The Captives Part 5

Maggie left the house.

The brother and sister, remaining in the room, walked towards one another as though driven by some common need of sympathy and protection against an outside power. Mathew Cardinal felt a genuine indignation that had but seldom figured in his life before. He had hated his brother, always, and never so greatly as at the moments of the man's reluctant charity towards him. But now, in the first clean uplift of his indignation, there was no self-congratulation at the justification of his prophecies.

"I knew him for what he was. But that he could do this! He meant it to hurt, too--that was like him all over. He had us in his mind. I wish I'd never taken a penny from him. I'd rather have starved. Yes, I would--far rather. I've been bad enough, but never a thing like that--"

His sister said quietly:

"He's dead, Mathew. We can do nothing. Maggie, poor child ..."

He approached for an instant more nearly than he had ever done. He took her hand. There were tears in his eyes.

"It's good of you, Anne--to take her."

She withdrew her hand--very gently.

"I wish we'd taken her before. She must have had a terrible time here.

I'd never realised ..."

He stood away from her near the window, feeling suddenly ashamed of his impetuosity.

"She's a strange girl," Anne Cardinal went on. "She didn't seem to feel this,--or anything. She hasn't, I think, much heart. I'm afraid she may find it a little difficult with us--"

Mathew was uncomfortable now. His mood had changed; he was sullen. His sister always made him feel like a disgraced dog. He shuffled on his feet.

"She's a good girl," he muttered at last, and then with a confused look about him, as though he were searching for something, he stumbled out of the room.

Meanwhile Maggie went on her way. She chose instinctively her path, through the kitchen garden at the back of the village, down the hill by the village street, over the little bridge that crossed the rocky stream of the Dreot, and up the steep hill that led on to the outskirts of Rothin Moor. The day, although she had no eyes for it, was one of those sudden impulses of misty warmth that surprise the Glebeshire frosts. The long stretch of the moor was enwrapped by a thin silver network of haze; the warmth of the sun, seen so dimly that it was like a shadow reflected in a mirror, struck to the very heart of the soil.

Where but yesterday there had been iron frost there was now soft yielding earth; it was as though the heat of the central fires of the world pressed dimly upward through many miles of heavy weighted resistance, straining to the light and air. Larks, lost in golden mist, circled in s.p.a.ce; Maggie could feel upon her face and neck and hands the warm moisture; the soil under her feet, now hard, now soft, seemed to tremble with some happy antic.i.p.ation; the moor, wrapped in its misty colour, had no bounds; the world was limitless s.p.a.ce with hidden streams, hidden suns.

The moor had a pathetic attraction for her, because not very long ago a man and a woman had been lost, only a few steps from Borhedden Farm, in the mist--lost their way and been frozen during the night. Poor things!

lovers, perhaps, they had been.

Maggie felt that here she could walk for miles and miles and that there was nothing to stop her; the clang of a gate, a house, a wall, a human voice was intolerable to her.

Her first thought as she went forward was disgust at her own weakness; once again she had been betrayed by her feelings. She could remember no single time when they had not betrayed her. She recalled now with an intolerable self-contempt her thoughts of her father at the time of the funeral and the hours that followed. It seemed to her now that she had only softened towards his memory because she had believed that he had left her money--and now, when she saw that he had treated her contemptuously, she found him once again the cruel, mean figure that she had before thought him.

For that she most bitterly, with an intensity that only her loneliness could have given her, despised herself. And yet something else in her knew that that reproach was not a true one. She had really softened towards him only because she had felt that she had behaved badly towards him, and the discovery now that he had behaved badly towards her did not alter her own original behaviour. She did not a.n.a.lyse all this; she only knew that there were in her longings for affection, a desire to be loved, an aching for companionship, and that these things must always be kept down, fast hidden within her. She realised her loneliness now with a fierce, proud, almost exultant independence. No more tears, no more leaning upon others, no more expecting anything from anybody. She was not dramatic in her new independence; she did not cry defiance to the golden mist or the larks or the hidden sun; she only walked on and on, stumping forward in her clumsy boots, her eyes hard and unseeing, her hands clasped behind her back.

Her expectation of happiness in her opening life that had been so strong with her that other day when she had looked down upon Polchester was gone. She expected nothing, she wanted nothing. Her only thought was that she would never yield to any one, never care for any one, never give to any one the opportunity of touching her. At moments through the mist came the figure of the cook, stout, florid, triumphant. Maggie regarded her contemptuously. "You cannot touch me,"

she thought. Of her father she would never think again. With both hands she flung all her memories of him into the mist to be lost for ever ...

She came suddenly upon a lonely farm-house. She knew the place, Borhedden; it had often been a favourite walk of hers from the Vicarage to Borhedden. The farmer let rooms there and, because the house was very old, some of the rooms were fine, with high ceilings, thick stone walls, and even some good panelling. The view too was superb, across to the Broads and the Molecatcher, or back to the Dreot Woods, or to the dim towers of Polchester Cathedral. The air here was fine--one of the healthiest spots in Glebeshire.

The farm to-day was transfigured by the misty glow; cows and horses could be faintly seen, ricks burnt with a dim fire. Somewhere dripping water falling on to stone gave a vocal spirit to the obscurity. The warm air seemed to radiate about the house like a flame that is obscured by sunlight.

The stealthy movements of the animals, the dripping of the water, were the only sounds. To Maggie the house seemed to say something, something comforting and rea.s.suring.

Standing there, she registered her vow that through all her life she would care for no one. No one should touch her.

Had there been an observer he might have found some food for his irony in the contemplation of that small, insignificant figure so ignorant of life and so defiant of it. He would have found perhaps something pathetic also. Maggie thought neither of irony nor of pathos, but turned homewards with her mouth set, her eyes grave, her heart controlled.

As she walked back the sun broke through the mist, and, turning, she could see Borhedden like a house on fire, its windows blazing against the sky.

It was natural that her aunt should wish to return to London as soon as possible. For one thing, Ellen the cook had packed her clothes and retired to some place in the village, there to await the departure of the defeated family. Then the house was not only unpleasant by reason of its atmosphere and a.s.sociations, but there were also the definite discomforts of roofs through which the rain dripped and floors that swayed beneath one's tread. Moreover, Aunt Elizabeth did not care to be left alone in the London house.

Uncle Mathew left on the day after the funeral. He had one little last conversation with Maggie.

"I hope you'll be happy in London," he said.

"I hope so," said Maggie.

"I know you'll do what you can to help your aunts." Then he went on more nervously. "Think of me sometimes. I shan't be able to come and see you very often, you know--too busy. But I shall like to know that you're thinking about me."

Maggie's new-found resolution taken so defiantly upon the moor was suddenly severely tested. She felt as though her uncle were leaving her to a world of enemies. She drove down her sense of desolation, and he saw nothing but her quiet composure.

"Of course I'll think of you," she answered. "And you must come often."

"They don't like me," he said, nodding his head towards where Aunt Anne might be supposed to be waiting. "It's not my fault altogether--but they have severe ideas. It's religion, of course."

She suddenly seemed to see in his eyes some terror or despair, as though he knew that he was going to drop "this time"--farther than ever before.

She caught his arm. "Uncle Mathew, what are you going to do? Where will you live? Take my three hundred pounds if it will help you. I don't want it just now. Keep it for me."

He had a moment of resolute, clear-sighted honesty. "No, my dear, if I had it it would go in a week. I can't keep money; I never could. I'm really better without any. I'm all right. You'll never get rid of me--don't you fear. We've got more in common than you think, although you're a good girl and I've gone to pieces a bit. All the same there's plenty worse than me. Your aunt, for all her religion, is d.a.m.ned difficult for a plain man to get along with. Most people would find me better company, after all. One last word, Maggie."

He bent down and whispered to her. "Don't you go getting caught by that sweep who runs their chapel up in London. He's a humbug if ever there was one--you mark my words. I know a thing or two. He's done your aunts a lot of harm, and he'll have his dirty fingers on you if you let him."

So he departed, his last kiss mingled with the usual aroma of whisky and tobacco, his last att.i.tude, as he turned away, that strange confusion of a.s.sumed dignity and natural genial stupidity that was so especially his.

Maggie turned, with all her new defiant resolution, to face the world alone with her Aunt Anne. Throughout the next day she was busied with collecting her few possessions, with her farewells to the one or two people in the village who had been kind to her, and with little sudden, almost surrept.i.tious visits to corners of the house, the garden, the wood where she had at one time or another been happy.

As the evening fell and a sudden storm of rain leapt up from beneath the hill and danced about the house, she had a wild longing to stay--to stay at any cost and in any discomfort. London had no longer interest, but only terror and dismay. She ran out into the dark and rain-drenched garden, felt her way to an old and battered seat that had seen in older days dolls' tea-parties and the ravages of bad-temper, stared from it across the kitchen-garden to the lights of the village, that seemed to rock and shiver in the wind and rain.

She stared pa.s.sionately at the lights, her heart beating as though it would suffocate her. At last, her clothes soaked with the storm, her hair dripping, she returned to the house. Her aunt was in the hall.

"My dear Maggie, where have you been?" in a voice that was kind but aghast.

"In the garden," said Maggie, hating her aunt.

"But it's pouring with rain! You're soaking! You must change at once!

Did you go out to find something?"

Maggie made no answer. She stood there, her face sulky and closed, the water dripping from her. Afterwards, as she changed her clothes, she reflected that there had been many occasions during these three days when her aunt would have felt irritation with her had she known her longer. She had always realised that she was careless, that when she should be thinking of one thing she thought of another, that her housekeeping and management of shops and servants had been irregular and undisciplined, but until now she had not sharply surveyed her weaknesses. Since the coming of her aunt she had been involved in a perfect network of little blunders; she had gone out of the room without shutting the door, had started into the village on an errand, and then, when she was there, had forgotten what it was; there had been holes in her stockings and rents in her blouses. After Ellen's departure she had endeavoured to help in the kitchen, but had made so many mistakes that Aunt Anne and the kitchen-maid had been compelled to banish her. She now wondered how during so many years she had run the house at all, but then her father had cared about nothing so that money was not wasted. She knew that Aunt Anne excused her mistakes just now because of the shock of her father's death and the events that followed it, but Maggie knew also that these faults were deep in her character.

She could explain it quite simply to herself by saying that behind the things that she saw there was always something that she did not see, something of the greatest importance and just beyond her vision; in her efforts to catch this farther thing she forgot what was immediately in front of her. It had always been so. Since a tiny child she had always supposed that the shapes and forms with which she was presented were only masks to hide the real thing. Such a view might lend interest to life, but it certainly made one careless; and although Uncle Mathew might understand it and put it down to the Cardinal imagination, she instinctively knew that Aunt Anne, unless Maggie definitely attributed it to religion, would be dismayed and even, if it persisted, angered.

Maggie had not, after all, the excuse and defence of being a dreamy child. With her square body and plain face, her clear, unspeculative eyes, her stolid movements, she could have no claim to dreams. With a sudden desolate pang Maggie suspected that Uncle Mathew was the only person who would ever understand her. Well, then, she must train herself.

She would close doors, turn out lights, put things back where she found them, mend her clothes, keep accounts. Indeed a new life was beginning for her. She felt, with a sudden return to the days before her walk on the moor, that if only her aunts would love her she would improve much more rapidly. And then with her new independence she a.s.sured herself that if they did not love her she most certainly would not love them ...

That night she sat opposite her aunt beside the fire. The house lay dead and empty behind them. Aunt Anne was so neat in her thin black silk, her black shining hair, her pale pointed face, a little round white locket rising and falling ever so slowly with the lift of her breast. There were white frills to her sleeves, and she read a slim book bound in purple leather. Her body never moved; only once and again her thin, delicate hand ever so gently lifted, turned a page, then settled down on to her lap once more. She never raised her eyes.