Maggie developed marvellously during her first weeks in London. It could not truthfully be said that her aunts gave her great opportunity for development; so far as they were concerned she might as well have been back in the green seclusion of St. Dreots.
It is true that she accompanied her Aunt Elizabeth upon several shopping expeditions, and on one hazardous afternoon they penetrated the tangled undergrowth of Harrods' Stores; on all these occasions Maggie was too deeply occupied with the personal safety and happiness of her aunt to have leisure for many observations.
Aunt Elizabeth always started upon her shopping expeditions with the conviction that something terrible was about to happen, and the expectation of this overwhelming catastrophe paralysed her nerves. Maggie wondered how it could have been with her when she had ventured forth alone. She would stand in the middle of the street hesitating as to the right omnibus for her to take, she was often uncertain of the direction in which she should go. She would wave her umbrella at an omnibus, and then when it began to slacken in answer to her appeal, would discover that it was not the one that she needed, and would wave her umbrella furiously once more. Then when at last she had mounted the vehicle she would flood the conductor with a stream of little questions, darting her eyes angrily at all her neighbours as though they were gathered there together to murder her at the earliest opportunity. She would be desperately confused when asked to pay for her ticket, would be unable to find her purse, and then when she discovered it would scatter its contents upon the ground. In such an agony would she be at the threatened passing of her destination that she would spring up at every pause of the omnibus, striking her nearest neighbour's eye or nose with her umbrella, apologising nervously, and then, because she thought she had been too forward with a stranger, staring fiercely about her and daring any one to speak to her. Upon the day that she visited Harrods' she spent the greater part of her time in the lift because she always wished to be somewhere where she was not, and because it always went up when she wished it to go down and down when she wished it to go up. Maggie, upon this eventful occasion, did her best, but she also was bewildered, and wondered how any of the attendants found their way home at night. Before the end of the afternoon Aunt Elizabeth was not far from tears. "It isn't cutlery we want. I told the man that it was saucepans. They pay us no attention at all. You aren't any help to me, Maggie." They arrived in a room filled with performing gramophones. This was the final blow. Aunt Elizabeth, trembling all over, refused either to advance or retreat. "Will you please," said Maggie very firmly to a beautifully clothed young man with hair like a looking-glass, "show us the way to the street?" He very kindly showed them, and it was not until they were in the homeward omnibus that Aunt Elizabeth discovered that she had bought nothing at all.
Nevertheless, although Maggie collected but little interesting detail from these occasions, she did gather a fine general impression of whirling movement and adventure. One day she would plunge into it—meanwhile it was better that she should move slowly and assemble gradual impressions. The solid caution that was mingled in her nature with passionate feeling and enthusiasm taught her admirable wisdom. Aunt Anne, it seemed, never moved beyond the small radius of her home and the Chapel. She attended continually Bible-meetings, prayer-meetings, Chapel services. She had one or two intimate friends, a simple and devout old maid called Miss Pyncheon, Mr. Magnus, whom Maggie had seen on the day of her arrival, Mr. Thurston, to whom Maggie had taken an instant dislike, and Amy Warlock. She visited these people and they visited her; for the rest she seemed to take no exercise, and her declared love for the country did not lead her into the Parks. She was more silent, if possible, than she had been at St. Dreots, and read to herself a great deal in the dark and melancholy drawing-room. Although she talked very little to Maggie, the girl fancied that her eye was always upon her. There was a strange attitude of watchfulness in her silent withdrawal from her scene as though she had retired simply because she could see the better from a distance.
She liked Maggie to read the Bible to her, and for an hour of every evening Maggie did this. For some reason the girl greatly disliked this hour and dreaded its approach. It was perhaps because it seemed to bring before her the figure of her father, the words as they fell from her lips seemed to be repeated by him as he stood behind her. Nothing was more unexpected by her than the way that those last days at St. Dreots crowded about her. They should surely have been killed by the colours and interests of this new life. It appeared that they were only accentuated by them. Especially did she see that night when she had watched beside her father's dead body ... she saw the stirring of the beard, the shape of the feet beneath the sheet, the flicker of the candle. Apart from this one hour of the day, however, she was happy, excited, expectant. What it was that she expected she did not exactly know, but there were so many things that life might now do for her. One thing that very evidently it did not intend to do for her was to make her tidy, careful, and a good manager. Old Martha, the Cardinal servant, was her sworn enemy, and, indeed, with reason. It seemed that Maggie could not remember the things that she was told: lighted lamps were left long after they should have been extinguished, one night the bathroom was drowned in water by a running tap, her clothes were not mended, she was never punctual at meal-times. And yet no one could call her a dreamy child. She could, about things that interested her, be remarkably sharp and penetrating. She had a swift and often successful intuition about characters; facts and details about places or people she never forgot. She had a hard, severe, entirely masculine sense of independence, an ironic contempt for sentimentality, a warm, ardent loyalty and simplicity in friendship. Her carelessness in all the details of life sprang from her long muddled years at St. Dreots, the lack of a mother's guidance and education, the careless selfishness of her father's disregard of her. She struggled, poor child, passionately to improve herself. She sat for hours in her room working at her clothes, trying to mend her stockings, the holes in her blouses, the rip of the braid at the bottom of her skirt. She waited listening for the cuckoo to call that she might be in exact time for luncheon or dinner, and then, as she listened, some thought would occur to her, and, although she did not dream, her definite tracking of her idea would lead her to forget all time. Soon there would be Martha's knock on the door and her surly ill-tempered voice:
"Quarter of an hour they've been sitting at luncheon, Miss."
And her clothes! The aunts had said that she must buy what was necessary, and she had gone with Aunt Elizabeth to choose all the right things. They had, between them, bought all the wrong ones. Maggie had no idea of whether or no something suited her; a dress, a hat that would look charming upon any one else looked terrible upon her; she did not know what was the matter, but nothing became her!
Her new friend, Caroline Smith, laughing and chattering, tried to help her. Caroline had very definite ideas about dress, and indeed spent the majority of her waking hours in contemplation of that subject. But she had never, she declared, been, in all her life, so puzzled. She was perfectly frank.
"But it looks AWFUL, Maggie dear, and yesterday in the shop it didn't seem so bad, although that old pig wouldn't let us have it the way we wanted. It's just as it is with poor mother, who gets fatter and fatter, diet herself as she may, so that she can wear nothing at all now that looks right, and is only really comfortable in her night-dress. Of course you're not FAT, Maggie darling, but it's your figure—everything's either too long or too short for you. You don't mind my speaking so frankly, do you? I always say one's either a friend or not, and if one's a friend why then be as rude as you please. What's friendship for?"
They were, in fact, the greatest possible friends. Maggie had never possessed a girl-friend before. She had, in the first days of the acquaintance, been shy and very silent—she had been afraid of going too far. But soon she had seen that she could not go too far and could not say too much. She had discovered then a multitude of new happinesses.
There was nothing, she found, too small, too unimportant to claim Caroline's interest. Caroline wished to know everything, and soon Maggie disclosed to her many things that she had told to no other human being in her life before. It could not honestly be said that Caroline had many wise comments to make on Maggie's experiences. Her attitude was one of surprised excitement. She was amazed by the most ordinary incidents and conversations. She found Maggie's life quite incredible.
"You must stop me, Maggie, if I hurt your feelings. But really! ... Why, if poor father had treated me like that I'd have gone straight out of the house and never come back. I would indeed ... Well, here you are now, dear, and we must just see each other as often as ever we can!"
They made a strange contrast, Maggie so plain in her black dress with her hair that always looked as though it had been cut short like a boy's, her strong rough movements, and Caroline, so neat and shining and entirely feminine that her only business in the world seemed to be to fascinate, beguile and bewilder the opposite sex. Whatever the aunts may have thought of this new friendship, they said nothing. Caroline had her way with them as with every one else. Maggie wondered often as to Aunt Anne's, real thoughts. But Aunt Anne only smiled her dim cold smile, gave her cold hand into the girl's warm one and said, "Good afternoon, Caroline. I hope your father and mother are well." "They're dears, you know," Caroline said to Maggie; "I do admire your Aunt Anne; she keeps to herself so. I wish I could keep to myself, but I never was able to. Poor mother used to say when I was quite little, 'You'll only make yourself cheap, Carrie, if you go on like that. Don't make yourself cheap, dear.' But what I say is, one's only young once and the people who don't want one needn't have one."
Nevertheless there were, even in these very early days, directions into which Maggie did not follow her new friend. Young as she was in many things, in some ways she was very old indeed. She had been trained in another school from Caroline; she felt from the very first that upon certain questions her lovely friend was inexperienced, foolish and dangerously reckless. On the question of "men," for instance, Maggie, with clear knowledge of her father and her uncle, refused to follow Caroline's light and easy excursions. Caroline was disappointed; she had a great deal to say on the subject and could speak, she assured Maggie, from a vast variety of experience: "Men are all the same. What I say is, show them you don't care 'that' about them and they'll come after you. Not that I care whether they do or no. Only it's fun the way they go on. You just try, Maggie."
But Maggie had her own thoughts. They were not imparted to her friend. Nothing indeed appeared to her more odd than that Caroline should be so wise in some things and so foolish in others. She did not know that it was her own strange upbringing that gave her independent estimates and judgments.
The second influence that, during these first weeks, developed her soul and body was, strangely enough, her aunt's elderly friend, Mr. Magnus. If Caroline introduced her to affairs of the world, Mr. Magnus introduced her to affairs of the brain and spirit.
She had never before known any one who might be called "clever." Her father was not, Uncle Mathew was not; no one in St. Dreots had been clever. Mr. Magnus, of course, was "clever" because he wrote books, two a year.
But to be an author, was not a claim to Maggie's admiration. As has been said before, she did not care for reading, and considered that the writing of books was a second-rate affair. The things that Mr. Magnus might have done with his life if he had not spent it in writing books! She regarded him with the kind indulgence of an elder who watches a child brick-building. He very quickly discovered her attitude and it amused him. They became the most excellent friends over it. She on her side very quickly discovered the true reason of his coming so often to their house; he loved Aunt Anne. At its first appearance this discovery was so strange and odd that Maggie refused to indulge it. Love seemed so far from Aunt Anne. She greeted Mr. Magnus from the chill distance whence she greeted the rest of the world—she gave him no more than she gave any one else—But Mr. Magnus did not seem to desire more. He waited patiently, a slightly ironical and self-contemptuous worshipper at a shrine that very seldom opened its doors, and never admitted him to its altar. It was this irony that Maggie liked in him; she regarded herself in the same way. Their friendship was founded on a mutual detachment. It prospered exceedingly.
Maggie soon discovered that Mr. Magnus was very happy to sit in their house even though Aunt Anne was not present. His attitude seemed to be that the atmosphere that she left behind her was enough for him and that he could not, in justice, expect any more. Before Maggie's arrival he had had but a slender excuse for his continual presence. He could not sit in the empty drawing-room surveying the large and ominous portrait of the Cardinal childhood, quite alone save for Thomas, without seeming a very considerable kind of fool. And to appear that in the eyes of Aunt Anne, who already regarded mankind in general with pity, would be a mistake.
Now that Maggie was here he might come so often as he pleased. Many was the dark afternoon through the long February and March months that they sat together in the dim drawing-room, Maggie straining her eyes over an attempted reform of some garment, Mr. Magnus talking in his mild ironical voice with his large moon-like spectacles fixed upon nothing in particular.
Mr. Magnus did all the talking. Maggie fancied that, all his life, he had persisted in the same gentle humorous fashion without any especial attention as to the wisdom, agreement or even existence of his audience. She fancied that all men who wrote books did that. They had to talk to "clear their ideas." She raised her eyes sometimes and looked at him as he sat there. His shabby, hapless appearance always appealed to her. She knew that he was, in reality, anything but hapless, but his clothes never fitted him, and it was impossible for him to escape from the Quixotic embarrassments of his thin hair, his high cheek-bones, his large spectacles. His smile, however, gave him his character; when he smiled—and he was always smiling—you saw a man independent, proud, wise and gentle. He was not a fool, Mr. Magnus, although he did love Aunt Anne.
To a great deal that he said Maggie paid but little attention; it was, she felt, not intended for her. She had, in all her relations with him, to struggle against the initial disadvantage that she regarded all men who wrote books with pity. She was not so stupid as not to realise that there were a great many fine books in the world and that one was the better for reading them, but, just because there were, already, so many fine ones, why write more that would almost certainly be not so fine? He tried to explain, to her that some men were compelled to write and could not help themselves.
"I wrote my first book when I was nineteen. One morning I just began to write, and then it was very easy. Then everything else was easy. The first publisher to whom I sent it accepted it. It was published and had quite a success. I thought I was made for life. Anything seemed possible to one. After all, so far as one's possibilities went one was on a level with any one—Shakespeare, Dante, any one you like. One might do anything... . I published a book a year, after that, for ten years—ten years ten books, and then awoke to the fact that I was nothing at all and would never be anything—that I would never write like Shakespeare, and, a matter of equal importance, would never sell like Mrs. Henry Wood. Not that I wished to write like any one else. I had a great idea of keeping to my own individuality, but I saw quite clearly that what I had in myself—all of it—was no real importance to any one. I might so well have been a butcher or baker for all that it mattered. I saw that I was one of those unfortunate people—there are many of them—just in between the artists and the shopkeepers. I was an artist all right, but not a good enough one to count; had I been a shopkeeper I might have sold my goods."
"Well, then, here's your question, Miss Cardinal. Why on earth did I go on writing? ... Simply because I couldn't help myself. Writing was the only thing in the world that gave me happiness. I thought too that there might be people, here and there, unknown to me who cared for what I did. Not many of course—I soon discovered that outside the small library set in London no one had ever heard of me. When I was younger I had fancied that that to me fiery blazing advertisement: "New Novel by William Magnus, author of ..." must cause men to stop in the street, exclaim, rush home to tell their wives, 'Do you know Magnus' new novel is out?'—now I realised that by nine out of every ten men and five out of every ten women the literary page in the paper is turned over with exactly the same impatience with which I turn over the betting columns. Anyway, why not? ... perfectly right. And then by this time I'd seen my old books, often enough, lying scattered amongst dusty piles in second-hand shops marked, 'All this lot 6d.' Hundreds and hundreds of six-shilling novels, dirty, degraded, ashamed ... I'd ask, sometimes, when I was very young, for my own works. 'What's the name? What? Magnus?—No, don't stock him. No demand. We could get you a copy, sir...' There it is. Why not laugh at it? I was doing perhaps the most useless thing in the world. A commonplace little water-colour, hung on a wall, can give happiness to heaps of people; a poor piece of music can do a thousand things, good and bad, but an unsuccessful novel—twenty unsuccessful novels! A whole row, with the same history awaiting their successors ... 'We welcome a new novel by Mr. William Magnus, who our readers will remember wrote that clever story ... The present work seems to us at least the equal of any that have preceded it.' ... A fortnight's advertisement—Dead silence. Some one in the Club, 'I see you've written another book, old man. You do turn 'em out.' A letter from a Press Agency who has never heard of one's name before, 'A little sheaf of thin miserable cuttings.' ... The Sixpenny Lot ... Ouf! And still I go on and shall go on until I die. Perhaps after all I'm more justified than any of them. I'm stripped of all reasons save the pleasure, the thrill, the torment, the hopes, the despairs of the work itself. I've got nothing else out of it and shall get nothing ... and therefore I'm justified. Now do you understand a little, Miss Cardinal?"
She half understood. She understood that he was compelled to do it just as some men are compelled to go to race meetings and just as Uncle Mathew was compelled to drink.
But she nevertheless thought it a dreadful pity that he was unable to stop and interest himself in something else. Then he could see it so plainly and yet go on! She admired and at the same time pitied him.
It seemed, this private history of Mr. Magnus, at first sight so far from Maggie's immediate concerns, her new life, her aunts, the Chapel and the Chapel world. It was only afterwards, when she looked back, that she was able to see that all these private affairs of private people radiated inwards, like the spokes of a wheel, towards the mysterious inner circle—that inner circle of which she was already dimly aware, and of which she was soon to feel the heat and light. She was, meanwhile, so far impressed by Mr. Magnus' confidences that she borrowed one of his novels from Caroline, who confided to her that she herself thought it the dullest and most tiresome of works. "To be honest, I only read a bit of it—I don't know what it's about. I think it's downright silly."
This book bore the mysterious title of "Dredinger." It was concerned apparently with the experiences of a young man who, buying an empty house in Bloomsbury, discovered a pool of water in the cellar. The young man was called Dredinger, which seemed to Maggie an unnatural kind of name. He had an irritating habit of never finishing his sentences, and the people he knew answered him in the same inconclusive fashion. The pool in the cellar naturally annoyed him, but he did nothing very practical about it, allowed it to remain there, and discussed it with a Professor of Chemistry. Beyond this Maggie could not penetrate. The young man was apparently in love with a lady much older than himself, who wore pince-nez, but it was an arid kind of love in which the young man discovered motives and symptoms with the same dexterous surprise with which he discovered newts and tadpoles in the cellar-pond. Maggie bravely attacked Mr. Magnus.
"Why didn't he have men in to clear up the pond and lay a new floor?" she asked.
"That was just the point," said Mr. Magnus. "He couldn't."
"Why couldn't he?"
"Weakness of character and waiting to see what would happen."
"He talked too much," she answered decisively. "But are there houses in London with ponds in them?"
"Lots," said Mr. Magnus. "Only the owners of the houses don't know it. There is a big pond in the Chapel. That's what Thurston came out of."
This was beyond Maggie altogether. An agreeable thing, however, about Mr. Magnus was that he did not mind when you disliked his work. He seemed to expect that you would not like it. He was certainly a very unconceited man.
A more important and more interesting theme was Mr. Magnus' reason for being where he was. What was he doing here? What led him to the Chapel doors, he being in no way a religious man?
"It was like this," he told her. "I was living in Golders Green, and suddenly one morning I was tired of the country that wasn't country, and the butcher boy and the postman. So I moved as far into the centre of things as I could and took a room in St. Martin's Lane close at hand here. Then one evening I was wandering about, a desolate Sunday evening when the town is given over to cats. I suddenly came across the Chapel. I like going into London churches by chance, there's always something interesting, something you wouldn't expect. The Chapel simply astonished me. I couldn't imagine what they were all about, it wasn't the ordinary London congregation, it was almost the ordinary London service and yet not quite; there was an air of expectation and even excitement which is most unusual in a London church. Then there was Warlock. Of course one could see at once that he was an extraordinary man, a kind of prophet all on his own; he was as far away from that congregation as Columbus was from his crew when he first sighted the Indies."
"I've met one or two prophets in my time, and their concern has always been with their audience first, themselves second and their vision last. Warlock is the other way round. He should have been a hermit, not the leader of a community. Well, it interested me. I came again and again ... I'm going to stay on now until the end."
"The end?" asked Maggie.
"The end of myself or the Chapel, whichever comes first. I wrote a story once—a very bad one—about some merchants—why merchants I don't know—who were flung on a desert island. It was all jungle and desolation, and then suddenly they came upon a little white Temple. It doesn't matter what happened afterwards. I've myself forgotten most of it, but I remember that the sailors used the Temple in different ways to keep their hopes and expectations alive. Their expectations that one day a ship would come and save them ... and so far as I remember they became imaginative about the Temple, and fancied that the Unknown God of it would help them to regain their private affairs: one of them wanted to get back to his girl, another to his favourite pub, another to his money-making, another to his collection of miniatures. And they used to sit and look at the Temple day after day and expect something to happen. When the ship came at last they wouldn't go into it because they couldn't bear to think that something should happen at last and they not be there to see it. Oh yes, one of them went back, I remember. But his actual meeting with his girl was so disappointing in comparison with his long expectation of it in front of the Temple that he took the next boat back to the island ... but he never found it again. He travelled everywhere and died, a disappointed man, at sea."
Mr. Magnus was fond of telling little stories, obscure and pointless, and Maggie supposed that it was a literary habit. On this occasion he continued to talk quite naturally for his own satisfaction. "Yes, one can make oneself believe in anything. I have believed in all sorts of things. In England, of course, people have believed in nothing except that things will always be as they always have been—a useful belief considering that things have never been as they always were. In the old days, when the Boer War hadn't interfered with tradition, it must have seemed to any one who wasn't a young man pretty hopeless, but now I don't know. Imagination's breaking in ... Warlock's a prophet. I've got fascinated, sitting round this Chapel, as badly as any of them. Yes, one can be led into belief of anything."
"And what do you believe in, Mr. Magnus?" asked Maggie.
"Well, not in myself anyway, nor Thurston, nor Miss Avies ... But in your Aunt perhaps, and Warlock. The only thing I'm sure of is that there's something there, but what it is of course I can't tell you, and I don't suppose I shall ever know. The story of Sir Galahad, Miss Cardinal—it seems mid-Victorian to us now—but it's a fine story and true enough."
Maggie, who knew nothing of mid-Victorianism, was silent.
He ended with: "Mind you decide for yourself. That's the great thing in life. Don't you believe anything that any one tells you. See for yourself. And if there's something of great value, don't think the less of it because the people who admire it aren't worth very much. Why should they be? And possibly after all it's only themselves they're admiring ... There's a fearful lot of nonsense and humbug in this thing, but there's something real too ..."
He changed his note, suddenly addressing himself intently to her as though he had a message to deliver.
"Don't think me impertinent. But your Aunt Anne. See as much of her as you can. She's devoted to you, Miss Cardinal. You mayn't have seen it—she's a reserved woman and very shy of her feelings, but she's spoken to me ... I hope I'm not interfering to say this, but perhaps at first you don't understand her. She loves you, you're the first human being I do believe that she's ever loved."
What was there then in Maggie that started up in rebellion at this unexpected declaration? She had been sitting there, tranquil, soothed with a happy sense that her new life was developing securely for her in the way that she would have it. Suddenly she was alert, suspicious, hostile.
"What has she said to you?" she asked quickly, frowning up at him and drawing back as though she were afraid of him. He was startled at the change in her.
"Said?" he repeated, stammering a little. "Why only ... Nothing ... except that she cared for you and hoped that you would be happy. She was afraid that it would all be strange for you at first ... Perhaps I have been interfering ..."
"No," Maggie interrupted quickly. "Not you. Only I must lead my own life. I must, mustn't I? I don't want to be selfish, but I can begin for myself now. I have a little money of my own—and I MUST make my own way. I don't want to be selfish," she repeated, "but I must be free. I don't understand Aunt Anne. She never seems to care for me. I want to do everything for her I can, but I don't want to be under any one ever any more."
She was so young when she said this that he was suddenly moved to an affectionate fatherly tenderness—but he knew her now too well to show it.
"No, you mustn't be selfish," he answered her almost drily. "We can't lead our lives quite alone, you know—every step we take we affect some one somewhere. Your aunt doesn't want your liberty—she wants your affection."
"She wants to make me religious," Maggie brought out, staring at Mr. Magnus.
"Ah, if you see that, you don't understand her," he answered. "How should you—yet? She cares so deeply for her religion that she wishes naturally any one whom she loves to share it with her. But if you don't—"
"If you don't?" cried Maggie, springing up from her seat and facing him.
"I'm sure she would wish to influence no one," he continued gravely. "You've seen for yourself how apart her life is. She is too conscious of the necessity for her own liberty—"
"It isn't liberty, it's slavery," Maggie caught him up passionately. "Do you suppose I haven't watched all these weeks? What does her religion do but shut her off from everything and everybody? Is she kind to Aunt Elizabeth? No, she isn't, and you know it. Would she care if we were all of us buried in the ruins of this house to-morrow? Not for a single moment. And it's her religion. I hate religion. I hate it! ... and since I've been in this house I've hated it more and more. You don't know what it was like with father. I don't think of it now or talk of it, but I know what it made of HIM. And now it's the same here, only it takes them in a different way. But it's the same in the end—no one who's religious cares for any one. And they'd make the same of me. Aunt Anne would—the same as she's made of Aunt Elizabeth. They haven't said much yet, but they're waiting for the right moment, and then they'll spring it upon me. It's in the house, it's in the rooms, it's in the very furniture. It's as though father had come back and was driving me into it. And I want to be free, I want to lead my own life, to make it myself. I don't want to think about God or Heaven or Hell. I don't care whether I'm good or bad... . What's the use of my being here in London and never seeing anything. I'll go into a shop or something and work my fingers to the bone. They SHAN'T catch me. They SHAN'T ... If Uncle Mathew were here ..."
She broke off suddenly, breathless, staring at Mr. Magnus as though she had not been aware until now that he was in the room. To say that her outburst astonished him was to put it very mildly indeed. She had always been so quiet and restrained; she had seemed so happy and tranquil.
He blushed, pushed his spectacles with his fingers, then finally stammered:
"I'd no idea—that—that you hated it so much."
She was quiet and composed again. "I don't hate it," she answered very calmly. "Only they shan't tie me—no one shall. And in the house it's as though some one were watching behind every door. It used to be just the same at home. When people think a lot about religion something seems to get into a place. Why, truly, Mr. Magnus, I've wondered once or twice lately, in spite of myself, whether they mayn't be right after all and God's going to come in a chariot and set the world on fire."
"It sounds silly, but when you see the way Aunt Anne and Mr. Warlock believe things it almost makes them true."
Maggie finally added: "You mustn't think me selfish. I'm very very grateful for all their kindness. I'm very happy. It's all splendid compared with what life used to be at home—but I fancy sometimes that the aunts think I'm just going to settle down here for ever and be like them—and I'm not—I'm afraid of Aunt Anne."
"Afraid of her?" said Mr. Magnus. "Ah, you mustn't be that."
"She has some plan in her head. I know she has—"
"No plan is set except for your good," said Mr. Magnus.
"I don't want any one to bother about my good," answered Maggie. "I can look after that for myself."
This little conversation revealed Maggie to Mr. Magnus in an entirely new light. He had thought her, until now, a good simple girl, entirely ignorant of life and eager to be taught. The sudden discovery of her independence distressed him. He left the house that afternoon with many new points to consider.
Meanwhile Maggie had kept from him the true root of the matter. She had said nothing of Martin Warlock. She had said nothing, even to herself, about him, and yet the consciousness of her meeting with him was always with her as a fire smoulders in the hold of a ship, burning stealthily through the thick heart of the place, dim and concealed, to burst suddenly, with a touch of the wind, into shining flame.
It was after her talk to Mr. Magnus that she suddenly saw that Martin Warlock was always in her thoughts, and then, because she was Maggie and had never been deceitful to herself or to any one else, she faced the fact and considered it. She knew that she was ignorant of the world and of life, that she knew nothing about men and, although she had many times fancied to herself what love must be like, she did not tell herself now that it was love that had come to her.
She saw him as a desirable companion; she thought that he would make a most interesting friend; she would like to make her experiences of life with him at her side. She would be free and he would be free, but they would exchange confidences.
And then because she was very simple and had learnt nothing of the difference between the things that decent girls might do and the things they might not she began to consider the easiest way of meeting him. She intended to go to him simply as one human being to another and tell him that she liked him and hoped that they would often see one another. There were no confused issues nor questions of propriety before Maggie. Certainly she was aware that men took advantage of girls' weakness—but that was, as in the case of Uncle Mathew, when they had drunk too much—and it was the fault of the girls, too, for not looking after themselves. Maggie felt that she could look after herself anywhere. She was more afraid, by far, of her Aunt Anne than of any man.
It happened on the very day after that conversation with Mr. Magnus that Aunt Anne said at luncheon:
"I think, Maggie dear, if you don't mind, that you and I will pay a call on Mrs. Warlock this afternoon. You have not been there yet. To-day will be a very good opportunity."
Maggie's mind flew at once to her clothes. She had been with Caroline Smith to that young lady's dressmaker, a thin and sharp-faced woman whose black dress gleamed with innumerable pins. Maggie had been pinched and measured, pulled in here and pulled out there. Then there had been afternoons when she had been "fitted" under Caroline's humorous and critical eye. Finally the dress had been delivered, only two days ago, in a long card-board box; it waited now for the great occasion.
The great occasion had, in the guise of the Warlock family, surely arrived. Maggie's heart beat as she went up to her room. When at last she was wearing the dress, standing before her mirror, her cheeks were red and her hands shook a little.
The dress was very fine—simple of course and quite plain, but elegant as no dress of Maggie's had ever been elegant. There surely could not anywhere be a more perfect black dress, and yet, as Maggie gazed, she was aware that there was something not quite right. She was always straightforward with herself; yes, the thing that was not quite right was her own stupid shape. Her figure was too square, her back was too short, her hands too large. She had a moment of acute disgust with herself so that she could have torn the dress from her and rushed into her old obscure and dingy black again. Of what use to dress her up? She would always look wrong, always be awkward and ungainly ... tears of disappointment gathered slowly in her eyes. Then her pride reasserted itself; she raised her head proudly and laughed at her anxious gaze. There was still her new hat. She took it from the bed and put it on, sticking big pins into it, moving back from the mirror, then forward again, turning her back, standing on her toes, suddenly bowing to herself and waving her hand.
She was caught thus, laughing into the mirror, by old Martha, who pushed her sour face through the door and said: "They've been waiting this long time for you, Miss."
"All right, Martha," Maggie answered sharply, annoyed that she should be found, posturing and bowing, by the woman. "Why didn't you knock?"
"I did knock, Miss. You were that occupied you didn't hear me." The old woman was grinning.
Maggie went downstairs, her heart still beating, her cheeks still flushed. She did hope that Aunt Anne would be pleased. Aunt Anne, although she never said anything about clothes, must, of course, notice such things, and if she loved Maggie as Mr. Magnus said she did, then she would "show her approval." The girl stood for a moment on the bottom step of the staircase looking at her aunt who was waiting for her in the little dark hall.
"Well, dear—I'm waiting," she said.
The burning eyes of Thomas the cat watched from the deep shadows.
"I'm so sorry. I was dressing," said Maggie.
Her aunt said nothing more and they left the house.
Maggie, as always when she walked with Aunt Anne, was aware that they made a strange couple, she so short and the other so tall, she with her sturdy masculine walk, her aunt with her awkward halting movement. They went in silence.
Maggie longed for a word of approval; a short sentence such as "How nice you're looking, Maggie," or "I like your dress, Maggie," or "That's a new dress, dear—I like it," would be enough. After that Maggie felt that she could face a multitude of wild and savage Warlocks, that she could walk into the Warlock drawing-room with a fine brave carriage, above all, that she would feel a sudden warm affection for her aunt that would make all their future life together easy.
But Aunt Anne said nothing. She looked exactly as she had looked upon her first appearance at St. Dreots, so thin and tall, with her pale tapering face and her eyes staring before her as though they saw nothing.
Maggie, as they turned up into Garrick Street, said:
"I hope you like my new dress, aunt."
Aunt Anne turned to her for a moment, smiled gently and then vaguely, as though her mind were elsewhere, answered:
"I liked your old dress better, dear."
Maggie's face flamed; her temper flared into her eyes. For a moment she had wild thoughts of breaking into open rebellion. She hated her dress, she hated London, above all, she hated Aunt Anne. That lady's happy unconsciousness that anything had occurred drove the girl into furious irritation. Well, it was hopeless then, Mr. Magnus could say what he pleased, her aunt did not care for her—she would not mind did she fall dead in the street before her. The words in Maggie's mind were: "You don't look at me. I'm not a human being to you at all. But I won't live with you. I'll go my own way. You can't keep me if you never speak to me nor think of me." But in some dark fashion that strange impassivity held her. Aunt Anne had her power ...
They climbed the dim crooked staircase behind the antiquary's wall. They rang the Warlock bell and were admitted. Maggie did not know what it was that she had expected, but it was certainly not the pink, warm room of Mrs. Warlock.
The heavy softly closing door hemmed them in, the silent carpet folded about their steps; the canary twittered, the fire spurted and crackled. But at once the girl's heart went out to old Mrs. Warlock; she looked so charming in her white cap and blue bow, her eyes were raised so gently to Maggie's face and her little hand was so soft and warm.
The meeting between Anne Cardinal and Mrs. Warlock was very gracious. Aunt Anne gravely pressed the old lady's hand, looked at her with her grave distant eyes, then very carefully and delicately sat down.
Amy Warlock came in; Maggie had met her before and disliked her. Conversation dealt decently and carefully with the weather, the canary and Maggie's discovery of London. Maggie was compelled to confess that she was afraid that she had not discovered London at all. She felt Amy Warlock's sharp eyes upon them all and, as always when she was in company that was, she thought, suspicious of her, she became hot and uncomfortable, she frowned and spoke in short, almost hostile, sentences.
"They're laughing at my new clothes," she thought, "I wish I'd worn my old ones ... and anyway these hurt me." She sat up very stiffly, her hands on her lap, her eyes staring at the little bright water-colour on the wall opposite. Mrs. Warlock, like a trickling, dancing brook, continued her talk:
"Of course there's the country. I was brought up as a girl just outside Salisbury ... So many, many years ago—I always tell my boy that I'm such an old woman now that I don't belong to his world at all. Just to sit here and see the younger generation go past. Don't regret your youth, Miss Cardinal. You'll want it back again one day. I said to Martin only yesterday ..."
Neither Aunt Anne nor Amy Warlock had anything to say, so that quite suddenly on the entrance of tea, conversation dropped. They all sat there and looked at one another. There was a large silver tray with silver tea-things upon it and a fat swelling china dish that held hot buttered toast. There was a standing wicker pyramid containing bread and butter, plates of little yellow and red cakes, shortbread and very heavy plum cake black with currants.
Mrs. Warlock had ceased all conversation, her eyes were fixed upon the preparations for tea. The door opened and John Warlock and his son came in.
Maggie's eyes lighted when she saw Martin Warlock. She behaved as she might have done had she been in her own room at St. Dreots. She sprang up from her chair and stood there, smiling, waiting for him. First his father shook hands with her, then Martin came and stood beside her, laughing.
His face was flushed and he seemed excited about something, but she felt nothing save her pleasure at meeting him, and it was only when he had moved on to her aunt that she was conscious once more of Amy Warlock's eyes, and wondered whether she had behaved badly in jumping up to meet him.
As she considered this her anger and her confusion at her anger increased. She saw that Martin was talking to her aunt and did not look at her. Perhaps he also had thought her forward; of course that horrid sister of his would think everything that she did wrong. But did he? Surely he understood. She wanted to ask him and then wanted to go home and leave them all. She saw that her teacup was trembling in her hand. She steadied it upon her knee and then her knee began to quiver, and all the time Amy Warlock watched her. She thought then that she must assert herself and show that she was not confused nor timid, so she began in a high-strained voice to talk to Mrs. Warlock. She told Mrs. Warlock that she found Harrods' a confusing place, that she had not yet visited Westminster Abbey, that her health was quite good, that she had no brothers and no sisters, that she could not play the piano, and that she was afraid that she never read books.
It was after the last of these interesting statements that she was suddenly aware of the sound of her own voice, as though it had been a brazen gong beating stridently in the vastness of a deserted Cathedral. She saw the old lady take two pieces of buttered toast from the china dish, hold them tenderly in her hand and fling them a swift, bird-like glance before she devoured them; during that moment's vision Maggie discovered what so many people of vaster experience both of life and of Mrs. Warlock had never discovered; namely, that the old lady cared more for her food than her company. Maggie was suddenly less afraid of the whole family. She looked up then at Martin as though she thus would prove her new courage and, he glancing across at the same moment, they smiled. He left his father's side and, coming over to her, sat down close to her. He dropped his voice in speaking to her.
"I've been wanting to see you," he said.
"Why?" she asked him.
"Well," he answered, smiling at her as though he wanted to tell her something privately. "I feel as though we'd got a lot to tell one another ... I'm a stranger here really quite as much as you."
"No, you're not," she said. "You can't be so MUCH a stranger anywhere because you've been all over the world and are ready for anything."
"And you?"
"I don't seem to manage the simplest things. Aunt Elizabeth and I get lost the moment we move outside the door ... Do you like my dress?" she asked him.
"Why!" he said, obviously startled by such a question. "It's—it's splendid!"
"No, you know it isn't," she answered quickly, dropping her voice into a confidential statement. "It's all wrong. I thought you'd know why as you've been everywhere. Caroline Smith helped me to choose it, and it looked all right until I wore it. It's me ... I'm hopeless to fit. Caroline says so. I don't care about clothes—if only I looked just like anybody else I'd never bother again—but it's so tiresome to have taken so much trouble and then for it to be all wrong."
Martin was then aware of many things—that this was a strange unusual girl, that she reassured him as to her interest, her vitality, her sincerity as no girl had ever done before, that his sister was aware of their intimate conversation and that she resented it, and that he must see this girl again and as soon as possible. He was as liable as any young man in the world to the most sudden and most violent enthusiasms, but they had been enthusiasms for a pretty face, for a sensual appeal, for a sentimental moment. Here there was no prettiness, no sensuality, no sentiment. There was something so new that he felt like Cortez upon his peak in Darien.
"It's all right," he reassured her urgently. "It's all right. I promise you it is. The great thing is to look yourself. And you'll never be the least like any one else." He meant that to be the first open declaration of his own particular discovery of her, but he was aware that his sentence could have more than one interpretation. Uncomfortably conscious then of his sister's regard of them, he looked up and said:
"Amy, Miss Cardinal's been telling me how confusing London is to her. You've got as good an idea of London as any one in the world. You should take her to one or two places and show her things."
Amy Warlock, every line of her stiff body firing at them both her hostility, answered:
"Oh, I don't think Miss Cardinal would care for me as a guide. I shouldn't be able to show her interesting things. We have scarcely, I should fancy, enough in common. Miss Cardinal's interests are, I imagine, very different from my own."
The tone, the words, fell into the sudden silence like a lighted match into water. Maggie, her head erect, her voice, in spite of herself, trembling a little, answered:
"Why, Miss Warlock, I shouldn't think of troubling you. It's very kind of your brother, but one must make one's discoveries for oneself, mustn't one? ... I am already beginning to find my way about."
After that the tea-party fell into complete disruption. Maggie, although she did not look, could feel Martin's anger like a flame beside her. She was aware that Aunt Anne and Mr. Warlock were, like some beings from another world, distant from the general confusion. Her one passionate desire was to get up and leave the place; to her intense relief she heard Aunt Anne's clear voice:
"I think, Mrs. Warlock, we must be turning homewards. Shall I send you those papers about the Perteway's Mission? ... Such splendid work. I think it would interest you."
It was as though a hole had suddenly opened in the floor of the neat little drawing-room and they were all hurrying to leave without, if possible, tumbling into it. There was a general shaking of hands.
Mrs. Warlock said kindly to Maggie:
"Do come soon again, dear. It does an old lady good to see young faces."
Martin was near the door. He almost crushed Maggie's hand in his: "I must see you—soon," he whispered.
Free from the house Maggie and her aunt walked home in complete silence. Maggie's heart was a confusion of rage, surprise, loneliness and pride. No one had ever behaved like that to her before. And what had she done? What was there about her that people hated? ... Why? ... Why? She felt as though, in some way, it had all been Aunt Anne's fault. Why did not Aunt Anne speak? Well, if they all hated her she would go on her own way. She did not care.
But alone in her room, her face, indignant, proud, quivering, surprising her in the long mirror by its strangeness, and causing her to feel, because it did not seem to belong to her, more lonely than ever, she burst out:
"I can't stand it. I CAN'T stand it. I'll get away ... so soon as ever I can!"
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