THE INSIDE SAINTS
Maggie, when she was nearly home, halted suddenly. She stopped as when
on the threshold of a room that should be empty one sees waiting a
stranger. If at the end of all this she should lose Martin! ...
There was the stranger who had come to her now and would not again
depart. She recognised the sharp pain, the almost unconscious pulling
back on the sudden edge of a dim pit, as something that would always be
with her now--always. One knows that in the second stage of a great
intimacy one's essential loneliness is only redoubled by close
companionship. One asks for so much more, and then more and more, but
that final embrace is elusive and no physical contact can surrender it.
But she was young and did not know that yet. All she knew was that she
would have to face these immediate troubles alone, that she would not
see him for perhaps a week, that she would not know what his people at
home were doing, and that she must not let any of these thoughts come
up into her brain. She must keep them all back: if she did not, she
would tumble into some foolish precipitate action.
When she reached home she was obstinate and determined. At once she
found that something was the matter. During luncheon the two aunts sat
like statues (Aunt Elizabeth a dumpy and squat one). Aunt Anne's
aloofness was coloured now with a very human anger. Maggie realised
with surprise that she had never seen her angry before. She had been
indignant, disapproving, superior, forbidding, but never angry. The
eyes were hard now, not with religious reserve but simply with bad
temper. The mist of anger dimmed the room, it was in the potatoes and
the cold dry mutton, especially was it in the hard pallid knobs of
cheese. And Aunt Elizabeth, although she was frightened by her sister's
anger on this occasion, shared in it. She pursed her lips at Maggie and
moved her fat, podgy hand as though she would like to smack Maggie's
cheeks.
Maggie was frightened--really frightened. The line of bold independence
was all very well, but now risks were attached to it. If she swiftly
tossed her head and told her aunts that she would walk out of the house
they might say "Walk!" and that would precipitate Martin's crisis. She
knew from the way he had looked at her that morning that his thoughts
were with his father, and it showed that she had travelled through the
first stage of her intimacy with him, that she could not trust him to
put her before his own family troubles. At all costs she must keep him
safe through these next difficult weeks, and the best way to keep him
safe was herself to remain quietly at home.
Of all this she thought as she swallowed the hostile knobs of cheese
and drank the tepid, gritty coffee.
She followed her aunts upstairs, and was not at all surprised when Aunt
Elizabeth, with an agitated murmur, vanished into higher regions. She
followed Aunt Anne into the drawing-room.
Aunt Anne sat in the stiff-backed tapestry chair by the fire. Maggie
stood in front of her. She was disarmed at that all-important moment by
her desperate sensation of defenceless loneliness. It was as though
half of herself--the man-half of herself--had left her. She tried to
summon her pluck but there was no pluck there. She could only want
Martin, over and over again inside herself. Had any one been, ever so
hopelessly ALONE before?
"Maggie, I am angry," said Aunt Anne. She said it as though she meant
it. Amazing how human this strange aloof creature had become. As though
some coloured saint bright with painted wood and tinsel before whom one
stood in reverence slipped down suddenly and with fingers of flesh and
blood struck one's face. Her cheeks were flushed, her beautiful hands
were no longer thin but were hard and active.
"What have I done, aunt?" asked Maggie.
"You have not treated us fairly. My sister and I have done everything
for you. You have not made it especially easy for us in any way, but we
have tried to give you what you wanted. You have repaid is with
ingratitude."
She paused, but Maggie said nothing. She went on:
"Lately--these last three weeks--we have given you complete liberty. I
advised that strongly against my sister's opinion because I thought you
weren't happy. You didn't make friends amongst our friends, and I
thought you should have the chance of finding some who were younger and
gayer than we were. Then I thought we could trust you. You have many
faults, but I believed that you were honest."
"I am honest!" Maggie broke in. Her aunt went on:
"You have used the liberty we gave you during these weeks to make
yourself the talk of our friends. You have been meeting Mr. Martin
Warlock secretly every day. You have been alone with him in the Park
and at the theatre. I know that you are young and very ignorant. You
could not have known that Martin Warlock is a man with whom no girl who
respects herself would be seen alone--"
"That is untrue!" Maggie flamed out.
"--and," went on Aunt Anne, "we would have forgiven that. It is your
deceit to ourselves that we cannot forget. Day after day you were
meeting him and pretending that you went to your other friends. I am
disappointed in you, bitterly disappointed. I saw from the first that
you did not mean to care for us, now, as well, you have disgraced us--"
Maggie began: "Yes, I have been seeing Martin. I didn't think it
wrong--I don't now. I didn't tell you because I was afraid that you
would stop me--"
"Then that shows that you knew it was wrong."
"No, Aunt Anne--only that you would think it was wrong. I can only go
by myself, by what I feel is wrong I mean. I've always had to, all my
life. It would have been no good doing anything else at home, because
father--"
She pulled herself up. She was not going to defend herself or ask for
pity. She said, speaking finally:
"Yes, I have been out with Martin every day. I went to the theatre with
him, too, and also had tea with him."
Maggie could see Aunt Anne's anger rising higher and higher like water
in a tube. Her voice was hard when she spoke again--she pronounced
judgment:
"We see now that you were right when you said that you had better leave
us. You are free to go as soon as you wish. You have, of course, your
money, but if you care to stay with us until you have found some work
you must now obey our rules. While you remain with us you must not go
out unless my sister or I accompany you." Then her voice changed,
softening a little. She suddenly raised her hands in a gesture of
appeal: "Oh, Maggie, Maggie, turn to God. You have rebelled against
Him. You have refused to listen to His voice. The end of that can be
only misery. He loves, but He also judges. Even now, within a day, a
week, He may come with judgment. Turn to Him, Maggie, not because I
tell you but because of the Truth. Pray with me now that He may help
you and give you strength."
Because she felt that she had indeed treated them badly and must do
just now what they wished, she knelt down on the drawing-room carpet.
Aunt Anne also knelt down, her figure stiff like iron, her raised hands
once again delicate and ghost-like.
"O Lord God," she prayed, "this Thy servant comes to Thee and prays
that Thou wilt give her strength in her struggle with the Evil One. She
has been tempted and is weak, but Thou art strong to save and wilt not
despise the least of these Thy children."
"Come, O Lord the Father, and take Thy daughter into Thy loving care,
and when Thou comest, in all Thy splendour, to redeem the world, I pray
that Thou wilt find her waiting for Thee in holiness and meekness of
heart."
They rose. Maggie's knees were sore with the stiff carpet. The family
group watched her from the wall ironically.
She saw that in spite of the prayer Aunt Anne had not forgiven her. She
stood away from her, and although her voice now was not so hard, it had
lost altogether the tender note that it used to have.
"Now, Maggie, you must promise us that you will not see Martin Warlock
again."
Maggie flushed. "No, aunt, I can't promise that."
"Then we must treat you as a prisoner whilst you are with us."
"If he wants to see me I must see him."
They looked at one another. Aunt Anne was like a man just then.
"Very well. Until you give us your promise we must see ourselves that
you do not disgrace us."
There was no more to be said. It was as though a heavy iron door had
rolled to.
Aunt Anne passed Maggie and left the room.
Well, then, there was the situation. As she remained in the empty room
she felt relief because now she knew where she was.
If only she could keep in touch with Martin then nothing else at all
mattered. But that must be, otherwise she felt that she would rush at
them all and tread them down and break doors and windows to get at him.
Meanwhile, how they must all have been talking! She felt no especial
anger against Caroline Smith. It had been her own fault for trusting
that note to her honour. Caroline had no honour, of course. Maggie
might have guessed that from the way that she talked about other
people. And then probably she herself was in love with Martin ... She
sat down, staring in front of her, thinking. They all knew, Amy
Warlock, Mr. Thurston, Miss Avies--knew about that wonderful,
marvellous thing, her love for Martin, his for her. They were turning
it over in their hands, soiling it, laughing at it, sneering at it. And
what were they doing to Martin? At that thought she sprang up and began
hurriedly to walk about. Oh, they must leave him alone! What were they
saying to him? They were telling him how ridiculous it was to have
anything to do with a plain, ugly girl! And he? Was he defending her?
At the sudden suggestion of his disloyalty indignation fought in her
with some strange, horrible suspicion. Yes, it would come back, that
thought. He was weak. He had told her that he was. He was weak. She
KNEW that he was. She would not lie to herself. And then at the thought
of his weakness the maternal love in her that was the strongest
instinct in her character flooded her body and soul, so that she did
not mind if he were weak, but only wanted to defend him, to protect him
...
Strangely, she felt more sure of him at that moment when she was
conscious of his weakness than she had been when she asserted his
strength. Beneath that weakness he would be true to her because he
needed her. No one else could give him what she did; he had said so
again and again. And it would always be so. He would have to come back
to her however often he denied her.
She felt happier then. She could face them all. She had been bad to her
aunts, too. She had done them harm, and they had been nothing but
goodness to her. Apart from leaving Martin she would do all, these next
weeks, to please them.
She went up to her bedroom, and when she reached it she realised, with
a little pang of fright, that she was a prisoner. No more meetings
outside Hatchards, no more teas, no more walks ... She looked out of
the window down into the street. It was a long way down and the figures
walking were puppets, not human at all. But the thing to be thought of
now was the question of letters. How was she to get them to the Strand
Office and receive from them Martin's letters in return? After long,
anxious thought there seemed to be only one way. There was a
kitchen-maid, Jane, who came every morning to the house, did odd jobs
in the kitchen, and went home again in the evening. Maggie had seen the
girl about the house a number of times, had noticed her for her
rebellious, independent look, and had felt some sympathy with her
because she was under the harsh dominion of Martha.
Maggie had spoken to her once or twice and the girl had seemed
grateful, smiling in a kind of dark, tearful way under her untidy hair.
Maggie believed that she would help her; of course the girl would get
into trouble were she discovered, and dismissal would certainly follow,
but it was clear enough that she would not in any case be under
Martha's government very long. Martha never kept kitchen-maids for more
than a month at a time.
She sat down at once and wrote her first letter, sitting on her bed.
DARLING MARTIN--There has been an explosion here. The aunts have told
me to give you up. I could not promise them that I would not see you
and so I am a prisoner here until I leave them altogether. I won't
leave them until after the New Year, partly because I gave a promise
and partly because it would make more trouble for you if I were turned
out just now. I can't leave the house at all unless I am with one of
them, so I am going to try and send the letters by the kitchen-maid
here who goes home every day, and she will fetch yours when she posts
mine. I'll give her a note to tell the post people that she is to have
them. Martin, dear, try and write every day, even if it's only the
shortest line, because it is dreadful to be shut up all day, and I
think of you all the time and wonder how you are. Don't be unhappy,
Martin--that's the one thing I couldn't bear. If you're not, I'm not.
There's no reason to be unhappy about me. I'm very cheerful indeed if I
know that you are all right. You are all right, aren't you? I do want
to know what happened when you got home. I quite understand that the
one thing you must do now is to keep your father well and not let
anything trouble him. If the thought of me troubles him, then tell him
that you are thinking of nothing but him now and how to make him happy.
But don't let them change your feeling for me. You know me better than
any of them do and I am just as you know me, every bit. The aunts are
very angry because they say I deceived them, but they haven't any right
to tell me who I shall love, have they? No one has. I am myself and
nobody's ever cared for me except you--and Uncle Mathew, so I don't see
why I should think of anybody. The aunts never cared for me
really--only to make me religious.
But, Martin, never forget I love you so much I can never change. I'm
not one who changes, and although I'm young now I shall be just the
same when I'm old. I have the ring and I look at it all the time. I
like to think you have the locket. Please write, dear Martin, or I'll
find it very difficult to stay quiet here, and I know I ought to stay
quiet for your sake.
Your loving,
MAGGIE.
She put it in an envelope, wrote the address as he had told her, and
then set out to find Jane. It was four o'clock in the afternoon now and
the house, on this winter's day, was dark and dim.
The gas was always badly lit in the passages, spitting and muttering
like an imprisoned animal. The house was so quiet when Maggie came out
on to the stairs that there seemed to be no one in it. She found her
way down into the hall and saw Thomas the cat there, moving like a
black ghost along the floor. He came up to her and rubbed himself in
his sinister, mysterious way against her dress. When she turned towards
the green baize door that led towards the kitchen regions he stood back
from her, stole on to the lower steps of the staircase and watched her
with steady, unblinking eyes. She pushed the door and went through into
the cold passage that smelt of cheese and bacon and damp earth. There
seemed to be no one about, and then suddenly the pantry door opened and
Jane came out. She stopped when she saw Maggie.
"Where's Martha?" asked Maggie in a low voice.
The whisper seemed to tell Jane at once that this was to be a
confidential matter. She jerked with a dirty thumb in the direction of
the kitchen.
"In there. Cooking the dinner," she whispered back. She was untidy,
there were streaks of black on her face, but her eyes looked up at
Maggie with a friendly, roguish glance, as though they had already
something in common. Maggie saw that she had no time to lose. She came
close to her.
"Jane," she said, "I'm in trouble. It's only you who can help me.
Here's a letter that I want posted--just in the ordinary way. Can you
do that for me?"
Jane, suddenly smiling, nodded her head.
"And there's something else," Maggie went on. "To-morrow morning,
before you come here, I want you to go to the Strand post-office--you
know the one opposite the station--and ask for a letter addressed to
me. I've written on a piece of paper here that you're to be given any
letters of mine. Give it to me somehow when no one's looking. Do you
understand?"
Jane nodded her head. Maggie gave her the note and also half-a-crown,
but Jane pushed back the money.
"I don't want no money," she said in a hoarse whisper. "You're the only
one here decent to me."
At that moment the kitchen door opened and Martha appeared. When she
saw Jane she came up to her and said: "Now then, idling again! What
about the potatoes?"
She looked at Maggie with her usual surly suspicion.
"I came down for a candle," Maggie said, "for my room. Will you give me
one, please?"
Jane had vanished.
Martin, meanwhile, after Maggie left him, had returned home in no happy
state. There had leapt upon him again that mood of sullen impatient
rebellion that he knew so well--a mood that really was like a
possession, so that, struggle as he--might, he seemed always in the
grip of some iron-fingered menacing figure.
It was possession in a sense that to many normal, happy people in this
world is so utterly unknown that they can only scornfully name it
weakness and so pass on their way. But those human beings who have
suffered from it do in very truth feel as though they had been caught
up into another world, a world of slavery, moral galley-driving with a
master high above them, driving them with a lash that their chained
limbs may not resist. Such men, if they try to explain that torment,
can often point to the very day and even hour of their sudden slavery;
at such a tick of the clock the clouds gather, the very houses and
street are weighted with a cold malignity, thoughts, desires, impulses
are all checked, perverted, driven and counter-driven by a mysterious
force. Let no man who has not known such hours and the terror of such a
dominion utter judgment upon his neighbour.
To Martin the threat of this conflict with his father over Maggie was
the one crisis that he had wished to avoid. But his character, which
was naturally easy and friendly and unsuspicious, had confused him.
Those three weeks with Maggie had been so happy, so free from all
morbidity and complication, that he had forgotten the world outside.
For a moment when Maggie had told him that she had given her note to
Caroline he had been afraid, but he had been lulled as the days passed
and nothing interfered with their security. Now he was suddenly plunged
into the middle of a confusion that was all the more complicated
because he could not tell what his mother and his, sister were
thinking. He knew that Amy had disliked him ever since his return, and
that that dislike had been changed into something fiercer since his
declared opposition to Thurston. His mother he simply did not
understand at all. She spoke to him still with the same affection and
tenderness, but behind the words he felt a hard purpose and a
mysterious aloofness.
She was not like his mother at all; it was as though some spy had been
introduced into the house in his mother's clothing.
But for them he did not care; it was his father of whom he must think.
Here, too, there was a mystery from which he was deliberately kept. He
knew, of course, that they were all expecting some crisis; as the days
advanced he could feel that the excitement increased. He knew that his
father had declared that he had visions and that there was to be a
revelation very shortly; but of these visions and this revelation he
heard only indirectly from others. His father said nothing to him of
these things, and at the ordinary Chapel services on Sunday there was
no allusion to them. He knew that the Inside Saints had a society and
rules of their own inside the larger body, and from that inner society
he was quite definitely excluded. Of that exclusion he would have been
only too glad had it not been for his father, but now when he saw him
growing from day to day more haggard and worn, more aloof from all
human society, when lie saw him wrapped further and further into some
strange and as it seemed to him insane absorption, he was determined to
fight his way into the heart of it. His growing intimacy with Maggie
had relieved him, for a moment, of the intensity of this other anxiety.
Now suddenly he was flung back into the very thick of it. His earlier
plan of forcing his father out of all this network of chicanery and
charlatanism now returned. He felt that if he could only seize his
father and forcibly abduct him and take him away from Amy and Thurston
and the rest, and all the associations of the Chapel, he might cure him
and lead him back to health and happiness again.
And yet he did not know. He had not himself escaped from it all by
leaving it, and then that undermining bewildering suspicion that
perhaps after all there was something in all of this, that it was not
only charlatanism, confused and disconcerted him. He was like a man who
hears sounds and faint cries behind a thick wall, and there are no
doors and windows, and the bricks are too stout to be torn apart.
He had been behind that wall all his life ...
Amy's allusion to Maggie in the morning had been very slight, but had
shown quite clearly that she had heard all, and probably more, than the
truth. When he returned that morning he found his mother alone,
knitting a pink woollen comforter, her gold spectacles on the end of
her nose, her fresh lace cap crisp and dainty on her white hair--the
very picture of the dearest old lady in the world.
"Mother," he began at once, "what did Amy mean this morning about
myself and Maggie Cardinal?"
"Maggie who, dear?" his mother asked.
"Maggie Cardinal--the Cardinal niece, you know," he said impatiently.
"Did she say anything? I don't remember."
"Yes, mother. You remember perfectly well. She said that they were all
talking about me and Maggie."
"Did she?" The old lady slowly counted her stitches. "Well, dear, I
shouldn't worry about what they all say--whoever 'they' may be."
"Oh, I don't care for that," he answered contemptuously, "although all
the same I'm not going to have Amy running that girl down. She's been
against her from the first. What I want to know is has Amy been to
father with this? Because if she has I'm going to stop it. I'm not
going to have her bothering father with bits of gossip that she's
picked up by listening behind other peoples' key-holes."
Amy, meanwhile, had come in and heard this last sentence.
"Thank you, Martin," she said quietly.
He turned to her with fury. "What did you mean at breakfast," he asked,
"by what you said about myself and Maggie Cardinal?"
She looked at him with contempt but no very active hostility.
"I was simply telling you something that I thought you ought to know,"
she said. "It is what everybody is saying--that you and she have been
meeting every day for weeks, sitting in the Park after dark together,
going to the theatre. People draw their own conclusions, I suppose."
"How much have you told father of this?" he demanded.
"I don't know at all what father has heard," she answered.
"You've been that girl's enemy since the first moment that she came
here," he continued, growing angrier and angrier at her quiet
indifference. "Now you're trying to damage her character."
"On the contrary," she answered, "I told you because I thought you
ought to know what people were saying. The girl doesn't matter to me
one way or another--but I'm sorry for her if she thinks she cares for
you. That won't bring her much happiness."
Then suddenly her impassivity had a strange effect upon him. He could
not answer her. He left them both, and went up to his room.
As soon as he had closed the door of his bedroom he knew that his bad
time was come upon him. It was a physical as well as a spiritual
dominion. The room visibly darkened before his eyes, his brain worked
as it would in dreams suggesting its own thoughts and wishes and
intentions. A dark shadow hung over him, hands were placed upon his
eyes, only one thought came before him again and again and again. "You
know, you have long known, that you are doomed to make miserable
everything that you touch, to ruin every one with whom you come in
contact. That is your fate, and you can no more escape from it than you
can escape from your body!"
How many hours of this kind he had known in Spain, in France, in South
America. Often at the very moment when he had thought that he was at
last settling down to some decent steady plan of life he would be
jerked from his purpose, some delay or failure would frustrate him, and
there would follow the voice in his ear and the hands on his eyes.
It was indeed as though he had been pledged to something in his early
life, and because he had broken from that pledge had been pursued ever
since ...
He stripped to the waist and bathed in cold water; even then it seemed
to him that his flesh was heavy and dull and yellow, that he was
growing obese and out of all condition. He put on a clean shirt and
collar, sat down on his bed and tried to think the thing out. To
whomsoever he had done harm in the past he would now spare Maggie and
his father. He was surprised at the rush of tenderness that came over
him at the thought of Maggie; he sat there for some time thinking over
every incident of the last three weeks; that, at least, had been a good
decent time, and no one could ever take it away from them again. He
looked at her picture in the locket and realised, as he looked at it, a
link with her that he had never felt with any woman before. "All the
same," he thought, "I should go away. She'd mind it at first, but not
half as much as she'd mind me later on when she saw what kind of a chap
I really was. She'd be unhappy for a bit, but she'd soon meet some one
else. She's never seen a man yet except me. She'd soon forget me. She's
such a kid."
Nevertheless when he thought of beginning that old wandering life again
he shrank back. He had hated it--Oh! how he'd hated it! And he didn't
want to leave Maggie. He was in reality beginning to believe that with
her he might pull himself right out of this morass of weakness and
indecision in which he had been wallowing for years. And yet what sort
of a life could he offer her? He did not believe that he would ever now
be able to find this other woman whom he had married, and until he had
found her and divorced her Maggie's position would be impossible. She,
knowing nothing of the world, could disregard it, but HE knew, knew
that daily, hourly recurrence of alights and insults and
disappointments, knew what that life could make after a time of women
in such a position; even though she did not mind he would mind for her
and would reproach himself continually.
No, it was impossible. He must go away secretly, without telling her
... Then, at that, he was pulled up again by the thought of his father.
He could not leave him until this crisis, whatever it might be, was
over. A very little thing now might kill him, and at the thought of
that possibility he jumped up from his bed and swore that THAT
catastrophe at least must be prevented. His father must live and be
happy and strong again, and he, Martin, must see to it.
That was his charge and his sacred duty above all else.
Strong in this thought he went down to his father's room. He knocked on
the door. There was no answer, and he went in. The room was in a mess
of untidiness. His father was walking up and down, staring in front of
him, talking to himself.
At the sound of the door he turned, saw Martin and smiled, the old
trusting smile of a child, that had been, during his time abroad,
Martin's clearest memory of him.
"Oh, is that you? Come in."
Martin came forward and his father put his arm round his neck as though
for support.
"I'm tired--horribly tired." Martin took him to the shabby broken
arm-chair and made him sit down. Himself sat in his old place on the
arm of the chair, his hand against his father's neck.
"Father, come away--just for a week--with me. We'll go right off into
the country to Glebeshire or somewhere, quite alone. We won't see a
soul. We'll just walk and eat and sleep. And then you'll come back to
your work here another man."
"No, Martin. I can't yet. Not just now."
"Why not, father?"
"I have work, work that can't be left."
"But if you go on like this you'll be so that you can't go on any
longer. You'll break down. You know what the doctor said about your
heart. You aren't taking any care at all."
"Perhaps ... perhaps ... but for a week or two I must just go on,
preparing ... many things ... Martin."
He suddenly looked up at his son, putting his hand on his knee.
"Yes, father."
"You're being good now, aren't you?"
"Good, father?"
"Yes ... Not doing anything you or I'd be ashamed of. I know in the
past ... but that's been forgotten, that's over. Only now, just now,
it's terribly important for us both that you should be good ... like
you used to be ... when you were a boy."
"Father, what have people been saying to you about me?"
"Nothing--nothing. Only I think about you so much. I pray about you all
the time. Soon, as you say, we'll go away together ... only now, just
now, I want you with me here, strong by my side. I want your help."
Martin took his father's hand, felt how dry and hot and feverish it was.
"I'll be with you," he said. "I promise that. Don't you listen to what
any one says. I won't leave you." He would like to have gone on and
asked other questions, but the old man seemed so worn out and exhausted
that he was afraid of distressing him, so he just sat there, his hands
on his shoulders, and suddenly the white head nodded, the beard sank
over the breast and huddled up in the chair as though life itself had
left him; the old man slept.
During the next four days Martin and Maggie corresponded through the
fair hands of Jane. He wrote only short letters, and over them he
struggled. He seemed to see Maggie through a tangled mist of persons
and motives and intentions. He could not get at the real Maggie at all,
he could not even get at his real feelings about her. He knew that
these letters were not enough for her, he could feel behind her own a
longing for something from him more definite, something that would
bring her closer to him. He was haunted by his picture of her sitting
in that dismal house, a prisoner, waiting for him, and at last, at the
end of the four days, he felt that he must, in some way or other see
her. Then she herself proposed a way.
"To-morrow night (Friday)," she wrote, "the aunts are going to a
meeting. They won't return until after eight o'clock. During most of
that time Martha will be in the kitchen cooking, and Jane (who is
staying late that night) has promised to give me a signal. I could run
out for quarter of an hour and meet you somewhere close by and risk
getting back. Jane will be ready to let me in. Of course, it may fail,
but things can't be worse than they are ... I absolutely forbid you to
come if you think that this can make anything worse for you at home.
But I MUST see you, Martin ... I feel to-night as though I couldn't
stand it any longer (although I've only had five days of it!), but I
think that if I met you, really you, for only five minutes, I could
bear it then for weeks. Let me know if you agree to this, and if so
where we could meet about 7.30."
The mere thought of seeing her was wonderful. He would not have
believed a month ago that it could have come to mean so much to him.
He wrote back:
"Yes. At the corner of Dundas Street, by the Pillar Box, 7.30."
He knew that she had been to that dark little street with her aunts to
see Miss Pyncheon.
The night, when it came, was misty, and when he reached the place she
was at once in his arms. She had been there more than five minutes, she
had thought that he was not coming. Martha had nearly caught her ...
He kissed her hair and her eyes and her mouth, holding her to him,
forgetting everything but her. She stayed, quiet, clinging to him as
though she would never let him go, then she drew away.
"Now we must walk about or some one will see us," she said.
"We've only got five minutes. Martin, what I want to know is, are you
happy?"
"Yes," he said.
They walked like ghosts, in the misty street.
"Well, then I am," she said. "Only your letters didn't sound very
happy."
"Can you hold on till after the New Year?" They were walking hand in
hand, her fingers curled in his palm.
"Yes," she said. "If you're happy."
"There are troubles of course," he said. "But I don't care for Amy and
the rest. It's only father that matters. I can't discover how much he
knows. If I knew that I'd be much happier. We'll be all right, Maggie,
if nothing happens to him."
With a little frightened catch in her throat she asked him:
"How do you mean, if anything happens to him?"
"If anything happened to him--" she could feel his hand stiffen round
hers; "through me--then--why then--I'd leave you--everything--I'd have
to."
"Leave me! ... Oh Martin! No!"
"I'd go. I'd go--I don't know where to. I don't know what I'd do. I'd
know then that I must leave every one alone, always, for
ever--especially you."
"No. You'd need me more than ever."
"You don't understand, Maggie. I'd be impossible after that. If father
suffered through me that would be the end of it--the end of everything."
"Martin, listen." She caught his arm, looking up, trying to see his
face. "If anything like that did happen that would be where you'd want
me. Don't you see that you COULDN'T harm me EXCEPT by leaving me?"
"You can reason it as you like, Maggie, but I know myself. I know the
impulse would be too strong--to go away and hide myself from everybody.
I've felt it before--when I've done something especially bad. It's
something in me that I've known all my life." Then he turned to her:
"But it's all right. Nothing shall happen to the old man. I'll see that
it doesn't. We've only got to wait a fortnight, then I'll get him away
for a holiday. And once he's better I can leave him. It WILL be all
right. It SHALL."
Then he bent down to her. "You know, Maggie, I love you more, far more
than I ever thought. Even if I went away you'd be the only one I'd
love. I never dreamt that I'd care for any one so much."
He felt her tremble under his hand when he said that.
She sighed. "Now I can go back," she said. "I'll say that over to
myself again and again."
They stayed a little longer, he put his arms round her again and held
her so close to him that she could feel his heart throbbing. Then when
they had kissed once more she went away.
She returned safely. Jane opened the door for her, mysteriously, as
though she enjoyed her share in the conspiracy. Maggie sped upstairs,
and now with Martin's words in her ears, had enough to stiffen her back
for the battle.
The next move in the affair was on the following afternoon when Maggie,
alone in the drawing-room, beheld Caroline Smith in the doorway.
"She's got cheek enough for anything," was Maggie's first thought, but
she was not aware of the true magnificence of that young woman's
audacity until she found her hand seized and her cheek kissed.
Caroline, in fact, had greeted her with precisely her old spontaneous
enthusiasm.
"Maggie, darling, where have you been all these days--but WEEKS it is
indeed! You might at least have sent me just a word. Life simply hasn't
been the same without you! You pet! ... and you look tired! Yes, you
do. You've been overworking or something, all because you haven't had
me to look after you!"
Maggie gravely withdrew, and standing away from the shining elegance of
her friend said:
"Caroline--I want to know something before we go any further. What I
want to know is--why did you read that note that I asked you to give to
Martin Warlock?"
Caroline stared in amazement. "My dear, what IS the matter? Are you ill
or something? Oh, you are. I can see you are! You poor darling! Read
your note? What note, dear?"
"The note I gave you a month ago--one evening when you were here."
"A note! A month ago. My dear! As though I could ever remember what I
did a MONTH ago! Why, it's always all I can manage to remember what I
did yesterday. Did you give me a note, dear?"
Maggie began to be angry. "Of course I did. You remember perfectly
well. I gave it to you for Martin Warlock. You let him have it, but
meanwhile you read it, and not only that but told everybody else about
it."
Caroline's expression changed. She was suddenly sulky. Her face was
like that of a spoilt child.
"Well, Maggie Cardinal, if you call that being a friend! To say that I
would ever do such a thing!"
"You know you did!" said Maggie quietly.
"Read your letters? As though I'd want to! Why should I? As though I
hadn't something more interesting to do! No thank you! Of course you
have been getting yourself into a mess. Every one knows that. That's
why I came here to-day--to show you that I was a REAL friend and didn't
mind WHAT people said about you! When they were all talking about you
last night, and saying the most DREADFUL things, I defended you and
said it wasn't really your fault, you couldn't have told what a rotten
sort of a man Martin Warlock was--"
"That's enough," said Maggie. "I don't want your defence, thank you.
You're mean and deceitful and untrue. You never have been a friend of
mine, and I don't want ever to see you again!"
Caroline Smith was horrified. "Well, upon my word. Isn't that
gratitude? Here am I, the only person in this whole place would take
any trouble with you! When the others all said that you were plain and
stupid and hadn't anything to say for yourself I stuck to you. I did
all I could, wasting all my time going to the dressmaker with you and
trying to make you look like something human, and this is the way you
repay me! Well, there's a lesson for me! Many's the time mother's said
to me, 'Carry, you'll just ruin yourself with that kind heart of yours,
laying yourself out for others when you ought to be seeing after
yourself. You've got too big a heart for this world.' Doesn't it just
show one? And to end it all with accusing me of reading your letters!
If you choose to sit in the park after dark with a man who everybody
knows--"
"Either you're going to leave this room or I am," said Maggie.
"Thank you!" said Caroline, tossing her head. "I haven't the slightest
desire to stay, I assure you! Only you'll be sorry for this, Maggie
Cardinal, you will indeed!"
With a swish of the skirts and a violent banging of the door she was
gone.
"The only friend I had," thought Maggie.
The next development was an announcement from Aunt Anne that she would
like Maggie to accompany her to a meeting at Miss Avies'. Aunt Anne did
not explain what kind of a meeting it would be, and Maggie asked no
questions. She simply replied that she would go. She had indeed by this
time a very considerable curiosity of her own as to what every one
thought was going to happen in ten days' time. Perhaps this meeting
would enlighten her. It did.
On arriving at Miss Avies' gaunt and menacing apartment she found
herself in the very stronghold of the Inside Saints. It was a strange
affair, and Maggie was never to see anything quite like it again. In
the first place, Miss Avies' room was not exactly the place in which
you would have expected to discover a meeting of this kind.
She lived over a house-agent's in John Street, Adelphi. Her
sitting-room was low-ceilinged with little diamond-paned windows. The
place was let furnished, and the green and red vases on the
mantelpiece, the brass clock and the bright yellow wallpaper were
properties of the landlord. To the atmosphere of the place Miss Avies,
although she lived there for a number of years, had contributed nothing.
It had all the desolate forlornness of a habitation in which no human
being has dwelt for a very long time; there was dust on the
mantelpiece, a melancholy sputtering of coal choked with cinders and
gasping for breath in the fireplace, stuffy hot clamminess beating
about the unopened windows. Along the breadth of the faded brown carpet
some fifty cane-bottomed chairs were pressed tightly in rows together,
and in front of the window, facing the chairs, was a little wooden
table with a chair beside it, on the table a glass of water and a Bible.
When Maggie and her aunts entered the chairs were almost all occupied
and they were forced to sit at the end of the last row but one. The
meeting had apparently not yet begun, and many heads were turned
towards them as they took their places. Maggie fancied that the glances
directed at herself were angry and severe, but that was very possibly
her imagination. She soon recognised people known to her--Miss
Pyncheon, calm and placid; Mrs. Smith, Caroline's mother, very stout,
hot, and self-important; Amy Warlock, proud and severe; and Miss Avies
herself standing, like a general surveying his forces, behind the table.
The room was draughty and close and had a confused smell of oil-cloth
and geraniums, and Maggie knew that soon she would have a headache. She
fancied that already the atmosphere was influencing the meeting. From
where she sat she could see a succession of side faces, and it was
strange what a hungry, appealing look these pale cheeks and staring
eyes had. Hungry! Yes, that's what they all were. She thought,
fantastically, for a moment, of poor Mr. Magnus's Treasure Hunters, and
she seemed to see the whole of this company in a raft drifting in
mid-ocean, not a sail in sight and the last ship's biscuit gone.
They were not, taken altogether, a very fine collection, old maids and
young girls, many of them apparently of the servant class, one or two
sitting with open mouths and a vacancy of expression that seemed to
demand a conjurer with a rabbit and a hat. Some faces were of the true
fanatic cast, lit with the glow of an expectancy and a hope that no
rational experience had ever actually justified. One girl, whom Maggie
had seen with Aunt Anne on some occasion, had especially this prophetic
anticipation in the whole pose of her body as she bent forward a
little, her elbows on her knees her chin on her hands, gazing with wide
burning eyes at Miss Avies. This girl, whom Maggie was never to see
again hung as a picture in the rooms of her mind for the rest of her
life--the youth, the desperate anxiety as of one who throws her last
piece upon the gaming-table, the poverty of the shabby black dress, the
real physical austerity and asceticism of the white cheeks and the thin
arms and pale hands--this figure remained a symbol for Maggie. She used
to wonder in after years, when fortune had carried her far enough away
from all this world, what had happened to that girl. But she was never
to know.
There were faces, too, like Miss Pyncheon's, calm, contented,
confident, old women who had found in their religion the panacea of all
their troubles. There were faces like Mrs. Smith's, coarse and vulgar,
out for any sensation that might come along, and ready instantly to
express their contempt if the particular "trick" that they were
expecting failed to come off; other faces, again, like Amy Warlock's,
grimly set upon secret thoughts and purposes of their own, faces
trained to withstand any sudden attack on the emotions, but eager, too,
like the rest for some revelation that was to answer all questions and
satisfy all expectations.
Maggie wondered, as she looked about her, how she could have raised in
her own imagination, around the Chapel and its affairs, so formidable
an atmosphere of terror and tyrannic discipline. Here gathered together
were a few women, tired, pale, many of them uneducated, awaiting like
children the opening of a box, the springing into flower of a dry husk
of a seed, the raising of the curtain on some wonderful scene. Maggie,
as she looked at them, knew that they must be disappointed, and her
heart ached for them all, yes, even for Amy Warlock, her declared
enemy. She lost, as she sat there, for the moment all sense of her own
personal history. She only saw them all tired and hungry and expectant;
perhaps, after all, there WAS something behind it all--something for
which they had a right to be searching; even of that she had not sure
knowledge--but the pathos and also the bravery of their search touched
and moved her. She was beginning to understand something of the beauty
that hovered like a bird always just out of sight about the ugly walls
of the Chapel.
"Whatever they want, poor dears," she thought, "I do hope they get it."
Miss Avies opened the meeting with an extempore prayer: then they all
stood up and sang a hymn, and their quavering voices were thin and
sharp and strained in the stuffy close-ceilinged room. The hymn, like
all the other Chapel hymns that Maggie had heard, had to do with "the
Blood of the Lamb," "the sacrifice of Blood," "the Blood that heals."
There was also a refrain:
And, when Thou comest, Lord, we pray That Thou wilt spare Thy
sword, Or on that grim and ghastly day Who will escape the Lord? WHO
will escape the Lord?
There were many verses to this hymn, and it had a long and lugubrious
tune, so that Maggie thought that it would never end, but as it
proceeded the words worked their effect on the congregation, and at the
last there was much emotion and several women were crying.
Then they all sat down again and the meeting developed a very
business-like side. There was a great deal of discussion as to dates,
places, appointments, and Maggie was amused to discover that in this
part of the proceedings Mrs. Smith had a great deal to say, and took a
very leading place.
The gathering became like any other assemblage of ladies for some
charitable or social purpose, and there were the usual disputes and
signs of temper and wounded pride; in all those matters Miss Avies was
a most admirable and unflinching chairman.
Then at last the real moment came. Miss Avies got up to speak. She
stood there, scornful, superior, and yet with some almost cynical
appeal in her eyes as though she said to them: "You poor fools! No one
knows better than I the folly of your being here, no one knows better
than I how far you will, all of you, be from realising any of your
dreams. Tricked, the lot of you!--and yet--and yet--go on believing,
expecting, hoping. Pray, pray that I may be wrong and you may be right."
What she actually said was as follows: "This will be our last meeting
before the end of the year. What will come to all of us before we all
meet again no one can say, but this we all know, that we have, most of
us, been living now for many years in expectation. We have been taught,
by the goodness of God, to believe that we must be ready at any moment
to obey His call, and that call may come, in the middle of our work, of
our prayers, of our love for others, of our pursuit of our own
ambitions, and that whenever it does come we must be ready to obey it.
We have been told by our great and good Master, who has been set over
us for our guidance by God Himself, that that call may now be very
near. Whatever form it may take we must accept it, give up all we have
and follow Him. That is understood by all of us. I will not say more
now. This is not the time for any more directions from me. We must
address ourselves, each one of us, to God Himself, and ask Him to
prepare us so that we may be as He would have us on the day of His
coming. I suggest now before we part that we share together in a few
minutes of private prayer." They all rose, and Maggie, before she knelt
down, caught a sudden glimpse of the pale girl whom she had noticed
earlier standing for a moment as though she were about to make some
desperate appeal to them all. Some words did indeed seem to come from
her lips, but the scraping of chairs drowned every other sound.
Nevertheless that figure was there, the hands stretched out, the very
soul struggling through the eyes for expression, the body tense,
sacred, eloquent, like the body of some young prophetess. Then all were
on their knees, and Maggie, too, her face in her hands, was praying. It
was, perhaps, the first time in her life that she had actively,
consciously, of her own volition prayed. The appeal formed itself as it
were without her own agency.
"God--if there is a God--give me Martin. I care for nothing else but
that. If You will give me Martin for my own always, ever, I will
believe in You. I will worship You and say prayers to You, and do
anything You tell me if You give me Martin. Oh God! I ought to have
him. He is mine. I can do more for him than any one else can--I can
make him happy and good. I know I can. God give him to me and I will be
your slave. God, give me Martin--God, give me Martin."
She rose, as it were, from the depths of the sea, from great darkness
and breathlessness and exhaustion. For a moment she could not see the
room nor any detail, but only one pale face after another, like a
pattern on a wall, hiding something from her.
She stood bewildered beside her aunts, not hearing the strains of the
last hymn nor the quaver of Aunt Anne's trembling voice beside her.
"God, give me Martin," was her last challenge in the strange pale
silence that floated around her. Then suddenly, as though she had
pushed open a door and gone through, she was back in the world again, a
flood of sound was about her ears, and in front of her the red face of
Mrs. Smith, her mouth wide open, like the mouth of an eager fish,
singing about "the Blood of the Lamb" with unctuous satisfaction ...