The Captives Part 33

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

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

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

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

"What can you do?" asked Katherine.

"I don't know," said Maggie.

"Can you shorthand and type?"

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

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

Maggie paused.

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

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

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

This sense of Martin's presence silenced her. "If I can feel," she said at last, "that I can ask your advice. I have n.o.body ... We all seem ...

Oh! how can I make you understand properly! You never will have seen anything like our house. It is all so queer, so shut-up, away from everything. I'm like a prisoner ..."

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

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

"Miss Cardinal," she said, "I want you to come here whenever you can.

You haven't seen our boy, Tim, yet--one and a half--and there are so many things I want to show you. Will you count yourself a friend of the house?"

Maggie blushed and twisted her hands together.

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

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

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

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

"Why did you do that?" asked Maggie.

"Because I wanted to marry my husband."

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

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

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

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

"Not happy but satisfied," she said.

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

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

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

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

She was let out into the outer world by the smiling maid-servant.

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

Maggie confronted a policeman.

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

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

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

Behind all this confusion there was Martin, Martin, Martin. Creeping nearer and nearer as though he were just behind her, or was it that she was creeping nearer and nearer to him? She did not know, but her heart now was beating so thickly that it was as though giants were wrapping cloth after cloth round it, hot cloths, but their hands were icy cold.

No, she was simply excited, desperately, madly excited.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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