The sun beat hotly upon the carpet. Caroline's rose-coloured silk shone and glowed, the tea was poured out, and there was chatter about the warm winter that it was and how time passed, and how fashions changed, and how you never saw a four-wheeler now, and what they were turning Kingsway into, and what they were turning the Law Courts out of, and even once, by Mr. Crashaw, a word about the Lyceum Theatre, where some one was playing the Merchant of Venice, which was a fine play and could do no one any harm.

"But I daresay," said Mr. Crashaw, "that this young lady here goes to nothing but plays every night of her life."

"Why, Mr. Crashaw," said Caroline, tossing her head. "If that's the kind of life you fancy I lead you're completely mistaken. Theatres indeed! Never do I put so much as the tip of my nose inside one. Father thinks they're wrong and so does Mother say she does, although I know she likes them, really; but any way that doesn't matter because I never have a moment to myself—sitting at home sewing, that's the way I spend my days, Mr. Crashaw."

It was the very last way she really spent them, as Maggie perfectly well knew. It is not to be supposed that Mr. Crashaw either was deceived. However, he gave a wicked wink with the eye that was least rheumatic and said something about "a beautiful young lady like Miss Smith wasted on sewing and darning," and Caroline smiled and said something about "one day perhaps"—and Aunt Anne looked remotely benevolent. What did she think of all this, Maggie wondered? What did she think of her great preacher, her prophet, wasting the few hours of life that remained to him over such a business? They had some secret understanding, perhaps, as though they said to one another, "We know, you and I, what are our real intentions beneath all this. We only do what we must."

Understanding or no, Mr. Crashaw sprang up with unexpected activity when Caroline departed and announced his intention of conducting her to her door. He made his adieus and then hobbled along after the rose-coloured silk as though this was his last chance of warming his hands at the flame of life.

When they were gone, Aunt Anne said:

"I am going back to bed, Maggie, dear. Martha will send me up some supper later. Elizabeth has gone to Lambeth to see a friend, so make yourself busy until seven, dear. If I want anything I'll ring."

When she was left alone in the darkening room she stood there thinking. Why should she not go out and find Martin? She did not care what any one thought. She would go to his house and ask for him. She had waited and waited ... She wanted him so, she wanted him so desperately!

Then Martha opened the door and announced him, yes, really announced him, saying: "It's young Mr. Warlock, Miss, and he says if your aunts isn't in you'll do."

"Ask him to come up, Martha," said Maggie, and then held herself there, rooted, where she stood so that she should not run to him and fling her arms round his neck. She felt at once with that quick perception that was hers, in spite of her ignorance of life, that this was no moment for love-making, and that he wanted something quite other from her.

He closed the door behind him, looked round the room, didn't come to her, but stayed where he was.

"I've been trying to see you all day," he said. "How long have we got alone do you think?" She never took her eyes from his face. "Until seven probably. Aunt Elizabeth's in Lambeth and Aunt Anne's in bed."

"That's luck." He drew a breath of relief, then moved over to the fireplace. "Maggie, I've come to say we mustn't see one another any more."

Some one, some vast figure shadowy behind her, moved suddenly forward and caught her in his arms and his embrace was deadly cold. She stood where she was, her hands at her side, looking steadfastly at him.

"Why?" she said. "Because—because—the fact is, I've been wrong altogether. Maggie, I'm not the sort of man for you to have anything to do with. You don't know much about life yet, do you? I'm about the first man you've ever met, aren't I? If you'd met another man before me, you'd have cared for him as much."

She said nothing and he seemed to be confused by her steady gaze, because he looked down and continued to speak as though to himself:

"I knew at once that there was danger in our meeting. With other girls they can look after themselves. One hasn't any responsibility to them. It's their own affair, but you believe every word a fellow says. And if we'd been friends it wouldn't have mattered, but from the very first we weren't that—we were something more."

"You were so different from any other girl. I've wanted to be good to you from the beginning, but now I see that if we go on I shall only be bad. It all comes in the end to my being bad—really bad—and I want you to know it."

"I don't know," said Maggie, "that I've thought very much whether you're good or bad. And it doesn't matter. I can look after myself."

"No, you can't," he said vehemently, making a step towards her and then suddenly stopping. "That's just it—you can't. I've been thinking all the time since the other evening when we were together, and I've seen that you believe every word I say and you trust me. I don't mean to tell lies—I don't know that I'm worse than most other men—but I'm not good enough for you to trust in all the same. I've been knocking about for years, and I suppose I've had most of my idealism knocked out of me. Anyway I don't believe in most people, and you still do. I'm not going to be the one to change you."

"Perhaps I know more about life than you think," said Maggie.

"No, how can you? You've never had a chance of seeing any of it. You'd get sick of me in no time. I'm moody and selfish and bad-tempered. I used to drink a bit too. And I can't be faithful to women. I might think I was going to be faithful to you and swear I would be—and then suddenly some one would come along. I thought for a bit I'd just go on with you and see what came of it. You're so unusual, you make me want to be straight with you; but I've seen it wouldn't be fair. I must just slip out of your path and you'll forget me, and then you'll meet a much better man than I and be happy. I'm queer—I have funny moods that last for days and days sometimes. I seem to do every one harm I come in touch with. There's my father now. I love him more than any one in the world, and yet I make him unhappy all the time. I'm a bad fellow to be with—"

He stopped suddenly, looked at her and laughed. "It isn't any good, Maggie ... You haven't any idea what a sweep I am. You'd hate me if you really knew."

She looked steadily back at him. "We haven't much time," she said, speaking with steady, calm conviction as though she had, for years, been expecting just such a conversation as this, and had thought out what she would say. "Aunt Elizabeth can come back earlier than she said. Perhaps I shall say something I oughtn't to. I don't care. The whole thing is that I love you. I suppose it's true that I don't know anything about men, but I'd be poor enough if my love for you just depended on your loving me back, and on your being good to me and all the rest of it. I've never had any one I could love until you came, but now that you have come it can't be anything that you can do that can alter it. If you were to go away I'd still love you, because it's the love in me that matters, not what I get for it. Perhaps you'll make me unhappy, but anyway one will be unhappy some of the time."

She went up to him and kissed him. "I know Caroline Smith or some one would be very shocked if they thought I'd said such things to you, but I can't help what they say."

He had a movement to catch her and hold her, but he kept himself off, moved away from her, turning his back to her.

"You don't understand ... you don't understand," he repeated. "You know nothing about men, Maggie, and you know nothing about me. I tell you I wouldn't be faithful to you, and I'd be drunk sometimes, and I'd have moods for days, when I'd just sulk and not speak to a soul. I think those moods some damned sort of religion when I'm in them, but what they really are is bad temper. You've got to know it, Maggie. I'd be rotten to you, however much I wanted not to be."

"That's my own affair," she answered. "I can look after myself. And for all the rest, I'm independent and I'll always be independent. I'll love you whether you're good to me or bad."

"Well, then," he suddenly wheeled round to her, "you'd better have it ... I'm married already."

She took that with a little startled cry. Her eyes searched his face in a puzzled fashion as though she were pursuing the truth. Then she said like a child who sees some toy broken before its eyes:

"Oh, Martin!"

"Yes. Nobody knows—not a soul. It was a mad thing—four years ago in Marseille I met a girl, a little dressmaker there. I went off my head and married her, and then a month later she ran off with a merchant chap, a Greek. I didn't care; we got on as badly as anything ... but there you are. No one knows. That's the whole thing, Maggie. I thought at first I wouldn't tell you. I was beginning to care for you too much, as a matter of fact, and then when your uncle asked me to dinner, I told myself I was a fool to go. Then when I saw how you trusted me, I thought I'd be a cad and let it continue, but somehow ... you've got an influence over me ... You've made me ashamed of things I wouldn't have hesitated about a year ago. And the funny thing is it isn't your looks. I can say things to you I couldn't to other women, and I'll tell you right away that there are lots of women attract me more. And yet I've never felt about any woman as I do about you, that I wanted to be good to her and care for her and love her. It's always whether they loved me that I've thought about ... Well, now I've told you, you see that I'd better go, hadn't I? You see ... you see."

She looked up at him.

"I've got to think. It makes a difference, of course. Can we meet after a week and talk again?"

"Much better if I don't see you any more. I'll go away altogether—abroad again."

"No—after a week—"

"Much better not."

"Yes. Come here after a week. And if we can't be alone I'll give you a letter somehow ... Please, Martin—you must."

"Maggie, just think—"

"No—after a week."

"Very well, then," he turned on her fiercely. "I've been honest. I've told you. I've done all I can. If I love you now it isn't my fault."

He left the room, not looking at her again. And she stood there, staring in front of her.



CHAPTER VI

THE PROPHET IN HIS OWN HOME

Martin walked into the street with a confused sense of triumph and defeat, that confusion that comes to all sensitive men at the moment when they are stepping, against their will, from one set of conditions into another. He had gone into that house, only half an hour ago, determined to leave Maggie for ever—for his good and hers. He came back into the street realising that he was now, perhaps for the first time, quite definitely involved in some relation with her—good, bad, safe, dangerous he did not know—but involved. He had intended to tell her nothing of his marriage—and he had told her. He had intended to treat their whole meeting as something light, passing, inconsiderable—he had instead treated it as something of the utmost gravity. He had intended, above all, to prove to himself that he could do what he wished—he had found that he had no power.

And so, as he stepped through the dim gold-dust of the evening light he was stirred with an immense sense of having stepped, definitely at last, across the threshold of new adventure and enterprise. All kinds of problems were awaiting solution—his relation to his father, his mother, his sister, his home, his past, his future, his sins and his weaknesses—and he had meant to solve them all, as he had often solved them in the past, by simply cutting adrift. But now, instead of that, he had decided to stay and face it all out, he had confessed at last that secret that he had hidden from all the world, and he had submitted to the will of a girl whom he scarcely knew and was not even sure that he liked.

He stopped at that for a moment and, standing in a little pool of purple light under the benignant friendliness of a golden moon new risen and solitary, he considered it. No, he did not know whether he liked her—it was interest rather that drew him, her strangeness, her strength and loneliness, young and solitary like the moon above him—and yet—also some feeling softer than interest so that he was suddenly touched as he thought of her and spoke out aloud: "I'll be good to her—whatever happens, by God I'll be good to her," so that a chauffeur near him turned and looked with hard scornful eyes, and a girl somewhere laughed. With all his conventional dislike of being in any way "odd" he walked hurriedly on, confused and wondering more than ever what it was that had happened to him. Always before he had known his own mind—now, in everything, he seemed to be pulled two ways. It was as though some spell had been thrown over him.

It was a lovely evening and he walked slowly, not wishing to enter his house too quickly. He realised that he had, during the last weeks, found nothing there but trouble. And if Maggie wished, in spite of what he had told her, to go on with him? And if his father, impatient at last, definitely asked him to stay at home altogether and insisted on an answer? And if his gradually increasing estrangement with his sister broke into open quarrel? And if, strangest of all, this religious business, that in such manifestations as the Chapel service of last night he hated with all his soul, held him after all?

He was in Garrick Street, outside the curiosity shop, his latchkey in his hand. He stopped and stared down the street as he had done once before, weeks ago. Was not the root of all his trouble simply this, that he was becoming against his will interested, drawn in? That there were things going on that his common sense rejected as nonsense, but that nevertheless were throwing out feelers like the twisting threats of an octopus, touching him now, only faintly, here for a second, there for a second, but fascinating, holding him so that he could not run away? Granted that Thurston was a charlatan, Miss Avies a humbug, his sister a fool, his father a dreamer, Crashaw a fanatic, did that mean that the power behind them all was sham? Was that force that he had felt when he was a child simply eager superstition? What was behind this street, this moon, these hurrying figures, his own daily life and thoughts? Was there really a vast conspiracy, a huge involving plot moving under the cardboard surface of the world, a plot that he had by an accident of birth spied upon and discovered?

Always, every day now, thoughts, suspicions, speculations were coming upon him, uninvited, undesired, from somewhere, from some one. He did not want them he wanted only the material physical life of the ordinary man. It must be because he was idling. He would get work at once, join with some one in the City, go abroad again ... but perhaps even then he would not escape. Thoughts like those of the last weeks did not depend for their urgency on place or time. And Maggie, she was mixed up in it all. He was aware, as he hesitated before opening the door, of the strangest feeling of belonging to her, not love, nor passion, not sentiment even. Only as though he had suddenly realised that with new perils he had received also new protection.

He went upstairs with a feeling that he was on the eve of events that would change his whole world.

As Martin climbed to the top of the black crooked staircase he was conscious, as though it had been shown him in a vision, that he was on the edge of some scene that might shape for him the whole course of his future life. He had been aware, once or twice before, of such a premonition, and, as with most men, half of him had rejected and half of him received the warning. To-day, however, there were reasons enough for thinking this no mere baseless superstition. With Maggie, with his father, with his sister, with his own life the decision had got to be taken, and it was with an abrupt determination that he would end, at all costs, the fears and uncertainties of these last weeks that he pushed back the hall-door and entered. He noticed at once strange garments hanging on the rack and a bright purple umbrella which belonged, as he knew, to a certain Mrs. Alweed, a friend of his mother's and a faithful servant of the Chapel, stiff and assertive in the umbrella-stand. There was a tea-party apparently. Well, he could not face that immediately. He would have to go in afterwards ... meanwhile ...

He turned down the passage, pushed back his father's door and entered. He paused abruptly in the doorway; there, standing in front of the window facing him, his pale chin in the air, his legs apart, supercilious and self-confident, stood Thurston. His father's desk was littered with papers, rustling and blowing a little in the breeze from the window that was never perfectly closed.

One candle, on the edge of the desk, its flame swaying in the air was the only light. Martin's first impulse was to turn abruptly back again and go up to his room. He could not speak to that fellow now, he could not! He half turned. Then something stopped him:

"Halloo!" he said. "Where's father?"

"Don't know," said Thurston, sucking the words through his teeth. "I've been wanting him too."

"Well, as he isn't here—" said Martin fiercely.

"No use me waiting? Quite so. All the same I'm going to wait."

The two figures were strangely contrasted, Martin red-brown with health, thick and square, Thurston pale with a spotted complexion, dim and watery eyes, legs and arms like sticks, his black clothes shabby and his boots dusty.

Nevertheless at that moment it was Thurston who had the power. He moved forward from the window. "Makes you fair sick to see me anywhere about the 'ouse, doesn't it? Oh, I know ... You can't kid me. I've seen from the first. You fair loathe the sight of me."

"That's nothing to do with it," said Martin uneasily. "Whether we like one another or not, there's no need to discuss it."

"Oh, isn't there?" said Thurston, coming a little closer so that he was standing now directly under the light of the candle. "Why not? Why shouldn't we? What's the 'arm? I believe in discussing things myself. I do really. I've said to myself a long way back. 'Well, now, the first time I get 'im alone I'll ask him why 'e does dislike me. I've always been civil to him,' I says to myself, 'and yet I can't please him—so I'll just ask him straight.'"

Martin shrugged his shoulders; he wanted to leave the room, but something in Thurston held him there.

"I suppose we aren't the sort to get on together. We haven't got enough in common," he said clumsily.

"I don't know about that," Thurston said in a friendly conversational tone. "I shouldn't wonder if we've got more in common than you'd fancy. Now I'll tell you right out, I like you. I've always liked you, and what's more I always shall. Whatever you do—"

"I don't care," broke in Martin angrily, "whether you like me or not."

"No, I know you don't," Thurston continued quietly. "And I know what you think of me, too. This is your idea of me, I reckon—that I'm a pushing, uneducated common bounder that's just using this religious business to shove himself along with; that's kidding all these poor old ladies that 'e believes in their bunkum, and is altogether about as low-down a fellow as you're likely to meet with. That's about the colour of it, isn't it?"

Martin said nothing. That was exactly "the colour of it."

"Yes, well," Thurston continued, a faint flush on his pale cheeks. "Of course I know that all right. And I'll tell you the idea that I might 'ave of you—only might 'ave, mind you. Why, that you're a stuck-up ignorant sort of feller, that's been rolling up and down all over Europe, gets a bit of money, comes over and bullies his father, thinks 'e knows better than every one about things 'e knows nothing about whatever—"

"Look here, Thurston," Martin interrupted, stepping forward. "I tell you I don't care a two-penny curse what a man like—"

"I only said might, mind you," said Thurston, smiling. "It's only a short-sighted fool would think that of you really. And I'm not a fool. No, really, I'm not. I've got quite another idea of you. My idea is that you're one of us whether you want to be or not, and that you always will be one of us. That's why I like you and will be a friend to you too."

"I tell you I don't want your damned friendship," Martin cried. "I don't want to have anything to do with you or your opinion or your plans or anything else."

"That's all right," said Thurston. "I quite understand. It's natural enough to feel as you do. But I'm afraid you'll 'ave to 'ave something to do with me. I'm not quite what you think me, and you're not quite what you think yourself. There's two of each of us, that's the truth of it. I may be a sham and a charlatan, one part of me, I don't know I'm sure. I certainly don't believe all your governor does. I don't believe all I say and I don't say all I think. But then 'oo does? You don't yourself. I'll even tell you straight out that when I just came into the business I laughed at the lot of 'em, your father and all. 'A silly lot o' softs they are,' I said to myself, 'to believe all that nonsense.' But now—I don't know. When you've been at this game a bit you scarcely know what you do believe, that's the truth of it. There may be something in it after all. Sometimes ... well, it 'ud surprise you if you'd seen all the things I have. Oh, I don't mean ghosts and spirits and all that kind of nonsense. No, but the kind of thing that 'appens to people you'd never expect. You're getting caught into it yourself; I've watched you all along. But that isn't the point. The point is that I'm not so bad as you think, nor so simple neither. And life isn't so simple, nor religion, nor love, nor anything as you think it. You're young yet, you know. Very young."

Martin turned back to the door.

"All very interesting, Thurston," he said. "You can think what you like, of course. All the same, the less we see of one another—"

"Well," said Thurston slowly, smiling. "That'll be a bit difficult—to avoid one another, I mean. You see, I'm going to marry your sister."

Martin laughed. Inside him something was saying: "Now, look out. This is all a trap. He doesn't mean what he says. He's trying to catch you."

"Going to marry Amy? Oh no, you're not."

Thurston did not appear to be interested in anything that Martin had to say. He continued as though he were pursuing his own thoughts. "Yes ... so it'll be difficult. I didn't think you'd like it when you heard. I said to Amy, 'E won't like it,' I said. She said you'd been too long away from the family to judge. And so you have, you know. Oh! Amy and I'll be right enough. She's a fine woman, your sister."

Martin burst out:

"Well, then, that settles it. It simply settles it. That finishes it."

"Finishes what?" asked Thurston, smiling in a friendly way.

"Never you mind. It's nothing to do with you. Has my father consented?"

"Yes ... said all 'e wanted was for Amy to be 'appy. And so she will be. I'll look after her. You'll come round to it in time."

"Father agrees ... My God! But it's impossible! Don't you see? Don't you see? I ..."

The sudden sense of his impotence called back his words. He felt nothing but rage and indignation against the whole set of them, against the house they were in, the very table with the papers blowing upon it and the candle shining ... Well, it made his own affair more simple—that was certain. He must be off—right away from them all. Stay in the house with that fellow for a brother-in-law? Stay when ...

"It's all right," said Thurston, moistening his pale dry lips with his tongue. "You'll see it in time. It's the best thing that could 'appen. And we've got more in common than you'd ever suppose. We 'ave, really. You're a religious man, really—can't escape your destiny, you know. There's religious and non-religious and it doesn't matter what your creed is, whether you're a Christian or a 'Ottentot, there it is. And if you're religious, you're religious. I may be the greatest humbug on the market, but I'm religious. It's like 'aving a 'are lip—you'll be bothered with it all your life."

But what more Thurston may have said Martin did not hear: he had left the room, banging the door behind him. On what was his indignation based? Injured pride. And was he really indignant? Was not something within him elated, because by this he had been offered his freedom? Thurston marry his sister? ... He could go his own way now. Even his father could not expect him to remain.

And he wanted Maggie—urgently, passionately. Standing for a moment there in the dark passage he wanted her. He was lonely, disregarded, despised.

They did not care for him here, no one cared for him anywhere—only Maggie who was clear-eyed and truthful and sure beyond any human being whom he had ever known. Then, with a very youthful sense of challenging this world that had so grossly insulted him by admitting Thurston into the heart of it, he joined the tea-party. There in the pink, close, sugar-smelling, soft atmosphere sat his mother, Amy, Mrs. Alweed and little Miss Pyncheon. His mother, with her lace cap and white hair and soft plump hands, was pouring tea through a strainer as though it were a rite. On her plate were three little frilly papers that had held sugary cakes, on her lips were fragments of sugar. Amy, in an ugly grey dress, sat severely straight upon a hard chair and was apparently listening to Miss Pyncheon, but her eyes, suspicious and restless, moved like the eyes of a newly captured animal. Mrs. Alweed, stout in pink with a large hat full of roses, smiled and smiled, waiting only for a moment when she could amble off once again into space safe on the old broad back of her family experiences, the only conversational steed to whose care she ever entrusted herself. She had a son Hector, a husband, Mr. Alweed, and a sister-in-law, Miss Alweed; she had the greatest confidence in the absorbed attention of the slightest of her acquaintances. "Hector, he's my boy, you know—although why I call him a boy I can't think—because he's twenty-two and a half—he's at Cambridge, Christs College—well, this morning I had a letter ..." she would begin. She began now upon Martin. His mind wandered. He looked about the little room and thought of Thurston. Why was he not more angry about it all? He had pretended to be indignant, he had hated Thurston as he stood there ... But had he? Half of him hated him. Then with a jerk Thurston's words came back to him: "There's two of each of us, that's the truth of it." "Two of each of us ..." Sitting there, listening to Mrs. Alweed's voice that flowed like a river behind him, he saw the two figures, saw them quite clearly and distinctly, flesh and blood, even clothes and voices and smile. And he knew that all his life these two figures had been growing, waiting for the moment when he would recognise them. One figure was the Martin whom he knew—brown, healthy, strong and sane; a figure wearing his clothes, his own clothes, the tweeds and the cloths, the brogues and the heavy boots, the soft untidy hats; the figure was hard, definite, resolute, quarrelling, arguing, loving, joking, swearing all in the sensible way. It was a figure that all the world had understood, that had been drunk often enough, lent other men money, been hard-up and extravagant and thoughtless. "A good chap." "A sensible fellow." "A pal." "No flies on Warlock." That was the kind of figure. And the life had been physical, had never asked questions, had never known morbidity, had lived on what it saw and could touch and could break ... And the other figure! That was, physically, less plainly seen. No, there it was, standing a little away from the other, standing away, contemptuously, despising it, deriding it. Fat, soft, white hanging cheeks, wearing anything to cover its body, but shining in some way through the clothes, so that it was body that you saw. A soft body, hands soft and the colour of the flesh pale and unhealthy. But it was the eyes that spoke: the mouth trembled and was weak, the chin was fat and feeble, but the eyes lived, lived—were eager, fighting, beseeching, longing, captive eyes!

And this figure, Martin knew, was a prey to every morbid desire, rushed to sensual excess and then crept back miserably to search for some spiritual flagellation. Above all, it was restless, as some one presses round a dark room searching for the lock of the door, restless and lonely, cowardly and selfish, but searching and sensitive and even faithful, faithful to something or to some one ... pursued also by something or some one. A figure to whom this world offered only opportunities for sin and failure and defeat, but a figure to whom this world was the merest shadow hiding, as a shade hides a lamp, the life within. Wretched enough with its bad health, its growing corpulence, its weak mouth, its furtive desires, but despising, nevertheless, the strong, healthy figure beside it. Thurston was right. Men are not born to be free, but to fight, to the very death, for the imprisonment and destruction of all that is easiest and most physically active and most pleasant to the sight and touch ...

"And so Hector really hopes that he'll be able to get down to us for Christmas, although he's been asked to go on this reading party. Of course, it's simply a question as to whether he works better at home or with his friends. If he were a weak character, I think Mr. Alweed would insist in his coming home, but Hector really cares for his work more than anything. He's never been very good at games; his short sight prevents him, poor boy, and as he very justly remarked, when he was home last holidays, 'I don't see, mother, how I am going to do my duty as a solicitor (that's what he hopes to be) if I don't work now. Many men regard Cambridge as a time for play. Not so I.'"

"But I hope that if Hector comes home this Christmas he'll attend the Chapel services. The influence your father might have on such a boy as Hector, Mr. Warlock, a boy, sensitive and thoughtful ... I was saying, Miss Pyncheon, that Hector—"

Miss Pyncheon was the soul of good-nature—but she was much more than that. She was by far the most sensible, genial, and worldly of the Inside Saints; it was, in fact, astonishing that she should be an Inside Saint at all.

Of them all she impressed Martin the most, because there was nothing of the crank about her. She went to theatres, to the seaside in the summer, took in The Queen, and was a subscriber to Boots' Circulating Library. She dressed quietly and in excellent taste—in grey or black and white. She had jolly brown eyes and a dimple in the middle of her chin. She was ready to discuss any question with any one, was marvellously broad-minded and tolerant, and although she was both poor and generous, always succeeded in making her little flat in Soho Square pretty and attractive.

Her chief fault, perhaps, was that she cared for no one especially—she had neither lovers nor parents nor sisters nor brothers, and to all her friends she behaved with the same kind geniality, welcoming one as another. She was thus aloof from them all and relied upon no one. The centre of her life was, of course, her religion, but of this she never spoke, although strangely enough no one doubted the intensity of her belief and the reality of her devotion.

She was a determined follower of Mr. Warlock; what he said she believed, but here, too, there seemed to be no personal attachment. She did not allow criticism of him in her own presence, but, on the other hand, she never spoke as though it would distress her very greatly to lose him. He was a sign, a symbol ... If one symbol went another could be found.

To Martin she was the one out-standing proof of the reality of the Chapel. All the others—his sister, Miss Avies, Thurston, Crashaw, the Miss Cardinals, yes, and his father too, were, in one way or another, eccentric, abnormal, but Miss Pyncheon was the sane every-day world, the worldly world, the world of drinks and dinners, and banks and tobacconists, and yet she believed as profoundly as any of them. What did she believe? She was an Inside Saint, therefore she must have accepted this whole story of the Second Coming and the rest of it. Of course women would believe anything ... Nevertheless ...

He scarcely listened to their chatter. He was forcing himself not to look at his sister, and yet Thurston's news seemed so extraordinary to him that his eye kept stealing round to her to see whether she were still the same. Could she have accepted him, that bounder and cad and charlatan? He felt a sudden cold chill of isolation as though in this world none of the ordinary laws were followed. "By God, I am a stranger here," he thought. It was not until after dinner that night that he was alone with his father. He had resolved on many fine things in the interval. He was going to "have it out with him," "to put his foot down," "to tell him that such a thing as Thurston's marriage to his sister was perfectly impossible." And then, for the thousandth time since his return to England he felt strangely weak and irresolute. He did wish to be "firm" with his father, but it would have been so much easier to be firm had he not been so fond of him. "Soft, sentimental weakness," he called it to himself, but he knew that it was something deeper than that, something that he would never be able to deny.

He went into his father's study that night with a strange dismal foreboding as though he were being drawn along upon some path that he did not want to follow. What was his father mixed up with all this business for? Why were such men as Thurston in existence? Why couldn't life be simple and straightforward with people like his father and himself and that girl Maggie alone somewhere with nothing to interfere? Life was never just as you wanted it, always a little askew, a little twisted, cynically cocking its eye at you before it vanished round the corner? He didn't seem to be able to manage it. Anyway, he wasn't going to have that fellow Thurston marrying his sister.

He found his father lying back in his arm-chair fast asleep, looking like a dead man, his long thin face pale with fatigue, his eyelids a dull grey, his mouth tightly closed as though in a grim determination to pursue some battle. And at the sight of him thus worn out and beaten Martin's affection flooded his heart. He stood opposite his father looking at him and loving him more deeply than he had ever done before.

"I will take him away from all this," was his thought, "these Thurstons and all—out of all this ... We'll go off abroad somewhere. And I'll make him fat and happy."

Then his father suddenly woke up, with a start and a cry: "Where am I?" ... Then he suddenly saw Martin. "Martin," he said, smiling.

Martin smiled back and then began at once: "Father, this isn't true about Thurston, is it?"

He saw, as he had often done before, that his father had to call himself up from some world of vision before he could realise even his surroundings. Martin he recognised intuitively with the recognition of the spirit, but he seemed to take in the details of the room slowly, one by one, as though blinded by the light.

"Ah—I've been dreaming," he said, still smiling at Martin helplessly and almost timidly. "I'm so tired these days—suddenly—I usen't to be ..." He put his hand to his forehead, then laid it on Martin's knee, and the strength and warmth of that seemed suddenly to fill him with vigour.

"You're never tired, are you?" he asked as a child might ask an elder.

"Very seldom," answered Martin, "I say, father, what is all this about Thurston?"

"Thurston ... Why, what's he been doing?"

"He says he's engaged to Amy." The disgust of the idea made Martin's words, against his will, sharp and angry.

"Does he? ... Yes, I remember. He spoke to me about it."

"Of course it's simply his infernal cheek ..."

Mr. Warlock sighed. "I don't know, I'm sure. Amy seemed to wish it."

Martin felt then more strongly than before the Something that drove him. It said to him: "Now, then ... here's a thing for you to make a row about—a big row. And then you can go off with Maggie." But, on the other hand, there was Something that said: "Don't hurt him. Don't hurt him. You may regret it all your life if ..."

If what? He didn't know. He was always threatened with regretting things all his life. The blow was always going to fall. And that pleasant very British phrase came back to him, "He would put his foot down"—however—he was very angry—very angry.

He burst out: "Oh, but that's absurd, father. Impossible—utterly. Thurston in the family? Why, you must see yourself how monstrous it would be. Amy's got some silly, sentimental whim and she's got to be told that it won't do. If you ask me, I don't think Amy's improved much since I was away. But that's not the question. The idea of Thurston's disgusting. You can't seriously consider it for a minute..."

"Why is Thurston disgusting, my boy?"

Martin hated to be called "my boy"—it made him feel so young and dependent.

"You've only got to look at him!" Martin jumped up, disregarding his father's hand, and began to stamp about the room. "He's a cad—he's not your friend, father. He isn't, really. He'd like to out you from the whole thing if he could. He thinks you're old-fashioned and behind the times, and all he thinks about is bringing in subscriptions and collecting new converts. He's like one of those men who beat drums outside tents in a fair ... He's a sickening man! He doesn't believe in his religion or anything else. I should think he's crooked about money, and immoral probably too. You're much too innocent, father. You're so good and trustful yourself that you don't know how these fellows are doing you in. There's a regular plot against you and they'd be most awfully pleased if you were to retire. They're not genuine like you. They simply use the Chapel for self-advertisement and making money. Of course there are some genuine ones like the Miss Cardinals, but Thurston's an absolute swindler ..."

He stopped short at that. He had said more than he had intended and he was frightened suddenly. He swung round on his heel and looked at his father.

"Come here, Martin." He came across the room. "Closer. Now, tell me. We're good friends, aren't we?"

"Of course, father."

He put his hand on his son's shoulder. "Do you know that I love you more than anything in the whole world? More, I'm sometimes terribly afraid, than God Himself. I can't help myself. I love you, Martin, so that it's like hunger or thirst ... It's the only earthly passion that I've ever had. And I'll tell you another thing. It's the one terror of my earthly life that you'll leave me. Now that I've got you back I'm afraid every time you go out of the house that you'll run away, round the corner, and never come back again. I love you and I'm not going to let you go again.—Not until—until—the Time has come ... What does it matter to you and me what Thurston and Amy do? God will come and He will find us both together—you and I—and He will take us up and keep us together and we shall never be separated any more ... I love your strength, Martin, your happiness, your youth—all the things I've never had. And you're not going to leave me, not though Amy married a hundred Thurstons ..."

Mr. Warlock's grip on his son's shoulder was iron.

Martin bent down and sat on the arm of his dusty leather chair to bring himself on to the same level. He put his arm round his father and drew him close to him. Maggie, Life, Money, Adventure—everything seemed to draw away from him and he saw himself, a little boy, pattering on bare feet down the aisle towards the font—just as though a spell had been cast over him.

They sat close together in silence. Then slowly the thought of Thurston came back again. Martin drew away a little.

"All the same, father," he said, "Thurston mustn't marry Amy."

"They're only engaged. There's no question of marriage yet."

"Then they are engaged?" Martin drew right away, standing up again.

"Oh, yes, they're engaged."

"Then I'm not going to stand it. I tell you I won't stay here if Thurston marries Amy."

Mr. Warlock sighed. "Well then, let's leave it, my boy. I daresay they'll never marry."

"No. I won't have it. It's too serious to leave."

His father's voice was sharper suddenly.

"Well, we won't talk about it just now, Martin, if you don't mind."

"But I must. You can't leave a thing like that. Thurston will simply own the place ..."

"I tell you, Martin, to leave it alone." They were both angry now.

"And I tell you, father, that if you let Thurston marry Amy I leave the house and never come back again."

"Isn't that rather selfish of you? You've been away all these years. You've left us to ourselves. You come back suddenly without seeing how we live or caring and then you dictate to us what we're to do. How can you expect us to listen?"

"And how can you expect me to stay?" Martin broke into a torrent of words: "I'm miserable here and you know that I am. Mother and Amy hate me and you're always wrapped up in your religion. What kind of a place is it for a fellow? I came back meaning that you and I should be the best pals father and son have ever been, but you wouldn't come out with me—you only wanted to drag me in. You tell me always to wait for something. To wait for what? I don't know. And nobody here does seem to know. And I can't wait for ever. I've got to lead my own life and if you won't come with me I must go off by myself—"

He was following his own ideas now—not looking at his father at all. "I've discovered since I've been home that I'm not the sort of fellow to settle down. I suppose I shall go on wandering about all my days. I'm not proud of myself, you know, father. I don't seem to be much good to any one, but the trouble is I don't want to be much better. I feel as though it wouldn't be much good if I did try. I can't give up my own life—for nobody—not even for you—and however rotten my own life is I'd rather lead it than some one else's."

He stopped and then went on quietly, as though he were arguing something out with himself: "The strange thing is that I do feel this place has got a kind of a hold on me. When you remind me of what I was like as a kid I go right back and feel helpless as though you could do anything with me you like. All the same I don't believe in this business, father—all this Second Coming and the rest of it. We're in the Twentieth Century now, you know, and everybody knows that that kind of thing is simply impossible. Only an old maid or two ... Why, I don't believe you believe in it really, father. That's why you're so keen on making me believe. But I don't; it's no use. You can't make me. I don't believe there's any God at all. If there were a God he'd let a fellow have more free will ..."

He was interrupted by an extraordinary cry. He turned to see his father standing, one hand pressed back on the chair, his face white, his eyes black and empty, like sightless eyes.

"Martin! That's blasphemy! ... Take care! Take care! ... Oh, my son, my son! ..."

Then he suddenly collapsed backwards, crouching on to the chair as though he were trying to flee from some danger. Martin sprang towards him. He caught him round the body, holding him to him—something was leaping like a furious animal inside his father's breast.

"What is it?" he cried, desperately frightened.

"It's my heart," Warlock answered in a voice very soft and distant. "Bad ... Excitement ... Ring that bell ... Amy ..."

A moment later Amy entered. She came quickly into the room, she said nothing—only gave Martin one look.

She gave her father something from a little bottle, kneeling in front of him.

At last she turned to her brother. "You'd better go," she said. "You can do nothing here."

Miserable, repentant, feeling as though he had no place in the world and yet eager too to defend himself, he left the room.



CHAPTER VII

THE OUTSIDE WORLD

Maggie had a week.

She did not need it. From the first half-hour after Martin's leaving her her mind was made up. This question of marriage did not, on further reflection, very greatly disturb her. She had known, in her time, a number of married people and they had been invariably unhappy and quarrelsome. The point seemed to be that you should be, in some way, near the person whom you loved, and she had only loved one person in all her life, and intended never to love another. Even this question of love was not nearly so tangled for her as it would be for any more civilised person. She knew very little about marriage and only in the most sordid fashion about sexual relations which were definitely connected in her mind with drunken peasants and her father's cook. They had nothing at all to do with Martin.

The opinion of the world was an unknown factor in her vision, she only knew of the opinion of her aunts and Miss Warlock and with these she was already in rebellion.

She would have been in great trouble had she supposed that this woman still loved Martin and needed him, but that, from what Martin had said, was obviously not so. No, it was all quite clear. They would escape together, out of this tangle of unnatural mysteries and warnings, and live happily for ever after in the country.

As to Martin's self-portrait, that did not greatly distress her. She had never supposed that he or any one else was "good." She had never known a "good" person. Nor did it occur to her, in her pristine state of savagery, that you loved any one the less for their drawbacks. She would rather be with Martin at his worst than with any one else at their best—that was all.

Half-an-hour was enough time to settle the whole affair. She then waited patiently until the end of the week. She did not quite know how she would arrange a meeting, but that would, she expected, arrange itself.

Two events occurred that filled her mind and made the week pass quickly. One was that she received an answer to her adventurous letter, the other was a remarkable conversation with Miss Caroline Smith. The answer to her letter was lying on her plate when she came down to breakfast, and Aunt Elizabeth was watching it with an excited stare.

It read as follows:

14 BRYANSTON SQUARE.

Dear Miss CARDINAL,

Of course I remember you perfectly. I wondered whether you would write to me one day. I am married now and live most of the year in London. Would you come and see me at Bryanston Square? I am nearly always at home at tea-time. If you are free would you perhaps come next Friday?

It will be so nice to see you again.

Yours sincerely,

KATHERINE MARK. "You've got a letter, dear. Your aunt isn't quite so well this morning, I'm afraid. Scrambled eggs."

"Yes," she looked her aunt in the face without any confusion. How strangely her decision about Martin had altered her relationship now to every one! What did it matter whether any one were angry? "I ought to have told you, Aunt Elizabeth. I wrote about a fortnight ago to a lady who came once to see us at home. She was a Miss Trenchard then. She said that if ever I wanted any help I was to write to her. So I have written—to ask her whether she can find me any work to do, and she has asked me to go and see her."

"Work," said Aunt Elizabeth. "But you won't go away while your aunt's so ill."

Wouldn't she? Maggie didn't know so much about that.

"I want to be independent," said Maggie, trying to fix Aunt Elizabeth's eyes. "It isn't fair that I should be a burden to you."

"You're no burden, dear." Aunt Elizabeth looked uneasily round the room. "Your aunt depends on you."

"Depends on me for what?"

"For everything."

"Then she oughtn't to, Aunt Elizabeth, I've said it again and again. I'm not fit for any one to depend on. I'm forgetful and careless and untidy. You know I am. And I'm different from every one here. I'm very grateful to Aunt Anne, but I'm not good enough for her to depend on."

Aunt Elizabeth blinked nervously.

"She's got very little. You mustn't take away all she has."

"I'm not all she has," answered Maggie, knowing that she was becoming excited and cross. "I don't belong to any one except myself." "And Martin" her soul whispered. Then she added, suddenly moved by remorse as she looked at Aunt Elizabeth's meek and trembling face, "You're so good to me, both of you, and I'm so bad. I'll give you anything but my freedom."

"You talk so strangely, dear," said Aunt Elizabeth. "But there are so many things I don't understand."

Maggie took the letter up to her bedroom and there read it a number of times. It all seemed wonderful to her, the stamped blue address, the rich white square notepaper, and above all the beautiful handwriting. She thought of her own childish scrawl and blushed, she even sat down, there and then, at her dressing-table and, with a pencil, began to imitate some of the letters.

On Friday! To-day was Tuesday. Bryanston Square. Wherever was Bryanston Square, and how would she find it? She determined to ask Caroline Smith.

She had not long to wait for her opportunity. On Wednesday evening about half-past five Miss Smith poked her head into the Cardinal drawing-room to discover Maggie sitting with her hands on her lap looking down on to the street.

"Are your aunts anywhere?" asked Caroline.

"No," said Maggie. "Aunt Anne's in bed and Aunt Elizabeth's at Miss Pyncheon's."

"That's right," said Caroline, "because I haven't seen you, darling, for ages."

"The day before yesterday," said Maggie.

"You're a literal pet," said Caroline kissing her. "I always exaggerate, of course, and it's so sweet of you to tell me about it." She rushed off to the fire and spread out her blue skirt and dangled her feet.

"Isn't it cold and dark? You funny dear, not to have the blinds down and to sit staring into the beastly street like that ... I believe you're in love."

Maggie came to herself with a start, got up and slowly went over to the fire.

"Caroline, where's Bryanston Square?"

"Oh, you pet, don't you know where Bryanston Square is?" cried Caroline suddenly fixing her bright eyes upon Maggie with burning curiosity.

"If I did I wouldn't ask," said Maggie.

"Quite right—neither you would. Well, it's near Marble Arch."

"But I don't know where the Marble Arch is."

"Lord!" cried Caroline. "And she's been in London for months. You really are a pet. Well, what you'd better do is to get into the first taxi you see and just say 'Bryanston Square.'"

How stupid of her! She might have thought of that for herself.

"Is there a park near Bryanston Square?" she asked.

"Yes. Of course—Hyde Park."

"And is it open at six?"

"Of course. You can't shut Hyde Park."

"Oh!"

Maggie pursued her thoughts. Caroline watched her with intense curiosity.

"What do you want with a Park, you darling?" she asked at last.

"Oh, nothing," said Maggie, slowly. Then she went on, laughing: "I've been asked out to tea—for the first time in my life. And I'm terribly frightened."

"How exciting!" said Caroline clapping her hands. "Who's it with?"

"It's a Mrs. Mark. She was a Miss Trenchard. She used to live in Glebeshire. She's going to find me some work to do."

"Work!" cried Caroline. "Aren't you going to stay with your aunts then?"

"I want to be independent," said Maggie slowly.

"Well!" said Caroline, amazed.

Could Maggie have seen just then into Miss Smith's mind and could she only have realised that, with Miss Smith, every action and intention in the human heart pivoted upon love-affairs and love-affairs only, she might have been warned and have saved much later trouble. She was intent on her own plans and was thinking of Caroline only as a possible agent.

"Caroline," she asked, "would you take a note for me to some one?"

"Of course," said Caroline. "Who is it?"

"Martin Warlock," said Maggie.

At the name she suddenly blushed crimson. She knew that Caroline was looking at her with eager curiosity. She suspected then that she had done something foolish and would have given anything to recall her words, but to recall them now seemed only to make it the more suspicious.

"It's only something his sister wanted to know," she said casually. "I thought you'd be seeing him soon. I hardly ever do."

"Yes, I'm going up there to-night," said Caroline staring at Maggie. "Well, I'll give it you before you go," then she went on as casually as she could. "What's been happening lately?"

"Of course you know all about the excitement," said Caroline sitting back in the faded arm-chair with her blue dress spread all about her like a cloud.

"What excitement?" said Maggie, pulling herself up, with a desperate struggle, from her own private adventures.

"What! you don't know?" Caroline exclaimed in an awed whisper.

"Know what?" Maggie asked, rather crossly, repenting more and more of asking Caroline to carry her note.

"Why, where DO you live? ... All about Mr. Warlock and his visions!"

"I've heard nothing at all," said Maggie.

This was unexpected joy to Caroline, who had never imagined that there would be any one so near the Inner Saints as Maggie who yet knew nothing about these recent events.

"Do you really know nothing about it?"

"Nothing," said Maggie.

"Aren't you wonderful?" said Caroline. "What happened was this. About three weeks ago Mr. Warlock had a vision in the middle of the night. He saw God at about three in the morning."

"How did he see God?" asked Maggie, awed in spite of herself.

Caroline's voice dropped to a mysterious whisper. "He just woke up and there God was at the end of the bed. Of course he's not spoken to me about it, but apparently there was a blaze of light and Something in the middle. And then a voice spoke and told Mr. Warlock that on the last night of this year everything would be fulfilled."

"What did He mean?" asked Maggie.

"Different people think He meant different things," said Caroline. "Of course there's most fearful excitement about it. Mr. Warlock's had two since."

"Two what?" asked Maggie.

"Two visions. Just like the first. The blazing light and the voice and telling him that the last night of the year's to be the time." Caroline then began to be carried away by her excitement. She talked faster and faster. "Oh! You don't know what a state every one's in! It's causing all sorts of divisions. First there are all his own real believers. Miss Pyncheon, your aunts, and the others. My father's one. They all believe every word he says. They're all quite certain that the last day of this year is to be the time of the Second Coming. They won't any of them, look a minute further than that. Father doesn't care a bit now what mother does with the money because, he says, we shan't want any next year. Mother isn't so sure so she's taking as much care of it as ever, and of course it's nice for her now to have it all in her own hands. They're all of them doing everything to make themselves ready. It doesn't matter how aggravating you are, father never loses his temper now. He's so sweet that it's maddening. Haven't you noticed how good your aunts are?"

"They're always the same," said Maggie.

"Well. I expect they're different really. Then there's the middle-class like Mr. Thurston and Miss Avies who pretend to believe all that Mr. Warlock says, but of course, they don't believe a word of it, and they hope that this will prove his ruin. They know there won't be any Second Coming on New Year's Eve, and then they think he will be finished and they'll be able to get rid of him. So they're encouraging him to believe in all this, and then when the moment comes they'll turn on him!"

"Beasts!" said Maggie suddenly.

"Well, I daresay you're right," said Caroline. "Only it does make me laugh, all of it. Thurston and Miss Avies have all their plans made, only now they're quarrelling because Thurston wants to marry Amy Warlock and Miss Avies meant him to marry her!"

"Is Mr. Thurston going to marry Miss Warlock?" cried Maggie.

"So they say," said Caroline again watching Maggie curiously. "Well, anyway, Miss Avies is the strongest of the lot really. I'd back her against anybody. I'm terrified of her myself, I tell you frankly. She'd wring any one's neck for twopence. Oh yes, she would! ... Then there are the third lot who simply don't believe in Mr. Warlock's visions at all and just laugh at him. People like Miss Smythe and Mrs. Bellaston. A lot of them are leaving the chapel. Mr. Warlock won't listen to anybody. He's getting stranger and stranger, and his heart's so bad they say he might die any day if he had a shock. Then he's always quarrelling with Martin."

Caroline suddenly stopped. She looked at Maggie.

"Martin's a terrible trial to his father," she said.

But Maggie was secure now.

"Is he?" she asked indifferently. Then she added slowly, "What do you believe, Caroline?"

"What do I believe?"

"Yes, about Mr. Warlock's visions."

"Oh, of course, it's only because he's ill and prays for hours without getting off his knees, and won't eat enough, that he sees things. And yet I don't know. There may be something in it. If I were on my knees for weeks I'd never see anything. But I'll be terribly sorry for Mr. Warlock if the time comes and nothing happens. He'll just have to go."

They sat a little longer together and then Caroline said: "Well, darling, I must be off. Where's that note?" She hesitated, looking at Maggie with a wicked gleam in her pale blue eyes. "You know, Maggie, I can't make up my mind. I've had an offer of marriage."

"I'm so glad, Caroline," said Maggie.

"Yes, but I don't know what to do. It's a man—Mr. Purdie. His father's ever so rich and they've got a big place down at Skeaton."

"Where's that?" asked Maggie.

"Oh, don't you know? Skeaton-on-Sea. It's a seaside resort. I've known William for a long time. His father knows father. He came to tea last week, and proposed. He's rather nice although he's so silent."

"Why don't you marry him then?" asked Maggie.

"Well, I know Martin Warlock's going to ask me. It's been getting closer and closer. I expect he will this week. Of course, he isn't so safe as William, but he's much more exciting. And he's got quite a lot of money of his own."

Strange, the sure, confident, happy security that Maggie felt in her heart at this announcement.

"I should wait for Martin Warlock," she said. "He'd be rather fun to marry."

"Do you think so?" answered Caroline. "Do you know, I believe I will. You're always right, you darling ... Only suppose I should miss them both. William won't wait for ever! Got that note, dear?"

Maggie was defiant. She would just show the creature that she wasn't afraid of her. She'd give her the note and she might imagine what she pleased.

She got a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote hurriedly.

The week is up on Friday. Will you meet me that evening at a quarter past six under the Marble Arch? MAGGIE.

The boldness, the excitement of this inflamed her. It was so like her to challenge any action once she was in it by taking it to its furthest limit. She put it in an envelope and wrote Martin's name with a flourish.

"There!" she said, giving it to Caroline.

"Thank you," said Caroline, and with a number of rather wet and elaborate kisses (Maggie hated kissing) departed.

But her afternoon was not yet over; hardly had Caroline left when the door was opened and Miss Avies was shown in. Maggie started up with dismay and began to stammer excuses. Miss Avies brushed them aside.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "You'll do as well—even, it may be, better."

A strange woman Miss Avies! Maggie had, of course, seen her at Chapel, but this was the first time that they had been alone together. Miss Avies was like a thin rod of black metal, erect and quivering and waiting to strike. Her long sallow face was stiff, not with outraged virtue, or elaborate pride, or burning scorn, but simply with the accumulated concentration of fiery determination. She was the very symbol of self-centred energy, inhuman, cold, relentless. Her hair was jet black and gleamed like steel, and she had thick black eyebrows like ink-marks against her forehead of parchment. Her eyes were dead, like glass eyes, and she had some false teeth that sometimes clicked in her mouth. She wore a black dress with no ornament and thin black gloves.

She did not seem, however, to Maggie unkindly, as she stood there, looking about the room rather short-sightedly. (She would not wear glasses. Could it have been vanity?) She was not hostile, nor scornful, nor even patronising ... but had Maggie been struck there, dead at her feet she would not have moved a step to help her. Her voice was ugly, with a crack in it, as though it needed oil. Maggie, as she looked at her, did not need to be told that she did not believe in Mr. Warlock's mysticism. She came across and shook Maggie's hand. Her touch was cold and stiff and a little damp like that of a wet stone.

"Sorry your Aunt's out," she said, "but I can talk to you for a while." She looked at Maggie for a moment. Then she said:

"Why don't you clear out of all this?"

The voice was so abrupt and the words so unexpected that Maggie jumped.

"Why don't I?" she repeated.

"Yes, you," said Miss Avies. "You've no place here in all this business. You don't believe in it, do you?"

"No," said Maggie.

"And you don't want to use it for something you do believe in?"

"No," said Maggie. "Well then, clear out."

Maggie, colouring a little, said:

"My aunts have been very good to me. I oughtn't to leave them."

"Fiddlesticks," said Miss Avies. "Your life's your own, not your aunts'."

She sat down and stayed bolt upright and motionless near the fire; she flung a thin dark shadow like a stain on the wall. There was a long pause between them. After that abrupt opening there seemed to be nothing to say. Maggie's thoughts also were elsewhere. She was wishing now passionately that she had not given that note to Caroline.

Suddenly Miss Avies said, "What do you do with yourself all day?"

Maggie laughed. "Try and make myself less careless, Miss Avies."

Miss Avies replied, "You'll never make yourself less careless. We are as we are."

"But don't you think," said Maggie, "that one can cure one's faults?"

"One gets rid of one only to make room for another ... But that doesn't matter. The point is that one should have an ambition. What's your ambition, child?"

Maggie didn't answer. Her ambition was Martin, but she couldn't tell Miss Avies so.

At last, after a long pause, as Miss Avies still seemed to be waiting, she answered:

"I suppose that I want to earn my living—to be independent."

"Well, leave this place then," said Miss Avies. "There's no independence here." Then added, as though to herself. "They think they're looking for the face of God ... It's only for themselves and their vanity they're looking."

Maggie said, to break another of the long pauses that seemed to be always forming between them:

"I think every one ought to earn their own living, don't you?"

Miss Avies shook her head. "You're very young—terribly young. I've got no advice to give you except to lead a healthy life somewhere away from these surroundings. We're an unnatural lot here and you're a healthy young creature ... Have you got a lover?"

Maggie smiled. "I've got a friend," she said. Miss Avies sighed. "That's more than I've got," she said.

"Not that I've time for one," she added. She got up. "I won't wait for your aunt," she said, "I've left a note downstairs ... You clear out as soon as you can, that's my advice to you."

She said good-bye, looking into Maggie's clear eyes. She was suddenly less inhuman, the touch of her hand was warmer.

"Don't you cheat yourself into believing in the Deity," she said, and was gone.

When Friday arrived Maggie had not seen Caroline again, and she could not tell whether the note had been safely delivered or no. She was not sure what she had better do. Caroline might hare done anything with the note, torn it up, burnt it, lost it, forgotten it altogether. Well, that was a risk that Maggie must take. If he did not appear she would wait a little while and then come away. They must soon meet in any case. They had all their lives before them.

Aunt Anne was up again—very, very pale now and so thin that the light seemed to shine through her making her more of a stained window saint than ever.

Maggie told her about the visit, Aunt Anne looked at her curiously. She seemed so weak and frail that Maggie suddenly felt warm maternal love. Rather shyly she put her hand upon her aunt's: "I won't go away until you're better—"

Aunt Anne nodded her head.

"I know you won't, dear," she said. "Don't be out late to-day. We shall be anxious about you."

Maggie had made a promise and was terrified when she thought of it. Suppose her aunt did not get better for years and years?

People often had long lingering illnesses with no apparent change in their condition. To Maggie a promise was an utterly final thing. She could not dream that one ever broke one's word. She trembled now when she thought of what she had done. She had been entrapped after all and by her own free will.

In her little room as she was putting on her hat she suddenly prayed to a God, of whom she knew nothing, that her aunt might get better soon.

She started out on her great adventure with a strange self-assurance as though loving Martin had given her the wisdom of all the ages.

Turning down the street towards the Strand she found almost at once a taxi-cab drawn up, as though it had been waiting there especially for her like an eloping coach in a romantic tale. A fat red-faced fellow with a purple nose, a cloth cap and a familiar vague eye, as though he always saw further than he intended, waited patiently for her to speak.

Boldly, as though she had done such things all her life, she said, "Fourteen Bryanston Square." Then she slipped in and was hidden from the gay world. She sat there, her hands on her lap staring at the three crimson rolls in the neck of her driver. She was thinking of nothing, nothing at all. Did she struggle to think? Only words would come, "Martin," or "Bryanston Square," or "cab," again and again, words that did not mean anything but physical sensations. "Martin" hot fire at the throat, "Bryanston Square" an iron rod down the spine, and "cab" dust and ashes in the eyes.

She tried to look at herself in the little mirror opposite her, but she could only catch the corner of her cheek and half her hat. But she minded less about her appearance now. If Martin could love her it did not matter what others thought—nevertheless she pulled her hat about a little and patted her dress. The cab stopped and she felt desperately lonely. Did any one care about her anywhere? No, no one. She could have cried with pity at the thought of her own loneliness.

"One and sixpence, Miss," said the cabman in so husky a voice.

She gave it to him.

"What's this?" he asked, looking at it.

"One and sixpence," she answered timidly, wondering at his sarcastic eye.

"Oh well, o' course," he said, looking her all over.

She knew instinctively that he demanded more. She found another sixpence. "Is that enough?" she asked.

He seemed ashamed.

"If I 'adn't a wife sick—" he began.

She ran up the high stone steps and rang a bell. The episode with the driver had disturbed her terribly. It had shown in what a foreign world she was. All her self-confidence was gone. She had to take a pull at herself and say: "Why, Maggie, you might be ringing the dentist's bell at this moment."

That helped her, and then the thought of Martin. She saw his boyish smile and felt the warm touch of his rough hand. When the maid was there instead of the green door, she almost said: "Is Martin in?"

But she behaved very well.

"Mrs. Mark?" she said in precisely the voice required.

The maid smiled and stood aside. And then into what a world she entered! A world of comfort and reassurance, of homeliness and kindliness, without parrots and fierce-eyed cats and swaying pictures of armoured men—a world of urbanity and light and space. There was a high white staircase with brown etchings in dark frames on the white walls. There was a thick soft carpet and a friendly fat grandfather clock. Many doors but none of them mysterious, all ready to be opened.

She climbed the staircase and was shown into a room high and gaily coloured and full of flowers. She saw the deep curtains, blue silk shot with purple, the chairs of blue silk and a bowl of soft amber light hanging from the ceiling. A mass of gold-red chrysanthemums flamed against the curtains. Several people were gathered round a tea-table near the fire.

She stood lost on the thick purple carpet under the amber light, all too brilliant for her. She had come from a world of darkness, owl-like she must blink before the blaze. Some one came forward to her, some one so kind and comforting, so easy and unsurprised that Maggie suddenly felt herself steadied as though a friend had put an arm around her. Before she had felt: "This light—I am shabby." Now she felt, "I am with friendly people." She was surprised at the way that she was suddenly at her ease.

Mrs. Mark was not beautiful, but she had soft liquid eyes and her hand that held Maggie's was firm and warm and strong.

"Let me introduce you," said Mrs. Mark. "That is Miss Trenchard, and that Mr. Trenchard. This is my husband. Philip, this is Miss Cardinal."

Miss Trenchard must be forty, Maggie thought. She was plump and thick-set, with a warm smile. Then Mr. Trenchard was a clergyman—he would be stout were he not so broad. His face was red, his hair snowy white, but he did not look old.

He smiled at Maggie as though he had known her all his life. Then there was Mr. Mark, who was stocky and thick, and reminded Maggie of Martin, although his face was quite different, he looked much cleverer and not such a boy; he was not, in fact, a boy at all. "I'm sure he thinks too hard," decided Maggie, who had habits of making up her mind at once about people.

"Well, there's no one to be frightened about here," she decided. And indeed there was not! It was as though they had all some especial reason for being nice to her. Perhaps they saw that she was not in her own world here. And yet they did not make her feel that. She drank in the differences with great gulps of appreciation, but it was not they who insisted.

Here were light and colour and space above all—rest. Nothing was about to happen, no threat over their heads that the roof would fall beneath one's feet, that the floor would sink. No sudden catching of the breath at the opening of a door, no hesitation about climbing the stairs, no surveillance by the watching Thomas, no distant clanging of the Chapel bell. How strange they all seemed, looking back from this safe harbour. The aunts, the Warlocks, Thurston, Mr. Crashaw, Caroline—all of them. There the imagination set fire to every twig—here the imagination was not needed, because everything occurred before your eyes.

She did not figure it all out in so many words at once, but the contrast of the two worlds was there nevertheless. Why had she been so anxious, so nervous, so distressed? There was no need. Had she not known that this other world existed? Perhaps she had not. She must never again forget it ...

Katherine Mark was so kind and friendly, her voice so soft and her interest so eager, that Maggie felt that she could tell her anything. But their talk was not to come just yet—first there must be general conversation.

The clergyman with the white hair and the rosy face laughed a great deal in a schoolboy kind of way, and every time that he laughed his sister, who was like a pippin apple with her sunburnt cheeks, looked at him with protecting eyes.

"She looks after him in everything," said Maggie to herself. He was called Paul by them all.

"He's my cousin, you know, Miss Cardinal," said Mrs. Mark. "And yet I scarcely ever see him. Isn't it a shame? Grace makes everything so comfortable for him ..."

Grace smiled, well pleased.

"It's Paul's devotion to his parish ..." she said in calm, happy, self-assured voice, as though she'd never had a surprise in her life.

"I'm sure it isn't either of those things," thought Maggie to herself. "He's lazy."

Lazy but nice. She had never seen a clergyman so healthy, so happy so clean and so kind. She smiled across the table at him.

"Do you know Skeaton?" he asked her. Skeaton! Where had she heard of the place? Why, of course, it was Caroline!

"Only yesterday I heard of it for the first time," she said. "A friend of mine knows some one there."

"Beastly place," said Mr. Mark. "Sand always blowing into your eyes."

Mr. and Mrs. Trenchard got up to go.

He stood a moment holding Maggie's hand. "If ever you come to Skeaton, Miss Cardinal," he said, "we shall be delighted ..." His eyes she noticed were light blue like a baby's. She felt that he liked her and would not forget her.

"Come, Paul," said Miss Trenchard, rather sharply Maggie fancied.

Soon afterwards Philip departed. "Must finish that beastly thing," he assured his wife.

"It's an article," Katherine Mark explained. "He's always writing about politics. I hate them, so he pretends to hate them too. But he doesn't really. He loves them."

"I know nothing about politics," said Maggie with profound truth. "Your husband must be very clever."

"He's better than that," said Katherine with pride; "I hate perfect people, don't you?"

"Oh, indeed I do!" said Maggie from the bottom of her heart. They then came to her particular business.

"I would like to get some work to do," said Maggie, "that would make me independent. I have three hundred pounds of my own."

"What can you do?" asked Katherine.

"I don't know," said Maggie.

"Can you shorthand and type?"

"No, I can't," said Maggie; "but I'll learn."

"Must you be independent soon?" asked Katherine. "Are you unhappy where you are?"

Maggie paused.

"Don't tell me anything you oughtn't to," said Katherine.

"No," answered Maggie. "It isn't that exactly. I'm not happy at home, but I think that's my fault. My aunts are very good. But I want to be free. It is all very religious where I am, and they want me to believe in their religion. I'm afraid I'm not religious at all. Then I don't want to be dependent on people. I'm very ignorant. I know nothing about anything, and so long as I am kept with my aunts I shall never learn."

She stopped abruptly. She had thought suddenly of Martin. His coming had altered everything. How could she say what she wanted her life to be until her relation to him were settled? Everything depended on that.

This sense of Martin's presence silenced her. "If I can feel," she said at last, "that I can ask your advice. I have nobody ... We all seem ... Oh! how can I make you understand properly! You never will have seen anything like our house. It is all so queer, so shut-up, away from everything. I'm like a prisoner ..."

And that is perhaps what she was like to Mrs. Mark, sitting there in her funny ill-fitting clothes, her anxious old-fashioned face as of a child aged long before her time. Katherine Mark, who had had, in her life, her own perplexities and sorrows, felt her heart warm to this strange isolated girl. She had needed in her own life at one time all her courage, and she had used it; she had never regretted the step that she had then taken. She believed therefore in courage ... Courage was eloquent in every movement of Maggie's square reliant body.

"She could be braver than I have ever been," she thought.

"Miss Cardinal," she said, "I want you to come here whenever you can. You haven't seen our boy, Tim, yet—one and a half—and there are so many things I want to show you. Will you count yourself a friend of the house?"

Maggie blushed and twisted her hands together.

"You're very good," she said, "but ... I don't know ... perhaps you won't like me, or what I do."

"I do like you," said Katherine. "And if I like any one I don't care what they do."

"All the same," said Maggie, "I don't belong ... to your world, your life. I should shock you, I know. You might be sorry afterwards that you knew me. Supposing I broke away ..."

"But I broke away myself," said Katherine, "it is sometimes the only thing to do. I made my mother, who had been goodness itself to me, desperately unhappy."

"Why did you do that?" asked Maggie.

"Because I wanted to marry my husband."

"Well, I love a man too," said Maggie.

"Oh, I do hope you'll be happy!" said Katherine. "As happy as I am."

"No," said Maggie, shaking her head, "I don't expect to be happy."

She seemed to herself as she said that to be hundreds of miles away from Katherine Mark and her easy life, the purple curtains and her amber light.

"Not happy but satisfied," she said.

She saw that it was five minutes past six. "I must go," she said.

When they said good-bye Katherine bent forward and kissed her.

"If ever, in your life. I can help in any way at all," she said, "come to me."

"I'll do that," promised Maggie. She coloured, and then herself bent forward and kissed Katherine. "I shall like to think of you—and all this—" she said and went.

She was let out into the outer world by the smiling maid-servant. Bryanston Square was dark with purple colour as though the purple curtains inside the house had been snipped off from a general curtained world. There was a star or two and some gaunt trees with black pointing fingers, and here a lighted window and there a shining doorway; behind it all the rumble of a world that disregarded love and death and all the Higher Catechism.

Maggie confronted a policeman.

"Please, can you tell me where the Marble Arch is?" she asked.

"Straight ahead, Miss," he answered, pointing down the street, "you can't miss it."

And she could not. It soon gleamed white ahead of her against the thick folds of the sky. When she saw it her heart raced in front of her, like a pony, suddenly released, kicking its heels. And her thoughts were so strangely wild! The lovely night, yes, purple like Mrs. Mark's curtains and scented oranges, chrysanthemums, boot-polish and candied sugar.—Oh yes! how kind they had been—nice clergyman, fat a little, but young in spite of his white hair, and Aunt Anne in bed under the crucifix struggling and Mr. Crashaw smiling lustfully at Caroline ... The long black streets, strips of silk and the lamps like fat buttons on a coat, there was a cat! Hist! Hist! A streak of black against black ... and the Chapel bell ringing and Thomas' fiery eyes ...

Behind all this confusion there was Martin, Martin, Martin. Creeping nearer and nearer as though he were just behind her, or was it that she was creeping nearer and nearer to him? She did not know, but her heart now was beating so thickly that it was as though giants were wrapping cloth after cloth round it, hot cloths, but their hands were icy cold. No, she was simply excited, desperately, madly excited.

She had never been excited before, and now, with the excitement, there was mingled the strangest hot pain and cold pity. She noticed that now her knees were trembling and that if they trembled much more she would not be able to walk at all.

"Now, Maggie, steady your knees!" she said to herself. But look, the houses now were trembling a little too! Ridiculous those smart houses with their fine doors and white steps to tremble! No, it was her heart, not the houses ...

"Do I look queer?" she thought; "will people be looking at me?"

Ideas raced through her head, now like horses in the Derby.

"Woof! Poof! Off we go!" St. Dreot's, that square piece of grass on the lawn with the light on it, her clothes, the socks that must be mended, Caroline's silk and the rustle it made, shops, houses, rivers, seas, death—yes, Aunt Anne's cancer ... and then, with a great upward surge like rising from the depths of the sea after a dive, Martin! Martin, Martin! ... For a moment then she had to pause. She had been walking too fast. Her heart jumped, then ran a step or two, then fell into a dead pause ... She went on, seeing now nothing but two lamps that watched her like the eyes of a giant.

She was there! This was a Marble Arch! All by itself in the middle of the road. She crossed to it, first went under it, then thought that he would not see her there so came out and stood, nervously rubbing her gloved hands against one another and turning her head, like a bird, swiftly from side to side. She didn't like standing there. It seemed to make her so prominent. Men stared at her. He should have been there first. He might have known ... But perhaps Caroline never gave him the letter. At that thought her heart really did stop. She was terrified at once as though some one had told her disastrous news. She would not wait very long; then she would go home ...

She saw him. He stood only a little away from her staring about him, looking for her. She felt that she had not seen him for years; she drank in his sturdiness, his boyish face, his air of caring nothing for authority. She had not seen his dark blue overcoat before. He stood directly under a lamp, swaying ever so little on his heels, his favourite, most characteristic, movement. He stood there as though he were purposely giving her a portrait that she might remember for the rest of her days. She was too nervous to move and then she wanted that wonderful moment to last, that moment when she had realised that he had come to meet her, that he was there, amongst all those crowds, simply for her, that he was looking for her and wanting her, that he would be bitterly disappointed did she not come ...

She saw him give a little impatient jerk of the head, the same movement that she had seen him make in Chapel. That jerk set her in motion again, and she was suddenly at his side. She touched his arm; he turned and his eyes lit with pleasure. They smiled at one another and then, without a word, moved off towards the park. He took her arm and put it through his. She felt the warm thick stuff of the blue coat, and beneath that the steady firm beat of his heart. They walked closely together, his thigh pressed against hers, and once and again her hair brushed his cheek. She was so shy that, until they were through the gates of the park, she did not speak. Then she said:

"I was so afraid that Caroline would not give you the note."

"Oh, she gave it me all right." He pressed her arm closer to him. "But I expect that she read it first."

"Oh, is she like that?"

"Yes, she's like that ..."

There was another pause; they turned down the path to the right towards the trees that were black lumps of velvet against the purple sky. There were no stars, and it was liquidly dark as though they ploughed through water. Maggie felt suffocated with heat and persecuted by a strange weariness; she was suddenly so tired that it was all that she could do to walk.

"I'm tired ..." she murmured—"expecting you—afraid that you wouldn't come."

"I believe that I would have come," he answered quite fiercely, "even if I hadn't had the note—I was determined to see you to-night some way. But you know, Maggie, it had better be for the last time ..."

"No," she said, whispering, "it's the first time."

"Let's sit down here," he said. "We're alone all right."

There was no seat near them. The trees made a cave of black above them, and in front of them the grass swept like a grey beach into mist. There was no sound save a distant whirr like the hum of a top that died to a whisper and then was lashed by some infuriated god to activity again.

They sat close together on the bench. She felt his arm move out as though he would embrace her, then suddenly he drew back.

"No," he said, "until we've talked this out we've got to be like strangers. We can't go on, you know, Maggie, and it's no use your saying we can."

She pressed her hands tightly together. "I can convince him better," she thought to herself, "if I'm very quiet and matter-of-fact." So, speaking very calmly and not looking at him, she went on:

"But, Martin, you promised last time that it would depend on me ... You said that if I didn't mind your being married and was willing to take risks that we would go on together. Well, I've thought all about it and I know that I'd rather be miserable with you than happy with any one else. But then I shouldn't be miserable. You seem to think you could make me miserable just as soon as you like. But that depends on myself. If I don't want to be miserable nobody can make me be." She paused. He moved a little closer and suddenly took her hand.

She drew it away and went on:

"Don't think I'm inexperienced about this, Martin. You say I know nothing about men. Perhaps I don't. But I know myself. I know what I want, and I can look after myself. However badly you treated me, it would be you that I was with all the time."

"No, no, Maggie," he answered, speaking rapidly and as though he were fiercely protesting against some one. "It isn't that at all. You say you know yourself—but then I know myself. It isn't only that I'm a rotten fellow. It is that I seem to bring a curse on every one I'm fond of. I love my father, and I've come back and made him miserable. It's always like that. And if I made you miserable it would be the worst thing I ever did ... I don't even know whether I love you. If I do it's different from any love I've ever had. Other women I'd be mad about. I'd go for them whatever happened and got them somehow, and I wouldn't care a bit whether they were happy or no. But I feel about you almost as though you were a man—not sensually at all, but that safe steady security that you feel for a man sometimes ... You're so restful to be with. I feel now as though you were the one person in the world who could turn me into a decent human being. I feel as though we were just meant to move along together; but then some other woman would come like a fire and off I'd go ... Then I'd hate myself worse than ever and be really finished."

Maggie looked at him.

"You don't love me then, Martin?" she asked.

"Yes I do," he answered suddenly, "I keep telling myself that I don't, but I know that I do. Only it's different. It's as though I were loving myself, the better part of myself. Not something new and wildly exciting, but something old that I had known always and that had always been with me. If I went away now. Maggie, I know I'd come back one day—perhaps years afterwards—but I know I'd come back. It's like that religious part of me, like my legs and my arms. Oh! it's not of my own comfort I'm doubting, but it's you! ... I don't want to hurt you, Maggie darling, just as I've hurt every one I loved—"

"I'll come with you, Martin," said Maggie, "as long as you want me, and if you don't want me, later you will again and I'll be waiting for you."

He put his arm round her. She crept up close to him, nestled into his coat and put her hand up to his cheek. He bent down his head and they kissed.

After that there could be no more argument. What had he not intended to press upon her? With what force arid power had he not planned to persuade her? How he would tell her that he did not love her, that he would not be faithful to her, that he would treat her cruelly. Now it was all gone. With a gesture of almost ironic abandonment he flung away his scruples. It was always so; life was stronger than he. He had tried, in this at least, to behave like a decent man. But life did not want him to be decent ...

And how he needed that rest that she gave him! As he felt her close up against him, folded into him with that utterly naif and childish trust that had allured and charmed him on the very first occasion, he felt nothing but a sweet and blessed rest. He would not think of the future. He would not ... HE WOULD NOT. And perhaps all would be well. As he pressed her closer to him, as he felt her lips suddenly strike through the dark, find his check and then his mouth, as he felt her soft confident hand find his and then close and fold inside it like a flower, he wondered whether this once he might not force things to be right. It was time he took things in hand. He could. He must ...

He began to whisper to her:

"Maggie darling ... It mayn't be bad. I'll find out where this other woman is and she shall divorce me. I'll arrange it all. And we'll go away somewhere where I can work, and we won't allow anybody to interfere. After all, I'm older now. The mess I've been in before is because I always make wrong shots ..."

His words ceased. Their hearts were beating too tumultuously together for words to be possible. Maggie did not wish to speak, she could not. She was mingled with him, her heart his, her lips his, her check his ... She did not believe that words would come even though she wished for them. She was utterly happy—so utterly that she was, as it were, numb with happiness. They murmured one another's names.

"Martin."

"Maggie! ..."

At last, dreaming, scarcely knowing what they did, like two children in a dark wood, they wandered towards home.



CHAPTER VIII

PARADISE

Maggie had never really been happy before. She had of course not known this; her adventures in introspection had been very few, besides she had not known what happiness looked like; her father, her uncle, and her aunts were not exactly happy people ...

Now she flung herself without thought or care into a flood of happiness, and as sometimes occurs in life, she was granted by the gods, beneficent or ironic as you please, a period of security when everything menacing or dangerous withdrew and it seemed as though the whole world were in a conspiracy to cheat her into confidence. She was confident because she did not think; she simply did not think at all. She loved Martin and Martin loved her; cased in that golden armour, she confronted her aunts and the house and the world behind the house with a sublime and happy confidence. She loved her aunts now, she loved Martha and the parrot and the cat, and she could not believe that they did not all love her. Because Martin loved her the rest of the world must also do so, and if they did not she would compel them.

For three whole weeks the spell lasted, for three marvellous golden weeks. When she looked back afterwards she wondered that she had not seen many things, warnings, portents, whatever you please to call them. But for three weeks she saw nothing but Martin, and for three weeks he saw nothing but Maggie.