The Captives Part 38

"What is it?" she asked breathlessly. "Look here, Maggie," he began, still scarcely looking at her. "I must get back at once. I only came to tell you that we must drop our meetings for the next day or two--until it's blown over."

"Until what's blown over," she asked him.

"It's my father. I don't know what exactly has happened. They'll none of them tell me, d.a.m.n them. It's Caroline Smith. She's been talking to Amy about you and me. I know that because of what Amy said about you at breakfast this morning."

"What did she say?"

"She wouldn't speak out. She hinted. But she admitted that Caroline Smith had told her something. But she doesn't matter. Nothing matters except father. He mustn't be excited just now. His heart's so bad. Any little thing ... We must wait."

She saw that he was scarcely realising her at all. She choked down all questions that concerned themselves. She simply agreed, nodding her head.

He did look at her then, smiling as he used to do.

"It's awfully hard on us. It won't be for more than a day or two. But I must put things right at home or it will be all up. I don't care for the others, of course, but if anything happened to father through me ..." He told her to write to the Charing Cross post-office. He would do the same. In a day or two it would be all right. He pressed her hand and was gone.

When she looked about her the street seemed quite empty although it was full of people. She threw up her head. She wouldn't be beaten by anybody ... only, it was lonely going back to the house and all of them ... alone ... without Martin.

She cried a little on her way home. But they were the last tears she shed.

CHAPTER IX

THE INSIDE SAINTS

Maggie, when she was nearly home, halted suddenly. She stopped as when on the threshold of a room that should be empty one sees waiting a stranger. If at the end of all this she should lose Martin! ...

There was the stranger who had come to her now and would not again depart. She recognised the sharp pain, the almost unconscious pulling back on the sudden edge of a dim pit, as something that would always be with her now--always. One knows that in the second stage of a great intimacy one's essential loneliness is only redoubled by close companionship. One asks for so much more, and then more and more, but that final embrace is elusive and no physical contact can surrender it.

But she was young and did not know that yet. All she knew was that she would have to face these immediate troubles alone, that she would not see him for perhaps a week, that she would not know what his people at home were doing, and that she must not let any of these thoughts come up into her brain. She must keep them all back: if she did not, she would tumble into some foolish precipitate action.

When she reached home she was obstinate and determined. At once she found that something was the matter. During luncheon the two aunts sat like statues (Aunt Elizabeth a dumpy and squat one). Aunt Anne's aloofness was coloured now with a very human anger. Maggie realised with surprise that she had never seen her angry before. She had been indignant, disapproving, superior, forbidding, but never angry. The eyes were hard now, not with religious reserve but simply with bad temper. The mist of anger dimmed the room, it was in the potatoes and the cold dry mutton, especially was it in the hard pallid k.n.o.bs of cheese. And Aunt Elizabeth, although she was frightened by her sister's anger on this occasion, shared in it. She pursed her lips at Maggie and moved her fat, podgy hand as though she would like to smack Maggie's cheeks.

Maggie was frightened--really frightened. The line of bold independence was all very well, but now risks were attached to it. If she swiftly tossed her head and told her aunts that she would walk out of the house they might say "Walk!" and that would precipitate Martin's crisis. She knew from the way he had looked at her that morning that his thoughts were with his father, and it showed that she had travelled through the first stage of her intimacy with him, that she could not trust him to put her before his own family troubles. At all costs she must keep him safe through these next difficult weeks, and the best way to keep him safe was herself to remain quietly at home.

Of all this she thought as she swallowed the hostile k.n.o.bs of cheese and drank the tepid, gritty coffee.

She followed her aunts upstairs, and was not at all surprised when Aunt Elizabeth, with an agitated murmur, vanished into higher regions. She followed Aunt Anne into the drawing-room.

Aunt Anne sat in the stiff-backed tapestry chair by the fire. Maggie stood in front of her. She was disarmed at that all-important moment by her desperate sensation of defenceless loneliness. It was as though half of herself--the man-half of herself--had left her. She tried to summon her pluck but there was no pluck there. She could only want Martin, over and over again inside herself. Had any one been, ever so hopelessly ALONE before?

"Maggie, I am angry," said Aunt Anne. She said it as though she meant it. Amazing how human this strange aloof creature had become. As though some coloured saint bright with painted wood and tinsel before whom one stood in reverence slipped down suddenly and with fingers of flesh and blood struck one's face. Her cheeks were flushed, her beautiful hands were no longer thin but were hard and active.

"What have I done, aunt?" asked Maggie.

"You have not treated us fairly. My sister and I have done everything for you. You have not made it especially easy for us in any way, but we have tried to give you what you wanted. You have repaid is with ingrat.i.tude."

She paused, but Maggie said nothing. She went on:

"Lately--these last three weeks--we have given you complete liberty. I advised that strongly against my sister's opinion because I thought you weren't happy. You didn't make friends amongst our friends, and I thought you should have the chance of finding some who were younger and gayer than we were. Then I thought we could trust you. You have many faults, but I believed that you were honest."

"I am honest!" Maggie broke in. Her aunt went on:

"You have used the liberty we gave you during these weeks to make yourself the talk of our friends. You have been meeting Mr. Martin Warlock secretly every day. You have been alone with him in the Park and at the theatre. I know that you are young and very ignorant. You could not have known that Martin Warlock is a man with whom no girl who respects herself would be seen alone--"

"That is untrue!" Maggie flamed out.

"--and," went on Aunt Anne, "we would have forgiven that. It is your deceit to ourselves that we cannot forget. Day after day you were meeting him and pretending that you went to your other friends. I am disappointed in you, bitterly disappointed. I saw from the first that you did not mean to care for us, now, as well, you have disgraced us--"

Maggie began: "Yes, I have been seeing Martin. I didn't think it wrong--I don't now. I didn't tell you because I was afraid that you would stop me--"

"Then that shows that you knew it was wrong."

"No, Aunt Anne--only that you would think it was wrong. I can only go by myself, by what I feel is wrong I mean. I've always had to, all my life. It would have been no good doing anything else at home, because father--"

She pulled herself up. She was not going to defend herself or ask for pity. She said, speaking finally:

"Yes, I have been out with Martin every day. I went to the theatre with him, too, and also had tea with him."

Maggie could see Aunt Anne's anger rising higher and higher like water in a tube. Her voice was hard when she spoke again--she p.r.o.nounced judgment:

"We see now that you were right when you said that you had better leave us. You are free to go as soon as you wish. You have, of course, your money, but if you care to stay with us until you have found some work you must now obey our rules. While you remain with us you must not go out unless my sister or I accompany you." Then her voice changed, softening a little. She suddenly raised her hands in a gesture of appeal: "Oh, Maggie, Maggie, turn to G.o.d. You have rebelled against Him. You have refused to listen to His voice. The end of that can be only misery. He loves, but He also judges. Even now, within a day, a week, He may come with judgment. Turn to Him, Maggie, not because I tell you but because of the Truth. Pray with me now that He may help you and give you strength."

Because she felt that she had indeed treated them badly and must do just now what they wished, she knelt down on the drawing-room carpet.

Aunt Anne also knelt down, her figure stiff like iron, her raised hands once again delicate and ghost-like.

"O Lord G.o.d," she prayed, "this Thy servant comes to Thee and prays that Thou wilt give her strength in her struggle with the Evil One. She has been tempted and is weak, but Thou art strong to save and wilt not despise the least of these Thy children."

"Come, O Lord the Father, and take Thy daughter into Thy loving care, and when Thou comest, in all Thy splendour, to redeem the world, I pray that Thou wilt find her waiting for Thee in holiness and meekness of heart."

They rose. Maggie's knees were sore with the stiff carpet. The family group watched her from the wall ironically.

She saw that in spite of the prayer Aunt Anne had not forgiven her. She stood away from her, and although her voice now was not so hard, it had lost altogether the tender note that it used to have.

"Now, Maggie, you must promise us that you will not see Martin Warlock again."

Maggie flushed. "No, aunt, I can't promise that."

"Then we must treat you as a prisoner whilst you are with us."

"If he wants to see me I must see him."

They looked at one another. Aunt Anne was like a man just then.

"Very well. Until you give us your promise we must see ourselves that you do not disgrace us."

There was no more to be said. It was as though a heavy iron door had rolled to.