Up to that moment when he had looked across the dinner table at Anne,
Majendie had felt secure in the bonds of his marriage. Anne's repugnance
had broken the natural tie; but up to that moment he had never doubted
that the immaterial link still held. If at times her presence was a
bodily torment, at other times he felt it as a spiritual protection. His
immense charity made allowance for all the extraordinary attitudes of
Anne. In his imagination they reduced themselves to one, the attitude of
inscrutable physical repugnance. He had accepted (as he had told himself
so often) the situation she had created. It appeared to him, of all
situations, the crudest and most simple. It had its merciful limits. The
discomfort of it, once vague, had grown, to his thwarted senses, almost
brutally defined. He could at least say, "It was here the trouble began,
and here, therefore, it shall end."
He thought he had sounded the depths of her repugnance, and could measure
by it his own misery. He said, "At any rate I know where I am"; and he
believed that if he stayed where he was, if he respected his wife's
prejudices, her prejudices would be bound to respect him. He could not
make her love him, but at least he considered that he had justified his
claim to her respect.
And now she had opened his eyes, and he had looked at her, and seen
things that had not (till that moment) come into his vision of their
separation. He saw subtler hostilities, incurable, indestructible
repugnances, attitudes at which his charity stood aghast. The situation
(so far from being crude and simple) involved endless refinements and
complexities of torture. He despaired now of ever reaching her.
Majendie had caught his first clear sight of the spiritual ramparts.
"I'm not good enough for her," he said. She had kept him with her that
evening, not because she wanted him to stay, but because she wanted him
to understand.
He had shown her that he understood by going to the friends for whom he
was good enough, who were good enough for him.
He went more than ever now, sometimes to the Ransomes, oftener to Gorst,
oftenest of all to Lawson Hannay. He liked more than ever to sit with
Mrs. Hannay; to lean up against the everlasting soft cushion she
presented to his soreness. More than ever he liked to talk to her of
simple things; of their acquaintance; of Edith, who had been a little
better, certainly no worse, this summer; of Peggy, of Peggy's future and
her education. He would sit for hours on Mrs. Hannay's sofa, his body
leaning back, his head bowed forward, his chin sunk on his breast,
listening attentively, yet with a dazed and rather stupid expression, to
Mrs. Hannay's conversation. His own was sometimes monotonous and a little
dull. He was growing even physically heavy. But Mrs. Hannay did not seem
to mind.
There was a certain justice in Anne's justification. He didn't
consciously prefer the Hannays' society to hers; but he actually found it
more agreeable, and for the reasons she suspected. They did worship him;
and their worship did make him feel superior, perhaps when he was least
so. They did flatter him; for, as Mrs. Hannay said, "He needed a little
patting on the back, now and then, poor fellow." And perhaps he was
really sinking a little to her level; he had so lost his sense of her
vulgarity.
He used to wonder how it was that she had kept Lawson straight. Perfectly
straight, Lawson had been, ever since his marriage. Possibly, probably,
if he had married a wife too inflexibly refined, he would have deviated
somewhat from that perfect straightness. His tastes had always been a
little vulgar. But there was no reason why he should go abroad to gratify
them when he possessed the paragon of amenable vulgarity at home. The
Gardners, whose union was almost miraculously complete, were not in their
way more admirably mated. And Lawson's reform must have been a stiff job
for any woman to tackle at the start.
A woman of marvellous ingenuity and tact. For she had kept Lawson
straight without his knowing it. She had played off one of Lawson's
little weaknesses against the other; had set, for instance, his fantastic
love of eating against his sordid little tendency to drink. Lawson
was now a model of sobriety.
And as she kept Lawson straight without his knowing it, she helped
Majendie, too, without his knowing it, to hold his miserable head up. She
ignored, resolutely, his attitude of dejection. She reminded him that if
he could make nothing else out of his life he could make money. She
convinced him that life, the life of a prosperous ship-owner in Scale,
was worth living, as long as he had Edith and Anne and Peggy to make
money for, especially Peggy.
And Majendie became more and more absorbed in his business, and more and
more he found his pleasure in it; in making money, that is to say, for
the persons whom he loved.
He had come even to find pleasure in making it for a person whom he did
not love, and hardly knew. He provided himself with one punctual and
agreeable sensation every week when he sent off the cheque for the small
sum that was poor Maggie's allowance. Once a week (he had settled it),
not once a month. For Maggie might (for anything he knew) be thriftless.
She might feast for three days, and then starve; and so find her sad way
to the street.
But Maggie was not thriftless. First at irregular intervals, weeks it
might be, or months, she had sent him various diminutive sums towards the
payment of her debt. Maggie was strictly honourable. She had got a little
work, she said, and hoped soon to have it regularly. And soon she began
to return to him, weekly, the half of her allowance. These sums he put by
for her, adding the interest. Some day there would be a modest hoard for
Maggie. He pleased himself, now and then, by wondering what the girl
would do with it. Buy a wedding-gown perhaps, when she married Mr.
Mumford. Time, he felt, was Mr. Mumford's best ally. In time, when she
had forgotten Gorst, Maggie would marry him.
Maggie's small business entailed a correspondence out of all proportion
to it. He had not yet gone to see her. Some day, he supposed, he would
have to go, to see whether the girl, as he phrased it vaguely, was
"really all right." With little creatures like Maggie you never could be
sure. There would always be the possibility of Gorst's successor, and he
had no desire to make Maggie's maintenance easier for him. He had made
her independent of all iniquitous sources of revenue.
At last, suddenly, the postal orders and the letters ceased; for three
weeks, four, five weeks. Then Majendie began to feel uneasy. He would
have to look her up.
Then one morning, early in September, a letter was brought to him at the
office (Maggie's letters were always addressed to the office, never to
his house). There was no postal order with it. For three weeks Maggie
had been ill, then she had been very poorly, very weak, too weak to sit
long at work. And so she had lost what work she had; but she hoped to get
more when she was strong again. When she was strong the repayments would
begin again, said Maggie. She hoped Mr. Majendie would forgive her for
not having sent any for so long. She was very sorry. But, if it wasn't
too much to ask, she would be very glad if Mr. Majendie would come some
day and see her.
He sent her an extra remittance by the bearer, and went to see her the
next day. His conscience reproached him for not having gone before.
Mrs. Morse, the landlady, received him with many appearances of relief.
In her mind he was evidently responsible for Maggie. He was the guardian,
the benefactor, the sender of rent.
"She's been very ill, sir," said Mrs. Morse; "but she wouldn't 'ave you
written to till she was better."
"Why not?"
"I'm sure I can't say, sir, wot 'er feeling was."
It struck him as strange and pathetic that Maggie could have a feeling.
He was soon to know that she had little else.
He found her sitting by a fire, wrapped in a shawl. It slipped from her
as she rose, as she leaped, rather, from her seat like one unnerved by a
sudden shock. He stooped and picked up the shawl before he spoke, that he
might give the poor thing time to recover herself.
"Did I startle you?" he said.
Maggie was still breathing hard. "I didn't think you'd come."
"Why not?"
"I don't know," she said weakly, and sat down again. Maggie was very
weak. She was not like the Maggie he remembered, the creature of
brilliant flesh and blood. Maggie's flesh was worn and limp; it had a
greenish tint; her blood no longer flowed in the cream rose of her face.
She had parted with the sources of her radiant youth.
She seemed to him to be suffering from severe anaemia. A horrible thought
came to him. Had the little thing been starving herself to save enough to
repay him?
"What have you been doing to yourself, Maggie?" he said brusquely.
Maggie looked frightened. "Nothing," she said.
"Working your fingers to the bone?"
She shook her head. "I was no good at dressmaking. They wouldn't have
me."
"Well--" he said kindly.
"There are a great many things I can do. I can make wreaths and crosses
and bookays. I made them at Evans's. I could go back there. Mr. Evans
would have me. But Mrs. Evans wouldn't." She paused, surveying her
immense resources. "Or I could do the flowers for people's parties.
I used to. Do you think--perhaps--they'd have me?"
Maggie's pitiful doubt was always whether "they" would "have" her.
"Yes," he said, smiling at her pathos, "perhaps they would."
"Or I could do embroidery. I learned, years ago, at Madame Ponting's.
I could go back. Only Madame wouldn't have me." (Maggie was palpably
foolish; but her folly was adorable.)
"Why wouldn't she have you?"
Maggie reddened, and he forbore to press the unkind inquiry. He gathered
that Maggie's ways had been not unknown to Madame Ponting, "years ago."
"Would you like to see some of my embroidery?"
He assented gravely. He did not want to turn Maggie from the path of
industry, which was to her the path of virtue.
She went to a cupboard, and returned with her arms full of little rolls
and parcels wrapped in paper. She unfolded and spread on the table
various squares, and strips, and little pieces, silk and woollen stuffs,
and canvas, exquisitely embroidered. There were flowers in most of the
patterns--flowers, as it appeared, of Maggie's fancy.
"I say, did you do all that yourself, Maggie?"
"Yes, that's what I _can_ do. I make the patterns out of me head, and
they're mostly flowers, because I love 'em. It's pretty, isn't it?" said
Maggie, stroking tenderly a pattern of pansies, blue pansies, such as she
had never sold in Evans's shop.
"Very pretty--very beautiful."
"I've sold lots--to a lady, before I was ill. See here."
Maggie unfolded something that was pinned in silver paper with a peculiar
care. It was a small garment, in some faint-coloured silk, embroidered
with blue pansies (always blue pansies).
"That's a frock," said she, "for a little girl. You've got a little
girl--a little fair girl."
He reddened. How the devil, he wondered, does she know that I have a
little fair girl? "I don't think it would fit her," he said.
Maggie reddened now.
"Oh--I don't want you to buy it. I don't want you to buy anything. Only
to tell people."
So much he promised her. He tried to think of all the people he could
tell. Mrs. Hannay, Mrs. Ransome, Mrs. Gardner--no, Mrs. Gardner was
Anne's friend. If Anne had been different he could have told Anne. He
could have told her everything. As it was--No.
He rose to go, but, instead of going, he stayed and bought several pieces
of embroidery for Mrs. Hannay, and the frock, not for Peggy, but for Mrs.
Ransome's little girl. They haggled a good deal over the price, owing
to Maggie's obstinate attempts to ruin her own market. (She must always
have been bent on ruining herself, poor child.) Then he tried to go
again, and Mrs. Morse came in with the tea-tray, and Maggie insisted on
making him a cup of tea, and of course he had to stay and drink it.
Maggie revived over her tea-tray. Her face flushed and rounded again to
an orb of jubilant content. And he asked her if she were happy. If she
liked her work.
She hesitated. "It's this way," she said. "Sometimes I can't think of
anything else. I can sit and sit at it for weeks on end. I don't want
anything else. Then, all of a sudden, something comes over me, and I
can't put in another stitch. Sometimes--when it comes--I'm that tired,
it's as if I 'ad weights on me arms, and I couldn't 'old them up to sew.
And sometimes, again, I'm that restless, it's as if you'd lit a fire
under me feet. I'm frightened," said Maggie, "when I feel it coming. But
I'm only tired now."
She broke off; but by the expression of her face, he saw that her
thoughts ran underground. He wondered where they would come out again.
"I haven't seen anybody this time," said Maggie, "for six months."
"Not even Mr. Mumford?"
"Oh, no, not him. I don't want to see him." And her thoughts ran back to
where they started from.
"It hasn't come lately," said Maggie, "it hasn't come for quite a long
time."
"What hasn't come?"
"What I've been telling you--what I'm afraid of."
"It won't come, Maggie," he said quickly. (He might have been her father
or the doctor.)
"If it does, it'll be worse now."
"Why should it be?"
"Because I can't get away from it. I've nowhere to go to. Other girls
have got their friends. I've got nobody. Why, Mr. Majendie--think--there
isn't a place in this whole town where I can go to for a cup of tea."
"You'll make friends."
She shook her head, guarding her little air of tragic wisdom.
Mrs. Morse popped her head in at the door, and out again.
"Is that woman kind to you?"
"Yes, very kind."
"She looks after you well?"
"Looks after me? I don't want looking after."
"Takes care of you, I mean. Gives you plenty of nice nourishing things to
eat?"
"Yes, plenty of nice things. And she comes and sits with me sometimes."
"You like her?"
"I love her."
"That's all right. You see, you _have_ got a friend, after all."
"Yes," said Maggie mournfully; and he saw that her thoughts were with
Gorst. "But it isn't the same thing, is it?"
Majendie could not honestly say it was; so he smiled, instead.
"It's a shame," said she, "to go on like this when you've been so good to
me."
"If I wasn't, you couldn't do it, could you? But what you want me to
understand is that, however good I've been, I haven't made things more
amusing for you."
"No, no," said Maggie vehemently, "I didn't mean that. Indeed I didn't.
I only wanted you to know--"
"How good _you_'ve been. Is that it? Well, because you're good, there's
no reason why you should be dull. Is there?"
"I don't know," said Maggie simply.
"See here, supposing that, instead of sending me all you earn, you keep
some of it to play with? Get Mrs. What's-her-name to go with you to
places."
"I don't want to go to places," she said. "I want to send it all to you."
He lapsed again into his formula. "There really is no reason why you
should."
"I want to. That's a reason, isn't it?" said she. She said it shyly,
tentatively, solemnly almost, as if it were some point in an infant's
metaphysics. There was no assurance in her tone, nothing to remind him
that Maggie had been the spoiled child of pleasure whose wants were
always reasons; nothing to suggest the perverted consciousness of power.
"Well--" He straightened himself stiffly for departure.
"Are you going?" she said.
"I must."
"Will you--come again?"
"Yes, I'll come, if you want me."
He saw again how piteous, how ill she looked. A pang of compassion went
through him. And after the pang there came a warm, delicious tremor. It
recalled the feeling he used to have when he did things for Edith, a
sensation singularly sweet and singularly pure.
It was consolation in his misery to realise that any one could want him,
even poor, perverted Maggie.
Maggie said nothing. But the flame rose in her face.
Downstairs Majendie found Mrs. Morse waiting for him at the door. "What's
been the matter with her?" he asked.
"I don't rightly know, sir. But between you and me, I think she's fretted
herself ill."
"Well, you've got to see that she doesn't fret, that's all."
He gave into her palm an earnest of the reward of vigilance.
That night he sent off the embroidered pieces to Mrs. Hannay, and the
embroidered frock to Mrs. Ransome; with a note to each lady recommending
Maggie, and Maggie's beautiful and innocent art.