about Katherine’s marriage, so that, although it happened three years ago, Mrs. Trenchard would not come to see Katherine and would not allow Katherine to come and see her.
Then there was Henry, a very strange young man. He was at Cambridge and said to be very clever. He did indeed seem to lead a mysterious life of his own and paid very little attention to Maggie, asking her once whether she did not think The Golden Ass wonderful, and what did she think of Petronius; and when Maggie laughed and said that she was glad to say she never read anything, he left her in an agitated horror. Lady Rachel Seddon was very grand and splendid, and frightened Katherine. She was related to every kind of duke and marquis, and although that fact did not impress Maggie in the least, it did seem to remove Lady Rachel into quite another world.
But they were all in another world — Maggie discovered that at once. They had, of course, every sort of catch-word and allusion and joke that no one but themselves and the people whom they brought into the house understood; Katherine was kindness itself. Philip too (he seemed to Maggie a weak, amiable young man) took a lot of trouble about her, but they did not belong to her nor she to them.
“And why should they?” said Maggie to herself. “I must look on it as though I were staying at a delightful hotel and were going on with my journey very soon.”
There was somebody, however, who did not belong any more than Maggie did, and very soon he became Maggie’s constant companion — this was the Rev. Paul Trenchard, Katherine’s cousin.
From the very moment months ago, when Maggie and he had first met in Katherine’s drawing-room, they had been friends. He had liked her, Maggie felt, at once. She on her side was attracted by a certain childlike simplicity and innocence. This very quality, she soon saw, moved the others, Philip and Henry and Mr. Trenchard senior, to derision. They did not like the Rev. Paul. They chaffed him, and he was very easily teased, because he was not clever and did not see their jokes. This put Maggie up in arms in his defence at once. But they had all the layman’s distrust of a parson. They were all polite to him, of course, and Maggie discovered that in this world politeness was of the very first importance, so that you really never said what you thought nor did what you wanted to. They frankly could not understand why Katherine asked the parson to stay, but because they loved Katherine they were as nice to him as their natures would allow them to be. Paul did not apparently notice that they put him outside their life. He was always genial, laughed a great deal when there WAS no reason to laugh at all, and told simple little stories in whose effect he profoundly believed. He was supported in his confidence by his sister Grace, who obviously adored him. She too was “outside” the family, but she seemed to be quite happy telling endless stories of Paul’s courage and cleverness and popularity. She did indeed believe that Skeaton-on-Sea, where Paul had his living, was the hub of the universe, and this amused all the Trenchard family very much indeed. It must not be supposed that Paul and his sister were treated unkindly. They were shown the greatest courtesy and hospitality, but Maggie knew that that was only because it was the Trenchard tradition to do so, and not from motives of affection or warmth of heart.
They could be warm-hearted; it was wonderful to see the way that they all adored Katherine, and they had many friends for whom they would do anything, but the Rev. Paul seemed to them frankly an ass, and they would be glad when he went away.
He did not seem to Maggie an ass. She thought h
im the kindest person she had ever known, kinder even than Katherine, because with Katherine there was the faintest suspicion of patronage; no, not of patronage — that was unfair ... but of an effort to put herself in exactly Maggie’s place so that she might understand perfectly what were Maggie’s motives. With Paul Trenchard there was no effort, no deliberate slipping out of one world into another one. He was frankly delighted to tell Maggie everything — all about Skeaton-on-Sea and its delights, about the church and its marvellous east window, about the choir and the difficulties with the choir-boys and the necessity for repairing the organ, about the troubles with the churchwardens, especially one Mr. Bellows, who, in his cantankerous and dyspeptic objections to everything that any one proposed, became quite a lively figure to Maggie’s imagination, about the St. John’s Brotherhood which had been formed to keep the “lads” out of the public-houses and was doing so well, about the Shakespeare Reading Society and a Mrs. Tempest (who also became a live figure in Maggie’s brain), “a born tragedian” and wonderful as Lady Macbeth and Katherine of Aragon. Skeaton slowly revealed itself to Maggie as a sunny sparkling place, with glittering sea, shining sand, and dark cool woods, full of kindliness, too, and friendship and good-humour. Paul and Grace Trenchard seemed to be the centre of this sunshine. How heartily Paul laughed as he recounted some of the tricks and escapades of his “young scamps.” “Dear fellows,” he would say, “I love them all ...” and Grace sat by smiling and nodding her head and beaming upon her beloved brother.
To Maggie, fresh from the dark and confused terrors of the Chapel, it was all marvellous. Here was rest indeed, here, with Martin cherished warmly in her heart, she might occupy herself with duties and interests. Here surely she would be useful to “somebody.” She heard a good deal of an old Mr. Toms, “a little queer in his head, poor man,” who seemed to figure in the outskirts of Skeaton society as a warning and a reassurance. (“No one in Skeaton thinks of him in any way but tenderly.”) Maggie wondered whether he might not want looking after ...