There was a certain justice in Anne's justification. He didn't consciously prefer the Hannays' society to hers; but he actually found it more agreeable, and for the reasons she suspected. They did worship him; and their worship did make him feel superior, perhaps when he was least so. They did flatter him; for, as Mrs. Hannay said, "He needed a little patting on the back, now and then, poor fellow." And perhaps he was really sinking a little to her level; he had so lost his sense of her vulgarity.

He used to wonder how it was that she had kept Lawson straight. Perfectly straight, Lawson had been, ever since his marriage. Possibly, probably, if he had married a wife too inflexibly refined, he would have deviated somewhat from that perfect straightness. His tastes had always been a little vulgar. But there was no reason why he should go abroad to gratify them when he possessed the paragon of amenable vulgarity at home. The Gardners, whose union was almost miraculously complete, were not in their way more admirably mated. And Lawson's reform must have been a stiff job for any woman to tackle at the start.

A woman of marvellous ingenuity and tact. For she had kept Lawson straight without his knowing it. She had played off one of Lawson's little weaknesses against the other; had set, for instance, his fantastic love of eating against his sordid little tendency to drink. Lawson was now a model of sobriety.

And as she kept Lawson straight without his knowing it, she helped Majendie, too, without his knowing it, to hold his miserable head up. She ignored, resolutely, his attitude of dejection. She reminded him that if he could make nothing else out of his life he could make money. She convinced him that life, the life of a prosperous ship-owner in Scale, was worth living, as long as he had Edith and Anne and Peggy to make money for, especially Peggy.

And Majendie became more and more absorbed in his business, and more and more he found his pleasure in it; in making money, that is to say, for the persons whom he loved.

He had come even to find pleasure in making it for a person whom he did not love, and hardly knew. He provided himself with one punctual and agreeable sensation every week when he sent off the cheque for the small sum that was poor Maggie's allowance. Once a week (he had settled it), not once a month. For Maggie might (for anything he knew) be thriftless. She might feast for three days, and then starve; and so find her sad way to the street.

But Maggie was not thriftless. First at irregular intervals, weeks it might be, or months, she had sent him various diminutive sums towards the payment of her debt. Maggie was strictly honourable. She had got a little work, she said, and hoped soon to have it regularly. And soon she began to return to him, weekly, the half of her allowance. These sums he put by for her, adding the interest. Some day there would be a modest hoard for Maggie. He pleased himself, now and then, by wondering what the girl would do with it. Buy a wedding-gown perhaps, when she married Mr. Mumford. Time, he felt, was Mr. Mumford's best ally. In time, when she had forgotten Gorst, Maggie would marry him.

Maggie's small business entailed a correspondence out of all proportion to it. He had not yet gone to see her. Some day, he supposed, he would have to go, to see whether the girl, as he phrased it vaguely, was "really all right." With little creatures like Maggie you never could be sure. There would always be the possibility of Gorst's successor, and he had no desire to make Maggie's maintenance easier for him. He had made her independent of all iniquitous sources of revenue.

At last, suddenly, the postal orders and the letters ceased; for three weeks, four, five weeks. Then Majendie began to feel uneasy. He would have to look her up.

Then one morning, early in September, a letter was brought to him at the office (Maggie's letters were always addressed to the office, never to his house). There was no postal order with it. For three weeks Maggie had been ill, then she had been very poorly, very weak, too weak to sit long at work. And so she had lost what work she had; but she hoped to get more when she was strong again. When she was strong the repayments would begin again, said Maggie. She hoped Mr. Majendie would forgive her for not having sent any for so long. She was very sorry. But, if it wasn't too much to ask, she would be very glad if Mr. Majendie would come some day and see her.

He sent her an extra remittance by the bearer, and went to see her the next day. His conscience reproached him for not having gone before.

Mrs. Morse, the landlady, received him with many appearances of relief. In her mind he was evidently responsible for Maggie. He was the guardian, the benefactor, the sender of rent.

"She's been very ill, sir," said Mrs. Morse; "but she wouldn't 'ave you written to till she was better."

"Why not?"

"I'm sure I can't say, sir, wot 'er feeling was."

It struck him as strange and pathetic that Maggie could have a feeling. He was soon to know that she had little else.

He found her sitting by a fire, wrapped in a shawl. It slipped from her as she rose, as she leaped, rather, from her seat like one unnerved by a sudden shock. He stooped and picked up the shawl before he spoke, that he might give the poor thing time to recover herself.

"Did I startle you?" he said.

Maggie was still breathing hard. "I didn't think you'd come."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," she said weakly, and sat down again. Maggie was very weak. She was not like the Maggie he remembered, the creature of brilliant flesh and blood. Maggie's flesh was worn and limp; it had a greenish tint; her blood no longer flowed in the cream rose of her face. She had parted with the sources of her radiant youth.

She seemed to him to be suffering from severe anaemia. A horrible thought came to him. Had the little thing been starving herself to save enough to repay him?

"What have you been doing to yourself, Maggie?" he said brusquely.

Maggie looked frightened. "Nothing," she said.

"Working your fingers to the bone?"

She shook her head. "I was no good at dressmaking. They wouldn't have me."

"Well—" he said kindly.

"There are a great many things I can do. I can make wreaths and crosses and bookays. I made them at Evans's. I could go back there. Mr. Evans would have me. But Mrs. Evans wouldn't." She paused, surveying her immense resources. "Or I could do the flowers for people's parties. I used to. Do you think—perhaps—they'd have me?"

Maggie's pitiful doubt was always whether "they" would "have" her.

"Yes," he said, smiling at her pathos, "perhaps they would."

"Or I could do embroidery. I learned, years ago, at Madame Ponting's. I could go back. Only Madame wouldn't have me." (Maggie was palpably foolish; but her folly was adorable.)

"Why wouldn't she have you?"

Maggie reddened, and he forbore to press the unkind inquiry. He gathered that Maggie's ways had been not unknown to Madame Ponting, "years ago."

"Would you like to see some of my embroidery?"

He assented gravely. He did not want to turn Maggie from the path of industry, which was to her the path of virtue.

She went to a cupboard, and returned with her arms full of little rolls and parcels wrapped in paper. She unfolded and spread on the table various squares, and strips, and little pieces, silk and woollen stuffs, and canvas, exquisitely embroidered. There were flowers in most of the patterns—flowers, as it appeared, of Maggie's fancy.

"I say, did you do all that yourself, Maggie?"

"Yes, that's what I can do. I make the patterns out of me head, and they're mostly flowers, because I love 'em. It's pretty, isn't it?" said Maggie, stroking tenderly a pattern of pansies, blue pansies, such as she had never sold in Evans's shop.

"Very pretty—very beautiful."

"I've sold lots—to a lady, before I was ill. See here."

Maggie unfolded something that was pinned in silver paper with a peculiar care. It was a small garment, in some faint-coloured silk, embroidered with blue pansies (always blue pansies).

"That's a frock," said she, "for a little girl. You've got a little girl—a little fair girl."

He reddened. How the devil, he wondered, does she know that I have a little fair girl? "I don't think it would fit her," he said.

Maggie reddened now.

"Oh—I don't want you to buy it. I don't want you to buy anything. Only to tell people."

So much he promised her. He tried to think of all the people he could tell. Mrs. Hannay, Mrs. Ransome, Mrs. Gardner—no, Mrs. Gardner was Anne's friend. If Anne had been different he could have told Anne. He could have told her everything. As it was—No.

He rose to go, but, instead of going, he stayed and bought several pieces of embroidery for Mrs. Hannay, and the frock, not for Peggy, but for Mrs. Ransome's little girl. They haggled a good deal over the price, owing to Maggie's obstinate attempts to ruin her own market. (She must always have been bent on ruining herself, poor child.) Then he tried to go again, and Mrs. Morse came in with the tea-tray, and Maggie insisted on making him a cup of tea, and of course he had to stay and drink it.

Maggie revived over her tea-tray. Her face flushed and rounded again to an orb of jubilant content. And he asked her if she were happy. If she liked her work.

She hesitated. "It's this way," she said. "Sometimes I can't think of anything else. I can sit and sit at it for weeks on end. I don't want anything else. Then, all of a sudden, something comes over me, and I can't put in another stitch. Sometimes—when it comes—I'm that tired, it's as if I 'ad weights on me arms, and I couldn't 'old them up to sew. And sometimes, again, I'm that restless, it's as if you'd lit a fire under me feet. I'm frightened," said Maggie, "when I feel it coming. But I'm only tired now."

She broke off; but by the expression of her face, he saw that her thoughts ran underground. He wondered where they would come out again.

"I haven't seen anybody this time," said Maggie, "for six months."

"Not even Mr. Mumford?"

"Oh, no, not him. I don't want to see him." And her thoughts ran back to where they started from.

"It hasn't come lately," said Maggie, "it hasn't come for quite a long time."

"What hasn't come?"

"What I've been telling you—what I'm afraid of."

"It won't come, Maggie," he said quickly. (He might have been her father or the doctor.)

"If it does, it'll be worse now."

"Why should it be?"

"Because I can't get away from it. I've nowhere to go to. Other girls have got their friends. I've got nobody. Why, Mr. Majendie—think—there isn't a place in this whole town where I can go to for a cup of tea."

"You'll make friends."

She shook her head, guarding her little air of tragic wisdom.

Mrs. Morse popped her head in at the door, and out again.

"Is that woman kind to you?"

"Yes, very kind."

"She looks after you well?"

"Looks after me? I don't want looking after."

"Takes care of you, I mean. Gives you plenty of nice nourishing things to eat?"

"Yes, plenty of nice things. And she comes and sits with me sometimes."

"You like her?"

"I love her."

"That's all right. You see, you have got a friend, after all."

"Yes," said Maggie mournfully; and he saw that her thoughts were with Gorst. "But it isn't the same thing, is it?"

Majendie could not honestly say it was; so he smiled, instead.

"It's a shame," said she, "to go on like this when you've been so good to me."

"If I wasn't, you couldn't do it, could you? But what you want me to understand is that, however good I've been, I haven't made things more amusing for you."

"No, no," said Maggie vehemently, "I didn't mean that. Indeed I didn't. I only wanted you to know—"

"How good you've been. Is that it? Well, because you're good, there's no reason why you should be dull. Is there?"

"I don't know," said Maggie simply.

"See here, supposing that, instead of sending me all you earn, you keep some of it to play with? Get Mrs. What's-her-name to go with you to places."

"I don't want to go to places," she said. "I want to send it all to you."

He lapsed again into his formula. "There really is no reason why you should."

"I want to. That's a reason, isn't it?" said she. She said it shyly, tentatively, solemnly almost, as if it were some point in an infant's metaphysics. There was no assurance in her tone, nothing to remind him that Maggie had been the spoiled child of pleasure whose wants were always reasons; nothing to suggest the perverted consciousness of power.

"Well—" He straightened himself stiffly for departure.

"Are you going?" she said.

"I must."

"Will you—come again?"

"Yes, I'll come, if you want me."

He saw again how piteous, how ill she looked. A pang of compassion went through him. And after the pang there came a warm, delicious tremor. It recalled the feeling he used to have when he did things for Edith, a sensation singularly sweet and singularly pure.

It was consolation in his misery to realise that any one could want him, even poor, perverted Maggie.

Maggie said nothing. But the flame rose in her face.

Downstairs Majendie found Mrs. Morse waiting for him at the door. "What's been the matter with her?" he asked.

"I don't rightly know, sir. But between you and me, I think she's fretted herself ill."

"Well, you've got to see that she doesn't fret, that's all."

He gave into her palm an earnest of the reward of vigilance.

That night he sent off the embroidered pieces to Mrs. Hannay, and the embroidered frock to Mrs. Ransome; with a note to each lady recommending Maggie, and Maggie's beautiful and innocent art.



CHAPTER XXIV

As Majendie declined more and more on his inferior friendships, Anne became more and more dependent on the Eliotts and the Gardners. Her evenings would have been intolerable without them. Edith no longer needed her. Edith, they still said, was growing better, or certainly no worse; and Mr. Gorst spent his evenings in Prior Street with Edie. The prodigal had made his peace with Anne, and came and went unquestioned. He was bent on making up for his long loss of Edie, and for the still longer loss of her that had to be. They felt that his brilliant presence kept the invading darkness from her door.

Autumn passed, and winter and spring, and in summer Edith was still with them.

Anne was no longer a stranger in her husband's house since her child had been born in it; but in the long light evenings, after Peggy had been put to bed at six o'clock, Peggy's mother was once more alien and alone. It was then that she would get up and leave her husband (why not, since he left her?) and slip from Prior Street to Thurston Square; then that she moved once more superbly in her superior circle. She was proud of her circle. It was so well defined; and if the round was small, that only meant that there was no room in it for borderlands and other obscure and undesirable places. The commercial world, so terrifying in its approaches, remained, and always would remain, outside it. Sitting in Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room she forgot that the soul of Scale on Humber was given over to tallow, and to timber, and Dutch cheeses. But for her constant habit of depreciation, she could almost have forgotten that her husband was only a ship-owner, and a ship-owner who had gone into a horrible partnership with Lawson Hannay. It appeased her to belittle him by comparisons. He had no spiritual fineness and fire like Canon Wharton, no intellectual interests like Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. She had long ago noticed his inability to converse with any brilliance; she was now aware of the heaviness, the physical slowness, that was growing on him. He was losing the personal distinction that had charmed her once, and made her proud to be seen with him at gatherings of the fastidious in Thurston Square.

Her fancy, still belittling him, ranked him now with the dull business men of Scale. In a few years, she said, he will be like Lawson Hannay.

A change was coming over her. She was no longer apathetic. Now that she saw less of her husband she thought more frequently of him, if only to his disparagement. At times the process was unconscious; at times, when she caught her thoughts dealing thus uncharitably with him, she was touched by a pang of contrition and of shame. At times she was pulled up in her thinking with a sudden shock. She said to herself that he used to be so different, and her heart would turn gently to the man he used to be. Then, as in the sad days of her bridal home-coming, the dear immortal memory of him rose up before her, and pleaded mercy for the insufferably mortal man. She saw him, with the body and the soul that had been once so familiar to her, slender, alert, and strong, a creature of appealing goodness and tenderness and charm. And she was troubled with a great longing for the presence of the thing she had so loved. She yearned even for signs of the old brilliant, startling personality, in face of the growing dulness that she saw. She found herself recalling with a smile sayings of his that had once vexed and now amused her. For Anne was softer.

At times she was aware of a new source of uneasiness. She was accustomed to judge all things in relation to the spiritual life. She had no other measure of their excellence. She had found profit for her soul in its divorce from her husband. She had persuaded herself that since she could not raise him, she herself would have sunk if she had clung to him or let him cling. She had felt that their tragic rupture strengthened the tie between her soul and God. But more than once lately, she had experienced difficulty in reaching her refuge, her place of peace. Something threatened her former inviolable security. The ramparts of the spiritual life were shaken. Her prayers, that were once an ascension of flamed and winged powers carrying her to heaven, had become mere clamorous petitions, drawing down the things of heaven to earth. Night and morning the same passionate prayer for herself and her child, the same prayer for her husband, painful and perfunctory; but not always now the same sense of absolution, of supreme and intimate communion. It was as if a veil, opaque but intangible, were drawn between her spirit and the Unseen. She thought it had come of living in perpetual contact with Walter's deterioration.

Yet Anne was softer.

Her love for Peggy had become more and more an engrossing passion, as Majendie left her more and more to the dominion of her motherhood. He had seen enough of the effect of rivalry. It was Anne's pleasure to take Peggy from her nurse and wash her and dress her, to tend her fine limbs, and comb her pale soft hair. It was as if her care for the little tender body had taught her patience and gentleness towards flesh and blood; as if, through the love it invoked, some veil was torn for her, and she saw, wrought in the body of her child, the wonder of the spirit's fellowship with earth.

She dreaded the passing of the seasons, as they would take with them each some heart-rending charm of Peggy's infancy. Now it would be the ceasing of her pretty, helpless cry, as Peggy acquired mastery over things; now the repudiation of her delicious play, as Peggy's intellect perceived its puerility; and now the leaving off for ever of the speech that was Peggy's own, as Peggy adopted the superstition of the English language. A few years and Peggy would have cast off pinafores, a very few more, and Peggy would be at a boarding-school; and before she left it she would have her hair up. There was a pang for Peggy's mother in looking backward, and in looking forward pang upon intolerable pang.

But Peggy was in no hurry to grow up. Her delicacy prolonged her babyhood and its sweet impunity. The sad state of Peggy's little body accounted for all the little sins that weighed on Peggy's mother's soul. You couldn't punish Peggy. An untender look made her tremble; at a harsh word she cried till she was sick. When Peggy committed sin she ran and told her mother, as if it were some wonderful and interesting experience. Anne was afraid that she would never teach the child the difference between right and wrong.

In this, by some strange irony, Majendie, for all his self-effacement, proved more effectual than Anne.

They were all three in the drawing-room one Sunday afternoon at tea-time. It was Peggy's hour. And in that hour she had found her moment, when her parents' backs were turned to the tea-table. The moment over, she came to Majendie, shivering with delight.

"Oh, daddy, daddy," she cried, "I did 'teal some sugar. I did 'teal it my own self, and eated it all up."

Peggy had been forbidden to touch the sugar basin ever since one very miserable day.

"Oh, Peggy, Peggy," said her mother, "that was very naughty."

"No, mummy, it wasn't. It wasn't naughty 't all."

She pondered, gravely working out her case. "I'd be sorry if it was naughty."

Majendie laughed.

"If you laugh every time she's naughty, how am I to make her learn?"

Majendie held out his hand. "Come here, Peggy."

Peggy came and cuddled against him, smiling sidelong mischief at her mother.

"Look here, Peggy, if you eat too much sugar, you'll be ill; and if you're ill, mummy'll be unhappy. See?"

"I'm sorry, daddy."

Peggy's mouth shook; she turned, and hid her face against his breast.

"There, there," he said, petting her. "Look at mummy; she's happy now."

Peggy's face peeped out, but it was not at her mother that she looked.

"Are you happy, daddy?"

He stooped, and kissed her, and left the room.

And then Peggy said, "I'm sorry, mummy. Why did daddy go away?"

"I don't know, darling."

"Do you think he will come back again?"

"Darling, I don't know."

"You'd like him to come back, wouldn't you, mummy?"

"Of course, Peggy."

"Then I'll go and tell him."

She trotted downstairs to the study, and came back shaking her head sadly.

"Daddy isn't coming. Naughty daddy."

"Why do you say that, Peggy?"

"Because he won't come when you want him to."

"Perhaps he's busy."

"Yes," said Peggy thoughtfully. "I fink he's busy." She sat very quiet on a footstool, thinking. "I fink," she said presently, "I'd better go and tell daddy he isn't naughty, else he'll be dreff'ly unhappy."

And she trotted downstairs and up again.

"Daddy sends his love, mummy, and he is busy. S'all I take your love to him?"

That was how it went on, now Peggy was older. That was how she made her mother's heart ache.

Anne was in terror for the time when Peggy would begin to see. For that, and for her own inability to teach her the stupendous difference between right and wrong.

But one day Peggy ran to her mother, crying as if her heart would break.

"Oh, muvver, muvver, kiss me," she sobbed. "I did kick daddy! Kiss me."

She flung her arms round Anne's knees, as if clinging for protection against the pursuing vision of her sin.

"Hush, hush, darling," said Anne. "Perhaps daddy didn't mind."

But Peggy howled in agony. "Y-y-yes, he did. I hurted him, I hurted him. He minded ever so."

"My little one," said Anne, "my little one!" and clung to her and comforted her.

She saw that Peggy's little mind recognised no sin except the sin against love; that Peggy's little heart could not conceive that love should refuse to forgive her and kiss her.

And Anne did not refuse.

Thus her terror grew. If it was to come to Peggy that way, her knowledge of the difference, what was Peggy to think when she grew older? When she began to see?

That was how Anne grew soft.

Her very body was changing into the beauty of her motherhood. The sweetness of her face, arrested in its hour of blossom, had unfolded and flowered again. Her mouth had lost its sad droop, and for Peggy there came many times laughter, and many times that lifting of the upper lip, the gleam of the white teeth, and the play of the little amber mole that Majendie loved and Anne was ashamed of.

She had become for her child that which she had been for her husband in her strange, immortal moments of surrender, a woman warmed and transfigured by a secret fire. Her new beauty remained, like a brooding charm, when the child was not with her.

And as the seasons, passing, made her more and more a woman dear and desirable, Majendie's passion for her became almost insane through its frustration.

Anne was aware of the insanity without realising its cause. He avoided her touch, and she wondered why. Her voice, heard in another room, drew his heart after her in longing. At the worst moments, to get away from her, he went out of the house. And she wondered where. Hours of stupefying depression were followed by fits of irritability that frightened her. And then she wished that he would not go to the Hannays, and eat things that disagreed with him.

Little Peggy helped to make his misery more unendurable. She was always running to and fro between her father and her mother, with questions concerning kisses and other endearments, till he, too, wondered what she would make of it when she began to see. Everything conspired against him. Peggy's formidable innocence was re-enforced by the still more formidable innocence of her mother. Anne positively flaunted before him the spectacle of her maternal passion. She showered her tendernesses on the child, without measuring their effect on him, for whom she had none. She did not allow herself to wonder how he felt, when he sat there hungry, looking on, while the little creature, greedy for caresses, was given her fill of love.

And when he was tortured by headache, she brought him an effervescing drink, and considered that she had done her duty.

A worse headache than usual had smitten him one late Sunday afternoon in August. A Sunday afternoon that made (but for Majendie and his headache) a little sacred idyl, so golden was it, so holy and so happy, with Peggy trotting between her father's and mother's knees, and the prodigal, burning with penitence, upstairs in Edie's room, singing Lead, Kindly Light, in a heavenly tenor.

Peggy tugged at Majendie's coat.

"Sing, daddy, sing! Mummy, make daddy sing."

"I can't make him sing, darling," said Anne, who was making soft eyes at Peggy, and curling her mouth into the shape it took when it sent kisses to her across the room.

Instead of singing, Majendie, with his eyes on Anne, flung his arms round Peggy and lifted her up and covered her little face with kisses. The child lay across his knees with her head thrown back and her legs struggling, and laughed for terror and delight.

Anne spoke with some austerity. "Put her down, Walter; I don't care for all this hugging and kissing. It excites the child."

Peggy was put down. But when bed-time came she achieved an inimitable revenge. Anne had to pick her up from the floor to carry her to bed. At first Peggy refused to be carried; then she surrendered on conditions that brought the blood to her mother's face.

From her mother's arms Peggy's head hung down as she struggled to say good-night a second time to daddy. He rose, and for a moment he and Anne stood linked together by the body of their child.

And Peggy reiterated, "I'll be a good girl, mummy, if you'll kiss daddy."

Anne raised her face to his and closed her eyes, and Majendie felt her soft lips touch his forehead without parting.

That night, when he refused his supper, she looked up anxiously.

"Are you not well, Walter?"

"I've got a splitting headache."

"You'd better take some anti-pyrine."

"I'm damned if I'll take any anti-pyrine."

"Well, don't, dear; but you needn't be so violent."

"I beg your pardon."

He cooled his hands against a jug of iced water, and pressed them to his forehead.

She left her place and came and sat beside him. "Come," she said in the sweet voice that pierced him, "come and lie down in the study." She laid her hand on his shoulder, and he rose and followed her.

She made him lie down on the sofa in the study, and put cushions under his head, and brought him the anti-pyrine. She sat beside him and dabbed eau-de-cologne all over his forehead, and blew on it with her soft breath. She paused, and sat very still, watching him, for a moment that seemed eternity. She didn't like the flush on his cheek nor the queer burning brilliance in his eyes. She was afraid he was in for a bad illness, and fear made her kind.

"Tell me how you feel, dear," she said gently. She was determined to be very gentle with him.

"Can't you see how I feel?" he answered.

She laid her firm, cool hand upon his forehead; and he gave a cry, the low cry she had once heard and dreamed of afterwards. He flung up his arm, and caught at her hand, and dragged it down, and held it close against his mouth, and kissed it.

She drew in her breath. Her hand stiffened against his in her effort to withdraw it; and when he had let it go, she turned from him and left him without a word.

He threw himself face downwards on the cushions, wounded and ashamed.



CHAPTER XXV

It was Friday evening, the Friday that followed that Sunday when Majendie's hope had risen at the touch of his wife's hand, and died again under her repulse.

Friday was the day which Maggie Forrest marked in her calendar sometimes with a query and sometimes with a cross. The query stood for "Will he come?" The cross meant "He came." To-night there was no cross, though Maggie had brushed her hair till it shone again, and put on her best dress, and laid out her little table for tea, and sat there waiting, like the ladies in those houses where he went; like Mrs. Hannay or Mrs. Ransome who bought her embroidery; or like that grand lady with the title, who had come with Mrs. Ransome—the lady who had bought more embroidery than anybody, the scent on whose clothes was enough, Maggie said, to take your breath away.

Maggie loved her tea-table. She embroidered beautiful linen cloths for it. Every Friday it was decked as an altar dedicated to the service of a god—in case he came.

He hadn't come. It was past eight, yet Maggie left the altar standing with the cloth on it, and waited. It would be terrible if the god should come and find no altar. Once, even at this late hour, he had come.

The house was very quiet. Mrs. Morse was out marketing, and Maggie was alone. Friday was market night in Scale. She wondered if he would remember that, and come. Her heart beat violently with the thought that he might be beginning to come late. The others had come late when they began to love her.

She had forgotten them, or only cared to remember such of their ways as threw light on Mr. Majendie's. For he was, as yet, obscure to her.

It seemed to her that a new thing had come to her, a thing marvellously and divinely new, this, that she should be waiting, counting hours, and marking days on calendars, measuring her own pulses with a hand, now on her heart, now on her throbbing forehead, and wondering what could be the matter with her. Maggie was six-and-twenty; but ever since she was nine she had been waiting and wondering. For there always had been somebody whom Maggie loved insanely. First it was the little boy who lived in the house opposite, at home. He had abandoned Maggie's society, and broken her heart on the day when he "went into trousers." Then it was the big boy in her father's shop who gave her chocolates one day and snubbed her cruelly the next. Then it was the young man who came to tune the piano in the back parlour. Then the arithmetic master in the little boarding-school they sent her to. And then (for Maggie's infatuations rose rapidly in the social scale) it was one of the young gentlemen who "studied" at the Vicarage. He was engaged to Maggie for a whole term; and he went away and jilted her, so that Maggie's heart was broken a second time. At last, on an evil day for Maggie, it was one of the gentlemen (not so young) staying up at "the big house." He watched for Maggie in dark lanes, and followed her through the fields at evening, till one evening he made her turn and follow her heart and him. And so Maggie went on her predestined way.

For after him there was the gentleman who came to Madame Ponting's, and after him, Mr. Gorst, who came to Evans's, and after Mr. Gorst—Last year Maggie could not have believed that there could be another after him. For each of these persons she would willingly have died. To each of them her soul leaped up and bowed itself, swept forward like a flame bowed and driven by the wind.

As long as each loved her, the flame burned steadily and still. Maggie's soul was appeased for a season. As each left her, the flame died out in tears, and her pulses beat feebly, and her life languished. Maggie went from flame to flame; for the hours when there was nobody to love simply dropped into the darkness and were forgotten. She left off living when she had to leave off loving. To be sure there was always Mr. Mumford. He was a tobacconist, and he lived over the shop in a house fronting the pier, a unique and dominant situation. And he was prepared to overlook the past and make Maggie his wife and mistress of the house fronting the pier. Unfortunately, Maggie did not love him. You couldn't love Mr. Mumford. You could only be sorry for him.

But though Maggie went from flame to flame, there were long periods of placidity when she loved nothing but her work, and was as good as gold. Maggie's father wouldn't believe it. He had never forgiven her, not even when the doctor told him that there was no sense in which the poor girl could be held responsible; they should have looked after her better, that was all. Maggie's father, the grocer, did not deal in smooth, extenuating phrases. He called such madness sin. So did Maggie in her hours of peace and sanity. She was terrified when she felt it coming on, and hid her face from her doom. But when it came she went to meet it, uplifted, tremulous, devoted, carrying her poor scorched heart in her hand for sacrifice.

Each time that she loved, it was as if her former sins had been blotted out; for there came a merciful forgetfulness that renewed, almost, her innocence. Her heart had its own perverted constancy. No lover was like her last lover, and for him she rejected and repudiated the past.

And each time that she loved she was torn asunder. She gave herself in pieces; her heart first, then her soul, then, if it must needs be, her body. The finest first, then all that was left of her. That was her unique merit, what marked her from the rest.

Majendie, she divined by instinct, had recognised her quality. He was the only one who had. And he had asked nothing of her. She would have lived miserably for Charlie Gorst. She would have died with joy for Mr. Majendie. And Maggie feared death worse than life, however miserable.

But there was something in her love for Majendie that revealed it as a thing apart. It had not made her idle. Her passion for Mr. Majendie blossomed and flowered, and ran over in beautiful embroidery. That industry ministered to it. Her heart was set on having those little sums to send him every week; for that was the only way she could hope to approach him of her own movement. She loved the curt little notes in which Majendie acknowledged the receipt of each postal order. She tied them together with white ribbon, and treasured them in a little box under lock and key. All the time, she knew he had a wife and child, but her fancy refused to recognise Mrs. Majendie's existence. It allowed him to have a child, but not a wife. She knew that he spent his Saturdays and Sundays with them at his home. He never came, or could come, on a Saturday or Sunday, and Maggie refused to consider the significance of this. She simply lived from Friday to Friday. No other day in the week existed for Maggie. All other days heralded it, or followed in its train. The blessed memory of it rested upon Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday and Thursday glowed and vibrated with its coming; Mondays and Tuesdays were forlorn and grey. Terrible were the days which followed a Friday when he had not come.

He had not come last Friday, nor the Friday before that. She had always a comfortable little theory to cheat herself with, to account for his not coming. He had been ill last Friday; that, of course, was why he had not come, Maggie knew. She did not like to think he was ill; but she did like to think that only illness could prevent his coming. And she had always believed what she liked.

The presumption in Maggie's mind amounted to a certainty that he would come to-night.

And at nine o'clock he came.

Her eyes shone as she greeted him. There was nothing about her to remind him of the dejected, anaemic girl who had sat shivering over the fire last September. Maggie had got all her lights and colours back again. She was lifted from her abasement, glorified. And yet, for all her glory, Maggie, on her good behaviour, became once more the prim young lady of the lower middle class. She sat, as she had been used to sit on long, dull Sunday afternoons in the parlour above the village shop, bolt upright on her chair, with her meek hands folded in her lap. But her eyes were fixed on Majendie, their ardent candour contrasting oddly with the stiff modesty of her deportment.

"Have you been ill?" she asked.

"Why should I have been ill?"

"Because you didn't come."

"You mustn't suppose I'm ill every time I don't come. I might be a chronic invalid at that rate."

He hadn't realised how often he came. He didn't mark the days with crosses in a calendar.

"But you were ill, this time, I know."

"How do you know?"

The processes of Maggie's mind amused him. It was such a funny, fugitive, burrowing, darting thing, Maggie's mind, transparent and yet secret in its ways.

"I know, because I saw—" she hesitated.

"Saw what?"

"The light in your window."

"My window?"

"Yes. The one that looks out on the garden at the back. It was twelve o'clock on Sunday night, and on Monday night the light was gone, and I knew that you were better."

"As it happens, you saw the light in my sister's room. She's always ill."

"Oh," said Maggie; and her face fell with the fall of her great argument.

"Sometimes," he said, "the light burns all night long."

"Yes," said Maggie, musing; "sometimes it burns all night long. But in the room above that room, there's a little soft light that burns all night, too. That's your room."

"No, that's my wife's room."

Maggie became thoughtful. "I used to think that was where your little girl sleeps, because of the night-light. Then your room's next it." Maggie desired to know all about the blessed house that contained him.

"That's the spare room," he said, laughing.

"Goodness! what a lot of rooms. Then yours is the one next the nursery, looking on the street. Fancy! That little room."

Again she became thoughtful. So did he.

"I say, Maggie, how did you know those lights burned all night?"

"Because I saw them."

"You can't see them."

"Yes, you can; from the little alley that goes along at the back."

He hadn't thought of the alley. Nobody ever passed that way after dark; it ended in a blind wall.

"What were you doing there at twelve o'clock at night?"

He looked for signs of shame and confusion on Maggie's face. But Maggie's face was one flame of joy. Her eyes were candid.

"Walking up and down," she said. "I was watching."

"Watching?"

"Your window."

"You mustn't, Maggie. You mustn't watch people's windows. They don't like it. It doesn't do."

The flame was troubled; but not the lucid candour of Maggie's eyes. "I had to. I thought you were ill. I came to make sure. I was all alone. I didn't let anybody see me. And when I saw the light I was frightened. And I came again the next night to see. I didn't think you'd mind. It's not as if I'd come to the front door, or written letters, was it?"

"No. But you must never do that again, mind. How did you know the house?"

Maggie hung her head. "I saw your little girl go in there."

"Were you 'watching'?"

"N-no. It was an accident."

"How did you know it was my little girl?"

"I saw you walking with her, one Saturday, in the Park. It was an accident—really. I was taking my work to that lady who buys from me—Mrs. 'Anny."

"I see."

"You're not angry with me, Mr. Magendy?"

"Of course not. What made you think I was?"

"Your face. You would be angry if I followed you. But I wouldn't do such a thing. I've never followed any one—never. And I wouldn't do it now, not if I was paid," she protested.

"It's all right, Maggie, it's all right."

Maggie clasped her knees and sat thinking. She seemed to know by intuition when it was advantageous to be silent, and when to speak. But Majendie was thinking, too. He was wondering whether he was not being a little too kind to Maggie; whether a little unkindness would not be a salutary change for both of them. Why couldn't the girl marry Mr. Mumford? He didn't want to profit by the transaction. He would have gladly paid Mr. Mumford to marry her, and take her away.

He put his hand over his eyes as a veil for his thoughts; and when he took it away again, Maggie had risen and was going on soundless feet towards the door.

"Don't go," she said, "I'll be back in a minute."

He flung himself back in the chair and waited. The minutes dragged. He had wanted Maggie away; and now she had gone he wanted her back again.

Maggie did not stay away long enough to give him time to discover how much he wanted her. She came back, carrying a tray with cups and a steaming coffee pot, and set it on the table.

A fragrance of strong coffee filled the room. The service of the god had begun.

She stood close against his side, yet humbly, as she handed him his cup. "It's nice and strong," she said. "Drink it. It'll do your head good."

And she sat down opposite him, and watched him drink it.

Maggie's watching face was luminous and tender. In her eyes there was the look that love gives for his signal—love that, in that moment, was pure and sweet as a mother's. She was glad to think that the coffee was strong, and would do his head good. She had no other thought in her mind, at that moment.

After the coffee she brought matches and cigarettes, which she offered shyly. Nature had given her an immortal shyness, born of her extreme humility.

"They're all right," she said, "Charlie smoked them." (Charlie was at times a useful memory.)

She struck a match and prepared to light the cigarette. This she did gravely and efficiently, with no sign of feminine consciousness or coquetry. It was part of the solemn evening service of the god. And, as he smoked, the devotee retreated to her chair and watched him.

"Maggie," he said, "supposing Mr. Mumford was to come in?"

"He won't. Sunday's his day; or would be, if I let him 'ave a day."

"Why don't you?"

She shook her head. "I've seen nobody."

There was silence for five minutes.

"Mr. Magendy—"

"Majendie, Maggie, Majendie."

"Mr. Mashendy—I'm beginning to be afraid."

"What are you afraid of?"

"What I've always told you about. That awful feeling. It's coming on again, I think."

"It won't come, Maggie, it won't come. Don't think about it, and it won't come."

He didn't understand very clearly what Maggie was talking about; but he remembered that, last September, after her illness, she had been afraid of something. And he remembered that he had comforted her with some such words as these.

"Yes," said she, "but I feel it coming."

"Maggie, you oughtn't to live alone like this. See here, you ought to marry. You ought to marry Mr. Mumford. Why don't you?"

"I don't want to marry anybody. And I don't love him."

"Well, don't think about that other thing. Don't think about it. You'll be all right."

"I won't think," said Maggie, and thought profoundly.

"Mr. Majendie," she said suddenly.

"Madam."

"You mustn't be afraid. I shall never do anything I know you wouldn't like me to."

"All right. Only don't think too much about that, either."

"I can't help thinking. You've been so good to me."

"I should try and forget that, too, a little more, if I were you. I'm only paying some of Mr. Gorst's debts for him."

The name called up no colour to her cheek. Maggie had forgotten Gorst, and all he had done for her.

"And you're paying me back."

She shook her head. "I can't ever pay you back."

Poor little girl! Was that what her mind was always running on?

There was silence again between them. And then Majendie looked at Maggie.

She was sitting very still, as if she were waiting for something, and yet content. Her eyes were swimming, as if with tears; but there were no tears in them. Her face was reddening, as if with shame, but there was no shame in it. She seemed to be listening, dazed and enchanted, to her own secret, the running whisper of her blood. Her lips were parted, and, as he looked at her, they closed and opened again in sympathy with the delicate tremors that moved her throat under her rounded chin. In her brooding look there was neither reminiscence nor foreboding; it was the look of a creature surrendered wholly to her hour.

As he looked at her his nerves sent an arrow of warning, a hot tremor darting from heart to brain.

"I must go now, Maggie," he said.

When he stood up, his knees shook under him.

"Not yet," said Maggie. "I'm all alone in the house, and I'm afraid."

"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said roughly. "I've got to go."

He strode towards the door while Maggie stared after him in terror. She understood nothing but that he was going to leave her. What had she done to drive him away?

"You're ill," she cried, as she followed him, panting in her fright.

He pushed her back gently from the threshold.

"Don't be a little fool, Maggie. I'm not ill."

Out in the street, five yards from Maggie's door, he battled with a vision of her that almost drove him back again. "It was I who was a fool," he thought. "I shall go back. Why not? She is predestined. Why not I as well as anybody else?"

All the way to his own door an insistent, abominable voice kept calling to him, "Why not? Why not?"

He went with noiseless footsteps up his own stairs, past the dark doors below, past Edith's open door where the lamp still burned brightly beyond the threshold. At Anne's door he paused.

It stood ajar in a dim light. He pushed it softly open and went in.

Anne and her child lay asleep under the silver crucifix.

Peggy had been taken into Anne's bed, and had curled herself close up against her mother's side. Her arm lay on Anne's breast; one hand clutched the border of Anne's nightgown. The long thick braid of Anne's hair was flung back on the pillow, framing the child's golden head in gold.

His eyes filled with tears as he looked at them. For a moment his heart stood still. Why not he as well as anybody else? His heart told him why.

As he turned he sighed. A sigh of longing and tenderness, and of thankfulness for a great deliverance. Above all, of thankfulness.



CHAPTER XXVI

The light burned in Edith's room till morning; for her spine kept sleep from her through many nights. They no longer said, "She is better, or certainly no worse." They said, "She is worse, or certainly no better." The progress of her death could be reckoned by weeks and measured by inches. Soon they would be giving her morphia, to make her sleep. Meanwhile she was terribly awake.

She heard her brother's soft footsteps as he passed her door. She heard him pause on the upper landing and creep into the room overhead. She heard him go out again and shut himself up in the little room beyond. There came upon her an awful intuition of the truth.

The next day she sent for him.

"What is it, Edie?" he said.

She looked at him with loving eyes, and asked him as Maggie had asked, "Are you ill?"

He started. The question brought back to him vividly the scene of the night before; brought back to him Maggie with her love and fear.

"What is it? Tell me," she insisted.

He owned to headaches. She knew he often had them.

"It's not a bit of use," she said, "trying to deceive me. It's not headaches. It's Anne."

"Poor Anne. I think she's all right. After all, she's got the child, you know."

"Yes. She's got Peggy. If I could see you all right, too, I should die happy."

"Don't worry about me. I'm not worth it."

She gazed at him searchingly, confirmed in her intuition. That was the sort of thing poor Charlie used to say.

"It's my fault," she said. "It always has been."

"Angel, if you could lay everybody's sins on your own shoulders, you would."

"I mean it. You were right and I was wrong. Ah, how one pays! Only you've had to pay for my untruthfulness. I can see it now. If I'd done as you asked me, in the beginning, and told her the truth—"

"She wouldn't have married me. No, Edie. You're assuming that I've lived to regret that I married her. I never have regretted it for one single moment. Not for myself, that is. For her, yes. Granted that I'm as unhappy as you please, I'd rather be unhappy with her than happy without her. See?"

"Walter—if you keep true to her, I believe you'll have your happiness yet. I don't know how it's coming. It may come very late. But it's bound to come. She's good—"

He assented with a groan. "Oh, much too good."

"And the goodness in her must recognise the goodness in you; when she understands. I believe she's beginning to understand. She doesn't know how much she understands."

"Understands what?"

"Your goodness. She loved you for it. She'll love you for it again."

"My dear Edie, you're the only person who believes in my goodness—you and Peggy."

"I and Peggy. And Charlie and the Hannays. And Nanna and the Gardners—and God."

"I wish God would give Anne a hint that He thinks well of me."

"Dear—if you keep true to her—He will."

If he kept true to her! It was the second time she had said it. It was almost as if she had divined what had so nearly happened.

"I think," she said, "I'd like to talk to Anne, now, while I can talk. You see, once they go giving me morphia"—she closed her eyes. "Just let me lie still for half an hour, and then bring Anne to me."

She lay still. He watched her for an hour. And he knew that in that hour she had prayed.

He found Anne sitting on the nursery floor, playing with Peggy. "Edie wants you," he said, loosening Peggy's little hands as they clung about his legs.

"Mother must go, darling," said she.

But all Peggy said was, "Daddy'll stay."

He did not stay long. He had to restrain himself, to go carefully with Peggy, lest he should help her to make her mother's heart ache.

Anne found Nanna busied about the bed. Nanna was saying, "Is that any easier, Miss Edie?"

"It's heavenly, Nanna," said Edie, stifling a moan. "Oh dear, I hope in the next world I shan't feel as if my spine were still with me, like people when their legs are cut off."

"Miss Edie, what an idea!"

"Well, Nanna, you can't tell whether it mayn't be so. Anne, dear, you've got such a nice, pretty body, why have you such a withering contempt for it? It behaves so well to you, too. That's more than I can say of mine; and yet, I believe I shall quite miss it when it's gone. At any rate, I shall be glad that I was decent to the poor thing while it was with me. Run away now, please, Nanna, and shut the door."

Nanna thought she knew why Miss Edie wanted the door shut. She, too, had her intuitive forebodings. She was aware, the whole household was aware, that the mistress cared more for her child than for the husband who had given it her. Their master's life was not altogether happy. They wondered many times how he was going to stand it.

"Anne" said Edith, "I'm uneasy about Walter."

"You need not be," said Anne.

"Why? Aren't you?"

"I know he hasn't been well lately—"

"How can you expect him to be well when he's so unhappy?"

Anne was silent.

"How long is it going to last, dear? And where is it going to end?"

"Edith, you needn't be afraid. I shall never leave him."

That was not what Edith was afraid of, but she did not say so.

"How can I," Anne went on, "when I believe the Church's doctrine of marriage?"

"Do you? Do you believe that love is a provision for the soul's redemption of the body? or for the body's redemption of the soul?"

"I believe that, having married Walter, whatever he is or does, I cannot leave him without great sin."

"Then you'll be shocked when I tell you that if your husband were a bad man, I should be the first to implore you to leave him, though he is my brother. Where there can be no love on either side there's no marriage, and no sacrament. That's my profane belief."

"And when there's love on one side only?"

"The sacrament is there, offered by the loving person, and refused by the unloving. And that refusal, my dear child, may, if you like, be a great sin—supposing, of course, that the love is pure and devoted. I hardly know which is the worst sin, then, to refuse to give, or to refuse to take it; or to take it, and then throw it away. What would you think if Peggy hardened her little heart against you?"

"My Peggy!"

"Yes, your Peggy. It's the same thing. You'll see it some day. But I want you to see it now, before it's too late."

"Edie, if you'd only tell me where I've failed! If you're thinking of our—our separation—"

"I was not. But, since you have mentioned it, I can't help reminding you that you fell in love with Walter because you thought he was a saint. And so I don't see what's to prevent you now. He's qualifying. He mayn't be perfect; but, in some ways, a saint couldn't very well do more. Has it never occurred to that you are indulging the virtue that comes easiest to you, and exacting from him the virtue that comes hardest? And he has stood the test."

"It was his own doing—his own wish."

"Is it? I doubt it—when he's more in love with you than he was before he married you."

"That's all over."

"For you. Not for him. He's a man, as you may say, of obstinate affections."

"Ah, Edie—you don't know."

"I know," said Edith, "you're perfectly sweet, the way you take my scoldings. It's cowardly of me, when I'm lying here safe, and you can't scold back again. But I wouldn't do it if I didn't love you."

"I know—I know you love me."

"But I couldn't love you so much, if I didn't love Walter more."

"You well may, Edie. He's been a good brother to you."

"Some day you'll own he's been as good a husband as he's been a brother. Better; for it's a more difficult post, my dear. I don't really think my body, spine and all, can have tried him more than your spirit."

"What have I done? Tell me—tell me."

"Done? Oh, Nancy, I hate to have to say it to you. What haven't you done? There's no way in which you haven't hurt and humiliated him. I'm not thinking of your separation—I'm thinking of the way you've treated him, and his affection for you and Peggy. You won't let him love you. You won't even let him love his little girl."

"Does he say that?"

"Would he say it? People in my peculiar position don't require to have things said to them; they say them. You see, if I didn't say them now I should have to get up out of my grave and do it, and that would be ten times more disagreeable for you. It might even be very uncomfortable for me."

"Edie, I wish I knew when you were serious."

"Well, if I'm not serious now, when shall I be?"

Anne smiled. "You're very like Walter."

"Yes. He's every bit as serious as I am. And he's getting more and more serious every day."

"Oh, Edie, you don't understand. I—I've suffered so terribly."

"I do understand. I've gone through it—every pang of it—and it's all come back to me again through your suffering—and I know it's been worse for you. I've told him so. It's because I don't want you to suffer more that I'm saying these awful things to you."

"Oh! Am I to suffer more?"

"I believe that's the only way your happiness can come to you—through great suffering. I'm only afraid that the suffering may come through Peggy, if you don't take care."

"Peggy—"

It was her own terror put into words.

"Yes. That child has a terrible capacity for loving. And for her that means suffering. She loves you. She loves her father. Do you suppose she won't suffer when she sees? Her little heart will be torn in two between you."

"Oh, Edith—I cannot bear it."

She hid her face from the anguish.

"You needn't. That's it. It rests with you."

"With me? If you would only tell me how."

"I can't tell you anything. It'll come. Probably in the way you least expect it. But—it'll come."

"Edie, I feel as if you held us all together. And when you've gone—"

"You mean when it's gone. When it's 'gone,'" said Edie, smiling. "I shall hold you together all the more. You needn't sigh like that."

"Did I sigh?"

As Anne stooped over the bed she sighed again, thinking how Edith's loving arms used to leap up and hold her, and how they could never hold anything any more.

Of all the things that Edith said to her that afternoon, two remained fixed in Anne's memory: how Peggy would suffer through overmuch loving—she remembered that saying, because it had confirmed her terror; and how love was a provision for the soul's redemption of the body, or for the body's redemption of the soul. This she remembered, because she did not understand it.

That was in August. Before the month was out they were beginning to give Edith morphia.

In September Gorst came to see her for the last time.

In October she died in her brother's arms.

In the days that followed, it was as if her spirit, refusing to depart from them, had rested on the sister she had loved. Spirit to spirit, she stooped, kindling in Anne her own dedicated flame. In the white death-chamber, and through the quiet house, the presence of Anne, moving with a hushed footfall, was like the presence of a blessed spirit. Her face was as a face long hidden upon the heart of peace. Her very grief aspired; it had wings, lifting her towards her sister in her heavenly place.

For Anne, in the days that followed, was possessed by a great and burning charity. Mrs. Hannay called and was taken into the white room to see Edith. And Anne's heart went out to Mrs. Hannay, when she spoke of the beauty and goodness of Edith; and to Lawson Hannay, when he pressed her hand without speaking; and to Gorst, when she saw him stealing on tiptoe from Edith's room, his face swollen and inflamed with grief. Her heart went out to all of them, because they had loved Edith.

And to her husband her heart went out with a tenderness born of an immense pity and compassion. For the first three days, Majendie gave no sign that he was shaken by his sister's death. But on the evening of the day they buried her, Anne found him in the study, sitting in his low chair by the fire, his head sunk, his body bowed forward over his knees, convulsed with a nervous shivering. He started and stared at her approach, and straightened himself suddenly. She held out her hand. He looked at it dumbly, as if unwilling or afraid to take it.

"My dear," she said softly.

Then she knelt beside him, and drew his head down upon her breast, and let it rest there.



CHAPTER XXVII

It was a Thursday night in October, three weeks after Edith's death. Anne was in her room, undressing. She moved noiselessly, with many tender precautions, for fear of waking Peggy, and for fear of destroying the peace that possessed her own soul like heavenly sleep. It was the mystic mood that went before prayer.

In those three weeks Anne felt that she had been brought very near to God. She had not known such stillness and content since the days at Scarby that had made her life terrible. It was as if Edith's spirit in bliss had power given it to help her sister, to draw Anne with it into the divine presence.

And the dead woman bound the living to each other also, as she had said. How she bound them Anne had not realised until to-day. It was Mrs. Elliott's day, her Thursday. Anne had spent half an hour in Thurston Square, and had come away with a cold, unsatisfactory feeling towards Fanny. Fanny, for the first time, had jarred on her. She had so plainly hesitated between condolence and congratulation. She seemed to be secretly rejoicing in Edith Majendie's death. Her manner intimated clearly that a burden had been removed from her friend's life, and that the time had now come for Anne to blossom out and enjoy herself. Anne had been glad to get away from Fanny, to come back to the house in Prior Street and to find Walter waiting for her. Fanny, in spite of her intellectual rarity, lacked the sense that, after all, he had, the sense of Edith's spiritual perfection. Strangely, inconsistently, incomprehensibly, he had it. He and his wife had that in common, if they had nothing else. They were bound to each other by Edith's dear and sacred memory, an immaterial, immortal tie. They would always share their knowledge of her. Other people might take for granted that her terrible illness had loosened, little by little, the bond that held them to her. They knew that it was not so. They never found themselves declining on the mourner's pitiful commonplaces, "Poor Edie"; "She is released"; "It's a mercy she was taken." It was their tribute to Edith's triumphant personality that they mourned for her as for one cut off in the fulness of a strong, beneficent life.

For those three weeks Anne remained to her husband all that she had been on the night of Edith's burial.

And, as she felt that nobody but her husband understood what she had lost in Edith, she realised for the first time his kindred to his sister. She forced herself to dwell on his many admirable qualities. He was unselfish, chivalrous, the soul of honour. On his chivalry, which touched her more nearly than his other virtues, she was disposed to put a very high interpretation. She felt that, in his way, he acknowledged her spiritual perfection, also, and reverenced it. If their relations only continued as they were, she believed that she would yet be happy with him. To think of him as she had once been obliged to think was to profane the sorrow that sanctified him now. She was persuaded that the shock of Edith's death had changed him, that he was ennobled by his grief. She could not yet see that the change was in herself. She said to herself that her prayers for him were answered.

For it was no longer an effort, painful and perfunctory, to pray for her husband. Since Edith's death she had prayed for him, as she had prayed in the time of reconciliation that followed her first discovery of his sin. She was horrified when she realised how in six years her passion of redemption had grown cold. It was there that she had failed him, in letting go the immaterial hold by which she might have drawn him with her into the secret shelter of the Unseen. She perceived that in those years her spiritual life had suffered by the invasion of her earthly trouble. She had approached the silent shelter with cries of supplication for herself and for her child, the sweet mortal thing she had loved above all mortal things. Every year had made it harder for her to reach the sources of her help, hardest of all to achieve the initiatory state, the nakedness, the prostration, the stillness of the dedicated soul. Too many miseries cried and strove in her. She could no longer shut to her door, and bar the passage to the procession of her thoughts, no longer cleanse and empty her spirit's house for the divine thing she desired to dwell with her.

And now she was restored to her peace; lifted up and swept, effortless, into the place of heavenly help. Anne's soul had no longer to reach out her hand and feel her way to God, for it was God who sought for her and found her. She heard behind her, as it were, the footsteps of the divine pursuing power. Once more, as in the mystic days before her marriage, she had only to close her eyes, and the communion was complete. At night, when her prayer was ended, she lay motionless in the darkness, till she seemed to pass into the ultimate bliss, beyond the reach of prayer. There were moments when she felt herself to be close upon the very vision of God, the beatitude of the pure.

After these moments Anne found herself contemplating her own inviolate sanctity.

There was in Anne an immense sincerity, underlying a perfect tangle of minute deceptions and hypocrisies. She was not deceived as to the supreme event. She was truly experiencing the great spiritual passion which, alone of passions, is destined to an immortal satisfaction. She had all but touched the end of the saint's progress. But she was ignorant, both of the paths that brought her there, and the paths that had led and might again lead, her feet astray.

Each night, when she closed her bedroom door, she felt that she was entering into a sanctuary. She was profoundly, tenderly grateful to her husband for the renunciation that made that refuge possible to her. She accepted her blessed isolation as his gift.

This Thursday had been a day of little lacerating distractions. She had gone through it thirsting for the rest and surrender, the healing silence of the night.

She undressed slowly, being by nature thorough and deliberate in all her movements.

She was standing before her looking-glass, about to unpin her hair, when she heard a low knock at her door. Majendie had been detained, and was late in coming to take his last look at Peggy before going to bed.

Anne opened the door softly, and signed to him to make no noise. He stole on tiptoe to the child's cot, and stood there for a moment. Then he came and sat down in the chair by the dressing-table, where Anne was standing with her arms raised, unpinning her hair. Majendie had always admired that attitude in Anne. It was simple, calm, classic, and superbly feminine. Her long white wrapper clothed her more perfectly than any dress.

He sat looking at the quick white fingers untwisting the braid of hair. It hung divided into three strands, still rippling with the braiding, still dull with its folded warmth. She combed the three into one sleek sheet that covered her like a veil, drawn close over head and shoulders. Her face showed smooth and saint-like between the cloistral bands. Majendie thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than that face and hair, with their harmonies of dull gold and sombre white.

"I like you," he said; "but isn't the style just a trifle severe?"

Anne said nothing. She was trying to forget his presence while she yet permitted it.

"Do you mind my looking at you like this?"

"No."

(They spoke in low voices, for fear of waking the sleeping child.)

She took up her brush, and with a turn of her head swept her hair forward over one shoulder. It hung in one mass to her waist. Then she began to brush it.

The first strokes of the brush stirred the dull gold that slept in its ashen furrows. A shining undulation passed through it, and broke, at the ends, as it were, into a curling golden foam. Then Anne stood up and tossed it backwards. Her brush went deep and straight, like a ploughshare, turning up the rich, smooth swell of the under-gold; it went light on the top, till numberless little threads of hair rippled, and rose, and knitted themselves, and lay on her head like a fine gold net; then, with a few swift swimming movements, upwards and outwards. It scattered the whole mass into drifting strands and flying wings and soft falling feathers, and, under them, little tender curls of flaxen down. With another stroke of the brush and a shake of her head, Anne's hair rose in one whorl and fell again, and broke into a shower of woven spray; pure gold in every thread.

Majendie held out a shy hand and caught the receding curl of it. Its faint fragrance reached him, winging a shaft of memory. His nerves shook him, and he looked away.

Anne had been cool and business-like in every motion, unconscious of her effect, unconscious almost of him. Now she gathered her hair into one mass, and began plaiting it rapidly, desiring thus to hasten his departure. She flung back the stiff braid, and laid her finger on the extinguisher of the shaded lamp, as a hint for him to go.

"Anne," he whispered, "Anne—"

The whisper struck fear into her.

She faced him calmly, coldly; not unkindly. Unkindness would have given him more hope than that pitiless imperturbability.

"Have you anything to say to me?" she said.

"No."

"Well, then, will you be good enough to go?"

"Do you really mean it?"

"I always mean what I say. I haven't said my prayers yet."

"And when you have said them?"

She had turned out the lamp, so that she might not see his unhappy face. She did not see it; she only saw her spiritual vision destroyed and scattered, and the havoc of dreams, resurgent, profaning heavenly sleep.

"Please," she whispered, "please, if you love me, leave me to myself."

He left her; and her heart turned after him as he went, and blessed him.

"He is good, after all," her heart said.

But Majendie's heart had hardened. He said to himself, "She is too much for me." As he lay awake thinking of her, he remembered Maggie. He remembered that Maggie loved him, and that he had gone away from her and left her, because he loved Anne. And now, because he loved Anne, he would go to Maggie. He remembered that it was on Fridays that he used to go and see her.

Very well, to-morrow night would be Friday night.

To-morrow night he would go and see her.

And yet, when to-morrow night came, he did not go. He never went until December, when Maggie's postal orders left off coming. Then he knew that Maggie was ill again. She had been fretting. He knew it; although, this time, she had not written to tell him so.

He went, and found Maggie perfectly well. The postal orders had not come, because the last lady, the lady with the title, had not paid her. Maggie was good as gold again, placid and at peace.

"Why," he asked himself bitterly, "why did I not leave her to her peace?"

And a still more bitter voice answered, "Why not you, as well as anybody else?"



BOOK III



CHAPTER XXVIII

Eastward along the Humber, past the brown wharves and the great square blocks of the warehouses, past the tall chimneys and the docks with their thin pine-forest of masts, there lie the forlorn flat lands of Holderness. Field after field, they stretch, lands level as water, only raised above the river by a fringe of turf and a belt of silt and sand. Earth and water are of one form and of one colour, for, beyond the brown belt, the widening river lies like a brown furrowed field, with a clayey gleam on the crests of its furrows. When the grey days come, water and earth and sky are one, and the river rolls sluggishly, as if shores and sky oppressed it, as if it took its motion from the dragging clouds.

Eleven miles from Scale a thin line of red roofs runs for a field's length up the shore, marking the neck of the estuary. It is the fishing hamlet of Fawlness. Its one street lies on the flat fields low and straight as a dyke.

Beyond the hamlet there is a little spit of land, and beyond the spit of land a narrow creek.

Half a mile up the creek the path that follows it breaks off into the open country, and thins to a track across five fields. It struggles to the gateway of a low, red-roofed, red-brick farm, and ends there. The farm stands alone, and the fields around it are bare to the skyline. Three tall elms stand side by side against it, sheltering it from the east, marking its humble place in the desolate land. To the west a broad bridle-path joins the road to Fawlness.

Majendie had a small yacht moored in the creek, near where the path breaks off to Three Elms Farm. Once, sometimes twice, a week, Majendie came to Three Elms Farm. Sometimes he came for the week-end, more often for a single night, arriving at six in the evening, and leaving very early the next day. In winter he took the train to Hesson, tramped seven miles across country, and reached the farm by the Fawlness road. In summer the yacht brought him from "Hannay & Majendie's" dock to Fawlness creek. At Three Elms Farm he found Maggie waiting for him.

This had been going on, once, sometimes twice a week, for nearly three years, ever since he had rented the farm and brought Maggie from Scale to live there.

The change had made the details of his life difficult. It called for all the qualities in which Majendie was most deficient. It necessitated endless vigilance, endless harassing precautions, an unnatural secrecy. He had to make Anne believe that he had taken to yachting for his health, that he was kept out by wind and weather, that the obligations and complexities of business, multiplying, tied him, and claimed his time. Maggie had to be hidden away, in a place where no one came, lodged with people whose discretion he could trust. Pearson, the captain of his yacht, a close-mouthed, close-fisted Yorkshireman, had a wife as reticent as himself. Pearson and his wife and their son Steve knew that their living depended on their secrecy. And cupidity apart, the three were devoted to their master and his mistress. Pearson and his son Steve were acquainted with the ways of certain gentlemen of Scale, who sailed their yachts from port to port, up and down the Yorkshire coast. Pearson was a man who observed life dispassionately. He asked no questions and answered none.

It was six o'clock in the evening, early in October, just three years after Edith's death. Majendie had left the yacht lying in the creek with Pearson, Steve, and the boatswain on board, and was hurrying along the field path to Three Elms Farm. A thin rain fell, blurring the distances. The house stood humbly, under its three elms. A light was burning in one window. Maggie stood at the garden gate in the rain, listening for the click of the field gate which was his signal. When it sounded she came down the path to meet him. She put her hands upon his shoulders, drew down his face and kissed him. He took her arm and led her, half clinging to him, into the house and into the lighted room.

A fire burned brightly on the hearth. His chair was set for him beside it, and Maggie's chair opposite. The small round table in the middle of the room was laid for supper. Maggie had decorated walls and chimney-piece and table with chrysanthemums from the garden, and autumn leaves and ivy from the hedgerows. The room had a glad light and welcome for him.

As he came into the lamplight Maggie gave one quick anxious look at him. She had always two thoughts in her little mind between their meetings: Is he ill? Is he well?

He was, to the outward seeing eye, superlatively well. Three years of life lived in the open air, life lived according to the will of nature, had given him back his outward and visible health. At thirty-nine, Majendie had once more the strength, the firm, upright slenderness, and the brilliance of his youth. His face was keen and brown, fined and freshened by wind and weather.

Maggie, waiting humbly on his mood, saw that it was propitious.

"What cold hands," said she. "And no overcoat? You bad boy." She felt his clothes all over to feel if they were damp. "Tired?"

"Just a little, Maggie."

She drew up his chair to the fire, and knelt down to unlace his boots.

"No, Maggie, I can't let you take my boots off."

"Yes, you can, and you will. Does she ever take your boots off?"

"Never."

"You don't allow her?"

"No. I don't allow her."

"You allow me" said Maggie triumphantly. She was persuaded that (since his wife was denied the joy of waiting on him) hers was the truly desirable position. Majendie had never had the heart to enlighten her.

She pressed his feet with her soft hands, to feel if his stockings were damp, too.

"There's a little hole," she cried. "I shall have to mend that to-night."

She put cushions at his back, and sat down on the floor beside him, and laid her head on his knee.

"There's a sole for supper," said she, in a dreamy voice, "and a roast chicken. And an apple tart. I made it." Maggie had always been absurdly proud of the things that she could do.

"Clever Maggie."

"I made it because I thought you'd like it."

"Kind Maggie."

"You didn't get any of those things yesterday, or the day before, did you?"

She was always afraid of giving him what he had had at home. That was one of the difficulties, she felt, of a double household.

"I forget," he said, a little wearily, "what I had yesterday."

Maggie noticed the weariness and said no more.

He laid his hand on her head and stroked her hair. He could always keep Maggie quiet by stroking her hair. She shifted herself instantly into a position easier for his hand. She sat still, only turning to the caressing hand, now her forehead, now the nape of her neck, now her delicate ear.

Maggie knew all his moods and ministered to them. She knew to-night that, if she held her tongue, the peace she had prepared for him would sink into him and heal him. He was not very tired. She could tell. She could measure his weariness to a degree by the movements of his hand. When he was tired she would seize the caressing hand and make it stop. In a few minutes supper would be ready, and when he had had supper, she knew, it would be time to talk.

Majendie was grateful for her silence. He was grateful to her for many things, for her beauty, for her sweetness, for her humility, for her love which had given so much and asked so little. Maggie had still the modest charm that gave to her and to her affection the illusion of a perfect innocence. It had been heightened rather than diminished by their intimacy.

Somehow she had managed so that, as long as he was with her, shame was impossible for himself or her. As long as he was with her he was wrapped in her illusion, the illusion of innocence, of happiness, of all the unspoken sanctities of home. He knew that whether he was or was not with her, as long as he loved her no other man would come between him and her; no other man would cross his threshold and stand upon his hearth. The house he came to was holy to her. There were times, so deep was the illusion, when he could have believed that Maggie, sitting there at his feet, was the pure spouse, the helpmate, and Anne, in the house in Prior Street, the unwedded, unacknowledged mistress, the distant, the secret, the forbidden. He had never disguised from Maggie the temporary and partial nature of the tie that bound them. But the illusion was too strong for both of them. It was strong upon him now.

The woman, Mrs. Pearson, came in with supper, moving round the room in silence, devoted and discreet.

Majendie was hungry. Maggie was unable to conceal her frank joy in seeing him eat and drink. She ate little and talked a great deal, drawn by his questions.

"What have you been doing, Maggie?"

Maggie gave an account of her innocent days, of her labours in house and farm and garden. She loved all three, she loved her flowers and her chickens and her rabbits, and the little young pigs. She loved all things that had life. She was proud of her house. Her hands were always busy in it. She had stitched all the linen for it. She had made all the tablecloths, sofa covers and curtains, and given to them embroidered borders. She liked to move about among all these beautiful things and feel that they were hers. But she loved those most which Majendie had used, or noticed, or admired. After supper she took up her old position by his chair.

"How long can you stay?" said she.

"I must go to-morrow."

"Oh, why?"

"I've told you why, dear. It's my little girl's birthday to-morrow."

She remembered.

"Her birthday. How old will she be to-morrow?"

"Seven."

"Seven. What does she do all day long?"

"Oh, she amuses herself. We have a garden."

"How she would love this garden, and the flowers, and the swing, and the chickens, and all the animals, wouldn't she?"

"Yes. Yes."

Somehow he didn't like Maggie to talk about his child, but he hadn't the heart to stop her.

"Is she as pretty as she was?"

"Prettier."

"And she's not a bit like you."

"Not a bit, not a little bit."

"I'm glad," said Maggie.

"Why on earth are you glad?"

"Because—I couldn't bear her child to be like you."

"You mustn't say those things, Maggie, I don't like it."

"I won't say them. You don't mind my thinking them, do you? I can't help thinking."

She thought for a long time; then she got up, and came to him, and put her arm round his neck, and bowed her head and whispered.

"Don't whisper. I hate it. Speak out. Say what you've got to say."

"I can't say it."

She said it very low.

He bent forward, freeing himself from her mouth and clinging arm.

"No, Maggie. Never. I told you that in the beginning. You promised me you wouldn't think of it. It's bad enough as it is."

"What's bad enough?"

"Everything, my child. I'm bad enough, if you like; but I'm not as bad as all that, I can assure you."

"You don't think me bad?"

"You know I don't. You know what I think of you. But you must learn to see what's possible and what isn't."

"I do see. Tell me one thing. Is it because you love her?"

"We can't go into that, Maggie. Can't you understand that it may be because I love you?"

"I don't know. But I don't mind so long as I know it isn't only because you love her."

"You're not to talk about her, Maggie."

"I know. I won't. I don't want to talk about her, I'm sure. I try not to think about her more than I can help."

"But you must think of her."

"Oh—must I?"

"At any rate, you must think of me."

"I do think of you. I think of you from morning till night. I don't think of anything else. I don't want anything else. I'm contented as long as I've got you. It wasn't that."

"What was it, Maggie?"

"Nothing. Only—it's so awfully lonely in between, when you're not here. That was why I asked you."

"Poor child, poor Maggie. Is it very bad to bear?"

"Not when I know you're coming."

"See here—if it gets too bad to bear, we must end it."

"End it?"

"Yes, Maggie. You must end it; you must give me up, when you're tired—"

"Oh no—no," she cried.

"Give me up," he repeated, "and go back to town."

"To Scale?"

"Well, yes; if it's so lonely here."

"And give you up?"

"Yes, Maggie, you must; if you go back to Scale."

"I shall never go back. Who could I go to? There's nobody who'd 'ave me. I've got nobody."

"Nobody?"

"Nobody but you, Wallie. Nobody but you. Have you never thought of that? Why, where should I be if I was to give you up?"

"I see, Maggie. I see. I see."

Up till then he had seen nothing. But Maggie, unwise, had put her hand through the fine web of illusion. She had seen, and made him see, the tragedy of the truth behind it, the real nature of the tie that bound them. It was an inconsistent tie, permanent in its impermanence, with all its incompleteness terribly complete. He could not give her up; he had not thought of giving her up; but neither had he thought of keeping her.

It was all wrong. It was wrong to keep her. It would be wrong to give her up. He was all she had. Whatever happened he could not give her up.

And so he said, "I see. I see."

"See here," said she (she had adopted some of his phrases), "when I said there was nobody, I meant nobody I'd have anything to do with. If I went back to Scale, there are plenty of low girls in the town who'd make friends with me, if I'd let 'em. But I won't be seen with them. You wouldn't have me seen with them, would you?"

"No, Maggie, not for all the world."

"Well, then, 'ow can you go on talking about my giving you up?"

No. He could not give her up. There was no tie between them but their sin, yet he could not break it. Degraded as it was, it saved him from deeper degradation.

He loved Anne with his whole soul, with his heart and with his body, and he had given his body to Maggie, with as much heart as went with it. In the world's sight he loved Maggie and was bound to Anne. In his own sight he loved Anne and was bound to Maggie.

It had come to that.

He did not care to look back upon the steps by which it had come. He only knew that, seven years ago, he had been sound and whole, a man with one aim and one passion and one life. Now he and his life were divided, cut clean in two by a line not to be passed or touched upon by either sundered half. All of him that Anne had rejected he had given to Maggie.

As far as he could judge he had acted, not grossly, not recklessly, but with a kind of passionate deliberation. He knew he would have to pay for it. He had not stopped to haggle with his conscience or to ask: how much? But he was prepared to pay.

Up to this moment his conscience had not dunned him. But now he foresaw a season when the bills would be falling due.

Maggie had torn the veil of illusion, and he looked for the first time upon his sin.

Even his conscience admitted that he had not meant it to come to that. He had had no ancient private tendency to sin. He wanted nothing but to live at home, happy with the wife he loved, and with his child, his children. And poor Maggie, she too would have asked no more than to be a good wife to the man she loved, and to be the mother of his children.