The Captives

CHAPTER II

HOBGOBLINS

The dawn had made the dark room grey when Maggie, stiff and sore from the strained position in which she had been sitting, went up to her room. She had intended not to go to bed, but weariness overcame her; she lay down on her bed, dressed as she was, and fell into a deep, exhausted slumber.

When she woke it was broad daylight. She was panic-stricken. How could she have slept? And now he might have gone. She washed her face and hands in the horrible little tin basin, brushed her hair, and then, with beating heart, went downstairs. His sitting-room was just as she had left it, the unwashed plates piled together, the red cloth over the window, the dead ashes of the fire in the grate. Very gently she opened his bedroom door. He was still in bed. She went over to him. He was asleep, muttering, his hands clenched on the counterpane. His cheeks were flushed. To her inexperienced eyes he looked very ill.

She touched him on the shoulder and with a start he sprang awake, his eyes wide open with terror, and he crying:

"What is it? No ... no ... don't. Don't."

"It's all right, Martin. It's I, Maggie," she said.

He stared at her; then dropping back on to the pillow, he muttered wearily as though he were worn out after a long struggle:

"I'm bad ... It's my chest. There's a doctor. They'll tell you ... He's been here before."

She went into the other room and rang the bell. After a time Mrs. Brandon herself appeared.

"I'm afraid Mr. Warlock is very ill," said Maggie, trying to keep her voice from trembling. "He's asked me to fetch the doctor who's been here to see him before. Can you tell me who he is and where he lives?"

Mrs. Brandon's bright and inquisitive eyes moved round the room, taking in the blue china, the hyacinth and the lamp. "Certingly," she said. "That must be Dr. Abrams. 'E lives in Cowley Street, No. 4—Dr. Emanuel Abrams. A good doctor when 'e's sober, and the morning's the best time to be sure of 'im. Certingly 'e's been in to see your friend several times. They've been merry together more than once."

"Where is Cowley Street?" asked Maggie.

"First to the right when you get out of the 'ouse, and then second to the left again. No. 4's the number. It's most likely 'e'll be asleep. Yes, Dr. Abrams, that's the name. 'E's attended a lot in this 'ouse. Wot a pretty flower! Cheers the room up I must say. Will you be wanting another fire?"

"Yes," said Maggie. "Could Emily see to that while I'm away?"

"Certingly," said Mrs. Brandon, looking at Maggie with a curious confidential smile—a hateful smile, but there was no time to think about it.

Maggie went out. She found Cowley Street without any difficulty. Dr. Abrams was up and having his breakfast. His close, musty room smelt of whisky and kippers. He himself was a little, fat round Jew, very red in the face, very small in the eye, very black in the hair, and very dirty in the hands.

He was startled by Maggie's appearance—very different she was from his usual patients.

"Looked just a baby," he informed Mrs. Brandon afterwards.

"Mrs. Warlock?" he asked.

"No," said Maggie defiantly. "I'm a friend of Mr. Warlock's."

"Ah, yes—quite so." He wiped his mouth, disappeared into another room, returned with a shabby black bag and a still shabbier top hat, and declared himself ready to start.

"It's pneumonia," he told her as they went along. "Had it three weeks ago. Of course if he was out in yesterday's fog that finished him."

"He was out," said Maggie, "for a long time."

"Quite so," said Dr. Abrams. "That's killed him, I shouldn't wonder." He snuffled in his speech and he snuffled in his walk.

Before they had gone very far he put his hand on Maggie's arm; she hated his touch, but his last words had so deeply terrified her that nothing else affected her. If Martin were killed by going out yesterday then she had killed him. He had gone out to escape her. But she drove that thought from her as she had driven so many others.

"The pneumonia's bad enough," said the little man, becoming more confidential as his grip tightened on her arm, "but it's heart's the trouble. Might finish him any day. Tells me his father was the same. What a nice warm arm you've got, my dear—it's a pleasant day, too."

They entered the house and Dr. Abrams stayed chatting with Emily in the passage for a considerable time. Any one of the opposite sex seemed to hare an irresistible attraction for him.

When they went upstairs the doctor was so held by his burning curiosity that it was difficult to lead him into Martin's bedroom. Everything interested him; he bent down and felt the tablecloth with his dirty thumb, then the soil round the hyacinth, then the blue china. Between every investigation he stared at Maggie as though he were now seeing her for the first time. At last, however, he was bending over Martin, and his examination was clever and deft; he had been, like his patient, used to better days. Martin was very ill.

"The boy's bad," he said, turning sharply round upon Maggie.

From the speaking of that word, for six days and six nights he was Maggie's loyal friend and fellow-combatant. They fought, side by side, in the great struggle for Martin's life. They won; but when Maggie tried to look back afterwards on the history of that wrestling, she saw nothing connectedly, only the candle-light springing and falling, the little doctor's sharp eyes, the torn paper of the wall, the ragged carpet, and always that strange mask that was Martin's face and yet the face of a stranger, something tortured and fantastic, passing from Chinese immobility to frenzied pain, from pain to sweating exhaustion, from exhaustion back to immobility.

On the eighth day she rose, as a swimmer rises from green depths, and saw the sunshine and the landscape again.

"He'll do if you're careful," said Dr. Abrams, and suddenly became once more the curious, dirty, sensual little creature that he had been at first. Her only contact with the outer world had been her visits to the neighbouring streets for necessaries and one journey to the bank (the nearest branch was in Oxford Street) to settle about her money. But now, with the doctor's words, the rest of the world came back to her. She remembered Paul. She was horrified to realise that during these days she had entirely forgotten him. He, of course could not write to her because he did not know her address. When she saw that Martin was quietly sleeping she sat down and wrote the following letter:

13A LYNTON STREET, KING'S CROSS, April 28th, 1912.

MY DEAR PAUL,—I have been very wrong indeed not to write to you before this. It's only of a piece with all my other bad behaviour to you, and it's very late now to saw that I am ashamed. I will tell you the truth, which is that on the day I left you I had received a letter telling me that the friend of whom I have often told you was in England, very ill, and with no one to care for him. I had to go. I don't know whether it was right or wrong—wrong I suppose—but I always knew that if he ever wanted me I SHOULD go. I've always been truthful to you about that. When I came here I found that he was in horrible lodgings, very ill indeed, and with no one to look after him. I HAD to stay, and now for a week he has been between life and death. He had pneumonia some weeks ago and went out too soon. His heart also is bad. I believe now he can get well if great care is taken.

Dear Paul, I don't know what to say to you. I have a bedroom in this house and every one is very kind to me, but you will think me very wicked. I can't help it. I can't come back to you and Grace. Perhaps later when he is quite well I shall be able to, but I don't think so. You don't need me; I have never been satisfactory to you, only a worry. Grace will never be able to live with me again, and I can't stay in Skeaton any more after Uncle Mathew's death. It has all been a wretched mistake, Paul, our marriage, hasn't it? It was my fault entirely. I shouldn't have married you when I knew that I would always love Martin. I thought then that I should be able to make you happy. If now I felt that I could I would come back at once, but you know as well as I do that, after this, we shall never be happy together again. I blame myself so much but I can't act differently. Perhaps when Martin is well he will not want me at all, but even then I don't think I could come back. Isn't it better that at least I should stay away for a time? You can say that I am staying with friends in London. You will be happier without me, oh, much happier—and Grace will be happier too. Perhaps you will think it better to forget me altogether and then your life will be as it was before you met me.

I won't ask you to forgive me for all the trouble I have been to you. I don't think you can. But I can't do differently now. Your affectionate MAGGIE.

She felt when she had finished it that it was miserably inadequate,
but at least it was truthful. As she wrote it her old feelings of tenderness and affection for Paul came back in a great flood. She saw him during the many, many times when he had been so good to her. She was miserable as she finished it, but she knew that there was nothing else to do. And he would know it too.

A day later a long letter came from Paul. It was very characteristic. It began by saying that of course Maggie must return at once. Throughout, the voice was that of a grieved and angry elder talking to a wicked and disobedient child. She saw that, far beyond everything else, it was his pride that was wounded, wounded as it had never been before. He could see nothing but that. Did she realise, he asked her, what she was doing? Sinning against all the laws of God and man. If she persisted in her wickedness she would be cut off from all decent people. No one could say that he had not shown her every indulgence, every kindness, every affection. Even now he was ready to forgive her, but she must come back at once, at once. Her extreme youth excused much, and both he and Grace realised it.

Through it all the strain—did she not see what she was doing? How could she behave so wickedly when she had been given so many blessings, when she had been shown the happiness of a Christian home? ...

It was not a letter to soften Maggie's resolve. She wrote a short reply saying that she could not come. She thought then that he would run up to London to fetch her. But he did not. He wrote once more, and then, for a time, there was silence.

She had little interval in which to think about Paul; Martin soon compelled her attention. He was well enough now to be up. He would lie all day, without moving except to take his meals, on the old red sofa, stretched out there, his arms behind his head, looking at Maggie with a strange taunting malicious stare as though he were defying her to stand up to him. She did stand up to him, although it needed all her strength, moral and physical. He was attacking her soul and she was saving his ...

He said no more about his going away. He accepted it as a fact that she was there and that she would stay there. He had changed his position and was fighting her on another ground.

Maggie had once, years before, read in a magazine, a story about a traveller and a deserted house. This traveller, lost, as are all travellers in stories, in a forest, benighted and hungry, saw the lights of a house.

He goes forward and finds a magnificent mansion, blazing with light in every window, but apparently deserted. He enters and finds room after room prepared for guests. A fine meal is laid ready and he enjoys it. He discovers the softest of beds and soon is fast asleep; but when he is safely snoring back creep all the guests out of the forest, hideous and evil, warped and deformed, maimed and rotten with disease. They had left the house, that he might be lured in it, knowing that he would never come whilst they were there. And so they creep into all the rooms, flinging their horrible shadows upon the gleaming walls, and gradually they steal about the bed ...

Maggie forgot the end of the story. The traveller escaped, or perhaps he did not. Perhaps he was strangled. But that moment of his awakening, when his startled eyes first stared upon those horrible faces, those deformed bodies, those evil smiles! What could one do, one naked and defenceless against so many?

Maggie thought of this story during Martin's convalescence. She seemed to see the evil guests, crowding back, one after the other into his soul, and as they came back they peeped out at her, smiling from the lighted windows. She saw that his plan was to thrust before her the very worst of himself. He said: "Well, I've tried to get rid of her and she won't go. That's her own affair, but if she stays, at least she shall see me as I am. No false sentimental picture. I'll cure her."

It was the oldest trick in the world, but to Maggie it was new enough. At first she was terrified. In spite of her early experience with her father, when she had learnt what wickedness could be, she was a child in all knowledge of the world. Above all she knew very little about her own sex and its relation with men. But she determined that she must take the whole of Martin; in the very first days of her love she had resolved that, and now that resolution was to be put to the test. Her terrified fear was lest the things that he told her about himself should affect her love for him. She had told him years before: "It isn't the things you've done that I mind or care about: it's you, not actions that matter." But his actions were himself, and what was she to do if all these things that he said were true?

Then she discovered that she had indeed spoken the truth. Her love for him did not change; it rather grew, helped and strengthened by a maternal pity and care that deepened and deepened. He seemed to her a man really possessed, in literal fact, by devils. The story of the lighted house was the symbol, only he, in the bitterness and defiance of his heart, had invited the guests, not been surprised by them.

He pretended to glory in his narration, boasting and swearing what he would do when he would return to the old scenes, how happy and triumphant he had been in the midst of his filth—but young and ignorant though she was she saw beneath this the misery, the shame, the bitterness, the ignominy. He was down in the dust, in a despair furious and more self-accusing than anything of which she had ever conceived.

Again and again, too, although this was never deliberately stated, she saw that he spoke like a man caught in a trap. He did not blame any one but himself for the catastrophe of his life, but he often spoke, in spite of himself, like a man who from the very beginning had been under some occult influence. He never alluded now to his early days but she remembered how he had once told her that that "Religion" had "got" him from the very beginning, and had weighted all the scales against him. It was as though he had said: "I was told from the very beginning that I was to be made a fighting-ground of. I didn't want to be that. I wasn't the man for that. I was chosen wrongly."

He only once made any allusion to his father's death, but Maggie very soon discovered that that was never away from his mind. "I loved my father and I killed him," he said one day, "so I thought it wise not to love any one again."

Gradually a picture was created in Maggie's mind, a picture originating in that dirty, dark room where they were. She saw many foreign countries and many foreign towns, and in all of them men and women were evil. The towns were always in the hour between daylight and dark, the streets twisted and obscure, the inhabitants furtive and sinister.

The things that those inhabitants did were made quite plain to her. She saw the dancing saloons, the women naked and laughing, the men drunken and besotted, the gambling, the quarrelling, drugging, suicide—all under a half-dead sky, stinking and offensive.

One day, at last, she laughed.

"Martin," she cried, "don't let's be so serious about it. You can't want to go back to that life—it's so dull. At first I was frightened, but now!—why it's all the same thing over and over again."

"I'm only telling you," he said; "I don't say that I do want to go back again. I don't want anything except for you to go away. I just want to go to hell my own fashion."

"You talk so much about going to hell," she said. "Why, for ten days now you've spoken of nothing else. There are other places, you know."

"You clear out and get back to your parson," he said. "You must see from what I've told you it isn't any good your staying. I've no money. My health's gone all to billyoh! I don't want to get better. Why should I? Perhaps I did love you a little bit—once—in a queer way, but that's all gone now. I don't love any one on this earth. I just want to get rid of this almighty confusion going on in my head. I can't rest for it. I'd finish myself off if I had pluck enough. I just haven't."

"Martin," she said, "why did you write all those letters to me?"

"What letters?" he asked.

"Those that Amy stopped—the ones from abroad."

"Oh, I don't know," he looked away from her. "I was a bit lonely, I suppose."

"Tell me another thing," she said. "These weeks I've been here have I bored you?"

"I've been too ill to tell ... How do I know? Well, no, you haven't. You're such a queer kid. You're different from any other human—utterly different. No, you haven't bored me—but don't think from that I like having you here. I don't—you remind me of the old life. I don't want to think of it more than I must. You'll admit I've been trying to scare you stiff in all I've told you, and I haven't scared you. It's true, most of it, but it isn't so damned sensational as I've tried to make it ... But, all the same, what's the use of your staying? I don't love you, and I'm never likely to. I've told you long ago you're not the sort of woman to attract me physically. You never did. You're more like a boy. Why should you ruin your own life when there's nothing to gain by it? You will ruin it, you know, staying on here with me. Every one thinks we're living together. Have you heard from your parson?"

"Yes," said Maggie.

"What does he say?"

"He says I've got to go back at once."

"Well, there you are."

"But don't you see, Martin, I shouldn't go back to him even if I left you. I've quite decided that. He'll never be happy with me unless I love him, which I can't do, and there's his sister who hates me. And he's just rooted in Skeaton. I can't live there after Uncle Mathew!"

"Tell me about that."

"No," she said, shrinking back. "I'll never tell any one. Not even you."

"Now, look here," he went on, after a pause. "You must see how hopeless it is, Maggie. You've got nothing to get out of it. As soon as I'm well enough I shall go off and leave you. You can't follow me, hunting me everywhere. You must see that."

"Yes, but what you don't, Martin, see," she answered him, "is that I've got some right to think of my own happiness. It's quite true what you say, that if you get well and decide you don't want to see me I won't follow you. Of course I won't. Perhaps one day you will want me all the same. But I'm happy only with you, and so long as I don't bore you I'm going to stay. I've always been wrong with every one else, stupid and doing everything I shouldn't. But with you it isn't so. I'm not stupid, and however you behave I'm happy. I can't help it. It's just so."

"But how can you be happy?" he said, "I'm not the sort for any one to be happy with. When I've been drinking I'm impossible. I'm sulky and lazy, and I don't want to be any better either. You may think you're happy these first few weeks, but you won't be later on."

"Let's try," said Maggie, laughing. "Here's a bargain, Martin. You say I don't bore you. I'll stay with you until you're quite well. Then if you don't want me I'll go and not bother you until you ask for me. Is that a bargain?"

"You'd much better not," he said.

"Oh, don't think I'm staying," she answered, "because I think you so splendid that I can't leave you. I don't think you splendid at all. And it's not because I think myself splendid either. I'm being quite selfish about it. I'm staying simply because I'm happier so."

"You'd much better not," he repeated.

"Is that a bargain?"

"Yes, if you like," he answered, looking at her with puzzled eyes. It was the first long conversation that they had had. After it, he was no nicer than before. He never kissed her, he never touched her, he seldom talked to her; when she talked, he seemed to be little interested. For hours he lay there, looking in front of him, saying nothing. When the little doctor came they wrangled and fought together but seemed to like one another.

Through it all Maggie could see that he was riddled with deep shame and self-contempt and haunted, always, by the thought of his father. She longed to speak to him about his father's death, but as yet she did not dare. If once she could persuade him that that had not been his fault, she could, she thought, really help him. That was the secret canker at his heart and she could not touch it.

Strangely, as the days passed, the years that had been added to him since their last meeting seemed to fall away. He became to her more and more the boy that he had been when she had known him before. In a thousand ways he showed it, his extraordinary youth and inexperience in spite of all that he had been and done. She felt older now than he and she loved him the more for that. Most of all she longed to get him away from this place where he was. Then one day little Abrams said to her:

"He'll never get well here."

"That's what I think," she said.

"Can't you carry him off somewhere? The country's the place for him—somewhere in the South."

Her heart leapt.

"Oh, Glebeshire!" she cried.

"Well, that's not a bad place," he said. "That would pick him up."

At once she thought, night and day, of St. Dreot's. A very hunger possessed her to get back there. And why not? For one thing, it would be so much cheaper. Her money would not last for ever, and Mrs. Brandon robbed her whenever possible. She determined that she would manage it. At last, greatly fearing it, she mentioned it to him, and to her surprise he did not scorn it.

"I don't care," he said, looking at her with that curious puzzled expression that she often saw now in his eyes, "I'm sick of this room. That's a bargain, Maggie, you can put me where you like until I'm well. Then I'm off."

She had a strange superstition that Borhedden was fated to see her triumph. She had wandered round the world and now was returning again to her own home. She remembered a Mrs. Bolitho who had had the farm in her day. She wrote to her, and two days later received a letter saying that there was room for them at Borhedden if they wished.

She was now all feverish impatience. Dr. Abrams said that Martin could be moved if they were very careful. All plans were made. Mrs. Brandon and the ugly little doctor both seemed quite sorry that they were going, and Emily even sniffed and wiped her eye with the corner of her apron. The world seemed now to be turning a different face to Maggie. Human beings liked her and were no longer suspicious to her as they had been before.

She felt herself how greatly she had changed. It was as though, until she had found Martin again, everything had been tied up in her, constrained. She had been some one lost and desolate. Nevertheless, how difficult these days were! Through all this time she spoke to him no affectionate word nor touched him with an affectionate gesture. She was simply a good-humoured companion, laughing at him, assuming, through it all, an off-hand indifference that meant for her so difficult a pretence that she thought he must discover it. He did not; he was in many ways more simple than she. She laid to sleep his suspicions. She could feel his relief that she was not romantic, that she wanted nothing whatever from him. He was ill—therefore was often churlish. He tried to hurt her again and again with cruel words and then waited to see whether she were hurt. She never showed him. He treated her with contempt, often not answering her questions, laughing at her little stupidities, complaining of her forgetfulness and, sometimes, her untidiness—telling her again and again to "go back to her parson."

She gave no sign. She fought her way. But it hurt; she could not have believed that anything could hurt so much. She was being always drawn to him, longing to put her arm around him, to dare to kiss him, risking any repulse. He seemed so young, so helpless, so unhappy. Every part of him called to her, his hair, his eyes, his voice, his body. But she held herself in, she never gave way, she was resolute in her plan.

On their last evening in Lynton Street, for five minutes, he was suddenly kind to her, almost the old Martin speaking with the old voice. She held her breath, scarcely daring to let herself know how happy she was.

"What do you think about God, Maggie?" he asked, turning on the sofa and looking at her.

"Think about God?" she said, repeating his words.

"Yes ...Is there one?"

"I don't know. I haven't any intelligence about those things."

"Is there immortality?"

"I don't know."

"I hope not. Your parson thinks there is, doesn't he?"

"Of course he does."

"Did he have lots of services and did you hare to go to them?"

"Yes."

"Poor Maggie—always having to go to them. Well, it's queer. Funny if there isn't anything after all when there's been such a fight about it so long. Did they make you very religious at Skeaton or wherever the place was?"

"No," said Maggie. "They thought me a terrible heathen. Grace was terrified of me, I seemed so wicked to her. She thought I was bewitching Paul's soul—"

"Perhaps you were."

"No. So little did I that he hasn't even come up to London to fetch me."

"Which did you like best—Skeaton or the Chapel?"

"I don't know. I was wrong in both of them. They were just opposite." Maggie waited a little. Then she said: "Martin there must be something. I can feel it as though it were behind a wall somewhere—I can hear it and I can't see anything. Aunt Anne and—and—your father, and Paul, and Mr. Magnus were all trying ... It feels like a fight, but I don't know who's fighting who."

Her allusion to his father had been unfortunate.

"It's all damned rot if you ask me," he said, turned his face to the wall and wouldn't say another word.

Next morning they started. Mrs. Brandon's bill was as large as she could make it and still not very large. Dr. Abrams, to Maggie's immense surprise, would not take a penny.

"I'm not wantin' money just now," he said. "I'm robbing a rich old man who lives near here. I'm a sort of highway man, you know, rob the rich and spend it how I like. Now don't you press me to make up a bill or I shall change my mind and give you one and it will be so large that you won't be able to go down to Glebeshire. How would you like that? Oh, don't think I'm doing it from fine motives. You're both a couple of babies, that's what you are, and it would be a shame to rob you. How you're ever going to get through the world don't know. The Babes in the Wood weren't in it. He thinks he's wicked, doesn't he?"

"Yes, he does," said Maggie.

"Wicked! Why, he doesn't know what wickedness is. A couple of children. Look after his heart or he'll be popping off one fine morning."

Maggie turned pale. "Oh no," she said, her voice trembling.

"He's going to get well."

Abrams sniffed. "If he doesn't drink and leads a healthy life he may. But leopards don't change their spots. He's worrying over something. What is it?"

"His father's death," said Maggie. "He loved his father more than any one and he's got it into his head that he gave him a shock and killed him."

"Well, you get it out of his head," said Abrams. "He won't be better until you do."

Next morning they were at Paddington, Martin very feeble but indifferent to everything. They had a third-class compartment to themselves until they got to Exeter, and all that while Martin never spoke a word. During this time Maggie did a lot of quiet thinking. She was worried, of course, about many things but especially finances. She knew very little about money. She gathered from Martin that he had not only spent ail that his and had left him, but had gone considerably beyond it, that he was badly in debt and saw no way of paying. This did not seem to worry him but it worried Maggie. Debts seemed to her awful things, and she could not imagine how any one lived under the burden of them. Supposing Martin were ill for a long time, how would they two live? Her little stock of money would not last very long. She must get work, but she knew more about the world after her years at Skeaton. She knew how ignorant she was, how uneducated and how unsophisticated. She did not doubt her ability to fight her way, but there might be weary months first, and meanwhile what of Martin?

She looked at him, asleep now in a corner of the carriage, his soft hat pulled down over his eyes, his head sunk, his hands heavy and idle on his lap. A fear caught at her heart as she watched him; he looked, indeed, terribly ill, exhausted with struggle, and now, with all the bitterness and despair drowned in sleep, very gentle and helpless. She bent over and folded the rug more closely round his knees. Had he woken then and seen her gaze! Her hand'' routed for an instant on his, then she withdrew back into her own corner.

That coming back into Glebeshire could not but be wonderful to her. She had been away for so long and it was her home.

The tranquillity and peace of the spring evening clothed her like a garment, the brown valleys, the soft green of the fields, the mild blue of the sky touched her until she could with difficulty keep back her tears.

"Oh, make it right!" she whispered; "make it right! Give him to me again—I do love him so!"

It was dusk when they arrived at Clinton St. Mary's.

The little station stood open to all the winds of heaven blowing in from the wide expanses of St. Mary's Moor. Maggie remembered, as though it were yesterday, her arrival at that station with Aunt Anne. Yes, she had grown since then.

A trap was waiting for them. Martin was still very silent, but he liked the air with the tang of the sea in it, and he asked sometimes about the names of places. As they drew nearer and nearer to all the old—remembered scenes, Maggie's heart beat faster and faster—this lane, that field, that cottage. And then, at last, there was the Vicarage perched on the top of the hill, with its chimneys like cats' ears!

She thought of Uncle Mathew. The sight of the tranquil evening the happiness and comfort of the fields enabled her to think of him, for the first time, quietly. She could face deliberately his death. It was as though he had been waiting for her here and had come forward to reassure her.

They drove through the quiet little village, out on to the high road, then down a side lane, the hedges brushing against the sides of the jingle, then through the gates, into the yard, with Borhedden Farm, bright with its lighted windows, waiting for them.

Mrs. Bolitho was standing in the porch and greeted them warmly.

"You'll be just starved," she said. "It's wisht work driving in an open jingle all the way from Clinton. Supper's just about ready."

They were shown up to the big roomy bedroom, smelling of candles and clover and lavender. Martin stood there looking about, then—

"Oh, Martin, isn't it nice!" Maggie cried. "I do hope you'll be happy here!"

The emotion of returning home, of seeing the old places, sniffing the old scents, reviving the old memories was too much for her. She flung her arms round his neck and kissed him on the lips. For a moment, for a wonderful moment it seemed that he was going to respond. She felt him move towards her. His hands tightened about hers. Then, but very gently, he drew away from her and walked to the window.