Afterwards, when Maggie looked back she was baffled. She tried to disentangle the events between that moment when Grace, holding the lamp in her hand, blinked at them as they came across the lawn, and that other most awful moment when, in Paul's study, Grace declared final and irrevocable war.
Between those two events ran the history of more than two years, and there was nothing stranger than the way that the scene in the garden and the scene in the study seemed to Maggie to be close together. What were the steps, she used to ask herself afterwards, that led to those last months of fury and tragedy and disaster? Was it my fault? Was it hers? Was it Paul's? What happened? If I had not done this or that, if Grace had not said—no, it was hopeless. She would break off in despair. Isolated scenes appeared before her, always bound, on either side, by that prologue and that finale, but the scenes would not form a chain. She could not connect; she would remain until the end bewildered as to Grace's motives. She never, until the day of her death, was to understand Grace.
"She was angry for such little things," she said afterwards.
"She hated me to be myself." The two years in retrospect seemed to have passed with incredible swiftness, the months that followed them were heavy and slow with trouble. But from the very first, that is, from the moment when Grace saw Paul kiss Maggie in the evening garden, battle was declared. Maggie might not know it, but it was so-and Grace knew it very well.
It may be said, however, in Grace's defence that she gave Maggie every chance. She marvelled at her own patience. For two years after that moment, when she decided that Maggie was "queer," and that her beloved Paul was in real danger of his losing his soul because of that "queerness," she held her hand. She was not naturally a patient woman-she was not introspective enough to be that—and she held no brief for Maggie. Nevertheless for two whole years she held her hand...
They were, all three, in that ugly house, figures moving in the dark. Grace simply knew, as the months passed, that she disliked and feared Maggie more and more; Paul knew that as the months passed—well, what he knew will appear in the following pages. And Maggie? She only knew that it needed all her endurance and stubborn will to force herself to accept this life as her life. She must-she must. To give way meant to run away, and to run away meant to long for what she could not have, and loneliness and defeat. She would make this into a success; she would care for Paul although she could not give him all that he needed. She would and she could... Every morning as she lay awake in the big double-bed with the brass knobs at the bed-foot winking at her in the early light she vowed that she would justify her acceptance of the man who lay sleeping so peacefully beside her. Poor child, her battle with Grace was to teach her how far her will and endurance could carry her...
Grace, on her side, was not a bad woman, she was simply a stupid one. She disliked Maggie for what seemed to her most admirable reasons and, as that dislike slowly, slowly turned into hatred, her self-justification only hardened.
Until that moment, when she saw a faded patch of wall-paper on the wall instead of her mother's portrait, she had no doubts whatever about the success of what she considered her choice. Maggie was a "dear," young, ignorant, helpless, but the very wife for Paul. Then slowly, slowly, the picture changed. Maggie was obstinate, Maggie was careless, Maggie was selfish, idle, lazy, irreligious—at last, Maggie was "queer."
Then, when in the dusk of that summer evening, she saw Paul kiss Maggie, as the moths blundered about her lamp, her stolid unimaginative heart was terrified. This girl, who was she? What had she been before they found her? What was this strange passion in Paul isolating him from her, his sister? This girl was dangerous to them all-a heathen. They had made a terrible mistake. Paul had been from the first bewitched by some strange spell, and she, his sister, had aided the witch.
And yet, to her credit be it remembered, for two years, she fought her fears, superstitions, jealousies, angers. That can have been no easy thing for a woman who had always had her own way. But Maggie helped her. There were many days during that first year at any rate when Grace thought that the girl was, after all, only the simple harmless child that she had first found her.
It was so transparently clear that Maggie bore no malice against any one in the world, that when she angered Grace she did so always by accident, never by plan-it was only unfortunate that the accidents should occur so often.
Maggie's days were from the very first of the utmost regularity. Breakfast at 8.30, then an interview with the cook (Grace generally in attendance here), then shopping (with Grace), luncheon at 1.30, afternoon, paying calls or receiving them, dinner 7.45, and after dinner, reading a book while Paul and Grace played bezique, or, if Paul was busy upon a sermon or a letter (he wrote letters very slowly), patience with Grace. This regular day was varied with meetings, choir practices, dinner-parties, and an occasional Penny Reading.
In this framework of the year it would have appeared that there was very little that could breed disturbance. There were, however, little irritations. Maggie would have given a great deal could she have been allowed to interview the cook in the morning alone.
It would seem impossible to an older person that Grace's presence could so embarrass Maggie; it embarrassed her to the terrible extent of driving every idea out of her head.
When Maggie had stammered and hesitated and at last allowed, the cook to make a suggestion, Grace would say. "You mustn't leave it all to cook, dear. Now what about a nice shepherd's pie?"
The cook, who hated Grace, would toss her head.
"Impossible to-day, Mum ... Quite impossible."
"Oh, do you think so?" Maggie would say.
This was the cook's opportunity.
"Well, for you, Mum, I'll see if it can't be managed. Difficult as it is."
Grace's anger boiled over.
"That woman must go," she insisted.
"Very well," said Maggie.
Cook after cook appeared and vanished. They all hated Grace.
"You're not very good at keeping servants, are you, Maggie, dear?" said Grace.
Then there was the shopping. Grace's conversation was the real trouble here. Grace's stories had seemed rather a joke in London, soon, in Skeaton, they became a torture. From the vicarage to the High Street was not far, but it was far enough for Grace's narrative powers to stretch their legs and get a healthy appetite for the day's work. Grace walked very slowly, because of her painful breathing. Her stout stolid figure in its stiff clothes (the skirt rather short, thick legs in black stockings and large flat boots), marched along. She had a peculiar walk, planting each foot on the ground with deliberate determination as though she were squashing a malignant beetle, she was rather short-sighted, but did not wear glasses, because, as she said to Maggie, "one need not look peculiar until one must." Her favourite head-gear was a black straw hat with a rather faded black ribbon and a huge pin stuck skewer-wise into it. This pin was like a dagger.
She peered around her as she walked, and for ever enquired of Maggie, "who that was on the other Bide of the road." Maggie, of course, did not know, and there began then a long cross-questioning as to colour, clothes, height, smile or frown. Nothing was too small to catch Grace's interest but nothing caught it for long. Maggie, at the end of her walk felt as though she were beset by a whirl of little buzzing flies. She noticed that Paul had, from, long habit, learnt to continue his own thoughts during Grace's stories, and she also tried to do this, but she was not clever at it because Grace would suddenly stop and say, "Where was I, Maggie?" and then when Maggie was confused regard her suspiciously, narrowing her eyes into little thin points. The shopping was difficult because Grace would stand at Maggie's elbow and say: "Now, Maggie, this is your affair, isn't it? You decide what you want," and then when Maggie had decided, Grace simply, to show her power, would say: "Oh, I don't think we'd better have that ... No, I don't think we'll have that. Will you show us something else, please?"-and so they had to begin all over again.
Nevertheless, throughout their first summer Maggie was almost happy; not QUITE happy, some silent but persistent rebellion at the very centre of her heart prevented her complete happiness. What she really felt was that half of her-the rebellious, questioning, passionate half of her-was asleep, and that at all costs, whatever occurred, she must keep it asleep. That was her real definite memory of her first year-that, through it all, she was wilfully, deliberately drugged.
Every one thought Paul very strange that summer. Mr. Flaunders, the curate, told Miss Purves that he was very "odd." "He was always the most tranquil man-a sunny nature, as you know, Miss Purves. Well now, I assure you, he's never the same from one minute to another. His temper is most uncertain, and one never can tell of what he's thinking. You know he took the Collects in the wrong order last Sunday, and last night he read the wrong lesson. Two days ago he was quite angry with me because I suggested another tune for 'Lead Kindly Light'-unlike himself, unlike himself."
"To what do you attribute this, Mr. Flaunders?" said Miss Purves. "You know our vicar so well."
"I'm sure I can't tell what it is," said Mr. Flaunders, sighing.
"Can it be his marriage?" said Miss Purves.
"I'm sure," said Mr. Flaunders, flushing, "that it can be nothing to do with Mrs. Trenchard. That's a fine woman, Miss Purves, a fine woman."
"She seems a little strange," said Miss Purves. "Why doesn't she let her hair grow? It's hardly Christian as it is."
"It's her health, I expect," said Mr. Flaunders.
Paul was very gentle and good to Maggie all that summer, better to her than any human being had ever been before. She became very fond of him, and yet it was not, apparently, her affection that he wanted. He seemed to be for ever on the verge of asking her some question and then checking himself. He was suddenly silent; she caught him looking at her in odd, furtive ways.
He made love to her and then suddenly checked himself, going off, leaving her alone. During these months she did everything she could for him. She knew that she was not satisfying him, because she could give him only affection and not love. But everything that he wanted her to do she did. And they never, through all those summer months, had one direct honest conversation. They were afraid.
She began to see, very clearly, his faults. His whole nature was easy, genial, and, above all, lazy. He liked to be liked, and she Was often astonished at the pleasure with which he received compliments. He had a conceit of himself, not as a man but as a clergyman, and she knew that nothing pleased him so much as when people praised his "good-natured humanity."
She saw him "play-acting," as she called it, that is, bringing forward a succession of little tricks, a jolly laugh, an enthusiastic opinion, a pretence of humility, a man-of-the-world air, all things not very bad in themselves, but put on many years ago, subconsciously as an actor puts on powder and paint. She saw that he was especially sensitive to lay opinion, liked to be thought a good fellow by the laymen in the place. To be popular she was afraid that he sometimes sacrificed his dignity, his sincerity and his pride. But he was really saved in this by his laziness. He was in fact too lazy to act energetically in his pursuit of popularity, and the temptation to sink into the dirty old chair in his study, smoke a pipe and go to sleep, hindered again and again his ambition. He had, as so many clergymen have, a great deal of the child in him, a remoteness from actual life, and a tremendous ignorance of the rough-and-tumble brutality and indecency of things. It had not been difficult for Grace, because of his laziness, his childishness, and his harmless conceited good-nature to obtain a very real dominion over him, and until now that dominion had never seriously been threatened.
Now, however, new impulses were stirring in his soul. Maggie saw it, Grace saw it, before the end of the summer the whole parish saw it. He was uneasy, dissatisfied, suffering under strange moods whose motives he concealed from all the world. In his sleep he cried Maggie's name with a passion that was a new voice in him. When she awoke and heard it she trembled, and then lay very still ...
And what a summer that was! To Maggie who had never, even in London, mingled with crowds it was an incredible invasion. The invasion was incredible, in the first place, because of the suddenness with which it fell upon Skeaton. One day Maggie noticed that announcements were pasted on to the Skeaton walls of the coming of a pierrot troupe ... "The Mig-Mags." There was a gay picture of fine beautiful pierrettes and fine stout pierrots all smiling together in a semi-circle. Then on another hoarding it was announced that the Theatre Royal, Skeaton, would shortly start its summer season, and would begin with that famous musical comedy, "The Girl from Bobo's."
Then the Pier Theatre put forward its claim with a West End comedy. The Royal Marine Band announced that it would play (weather permitting) in the Pergola on the Leas every afternoon, 4.20-6. Other signs of new life were the Skeaton Roller-Skating Rink, The Piccadilly Cinema, Concerts in the Town Hall, and Popular Lectures in the Skeaton Institute. There was also a word here and there about Wanton's Bathing Machines, Button's Donkeys, and Milton and Rowe's Char-a-bancs.
Then, on a sunny day in June the invasion began. The little railway by the sea was only a loop-line that connected Skeaton with Lane-on-Sea, Frambell, and Hooton. The main London line had its Skeaton station a little way out of the town, and the station road to the beach passed the vicarage. Maggie soon learnt to know the times when the excursion trains would pour their victims on to the hot, dry road. Early in the afternoon was one time, and she would see them eagerly, excitedly hurrying to the sea, fathers and mothers and babies, lovers and noisy young men and shrieking girls. Then in the evening she would see them return, some cross, some too tired to speak, some happy and singing, some arguing and disputing, babies crying-all hurrying, hurrying lest the train should be missed. At first she would not penetrate to the beach. She understood from Paul and Grace that one did not go to the beach during the summer months; at any rate, not the popular beach. There was Merton Sand two miles away. One might go there ... it was always deserted. This mysterious "one" fascinated Maggie's imagination. So many times a day Grace said "Oh, I don't think one ought to." Maggie heard again and again about the trippers, "Oh, one must keep away from there, you know."
In fact the Skeaton aristocracy retired with shuddering gestures into its own castle. Life became horribly dull. The Maxses, the Constantines, and the remainder of the Upper Ten either went away or hid themselves in their grounds.
Once or twice there would be a tennis party, then silence ...
This summer was a very hot one; the little garden was stifling and the glass bottles cracked in the sun.
"I want to get out. I want to get out," cried Maggie-so she went down to the sea. She went surreptitiously; this was the first surreptitious thing she had done. She gazed from the Promenade that began just beyond the little station and ran the length of the town down upon the sands. The beach was a small one compared with the great stretches of Merton and Buquay, and the space was covered now so thickly with human beings that the sand was scarcely visible. It was a bright afternoon, hot but tempered with a little breeze. The crowd bathed, paddled, screamed, made sand-castles, lay sleeping, flirting, eating out of paper bags, reading, quarrelling. Here were two niggers with banjoes, then a stout lady with a harmonium, then a gentleman drawing pictures on the sand; here again a man with sweets on a tray, here, just below Maggie, a funny old woman with a little hut where ginger-beer and such things were sold. The noise was deafening; the wind stirred the sand curiously so that it blew up and about in little wreaths and spirals. Everything and everybody seemed to be covered with the grit of this fine small sand; it was in Maggie's eyes, nose, and mouth as she watched.
She hated the place—the station, the beach, the town, and the woods—even more than she had done before. She hated the place—but she loved the people.
The place was sneering, self-satisfied, contemptuous, inhuman, like some cynical, debased speculator making a sure profit out of the innocent weaknesses of human nature. As she turned and looked she could see the whole ugly town with the spire of St. John's-Paul's church, raised self-righteously above it.
The town was like a prison hemmed in by the dark woods and the oily sea. She felt a sudden terrified consciousness of her own imprisonment. It was perhaps from that moment that she began to be definitely unhappy in her own life, that she realised with that sudden inspiration that is given to us on occasion, how hostile Grace was becoming, how strange and unreal was Paul, and how far away was every one else!
Just below her on the sand a happy family played-some babies, two little boys digging, the father smoking, his hat tilted over his eyes against the sun, the mother finding biscuits in a bag for the youngest infant. It was a very merry family and full of laughter. The youngest baby looked up and saw Maggie standing all alone there, and crowed. Then all the family looked up, the boys suspended their digging, father tilted back his hat, the mother shyly smiled.
Maggie smiled back, and then, overcome by so poignant a feeling of loneliness, tempted, too, almost irresistibly to run down the steps, join them on the sand, build castles, play with the babies, she hurried away lest she should give way.
"I must be pretending at being married," she thought to herself. "I don't feel married at all. I'm not natural. If I were sitting on the sand digging I'd be quite natural. No wonder Grace thinks me tiresome. But how does one get older and grown up? What is one to do?"
She did not trust herself to go down to the sands again that summer. The autumn came, the woods turned to gold, the sea was flurried with rain, and the Church began to fill the horizon. The autumn and the winter were the times of the Church's High Festival. Paul, as though he were aware that he had, during these last months, been hovering about strange places and peering into dark windows, busied himself about the affairs of his parish with an energy that surprised every one.
Maggie was aware of a number of young women of whom before she had been unconscious. Miss Carmichael, Misses Mary and Jane Bethel, Miss Clarice Hendon, Miss Polly Jones ... some of these pretty girls, all of them terribly modern, strident, self-assured, scornful, it seemed to Maggie. At first she was frightened of them as she had never been frightened of any one before. They did look at her, of course, as though they thought her strange, and then they soon discovered that she knew nothing at all about life.
Their two chief employments, woven in, as it were, to the web of their church assistance, were Love and Mockery-flirtations, broken engagements, refusals, acceptances, and, on the other hand, jokes about everybody and everything. Maggie soon discovered that Grace was one of their favourite Aunt Sallies; this made her very angry, and she showed so plainly her indignation on the first occasion of their wit that they never laughed at Grace in Maggie's presence again.
Maggie felt, after this, very tender and sympathetic towards Grace, until she discovered that her good sister-in-law was quite unaware that any one laughed at her and would have refused to believe it had she been told. At the same time there went strangely with this confidence an odd perpetual suspicion. Grace was for ever on guard against laughter, and nothing made her more indignant than to come into a room and see that people suddenly ceased their conversation. Maggie, however, did try this autumn to establish friendly relations with Grace. It seemed to her that it was the little things that were against the friendliness rather than the big ones. How she seriously blamed herself for an irritation that was really childish. Who, for instance, a grown woman and married, could do other than blame herself for being irritated by Grace's habit of not finishing her sentences. Grace would say:
"Maggie, did you remember to-oh well, it doesn't matter—"
"Remember what, Grace?"
"No, really it doesn't matter. It was only that—"
"But Grace, do tell me, because otherwise you'll be blaming me for something I ought to have done."
"Blaming you! Why, Maggie, to hear you talk any one would think that I was always scolding you. Of course if that's what you feel—"
"No, no, I don't. But I'm so careless. I forget things so. I don't want to forget something that I ought to do."
"Yes, you are careless, Maggie. That's quite true. It's one of your faults."
(Strange how willing we are ourselves to admit a fault and irritated when a friend agrees about it with us.)
"Oh, I'm not always careless," said Maggie.
"Often you are, dear, aren't you? You must learn. I'm sure you'll improve in time. I wonder whether-but no, I decided I wouldn't bother, didn't I? Still perhaps, after all—No, I daresay it's wiser to leave it alone."
Another little thing that the autumn emphasised was Grace's inability to discover when a complaint or a remonstrance was decently deceased. One evening Paul, going out in a hurry, asked Maggie to give Grace the message that Evensong would be at 6.30 instead of 7 that day. Maggie forgot to give the message and Grace arrived at the Church during the reading of the second lesson.
"Oh Grace, I'm so sorry!" said Maggie.
"It doesn't matter," said Grace; "but how you could forget, Maggie, is so strange! Do try not to forget things. I know it worries Paul. For myself I don't care, although I do value punctuality and memory—I do indeed. What I mean is that it isn't for my own happiness that I mind—"
"I don't want to forget," said Maggie. "One would think to hear you, Grace, that you imagine I like forgetting."
"Really, Maggie," said Grace, "I don't think that's quite the way to speak to me."
And again and again throughout the long winter this little episode figured.
"You'll remember to be punctual, won't you, Maggie? Not like the time when you forgot to tell me."
"You'll forgive me reminding you, Maggie, but I didn't want it to be like the time you forgot to give me—"
"Oh, you'd better not trust to Maggie, Paul. Only the other day when you gave her the message about Evensong—"
Grace meant no harm by this. Her mind moved slowly and was entangled by a vast quantity of useless lumber. She was really shocked by carelessness and inaccuracy because she was radically careless and inaccurate herself but didn't know it.
"If there's one thing I value it's order." she would say, but in struggling to remember superficial things she forgot all essentials. Her brain moved just half as slowly as everything else.
That winter was warm and muggy, with continuous showers of warm rain that seamed to change into mud in the air as it fell.
The Church was filled with the clammy mist of its central heating. Maggie, as she sat through service after service, watched one headache race after another. The air was full of headache; she asked once that a window might be kept open. "That would mean Death in Skeaton. You don't understand the Skeaton air," said Grace.
"That's because I don't get enough of it," said Maggie. She found herself looking back to the Chapel services with wistful regret. What had there been there that was not here? Here everything was ordered, arranged, in decent sequence, in regular symmetry and progression. And yet no one seemed to Maggie to listen to what they were saying, and no one thought of the meaning of the words that they used.
And if they did, of what use would it be? The affair was all settled; heaven was arrayed, parcelled out, its very streets and courts mapped and described. It was the destination of every one in the building as surely as though they were travelling to London by the morning express. They were sated with knowledge of their destiny—no curiosity, no wonder, no agitation, no fear. Even the words of the most beautiful prayers had ceased to have any meaning because the matter had been settled so long ago and there was nothing more to be said. How that Chapel had throbbed with expectation, with amaze, with curiosity, with struggle! Foolish much of it perhaps, stifling it had seemed then in its superstition. Maggie had been afraid then, so afraid that she could not sleep at nights. How she longed now for that fear to return to her!
At this point she would discover that she was beckoning back to her the figures of that other world. They must not come ... the two worlds must not join or she was lost ... she turned her back from her memories and her desires.
During this winter there were the two affairs of Mr. Toms and Caroline.
Maggie carried out her resolve of calling on Mr. Toms. She did it one dark afternoon a few days before Christmas, moved, it must be confessed, partly by a sense of exasperation with Grace. Grace had been that day quite especially tiresome. She had a cold, and a new evening dress had cost twice as much as it ought to have done. Mitch had broken into eczema, and Mrs. Constantine had overruled her at a committee meeting. With a flood of disconnected talk she had overwhelmed Maggie until the girl felt as though her head had been thrust into a bag of flour. Through it all there had been an undercurrent of complaint as though Maggie were responsible.
Early in the afternoon Grace declared that her head was splitting and retired to her bedroom. Maggie, in a state of blinded and deafened exasperation, remembered Mr. Toms and decided to call on him. She found a neat little house standing in a neat little garden near the sea just beyond the end of the Promenade, or The Leas, as the real Skeatonian always called it. Miss Toms and Mr. Toms were sitting in a very small room with a large fire, a pale grey wallpaper, and a number of brightly-painted wooden toys arranged on a shelf running round the room. The toys were of all kinds—a farm, cows and sheep, tigers and lions, soldiers and cannon, a church and a butcher's shop, little green tufted trees, and a Noah's ark. Mr. Toms was sitting, neat as a pin, smiling in an armchair beside the fire, and Miss Toms near him was reading aloud.
Maggie saw at once that her visit embarrassed Miss Toms terribly. It was an embarrassment that she understood perfectly, so like her own feelings on so many occasions. This put her at once at her ease, and she was the old, simple, direct Maggie, her face eager with kindness and understanding. Mr. Toms smiled perpetually but shook hands like the little gentleman he was.
Maggie, studying Miss Toms' face, saw that it was lined with trouble—an ugly face, grave, severe, but brave and proud. Maggie apologised for not coming before.
"I would have come—" she began.
"Oh, you needn't apologise," said Miss Toms brusquely. "They don't call on us here, and we don't want them to."
"They don't call," said Mr. Toms brightly, "because they know I'm queer in the head, and they're afraid I shall do something odd. They told you I was queer in the head, didn't they?"
Strangely enough this statement of his "queerness," although it brought a lump into Maggie's throat, did not disturb or confuse her.
"Yes," she said, "they did. I asked who you were after I had seen you in the road that day."
"I'm not in the least dangerous," said Mr. Toms. "You needn't be afraid. Certain things seem odd to me that don't seem odd to other people—that's all."
"The fact is, Mrs. Trenchard," said Miss Toms, speaking very fast and flushing as she spoke, "that we are very happy by ourselves, my brother and I. He is the greatest friend I have in the world, and I am his. We are quite sufficient for one another. I don't want to seem rude, and it's kind of you to have come, but it's better to leave us alone—it is indeed."
"Well, I don't know," bald Maggie, smiling. "You see, I'm a little queer myself—at least I think that most of the people here are coming to that conclusion. I'm sure I'm more queer than your brother. At any rate I can't do you any harm, and we may as well give it a trial, mayn't we?"
Mr. Toms clapped his hands with so sudden a noise that Maggie jumped.
"That's right," he said. "That's the way I like to hear people talk. You shall judge for yourself, and WE'LL judge for ourselves." His voice was very soft and pleasant. The only thing at all strange about him was his smile, that came and went like the ripple of firelight on the wall. "You'd like to know all about us, wouldn't you? Well, until ten years ago I was selling corn in the City. Such a waste of time! But I took it very seriously then and worked, worked, worked. I worked too hard, you know, much too hard, and then I was ill—ill for a long time. When I was better corn didn't seem to be of any importance, and people thought that very odd of me. I was confused sometimes and called people by their wrong names, and sometimes I said what was in my head instead of saying what was in my stomach. Every one thought it very odd, and if my dear sister hadn't come to the rescue they would have locked me up—they would indeed!"
"Shut me up and never let me walk about—all because I didn't care for corn any more."
He laughed his little chuckling laugh. "But we beat them, didn't we, Dorothy? Yes, we did—and here we are! Now, you tell us your history."
Miss Toms had been watching Maggie's face intently while her brother spoke, and the clear steady candour of Maggie's eyes and her calm acceptance of all that the little man said must have been reassuring.
"Now. Jim," she said, "don't bother Mrs. Trenchard. You can't expect her to tell us her history when she's calling for the first time."
"Why not expect me to?" said Maggie. "I've got no history. I lived in Glebeshire most of my life with my father, who was a clergyman. Then he died and I lived with two aunts in London. Then I met Paul and he married me, and here I am!"
"That's not history," said Mr. Toms a little impatiently. "However, I won't bother you now. You're only a child, I see. And I'm very glad to see it. I don't like grown up people."
"How do you like Skeaton?" asked Miss Toms, speaking more graciously than she had done.
"Oh I shall like it, I expect," said Maggie. "At least I shall like the people. I don't think I shall ever like the place—the sand blows about, and I don't like the woods."
"Yes, they're greasy, aren't they?" said Mr. Toms, "and full of little flies. And the trees are dark and never cool—"
They talked a little while longer, and then Maggie got up to say good-bye. When she took Mr. Tom's hand and felt his warm confident pressure, and saw his large trusting eyes looking into hers, she felt a warmth of friendliness, also it seemed to her that she had known him all her life.
Miss Toms came with her to the door. They looked out into the dark. The sea rustled close at hand, far on the horizon a red light was burning as though it were a great fire. They could hear the wave break on the beach and sigh in the darkness as it withdrew.
"I shall come again," said Maggie.
"Don't you be too sure," said Miss Toms. "We shall quite understand if you don't come, and we shan't think the worse of you. Public opinion here is very strong. They don't want to be unkind to Jim, but they think he ought to be shut up ...Shut up!" Maggie could feel that she was quivering. "Shut up!"
Maggie tossed her head.
"Anyway, they haven't shut me up yet," she said.
"Well—good-night," said Miss Toms, after a little pause in which she appeared to be struggling to say more.
She told Grace and Paul at supper that night that she had been to see the Toms. She saw Grace struggling not to show her disapproval and thought it was nice of her.
"Do you really think—?" said Grace. "Oh, perhaps, after all—"
"Paul," said Maggie, "do you not want me to see the Toms?"
Paul was distressed.
"No, it isn't that ...Miss Toms is a very nice woman. Only—"
"You think it's not natural of me to take an interest in some one who's a little off his head like Mr. Toms."
"Well, dear, perhaps there is something—"
Maggie laughed. "I'm a little off my head too. Oh! you needn't look so shocked, Grace. You know you think it, and every one else here thinks it too. Now, Grace, confess. You're beginning to be horrified that Paul married me."
"Please, Maggie—" said Paul, who hated scenes. Grace was always flushed by a direct attack. Her eyes gazed in despair about her while she plunged about in her mind.
"Maggie, you mustn't say such things—no, you mustn't. Of course it's true that you've got more to learn than I thought. You ARE careless, dear, aren't you? You remember yesterday that you promised to look in at Pettits and get a reel of cotton, and then of course Mr. Toms is a good little man—every one says so—but at the same time he's QUEER, you must admit that, Maggie; indeed it wasn't really very long ago that he asked Mrs. Maxse in the High Street to take all her clothes off so that he could see what she was really made of. Now, that ISN'T nice, Maggie, it's odd—you can't deny it. And if you'd only told me that you hadn't been to Pettits I could have gone later myself."
"If it isn't one thing," said Maggie, "it's another. I may be a child and careless, and not be educated, and have strange ideas, but if you thought, Grace, that it was going to be just the same after Paul was married as before you were mistaken. Three's a difficult number to manage, you know."
"Oh, if you mean," said Grace, crimsoning, "that I'm better away, that I should live somewhere else, please say so openly. I hate this hinting. What I mean to say is I can leave to-morrow."
"My dear Grace," said Paul hurriedly, "whoever thought such a thing? We couldn't get on without you. All that Maggie meant was that it takes time to settle down. So it does."
"That isn't all I meant," said Maggie slowly. "I meant that I'm not just a child as you both think. I've got a life of my own and ideas of my own. I'll give way to you both in lots of things so long as it makes you happy, but you're not—you're not going to shut me up as you'd like to do to Mr. Toms."
Perhaps both Grace and Paul had a sharp troubling impression of having caught some strange creature against their will. Maggie had risen from the table and stood for the moment by the door facing them, her short hair, standing thick about her head, contrasting with her thick white neck, her body balanced clumsily but with great strength, like that of a boy who has not yet grown to his full maturity. She tossed her head back in a way that she had and was gone.
The Caroline affair was of another sort. Some days after Christmas, Maggie went to have tea with Caroline. She did not enjoy it at all. She felt at once that there was something wrong with the house. It was full of paintings in big gold frames, looking-glasses, and marble statues, and there was a large garden that had an artificial look of having been painted by some clever artist in the course of a night. Maggie did not pay a long visit. There were a number of men present; there was also a gramophone, and after tea they turned up the carpet in the dining-room and danced.
Caroline, in spite of her noise and laughter, did not seem to Maggie to be happy. She introduced her for a moment to the master of the house, a stout red-faced man who looked as though he had lost something very precious, but was too sleepy to search for it. He called Caroline "Sweet," and she treated him with patronage and contempt. Maggie came away distressed, and she was not surprised to hear, a day or two later, from Grace that Mrs. Purdie was "fast" and had been rude to Mrs. Constantine.
One day early in the spring Grace announced that Maggie ought not to go and see Mrs. Purdie any more. "There are all sorts of stories," said Grace. "People say—Oh, well, never mind. They have dancing on Sunday."
"But she's an old friend of mine," said Maggie.
"You have others to think of beside yourself, Maggie," said Grace. "And there is the Church."
"She's an old friend of mine," repeated Maggie, her mouth set obstinately.
"I will ask Paul what he thinks," said Grace.
"Please," said Maggie, her colour rising into her cheeks, "don't interfere between Paul and me. I'll speak to him myself."
She did. Paul maintained the attitude of indifference that he had adopted during the last six months.
"But would you rather I didn't go?" asked Maggie, aggravated.
"You must use your judgment," said Paul.
"But don't you see that I can't leave a friend just because people are saying nasty things."
"There's your position in the parish," said Paul.
"Oh, Paul!" Maggie cried. "Don't be so aggravating! Just say what you really think."
"I'm sorry I'm aggravating," said Paul patiently.
It was this conversation that determined Maggie. She had been coming, through all the winter months, to a resolution. She must be alone with Paul, she must have things out with him. As the months had gone they had been slipping further and further apart. It had been Paul who had gradually withdrawn into himself. He had been kind and thoughtful but reserved, shy, embarrassed. She understood his trouble, but at her first attempt to force him to speak he escaped and placed Grace between them. Well, this summer should see the end of that. They must know where they stood, and for that they must be alone ...
One day, early in June, Paul announced that he thought of exchanging duties, for the month of August, with a Wiltshire clergyman. This was Maggie's opportunity. Finding him alone in his study, she attacked.
"Paul, did you mean Grace to come with us to Little Harben in August?"
"Of course, dear. She has nowhere else to go."
"Well, she mustn't come. I've given way about everything since we were married. I'm not going to give way about this. That month we are to be alone."
"Alone!" said Paul. "But we're always alone."
"We're never alone," said Maggie, standing with her legs apart and her hands behind her back. "I don't mean to complain about Grace. She's been very good to me, I know, and I've got much to be grateful for. All the same she's not coming to Little Harben. She's got you all the rest of the year. She can give you up for a month."
"But Maggie—" said Paul.
"No, I'm quite determined about this. I may be a child and a fool, but I know what I'm talking about this time. You're not happy. You never talk to me as you used to. There are many things we ought to have out, but Grace is always there in the daytime and at night you're too tired. If we go on like this we'll be strangers in another six months."
He turned round to stare at her, and she saw in his eyes an odd excited light.
"Maggie," he said in a low voice. "If we go alone to Little Harben does it mean that you think—you can begin to love me?"
She turned her eyes away. "I don't know. I don't know about myself, I only know that I want us to be happy and I want us to be close together—as we were before we were married. It's all gone wrong somehow; I'm sure it's my fault. It was just the same with my father and my aunts. I couldn't say the things to them I wanted to, the things I really felt, and so I lost them. I'm going to lose you in the same way if I'm not careful."
He still looked at her strangely. At last, with a sigh, he turned back to his desk.
"I'll speak to Grace," he said. That night the storm broke.
During supper Grace was very quiet. Maggie, watching her, knew that Paul had spoken to her. Afterwards in the study the atmosphere was electric. Grace read The Church Times, Paul the Standard, Maggie Longfellow's Golden Legend, which she thought foolish.
Grace looked up. "So I understand, Maggie, that you don't want me to come with you and Paul this summer?"
Maggie, her heart, in spite of herself, thumping in her breast, faced a Grace transfigured by emotion. That countenance, heavily, flabbily good-natured, the eyes if stupid, also kind, was now marked and riven with a flaming anger.
But Maggie was no coward. With her old gesture of self-command she stilled her heart. "I'm very sorry, Grace," she said. "But it's only for a month. I want to be alone with Paul."
Grace, her hands fumbling on the arms of her chair as though she were blind, rose.
"You've hated my being here, Maggie ... all this time I've seen it. You've hated me. You don't know that you owe everything to me, that you couldn't have managed the house, the shops, the servants—nothing, nothing. This last year I've worked my fingers to the bone for you and Paul. What do you think I get out of it? Nothing. It's because I love Paul ... because I love Paul. But you've hated my doing things better than you, you've wanted me to fail, you've been jealous, that's what you've been. Very well, then, I'll go. You've made that plain enough at any rate. I'll leave to-morrow. I won't wait another hour. And I'll never forgive you for this—never. You've taken Paul away from me ... all I've ever had. I'll never forgive you—never, never, never."
"Grace, Grace," cried Paul.
But she rushed from the room.
Maggie looked at her husband.
"Why, Paul," she said, "you're frightened. Grace doesn't mean it. She won't go to-morrow—or ever. There's nothing to be frightened of."
His red cheeks were pale. His hands trembled.
"I do so hate quarrels," he said.
Maggie went up to him and rather timidly put her hand on his arm.
"We'll have a lovely time at Harben," she said. "Oh, I do want you to be happy, Paul."
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