CHAPTER I

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The Captives

by

Hugh Walpole

TO

ARNOLD BENNETT

WITH DEEP AFFECTION

"I confess that I do not see why the very existence of an invisible

world may not in part depend on the personal response which any of us

may make to the religious appeal. God Himself, in short, may draw vital

strength and increase of very being from our fidelity. For my own part

I do not know what the sweat and blood and tragedy of this life mean,

if they mean anything short of this. If this life be not a real fight,

in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it

is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may

withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight--as if there were

something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities

and faithlessness, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our

own hearts from atheisms and fears ..."

WILLIAM JAMES.

CONTENTS

PART I: BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY

I DEATH OF THE REV. CHARLES CARDINAL

II AUNT ANNE

III THE LONDON HOUSE

IV THE CHAPEL

PART II: THE CHARIOT OF FIRE

I THE WARLOCKS

II EXPECTATION

III MAGGIE AND MARTIN

IV MR. CRASHAW

V THE CHOICE

VI THE PROPHET IN HIS OWN HOME

VII THE OUTSIDE WORLD

VIII PARADISE

IX THE INSIDE SAINTS

X THE PROPHET

XI THE CHARIOT OF FIRE

PART III: THE WITCH

I THE THREE VISITS

II PLUNGE INTO THE OTHER HALF

III SKEATON-ON-SEA

IV GRACE

V THE BATTLE OF SKEATON: FIRST YEAR

VI THE BATTLE OF SKEATON: SECOND YEAR

VII DEATH OF AUNT ANNE

VIII DEATH OF UNCLE MATHEW

IX SOUL OF PAUL

X THE REVIVAL

PART IV: THE JOURNEY HOME AGAIN

I THE DARK ROOM

II HOBGOBLINS

III THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE

PART I

BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY

CHAPTER I

DEATH OF THE REV. CHARLES CARDINAL

Death leapt upon the Rev. Charles Cardinal, Rector of St. Dreots in

South Glebeshire, at the moment that he bent down towards the second

long drawer of his washhand-stand; he bent down to find a clean collar.

It is in its way a symbol of his whole life, that death claimed him

before he could find one.

At one moment his mind was intent upon his collar; at the next he was

stricken with a wild surmise, a terror that even at that instant he

would persuade himself was exaggerated. He saw before his clouding eyes

a black pit. A strong hand striking him in the middle of his back flung

him contemptuously forward into it; a gasping cry of protest and all

was over. Had time been permitted him he would have stretched out a

hand towards the shabby black box that, true to all miserly convention,

occupied the space beneath his bed. Time was not allowed him. He might

take with him into the darkness neither money nor clean clothing.

He had been told on many occasions about his heart, that he must not

excite nor strain it. He allowed that to pass as he allowed many other

things because his imagination was fixed upon one ambition, and one

alone. He had made, upon this last and fatal occasion, haste to find

his collar because the bell had begun its Evensong clatter and he did

not wish to-night to be late. The bell continued to ring and he lay his

broad widespread length upon the floor. He was a large and dirty man.

The shabby old house was occupied with its customary life. Down in the

kitchen Ellen the cook was snatching a moment from her labours to drink

a cup of tea. She sat at the deal table, her full bosom pressed by the

boards, her saucer balanced on her hand; she blew, with little heaving

pants, at her tea to cool it. Her thoughts were with a new hat and some

red roses with which she would trim it; she looked out with little

shivers of content at the falling winter's dusk: Anne the kitchen-maid

scoured the pans; her bony frame seemed to rattle as she scrubbed with

her red hands; she was happy because she was hungry and there would be

a beef-steak pudding for dinner. She sang to herself as she worked.

Upstairs in the dining-room Maggie Cardinal, the only child of the Rev.

Charles, sat sewing. She hoard the jangling of the church hell; she

heard also, suddenly, with a surprise that made her heart beat for a

moment with furious leaps, a tapping on the window-pane. Then directly

after that she fancied that there came from her father's room above the

thud of some sudden fall or collapse. She listened. The bell swallowed

all other noise. She thought that she had been mistaken, but the

tapping at the window began again, now insistent; the church bell

suddenly stopped and in the silence that followed one could hear the

slight creak of some bough driven by the sea-wind against the wall.

The curtains were not drawn and where the curve of the hill fell away

the sky was faintly yellow; some cold stars like points of ice pierced

the higher blue; carelessly, as though with studied indifference,

flakes of snow fell, turning grey against the lamp-lit windows, then

vanishing utterly. Maggie, going to the window, saw a dark shapeless

figure beyond the glass. For an instant she was invaded by the terror

of her surprised loneliness, then she remembered her father and the

warm kitchen, then realised that this figure in the dark must be her

Uncle Mathew.

She went out into the hall, pushed back the stiff, clumsy handle of the

door, and stepped on to the gravel path. She called out, laughing:

"Come in! You frightened me out of my life."

As he came towards her she felt the mingled kindness and irritation

that he always roused in her. He stood in the light of the hall lamp, a

fat man, a soft hat pushed to the back of his head, a bag in one hand.

His face was weak and good-tempered, his eyes had once been fine but

now they were dim and blurred; there were dimples in his fat cheeks; he

wore on his upper lip a ragged and untidy moustache and he had two

indeterminate chins. His expression was mild, kindly, now a little

ashamed, now greatly indignant. It was a pity, as he often said, that

he had not more control over his feelings. Maggie saw at once that he

was, as usual, a little drunk.

"Well," she said. "Come in, Uncle. Father is in church, I think," she

added.

Uncle Mathew stepped with careful deliberation into the hall, put his

bag on a chair, and began a long, rambling explanation.

"You know, Maggie, that I would have sent you a post card if I had had

an idea, but, upon my soul, there I was suddenly in Drymouth on

important business. I thought to myself on waking this morning--I took

a room at the 'Three Tuns'--'Why, there are Charles and Maggie whom I

haven't seen for an age.' I'd have sent you a telegram but the truth

is, my dear, that I didn't want to spend a penny more than I must.

Things haven't been going so well with me of late. It's a long story. I

want your father's advice. I've had the worst of luck and I could tell

you one or two things that would simply surprise you--but anyway, there

it is. Just for a night I'm sure you won't mind. To-morrow or the day

after I must be back in town or this thing will slip right through my

fingers. These days one must be awake or one's simply nowhere."

He paused and nodded his head very solemnly at her, looking, as he did

so, serious and important.

It was thus that he always appeared, "for one night only," but staying

for weeks and weeks in spite of the indignant protests of his brother

Charles who had never liked him and grudged the expense of his visits.

Maggie herself took his appearance as she did everything else in her

life with good-tempered philosophy. She had an affection for her uncle;

she wished that he did not drink so much, but had he made a success of

life she would not have cared for him as she did. After all every one

had their weaknesses ...

She steered her uncle into the dining-room and placed him on a chair

beside the fire. In all his movements he attempted restraints and

dignity because he knew that he was drunk but hoped that his niece, in

spite of her long experience of him, would not perceive it. At the same

time he knew that she did perceive it and would perhaps scold him about

it. This made him a little indignant because, after all, he had only

taken the tiniest drop--one drop at Drymouth, another at Liskane

station, and another at "The Hearty Cow" at Clinton St. Mary, just

before his start on his cold lonely walk to St. Dreot's. He hoped that

he would prevent her criticism by his easy pleasant talk, so on he

chattered.

She sat down near him and continuing to sew smiled at him, wondered

what there was for dinner and the kind of mood that her father would be

in when he found his dear brother here.

Maggie Cardinal, at the time, was nineteen years of age. She was

neither handsome nor distinguished, plain indeed, although her mild,

good-natured eyes had in their light a quality of vitality and interest

that gave her personality; her figure was thick and square--she would

be probably stout one day. She moved like a man. Behind the mildness of

her eyes there was much character and resolve in her carriage, in the

strong neck, the firm breasts, the mouth resolute and determined. She

had now the fine expectation of her youth, her health, her optimism,

her ignorance of the world. When these things left her she would

perhaps be a yet plainer woman. In her dress she was not clever. Her

clothes were ugly with the coarse drab grey of their material and the

unskilful workmanship that had created them. And yet there would be

some souls who would see in her health, her youth, the kind sympathy of

her eyes and mouth, the high nobility of her forehead from which her

hair was brushed back, an attraction that might hold them more deeply

than an obvious beauty.

Uncle Mathew although he was a silly man was one of these perceptive

souls, and had he not been compelled by his circumstances to think

continually about himself, would have loved his niece very dearly. As

it was, he thought her a fine girl when he thought of her at all, and

wished her more success in life than her "poor old uncle" had had. He

looked at her now across the fireplace with satisfaction. She was

something sure and pleasant in a world that swayed and was uncertain.

He was drunk enough to feel happy so long as he was not scolded. He

dreaded the moment when his brother Charles would appear, and he strove

to arrange in his mind the wise and unanswerable word with which he

would defend himself, but his thoughts slipped just as the firelight

slipped and the floors with the old threadbare carpet.

Then suddenly the hall door opened with a jangle, there were steps in

the hall, and Old Timmie Carthewe the sexton appeared in the

dining-room. He had a goat's face and a body like a hairpin.

"Rector's not been to service," he said. "There's Miss Dunnett and Mrs.

Giles and the two Miss Backshaws. I'm feared he's forgotten."

Maggie started up. Instantly to her mind came the memory of that

fancied sound from her father's room. She listened now, her head

raised, and the two men, their eyes bleared but their noses sniffing as

though they were dogs, listened also. There were certain sounds, clocks

ticking, the bough scraping on the wall, a cart's echo on the frozen

road, the maid singing far in the depths of the house. Maggie nodded

her head.

"I'll go and see," she said.

She went into the hall and stood again listening. Then she called,

"Father! Father!" but there was no answer. She had never in all her

life been frightened by anything and she was not frightened now;

nevertheless, as she went up the stairs, she looked behind her to see

whether any one followed her.

She called again "Father!" then went to his door, pushed it open, and

looked in. The room was cold with a faint scent of tallow candle and

damp.

In the twilight she saw her father's body lying like a shadow stretched

right across the floor, with the grey dirty fingers of one hand

clenched.

After that events followed swiftly. Maggie herself had no time nor

opportunity for any personal emotion save a dumb kind of wonder that

she did not feel more. But she saw all "through a glass darkly." There

had been first that moment when the sexton and Uncle Mathew, still like

dogs sniffing, had peered with their eyes through her father's door.

Then there had been the summoning of Dr. Bubbage from the village, his

self-importance, his continual "I warned him. I warned him. He can't

say I didn't warn him," and then (very dim and far away) "Thank you,

Miss Cardinal. I think I will have a glass if you don't mind." There

had been cook crying in the kitchen (her red roses intended for Sunday

must now be postponed) and the maid sniffing in the hall. There had

been Uncle Mathew, muddled and confused, but clinging to his one idea

that "the best thing you can do, my dear, is to send for your Aunt

Anne." There had been the telegram dispatched to Aunt Anne, and then

after that the house had seemed quite filled with people--ladies who

had--wished to know whether they could help her in any way and even the

village butcher who was there for no reason but stood in the hall

rubbing his hands on his thighs and sniffing. All these persons Maggie

surveyed through a mist. She was calm and collected and empty of all

personality; Maggie Cardinal, the real Maggie Cardinal, was away on a

visit somewhere and would not be back for a time or two.

Then suddenly as the house had filled so suddenly it emptied. Maggie

found that she was desperately tired. She went to bed and slept

instantly. On waking next morning she was aware that it was a most

beautiful winter's day and that there was something strange in the air.

There came to her then very slowly a sense of her father. She saw him

on the one side, persistently as she had found him in his room,

strange, shapeless, with a crumpled face and a dirty beard that seemed

to be more dead than the rest of him. On the other side she saw him as

she had found him in the first days of her consciousness of the world.

He must have been "jolly" then, large and strong, laughing often,

tossing her, she remembered, to the ceiling, his beard jet-black and

his eyebrows bushy and overhanging. Once that vigour, afterwards this

horror. She shook away from her last vision of him but it returned

again and again, hanging about her over her shoulder like an ill-omened

messenger. And all the life between seemed to be suddenly wiped away as

a sponge wipes figures off a slate. After the death of her mother she

had made the best of her circumstances. There had been many days when

life had been unpleasant, and in the last year, as his miserliness had

grown upon him, his ill-temper at any fancied extravagance had been

almost that of an insane man, but Maggie knew very little of the

affairs of other men and it seemed to her that every one had some

disadvantage with which to grapple. She did not pretend to care for her

father, she was very lonely because the villagers hated him, but she

had always made the best of everything because she had never had an

intimate friend to tell her that that was a foolish thing to do.

It was indeed marvellous how isolated her life had been; she knew

simply nothing about the world at all.

She could not pretend that she was sorry that her father had died; and

yet she missed him because she knew very well that she was now no one's

business, that she was utterly and absolutely alone in the universe. It

might be said that she could not be utterly alone when she had her

Uncle Mathew, but, although she was ignorant of life, she knew her

Uncle Mathew ... Nevertheless, he did something to remove the sharp

alarm of her sudden isolation. Upon the day after her father's death he

was at his very best, his kindest, and most gentle. He was rather

pathetic, having drunk nothing out of respect to the occasion; he felt,

somewhere deep down in him, a persistent exaltation that his brother

Charles was dead, but he knew that it was not decent to allow this

feeling to conquer him and he was truly anxious to protect and comfort

his niece so well as he was able. Early in the afternoon he suggested

that they should go for a walk. Everything necessary had been done. An

answer to their telegram had been received from his sister Anne that

she could not leave London until that night but would arrive at Clinton

St. Mary station at half-past nine to-morrow morning. That would be in

good time for the funeral, a ceremony that was to be conducted by the

Rev. Tom Trefusis, the sporting vicar of Cator Hill, the neighbouring

parish.

The house now was empty and silent. They must escape from that figure,

now decent, clean, and solemn, lying upon the bed upstairs. Mathew took

his niece by the hand and said:

"My dear, a little fresh air is the thing for both of us. It will cheer

you up."

So they went out for a walk together. Maggie knew, with a deep and

intimate experience, every lane and road within twenty miles' radius of

St. Dreot's, There was the high-road that went through Gator Hill to

Clinton and then to Polwint; here were the paths across the fields to

Lucent, the lanes that led to the valley of the Lisp, all the paths

like spiders' webs through Rothin Wood, from whose curve you could see

Polchester, grey and white, with its red-brown roofs and the spires of

the Cathedral thrusting like pointing fingers into the heaven. It was

the Polchester View that she chose to-day, but as they started through

the deep lanes down the St. Dreot's hill she was startled and disturbed

by the strange aspect which everything wore to her. She had not as yet

realised the great shock her father's death had been; she was

exhausted, spiritually and physically, in spite of the deep sleep of

the night before. The form and shape of the world was a little strained

and fantastic, the colours uncertain, now vivid, now vanishing, the

familiar trees, hedges, clouds, screens, as it were, concealing some

scene that was being played behind them. But beyond and above all other

sensations she was conscious of her liberty. She struggled against

this; she should be conscious, before everything, of her father's loss.

But she was not. It meant to her at present not so much the loss of a

familiar figure as the sudden juggling, by an outside future, of all

the regular incidents and scenes of her daily life, as at a pantomime

one sees by a transformation of the scenery, the tables, the chairs,

and pictures the walls dance to an unexpected jig. She was free, free,

free--alone but free. What form her life would take she did not know,

what troubles and sorrows in the future there might be she did not

care--to-morrow her life would begin.

Although unsentimental she was tender-hearted and affectionate, but

now, for many years, her life with her father had been a daily battle

of ever-increasing anger and bitterness. It may be that once he had

loved her; that had been in those days when she was not old enough to

love him ... since she had known him he had loved only money. She would

have loved him had he allowed her, and because he did not she bore him

no grudge. She had always regarded her life, sterile and unprofitable

as it was, with humour until now when, like a discarded dress, it had

slipped behind her. She did not see it, even now, with bitterness;

there was no bitterness for anything in her character.

As they walked Uncle Mathew was considering her for the first time. On

the other occasions when he had stayed in his brother's house he had

been greatly occupied with his own plans--requests for money

(invariably refused) schemes for making money, plots to frighten his

brother out of one or other of his possessions. He had been frankly

predatory, and that plain, quiet girl his niece had been pleasant

company but no more. Now she was suddenly of the first importance. She

would in all probability inherit a considerable sum. How much there

might be in that black box under the bed one could not say, but surely

you could not be so relentless a miser for so long a period without

accumulating a very agreeable amount. Did the girl realise that she

would, perhaps, be rich? Uncle Mathew licked his lips with his tongue.

So quiet and self-possessed was she that you could not tell what she

was thinking. Were she only pretty she might marry anybody. As it was,

with that figure ... But she was a good girl. Uncle Mathew felt kind

and tender-hearted towards her. He would advise her about life of which

he had had a very considerable experience, and of which, of course, she

knew nothing. His heart was warm, although it would have been warmer

still had he been able to drink a glass of something before starting

out.

"And what will you do now, my dear, do you think?" he asked.

They had left the deep lanes and struck across the hard-rutted fields.

A thin powder of snow lay upon the land, and under the yellow light of

the winter sky the surface was blue, shadowed with white patches where

the snow had fallen more thickly. The trees and hedges were black and

hard against the white horizon that was tightly stretched like the

paper of a Japanese screen. The smell of burning wood was in the air,

and once and again a rook slowly swung its wheel, cutting the air as it

flew. The cold was so pleasantly sharp that it was the best possible

thing for Uncle Mathew, who was accustomed to an atmosphere of hissing

gas, unwashen glasses, and rinds of cheese.

Maggie did not answer his question but herself asked one.

"Uncle Mathew, do you believe in religion?"

"Religion, my dear?" answered her uncle, greatly startled at so unusual

a question. "What sort of religion?"

"The kind of religion that father preached about every Sunday--the

Christian religion."

"To tell you the truth, my dear," he answered confidentially, "I've

never had much time to think about it. With some men, you see, it's

part of their lives, and with others--well, it isn't. My lines never

ran that way."

"Was father very religious when he was young?"

"No, I can't say that he was. But then we never got on, your father and

I. Our lines didn't run together at all. But I shouldn't have called

him a religious man."

"Then all this time father has been lying?"

Her uncle gazed at her apprehensively. He did not wish to undermine her

faith in her father on the very day after his death, but he was so

ignorant about her, her thoughts and beliefs and desires, that he did

not know what her idea of her father had been. His idea of him had

always been that he was a dirty, miserly scoundrel, but that was not

quite the thing for a daughter to feel, and there was an innocence and

simplicity about Maggie that perplexed him.

"I can't truly say that I ever knew what your father's private feelings

were. He never cared for me enough to tell me. He may have been very

religious in his real thoughts. We never discussed such things."

Maggie turned round upon him.

"I know. You're pretending. You've said to yourself, 'I mustn't tell

her what I think about her father the very day after his death, that

isn't a pleasant thing to do.' We've all got to pretend that he was

splendid. But he wasn't--never. Who can know it better than I? Didn't

he worry mother until she died? Didn't he lead me an awful life always,

and aren't I delighted now that he's dead? It's everything to me. I've

longed for this day for years, and now we've got to pretend that we're

sorry and that it would be a good thing if he were alive. It wouldn't

be a good thing--it would be a bad thing for every one. He was a bad

man and I hated him."

Then, quite suddenly, she cried. Turning away from her uncle she folded

her face in her arms like a small child and sobbed. Standing, looking

at her bent shoulders, her square, ugly figure, her shabby old hat with

its dingy black ribbon, pushed a little to the side of her head, Uncle

Mathew thought that she was a most uncomprehensible girl. If she felt

like that about her father why should she cry; and if she cried she

must surely have some affection for his memory. All he could say was:

"There, there, my dear--Well, well. It's all right." He felt foolish

and helpless.

She turned round at last, drying her eyes. "It's such a shame," she

said, still sobbing, "that that's what I shall feel about him. He's all

I had and that's what I feel. But if you knew--if you knew--all the

things he did."

They walked on again, entering Rothin Wood. "He never tried to make me

religious," she went on. "He didn't care what I felt. I sat in the

choir, and I took a Sunday-school class, and I visited the villagers,

but I, myself--what happened to me--he didn't care. He never took any

trouble about the church, he just gabbled the prayers and preached the

same old sermons. People in the village said it was a scandal and that

he ought to be turned out but no one ever did anything. They'll clean

everything up now. There'll be a new clergyman. They'll mend the holes

in the kitchen floor and the ceiling of my bedroom. It will be all new

and fresh."

"And what will you do, Maggie?" said her uncle, trying to make his

voice indifferent as though he had no personal interest in her plans.

"I haven't thought yet," she said.

"I've an idea," he went on. "What do you say to your living with me? A

nice little place somewhere in London. I've felt for a long time that I

should settle down. Your father will have left you a little money--not

much, perhaps, but just enough for us to manage comfortably. And there

we'd be, as easy as anything. I can see us very happy together."

But he did not as yet know his niece. She shook her head.

"No," she said. "I'm going to live with Aunt Anne and Aunt Elizabeth.

We wouldn't be happy, Uncle, you and I. Our house would always be in a

mess and there are so many things that I must learn that only another

woman could teach me. I never had a chance with father."

He had entered upon this little walk with every intention of settling

the whole affair before their return. He had had no idea of any

opposition--her ignorance of the world would make her easy to adapt.

But now when he saw that she had already considered the matter and was

firmly resolved, his arguments deserted him.

"Just consider a moment," he said.

"I think it will be best for me to live with the aunts," she answered

firmly. "They have wished it before. Of course then it was impossible

but now it will do very well."

He had one more attempt.

"You won't be happy there, my dear, with all their religion and the

rest of it--and two old maids. You'll see no life at all."

"That depends upon myself," she answered, "and as to their religion at

least they believe in it."

"Yes, your Aunt Anne is a very sincere woman," Uncle Mathew answered

grimly.

He was angry and helpless. She seemed suddenly some one with whom it

was impossible to argue. He had intended to be pathetic, to paint

delightful pictures of uncle and niece sheltering snugly together

defended by their affection against a cold and hostile London. His own

eyes had filled with tears as he thought of it. What a hard,

cold-hearted girl she was! Nevertheless for the moment he abandoned the

subject.

That she should go and live with her aunts was not for Maggie in any

way a new idea. A number of years ago when she had been a little girl

of thirteen or fourteen years of age her father had had a most violent

quarrel with his sister Anne. Maggie had never known the exact cause of

this although even at that period she suspected that it was in some way

connected with money. She found afterwards that her father had

considered that certain pieces of furniture bequeathed to the family by

a defunct relation were his and not his sister's. Miss Anne Cardinal, a

lady of strong character, clung to her sofa, cabinet, and porcelain,

bowls, and successfully maintained her right. The Reverend Charles

forbade the further mention of her name by any member of his household.

This quarrel was a grievous disappointment to Maggie who had often been

promised that when she should be a good girl she should go and stay

with her aunts in London. She had invented for herself a strange

fascinating picture of the dark, mysterious London house, with London

like a magic cauldron bubbling beyond it. There was moreover the

further strangeness of her aunt's religion. Her father in his anger had

spoken about "their wicked blasphemy," "their insolence in the eyes of

God," "their blindness and ignorant conceit." Maggie had discovered, on

a later day, from her uncle that her aunts belonged to a sect known as

the Kingscote Brethren and that the main feature of their creed was

that they expected the second coming of the Lord God upon earth at no

very distant date.

"Will it really happen, Uncle Mathew?" she asked in an awe-struck voice

when she first heard this.

"It's all bunkum if you ask me," said her uncle. "And it's had a

hardening effect on your aunts who were kind women once, but they're

completely in the hands of the blackguard who runs their chapel, poor

innocents. I'd wring his neck if I caught him."

All this was very fascinating to Maggie who was of a practical mind

with regard to the facts immediately before her but had beyond them a

lively imagination. Her life had been so lonely, spent for the most

part so far from children of her own age, that she had no test of

reality. She did not see any reason why the Lord God should not come

again and she saw every reason why her aunts should condemn her uncle.

That London house swam now in a light struck partly from the wisdom and

omniscience of her aunts, partly from God's threatened descent upon

them.

Aunt Anne's name was no longer mentioned in St. Dreot's but Maggie did

not forget, and at every new tyranny from her father she thought to

herself--"Well, there is London. I shall be there one day."

As they walked Maggie looked at her uncle. What was he really? He

should be a gentleman and yet he didn't look like one. She remembered

things that he had at different times said to her.

"Why, look at myself!" he had on earlier days, half-maudlin from "his

drop at the 'Bull and Bush,'" exclaimed to Maggie, "I can't call myself

a success! I'm a rotten failure if you want to know, and I had most

things in my favour to start with, went to Cambridge, had a good

opening as a barrister. But it wasn't quick enough for me. I was

restless and wanted to jump the moon--now look at me! Same with your

father, only he's put all his imagination into money--same as your

aunts have put theirs into religion. We're not like ordinary people, us

Cardinals."

"And have I got a lot of imagination too?" Maggie had asked on one

occasion.

"I'm sure I don't know," her uncle had answered her. "You don't look to

me like a Cardinal at all--much too quiet. But you may have it

somewhere. Look out for a bad time if you have."

Today Maggie's abrupt checking of his projects had made him sulky and

he talked but little. "Damn it all!" he had started out with the most

charming intentions towards the girl and now look at her! Was it

natural conduct in the day after she had lost her only protector? No,

it was not. Had she been pretty he might have, even now, forgiven her,

but today she looked especially plain with her pale face and shabby

black dress and her obstinate mouth and chin. He was uneasy, too, about

the imminent arrival of his sister Anne, who always frightened him and

made him think poorly of the world in general. No hope of getting any

money out of her, nor would Charles have left him a penny. It was a

rotten, unsympathetic world, and Uncle Mathew cursed God as he strutted

sulkily along. Maggie also had fallen into silence.

They came at last out of the wood and stood at the edge of it, with the

pine trees behind them, looking down over Polchester. On this winter's

afternoon Polchester with the thin covering of snow upon its roofs

sparkled like a city under glass. The Cathedral was dim in the mist of

the early dusk and the sun, setting behind the hill, with its last rays

caught the windows so that they blazed through the haze like smoking

fires. Whilst Maggie and her uncle stood there the bells began to ring

for Evensong, and the sound like a faint echo seemed to come from

behind them out of the wood. In the spring all the Polchester orchards

would be white and pink with blossom, in the summer the river that

encircled the city wall would run like a blue scarf between its green

sloping hills--now there was frost and snow and mist with the fires

smouldering at its heart. She gazed at it now as she had never gazed at

it before. She was going into it now. Her life was beginning at last.

When the sun had left the windows and the walls were grey she turned

back into the wood and led the way silently towards home.

The house that night was very strange with her father dead in it. She

sat, because she thought it her duty, in his bedroom. He lay on his

bed, with his beard carefully combed and brushed now, spread out upon

the sheet. His closed eyes and mouth gave him a grave and reverend

appearance which he had never worn in his life. He lay there, under the

flickering candle-light, like some saint who at length, after a life of

severe discipline, had entered into the joy of his Lord. Beneath the

bed was the big black box.

Maggie did not look at her father. She sat there, near the dark window,

her hands folded on her lap. She thought of nothing at all except the

rats. She was not afraid of them but they worried her. They had been a

trouble in the house for a long time past, poison had been laid for

them and they had refused to take it. They had had, perhaps, some fear

of the Reverend Charles, at any rate they scampered and scurried now

behind the wainscoting as though conscious of their release. "Even the

rats are glad," Maggie thought to herself. In the uncertain

candle-light the fancy seized her that one rat, a very large one, had

crept out from his hole, crawled on to the bed, and now sat on the

sheet looking at her father. It would be a horrible thing did the rat

walk across her father's beard, and yet for her life she could not

move. She waited, fascinated. She fancied that the beard stirred a

little as though the rat had moved it. She fancied that the rat grew

and grew in size, now there were many of them, all with their little

sharp beady eyes watching the corpse. Now there were none; only the

large limbs outlined beneath the spread, the waxen face, the ticking

clock, the strange empty shape of his grey dressing-gown hanging upon a

nail on the wall. Where was her father gone? She did not know, she did

not care--only she trusted that she would never meet him again--never

again. Her head nodded; her hands and feet were cold; the candle-light

jumped, the rats scampered ... she slept.

When it was quite dark beyond the windows and the candles were low

Maggie came downstairs, stiff, cold, and very hungry. She felt that it

was wrong to have slept and very wrong to be hungry, but there it was;

she did not pretend to herself that things were other than they were.

In the dining-room she found supper laid out upon the table, cold beef,

potatoes in their jackets, cold beetroot, jelly, and cheese, and her

uncle playing cards on the unoccupied end of the table in a melancholy

manner by himself. She felt that it was wrong of him to play cards on

such an occasion, but the cards were such dirty grey ones and he

obtained obviously so little pleasure from his amusement that he could

not be considered to be wildly abandoning himself to riot and

extravagance.

She felt pleasure in his company; for the first time since her father's

death she was a little frightened and uneasy. She might even have gone

to him and cried on his shoulder had he given her any encouragement,

but he did not speak to her except to say that he had already eaten. He

was still a little sulky with her.

When she had finished her meal she sat in her accustomed chair by the

fire, her head propped on her hands, looking into the flame, and there,

half-asleep, half-awake, memories, conversations, long-vanished scenes

trooped before her eyes as though they were bidding her a long

farewell. She did not, as she sat there, sentimentalise about any of

them, she saw them as they were, some happy, some unhappy, some

terrifying, some amusing, all of them dead and passed, grey and thin,

the life gone out of them. Her mind was fixed on the future. What was

it going to be? Would she have money as her uncle had said? Would she

see London and the world? Would she find friends, people who would be

glad to be with her and have her with them? What would her aunts be

like? and so from them, what about all the other members of the family

of whom she had heard? She painted for herself a gay scene in which, at

the door of some great house, a fine gathering of Cardinals waited with

smiles and outstretched hands to welcome her. Then, laughing at herself

as she always did when she had allowed her fancy free rein, she shook

her head. No, it certainly would not be like that. Relations were not

like that. That was not the way to face the world to encourage romantic

dreams. Her uncle, watching her surreptitiously, wondered of what she

was thinking. Her determined treatment of him that afternoon continued

to surprise him. She certainly ought to make her way in the world, but

what a pity that she was so plain. Perhaps if she got some colour into

her cheeks, dressed better, brushed her hair differently--no, her mouth

would always be too large and her nose too small--and her figure was

absurd. Uncle Mathew considered that he was a judge of women.

He rose at last and, rather shamefacedly, said that he should go to

bed. Maggie wondered at the confusion that she detected in him. She

looked at him and he dropped his eyes.

"Good night, Uncle Mathew."

He looked at her then and noticed by her white face and dark-lined eyes

what a strain the day had been to her. He saw again the figure in the

shabby black hat sobbing in the lane. He suddenly put his arms about

her and held her close to him. She noticed that he smelled of whisky,

but she felt his kindness, and putting her hand on his fat shoulder

kissed once more his cheek.

When he had left her, her weariness came suddenly down upon her,

overwhelming her as though the roof had fallen in. The lamp swelled

before her tired eyes as though it had been an evil, unhealthy flower.

The table slid into the chairs and the cold beef leered at the jelly;

the pictures jumped and the clock ran in a mad scurry backwards and

forwards.

She dragged her dazed body up through the silent house to her bedroom,

undressed, was instantly in bed and asleep.

She slept without dreams but woke suddenly as though she had been flung

into the midst of one. She sat up in bed, knowing from the thumping of

her heart that she was seized with panic but finding, in the first

flash, no reason for her alarm. The room was pitch black with shadows

of light here and there, but she had with her, in the confusion of her

sleep, uncertainty as to the different parts of the room. What had

awakened her? Of what was she frightened? Then suddenly, as one slits a

black screen with a knife, a thin line of light cracked the darkness.

As though some one had whispered it in her ear she knew that the door

was there and the dark well of uncertainty into which she had been

plunged was suddenly changed into her own room where she could

recognise the window, the chest of drawers, the looking-glass, the

chairs. Some one was opening her door and her first thought that it was

of course her father was checked instantly by the knowledge, conveyed

again as though some one had whispered to her, that her father was dead.

The thin line of light was now a wedge, it wavered, drew back to a

spider's thread again, then broadened with a flush of colour into a

streaming path. Some one stood in the doorway holding a candle. Maggie

saw that it was Uncle Mathew in his shirt and trousers.

"What is it?" she said.

He swayed as he stood there, his candle making fantastic leaps and

shallows of light. He was smiling at her in a silly way and she saw

that he was drunk. She had had a horror of drunkenness ever since, as a

little girl, she had watched an inebriated carter kicking his wife. She

always, after that, saw the woman's bent head and stooping shoulders.

Now she knew, sitting up in bed, that she was frightened not only of

Uncle Mathew, but of the house, of the whole world.

She was alone. She realised her loneliness in a great flash of

bewilderment and cold terror as though the ground had suddenly broken

away from her and she was on the edge of a vast pit. There was no one

in the house to help her. Her father was dead. The cook and the maid

were sunk in heavy slumber at the other end of the house. There was no

one to help her. She was alone, and it seemed to her that in the shock

of that discovery she realised that she would always be alone now, for

the rest of her life.

"What is it, Uncle Mathew?" she said again. Her voice was steady,

although her heart hammered. Some other part of her brain was wondering

where it was that he had got the drink. He must have had a bottle of

whisky in his room; she remembered his shyness when he said good-night

to her.

He stood in the middle of the floor, swaying on his feet and smiling at

her. The flame of the light rose and fell in jerks and spasms.

"I thought," he said, "I'd come--to see m'little Maggie, m'little

niece, jus' to talk a lill bit and cheer her up--up." He drew nearer

the bed. "She'll be lonely, I said--lonely--very--aren't you--lonely

Maggie?"

"It's very late," she said, "and you're dropping grease ail over the

floor with that candle. You go back to bed, uncle. I'm all right. You

go back to bed."

"Go back? No, no, no. Oh no, not back to bed. It'll soon be mornin'.

That'll be jolly-jolly. We'll talk--together till mornin'."

He put the candle on a chair, nearly falling as he did so, then came

towards her. He stood over her, his shirt, open at the neck,

protuberating over his stomach, his short thick legs swaying. His red,

unshaven face with the trembling lips was hateful to her.

Suddenly he sat on the edge of her bed and put his hands out towards

her. He caught her hair.

"My little Maggie--my little Maggie," he said.

The fright, the terror, the panic that seized her was like the sudden

rising of some black figure who grew before her, bent towards her and

with cold hard fingers squeezed her throat. For an instant she was

helpless, quivering, weak in every bone of her body.

Then some one said to her:

"But you can manage this."

"I can manage this," she answered almost aloud.

"You're alone now. You mustn't let things be too much for you."

She jumped out of bed, on the farther side away from her uncle. She put

on her dressing-gown. She stood and pointed at the door.

"Now, uncle, you go back to your room at once. It's disgraceful coming

in the middle of the night and disturbing every one. Go back to bed."

The new tone in her voice startled him. He looked at her in a

bewildered fashion. He got up from the bed.

"Why, Maggie--I only--only--"

He stared from her to the candle and from the candle back to her again.

"Now go," she repeated. "Quick now."

He hung his head. "Now you're angry--angry with your poor ole

uncle--poor ole uncle." He looked at her, his eyes puzzled as though he

had never seen her before.

"You're very hard," he said, shaking his head. He stumbled towards the

door--"Very hard," he repeated, and went out, his head still hanging.

She heard him knock his foot against the stairs. Soon there was silence.

She blew out the candle and went back to bed. She lay there, her heart,

at first, throbbing, her eyes straining the darkness. Then she grew

more tranquil. She felt in her heart a strange triumph as though

already she had begun life and had begun it with success. She thought,

before she sank deep into sleep, that anything would yield to one did

one only deal sensibly with it ... After all, it was a fine thing to be

alone.

CHAPTER II

AUNT ANNE

In the morning, however, she discovered no fine things anywhere. The

hours that had elapsed since her father's death had wrought in him a

"sea-change." He had gained nobility, almost beauty. She wondered with

a desolate self-criticism whether during all those years she had been

to blame and not he. Perhaps he had wished for sympathy and intimacy

and she had repulsed him. His little possessions here and there about

the house reproached her.

Uncle Mathew had a bad headache and would not come down to breakfast.

She felt indignant with him but also indulgent. He had shown himself

hopelessly lacking in good taste, and good feeling, but then she had

never supposed that he had these things. At the same time the last

support seemed to have been removed from her; it might well be that her

Aunt Anne would not care for her and would not wish to have her in her

house. What should she do then? Whither should she go? She flung up her

head and looked bravely into the face of Ellen, the cook, who came to

remove the breakfast, but she had to bite her lip to keep back the

tears that WOULD come and fill her eyes so that the world was misty and

obscure.

There was, she fancied, something strange about Ellen. In HER eyes some

obscure triumph or excitement, some scorn and derision, Maggie fancied,

of herself. Had the woman been drinking? ...

Then there arrived Mr. Brassy, her father's solicitor, from Cator Hill.

He had been often in the house, a short fat man with a purple face,

clothes of a horsy cut, and large, red, swollen fingers. He took now

possession of the house with much self-importance. "Well, Miss Maggie"

(he blew his words at her as a child blows soap-bubbles). "Here we are,

then. Very sad indeed--very. I've been through the house--got the will

all right. Your aunt, you say, will be with us?"

"My aunt from London. Miss Anne Cardinal. I expect her in half an hour.

She should have arrived at Clinton by the half-past nine train."

"Well, well. Yes--yes--indeed, your uncle is also here?"

"Yes. He will be down shortly."

"Very good, Miss Maggie. Very good."

She hated that he should call her Miss Maggie. He had always treated

her with considerable respect, but to-day she fancied that he

patronised her. He placed his hand for a moment on her shoulder and she

shrank back. He felt her action and, abashed a little, coughed and blew

his nose. He strutted about the room. Then the door opened and Ellen

the cook looked in upon them.

"I only wished to see, Miss, whether I could do anything for you?"

"Nothing, thank you," said Maggie.

"Been with you some time that woman?" said Mr. Brassy.

"Yes," said Maggie, "about five years, I think."

"Hum! Hum--name of Harmer."

"Yes. Harmer."

"Not married?"

"No," answered Maggie, wondering at this interest.

"Not so far as you know."

"No. She's always Miss Harmer."

"Quite so--quite so. Dear me, yes."

Other people appeared, asked questions and vanished. It seemed to have

been all taken out of her hands and it was strange how desolate this

made her. For so many years she had had the management of that house,

since her fourteenth birthday, indeed. Ugly and dilapidated though the

place had been, it had grown, after a time, to belong to her, and she

had felt as though it were in some way grateful to her for keeping it,

poor thing, together. Now it had suddenly withdrawn itself and was

preparing for the next comer. Maggie felt this quite definitely and

thought that probably it was glad that now its roof would be mended and

its floors made whole. It had thrown her off ... Well, she would not

burden it long.

There were sounds then of wheels on the gravel. The old dilapidated cab

from Clinton with its ricketty windows and moth-eaten seats that smelt

of straw and beer was standing at the door, the horse puffing great

breaths of steam into the frozen air. Her aunt had arrived. Maggie,

standing behind the window, looked out. The carriage door opened, and a

figure, that seemed unusually tall, appeared to straighten itself out

and rose to its full height on the gravel path as though it had been

sitting in the cab pressed together, its head upon its knees.

Then in the hall that was dark even on the brightest day, Aunt Anne

revealed herself as a lady, tall indeed, but not too tall, of a fine

carriage, in a black rather shabby dress and a black bonnet. Her face

was grave and sharply pointed, with dark eyes--sad rather, and of the

pale remote colour that the Virgin in the St. Dreot's east end window

wears. Standing there in the dusky hall, quietly, quite apart from the

little bustle that surrounded her, she seemed to Maggie even in that

first moment like some one wrapt, caught away into her own visions.

"I paid the cabman five shillings," she said very softly. "I hope that

was right. And you are Maggie, are you?"

She bent down and kissed her. Her lips were warm and comforting.

Maggie, who had, when she was shy, something of the off-hand manner of

a boy, said:

"Yes. That's all right. We generally give him four and six."

They went into the dining-room where was Mr. Brassy. He came forward to

them, blowing his words at them, rubbing his hands:

"Miss Cardinal--I am honoured--my name is Brassy, your brother's

lawyer. Very, very sad--so sudden, so sudden. The funeral is at twelve.

If there is anything I can do--"

Miss Cardinal did not regard him at all and Maggie saw that this

annoyed him. The girl watched her aunt, conscious of some strange new

excitement at her heart. She had never seen any one who in the least

resembled this remote silent woman. Maggie did not know what it was

that she had expected, but certainly it had not been this. There was

something in her Aunt's face that recalled her father and her uncle,

something in the eyes, something in the width and height of the

forehead, but this resemblance only accentuated the astounding

difference. Maggie's first impression was her ultimate one--that her

aunt had strayed out of some stained-glass window into a wild world

that did not bewilder her only because she did not seriously regard it.

Maggie found herself wondering who had fastened her aunt's buttons and

strings when she rose in the morning, how had she ever travelled in the

right train and descended at the right station? How could she remember

such trifles when her thoughts were fixed on such distant compelling

dreams? The pale oval face, the black hair brushed back from the

forehead, the thin hands with long tapering fingers, the black dress,

the slender upright body--this figure against the cold bright winter

sunlight was a picture that remained always from that day in Maggie's

soul.

Her aunt looked about her as though she had just awaked from sleep.

"Would you care to come up to your room?" asked Maggie, feeling the

embarrassment of Mr. Brassy's presence.

"Yes, dear, thank you--I will," said Miss Cardinal. They moved from the

room, Aunt Anne walking with a strange, almost clumsy uncertainty,

halting from one foot to the other as though she had never learnt to

trust her legs, a movement with which Maggie was to become intensely

familiar. It was as though her aunt had flown in some earlier

existence, and had never become accustomed to this clumsier earthly

fashion.

The spare bedroom was a bright room with a broad high window. The view

was magnificent, looking over the hill that dropped below the vicarage

out across fields and streams to Cator Hill, to the right into the

heart of the St. Dreot Woods, to the left to the green valley through

whose reeds and sloping shadows the Lisp gleamed like a burnished wire

threading its way to the sea. There was a high-backed old-fashioned

chair by the window. Against this Miss Cardinal stood, her thin body

reflected, motionless, as though it had been painted in a long glass

behind her. She gazed before her.

Maggie saw that she was agitated, passionately moved. The sun catching

the hoar-frost on the frozen soil turned the world to crystal, and in

every field were little shallows of blue light; the St. Dreot Woods

were deep black with flickering golden stars.

She tried to speak. She could not. Tears were in her eyes. "It is so

long ... since I ... London," she smiled at Maggie. Then Maggie heard

her say:

The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing.

He shall feed me in a green pasture; and lead me forth beside the

waters of comfort.

He shall convert my soul, and bring me forth in the paths of

righteousness, for His Name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will

fear no evil; for thou art with me, they rod and thy staff comfort me.

Thou shalt prepare a table before me against them that trouble me: thou

hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall be full.

But thy loving--kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my

life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

There was a pause--then Maggie said timidly, "Won't you take off your

bonnet? It will be more comfortable." "Thank you, my dear." She took

off her bonnet and laid it on the bed. Then she resumed her stand at

the window, her eyes lost in the sunny distance. "I did wrong," she

said, as though she were speaking to herself. "I should not have

allowed that quarrel with your father. I regret it now very deeply. But

we always see too late the consequences of our proud self-will." She

turned then.

"Come here, dear," she said.

Maggie came to her. Her aunt looked at her and Maggie was deeply

conscious of her shabby dress, her rough hands, her ugly boots. Then,

as always when she was self-critical, her eyes grew haughty and her

mouth defiant.

Her aunt kissed her, her cool, firm fingers against the girl's warm

neck.

"You will come to us now, dear. You should have come long ago."

Maggie wanted to speak, but she could not.

"We will try to make you happy, but ours is not an exciting life."

Maggie's eyes lit up. "It has not," she said, "been very exciting here

always." Then she went on, colour in her cheeks, "I think father did

all he could. I feel now that there were a lot of things that I should

have done, only I didn't see them at the time. He never asked me to

help him, but I wish now that I had offered--or--suggested."

Her lips quivered, again she was near tears, and again, as it had been

on her walk with Uncle Mathew, her regret was not for her father but

for the waste that her life with him had been. But there was something

in her aunt that prevented complete confidence. She seemed in something

to be outside small daily troubles. Before they could speak any more

there was a knock on the door and Uncle Mathew came in. He stood there

looking both ashamed of himself and obstinate.

He most certainly did not appear at his best, a large piece of plaster

on his right cheek showing where he had cut himself with his razor, and

a shabby and tight black suit (it was his London suit, and had lain

crumpled disastrously in his hand-bag) accentuating the undue roundness

of his limbs; his eyes blinked and his mouth trembled a little at the

corners. He was obviously afraid of his sister and flung his niece a

watery wink as though to implore her silence as to his various

misdemeanours.

Brother and sister shook hands, and Maggie, as she watched them, was

surprised to feel within herself a certain sympathy with her uncle.

Aunt Anne's greeting was gentle and kind but infinitely distant, and

had something of the tenderness with which the Pope washes the feet of

the beggars in Rome.

"I'm so glad that you were here," she said in her soft voice. "It must

have been such a comfort to Maggie."

"He has been, indeed, Aunt Anne," Maggie broke in eagerly.

Her uncle looked at her with great surprise; after his behaviour of

last night he had not expected this. Reassured, he began a voluble

explanation of his movements and plans, rubbing his hands together and

turning one boot against the other.

He had a great deal to say, because he had seen neither of his sisters

for a very long time. Then he wished to make a good impression because

Maggie, the heiress, would be of importance now. What an idiot he had

been last night. What had he done? He could remember nothing. It was

evident that it had been nothing very bad--Maggie bore him no

grudge--good girl, Maggie. He felt affectionate towards her and would

have told her so had her aunt not been present. These thoughts underlay

his rambling history. He was aware suddenly that his audience was

inattentive. He saw, indeed, that his sister was standing with her back

half-turned, gazing on to the shining country beyond the window. He

ceased abruptly, gave his niece a wink, and when this was unsuccessful,

muttering a few words, stumbled out of the room.

The whole village attended the funeral, not because it liked the Rev.

Charles, but because it liked funerals. Maggie was, in all probability,

the only person present who thought very deeply about the late Vicar of

St. Dreot's. The Rev. Tom Trefusis who conducted the ceremony was a

large red-faced man who had played Rugby football for his University

and spent most of his energy over the development of cricket and

football clubs up and down the county. He could not be expected to have

cared very greatly for the Rev. Charles, who had been at no period of

his life and in no possible sense of the word a sportsman. As he

conducted the service his mind speculated as to the next vicar (the

Rev. Tom knew an excellent fellow, stroke of the Cambridge boat in '12,

who would be just the man) the possibility of the frost breaking in

time for the inter-county Rugby match at Truxe, the immediate return of

his wife from London (he was very fond of his wife), and, lastly, a

certain cramp in the stomach that sometimes "bowled him over" and of

which the taking of a funeral--"here to-day and gone to-morrow"--always

reminded him.

"Wonder how long I'll last," he thought as he stood over the grave of

the Rev. Charles and let his eyes wander over the little white

gravestones that ran almost into the dark wall of St. Dreot Woods as

though they were trying to hide themselves. "Wish the frost 'ud

break--ground'll be as hard as nails." The soil fell, thump, thump upon

the coffin. Rooks cawed in the trees; the bell tolled its cracked note.

The Rev. Charles was crammed down with the soil by the eager spades of

the sexton and his friend, who were cold and wanted a drink.

Maggie, meanwhile, watched the final disappearance of her father with

an ever-growing remorse. Ever since her declaration to her uncle during

their walk yesterday this new picture of her father had grown before

her eyes. She had already forgotten many, many things that might now

have made her resentful or at least critical. She saw him as a figure

most disastrously misunderstood. Without any sentimentality in her

vision she saw him lonely, proud, reserved, longing for her sympathy

which she denied him. His greed for money she saw suddenly as a

determination that his daughter should not be left in want. All those

years he had striven and his apparent harshness, sharpness, unkindness

had been that he might pursue his great object.

She did not cry (some of the villagers curiously watching her thought

her a hard-hearted little thing), but her heart was full of tenderness

as she stood there, seeing the humped grey church that was part of her

life, the green mounds with no name, the dark wood, the grey roofs of

the village clustered below the hill, hearing the bell, the rooks, the

healthy voice of Mr. Trefusis, the bark of some distant dog, the creak

of some distant wheel.

"I missed my chance," she thought. "If only now I could have told him!"

Her aunt stood at her side and once again Maggie felt irritation at her

composure. "After all, he was her brother," she thought. She remembered

the feeling and passion with which her aunt had repeated the

Twenty-third Psalm. She was puzzled.

A moment of shrinking came upon her as she thought of the coming London

life.

Then the service was over. The villagers, with that inevitable

disappointment that always lingers after a funeral, went to their

homes. The children remained until night, under the illusion that it

was Sunday.

Maggie spent the rest of the day, for the most part, alone in her room

and thinking of her father. Her bedroom, an attic with a sloping roof,

contained all her worldly possessions. In part because she had always

been so reserved a child, in part because there had been no one in whom

she might confide even had she wished it, she had always placed an

intensity of feeling around and about the few things that were hers.

Her library was very small, but this did not distress her because she

had never cared for reading. Upon the little hanging shelf above her

bed (deal wood painted white, with blue cornflowers) were The Heir of

Redclyffe, a shabby blue-covered copy, Ministering Children, Madame How

and Lady Why, The Imitation of Christ, Robinson Crusoe, Mrs. Beeton's

Cookery Book, The Holy Bible, and The Poems of Longfellow. These had

been given her upon various Christmasses and birthdays. She did not

care for any of them except The Imitation of Christ and Robinson

Crusoe. The Bible was spoilt for her by incessant services and Sunday

School classes; The Heir of Redclyffe and Ministering Children she

found absurdly sentimental and unlike any life that she had ever known;

Mrs. Beeton she had never opened, and Longfellow and Kingsley's Natural

History she found dull. For Robinson Crusoe she had the intense human

sympathy that all lonely people feel for that masterpiece. The

Imitation pleased her by what she would have called its common sense.

Such a passage, for example: "Oftentimes something lurketh within, or

else occurreth from without, which draweth us after it. Many secretly

seek themselves in what they do, and know it not."

"They seem also to live in good peace of mind, when things are done

according to their will and opinion; but if things happen otherwise

than they desire, they are straightway moved and much vexed."

And behind this common sense she did seem to be directly in touch with

some one whom she might find had she more time and friends to advise

her. She was conscious in her lonely hours, that nothing gave her such

a feeling of company as did this little battered red book, and she felt

that that friendliness might one day advance to some greater intimacy.

About these things she was intensely reserved and she spoke of them to

no human being.

Even for the books for whose contents she did not care she had a kindly

feeling. So often had they looked down upon her when she sat there

exasperated, angry at her own tears, rebellious, after some scene with

her father. No other place but this room had seen these old agonies of

hers. She would be sorry after all to leave it.

There were not many things beside the books. Two bowls of blue

Glebeshire pottery, cheap things but precious, a box plastered with

coloured shells, an amber bead necklace, a blue leather writing-case, a

photograph of her father as a young clergyman with a beard and

whiskers, a faded daguerreotype of her mother, last, but by no means

least, a small black lacquer musical-box that played two tunes, "Weel

may the Keel row" and "John Peel,"--these were her worldly possessions.

She sat there; as the day closed down, the trees were swept into the

night, the wind rose in the dark wood, the winter's moon crept pale and

cold into the sky, snow began to fall, at first thinly, then in a

storm, hiding the moon, flinging the fields and roads into a white

shining splendour; the wind died and the stars peeped between the

flakes of whirling snow.

She sat without moving, accusing her heart of hardness, of unkindness.

She seemed to herself then deserving of every punishment. "If I had

only gone to him," she thought again and again. She remembered how she

had kept apart from him, enclosed herself in a reserve that he should

never break. She remembered the times when he had scolded her, coldly,

bitterly, and she had stood, her face as a rock, her heart beating but

her body without movement, then had turned and gone silently from the

room. All her wicked, cold heart that in some strange way cared for

love but could not make those movements towards others that would show

that it cared. What was it in her? Would she always, through life, miss

the things for which she longed through her coldness and obstinacy?

She took her father's photograph, stared at it, gazed into it, held it

in an agony of remorse. She shivered in the cold of her room but did

not know it. Her candle, caught in some draught, blew out, and

instantly the white world without leapt in upon her and her room was

lit with a strange unearthly glow. She saw nothing but her father. At

last she fell asleep in the chair, clutching in her hand the photograph.

Thus her aunt found her, later in the evening. She was touched by the

figure, the shabby black frock, the white tired face. She had been

honestly disappointed in her niece, disappointed in her plainness, in

her apparent want of heart, in her silence and moroseness. Mathew had

told her of the girl's outburst to him against her father, and this had

seemed to her shocking upon the very day after that father's death. Now

when she saw the photograph clenched in Maggie's hand tears came into

her eyes. She said, "Maggie! dear Maggie!" and woke her. Maggie,

stirring saw her aunt's slender figure and delicate face standing in

the snowlight as though she had been truly a saint from heaven.

Maggie's first impulse was to rise up, fling her arms around her aunt's

neck and hug her. Had she done that the history of her life might have

been changed. Her natural shyness checked her impulse. She got up, the

photograph dropped from her hand, she smiled a little and then said

awkwardly, "I've been asleep. Do you want me? I'll come down."

Her aunt drew her towards her.

"Maggie, dear," she said, "don't feel lonely any more. Think of me and

your Aunt Elizabeth as your friends who will always care for you. You

must never be lonely again."

Maggie's whole heart responded. She felt its wild beating but she could

do nothing, could say nothing. Her body stiffened. In spite of herself

she withdrew herself. Her face reddened, then, was pale.

"Thank you, aunt," was all she could say.

Her aunt moved away. Silently they went downstairs together.

At about ten the next morning they were seated in the dining-room--Aunt

Anne, Uncle Mathew, Maggie, and Mr. Brassy. Mr. Brassy was speaking:

"I'm afraid, Miss Cardinal, that there can be no question about the

legality of this. It has been duly witnessed and signed. I regret

extremely ... but as you can well understand, I was quite unable to

prevent. With the exception of a legacy of 300 Pounds Sterling to Miss

Maggie Cardinal everything goes to Miss Ellen Harmer, 'To whom I owe

more than I can ever possibly--'"

"Thank you," interrupted Aunt Anne. "This is, I think, the woman who

has been cook here during the last four years?"

"About five, I think," said Mr. Brassy softly.

Uncle Mathew was upon his feet, trembling.

"This is monstrous," he stuttered, "absolutely monstrous. Of course an

appeal will be made--undue influence--the most abominable thing."

Maggie watched them all as though the whole business were far from

herself. She sat there, her hands folded on her lap, looking at the

mantelpiece with the ugly marble clock, the letter clip with old soiled

letters in it, the fat green vase with dusty everlastings. Just as on

the night when her uncle had come into her room she had fancied that

some one spoke to her, so now she seemed to hear:

"Ah, that's a nasty knock for you--a very nasty knock."

Her father had left all his money, with the exception of 300, Pounds

Sterling to Ellen the cook; Maggie did not, for a moment, speculate as

to the probable total amount. Three hundred pounds seemed to her a very

large sum--it would at any rate give her something to begin life

upon--but the thing that seized and held her was the secret friendship

that must have existed between her father and Ellen--secret friendship

was the first form that the relationship assumed for her. She saw

Ellen, red of face with little eyes and a flat nose upon which flies

used to settle, a fat, short neck, the wheezings and the pantings, the

stumping walk, the great broad back. And she saw her father--first as

the tall, dirty man whom she used to know, with the shiny black

trousers, the untidy beard, the frowning eyes, the nails bitten to the

quick, the ragged shirt-cuffs--then as that veiled shape below the

clothes, the lift of the sheet above the toes, the loins, the stomach,

the beard neatly brushed, the closed yellow eyelids, the yellow

forehead, the rats with their gleaming eyes. In a kind of terror as

though she were being led against her will into some disgusting chamber

where the skulls were stale and the sights indecent, she saw the

friendship of those two--Ellen the cook and her father.

Young, inexperienced though she was, she was old already in a certain

crude knowledge of facts. It could not be said that she traced to their

ultimate hiding-place the relations of her father and the woman, but in

some relation, ugly, sordid, degraded, she saw those two figures

united. Many, many little things came to her mind as she sat there,

moments when the cook had breathlessly and in a sudden heat betrayed

some unexpected agitation, moments when her father had shown confusion,

moments when she had fancied whispers, laughter behind walls, scurrying

feet. She entwined desperately her hands together as pictures developed

behind her eyes.

Ah! but she was ashamed, most bitterly ashamed!

The rest of the interview came to her only dimly. She knew that Uncle

Mathew was still upon his feet protesting, that her aunt's face was

cold and wore a look of distressed surprise as though some one had

suddenly been rude to her.

From very, very far away came Mr. Brassy's voice: "I was aware that

this could not be agreeable, Miss Cardinal. But I am afraid that, under

the circumstances, there is nothing to be done. As to undue influence I

think that I should warn you, Mr. Cardinal, that there could be very

little hope ... and of course the expense ... if I may advise you ..."

The voice sank away again, the room faded, the air was still and

painted; like figures on a stage acting before an audience of one

Maggie saw those grotesque persons ...

She did not speak one word during the whole affair.

After a time she saw that Mr. Brassy was not in the room. Her aunt was

speaking to her:

"Maggie, dear--I'm so very sorry--so very sorry. But you know that you

will come to us and find a home there. You mustn't think about the

money--"

With a sudden impulse she arose, almost brushing her aunt aside.

"Ah! that's not it--that's not it!" she cried. Then, recovering herself

a little, she went on--"It's all right, Aunt Anne. I'm all right. I'm

going out for a little. If I'm not back for lunch, don't wait.

Something cold, anything, tell Ellen--"

At the sudden mention of that name she stopped, coloured a little,

turned away and left the room. In the hall she nearly ran against the

cook. The woman was standing there, motionless, breathing deeply, her

eyes fixed upon the dining-room. When she saw Maggie, she moved as

though she would speak, then something in the girl's face checked her.

She drew back into the shadow.

Maggie left the house.

The brother and sister, remaining in the room, walked towards one

another as though driven by some common need of sympathy and protection

against an outside power. Mathew Cardinal felt a genuine indignation

that had but seldom figured in his life before. He had hated his

brother, always, and never so greatly as at the moments of the man's

reluctant charity towards him. But now, in the first clean uplift of

his indignation, there was no self-congratulation at the justification

of his prophecies.

"I knew him for what he was. But that he could do this! He meant it to

hurt, too--that was like him all over. He had us in his mind. I wish

I'd never taken a penny from him. I'd rather have starved. Yes, I

would--far rather. I've been bad enough, but never a thing like that--"

His sister said quietly:

"He's dead, Mathew. We can do nothing. Maggie, poor child ..."

He approached for an instant more nearly than he had ever done. He took

her hand. There were tears in his eyes.

"It's good of you, Anne--to take her."

She withdrew her hand--very gently.

"I wish we'd taken her before. She must have had a terrible time here.

I'd never realised ..."

He stood away from her near the window, feeling suddenly ashamed of his

impetuosity.

"She's a strange girl," Anne Cardinal went on. "She didn't seem to feel

this,--or anything. She hasn't, I think, much heart. I'm afraid she may

find it a little difficult with us--"

Mathew was uncomfortable now. His mood had changed; he was sullen. His

sister always made him feel like a disgraced dog. He shuffled on his

feet.

"She's a good girl," he muttered at last, and then with a confused look

about him, as though he were searching for something, he stumbled out

of the room.

Meanwhile Maggie went on her way. She chose instinctively her path,

through the kitchen garden at the back of the village, down the hill by

the village street, over the little bridge that crossed the rocky

stream of the Dreot, and up the steep hill that led on to the outskirts

of Rothin Moor. The day, although she had no eyes for it, was one of

those sudden impulses of misty warmth that surprise the Glebeshire

frosts. The long stretch of the moor was enwrapped by a thin silver

network of haze; the warmth of the sun, seen so dimly that it was like

a shadow reflected in a mirror, struck to the very heart of the soil.

Where but yesterday there had been iron frost there was now soft

yielding earth; it was as though the heat of the central fires of the

world pressed dimly upward through many miles of heavy weighted

resistance, straining to the light and air. Larks, lost in golden mist,

circled in space; Maggie could feel upon her face and neck and hands

the warm moisture; the soil under her feet, now hard, now soft, seemed

to tremble with some happy anticipation; the moor, wrapped in its misty

colour, had no bounds; the world was limitless space with hidden

streams, hidden suns.

The moor had a pathetic attraction for her, because not very long ago a

man and a woman had been lost, only a few steps from Borhedden Farm, in

the mist--lost their way and been frozen during the night. Poor things!

lovers, perhaps, they had been.

Maggie felt that here she could walk for miles and miles and that there

was nothing to stop her; the clang of a gate, a house, a wall, a human

voice was intolerable to her.

Her first thought as she went forward was disgust at her own weakness;

once again she had been betrayed by her feelings. She could remember no

single time when they had not betrayed her. She recalled now with an

intolerable self-contempt her thoughts of her father at the time of the

funeral and the hours that followed. It seemed to her now that she had

only softened towards his memory because she had believed that he had

left her money--and now, when she saw that he had treated her

contemptuously, she found him once again the cruel, mean figure that

she had before thought him.

For that she most bitterly, with an intensity that only her loneliness

could have given her, despised herself. And yet something else in her

knew that that reproach was not a true one. She had really softened

towards him only because she had felt that she had behaved badly

towards him, and the discovery now that he had behaved badly towards

her did not alter her own original behaviour. She did not analyse all

this; she only knew that there were in her longings for affection, a

desire to be loved, an aching for companionship, and that these things

must always be kept down, fast hidden within her. She realised her

loneliness now with a fierce, proud, almost exultant independence. No

more tears, no more leaning upon others, no more expecting anything

from anybody. She was not dramatic in her new independence; she did not

cry defiance to the golden mist or the larks or the hidden sun; she

only walked on and on, stumping forward in her clumsy boots, her eyes

hard and unseeing, her hands clasped behind her back.

Her expectation of happiness in her opening life that had been so

strong with her that other day when she had looked down upon Polchester

was gone. She expected nothing, she wanted nothing. Her only thought

was that she would never yield to any one, never care for any one,

never give to any one the opportunity of touching her. At moments

through the mist came the figure of the cook, stout, florid,

triumphant. Maggie regarded her contemptuously. "You cannot touch me,"

she thought. Of her father she would never think again. With both hands

she flung all her memories of him into the mist to be lost for ever ...

She came suddenly upon a lonely farm-house. She knew the place,

Borhedden; it had often been a favourite walk of hers from the Vicarage

to Borhedden. The farmer let rooms there and, because the house was

very old, some of the rooms were fine, with high ceilings, thick stone

walls, and even some good panelling. The view too was superb, across to

the Broads and the Molecatcher, or back to the Dreot Woods, or to the

dim towers of Polchester Cathedral. The air here was fine--one of the

healthiest spots in Glebeshire.

The farm to-day was transfigured by the misty glow; cows and horses

could be faintly seen, ricks burnt with a dim fire. Somewhere dripping

water falling on to stone gave a vocal spirit to the obscurity. The

warm air seemed to radiate about the house like a flame that is

obscured by sunlight.

The stealthy movements of the animals, the dripping of the water, were

the only sounds. To Maggie the house seemed to say something, something

comforting and reassuring.

Standing there, she registered her vow that through all her life she

would care for no one. No one should touch her.

Had there been an observer he might have found some food for his irony

in the contemplation of that small, insignificant figure so ignorant of

life and so defiant of it. He would have found perhaps something

pathetic also. Maggie thought neither of irony nor of pathos, but

turned homewards with her mouth set, her eyes grave, her heart

controlled.

As she walked back the sun broke through the mist, and, turning, she

could see Borhedden like a house on fire, its windows blazing against

the sky.

It was natural that her aunt should wish to return to London as soon as

possible. For one thing, Ellen the cook had packed her clothes and

retired to some place in the village, there to await the departure of

the defeated family. Then the house was not only unpleasant by reason

of its atmosphere and associations, but there were also the definite

discomforts of roofs through which the rain dripped and floors that

swayed beneath one's tread. Moreover, Aunt Elizabeth did not care to be

left alone in the London house.

Uncle Mathew left on the day after the funeral. He had one little last

conversation with Maggie.

"I hope you'll be happy in London," he said.

"I hope so," said Maggie.

"I know you'll do what you can to help your aunts." Then he went on

more nervously. "Think of me sometimes. I shan't be able to come and

see you very often, you know--too busy. But I shall like to know that

you're thinking about me."

Maggie's new-found resolution taken so defiantly upon the moor was

suddenly severely tested. She felt as though her uncle were leaving her

to a world of enemies. She drove down her sense of desolation, and he

saw nothing but her quiet composure.

"Of course I'll think of you," she answered. "And you must come often."

"They don't like me," he said, nodding his head towards where Aunt Anne

might be supposed to be waiting. "It's not my fault altogether--but

they have severe ideas. It's religion, of course."

She suddenly seemed to see in his eyes some terror or despair, as

though he knew that he was going to drop "this time"--farther than ever

before.

She caught his arm. "Uncle Mathew, what are you going to do? Where will

you live? Take my three hundred pounds if it will help you. I don't

want it just now. Keep it for me."

He had a moment of resolute, clear-sighted honesty. "No, my dear, if I

had it it would go in a week. I can't keep money; I never could. I'm

really better without any. I'm all right. You'll never get rid of

me--don't you fear. We've got more in common than you think, although

you're a good girl and I've gone to pieces a bit. All the same there's

plenty worse than me. Your aunt, for all her religion, is damned

difficult for a plain man to get along with. Most people would find me

better company, after all. One last word, Maggie."

He bent down and whispered to her. "Don't you go getting caught by that

sweep who runs their chapel up in London. He's a humbug if ever there

was one--you mark my words. I know a thing or two. He's done your aunts

a lot of harm, and he'll have his dirty fingers on you if you let him."

So he departed, his last kiss mingled with the usual aroma of whisky

and tobacco, his last attitude, as he turned away, that strange

confusion of assumed dignity and natural genial stupidity that was so

especially his.

Maggie turned, with all her new defiant resolution, to face the world

alone with her Aunt Anne. Throughout the next day she was busied with

collecting her few possessions, with her farewells to the one or two

people in the village who had been kind to her, and with little sudden,

almost surreptitious visits to corners of the house, the garden, the

wood where she had at one time or another been happy.

As the evening fell and a sudden storm of rain leapt up from beneath

the hill and danced about the house, she had a wild longing to stay--to

stay at any cost and in any discomfort. London had no longer interest,

but only terror and dismay. She ran out into the dark and rain-drenched

garden, felt her way to an old and battered seat that had seen in older

days dolls' tea-parties and the ravages of bad-temper, stared from it

across the kitchen-garden to the lights of the village, that seemed to

rock and shiver in the wind and rain.

She stared passionately at the lights, her heart beating as though it

would suffocate her. At last, her clothes soaked with the storm, her

hair dripping, she returned to the house. Her aunt was in the hall.

"My dear Maggie, where have you been?" in a voice that was kind but

aghast.

"In the garden," said Maggie, hating her aunt.

"But it's pouring with rain! You're soaking! You must change at once!

Did you go out to find something?"

Maggie made no answer. She stood there, her face sulky and closed, the

water dripping from her. Afterwards, as she changed her clothes, she

reflected that there had been many occasions during these three days

when her aunt would have felt irritation with her had she known her

longer. She had always realised that she was careless, that when she

should be thinking of one thing she thought of another, that her

housekeeping and management of shops and servants had been irregular

and undisciplined, but until now she had not sharply surveyed her

weaknesses. Since the coming of her aunt she had been involved in a

perfect network of little blunders; she had gone out of the room

without shutting the door, had started into the village on an errand,

and then, when she was there, had forgotten what it was; there had been

holes in her stockings and rents in her blouses. After Ellen's

departure she had endeavoured to help in the kitchen, but had made so

many mistakes that Aunt Anne and the kitchen-maid had been compelled to

banish her. She now wondered how during so many years she had run the

house at all, but then her father had cared about nothing so that money

was not wasted. She knew that Aunt Anne excused her mistakes just now

because of the shock of her father's death and the events that followed

it, but Maggie knew also that these faults were deep in her character.

She could explain it quite simply to herself by saying that behind the

things that she saw there was always something that she did not see,

something of the greatest importance and just beyond her vision; in her

efforts to catch this farther thing she forgot what was immediately in

front of her. It had always been so. Since a tiny child she had always

supposed that the shapes and forms with which she was presented were

only masks to hide the real thing. Such a view might lend interest to

life, but it certainly made one careless; and although Uncle Mathew

might understand it and put it down to the Cardinal imagination, she

instinctively knew that Aunt Anne, unless Maggie definitely attributed

it to religion, would be dismayed and even, if it persisted, angered.

Maggie had not, after all, the excuse and defence of being a dreamy

child. With her square body and plain face, her clear, unspeculative

eyes, her stolid movements, she could have no claim to dreams. With a

sudden desolate pang Maggie suspected that Uncle Mathew was the only

person who would ever understand her. Well, then, she must train

herself.

She would close doors, turn out lights, put things back where she found

them, mend her clothes, keep accounts. Indeed a new life was beginning

for her. She felt, with a sudden return to the days before her walk on

the moor, that if only her aunts would love her she would improve much

more rapidly. And then with her new independence she assured herself

that if they did not love her she most certainly would not love them ...

That night she sat opposite her aunt beside the fire. The house lay

dead and empty behind them. Aunt Anne was so neat in her thin black

silk, her black shining hair, her pale pointed face, a little round

white locket rising and falling ever so slowly with the lift of her

breast. There were white frills to her sleeves, and she read a slim

book bound in purple leather. Her body never moved; only once and again

her thin, delicate hand ever so gently lifted, turned a page, then

settled down on to her lap once more. She never raised her eyes.

The fire was heavy and sullen; the wind howled; that old familiar

beating of the twigs upon the pane seemed to reiterate to Maggie that

this was her last evening. She pretended to read. She had found a heavy

gilt volume of Paradise Lost with Dore's pictures. She read these words:

Beyond this flood a frozen Continent Lies dark and wilde, beat with

perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail; which on firm land Thaws

not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems Of ancient pile; all else deep

snow and ice, A gulf profound as that Serbonian bay Betwixt Damiata and

Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk; the parching Air Burns

froze, and cold performs the effect of Fire.

Further again, words caught her eye.

Thus roving on In confused march forlorn, th' adventurous Bands With

shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast Viewed first their lamentable

lot, and found No rest; through many a dark and drearie Vaile They

passed, and many a Region dolorous. O'er many a frozen, many a fiery

Alpe, Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens and shades of death, A

Universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good

Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breaks Perverse, all

monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse

Than Fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras,

and Chimaeras dire.

She did not care for reading, most especially she did not care for

poetry, but to-night she saw the picture. Up to the very bounds of the

house this waste country, filled with beasts of prey, animals with

fiery eyes and incredible names, the long stretch of snow and ice, the

black water with no stars reflected in it, the wind.

A coal crashed in the fire; she gave a little cry.

"My dear, what is it?" said Aunt Anne. Then, with a little shake of her

shoulders, she added: "There's a horrid draught. Perhaps you forgot to

close the kitchen-door when you came away, Maggie dear."

Maggie flushed. Of course she had forgotten. She left the room, crossed

the hall. Yes, there was the door, wide open. She locked it, the place

was utterly cold and desolate. She closed the door, stood for a moment

in the little hall.

"I don't care what's going to happen!" she cried aloud. So ended her

life in that house.

CHAPTER III

THE LONDON HOUSE

It was strange after this that the start on the London journey should

be so curiously unexciting; it was perhaps the presence of Aunt Anne

that reduced everything to an unemotional level. Maggie wondered as she

sat in the old moth-eaten, whisky-smelling cab whether her Aunt Anne

was ever moved about anything. Then something occurred that showed her

that, as yet, she knew very little about her aunt. As, clamping down

the stony hill, they had a last glimpse at the corner of the two

Vicarage chimneys, looking above the high hedge like a pair of

inquisitive lunatics, Maggie choked. She pressed her hands together,

pushed her hair from her face and, in so doing, touched her black hat.

"Your hat's crooked, Maggie dear," said her aunt gently. The girl's hot

hands clutched the soft packet of sandwiches and a little black handbag

that yesterday Aunt Anne had bought for her in the village. It was a

shabby little bag, and had strange habits of opening when it was not

expected to do so and remaining shut when something was needed from it.

It gaped now and, just as the cab climbed Cator Hill, it fell forward

and flung the contents on to the floor. Maggie, blushing, looked up

expecting a reproof. She saw that her aunt's eyes were fixed upon the

view; as upon the day of her arrival, so now. Her face wore a look of

rapture. She drank it in.

Maggie also took the last joy of the familiar scene. The Vicarage, like

a grey crouching cat, lay basking on the green hill. The sunlight

flooded the dark wood; galleons of clouds rolled like lumbering vessels

across the blue sky.

"It's lovely, isn't it?" whispered Maggie.

"Beautiful--beautiful," sighed her aunt.

"I've always loved just this view. I've often walked here just to see

it," Maggie said.

Aunt Anne sat back in her seat.

"It's been hard for me always to live in London. I love the country so."

"So do I," said Maggie, passionately.

For a moment they were together, caught up by the same happiness.

Then Aunt Anne said:

"Why, your bag, dear! The things are all about the place."

Maggie bent down. When she looked up again they had dipped down on the

other side of the hill.

Maggie had only once in all her life been in a train, but on this

present occasion she did not find it very thrilling. It was rather like

being in anything else, and her imagination exercised itself upon the

people in the carriage rather than the scenery outside. She was at

first extremely self-conscious and fancied that every one whispered

about her. Then, lulled by the motion of the train and the warmth, she

slept; she was more deeply exhausted by the events of the last week

than she knew, and throughout the day she slumbered, woke, and

slumbered again.

Quite suddenly she awoke with a definite shock to a new world. Evening

had come; there were lights that rushed up to the train, stared in at

the window, and rushed away again. On every side things seemed to

change places in a general post, trees and houses, hedges and roads,

all lit by an evening moon and wrapt in a white and wavering mist. Then

the town was upon them, quite instantly; streets ran like ribbons into

grey folds of buildings; rows of lamps, scattered at first, drew into a

single point of dancing flame; towers and chimneys seemed to jump from

place to place as though they were trying to keep in time with the

train; a bell rang monotonously; wreaths of smoke rose lazily against

the stars and fell again.

When at last she found herself, a tiny figure, standing upon the vast

platform under the high black dome, the noise and confusion excited and

delighted her. She rose to the waves of sound as a swimmer rises in the

sea, her heart beat fast, and she was so eagerly engaged in looking

about her, in staring at the hurrying people, in locating the shrill

screams of the engines, in determining not to jump when the carriages

jolted together, that her little black bag opened unexpectedly once

more and spilled a handkerchief, a hand-mirror, a paper packet of

sweets, a small pair of scissors, and a shabby brown purse upon the

station-floor. She was greatly confused when an old gentleman helped

her to pick them up. The little mirror was broken.

"Oh! it's bad luck!" she cried, staring distressfully at the old man.

He smiled, and would have certainly been very agreeable to her had not

Aunt Anne, who had been finding their boxes and securing a cab, arrived

and taken Maggie away. "You shouldn't speak to strange gentlemen,

dear," said Aunt Anne.

But Maggie did not listen. It was characteristic of Anne Cardinal that

she should secure the only four-wheeler in the station, rejecting the

taxi-cabs that waited in rows for her pleasure. Had Maggie only known,

her aunt's choice was eloquent of their future life together. But

Maggie did not know and did not care. Her excitement was intense. That

old St. Dreot life had already swung so far behind her that it was like

a fantastic dream; as they rumbled through the streets, the cries, the

smells, the lights seemed arranged especially for her. She could not

believe that they had all been, just like this, before her arrival. As

with everything, she was busy imagining the World behind this display,

the invisible Circle inside the circle that she saw.

They came into the Strand, and the masses of moving people seemed to

her like somnambulists walking without reason or purpose. She felt as

though there would suddenly come a great hole in the middle of the

street into which the cab would tumble. The noise seemed to her country

ears deafening, and when, suddenly, the lighted letters of some

advertisement flashed out gigantic against the sky, she gave a little

scream. She puzzled her aunt by saying:

"But it isn't really like this, is it?"

To which Aunt Anne could only say:

"You're hungry and tired, dear, I expect."

With one last outrending scream the whole world seemed to fling itself

at the window, open because Aunt Anne thought the cab "had a smell."

"Oosh--O O S H." "OOSH." ... Maggie drew back as though she expected

some one to leap in upon them. Then, with that marvellous and ironical

gift of contrast that is London's secret, they were suddenly driven

into the sleepiest quiet; they stumbled up a street that was like a

cave for misty darkness and muffled echoes. The cab's wheels made a

riotous clatter.

A man posting a letter in a pillar-box was the only figure in the

street. The stars shone overhead with wonderful brilliance, and a

little bell jangled softly close at hand. All the houses were tall and

secret, with high white steps and flat faces. A cat slipped across the

street; another swiftly followed it.

St. Dreot's seemed near at hand again and Ellen the cook not so far

away. Maggie felt a sudden forlornness and desolation.

"What a very quiet street!" she whispered, as though she were afraid

lest the street should hear.

They stopped before one of the flat-faced houses; Aunt Anne rang the

bell, and an old woman with a face like a lemon helped the cabman with

the boxes. Maggie was standing in a hall that smelt of damp and

geraniums. It was intensely dark, and a shrill scream from somewhere

did not make things more pleasant.

"That's Edward the parrot," said Aunt Anne. "Take care not to approach

him too closely, dear, because he bites."

Then they went upstairs, Maggie groping her way and stumbling at the

sharp corners. The darkness grew; she knocked her knee on the corner of

something, cried out, and a suddenly opened door threw a pale green

light upon a big picture of men in armour attacking a fortified town

beneath a thundery sky. This picture wavered and faltered, hung as it

was upon a thin cord strained to breaking-point. Maggie reached the

security of the room beyond the passage, her shoulders bent a little as

though she expected to near at every instant the crashing collapse of

the armoured men. Her eyes unused to the light, she stumbled into the

room, fell into some one's arms, felt that her poor hat was crooked and

her cheeks burning, and then was rebuked, as it seemed, by the piercing

cry of Edward the parrot from the very bowels of the house.

She stammered something to the man who had held her and then let her

go. She was confused, hot and angry. "They'll think me an idiot who

can't enter a room properly." She glared about her and felt as though

she had been taken prisoner by some strange people who lived under the

sea. She was aware, when her eyes were accustomed to the dim light,

that the entrance of herself and her aunt had interrupted the

conversation of three people. Near the fireplace sat a little woman

wearing black mittens and a white lace cap; standing above her with his

arm on the mantelpiece was a thin, battered-looking gentleman with

large spectacles, high, gaunt features and a very thin head of hair;

near the door was the man against whom Maggie had collided. She saw

that he was young, thick-set and restless. She noticed even then his

eyes, bright and laughing as though he were immensely amused. His mouth

opened and closed again, his eyes were never still, and he made fierce

dumb protests with his body, jerking it forward pulling it back, as a

rider strives to restrain an unruly horse. Maggie was able to notice

these things, because during the first moments her Aunt Anne entirely

held the stage. She advanced to the fireplace with her halting

movement, embraced the little lady by the fire with a soft and

unimpassioned clasp.

"Well, Elizabeth, here we are, you see," turned to the thin gentleman

saying, "Why you, Mr. Magnus! I thought that you were still in

Wiltshire!" then from the middle of the room addressing the stout young

man: "I'm very glad to see you, Mr. Warlock."

Maggie fancied that the three persons were nervous of her aunt; the

stout young man was amused perhaps at the general situation, but Mr.

Magnus by the fireplace showed great emotion, the colour mounting into

his high bony cheeks and his nostrils twitching like a horse's. Maggie

had been always very observant, and she was detached enough now to

notice that the drawing-room was filled with ugly and cumbrous things

and yet seemed unfurnished. Although everything was old and had been

there obviously for years, the place yet reminded one of a bare chamber

into which, furniture had just been piled without order or arrangement.

Opposite the door was a large and very bad painting of the two sisters

as young girls, sitting, with arms encircled, in low dresses, on the

seashore before a grey and angry sea, and Uncle Mathew as a small,

shiny-faced boy in tight short blue trousers, carrying a bucket and

spade, and a smug, pious expression. The room was lit with gas that

sizzled and hissed in a protesting undertone; there was a big black cat

near the fire, and this watched Maggie with green and fiery eyes.

She stood there by the door tired and hungry; she felt unacknowledged

and forgotten.

"I know I shall hate it," was her thought; she was conscious of her

arms and her legs; her ankle tickled in her shoe, and she longed to

scratch it. She sneezed suddenly, and they all jumped as though the

floor had opened beneath them.

"And Maggie?" said the little lady by the fireplace.

Maggie moved forward with the awkward gestures and the angry look in

her eyes that were always hers when she was ill at ease.

"Maggie," said Aunt Anne, "has been very good."

"And she's tired, I'm sure," continued the little lady, who must of

course be Aunt Elizabeth. "The journey was easy, dear. And you had no

change. They gave you footwarmers, I hope. It's been lovely weather.

I'm so glad to see you, dear. I've had no photograph of you since you

were a baby."

Aunt Elizabeth had a way, Maggie thought, of collecting a number of

little disconnected statements as though she were working out a sum and

hoped--but was not very certain--that she would achieve a successful

answer. "Add two and five and three and four ..." The statements that

she made were apparently worlds apart in interest and importance, but

she hoped with good fortune to flash upon the boards a fine result. She

was nervous, Maggie saw, and her thin shoulders were a little bent as

though she expected some one from behind to strike her suddenly in the

small of the back.

"She's afraid of something," thought Maggie.

Aunt Elizabeth had obviously not the strong character of her sister

Anne.

"Thank you," said Maggie, looking, for no reason at all, at Mr. Magnus,

"I slept in the train, so I'm not tired." She stopped then, because

there was nothing more to say. She felt that she ought to kiss her

aunt; she thought she saw in her aunt's small rather watery eyes an

appeal that she should do so. The distance, however, seemed infinite,

and Maggie had a strange feeling that her bending down would break some

spell, that the picture in the passage would fall with a ghostly

clatter, that Edward the parrot would scream and shriek, that the gas

would burst into a bubbling horror, that the big black cat would leap

upon her and tear her with its claws.

"Well, I'm not afraid," she thought. And, as though she were defying

the universe, she bent down and kissed her aunt. She fancied that this

act of hers produced a little sigh of relief. Every one seemed to

settle down. They all sat, and conversation was general.

Mr. Magnus had a rather melancholy, deprecating voice, but with some

touch of irony too, as though he were used to being called a fool by

his fellow-beings, but after all knew better than they did. He did not

sound at all conceited; only amused with a little gentle melancholy at

his own position.

"I'm glad to see you so well, Miss Cardinal," he said with an air of

rather old-fashioned courtesy. "I had been afraid that it might have

exhausted you. I only came to welcome you. I must return at once. I

have an article to finish before midnight."

Aunt Anne smiled gently: "No, I'm not tired, thank you. And what has

happened while I have been away?"

"I have been away too, as you know," said Mr. Magnus, "but I understand

that your sister has been very busy--quite a number--"

Aunt Elizabeth said in her trembling voice: "No. No--Anne--I assure

you. Nothing at all. As you know, the Bible Committee wanted to discuss

the new scheme. Last Tuesday. Mr. Warlock, Mr. Simms, young Holliday,

Miss Martin, Mary Hearst. And Sophie Dunn. AND Mr. Turner. Nothing at

all. It was a wet day. Last Tuesday afternoon."

"Your mother is quite well, I hope, Mr. Warlock?" said Aunt Anne,

turning to the young man. "Yes--she's all right," he answered. "Just

the same. Amy wants you to go and see her. I was to give you the

message, if you could manage to-morrow sometime; or she'd come here if

it's more convenient. There's something important, she says, but I

don't suppose it's important in the least. You know what she is."

He spoke, laughing. His eyes wandered all round the room and suddenly

settled on Maggie with a startled stare, as though she were the last

person whom he had expected to find there.

"Yes. To-morrow afternoon, perhaps--about three, if that would suit

her. How is Amy?"

"Oh, she's all right. As eager to run the world as ever--and she never

will run it so long as she shows her cards as obviously as she does. I

tell her so. But it's no good. She doesn't listen to me, you know."

Aunt Anne, with the incomparable way that she had, brushed all this

very gently aside. She simply said: "I'm glad that she's well." Then

she turned to the other gentleman:

"Your writing's quite satisfactory, I hope, Mr. Magnus."

She spoke as though it had been a cold or a toothache.

He smiled his melancholy ironical smile. "I go on, you know, Miss

Cardinal. After all, it's my bread and butter."

Maggie, looking at him, knew that this was exactly the way that he did

not regard it, and felt a sudden sympathy towards him with his thin

hair, his large spectacles and his shabby clothes. But her look at him

was the last thing of which she was properly conscious. The wall beyond

the fireplace, that had seemed before to her dim and dark, now suddenly

appeared to lurch forward, to bulge before her eyes; the floor with its

old, rather shabby carpet rose on a slant as though it was rocked by an

unsteady sea; worst of all, the large black cat swelled like a balloon,

its whiskers distended like wire. She knew that her eyes were burning,

that her forehead was cold, and that she felt sick. She was hungry, and

at the same time was conscious that she could eat nothing. Her only

wish was to creep away and hide herself from every one.

However, through all her confusion she was aware of her determination

not to betray to them that she was ill. "If only the cat wouldn't grow

so fast, I believe I could manage," was her desperate thought. There

was a roaring in her ears; she caught suddenly from an infinite

distance the voice of the stout young man--"She's ill! She's fainting!"

She was aware that she struggled to face him with fierce protesting

eyes. The next thing she knew was that she lay for the second time that

afternoon in his arms. She felt that he laid her, clumsily but gently,

upon the sofa; some one sprinkled cold water on her forehead. Deep down

in her soul she hated and despised herself for this weakness before

strangers. She closed her eyes tightly, desiring to conceal not so much

the others as herself from her scornful gaze. She heard some one say

something about a cup of tea, and she wanted it suddenly with a

desperate, fiery desire, but she would not speak, no, not if they were

to torture her with thirst for days and days--to that extent at least

she could preserve her independence.

She heard her Aunt Elizabeth say something like: "Poor

thing--strain--last week--father--too much."

She gathered all her energies together to say "It hasn't been too much.

I'm all right," but they brought her a cup of tea, and before that she

succumbed. She drank it with eager greed, then lay back, her eyes

closed, and slowly the bars of hot iron withdrew from her forehead. She

slept.

She woke to a room wrapped in a green trembling twilight. She was alone

save for the black cat. The fire crackled, the gas was turned low, and

the London murmur beyond the window was like the hum of an organ. There

was no one in the room; she felt, as she lay there, an increasing

irritation at her weakness. She was afraid too for her future. Did she

faint like this at the earliest opportunity people would allow her no

chance of earning her living. Where was that fine independent life upon

which, outside Borhedden Farm, she had resolved? And these people, her

aunts, the young man, the thin spectacled man, what would they think of

her? They would name it affectation, perhaps, and imagine that she had

acted in such a way that she might gain their interest and sympathy.

Such a thought sent the colour flaming to her cheeks; she sat up on the

sofa. She would go to them at once and show them that she was perfectly

strong and well.

The door opened and Aunt Elizabeth came in, very gently as though she

were going to steal something. She was, Maggie saw now, so little as to

be almost deformed, with a soft pale face, lined and wrinkled, and blue

watery eyes. She wore a black silk wrapper over her shoulders, and soft

black slippers. Alice in Wonderland was one of the few books that

Maggie had read in her childhood; Aunt Elizabeth reminded her strongly

of the White Queen in the second part of that masterpiece.

"Oh, you're not asleep, dear," said Aunt Elizabeth.

"No, I'm not," said Maggie. "I'm perfectly all right. I can't think

what made me behave like that. I've never done such a thing before. I'm

ashamed!"

"It was very natural," said Aunt Elizabeth. "You should have had some

tea at once. It was my fault. It's late now. Nine o'clock. My sister

suggests bed. Supper in bed. Very nice, I always think, after a long

journey. It will be fine to-morrow, I expect. We've had beautiful

weather until this morning, when it rained for an hour. Chicken and

some pudding. There's a little Australian wine that my sister keeps in

the house for accidents. I liked it myself when I had it once for

severe neuralgia."

She suddenly, with a half-nervous, half-desperate gesture, put out her

hand and took Maggie's. Her hand was soft like blanc-mange; it had

apparently no bones in it.

Maggie was touched and grateful. She liked this little shy, frightened

woman. She would do anything to please her.

"Don't think," she said eagerly, "that I've ever fainted like that

before. I assure you that I've never done anything so silly. You

mustn't think that I'm not strong. I'm strong as a horse--father always

said so. I've come to help you and Aunt Anne in any way I can. You

mustn't think that I'm going to be in the way. I only want to be

useful."

Aunt Elizabeth started and looked at the door. "I thought I heard

something," she said. They both listened.

"Perhaps it was the parrot," said Maggie.

Aunt Elizabeth smiled bravely.

"There are often noises in an old house like this," she said. The black

cat came towards them, slowly, with immense dignified indifference. He

swung his tail as though to show them that he cared for no one. He

walked to the door and waited; then followed them out of the room.

Maggie found that her bedroom was a room at the top of the house, very

white and clean, with a smell of soot and tallow candle that was new

and attractive. There was a large text in bright purple over the

bed--"The Lord cometh; prepare ye the way of the Lord." From the window

one saw roofs, towers, chimneys, a sweeping arc of sky-lights now spun

and sparkled into pathways and out again, driven by the rumble behind

them that never ceased, although muffled by the closed window.

They talked together for a little while, standing near the window, the

candle wavering in Aunt Elizabeth's unsteady hand.

"We thought you'd like this top room. It's quieter than the rest of the

house. Sometimes when the sweep hasn't been the soot tumbles down the

chimney. You mustn't mind that. Thomas will push open the door and walk

in at times. It's his way."

"Thomas?" said Maggie bewildered.

"Our cat. He has been with us for many years now. Those who know say

that he might have taken prizes once. I can't tell I'm sure. If you

pull that bell when you want anything Martha will come. She will call

you at half-past seven; prayers are in the dining-room at a quarter

past eight. Sometimes the wind blows through the wall-paper, but it is

only the wind."

Maggie drew back the curtains that hid the glitter of the lights.

"Were those great friends of yours, those gentlemen this evening?"

"The one who wears spectacles, Mr. Magnus--yes, he is a very old

friend. He is devoted to my sister. He writes stories."

"What, in the papers?"

"No, in books. Two every year."

"And the other one?"

"That is young Mr. Warlock--he is the son of our minister."

"Does he live near here?"

"He lives just now with his parents. Of late years he has been abroad."

"He doesn't look like the son of a minister," said Maggie.

"No, I'm afraid--" Aunt Elizabeth suddenly stopped. "His father has

been minister of our chapel for twenty years. He is a great and

wonderful man."

"Where is the chapel?"

"Very near at hand. You will see it to-morrow. To-morrow is Sunday."

There was a long pause. Maggie knew that now was the time when she

should say something friendly and affectionate. She could say nothing.

She stared at her aunt, then at a long mirror that faced her bed, then

at the lighted sky. She felt warmly grateful, eager to show all the

world that she would do her best, that she was ready to give herself to

this new life with all her soul and strength--she could say nothing.

They waited.

At last her aunt said:

"Good-night, dear Maggie."

"Good-night, Aunt Elizabeth."

She stole away, leaving the candle upon the chest of drawers; the cat

followed her, swinging his tail.

Left alone, Maggie felt the whole sweep of her excitement. She was

exhausted, her body felt as though it had been trampled upon, she was

so tired that she could scarcely drag her clothes from her, but the

exaltation of her spirit was beyond and above all this. Half undressed

she stood before the long mirror. She had never before possessed a long

looking-glass, and now she seemed to see herself as she really was for

the first time. Was she very ugly and unattractive? Yes, she must be

with that stumpy body, those thick legs and arms, that short nose and

large mouth. And she did not know what to do to herself to make herself

attractive. Other girls knew but she had never had any one who could

tell her. Perhaps she would make girl friends now who would show her.

But, after all, she did not care. She was herself. People who did not

like her could leave her--yes they could, and she would not stir a

finger to fetch them back.

Then, deep down in her soul, she knew that she wanted success, a

magnificent life, a great future. Nay more, she expected it. She had

force and strength, and she would compel life to give her what she

wanted. She laughed at herself in the glass. She was happy, almost

triumphant, and for no reason at all.

She went to her windows and opened them; there came up to her the

tramping progress of the motor-omnibuses. They advanced, like elephants

charging down a jungle, nearer, nearer, nearer. Before the tramp of one

had passed another was advancing, and then upon that

another--ceaselessly, advancing and retreating.

In her nightdress she leaned out of the window, poised, as it seemed to

her, above a swaying carpet of lights.

Life seemed to hold every promise in store for her.

She crossed to her bed, drew the clothes about her and, forgetting her

supper, forgetting all that had happened to her, her journey, her

fainting, the young man, Edward the parrot, she fell into a slumber as

deep, as secure, as death itself.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHAPEL

Maggie woke next morning to a strange silence. Many were the silent

mornings that had greeted her at St. Dreots, but this was silence with

a difference; it was the silence, she was instantly aware, of some one

whose very soul was noise and tumult. She listened, and the sudden

chirping of some sparrows beyond her window only accentuated the sense

of expectation. She had never, in all her days, been so conscious of

Sunday.

She was almost afraid to move lest she should break the spell.

She lay in bed and thought of the preceding evening. Her fainting fit

seemed to her now more than ever unfortunate; it had placed her at a

disadvantage with them all. She could imagine the stout young man

returning to his home and saying: "Their niece has arrived. Seems a

weak little thing. Fainted right off there in the drawing-room." Or her

aunts saying anxiously to one another: "Well, I didn't know she was as

delicate as that. I hope she won't be always ill," ... and she wasn't

delicate--no one stronger. She had never fainted before. The silliness

of it!

The next thing that disturbed her was the comfort and arrangement of

everything. Certainly the drawing-room had not been very orderly, full

of old things badly placed, but this bedroom was clean and tidy, and

the supper last night, so neat on its tray with everything that she

could want! She could feel the order and discipline of the whole house.

And she had never, in all her life, been either orderly or disciplined.

She had never been brought up to be so. How could you be orderly when

there were holes in the bedroom ceiling and the kitchen floor, holes

that your father would never trouble to have mended?

Her aunts would wish her to help in the house and she would forget

things. There passed before her, in that Sunday quiet, a terrible

procession of the things that she would forget. She knew that she would

not be patient under correction, especially under the correction of her

Aunt Anne. Already she felt in her a rebellion at her aunt's aloofness

and passivity. After all, why should she treat every one as though she

were God? Maggie felt that there was in her aunt's attitude something

sentimental and affected. She hated sentiment and affectation in any

one. She was afraid, too, that Anne bullied Aunt Elizabeth. Maggie was

sorry for Aunt Elizabeth but, with all the arrogance of the young, a

little despised her. Why did she tremble and start like that? She

should stand up for herself and not mind what her sister said to her.

Finally, there was something about the house for which Maggie could not

quite account, some uneasiness or expectation, as though one knew that

there was some one behind the door and was therefore afraid to open it.

It may have been simply London that was behind it. Maggie was ready to

attribute anything to the influence of that tremendous power, but her

own final impression was that the people in this house had for too long

a time been brooding over something. "It would do my aunts a lot of

good to move somewhere else," she said to herself. "As Aunt Anne loves

the country so much I can't think why she doesn't live there." There

were many things that she was to learn before the end of the day.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a little whirr and clatter, which,

thin and distant though it was, penetrated into her room. The whirr was

followed by the voice, clear, self-confident and cheerful, of a cuckoo.

Maggie was in an instant out of bed, into the passage and standing, in

her nightdress, before a high, old cuckoo-clock that stood at the top

of the stairs. The wooden bird, looking down at her in friendly

fashion, "cuckooed" eight times, flapped his wings at her and

disappeared. It is a sufficient witness to Maggie's youth and

inexperience that she was enraptured by this event. It was not only

that she had never seen a cuckoo-clock before; she had, for that

matter, never heard of the existence of such a thing. It gave her

greater happiness than any bare mechanical discovery could have done.

The bird seemed to have come to her, in the friendliest way, to remove

some of the chilly passivity of the house. Her greatest fear since her

arrival had been that this was a house "in which nothing was ever going

to happen," and that "she would never get out of it." "It will be just

as it has been all my life, seeing nothing, doing nothing--only instead

of father it will be the aunts." The bird seemed to promise her

adventure and excitement. To most people it would have been only a

further sign of an old-fashioned household far behind the times. To

Maggie it was thrilling and encouraging. He would remind her every hour

of the day of the possibility of fun in a world that was full of

surprises. She heard suddenly a step behind her and a dry voice saying:

"Your hot water, Miss Maggie."

She turned round, blushing at being caught staring up at a cuckoo-clock

like a baby in her nightdress, to face the wrinkled old woman who the

night before had brought her, with a grudging countenance, her supper.

Maggie had thought then that this old Martha did not like her and

resented the extra work that her stay in the house involved; she was

now more than ever sure of that dislike.

"I thought I was to be called at half-past seven."

"Eight on Sundays," said the old woman. "I hope you're better this

morning, miss."

Maggie felt this to be deeply ironical and flushed.

"I'm quite well, thank you," she said stiffly. "What time is breakfast

on Sundays?"

"The prayer-bell rings at a quarter to nine, miss."

They exchanged no more conversation.

At a quarter to nine a shrill, jangling bell rang out and Maggie

hurried down the dark staircase. She did not know where the dining-room

was, but by good chance she caught sight of Aunt Elizabeth's little

body moving hurriedly down the passage and hastened after her. She

arrived only just in time. There, standing in a row before four chairs,

their faces red and shining, their hands folded in front of them, were

the domestics; there, with a little high desk in front of her, on the

other side of the long dining-room table was Aunt Anne; here, near the

door, were two chairs obviously intended for Aunt Elizabeth and Maggie.

Maggie in her haste pushed the door, and it banged loudly behind her;

in the silent room the noise echoed through the house. It was followed

by a piercing scream from Edward, whom, Maggie concluded, it had

awakened. All this confused her very much and gave her anything but a

religious state of mind.

What followed resembled very much the ceremonies with which her father

had been accustomed to begin the day, except that her father, with one

eye on the bacon, had gabbled at frantic pace through the prayers and

Aunt Anne read them very slowly and with great beauty. She read from

the Gospel of St. John: "These things I command you, that ye love one

another ..."; but the clear, sweet tones of her voice gave no

conviction of a love for mankind.

Maggie looking from that pale remote face to the roughened cheeks and

plump body of the kitchen-maid felt that here there could be no

possible bond. When they knelt down she was conscious, as she had been

since she was a tiny child, of two things--the upturned heels of the

servants' boots and the discomfort to her own knees. These two facts

had always hindered her religious devotions, and they hindered them

now. There had always been to her something irresistibly comic in those

upturned heels, the dull flat surfaces of these cheap shoes. In the

kitchen-maid's there were the signs of wear; Martha's were new and

shining; the house-maid's were smart and probably creaked abominably.

The bodies above them sniffed and rustled and sighed. The vacant,

stupid faces of the shoes were Aunt Anne's only audience. Maggie

wondered what the owners of those shoes felt about the house. Had they

a sense of irritation too or did they perhaps think about nothing at

all save their food, their pay and their young man or their night out?

The pain to her knees pierced her thoughts; the prayers were very

long?--Aunt Anne's beautiful voice was interminable.

Breakfast was quiet and silent. Edward, who received apparently a

larger meal on Sundays than at ordinary times, chattered happily to

himself, and Maggie heard him say complacently, "Poor Parrot?--Poor

Parrot. How do you do? How do you do?"

"Service is at eleven o'clock, dear," said Aunt Anne. "We leave the

house at ten minutes to eleven."

Maggie, not knowing what to do with the hour in front of her, went up

to her bedroom, found the servant making the bed, came down into the

drawing-room and sat in a dark corner under a large bead mat, that,

nailed to the wall, gave little taps and rustlings as though it were

trying to escape.

She felt that she should be doing something, but what? She sat there,

straining her ear for sounds. "One always seems to be expecting some

one in this house," she thought. The weather that had been bright had

now changed and little gusts of rain beat upon the windows. She thought

with a sudden strange warmth of Uncle Mathew. What was he doing? Where

was he? How pleasant it would be were he suddenly to walk into that

chilly, dark room. She would not show him that she was lonely, but she

would give him such a welcome as he had never had from her before. Had

he money enough? Was he feeling perhaps as desolate amongst strangers

as she? The rain tickled the window-panes. Maggie, with a desolation at

her heart that she was too proud to own, sat there and waited.

She looked back afterwards upon that moment as the last shivering pause

before she made that amazing plunge that was to give her new life.

The sound of a little forlorn bell suddenly penetrated the rain. It was

just such a bell as rang every Sunday from chapels across the

Glebeshire moors, and Maggie knew, when Aunt Elizabeth opened the door

and looked in upon her, that the summons was for her.

"Oh! my dear (a favourite exclamation of Aunt Elizabeth's) and you're

not ready. The bell's begun. The rain's coming down very hard, I'm

afraid. It's only a step from our door. Your things, dear, as quick as

you can."

The girl ran upstairs and, stayed by some sudden impulse, stood for a

moment before the long mirror. It was as though she were imploring that

familiar casual figure that she saw there not to leave her, the only

friend she had in a world that was suddenly terrifying and alarming.

Her old black dress that had seemed almost smart for the St. Dreot

funeral now appeared most desperately shabby; she knew that her black

hat was anything but attractive.

"What do I care for them all!" her heart said defiantly. "What do they

matter to me!"

She marched out of the house behind the aunts with her head in the air,

very conscious of a hole in one of her thin black gloves.

The street, deserted, danced in the rain; the little bell clanged with

the stupid monotony of its one obstinate idea; the town wore its

customary Sunday air of a stage when the performance is concluded, the

audience vanished and the lights turned down. The aunts had a solemn

air as though they were carrying Maggie as a sacrifice. All these

things were depressing.

They turned out of their own street into a thin, grey one in which the

puddles sprang and danced against isolated milk-cans and a desolate

pillar-box. The little bell was now loud and strident, and when they

passed into a passage which led into a square, rather grimy yard,

Maggie saw that they had arrived. Before her was a hideous building,

the colour of beef badly cooked, with grey stone streaks in it here and

there and thin, narrow windows of grey glass with stiff, iron divisions

between the glass. The porch to the door was of the ugliest grey stone

with "The Lord Cometh" in big black letters across the top of it. Just

inside the door was a muddy red mat, and near the mat stood a gentleman

in a faded frock-coat and brown boots, an official apparently. There

arrived at the same time as Maggie and her aunts a number of ladies and

gentlemen all hidden beneath umbrellas. As they stood in the doorway a

sudden scurry of wind and rain drove them all forward so that there was

some crush and confusion in the little passage beyond the door.

Waterproofs steamed; umbrellas were ranged in dripping disorder against

the wall. The official, who talked in a hushed whisper that was drowned

by the creaking of his boots, welcomed them all with the intimacy of an

old acquaintance. "Oh, Miss Hearst--terrible weather--no, she's not

here yet." "Good morning, Mrs. Smith--very glad you're better. Yes, I

spoke to them about the prayer-books. They promised to return them this

morning ..." and so on. He turned, pushed back a door and led the way

into the chapel. The interior was as ugly as the outside. The walls

were of the coldest grey stone, broken here and there by the lighter

grey of a window. Across the roof were rafters built of that bright

shining wood that belongs intimately to colonial life, sheep-shearing,

apples of an immense size and brushwood. Two lamps of black iron hung

from these rafters. At the farther end of the chapel was a rail of this

same bright wood, and behind the rail a desk and a chair. In front of

the rail was a harmonium before which was already seated a stout and

expectant lady, evidently eager to begin her duties of the day. The

chapel was not very large and was already nearly filled. The

congregation was sitting in absolute silence, so that the passing of

Maggie and her aunts up the aisle attracted great attention. All eyes

were turned in their direction and Maggie felt that she herself was an

object of very especial interest.

Aunt Anne walked first and took what was obviously her own regular seat

near the front. Maggie sat between her two aunts. She could not feel

for the moment anything but a startled surprise at the ugliness of the

building. She had entered at different times the Glebeshire chapels,

but their primitive position and need had given them the spirit of

honest sincerity. Here she had expected she did not know what. Always

from those very early days when she had first heard about her aunts she

had had visions of a strange illuminated place into which God, "riding

on a chariot clothed in flames," would one day come. Even after she had

grown up she had still fancied that the centre of her aunts' strange,

fantastic religion must be a strange, fantastic place. And yet now, as

she looked around her, she was not, to her own surprise, disappointed.

She was even satisfied; the "wonder" was not in the building. Well,

then, it must be in something "inside," something that she had yet to

discover. The chapel had the thrilling quality of a little plain deal

box that carries a jewel.

She examined then the people around her. Women were in a great

majority, a man scattered forlornly amongst them once and again. She

discovered at once the alert eyes of young Mr. Warlock. He was seated

in the side aisle with a thin, severe-looking woman beside him. He

stared straight in front of him, wriggling sometimes his broad back as

though he were a dog tied by a chain. Some one else very quickly

claimed Maggie's attention; this was a girl who, in the seat behind Mr.

Warlock, was as noticeable in that congregation as a bird-of-paradise

amongst a colony of crows. She was wearing a dress of light blue silk

and a large hat of blue with a grey bird in the front of it.

Her hair, beneath the hat, was bright gold, her cheeks were the

brightest pink and her eyes sparkled in a most lovely and fascinating

manner. She was immensely interesting to Maggie, who had never, in her

life, dreamed of anything so dazzling. She was very restless and

animated and self-conscious. There sat at her side a stout and solemn

woman, who was evidently from a strange, almost ironical likeness her

mother. The young lady seemed to regard both the place and the occasion

as the greatest joke in the world. She flung her eyes from one to

another as though inviting some one to share her merriment.

Amongst that black-garbed assembly the blue dress shone out as though

it would attract everything to itself. "She's very pretty," thought

Maggie, who was more conscious of her shabby clothes than ever. But her

chief feeling was of surprise that so brilliant a bird had been able to

penetrate into the chapel at all. "She must be a stranger just come out

of curiosity." Then the girl's eyes suddenly met Maggie's and held

them; the brilliant creature smiled and Maggie smiled in return. She

looked afterwards at Aunt Anne, but Aunt Anne, buried in her book of

devotions, had seen nothing.

Suddenly, after a strange wheeze and muffled scream, the harmonium

began. Every one looked up expectantly; Mr. Warlock, alone, appeared

from a door at the right of the screen and took his place behind the

desk.

He stood for a moment facing them before he took his place. He was a

man of great size, old now but holding himself absolutely erect. He was

dressed in a plain black gown with a low, white collar and a white tie.

This long gown added to his height, but the width of the shoulders and

neck, and the carriage of his head showed that he was a man built on a

noble scale. His hair was snow-white and he wore a beard, that was in

startling contrast against his black gown. His cheeks were of high

colour, his eyes blue; he was older than Maggie had expected and must,

she thought, be over seventy. His whole bearing and behaviour was of a

man who had enjoyed great physical health. His expression was mild and

simple, dignified but not proud, utterly unconscious of self, earnest

and determined, lacking in humour perhaps. There was nothing in the

least theatrical about him and yet he conveyed an impression that was

startling and dramatic. His was a figure that would have been noticed

anywhere, if only for its physical health and shining cleanliness.

Maggie felt that to many people there his entrance was a sensation,

sought for and expected by them. So startling was the impression that

he made upon herself that she wondered that the chapel was not crowded

by an excited throng. She liked him at once, felt that she would be at

ease with him as she had never been with anybody in her life. And yet

behind this there was perhaps some subtle sense of disappointment. He

was not mysterious, he did not seem very clever; he was only an old

man, magnificently preserved. There was no fear nor wonder in her

attitude to him. He could not convince her, she thought, of things that

she herself had not seen.

He knelt and prayed for a moment before his desk, then he rose and,

with his hands resting on the wood before him, said: "Let us offer

thanks to Almighty God that He has kept us in safety and in health

during the past week." They all knelt down. He prayed then, in a voice

that was soft and clear and that hid behind the words a little

roughness of accent that was not unpleasant. His prayer was extempore,

and he addressed God intimately and almost conversationally. "Thou

knowest how we are weak and foolish, our faults are all known to Thee

and our blunders are not hid, therefore we thank Thee that Thou hast

not been impatient with us, but, seeing that we are but little children

in Thy hands, hast deemed the thunderbolt too heavy for our heads and

the lightning too blinding for our eyes. With humble hearts we thank

Thee, and pray that Thou wilt keep us mindful of Thy coming, that we

may be found watching, with our loins girt and our lamps lit, waiting

in prayer for Thy dreadful day..."

During this prayer Maggie was conscious of a strange excitement. She

knelt with her eyes tightly closed, but through the darkness she felt

as though he were addressing her alone. She seemed to approach him, to

feel his hands upon her shoulders, to hear his voice in her ears. When

she rose at the ending of the prayer it was as though she had

definitely passed through some door into a new room. Then, rising, she

was conscious that the laughing eyes of the young lady in blue were

again trying to hold her own. She refused to look--she coloured,

hanging her head so that her eyes should not be caught.

For some time she was unaware of the progress of the service. Then the

clear emphasis of his voice caught again her attention. "Our lesson for

to-day," he said, "is from the Fortieth Chapter of Isaiah." He

proceeded to read:

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare

is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received

of the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of

the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be

made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places

plain:

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it

together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass,

and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:...

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall

stand for ever.

O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain;

O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with

strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah,

Behold your God!

Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule

for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs with

his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that

are with young.

How many times had Maggie heard the reading of those words. They

brought instantly back to her her father's voice, the strange snuffling

hurry with which he hastened to the end, his voice hesitating a little

as his wandering eye caught the misbehaviour of some small boy in the

choir.

Now the words were charged with a conviction that was neither forced

nor adopted for dramatic effect. It was as though a herald read some

proclamation for his master who was approaching the gates of the city.

The hymns and prayers that followed seemed to have no importance. The

hymns happened on that day to be familiar ones that Maggie had always

known: "As pants the hart for cooling streams," "Just as I am, without

one plea" and "Jerusalem the golden." These were sung, of course,

slowly, badly and sentimentally, the harmonium screaming in amazing

discords, and the deep and untuneful voices of some members of the

congregation drowning the ladies and placing a general discord upon

everything. Especially distressing was Aunt Elizabeth, who evidently

loved to sing hymns but had little idea of melody or rhythm, and was

influenced entirely by a copious sentiment which overflowed into her

eyes and trembled at the tips of her fingers.

All this was as naive and awkward as is always the singing of English

hymns in English churches by English citizens. The chapel, which had

seemed before to be rising to some strange atmosphere of expectation,

slipped back now to its native ugliness and sterility. The personality

was in the man and in the man alone.

Maggie looked about her, at the faces of the women who surrounded her.

They were grey, strained, ugly in the poor light of the building. The

majority of them seemed to be either servant-girls or women who had

passed the adventurous period of life and had passed it without

adventure. When the time for the sermon arrived Mr. Warlock prayed, his

head bowed, during a moment's silence, then leaning forward on his desk

repeated some of the words of his earlier reading:

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway

for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill

shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the

rough places plain: ... say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!...

What followed was practical, eloquent, the preaching of a man who had

through the course of a long life addressed men of all kinds and in all

places. But behind the facility and easy flow of his words Maggie

fancied that she detected some urgent insistence that came from the

man's very heart. She was moved by that as though he were saying to her

personally, "Don't heed these outward words of mine. But listen to me

myself. There is something I must tell you. There is no time to lose.

You must believe me. I will compel your belief. Follow me and I will

show what will transform your life." He concluded his sermon with these

words:

"And what of our responsibility? We may compare ourselves, I think, to

men who, banded together on some secret service, wait for the moment

when they are to declare themselves and, by that action, transform the

world. Until that moment comes they must lead their ordinary daily

lives, seem as careless of the future as their fellows, laugh and eat

and work and play as though nothing beyond the business of the day were

their concern. But in their hearts is the responsibility of their

secret knowledge. They cannot be as other men knowing what they do,

they cannot be to one another as they are to other men with the bond of

their common duty shared between them. Much has been given them, much

will be demanded of them; and when the day comes it will not be the

events of that day that will test them but the private history, known

only to themselves and their Master, of the hours that have preceded

that day."

"I tell you what I have often told you before from this same place,

that beside the history of the spirit the history of the body is

nothing--and that history of the spirit is no easy, tranquil progress

from birth to death, but must rather be, if we are to have any history

at all, a struggle, a wrestling, a contest, bloody, unceasing,

uncertain in its issue from the first hour until the last. This is no

mere warning spoken from the lips only by one who, from sheer weekly

necessity, may seem to you formal and official; it is as urgent, as

deeply from the heart as though it were a summons from a messenger who

has come to you directly from his Master. I beg of you to consider your

responsibility, which is greater than that of other men. We are

brothers bound together by a great expectation, a great preparation, a

great trust. We are in training for a day when more will be demanded of

us than of any other men upon the earth. That is no light thing. Let us

hold ourselves then as souls upon whom a great charge is laid."

When he had ended and knelt again to pray Maggie felt instantly the

inevitable reaction. The harmonium quavered and rumbled over the first

bars of some hymn which began with the words, "Cry, sinner, cry before

the altar of the Lord," the man with the brown, creaking boots walked

about with a collection plate, an odour of gas-pipes, badly heated,

penetrated the building, the rain lashed the grey window-panes. Maggie,

looking about her, could not see in the pale, tired faces of the women

who surrounded her the ardent souls of a glorious band. Their belief in

the coming of God had, it seemed, done very little for them. It might

be true that the history of the soul was of more importance than the

history of the body, but common sense had something to say.

Her mind went back inevitably to St. Dreot's church, her father, Ellen

the cook. That was what the history of the spirit had been to her so

far. What reason had she to suppose that this was any more real than

that had been? Nevertheless, when at the end of the sermon she left the

building and went once more into the soaking streets some sense of

expectation was with her, so that she hastened into her aunt's house as

though she would find that some strange event had occurred in her

absence.

Nothing, of course, had occurred.

During the afternoon the rain ceased to fall and a dim, grey light,

born of an intense silence, enveloped the town. About three o'clock the

aunts went out to some religious gathering and Maggie was left to

herself. She discovered in Aunt Elizabeth's bedroom a bound volume of

Good Words, and with this seated herself by the drawing-room fire. Soon

she slept.

She was awakened by a consciousness that some one was in the room and,

sitting up, staring through the gloom, heard a movement near the door,

a rustle, a little jingle, a laugh.

"Is any one there?" said a high, shrill voice.

Maggie got up.

"I'm here," she said.

Some one came forward; it was the girl of the blue dress who had smiled

at Maggie in chapel. She held out her hand--"I hope you don't think me

too awful. My name's Caroline Smith. How do you do?"

They shook hands. Maggie, still bewildered by sleep, said, stammering,

"Won't you sit down? I beg your pardon. My aunts--"

"Oh, it isn't the aunts I wanted to see," replied Miss Smith, laughing

so that a number of little bracelets jingled most tunefully together.

"I came to see you. We smiled at one another in chapel. It was your

first time, wasn't it? Didn't you think it all awfully quaint?"

"Won't you sit down?" said Maggie again, "and I'll ring for the lamp."

"Oh! don't ring for the lamp. I like the dusk. And we can make friends

so much better without a lamp. I always say if you want to know anybody

really well, don't have a light."

She seated herself near the fire, arranging her dress very carefully,

patting her hair beneath her hat, poking her shoes out from beneath her

skirts, then withdrawing them again. "Well, what do you think of it

all?"

Maggie stared. She did not know what to say. She had never met any one

in the least like this before.

"I do hope," Miss Smith went on, "that you don't think me forward. I

daresay you do. But I can't bear wasting time. Of course I heard that

you were coming, so then I looked out for you in chapel to-day. I

thought you looked so nice that I said to mother, 'I'll go and see her

this very afternoon.' Of course I've known your aunts for ages. I'm

always in and out here so that it isn't as bad as it seems. They'll all

be back for tea soon and I want to have a talk first."

"Thank you very much," was all that Maggie could think of to say.

"You've come to live here, haven't you?" continued Miss Smith. "I'm so

glad. I think you look so nice. You don't mind my saying that, do you?

I always tell people what I think of them and then one knows where one

is. Now, do tell me--I'm simply dying to know--what do you think of

everything?"

"Well," said Maggie, smiling, "I only arrived here yesterday. It's

rather difficult to say."

"Oh! I know. I saw Mr. Magnus this morning and he told me that he met

you. He said you were ill. You don't look ill."

"It was very silly of me," said Maggie, "I don't know what made me

faint. I've never done such a thing before."

"I used to faint simply heaps of times when I was a kid," said Miss

Smith, "I was always doing it. I had all sorts of doctors. They thought

I'd never grow up. I'm not very strong now really. They say it's heart,

but I always say it can't be that because I've given it all away." Here

Miss Smith laughed immoderately.

"Weren't they the most terrible set of frumps at chapel this morning?"

She did not wait for an answer, but went on: "Mr. Warlock's all right,

of course. I think he's such a fine-looking man, don't you? Of course

he's old now, but his beard's rather attractive I think. He's a duck,

but isn't that harmonium ghastly? I can't think why they don't buy an

organ, they're most awfully rich I know, and do simply nothing with

their money."

"Why do you go," said Maggie, "if you think it all so dreadful?"

"Oh! I have to go," said Miss Smith, "to please mother. And one has to

do something on Sunday, and besides one sees one's friends. Did you

notice Martin Warlock, Mr. Warlock's son, you know. He was sitting

quite close to me."

"He was here yesterday afternoon," said Maggie quietly.

"Oh, was he really? Now that is interesting. I wonder what he came for.

He scarcely ever comes here. Did you like him?"

"I didn't speak to him," said Maggie.

"Of course he's only been here a little time. He's Mr. Warlock's only

son. He's lived for years abroad and then the other day his aunt died

and left him some money so he came home. His father simply adores him.

They say--but of course I don't know. Don't quote me--that he's been

most awfully wild. Drink, all sorts of things. But of course they'll

say anything of anybody. I think he's got such an interesting face,

don't you?"

"I don't think," said Maggie, "that you ought to say those things of

any one if you don't know they're true."

"Oh! what a darling you are!" said Miss Smith. "You're perfectly

right--one oughtn't. But every one does. When you've lived up here a

little while you will too. And what does it matter? You're sure to hear

it sooner or later. But that's right. You keep me straight. I know I

talk far too much. I'm always being told about it. But what can one do?

Life's so funny--one must talk about it. You haven't seen Miss Avies

and Mr. Thurston yet, have you?"

"No," said Maggie. "Not unless I saw them in Chapel this morning."

"Ah! they're the ones," said Miss Smith. "No, they weren't there

to-day. They're away on a mission. They make things hum. They quarrel

with Mr. Warlock because they say he isn't noisy enough. Mr. Thurston's

awful and Miss Avies isn't much better. You'll have them on to you soon

enough. But of course I'm not one of the Inside Ones."

"Inside Ones?" asked Maggie.

"Yes, the real ones. They'll be at you after a time and ask you if

you'll join them. The congregation this morning was just anybody who

likes to come. But the real brethren have to swear vows and be baptized

and all sorts of things. But that's only if you believe God's really

coming in a year or two. Of course I don't, although sometimes it makes

one quite creepy--all down one's spine. In case, after all, He really

should come, you know."

"Are my aunts inside?" asked Maggie.

"Of course they are. Miss Anne Cardinal's one of the chief of them.

Miss Avies is jealous as anything of her, but your aunt's so quiet that

Miss Avies can't do anything. I just love your aunts. I think they're

sweet. You will be a friend of mine, won't you? I like you so much. I

like your being quiet and telling me when I talk too much. I sound

silly, I know, but it's really mother's fault, as I always tell her.

She never brought me up at all. She likes me to wear pretty things and

doesn't care about anything else. Poor mother! She's had such a time

with father; he's one of the most serious of all the Brethren and never

has time to think about any of us. Then he's in a bank all the week,

where he can't think about God much because he makes mistakes about

figures if he does, so he has to put it all into Sunday. We will be

friends, won't we?"

It came to Maggie with a strange ironic little pang that this was the

first time that any one had asked for her friendship.

"Of course," she said.

Miss Smith's further confidences were interrupted by the aunts and

behind them, to Maggie's great surprise, Mr. Warlock and his son. The

sudden descent of these gentlemen upon the still lingering echoes of

Miss Caroline Smith's critical and explanatory remarks embarrassed

Maggie. Not so Miss Smith. She kissed both the aunts with an emphasis

that they apparently appreciated for they smiled and Aunt Anne laid her

hand affectionately upon the girl's sleeve. Maggie, watching, felt the

strangest little pang of jealousy. That was the way that she should

have behaved, been warm and demonstrative from the beginning--but she

could not.

Even now she stood back in the shadows of the room, watching them all

with large grave eyes, hoping that they would not notice her.

With Mr. Warlock and his son also Miss Smith seemed perfectly at home,

chattering, laughing up into young Warlock's eyes, as though there were

some especial understanding between them. Maggie, nevertheless, fancied

that he, young Warlock, was not listening to her. His eyes wandered. He

had that same restlessness of body that she had before noticed in him,

swinging a little on his legs set apart, his hands clasped behind his

thick broad back. He had some compelling interest for her. He had had

that, she now realised, since the first moment that she had seen him.

It might be that the things that that girl had told her about him

increased her interest and, perhaps her sympathy? But it was his

strange detached air of observation that held her--as though he were a

being from some other planet watching them all, liking them, but

bearing no kind of relation to them except that of a cheerful

observer--it was this that attracted her. She liked his thick, rough

untidy hair, the healthy red brown of his cheeks, his light blue eyes,

his air of vigour and bodily health.

As she waited she was startled into consciousness by a voice in her

ear. She turned to find the elder Mr. Warlock beside her.

"You will forgive my speaking to you, Miss Cardinal. I saw you at our

Chapel this morning."

His great height towered above her short clumsy figure; he seemed to

peer down at her from above his snowy beard as though he were the

inhabitant of some other world. His voice was of an extreme kindliness

and his eyes, when she looked up at him, shone with friendliness. She

found herself, to her own surprise, talking to him with great ease. He

was perfectly simple, human and unaffected. He asked her about her

country.

"I spend my days in longing to get back to my own place--and perhaps I

shall never see it again. I was born in Wiltshire--Salisbury Plain. My

great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, they all were ministers

of our Chapel there before me. They had no thought in their day of

London. I have always missed that space, the quiet. I shall always miss

it. Towns are not friendly to me."

She told him about St. Dreots, a little about her father.

"Ah, you're lucky!" he said. "You'll return many times before you

die--and you'll find no change there. Those places do not change as

towns do."

They were standing apart from the others near the window. He suddenly

put his hand on her arm, smiling at her.

"My dear," he said. "You don't mind me saying 'My dear,' but an old man

has his privileges--will you come and see us whenever you care to? My

wife will be so glad. I know that at first one can be lonely in this

great place. Just come in when you please."

He took her hand for a moment and then turned back to Aunt Anne, who

was now pouring out tea at a little table by the fire.

Martin Warlock, as his father moved away, came across to her, She had

known that he would do that as though something had been arranged

between them. When he came to her, however, he stood there before her

and had nothing to say. She also had nothing to say. His eyes searched

her face, then he broke out abruptly.

"Are you better?"

"I'm all right," she answered him brusquely. "Please don't say anything

about yesterday. It was an idiotic thing to do."

"That's what I came about to-day--to see how you were," he answered

her, his eyes laughing at her. "I should never have dreamed of coming

otherwise, you know. I saw you in chapel this morning so I guessed you

were all right, but it seemed such bad luck fainting right off the

minute you got here."

"I've never fainted in my life before," she answered.

"No, you don't look the sort of girl who'd faint. But I suppose you've

had a rotten time with your father and all."

His eyes still searched for hers. She determined that she would not

look at him; her heart was beating strangely and, although she did not

look, she could in some sub-conscious way see the rough toss of his

hair against his forehead; she could smell the stuff of his coat. But

she would not look up.

"You're going to live here, aren't you?"

"Yes," she said.

"I've only just come back," he went on.

"I know," she said.

"Oh! of course; that girl," jerking his head in the direction of the

tea-table and laughing. "She told you. She's been here this afternoon,

hasn't she? She chatters like anything. Don't you believe half she

says."

There was another pause. The voices at the tea-table seemed to come

from very far away.

Then he said roughly, moving a very little nearer to her:

"I'm glad you've come."

At that she raised her eyes, her cheeks flushed. She looked him full in

the face, her head up. Her heart thundered in her breast. She felt as

though she were at the beginning of some tremendous adventure--an

adventure enthralling, magnificent--and perilous.

PART II

THE CHARIOT OF FIRE

CHAPTER I

THE WARLOCKS

There is beyond question, in human nature, such a thing as an inherited

consciousness of God, and this consciousness, if inherited through many

generations, may defy apparent reason, all progress of vaunted

civilisations, and even, it may be suggested, the actual challenge of

death itself.

This consciousness of God had been quite simply the foundation of Mr.

Warlock's history. In the middle of the eighteenth century it expressed

itself in the formula of John Wesley's revival; the John Wesley of that

day preached up and down the length and breadth of Westmoreland,

Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham, and being a fighter, a preacher and

a simple-minded human being at one and the same time, received a large

following and died full of years and honours.

It was somewhere about 1830 that this John's grandson, James Warlock,

Martin's grandfather, broke from the main body and led his little flock

on to the wide spaces of Salisbury Plain. James Warlock, unlike his

father and grandfather, was a little sickly man with a narrow chest, no

limbs to speak of and a sharp pale face. Martin had a faded

daguerreotype of him set against the background of the old Wiltshire

kitchen, his black clothes hung upon him like a disguise, his eyes

burning even upon that faded picture with the fire of his spirit. For

James Warlock was a mystic, a visionary, a prophet. He walked and

talked with God; in no jesting spirit it was said that he knew God's

plans and could turn the world into a blazing coal so soon as he

pleased. It was because he knew with certainty that God would, in

person, soon, descend upon the earth that he separated from the main

body and led his little band down into Wiltshire. Here on the broad

gleaming Plain they prepared for God's coming. Named now the Kingscote

Brethren after their new abode, they built a Chapel, sat down and

waited. Then in 1840 the prophet declared that the Coming was not yet,

that it would be in the next generation, but that their preparations

must not be relaxed. He himself prepared by taking to himself a wife, a

calm untroubled countrywoman of the place, that she might give him a

son whom he might prepare, in due course, for his great destiny. John,

father of Martin, was born, a large-limbed, smiling infant, with the

tranquillity of his mother as well as something of the mysticism of his

father.

Upon him, as upon his ancestors, this consciousness of God had most

absolutely descended. Never for a moment did he question the facts that

his father told to him. He grew into a giant of health and strength,

and those who, in those old days, saw them tell that it was a strange

picture to watch the little wizened man, walking with odd emotional

gestures, with little hops and leaps and swinging of the arms beside

the firm long stride of the young man towering above him.

When young John was twenty-three years of age his father was found dead

under a tree upon a summer's evening. His expression was of a man

challenging some new and startling discovery; he had found perhaps new

visions to confront his gaze. They buried him in Kingscote and his son

reigned in his stead.

But they were approaching new and modern times. These old days, of

simple faith and superstition were passing never to return. There were

new elements in the Kingscote company of souls and these elements

demanded freer play both of thought and action. They argued that, as to

them alone out of all the world the time and manner of God's coming was

known, they should influence with their activities some wider sphere

than this Wiltshire village.

John Warlock clung with all his strength to the old world that he knew,

the world that gave him leisure and quiet for contemplation. He had no

wish to bring in converts, to stir England into a frenzy of terror and

anticipation. God gave him no command to spread his beliefs; even his

father, fanatic though he had been, had cherished his own small company

of saints as souls to whom these things, hidden deliberately from the

outside world, had especially been entrusted.

So long as he could he resisted; then when he was about forty,

somewhere around 1880, the Kingscote Brethren moved to London. In this

year, 1907, John Warlock was sixty-seven and the Kingscote Brethren had

had their Chapel in Solomon's Place, behind Garrick Street, for

twenty-seven years. In 1880 John Warlock had married Amelia, daughter

of Francis Stephens, merchant. In 1881 a daughter, Amy, was born to

them; in 1883, Martin; they had no other children. Martin was at the

time of Maggie's arrival in London twenty-four years of age.

Upon a certain fine evening, a fortnight after Martin Warlock's first

meeting with Maggie, he arrived at the door of his house in Garrick

Street, and having forgotten his latch-key, was compelled to ring the

old screaming bell that had long survived its respectable reputable

days. The Warlocks had lived during the last ten years in an upper part

above a curiosity shop four doors from the Garrick Club in Garrick

Street. There was a house-door that abutted on to the shop-door and,

passing through it, you stumbled along a little dark passage like a

rabbit warren, up some crooked stairs, and found yourself in the

Warlock country without ever troubling Mr. Spencer, the stout, hearty,

but inartistic owner of the curiosity shop.

On the present occasion, after pulling the bell, Martin stared down the

street as though somewhere in the dim golden light of its farthest

recesses he would find an answer to a question that he was asking. The

broad sturdy strength of his body, the easy good-temper of his

expression spoke of a life lived physically rather than mentally. And

yet this was only half true. Martin Warlock should at this time have

been a quite normal young man with normal desires, normal passions,

normal instincts. Such he would undoubtedly have been had he not had

his early environment of egotism, mystery and clap-trap--had he, also,

not developed through his childhood and youth his passionate devotion

to his father. The religious ceremonies of his young days had made him

self-conscious and introspective and, although during his years abroad

he had felt on many occasions that he was completely freed from his

early bondage, scenes, thoughts and longings would recur and remind him

that he was celebrating his liberty too soon. The licences that to most

men in their first youth are incidental and easily forgotten engraved

themselves upon Martin's reluctant soul because of that religious sense

that had been driven in upon him at the very hour of his birth. He

could not sin and forget. He sinned and was remorseful, was impatient

at his remorse, sinned again to rid himself of it and was more

remorseful still. The main impulse of his life at this time was his

self-distrust. He fancied that by returning home he might regain

confidence. He longed to rid himself of the conviction that he was "set

aside" by some fate or other, call it God or not as you please. He

thought that he hurt all those whom he loved when his only longing was

to do them good. He used suddenly to leave his friends because he

thought that he was doing them harm. It was as though he heard some

Power saying to him: "I marked you out for my own in the beginning and

you can't escape me. You may struggle as you like. Until you surrender

everything shall turn to dust in your hands." He came back to England

determined to assert his independence.

He gazed now at the placidity of Garrick Street with the intensity of

some challenging "Stand and Deliver!" All that the street had to give

for the moment was a bishop and an actor mounting the steps of the

Garrick Club, an old lady with a black bonnet and a milk-jug, a young

man in a hurry and a failure selling bootlaces. None of them could be

expected to offer reassurance to Martin--none of these noticed him--but

an intelligent observer, had such a stranger to Garrick Street been

present, might have found that gaze of interest. Martin's physical

solidity could not entirely veil the worried uncertain glance that

flashed for a moment and then, with a little reassuring sigh, was gone.

The door opened, a girl looked for a moment into the street, he passed

inside. Having stumbled up the dark stairs, pushed back their private

entrance, hung up his coat in the little hall, with a deliberate effort

he shook off the suspicions that had, during the last moments, troubled

him and prepared to meet his mother and sister.

Because he had a happy, easy and affectionate temperament absence

always gilded his friends with gifts and qualities that their presence

only too often denied. His years abroad had given him a picture of his

mother and sister that the few weeks of his return had already dimmed

and obscured. His mother's weekly letters had, during ten long years,

built up an image of her as the dearest old lady in the world. He had

always, since a child, seen her in a detached way--his deep and

permanent relations had been with his father--but those letters, of

which he had now a deep and carefully cherished pile, gave him a most

charming picture of her. They had not been clever nor deep nor indeed

very interesting, but they had been affectionate and tender with all

the gentleness of the figure that he remembered sitting in its lace cap

beside the fire.

After three weeks of home life he was compelled to confess that he did

not in the least understand his mother. His intuitions about people

were not in fact of a very penetrating character.

His mother appeared to all her world as a "sweet old lady," but even

Martin could already perceive that was not in the least what she really

was. He had seen her old hands tremble with suppressed temper on the

very day after his arrival; he had seen her old lips white with anger

because the maid had brought her the wrong shawl. Old ladies must of

course have their fancies, but his mother had some fixed and fierce

purpose in her life that was quite beyond his powers of penetration. It

might of course have something to do with her attachment to his father.

Attached Martin could see that she was, but at the same time completely

and eternally outside her husband's spiritual life. That might have

been perhaps in the first place by her own desire--she did not want "to

be bothered with all that nonsense." But certainly all these years with

him had worked upon her: she was not perhaps so sure now that it was

all "nonsense." She wanted, it might be, a closer alliance with him,

which she could not have because she had once rejected the chance of

it. Martin did not know; he was aware that there was a great deal going

on in the house that he did not fathom. Amy, his sister, knew. There

was an alliance between his mother and his sister deep and strong, as

he could see--he did not yet know that it was founded very largely on

dislike and fear of himself.

How fantastic these theories of fire and passion must seem, he amused

himself by considering, to any one who knew his mother only from the

outside. She was sitting to-day as always in her little pink and white

chintz drawing-room, a bright fire burning and a canary singing in a

cage beside the window. The rest of the house was ugly and strangely

uninhabited as though the Warlocks had merely pitched their tents for a

night and were moving forward to-morrow, but this little room, close,

smelling of musk and sweet biscuits (a silver box with lemon-shaped

biscuits in it stood on a little table near the old lady), with its

pretty pink curtains, its canary, and its heavy and softly closing

door, was like a place enclosed, dedicated to the world, and ruled by a

remorseless spirit of comfort.

Mrs. Warlock was only sixty years of age, but she had, a number of

years ago, declared herself an invalid, and now never, unless she drove

on a very fine afternoon, left the house. Whether she were truly an

invalid nobody knew; she presented certainly a most healthy appearance

with her shell-pink cheeks, her snow-white hair, her firm bosom rising

and falling with such gentle regularity beneath the tight and shining

black silk that covered it, her clear bright eyes like shining glass.

She always sat in a deep arm-chair covered with the chintz of the

curtains and filled with plump pillows of pink silk. A white filmy

shawl was spread over her knees, at her throat was a little bright

coquettish blue bow that added, amazingly, to the innocent charm of her

old age. On her white hair, crinkled and arranged as though it were

some ornament, not quite a wig but still apart from the rest of her

body, she wore a lace cap. She was fond of knitting; she made warm

woollen comforters and underclothing for the children of the poor. She

was immensely fond of conversation, being of an inquisitive nature. But

above all was she fond of eating. This covetousness of food had grown

on her as her years had increased. The thought of foods of various

kinds filled many hours of her day, and the desire for pleasant things

to eat was the motive of many of her most deliberate actions. She

cherished warmly and secretly this little lust of hers. None of the

family was aware of the grip that the desire had upon her nor of the

speed with which the desire was growing. She did not ask directly for

the things that she liked, but manoeuvred with little plots and

intrigues to obtain them. The cook in the Warlock household had neither

art nor science at her disposal, but as it happened old Mrs. Warlock

lusted after very simple things. She loved rice-pudding; her heart beat

fast in her breast when she thought of the brown crinkly skin of the

rich warm milk of a true rice-pudding; also she loved hot buttered

toast, very buttery so that it soaked your fingers; also beef-steak

pudding with gravy rich and dark and its white covering thick and

heavy; she also loved hot and sweet tea and the little cakes that Amy

sometimes bought, red and yellow and pink, held in white paper--also

plum-pudding, which, alas! only came at Christmastime and wedding-cake,

which scarcely ever came at all.

This vice, of which she was almost triumphantly conscious as though it

were a proof of her enduring vitality, she clutched eagerly to herself.

She did not wish that any human being should perceive it. Of her

husband she was not afraid--it would never possibly occur to him that

food was of importance to any one; Amy might discover what she pleased,

she was in strong alliance with her mother and would never betray her.

Her fear was of Martin. She feared very deeply his influence upon her

husband. During Martin's absence she and Amy had managed very

successfully to have the house as they wished it; John Warlock, the

master, had been too deeply occupied with the affairs of the soul to be

concerned also with the affairs of the body.

She had, she believed, exercised an increasing influence over him. She

had always loved him with a fierce and selfish love, but now, when he

was nearly seventy, and to both of them only a few years of earthly

ambition could remain, she desired, with all the urgent ferocity of a

human being through whose fingers the last sands of his opportunity are

slipping, to seize and hold and have him entirely hers. He had always

eluded her; although he had once certainly loved her with, at any rate,

a semblance of earthly passion, his spiritual life had always come

between them, holding him from her, helping him to escape when he

pleased, tantalising, sometimes maddening too. She was certainly now

not so ready to dismiss that spiritual life as once she had been. She

was herself an old heathen; for herself she believed in nothing but her

earthly appetites and desires, but for him and for others there might

be something in it, ... and perhaps some day some dreadful thing would

occur ... a chariot of Fire descend upon the Chapel and some sort of a

fierce and hostile God deliver judgment; she only hoped that she would

be dead before then.

Meanwhile she and Amy had, undoubtedly, during these last years,

increased their influence over him. He was not aware of it, but as he

was growing now older and weaker--he had had trouble with his heart--he

inevitably depended more upon them. The old lady began to count upon

her triumph. Then came Martin's return.

She had forgotten Martin. It is true that she had written to him every

week during his long absence, but her letters had been all part of the

"dear old lady" habit which was put on by her just as an actress

prepares herself, nightly, for a character in which she knows she is

the greatest possible success. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Smith ... No,

we've not heard from Martin now for three weeks. Careless boy! I always

write myself every week so that he may have at any rate one little word

from home ..."

She had never felt that she had any real share in his life; he had

always belonged to his father; nor was she a woman who cared about

children. Martin had long ago become to her simply an opportunity for

further decoration. Since his return it had been quite another affair.

In one moment she had seen her power over her husband shrivel and

disappear. Martin was home again. Martin must be here, Martin must be

there; Martin must see this, Martin must do this. She had seen before

in earlier days the force of her husband's passion when it was roused.

There was something now in his reception of their son that terrified

her. She had at once perceived that Amy was as deeply moved as she. The

girl, plain, awkward, silent, morose, had always adored her father, but

she had never known how to approach him. She was not clever, she had

not been able to enter into his life although she would have done

anything that he desired of her. What she had suffered during those

early years when, as a little ugly girl, she had watched her brother,

accepted, received into the Brotherhood, praised for his wisdom, his

intimacy with God, his marvellous saintly promise, praised for these

things when she had known all his weaknesses, how he had slipped away

to a music-hall when he was only fourteen and smoked and drank there,

how he had laughed at Mr. Thurston's dropping of his "h's" or at Miss

Avies' prayer meetings! No one ever knew what in those years she had

thought of her brother. Then, after Martin had flung it all away and

escaped abroad, she had begun, slowly, painfully, but with dogged

persistence, to make herself indispensable to her father; Martin she

had put out of her mind. He would never return, or, at least, the

interval of his departure should have been severe enough to separate

him for ever from his father ...

In a moment's glance, in a clasp of the hand, in a flash of the eye,

she had seen that love leap up in her father's heart as strong as ever

it had been. Every day of Martin's residence in the house had added

fire to that love. She was a good woman; she struggled hard to beat

down her jealousy. She prayed. She lay for hours at night struggling

with her sins. If Martin had been worthy, if he had shown love in

return, but, from the bottom of her soul, as the days increased she

despised him--despised him for his light heart, his care of worldly

things, his utter lack of comprehension of their father, his scorn,

even now but badly concealed, of all the sanctities that she had in

reverence.

Therefore she drew near to her mother and the two of them watched and

waited ...

His mother was knitting. She lifted to him her pink wrinkled face and,

her spectacles balanced on the end of her nose, smiled the smile of the

dearest old lady in the world.

"Well, dear, and have you had a pleasant day?"

"All right, mother, thank you. Funny thing; met a man in the street,

hadn't seen for five years. Saw him last in Rio--Funny thing. Well, we

lunched together. Not a bad fellow--Seen a thing or two, he has."

Mrs. Warlock counted her stitches. "Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen ... How

nice for you, dear. What was his name?"

"Thompson ... I say," Martin suddenly raised his head as though he

heard something, "where's Amy?"

"Changing. She's been paying a call on the Miss Cardinals. Thought it

would be polite because of the new niece.--Six, seven, eight and nine..."

"What did she think of her?"

"Of whom, dear?"

"Of the niece."

"Oh, I don't think she liked her very much. She said that she was plain

and silent--and looked cross, Amy thought."

"Oh yes, Amy would." His face, as was his way when he was vexed,

flushed very slowly, the deeper red rising through the red-brown until,

ceasing in the middle of his forehead, it left a white line beneath his

hair. "She isn't cross a bit."

"I don't know, dear. It isn't my opinion. I only tell you what Amy

said. People here don't seem to like her. Mrs. Smith was telling me

yesterday that she's so difficult to talk to and seems to know nothing

about anything, poor girl."

"Mrs. Smith!" He swung his body on his hips indignantly. "A lot she

knows about anything! I hate that woman and her chattering daughter."

"Well, dear, I don't know, I'm sure; Mrs. Smith always seems to me very

kind."

He looked at her as though he had suddenly remembered something.

"I say--is it true what Amy says, that I woke you up this morning when

I went out by banging my door?"

"I'm sure you didn't.--Amy shouldn't say such things. And if you did

what does it matter? I sleep so badly that half an hour more or less

makes very little difference."

"Well, she says so--" He went on, dropping his voice: "I say, mother,

what's the matter with Amy? Why's she so sick with me? I haven't done

anything to offend her, have I?"

"Of course not. What a silly boy you are, Martin! Nine, ten, eleven ...

There! that's enough for this evening. I'll finish it in another day.

You mustn't mind Amy, Martin. She isn't always very well."

The door opened and Amy came in. She was a tall gaunt woman who looked

a great deal older than her brother. She did not make the best of

herself, brushing her thin black hair straight back from her bony

forehead. She had a habit of half closing her eyes when she peered at

some one as though she could not see. She should, long ago, have worn

spectacles, but from some strange half-conscious vanity had always

refused to do so. Every year her sight grew worse. She was wearing now

a dress of black silk, very badly made, cut to display her long skinny

neck and bony shoulders. She wore her clothes as though she struggled

between a disdain for such vanities and a desire to appear attractive.

Her manner of twisting her eyelids and wrinkling her nose gave her a

peevish expression, but, behind that, there was a hint of pathos, a

half-seen glimpse of a soul that desired friendship and affection. She

was very tall and there was something masculine in the long angularity

of her limbs. She offered a strange contrast to the broad and ruddy

Martin. There was, however, something in the eyes of each--some sudden

surprised almost visionary flash that came and went that showed them to

be the children of the same father. To Mrs. Warlock they bore no

resemblance whatever. Amy stopped when she saw her brother as though

she had not expected him to be there.

"Well, Martin," she said--then came forward and sat in a chair opposite

her mother.

"Mr. Thurston's coming to suppar," she said.

Martin frowned. "Oh, hang it, what for?" he cried.

"He's taking me to Miss Aries' Bible meeting," Amy answered coldly.

"What a baby you are about people, Martin. I should have thought all

your living abroad so much would have made you understanding. But

you're like the rest. You must have every one cut to the same pattern."

Martin looked up for a moment as though he would answer angrily; then

he controlled himself and said, laughing: "I suppose I have my

prejudices like every one else. I daresay Thurston's a very good sort

of fellow, but we don't like one another, and there's an end of it,

Everybody can't like everybody, Amy--why, even you don't like every

one."

"No, I don't," she answered shortly.

She looked for an instant at her mother. Martin caught the glance that

passed between them, and suddenly the discomfort of which he had been

aware as he stood, half an hour before, in the street, returned to him

with redoubled force. What was the matter with everybody? What had he

done?

"Well, I'll go and change," he said.

"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, dear," said his mother.

"I'll be in time all right," he said.

At the door he almost ran into Mr. Thurston. This gentleman had been

described, on some earlier occasion, by an unfriendly observer as "the

Suburban Savonarola." He was tall and extremely thin with a bony

pointed face that was in some lights grey and in others white. He had

the excited staring eyes of a fanatic, and his hair now very scanty,

was plastered over his head in black shining streaks. He wore a rather

faded black suit, a white low collar and a white bow tie. He had a

habit, at moments of stress, of cracking his fingers. He had a very

pronounced cockney accent when he was excited, at other times he

struggled against this with some success.

He passed from brooding silences into sudden bursts of declamation with

such abruptness that strangers thought him very eloquent. When he was

excited the colour ran into his nose as though he had been drinking,

and often his ears were red. His history was simple. The son of a small

draper in Streatham, he had at an early age joined himself to an

American Revivalist called Harper. When after some six years of

successful enterprise Mr. Harper had been imprisoned for forgery, young

William Thurston had attached himself to a Christian Science Chapel in

Hoxton. Then, somewhere about 1897, he had met Miss Avies at a

Revivalist Meeting in the Albert Hall and, fascinated by her ardent

spirit, transferred his services to the Kingscote Brethren.

He had now risen to a position of great importance in the Chapel; it

was known that he disagreed profoundly with his leader on some vital

questions, and it was thought that he might at a later date definitely

secede and conduct a party of his own.

Certainly he had exceptional energies and gifts of exhortation and

invective not to be despised. Martin politely wished him "Good evening"

and escaped to his room.

As he changed his clothes he tried to translate into definite facts his

vague discomfort. One, he hated that swine Thurston. Two, Amy was vexed

with him (What strange impossible creatures women were!). Third--and by

far the most important of them all--his father wanted to talk to him.

He knew very well that this talk had been preparing for him ever since

his return from abroad. He dreaded it. Oh! he dreaded it most horribly!

He loved his father but with a love that had in it elements of fear,

timidity, every possible sort of awkwardness. Moreover he was helpless.

Ever since that first day when as a tiny child of four or five he had

awakened to behold that figure, enormous in a long night-shirt,

summoning God in the middle of the night with a candle flickering

fantastic shadows on to the wall behind them, Martin had been weak as

putty in his father's hands. Against other men he could stand up;

against that strange company of fears, affections, superstitions,

shadowy terrors, dim expectations that his father presented to him he

could do nothing.

Well--that conversation had to come some time. He must show that he was

a man now, moulded by the world with his own beliefs, purposes,

resolves. But if he did not love him, how much easier it would be!

When he went downstairs he found the old man in the little pink

drawing-room--he looked tired and worn. Martin remembered with alarm

the things that he had heard recently about his father's heart. He

glanced up and the older man's hand fastened on his shoulder; they

stood there side by side. After a few minutes they all went in to

supper.

Mr. Thurston's nose was flushed with the success of the mission from

which he had just returned. He had been one of a number whose aim it

had been during the preceding week to bring light and happiness into

the lives of the inhabitants of Putney. They had been obviously

appreciated, as the collection for the week had amounted to between

seventy and eighty pounds. A proper share of this fine result Mr.

Thurston naturally appropriated to his own efforts. His long tapering

fingers were not so clean as they might have been, but this did not

prevent him from waving them in the air and pointing them at imaginary

Putney citizens whom he evoked in support of his statements.

"We 'ad a reelly thumpin' meeting on Thursday--Town Hall--One for the

women in the small 'all hand one for the men in the Main Hall. Almost

no opposition you might say, and when it came to the Hymn singing it

fairly took the roof off. A lot of 'em stopped afterwards--one lad of

eighteen or so is coming over to us 'ere. Butcher's apprentice. Says

'e's felt the Lord pressing him a long way back but the flesh held him.

Might work him up into a very useful lad with the Lord's help. Thank

you, Mrs. Warlock, I will try a bit more of that cold beef if you don't

mind. Pretty place, Putney. Ever been there, Mr. Warlock? Ah, you

should go--"

Amy Warlock listened with the greatest interest; otherwise, it must be

confessed, Mr. Thurston's audience was somewhat inattentive. Mr.

Warlock's mind was obviously elsewhere; he passed his hand through his

beard, his eyes staring at the table-cloth. Mr. Thurston, noticing

this, tried another topic.

"What 'ave you heard, Mrs. Warlock, about the new Miss Cardinal? I

'aven't seen her yet myself."

Mrs. Warlock, who had just given herself a little piece of beef, some

potato and some spinach, and was arranging these delicacies with the

greatest care upon her plate, just smiled without raising her eyes. Amy

answered--

"I've seen her. I was there this afternoon. I can't say that I found

her very interesting. Plain-ugly in fact. She never opened her mouth

all the afternoon. Caroline Smith tells me that she knows nothing at

all, seen nothing, been nowhere. Bad-tempered I should think."

"Dear, dear," said Mr. Thurston with a gratified sigh, "is it so

reelly?"

Martin looked across at his sister indignantly. "Trust one woman about

another," he said. "Just because she doesn't chatter like a magpie you

concluded she's got nothing to say. It's even conceivable that she

found you dull, Amy."

Amy looked at him with a strange penetrating glance that in some

undefined way increased his irritation. "It's quite possible," she said

quietly. "But I don't think even you, Martin, can call her handsome. As

to her intelligence, she never gave me a chance of judging."

"I've been there several times," said Martin hotly. "I like her

immensely." He felt as soon as he had spoken that it had been a foolish

thing to say. He saw Mr. Thurston smile. In the pause that followed he

felt as though he had with a gesture of the hand flung a stone into a

pool of chatter and scandal whose ripples might spread far beyond his

control. At that moment he hated his sister.

"I didn't know you knew her so well, dear," said his mother.

"I don't know her," he said, "I've only seen her three times. But she

ought to be given her chance. It can't be much fun for her coming here

where she knows no one--after her father suddenly dying. I believe she

was all alone with him."

He had expected his father to defend her. He remembered that he had

apparently liked her. But his father said nothing. There was an awkward

and uncomfortable pause. After supper Mr. Thurston rubbed his hands,

helped Amy Warlock into her cloak, said to the company in general:

"Good night. Should be a very full meeting to-night ... Well, well ...

Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Warlock, I'm sure."

The door was closed, Mrs. Warlock retired into her bedroom; the house

was left to Martin and his father.

Mr. Warlock's room was hideous. It opened, somewhat ironically, out of

Mrs. Warlock's pink drawing-room. A huge and exceedingly ugly American

roll-top desk took up much of the room. There were bookshelves into

which books had been piled. Commentaries on the Bible, volumes of

sermons, pamphlets, tattered copies of old religious magazines. A bare

carpet displayed holes and rents. The fireplace was grim with dirty

pieces of paper and untidy shavings. In the midst of this disorder

there hung over the mantelpiece, against the faded grey wall-paper, a

fine copy of Raphael's "Transfiguration." Mr. Warlock lighted a candle

and the flame flickered with changing colours upon the picture's

surface. It had been given to John Warlock many years before by an old

lady who heard him preach and had been, for a week, converted, but on

his demand that she should give her wealth to the poor and fling aside

her passion for Musical Comedy, left him with indignation. The picture

had remained; it hung there now crooked on its cord.

John Warlock was unconscious of the dust and disorder that surrounded

him. His own passion for personal cleanliness sprang from the early

days with his father, to whom bodily cleanliness had been part of a

fanatical mysticism. Partly also by reason of that early training,

sloth, drunkenness, immorality, had no power over him. And of the whole

actual world that surrounded him he was very little conscious except

that he hated towns and longed always for air and space.

So that the windows were open one room was to him as another.

He had often, during his work with the members of his community, been

conscious of his ignorance of the impulses and powers that went up to

make the ordinary sensual physical life of the normal man. His own

troubles, trials, failures were so utterly of another kind that in this

other world his imagination refused to aid him. This had often deeply

distressed him and made him timid and shy in his dealings with men and

women. It was this, more than anything else, that held him back from

the ambition to proselytise. How could he go forth and challenge men's

souls when he could not understand nor feel their difficulties? More

and more as his years advanced had he retired into himself, into his

own mystical world of communion with a God who drew ever nearer and

nearer to him. He humbled himself before men; he did not believe

himself better than they because he had not yielded to their

temptations; but he could not help them; his tongue was tied; he was a

man cut off from his fellows and he knew it.

He had never felt so impatient of his impotence as he did to-night. For

ten years he had been waiting for this interview with his son, and now

that it was come he was timid and afraid as though he had been opposed

by a stranger. He had always known that Martin would return. It had

been his one worldly ambition and prayer to have him at his side again.

When he had thought and dreamt of the time that was coming, he had

thought that it would be simple enough to win the boy back to the old

allegiance and faith to which he had once been bound. Meanwhile the boy

had grown into a man; here was a new Martin deep in experiences,

desires, ambitions of which his father could have no perception. Even

in the moment that he was aware of the possibility of losing his son he

was aware also of the deep almost fanatical resolve to keep him, to

hold him at all costs.

This was to be the test of his whole earthly life. He seemed, as he sat

there, looking across at his boy, to challenge God Himself to take him

from him. It was as though he said:

"This reward at least I have a right to ask. I demand it ..."

Martin, on his side, was conscious of a profound discomfort. He had,

increasingly as the years had passed, wished to take life easily and

pleasantly. Suddenly now another world rose up before him. Yes, another

world. He was not fool enough to dismiss it simply because it did not

resemble his own. Moreover it had been once his, and this was

increasingly borne in upon him. But it all seemed to him now incredibly

old, childish and even fantastic, as though here, in the middle of

London, he had suddenly stepped into a little wood with a witch, a

cottage and a boiling cauldron. Such things could not frighten, of

course--he was no longer a child--and yet because he had once been

frightened some impression of alarm and dismay hovered over him.

During all his normal years abroad he had forgotten the power of

superstition, of dreams and omens; he knew now, as he faced his father,

that the power was real enough.

They talked for a little while of ordinary things; the candle flame

jumped and fell, the shavings rustled strangely in the fireplace, the

"Transfiguration" swung a little on its cord, the colour still

lingering at its heart as the rest of the room moved restlessly under

the ebb and flow of black shadows. Then the candle suddenly blew out.

"A lamp will be better," said Mr. Warlock.

He left the room and Martin sat there, in the darkness, haunted by he

knew not what anticipations. The light was brought, they drew closer

together, sitting in the little glossy pool, the room pitch dark around

them.

"Well, Martin," at last Mr. Warlock said, "I want to hear so many

things. Our first time together alone."

"There isn't very much," Martin tried to speak naturally and

carelessly. "I wrote about most things in my letters. Pretty rotten

letters I'm afraid." He laughed.

"And now--what do you intend to do now?"

"Oh, I don't know--Look around for a bit."

There was another long pause. Then Mr. Warlock began again. "When I ask

about your life, my boy, I don't mean where you've lived, how you've

earned your living--I do know all that--you've been very good about

writing. But your real life, what you've been thinking about things,

how you feel about everything ..."

"Well, father--I don't know. One hadn't much time for thinking, you

know. No one did much thinking in Rio. When I was in the Bermudas there

was a fellow ..."

"Yes, but tell me about yourself."

Then, with a desperate effort, he broke out:

"Father, you'll be badly disappointed in me. I've been feeling it

coming all the time. I can't help it. I'm just like any one else. I

want to have a good time. One's only young once. I'm awfully sorry. I

want to please you in any way I can, but--but--it's all gone--all that

early part. It's simply one's childhood that's finished with."

"And it can't come back?" his father said quietly.

"Never!" Martin's voice was almost a cry as though he were defying

something.

"We are very weak against God's will," his father said, still quietly

as though it were not he that was speaking but some voice in the shadow

behind him. "You are not your own master, Martin."

"I am my own master," Martin answered passionately. "I have been my own

master for ten years. I've not done anything very fine with my life, I

know. I'm just like any one else--but I've found my feet. I can look

after myself against anybody and I'm independent--of every one and of

everything."

His father drew a little closer to him.

"Of course," he said, "I was not so foolish as to expect that you would

come back to us just as you left us. I know that you must have your own

life--and be free--so much as any of us are free at all ..." Then after

a little pause. "What are your plans? What are you going to do?"

"Well," answered Martin, hesitating, "I haven't exactly settled, you

know. I might take a small share in some business, go into the City.

Then at other times I feel I shouldn't like being cooped up in a town

after the life I've led. Sometimes, this last month, I've felt I

couldn't breathe. It was though, are you, all the chimneys were going

to tumble in. When you're out on a field you know where you are, don't

you? So I've thought it would be nice to have a little farm somewhere

in the South, Devonshire or Glebeshire ... And then I'd marry of

course, a girl who'd like that kind of life and wouldn't find it dull.

There'd be plenty of work--a healthy life for children right away from

these towns ... That's my sort of idea, father, but of course one

doesn't know ..."

Martin trailed off into inconsequent words. It was as though his father

were waiting for him to commit himself and would then suddenly leap

upon him with "There! Now, you've betrayed yourself. I've caught you--"

and he had simply nothing to betray, nothing to conceal.

But anything was better than these pauses during which the threats and

anticipations piled up and up, making a monstrous figure out of exactly

nothing at all.

It was not enough to tell himself that between every father and son

there were restraints and hesitations, a division cleft by the

remembrance of the time when one had commanded and the other obeyed.

There were other elements here--for one the element of an old affection

that had once been at the very root of the boy's soul and was now in

the strangest way creeping back to him, as an old familiar, but

forgotten form might creep out of the dark and sit at his feet and

clasp his knees.

"Well," said John Warlock. "That's very pleasant. You must feel very

grateful to your aunt Rachel, Martin; she's given you the opportunity

of doing what you like with your life. She spoke to me about it before

she died."

"She spoke to you about it?"

"Yes. She told me that she did it because she wanted to bring you back

to me. She knew of my love for you. We often talked of you together.

She was a faithful servant of God. She believed that God meant to bring

you, through her, back into His arms."

"I might not have come," Martin said with a sudden anger that surprised

himself. "She made no conditions. I might have gone on with my life

there abroad. I am free to lead my own life where and how I please."

"Quite free." His father answered gently. "But she knew that you would

come. Of course you are your own master, Martin--"

"No, but it must be quite clear," Martin cried, the excitement rising

in him as he spoke. He leaned forward almost touching his father's

chair. "I'm not bound to any one by this money. It was awfully jolly of

Aunt Rachel. I'll never forget her--but I'm free. I haven't got to say

that I believe things when I don't, or that I think things that she

thought just because she did ... I don't want to hurt you, father, but

you know that it must have seemed to me pretty odd coming back after

all these years and finding you, all in the same place, doing the same

things, believing in the same things--just like years ago. I've seen

the world a bit, I can tell you--Russia, China, Japan, America, North

and South, India. You believe as far as you can see. What are you to

think when, in every country that you come to, you see people believing

in different things? They can't all be right, you know."

His father said nothing.

"But each thinks he's right--and each hates the other. Then, when I

came back and saw a fellow like that man Thurston preaching and laying

down the law, well, it seemed odd enough that any one could be taken in

by it. I hope I don't hurt you, father ... only that's what you want,

isn't it ... to have it out quite plainly? ..."

His father, still very gently and hesitating as though he found it

difficult to catch the words that he wished (his voice had still the

remoteness of some one speaking, who was far from them both), said:

"You'll think it odd, Martin, when you know how often I have to preach

and speak in public, that I should find it hard to talk--but I never,

with any man alone, could find words easily. I know so little. It is

God's punishment for some selfish nervousness and shyness in me, that

even now when I am an old man I cannot speak as one man to another.

There was once, I remember, a young man who had heard me preach and was

moved by my words and begged to see me in private. He came one evening;

he was tempted to commit a terrible sin. He depended upon me to save

him and I could say nothing. I struggled, I prayed, but it was

incredible to me that any man could be tempted to such a thing. I spoke

only conventional words that meant nothing. He went away from me, and

his lost soul is now upon me and will always be ... but, Martin, what I

would say beyond everything is--do not let us separate. Be free as you

must be free, as you should be free--but stay with me--remain with me.

I am an old man; I have longed for you as I think no other father can

ever have longed for his son. They tell me that I cannot live many more

years. God chooses His time. Be with me, Martin, for a little while

even though I may seem old to you and foolish. Perhaps things will come

back to you that you have long forgotten. You were once pledged and it

was a vow that is not easily removed--but it is enough for the present

if you will be with me a little, give me some of your time--give the

old days a chance to come back." He laid his hand upon his son's.

The sudden touch of the dry, hot, trembling skin filled Martin's heart

with the strangest confusion of affection, embarrassment and some

familiar pathos. In just that way ten years before he had felt his

father's hand and had thought: "How old he's getting! ... How I shall

miss him! ... I hope nothing happens to him!" In the very balance of

his father's sentences and the deliberate choice of words there had

been something old-fashioned and remote from all the life and scramble

of Martin's recent years. Now he took his father's hand in his own

strong grasp and said gruffly:

"That's all right, father ... I'm not going while you want me ... You

and I ... always ... it's just the same now."

But even as he spoke he felt as though he were giving some pledge that

was to involve him in far more than he could see before him. Then, with

a happy sense that the sentimental part of the conversation was over,

he began to talk about all kinds of things. He let himself go and even,

after a while, began to feel the whole thing really jolly and pleasant.

His father wanted waking up. He had been here so long, with all these

awful frumps, brooding over one idea, never getting away from this

Religion.

Martin began to imagine himself very cleverly leading his father into a

normal natural life, taking him to see things, making him laugh; it

would do his health a world of good.

Then, quite suddenly, the old man said:

"And what do you remember, Martin, of the old days here, the days when

you were quite small, when we lived in Mason Street?"

What did Martin remember? He remembered a good deal. He was surprised

when he began to think ... "Did he remember ..." his father suggested a

scene, a day--yes, he remembered that. His father continued, as though

it had been for his own pleasure.

The scenes, the hours returned with a vividness and actuality that

thronged the room.

He could see Mason Street with its grocer's shop at the corner, its

Baths and Public Library, the sudden little black dips into the areas

as the houses followed one another, the lamp-post opposite their window

that had always excited him because it leaned inwards a little as

though it would presently tumble. He remembered the fat short cook with

the pink cotton dress who wheezed and blew so when she had to climb the

stairs. He remembered the rooms that would seem bare enough to him now,

he supposed, but were then filled with exciting possibilities--a little

round brown table, his mother's work-box with mother-of-pearl shells

upon the cover, a stuffed bird with bright blue feathers under a glass

case, a screen with coloured pictures of battles and horses and

elephants casted upon it. He remembered the exact sound that the

tinkling bell made when it summoned them to meals, he remembered the

especial smell of beef and carpet that was the dining-room, he

remembered a little door of coloured glass on the first landing, a

cupboard that had in it sugar and apples, a room full of old books

piled high all about the floor upon the dry and dusty boards ... a

thousand other things came crowding around him.

Then, as his father's voice continued, out from the background there

came his own figure, a small, pale, excited boy in short trousers.

He was immensely excited--that was the principal thing. It was evening,

the house seemed to swim in candlelight and smoke through which things

could be seen only dimly.

Something wonderful was about to happen to him. He was in a state of

glory, very close to God, so close that he could almost see Him sitting

with His long white beard in the middle of a cloud, watching Martin

with interest and affection. He was pleased with Martin and Martin was

pleased with himself. At the same time as his pleasure he was aware

that the stuff of his new black trousers tickled his knees and that he

was hungry.

He saw his small sister Amy for a moment and expressed quite

effectively by a smile and nod of the head his immeasurable superiority

to her ...

They, he and his father, drove in a cab to the Chapel. Of what followed

then he was now less aware. He remembered that he was in a small room

with two men, that they all took off their clothes (he remembered that

one man, very stout and red, looked funny without his clothes), that

they put on long white night-shirts, that his was too long for him and

that he tripped over it, that they all three walked down the centre of

the Chapel, which was filled with eyes, mouths and boots, and that he

was very conscious of his toe-nails, which had never been exposed in

public before, that they came to a round stone place filled with water

and into this after the two men he was dipped, that he didn't scream

from the coldness, of the water although he wanted to, that he was

wrapped in a blanket and finally carried home in an ecstasy of triumph.

What happiness followed! The vitality of it swept down upon him now, so

that he seemed never to have lived since then. He was the chosen of God

and every one knew it. What a little prig and yet how simple it had all

been, without any consciousness of insincerity or acting on his part.

God had chosen him and there he was, for ever and ever safe and happy.

It was not only that he was assured that when the moment arrived he

would have, in Heaven, a "good time"--it was that he was greatly

exalted, so that he gave his twopence a week pocket-money to his

school-fellows, never pulled Amy's hair, never teased his mother's

canary. He had been aware, young though he was, of another life. He

prayed and prayed, he went to an endless succession of services and

meetings. There was Mr. Bates, one of the leading brethren then, who

loved him and spoilt him ... above all, through and beyond it all,

there was his father, who adored him and whom he adored.

That adoration--of God, of his father, of life itself! Was it possible

that a small boy, normal and ordinary enough in other ways, could feel

so intensely such passions?

The dark room was crowding him with figures and scenes. A whole world

that he had thought dead and withered was beating--urgently,

insistently, upon his consciousness.

In another instant he did not know what surrender, what acknowledgement

he might have made. It seemed to him that nothing in life was worth

while save to receive again, in some fashion, that vitality that he had

once known.

The door was flung open; a stream of light struck the dark; the

shadows, memories, fled, helter-skelter, like crackling smoke into the

air.

Amy stood in the doorway, blinking at him, scowling. He knew, for some

undefined reason, that he could not meet his father's eyes. He jumped

up and walked to the window.