by Hugh Walpole
The thought gradually occurred to her that this kindly genial clergyman might perhaps find her some work in Skeaton. He even himself hinted at something ... She might be some one’s secretary or housekeeper.
About Grace Trenchard Maggie was not quite so sure. She was kindness itself and liked to hold Maggie’s hand and pat it — but there was no doubt at all that she was just a little bit tiresome. Maggie rebuked herself for thinking this, but again and again the thought arose. Grace was in a state of perpetual wonder, everything amazed her. You would not think to look at her flat broad placidity that she was a creature of excitement, and it might be that her excitement was rather superficial. She would say: “Why! Just fancy, Maggie! ... To-day’s Tuesday!” Then you wondered what was coming next and nothing came at all. She had endless stories about her adventures in the streets of London, and these stories were endless because of all the details that must be fitted in, and then the details slipped out of her grasp and winked at her maliciously as they disappeared. The fact was perhaps that she was not very clever, but then Maggie wasn’t very clever either, so she had no right to criticise Miss Trenchard, who was really as amiable as she could be. Henry Trenchard said once to Maggie in his usual scornful way:
“Oh, Grace! ... She’s the stupidest woman in Skeaton, which means the stupidest woman in the world.”
The Trenchards, Maggie thought, were rather given to scorning every one save themselves. Even Philip, who was not a Trenchard, had caught the habit. Katherine, of course, despised no one and liked every one, but that was rather tiresome too.
In fact at the end of her first week Maggie thought that as soon as possible she would find a room for herself somewhere and start to earn her living. She discovered that she was developing a new sensitiveness. When she was living with the aunts she had not minded very seriously the criticisms made upon her; she had indeed been disappointed when Aunt Anne had not admired her new dress, and she had hated Amy Warlock’s rudeness, but that was because Martin had been involved. This new sensitiveness worried her; she hated to care whether people laughed at the way she came into a room or whether she expressed foolish opinions about books and pictures. She had always said just what she thought, but now, before Philip’s kindly attention and Mr. Trenchard senior’s indulgence (he wrote books and articles in the papers), she hated her ignorance. Paul Trenchard knew frankly nothing about Art. “I know what I like,” he said, “and that’s enough for me.” He liked Watts’s pictures and In Memoriam and Dickens, and he heard The Messiah once a year in London if he could leave his parish work. He laughed about it all. “The souls of men! The souls of men!” he would say. “That is what I’m after, Miss Cardinal. You’re not going to catch them with the latest neurotic novel, however well it’s written.”
Oh, he was kind to her! He was kinder and kinder and kinder. She told him everything — except about Martin. She told him all about her life at St. Dreot’s and her father and Uncle Mathew, the aunts and the Chapel.
He was frankly shocked by the Chapel. “That’s not the way to get into heaven,” he said. “We must be more patient than that. The daily round, the daily task, that’s the kind.”
His physical presence began to pervade all her doings. He was not handsome, but so clean, so rosy, and so strong. No mystery about him, no terrors, no invasions from the devil. Everything was clear and certain. He knew just where he was and exactly whither he was going. One afternoon, when they were out in the motor together, he took Maggie’s hand under the rug and he held it so calmly, so firmly, with so kindly a benevolence that she could not be frightened or uncomfortable. He was like a large friendly brother ...
One day he called her Maggie. He blushed and laughed. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “It slipped out. I caught it from Katherine.”
“Oh, please, ... never mind,” she answered. “Miss Cardinal’s so stiff.”
“Then you must call me Paul,” he said.
A little conversation that Maggie had after this with Millicent showed her in sharp relief exactly where she stood in relation to the Trenchard family. They had been out in the motor together. Millie had been shopping and now they were rolling back through the Park.
“Are you happy with us, Maggie?” Millicent suddenly asked.
“Very happy,” Maggie answered.
“Well, I hope you are,” said Millicent. “I don’t think that as a family we’re very good at making any one happy except ourselves. I think we’re very selfish.”
“No, I don’t think you’re selfish,” said Maggie, “but I think you’re sufficient for yourselves. I don’t fancy you really want any one from outside.”
“No, I don’t think the others do. I do though. You don’t suppose I’m going to stay in the Trenchard bosom for ever, do you? I’m not, I assure you. But what you’ve said means that you don’t really feel at home with us.”
“I don’t think I want to feel at home with you,” Maggie answered. “I don’t belong to any of you. Contrast us, for instance. You’ve got everything — good looks, money, cleverness, position. You can get what you like out of life. I’ve got nothing. I’m plain, poor, awkward, uneducated — and yet you know I wouldn’t change places with any one. I’d rather be myself than any one alive.”
“Yes, you would,” said Millicent, nodding her head. “That’s you all over. I felt it the moment you came into the house. You’re adventurous. We’re not. Katherine was adventurous for a moment when she married Philip, but she soon slipped back again. But you’ll do just what you want to always.”
“I shall have to,” said Maggie, laughing. “There’s no one else to do it for me. It isn’t only that I don’t belong to you — I’ve never belonged to any one, only one person — and he’s gone now. I belong to him — and he’ll never come back.”
“Were you frightfully in love?” asked Millie, deeply interested.
“Yes,” said Maggie.
“He oughtn’t to have gone away like that,” said Millicent.
“Yes, he ought,” said Maggie. “He was quite right. But don’t let’s bother about that. I’ve got to find some place now where I can work. The worst of it is I’m so ignorant. But there must be something that I ran do.”
“There’s Paul,” said Millie.
“What do you mean?” asked Maggie.
“Oh, he cares like anything for you. You must have noticed. It began after the first time he met you. He was always asking about you. Of course every one’s noticed it.”
“Cares for me,” Maggie repeated.
“Yes, of course. He’s wanted to marry for a long time. Tired of Grace bossing him, I expect. That doesn’t sound very polite to you, but I know that he cares for you apart from that — for yourself, I mean. And I expect Grace is tired of housekeeping.”
Maggie’s feelings were very strange. Why should he care about her? Did she want him to care? A strange friendly feeling stole about her heart. She was not alone then, after all. Some one wanted her, wanted her so obviously that every one had noticed it — did not want her as Martin had wanted her, against his own will and judgment. If he did offer her his home what would she feel?
There was rest there, rest and a real home, a home that she had never in all her life known. Of course she did not love him in the least. His approach did not make her pulses beat a moment faster, she did not long for him to come when he was not there — but he wanted her! That was the great thing. He wanted her!
“Of course if he asked you, you wouldn’t really think of marrying him?” said Millicent.
“I don’t know,” said Maggie slowly.
“What! Marry him and live in Skeaton!” Millicent was frankly amazed. “Why, Skeaton’s awful, and the people in it are awful, and Grace is awful. In the summer it’s all nigger-minstrels and bathing-tents, and in the winter there isn’t a soul—” Millicent shivered.
Maggie smiled. “Of course it seems dull to you, but my life’s been very different. It hasn’t been very exciting, and if I could really help him�
�” she broke off. “I do like him,” she said. “He’s the kindest man I’ve ever met. Of course he seems dull to you who have met all kinds of brilliant people. I hate brilliant people.”
The car was in Bryanston Square. Just before it stopped Millie bent over and kissed Maggie.
“I think you’re a darling,” she said.
But Millie didn’t think Maggie “a darling” for long — that is, she did not think about her at all for long; none of the family did.
So quiet was Maggie, so little in any one’s way that, at the end of a fortnight, she made no difference to any one in the house. She was much better now, looking a different person, colour in her cheeks and light in her eyes. During her illness they had cut her hair and this made her look more than ever like a boy. She wore her plain dark dresses, black and dark blue; they never quite fitted and, with her queer odd face, her high forehead, rather awkward mouth, and grave questioning eyes she gave you the impression that she had been hurried into some disguise and was wearing it with discomfort but amusement. Some one who met her at the Trenchards at this time said of her: “What a funny girl! She’s like a schoolboy dressed up to play a part in the school speeches.” Of course she was not playing a part, no one could have been more entirely natural and honest, but she was odd, strange, out of her own world, and every one felt it.
It was, perhaps, this strangeness that attracted Paul Trenchard. He was, above everything, a kindly man-kindly, perhaps a little through laziness, but nevertheless moved always by distress or misfortune in others. Maggie was not distressed — she was quite cheerful and entirely unsentimental — nevertheless she had been very ill, was almost penniless, had had some private trouble, was an orphan, had no friends save two old aunts, and was amazingly ignorant of the world.
This last was, perhaps, the thing that struck him most of all. He, too, was ignorant of the world, but he didn’t know that, and he was amazed at the things that Maggie brushed aside as unimportant. He found that he was beginning to think of her as “my little heathen.” His attitude was the same as that of a good missionary discovering a naked but trusting native.
The thought of training this virgin mind was delightful to him.
He liked her quaintness, and one day suddenly, to his own surprise, when they were alone in the drawing-room, he kissed her, a most chaste kiss, gently on the forehead.
“Oh. my dear child—” he said in a kind of dismay.
She looked up at him with complete confidence. So gentle a kiss had it been that it had been no more than a pressure of the hand.
A few days later Katherine spoke to her. She came up to her bedroom just as Maggie was beginning to undress. Maggie stood in front of the glass, her evening frock off, brushing her short thick hair before the glass.
“Have you made any plans yet, dear?” asked Katherine.
Maggie shook her head.
“No.” she said. “Not yet.”
Katherine hesitated.
“I’ve got a confession to make,” she said at last.
Maggie turned to look at her with her large childish eyes.
“Oh, I do hope you’ve done something wrong,” she said, laughing, “something really bad that I should have to ‘overlook.’”
“What do you mean?” asked Katherine.
Maggie only said: “We’d be more on a level then.”
“I don’t think it’s anything very bad. But the truth is, Maggie, that I didn’t ask you here only for my own pleasure and to make you well. There was a third reason.”
“I know,” said Maggie; “Paul.”
“My dear!” said Katherine, amazed. “How did you guess? I never should have done.”
“Paul’s asked you to find out whether I like him,” said Maggie.
“Yes,” said Katherine.
“Well, I do like him.” said Maggie.
“Don’t think that I’ve been unfair,” said Katherine. They were sitting now side by side on Maggie’s bed and Katherine’s hand was on Maggie’s knee. “I’ll tell you exactly how it happened. Paul was interested in you from the moment that he saw you at my house ever so long ago. He asked ever so many questions about you, and the next time he stayed he wanted me to write and ask you to come and stay. Well, I didn’t. I knew from what you told me that you cared for somebody else, and I didn’t want to get Paul really fond of you if it was going to be no good. You see, I’ve known Paul for ages. He’s nearly ten years older than I, but he used to come and stay with us at Garth, when he was at Cambridge and before he was a clergyman.”
“I’m very fond of him. I know the others think he’s stupid simply because he doesn’t know the things that they do, but he’s good and kind and honest, and just exactly what he seems to be.”
“I like him,” repeated Maggie, nodding her head.
“He’s been wanting to be married,” went on Katherine, “for some time. I’m going to tell you everything so that I shall have been perfectly fair. Grace wants him to be married too. All her life she’s looked after him and he’s always done exactly what she told him. He’s rather lazy and it’s not hard for some one to get an influence over him. Well, she’s not really a very good manager. She thinks she is, but she isn’t. She arranges things and wants things to stay just where she puts them, but she arranges all the wrong unnecessary things. Still, it’s easy to criticise, and I’m not a very good manager myself. I think she’s growing rather tired of it and would like some one to take it off her hands. Of course Paul must marry the right person, some one whom she can control and manage, and some one who won’t transplant her in Paul’s affection. That’s her idea. But it’s all nonsense, of course. You can’t have your cake and eat it. She simply doesn’t understand what marriage is like. When Paul marries she’ll learn more about life in a month than she’s learnt in all her days. Well, Maggie, dear, she thinks you’re just the girl for Paul. She thinks she can do what she likes with you. She thinks you’re nice, of course, but she’s going to ‘form’ you and ‘train’ you. You needn’t worry about that, you needn’t really, if you care about Paul. You’d manage both of them in a week. But there it is — I thought I ought to warn you about Grace.”
“As to Paul, I believe you’d be happy. You’d have your home and your life and your friends. Skeaton isn’t so bad if you live in it, I believe, and Paul could get another living if you weren’t happy there.”
Did Katherine have any scruples as she pursued her argument? A real glance at Maggie’s confiding trustful gaze might have shaken her resolve. This child who knew so little about anything — was Skeaton the world for her? But Katherine had so many philanthropies that she was given to finishing one off a little abruptly in order to make ready for the next one.
She was interested just now in a scheme for adopting illegitimate babies. She thought Maggie an “angel” and she just longed for her to be happy. Nevertheless Maggie was very ignorant, and it was a little difficult to see what trade or occupation she would be able to adopt. She was nearly well now and Katherine did not know quite what to do with her. Here was an admirable marriage, something that would give a home and children and friends. What could be better? She had just passed apparently through a love affair that could have led to no possible good — solve the difficulty, make Maggie safe for life, and pass on to the illegitimate babies!
“Of course, I don’t love him,” said Maggie, staring in front of her.
“But you like him,” said Katherine. “It isn’t as though Paul were a very young man. He wouldn’t expect anything very romantic. He isn’t really a romantic man himself.”
“And I shall always love Martin,” pursued Maggie.
Katherine’s own romance had fulfilled itself so thoroughly that it had almost ceased to be romantic. The Trenchard blood in her made her a little impatient of unfulfilled romances.
“Don’t you think, Maggie, dear,” she said gently, “that it would be better to forget him?”
“No, I don’t,” said Maggie, moving away from Katherine. �
�And I should have to tell Paul about him. I’d tell Paul the exact truth, that if I married him it was because I liked him and I thought we’d be good friends. I see quite clearly that I can’t sit for ever waiting for Martin to come back, and the sooner I settle to something the better. If Paul wants a friend I can be one, but I should never love him — even though Martin wasn’t there. And as to the managing, I’m dreadfully careless and forgetful.”
“You’d soon learn,” said Katherine.
“Do you think I should?” asked Maggie. “I don’t know, I’m sure. As to Grace, I think we’d get on all right. There’s a greater difficulty than that though.”
“What?” asked Katherine as Maggie hesitated.
“Religion,” said Maggie. “Paul’s a clergyman and I don’t believe in his religion at all. Two months ago I’d have said I hated all religion — and so would you if you’d had a time like me. But since Martin’s gone I’m not so sure. There’s some-thing I want to find out... But Paul’s found out everything. He’s quite sure and certain. I’d have to tell him I don’t believe in any of his faith.”
“Tell him, of course,” said Katherine. “I think he knows that already. He’s going to convert you. He looks forward to it. If he hadn’t been so lazy he’d have been a missionary.”
“Tell me about Skeaton,” said Maggie.
“I’ve only been there once,” said Katherine. “Frankly, I didn’t like it very much, but then I’m so used to the Glebeshire sea that it all seemed rather tame. There was a good deal of sand blowing about the day I was there, but Paul’s house is nice with a garden and a croquet-lawn, and — and — Oh! very nice, and nice people next door I believe.”