by Hugh Walpole
At that definite picture she controlled her mind again. She pulled it up as a driver drags back a restive horse. Her first real thought was: “How hard that this letter should have come now when I was just going to put everything right with Paul.” Her next: “Poor Paul! But I don’t care for him a bit ... I don’t care for any one but Martin. I never did.” Her next: “Why did I ever think I did?” And her next: “Why did I ever do this?” She knew with a strange calm certainty that from this moment she would never be rid of Martin’s presence again. She had maintained for more than a year a wonderful make-believe of indifference. She had fancied that by, pushing furiously with both hands one could drive things into the past. But Fate was cleverer than that. What he wanted to keep he kept for you — the weaving of the pattern in the carpet might be your handiwork, but the final design was settled before ever the carpet was begun. Not that any of these fine thoughts ever entered Maggie’s head. All that she thought was “I love Martin. I want to go to him. He’s ill. I’ve got to do my duty about Paul.” She settled upon that last point. She bound her mind around it, fast and secure like thick cord. She put Mr. Magnus’ letter away in the shell-covered box, the wedding-present from the aunts; in this box were the programme of the play that she had been to with Martin, the ring with the three pearls, Martin’s few letters, and some petals of the chrysanthemum, dry and faded, that she had worn on the great day of the matinee. Something had warned her that it was foolish to keep Martin’s letters, but why should she not? She had never hidden her love for Martin. Then, standing in the middle of the room, close beside the large double-bed, with a football-group and “The Crucifixion” staring down upon her, she had her worst hour. Nothing in all life could have moved her as did that picture of Martin’s loneliness and sickness. Wave after wave of persuasion swept over her: “Go! Go now! Take the train to Paris. You can find out from Mr. Magnus where he was living. He is sick. He needs you. You swore to him that you would never desert him, and you have deserted him. They don’t want you here. Grace hates you, and Paul is too lazy to care!”
At the thought of Paul resolution came to her. She looked up at the rather fat, amiable youth with the stout legs and the bare knees in the football photograph, and prayed to it: “Paul, I’m very lonely and tempted. Care for me even though I can’t love you as you want. Don’t give me up because I can’t let you have what some one else has got. Let’s be happy, Paul — please.”
She was shivering. She looked back with a terrified, reluctant glance to the drawer where Mr. Magnus’ letter was, then she went downstairs.
Soon after they started for Little Harben. The last days in Skeaton had scarcely been happy ones. Grace had erected an elaborate scaffolding of offended dignity and bitter misery. She was not bitterly miserable, indeed she enjoyed her game, but it was depressing to watch Paul give way to her. He was determined to leave her in a happy mind. Any one could have told him that the way to do that was to leave her alone altogether. Instead he petted her, persuading her to eat her favourite pudding, buying her a new work-box that she needed, dismissing a boy from the choir (the only treble who was a treble) because he was supposed to have made a long-nose at Grace during choir-practice.
He adopted also a pleading line with her. “Now, Grace dear, don’t you think you could manage a little bit more?”
“Do you think you ought to go out in all this rain, Grace dear?”
“Grace, you look tired to death. Shall I read to you a little?”
He listened to her stories with a new elaborate attention. He laughed heartily at the very faintest glimmer of a joke. Through it all Grace maintained an unreleased solemnity, a mournful superiority, a grim forbearance.
Maggie, watching, felt with a sinking heart that she was beginning to despise Paul.
His very movement as he hurried to place a cushion for Grace sent a little shiver down her back. “Oh, don’t do it, Paul!” she heard herself cry internally, but she could say nothing. She had won her victory about Harben. She could only now be silent. Still, she bore no grudge at all against Grace. She even liked her.
Grace made many sinister allusions to her fancied departure. “Ah, in November ... Oh! of course I shall not be here then!” or, “That will be in the autumn then, won’t it? You’d better give it to some one who will be here at the time.” With every allusion she scored a victory. It was evident that Paul was terrified by the thought that she should leave him. He did not see what he would do without her. His world would tumble to pieces.
“But she hasn’t the remotest intention of going,” said Maggie. “She’ll never go.”
“Well, I don’t know. It would be strange without her, Maggie, I must confess. You see, all our lives we’ve been together — all our lives.”
Nevertheless he felt perhaps some relief, in spite of himself, when they were safely in a train for Little Harben. It was rather a relief, just for a day or two, not to see Grace’s reproachful face. Yes, it was. He was quite gay, almost like the boy he used to be. Little Harben was one of the smallest villages in Wiltshire and its Rectory one of the most dilapidated. The Rectory was sunk into the very bottom of a green well. Green hills rose on every side above it, green woods pressed in all around it, a wild, deserted green garden crept up to the windows and clambered about the old walls. There was hardly any furniture in the house, and many many windows all without curtains. Long looking-glasses reflected the green garden at every possible angle so that all the lights and shadows in the house were green. There was a cat with green eyes, and the old servant was so aged and infirm that she was, spiritually if not physically, covered with green moss.
From their bedroom they could see the long green slope of the hill. Everywhere there was a noise of birds nestling amongst the leaves, of invisible streams running through the grass, of branches mysteriously cracking, and, always, in the distance some one seemed to be chopping with an axe. If you pushed a window open multitudes of little insects fell in showers about you. All the roses were eaten with green flies.
“What a place!” said Maggie; nevertheless it was rather agreeable after the sand of Skeaton.
During the first three days they preserved their attitude of friendly distance. On the fourth evening Maggie desperately flung down her challenge. They were sitting, after supper, in the wild deserted garden. It was a wonderful evening, faintly blue and dim crocus with flickering silver stars. The last birds twittered in the woods; the green arc of the hill against the evening sky had a great majesty of repose and rest. “Now, Paul!” said Maggie.
“What is it, dear?” but he slowly changed colour and looked away from her, out into the wood.
“We’ve got to face it some time,” she said. “The sooner, then, the better—”
“Face what?” he asked, dropping his voice as though he were afraid that some one would overhear.
“You and me.” Maggie gathered her resources together. “Before we were married we were great friends. You were the greatest friend I ever had except Uncle Mathew. And now I don’t know what we are.”
“Whose fault is that?” he asked huskily. “You know what the matter is. You don’t love me. You never have ... Have you?” He suddenly ended, turning towards her.
She saw his new eagerness and she was frightened, but she looked at a little bunch of stars that twinkled at her above the dark elms and took courage.
“I’m very bad at explaining my feelings,” she said. “And you’re not very good either, Paul. I know I am very fond of you, and I feel as though it ought to be so simple if I were wiser or kinder. I’ve been thinking for weeks about this, and I want to say that I’m ready to do anything that will make you happy.”
“You’ll love me?” he asked.
“I’m very fond of you, and I always will be.”
“No, but love.”
“A word like that isn’t important. Affection—”
“No. It’s love I want.”
She turned away from him, pressing her hands together, staring
into the wood that was sinking into avenues of dark. She couldn’t answer him. He came over to her. He knelt on the dry grass, took her head between his hands, and kissed her again and again and again.
She heard him murmur: “Maggie ... Maggie ... Maggie. You must love me. You must. I’ve waited so long. I didn’t know what love was. God in His Mercy forgive me for the thoughts I’ve had this year. You’ve tormented me. Tantalised me. You’re a witch. A witch. You’re so strange, so odd, so unlike any one. You’ve enchanted me. Love me. Maggie ... Love me ... Love me.”
She caught his words all broken and scattered. She felt his heart beating against her body, and his hands were hot to the touch of her cold cheek. She felt that he was desperate and ashamed and pitiful. She felt, above all else, that she must respond — and she could not. She strove to give him what he needed. She caught his hands, and then, because she knew that she was acting falsely and the whole of her nature was in rebellion, she drew back. He felt her withdraw. His hands dropped.
She burst into tears, suddenly hiding her face in her hands as she used to do when she was a little girl.
“Oh, Paul,” she wept. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m wicked. I can’t—”
He got up and stood with his back to her, looking towards the night sky that flashed now with stars.
She controlled herself, feeling desperately that their whole future together hung on the approaching minutes. She went up to him, standing at first timidly behind him, then putting her hand through his arm.
“Paul. It isn’t so hopeless. If I can’t give you that I can give you everything else. I told you from the first that I couldn’t help loving Martin. All that kind of love I gave to him, but we can be friends. I want a friend so badly. If we’re both lonely we can come together closer and closer, and perhaps, later on—”
But she could not go on. She knew that she would never forget Martin, that she would never love Paul. These two things were so clear to her that she could not pretend. As the darkness gathered the wood into its arms and the last twitter of the birds sank into silence, she felt that she too was being caught into some silent blackness. The sky was pale green, the stars so bright that the rest of the world seemed to lie in dim shadow. She could scarcely see Paul now; when he spoke his voice came, disembodied, out of the dusk.
“You’ll never forget him, then?” at last he asked.
“No.”
“You’re strange. You don’t belong to us. I should have seen that at the beginning. I knew nothing about women and thought that all that I wanted — oh God, why should I be so tempted? I’ve been a good man ...” Then he came close to her and put his hand on her shoulder and even drew her to him. “I won’t bother you any more, Maggie. I’ll conquer this. We’ll be friends as you want. It isn’t fair to you—”
She felt the control that he was keeping on himself and she admired him. Nevertheless she knew, young though she was, that if she let him go now she was losing him for ever. The strangest pang of loneliness and isolation seized her. If Paul left her and Martin wasn’t there, she was lonely indeed. She saw quite clearly how his laziness would come to his aid. He would summon first his virtue and his religion, and twenty years of abstinence would soon reassert their sway; then he would slip back into the old, lazy, self-complacent being that he had been before. Staring into the dark wood she saw it all. She could completely capture him by responding to his passion. Without that she was too queer, too untidy, too undisciplined, to hold him at all. But she could not lie, she could not pretend.
She kissed him.
“Paul, let’s be friends, then. Splendid friends. Oh! we will be happy!”
But as he kissed her she knew that she had lost him.
Paul was very kind to her during their stay at Little Harben, but they recovered none of that old friendship that had been theirs before they married. Too many things were now between them. By the end of that month Maggie longed to return to Skeaton. It was not only that she felt crushed and choked by the strangling green that hemmed in the old house — the weeds and the trees, and the plants seemed to draw in the night closer and closer about the windows and doors — but also solitude with Paul was revealing to her, in a ruthless, cruel manner, his weaknesses. They were none of them, perhaps, very terrible, but she did not wish to see them. She would like to shut her eyes to them all. If she lost that friendly kindness that she felt for him then indeed she had lost everything. She felt as though he were wilfully trying to tug it away from her.
Why was it that she had never shrunk from the faults of Martin and Uncle Mathew — faults so plain and obvious — and now shrunk from Paul’s? Paul’s were such little ones — a desire for praise and appreciation, a readiness to be cheated into believing that all was well when he knew that things were very wrong, an eagerness to be liked even by quite worthless people, sloth and laziness, living lies that were of no importance save as sign-posts to the cowardice of his soul. Yes, cowardice! That was the worst of all. Was it his religion that had made him cowardly? Why was Maggie so terribly certain that if the necessity for physical defence of her or some helpless creature arose Paul would evade it and talk about “turning the other cheek”? He was so large a man and so soft — a terrific egoist finally, in the centre of his soul, an egoist barricaded by superstitions and fears and lies, but not a ruthless egoist, because that demanded energy.
And yet, with all this, he had so many good points. He was a child, a baby, like so many clergymen. Even her father could have been defended by that plea ...
He was not radically bad, he was radically good, but he had never known discipline or real sorrow or hardship. Wrapped in cotton wool all his life, spoilt, indulged, treated by the world as men treat women. His effeminacy was the result of his training because he had always been sheltered. Now his contact with Maggie was presenting him for the first time with Reality. Would he face and grapple with it, or would he slip away, evade it, and creep back into his padded castle?
The return to Skeaton and the winter that followed it did not answer that question. Maggie, Grace, and Paul were figures, guarded and defended, outwardly friendly. Grace behaved during those months very well, but Maggie knew that this was a fresh sign of hostility. The “Chut-Chut,” “My dear child,” and the rest that had been so irritating had been after all signs of intimacy. They were now withdrawn. Maggie made herself during that winter and the spring that followed as busy as possible. She ruthlessly forbade all thoughts of Martin, of the aunts, of London; she scarcely saw Caroline, and the church was her fortress. She seemed to be flung from service to service, to be singing in the choir (she had no voice), asking children their catechism, listening to Paul’s high, rather strained, voice reading the lessons, talking politely to Mrs. Maxse or one of the numerous girls, knitting and sewing (always so badly), and above all struggling to remember the things that she was for ever forgetting. Throughout this period she was pervaded by the damp, oily smell of the heated church, always too hot, always too close, always too breathless.
She had many headaches; she liked them because they held back her temptation to think of forbidden things.
Gradually, although she did not know it, the impression gained ground that she was “queer.” She had not been to the Toms’ often, but she was spoken of as their friend. She had seen Caroline, who was now considered by the church a most scandalous figure, scarcely at all, but it was known that she was an old friend. Above all, it was understood that the rector and his wife were not happy.
“Oh, she’s odd — looks more like a boy than a woman. She never says anything, seems to have no ideas. I don’t believe she’s religious really either.”
She knew nothing of this. She did not notice that she was not asked often to other houses. People were kind (the Skeaton people were neither malicious nor cruel) but left her more and more alone. She said to herself again and again: “I must make this a success — I must” — but the words were becoming mechanical. It was like tramping a treadmill: she got no f
urther, only became more and more exhausted. That spring and summer people noticed her white face and strange eyes. “Oh, she’s a queer girl,” they said.
The summer was very hot with a little wind that blew the sand everywhere. Strange how that sand succeeded in penetrating into the very depth of the town. The sand lay upon the pavement of the High Street so that your feet gritted as you walked. The woods and houses lay for nearly two months beneath a blazing sun. There was scarcely any rain. The little garden behind the Rectory was parched and brown; the laurel bushes were grey with dust. They saw very few people that summer; many of their friends had escaped.
Maggie, thinking of the green depths of Harben a year ago, longed for its coolness; nevertheless she was happy to think that she would never have to see Harben again.
As she had foretold, laziness settled upon Paul. What he loved best was to sink into his old armchair in the dusty study and read old volumes of Temple Bar and the Cornhill. He had them piled at his side; he read article after article about such subjects as “The Silkworm Industry” and “Street Signs of the Eighteenth Century.” He was very proud of his sermons, but now he seldom gave a new one. He always intended to. “Don’t let any one disturb me to-night, Maggie,” he would say at supper on Fridays. “I’ve got my sermon.” But on entering the study he remembered that there was an article in Temple Bar that he must finish. He also read the Church Times right through, including the advertisements. Grace gradually resumed her old functions.
She maintained, however, an elaborate pretence of leaving everything to Maggie. Especially was she delighted when Maggie forgot something. When that happened she said nothing; her mouth curled a little. She treated Maggie less and less to her garrulous confidences. They would sit for hours in the drawing-room together without exchanging a word. Maggie and Paul had now different bedrooms. Early in the autumn Maggie had a little note from Mr. Magnus. It said: