by Hugh Walpole
She entered and stood listening. A door beyond her opened and a man came in. She knew at once that it was Martin. Her thoughts followed one another in strange flurried inconsequence. Yes, it was Martin. He was fatter than he had been — fat and ill. Very ill. His face was pale, his hair, thinner than before, unbrushed. He was wearing an old dirty blue suit with a coat that buttoned over the waistcoat like a seaman’s jacket. Yes, he was ill and fat and unkempt, but it was Martin. At that reiterated assurance in the depths of her soul she seemed to sink into a marvellous certain tranquillity — so certain that she shed, as it were with a gesture, all the unhappiness and doubt and desolation with which the last years had burdened her.
She had “touched” Martin again, and with that “touch” she was safe. It did not matter how he treated her nor whether he wanted her. She was sane and happy and whole again as she had not been since he left her.
Meanwhile he looked at her across the dark room, frowning.
“Who is it?” he asked. “What do you want?”
The sound of his voice moved her passionately. For how long she had ached and yearned for it! He spoke more huskily, with a thicker tone than he had done, but it was the same voice, rough a little and slow.
“Don’t you know me, Martin?” she said, laughing for sheer happiness. She saw before she spoke that he had recognised her. He said nothing, staring at her across the table; and she, held by some safe instinct, did not move from where she was.
At last he said:
“Well ... What do you want?”
“Oh, Martin, don’t you recognise me? I’m Maggie.”
He nodded. “Yes, I know. You mustn’t come here, though. We’ve nothing to say to one another nowadays — no, nothing.” He didn’t look at her; his eyes were turned towards the grimy window.
She had an astonishing sense of her possession of him. She laughed and came close to the table.
“I’m not going away, Martin ... not until we’ve had a talk. Nothing can make me. So there!”
He was looking at her again.
“Why, you’ve cut your hair!” he said.
“Yes.” she said.
Then he turned roughly right round upon her as though he meant to end the matter once and for all.
“Look here! ... I do mean what I say—” He was cut off then by a fit of coughing. He leant back against the wall and fought with it, his hand against his chest. She made no movement and said no word while the attack lasted.
He gasped, recovering his breath, then, speaking in a voice lower than before: “I mean what I say. I don’t want you. I don’t want any one. There’s nothing for us to say to one another. It’s only waste of time.”
“Yes,” she answered. “That’s your side of the question. There’s also mine. Once before you had your own way and I was very miserable about it. Now it’s my turn. I’m going to stay here until we’ve talked.”
He turned, his face working angrily, upon her.
“You can’t stay here. It’s impossible. What do you do it for when I tell you I don’t want you? First my sister ... then you ... come here spying. Well, now you’re seen what it’s like, haven’t you? Very jolly, isn’t it? Very handsome? You’d better go away again, then. You’ve seen all you’ve wanted to.”
“I’m not going away,” repeated Maggie, “I didn’t come to spy. You know that. Of course you can turn me out, but you’ll have to use force.”
“Oh, no, I won’t,” he answered. “There are other ways.”
He disappeared into the other room. A moment later he returned; he was wearing a soft black hat and a shabby grey overcoat.
“You’ll get tired of waiting, I expect,” he said, and, without looking at her but just touching her arm as he brushed past her, he left the room. She heard him descend the stairs. Then the street-door closed.
She sat down upon the shabby red sofa and looked about her. What a horrible room! Its darkness was tainted with a creeping coldness that seemed to steal in wavering gusts from wall to wall. The carpet was faded to a nondescript colour and was gashed into torn strips near the fireplace. No pictures were on the walls from which the wall-paper was peeling. He had done nothing whatever to make it more habitable.
He must have been staying there for several weeks, and yet there were no signs of any personal belongings. Nothing of himself to be seen! Nothing! It was as though in the bitterness of his spirit he had said that he would not touch such a spot save, of necessity, with his body. It should remain, so far as he might go, for ever tenantless.
She felt that. She seemed to be now marvellously perceptive. Until an hour ago she had been lost, ostracised; now she was at home again, clear in purpose, afraid of no one and of nothing. Strangely, although his sickness both of body and soul touched her to the very depths of her being, her predominant sensation was of happiness. She had found him again! Oh, she had found him again! Nothing, in this world or the next, counted in comparison with that. If she were close to him she would make him well, she would make him rich, she would make him happy. Where he had been, what he had done, mattered nothing. Where she had been, what she had done, nothing. Nothing in their two lives counted but their meeting again, and she who had been always so shy and so diffident felt no doubt at all about his returning to her. There would be a fight. As she looked around the gradually darkening room she realised that. It might be a long fight and a difficult one, but that she would win she had no doubt. It had been preordained that she should win. No one on this earth or above it could beat her.
Gradually she became more practical. Slowly she formed her plans. First, what had Martin done? Perhaps he had told the woman of the house that she, Maggie, was to be turned out, did she not, of herself, go away. No, Martin would not do that. Maggie knew quite confidently that he would never allow any one to insult her. Perhaps Martin would not come back at all. Perhaps his hat and his coat were his only possessions. That was a terrible thought! Had he gone, leaving no trace, how would she ever find him again? She remembered then that he had gone straight downstairs and out of the house. He had not spoken to the landlady. That did not look like a permanent departure. But she would make certain.
She pushed open the other door and peeped into the further room. She saw a dirty unmade bed, a tin washhand stand, and an open carpet-bag filled with soiled linen. No, he would come back.
She sat there thinking out her plans. She was suddenly clear, determined, resourceful, all the things that she had never been in her life before. First she must see the landlady; next she must go to the shops — but suppose he should return while she was there, pack his bag and leave for ever? She must risk that. She thought that he would not return at once because he would want, as he said, “to tire her out.” “To tire her out!” She laughed at that. She looked about the room and decided how she would improve it. She nodded to herself. Yes, and the bedroom too. All this time she was so happy that she could scarcely prevent herself from singing aloud.
She went out, down the dark stairs, and found the maid, under a swinging candle-flame, still scrubbing. How strange that in that short space of time, when the whole of life had altered for her, that girl had been on her knees scrubbing!
“Could you tell me, please,” she asked, “whether I could see somebody who is in charge of this house — the landlady or—”
“Is there anything I can do?” said a voice behind her.
She turned to find a short stout woman in voluminous black — black bonnet, black cape, black gloves — watching her with sharp bright eyes.
“Are you the landlady?” Maggie asked.
“I ham,” said the woman. “Mrs. Brandon — ma’am.”
The servant-girl had suspended operations, kneeling up and watching with open mouth developments.
“I’m very glad to meet you,” said Maggie. “How do you do?”
“How do you do, ma’am?” said Mrs. Brandon.
“The point is just this,” said Maggie, speaking rather fast as though she were confused,
which she was not. “Mr. Warlock is a very old friend of mine and I’m afraid he’s very ill indeed. He’s very ill and there’s nobody to look after him. What I was wondering was whether there was a bedroom in your house that I could have — so that I could look after him, you see, and get him anything he wants.”
Mrs. Brandon overlooked Maggie from head to foot — very slowly she did it, her eyes passing over the rather shabby black hat, the short hair, the plain black dress, the shoes worn and soiled. She also looked at Maggie’s wedding-ring.
“Well, Mrs.—” she began.
“Mrs. Trenchard is my name,” said Maggie, blushing in spite of herself at the long scrutiny.
“I ‘ope you’re not reproaching anybody with neglect of the gentleman.” She had an action, as she talked, of flinging a very seedy-looking black boa back across her neck vindictively. “Wot I mean to say is that gentleman lodgers must take their chance and e’s two weeks overdue with ’is rent as it is ... but of course I’m not saying I couldn’t oblige. ‘E’s a nice gentleman too, although not talkative so to speak, but if it would give ’im ‘appiness to ‘ave a lady friend close at ‘and as you might say, why I wouldn’t like to be one to stand in ’is way. ‘Live and let live,’ ‘as always been my motter, and a very good one too.”
She said all this very slowly, with a good many significant pauses. Maggie, however, felt nothing but happiness at the prospect of getting her way. She had gone far beyond all personal sensations of shame or fear or hesitation.
“Would you show me the room, please?” she asked.
They pushed past the servant-girl, whose eyes followed them up the stairs with hungry curiosity.
They climbed to the top of the house. Mrs. Brandon displayed a dark sulky little room with damp of the tomb clinging to its wall.
“Ten bob a week,” she said. She sunk her voice to a confidential whisper. “The best of this ‘ouse is that you can do what you like. No one minds and no one sees. ‘Them as lives in glass ‘ouses.’ That’s what I say.”
“I’ll take it,” said Maggie.
“You’ll be wanting a key, my dear,” said Mrs. Brandon, suddenly very friendly. “To let yerself in an’ out at nights. I’ll fetch yer one.”
She did. Maggie thanked her.
“I wonder,” she said, “whether you have such a thing as a small basket you could lend me. I’m going out to buy one or two necessaries.”
“Certingly,” said Mrs. Brandon, all smiles. “Certingly, and anythink else you’ll be needing. All you’ve got to do is ter ask.”
This settled, Maggie departed on her shopping expedition. She was still driven by a curious clarity and decision as to what she wanted to do. She felt as though she could conquer the world to-day and then parcel it out equitably and with success amongst the greedy kings of the earth. What were kings to her now that she had found Martin? Less than the dust ...
Lynton Street offered her nothing but dirty and grime-stained windows, but she found her way into King Edward Street, and here there were many shops. She had not very much money actually upon her, and the remainder of her precious three hundred was locked up in a bank in Skeaton, but it was a bank that had, she knew, branches in London. She looked in her purse and found that she had three pounds, twelve shillings and sixpence. Martin must have his meals upon something other than paper, so the probability was that there was crockery of a kind in his room — or perhaps Mrs. Brandon supplied it. Nevertheless Maggie’s first purchases were a blue teapot, two blue plates, and two blue cups and saucers.
As to food she must get something that could be cooked easily on his fire. She bought three of the freshest possible eggs, half a dozen sausages, a loaf of bread, half a pound of butter, two pots of jam, one pot of marmalade, some apples, a pound of tea, a pound of sugar.
“This will do as a start,” she said to herself.
She was just about to turn into Lynton Street when she stopped at a flower shop. In the window, smiling at her most fragrantly under the gas-light was a white hyacinth in a blue pot. It seemed to speak to her with, the same significance as once the ring with the three pearls; as though it said: “You’ve got to use me. I’m a link in the chain.”
She went in and asked its price; not very much, considering the splendour of the blue pot. She bought it. She was glad that 13A was not far, because now the basket and the flower weighed heavily upon her.
She climbed the stairs to Martin’s room with beating heart. Suppose he had returned and was there and would not let her in? Or suppose, worse than that, that he had returned, packed his bag and gone away again? Her heart was beating so terribly when at last she had arrived outside the door that she had to put down the hyacinth and the basket and stand for a minute there, panting.
She pushed back the door; the room was lit by the reflection from a lamp in a window on the opposite side of the road; this flickered with a pale uncertain glow across the floor. He was not here. She opened the bedroom door. He had not packed his bag. She sighed with relief. She found a bell and pressed it. To her great surprise the scrubbing maid almost instantly presented herself; curiosity had undoubtedly hastened her steps.
“What’s your name?” asked Maggie, smiling.
“Emily,” said the girl.
“The first thing I want is a box of matches,” said Maggie. “You’ll light the gas for me, won’t you. The truth is, I’m not quite tall enough to reach it.”
Emily lit the gas.
“Thank you so much,” said Maggie. “I must have a fire. That’s the next thing. This cold room must have been a bad thing for Mr. Warlock with his cough.”
“Yes, ’e ‘as got a corf,” said Emily, watching Maggie with all her eyes.
“Well, do you think I could have a fire?” asked Maggie.
Emily considered.
“I’ll ask the missus,” she said; “I shouldn’t wonder.”
She returned soon with coal, wood and newspaper. She also informed Maggie that Mrs. Brandon would like to have a “little in advance if convenient, that being the custom.”
Maggie delivered up ten and sixpence and was left with exactly two shillings in her pocket. But how beautiful the room appeared! Emily, whose ugly bony countenance now wore a look of excited breathlessness as though she were playing a new kind of game, discovered a piece of dark sad cloth somewhere in the lower region and this was pinned up over the window. The fire was soon blazing away as though the fireplace rejoiced to have a chance of being warm once more. A shabby but clean table-cloth was discovered and placed upon the table, and in the middle of this the hyacinth was triumphantly stationed.
“Now I tell you what would be nice,” said Maggie, also by this time breathless, “and that’s a lamp. This gas isn’t very pleasant, is it, and it DOES make such a noise.”
“It DOES make a noise,” said Emily, looking at the gas as though she were seeing it for the first time.
“Well, do you think there’s a lamp somewhere?”
Emily licked her finger.
“I’ll ask the missus,” she said and disappeared. Soon she returned with a lamp, its glories hidden beneath a bright pink paper shade.
Maggie removed the paper shade, placed the lamp on the table, then the blue plates, the blue cups and saucers, the blue teapot.
A shrill voice was heard calling for Emily. Maggie had then her kingdom to herself.
She stood there, waiting and listening. The approaching interview must have seemed to her the climax of her whole life. She stood, clasping and unclasping her hands, going to the table, moving the plates, then moving them back again. Perhaps he would not return at all that night, perhaps not until midnight or later. He might be drunk, he might be violent. She did not care. It was enough for her that he should be there.
“Oh I do wish he’d come,” she whispered aloud.
She had looked at her watch and seen that it was just eight o’clock when she heard a step on the stair. She had already borrowed from Emily a frying-pan. Quickly she put the sau
sages into it, placed them on the fire and then stood over them.
The door opened. She knew who it was because she heard him start suddenly with a little exclamation of surprise. She turned and looked at him. Her first thought was that he seemed desperately weary, weary with a fatigue not only physical. His whole bearing was that of a man beaten, defeated, raging, it might be, with the consciousness of his defeat but beyond all hope of avenging it. Her pity for him made her tremble but, with that, she realised that the worst thing that she could do was to show pity. What had he expected? To find her gone? To find her still sitting defiantly where he had left her? To see her crying, perhaps on her knees before him, beseeching him? Anything but not this.
She could see that he was astonished and was resolved not to let her know it.
He moved past her without a word, and went into the other room. She said nothing, but bent over the sausages. They were sizzling and flung out a splendid smell.
He came back without his hat and coat. He stood by the bedroom door and slowly looked round the room, taking everything in.
“I thought you’d have gone,” he said; “I warned you.”
She looked up at him, laughing:
“I haven’t,” she said. “Whatever happens afterwards, Martin, we may as well have one meal together. I’m very hungry. I know you’ll forgive my using your room like this, but I didn’t want to go to a shop. So I just brought the things in here.”
His eyes lighted on the hyacinth.
“I know what your game is,” he said huskily. “But it isn’t any good. You may as well chuck it.”
“All right,” she said. “After we’ve had a meal.”
Straightening herself up from the heat of the fire she had a terrible temptation then to go to him. It overwhelmed her in a flood; her knees and hands trembled. She wanted just to touch his arm, to put her hand on his shoulder. But she knew that she must not.
“Sit down for a bit,” she said very quietly, “and let’s have our meal. There’s nothing terrible in that, Martin. I’ve not put poison in your food or anything and the sausages do smell nice.”