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.