The Captives Part 51

"Cares for me," Maggie repeated.

"Yes, of course. He's wanted to marry for a long time. Tired of Grace bossing him, I expect. That doesn't sound very polite to you, but I know that he cares for you apart from that--for yourself, I mean. And I expect Grace is tired of housekeeping."

Maggie's feelings were very strange. Why should he care about her? Did she want him to care? A strange friendly feeling stole about her heart.

She was not alone then, after all. Some one wanted her, wanted her so obviously that every one had noticed it--did not want her as Martin had wanted her, against his own will and judgment. If he did offer her his home what would she feel?

There was rest there, rest and a real home, a home that she had never in all her life known. Of course she did not love him in the least. His approach did not make her pulses beat a moment faster, she did not long for him to come when he was not there--but he wanted her! That was the great thing. He wanted her!

"Of course if he asked you, you wouldn't really think of marrying him?"

said Millicent.

"I don't know," said Maggie slowly.

"What! Marry him and live in Skeaton!" Millicent was frankly amazed.

"Why, Skeaton's awful, and the people in it are awful, and Grace is awful. In the summer it's all n.i.g.g.e.r-minstrels and bathing-tents, and in the winter there isn't a soul--" Millicent shivered.

Maggie smiled. "Of course it seems dull to you, but my life's been very different. It hasn't been very exciting, and if I could really help him--" she broke off. "I do like him," she said. "He's the kindest man I've ever met. Of course he seems dull to you who have met all kinds of brilliant people. I hate brilliant people."

The car was in Bryanston Square. Just before it stopped Millie bent over and kissed Maggie.

"I think you're a darling," she said.

But Millie didn't think Maggie "a darling" for long--that is, she did not think about her at all for long; none of the family did.

So quiet was Maggie, so little in any one's way that, at the end of a fortnight, she made no difference to any one in the house. She was much better now, looking a different person, colour in her cheeks and light in her eyes. During her illness they had cut her hair and this made her look more than ever like a boy. She wore her plain dark dresses, black and dark blue; they never quite fitted and, with her queer odd face, her high forehead, rather awkward mouth, and grave questioning eyes she gave you the impression that she had been hurried into some disguise and was wearing it with discomfort but amus.e.m.e.nt. Some one who met her at the Trenchards at this time said of her: "What a funny girl! She's like a schoolboy dressed up to play a part in the school speeches." Of course she was not playing a part, no one could have been more entirely natural and honest, but she was odd, strange, out of her own world, and every one felt it.

It was, perhaps, this strangeness that attracted Paul Trenchard. He was, above everything, a kindly man-kindly, perhaps a little through laziness, but nevertheless moved always by distress or misfortune in others. Maggie was not distressed--she was quite cheerful and entirely unsentimental--nevertheless she had been very ill, was almost penniless, had had some private trouble, was an orphan, had no friends save two old aunts, and was amazingly ignorant of the world.

This last was, perhaps, the thing that struck him most of all. He, too, was ignorant of the world, but he didn't know that, and he was amazed at the things that Maggie brushed aside as unimportant. He found that he was beginning to think of her as "my little heathen." His att.i.tude was the same as that of a good missionary discovering a naked but trusting native.

The thought of training this virgin mind was delightful to him.

He liked her quaintness, and one day suddenly, to his own surprise, when they were alone in the drawing-room, he kissed her, a most chaste kiss, gently on the forehead.

"Oh. my dear child--" he said in a kind of dismay.

She looked up at him with complete confidence. So gentle a kiss had it been that it had been no more than a pressure of the hand.

A few days later Katherine spoke to her. She came up to her bedroom just as Maggie was beginning to undress. Maggie stood in front of the gla.s.s, her evening frock off, brushing her short thick hair before the gla.s.s.

"Have you made any plans yet, dear?" asked Katherine.

Maggie shook her head.

"No." she said. "Not yet."

Katherine hesitated.

"I've got a confession to make," she said at last.

Maggie turned to look at her with her large childish eyes.

"Oh, I do hope you've done something wrong," she said, laughing, "something really bad that I should have to 'overlook.'"

"What do you mean?" asked Katherine.

Maggie only said: "We'd be more on a level then."

"I don't think it's anything very bad. But the truth is, Maggie, that I didn't ask you here only for my own pleasure and to make you well.

There was a third reason."

"I know," said Maggie; "Paul."

"My dear!" said Katherine, amazed. "How did you guess? I never should have done."

"Paul's asked you to find out whether I like him," said Maggie.

"Yes," said Katherine.

"Well, I do like him." said Maggie.

"Don't think that I've been unfair," said Katherine. They were sitting now side by side on Maggie's bed and Katherine's hand was on Maggie's knee. "I'll tell you exactly how it happened. Paul was interested in you from the moment that he saw you at my house ever so long ago. He asked ever so many questions about you, and the next time he stayed he wanted me to write and ask you to come and stay. Well, I didn't. I knew from what you told me that you cared for somebody else, and I didn't want to get Paul really fond of you if it was going to be no good. You see, I've known Paul for ages. He's nearly ten years older than I, but he used to come and stay with us at Garth, when he was at Cambridge and before he was a clergyman."

"I'm very fond of him. I know the others think he's stupid simply because he doesn't know the things that they do, but he's good and kind and honest, and just exactly what he seems to be."

"I like him," repeated Maggie, nodding her head.

"He's been wanting to be married," went on Katherine, "for some time.

I'm going to tell you everything so that I shall have been perfectly fair. Grace wants him to be married too. All her life she's looked after him and he's always done exactly what she told him. He's rather lazy and it's not hard for some one to get an influence over him. Well, she's not really a very good manager. She thinks she is, but she isn't.

She arranges things and wants things to stay just where she puts them, but she arranges all the wrong unnecessary things. Still, it's easy to criticise, and I'm not a very good manager myself. I think she's growing rather tired of it and would like some one to take it off her hands. Of course Paul must marry the right person, some one whom she can control and manage, and some one who won't transplant her in Paul's affection. That's her idea. But it's all nonsense, of course. You can't have your cake and eat it. She simply doesn't understand what marriage is like. When Paul marries she'll learn more about life in a month than she's learnt in all her days. Well, Maggie, dear, she thinks you're just the girl for Paul. She thinks she can do what she likes with you.

She thinks you're nice, of course, but she's going to 'form' you and 'train' you. You needn't worry about that, you needn't really, if you care about Paul. You'd manage both of them in a week. But there it is--I thought I ought to warn you about Grace."

"As to Paul, I believe you'd be happy. You'd have your home and your life and your friends. Skeaton isn't so bad if you live in it, I believe, and Paul could get another living if you weren't happy there."

Did Katherine have any scruples as she pursued her argument? A real glance at Maggie's confiding trustful gaze might have shaken her resolve. This child who knew so little about anything--was Skeaton the world for her? But Katherine had so many philanthropies that she was given to finishing one off a little abruptly in order to make ready for the next one.

She was interested just now in a scheme for adopting illegitimate babies. She thought Maggie an "angel" and she just longed for her to be happy. Nevertheless Maggie was very ignorant, and it was a little difficult to see what trade or occupation she would be able to adopt.

She was nearly well now and Katherine did not know quite what to do with her. Here was an admirable marriage, something that would give a home and children and friends. What could be better? She had just pa.s.sed apparently through a love affair that could have led to no possible good--solve the difficulty, make Maggie safe for life, and pa.s.s on to the illegitimate babies!

"Of course, I don't love him," said Maggie, staring in front of her.

"But you like him," said Katherine. "It isn't as though Paul were a very young man. He wouldn't expect anything very romantic. He isn't really a romantic man himself."

"And I shall always love Martin," pursued Maggie.

Katherine's own romance had fulfilled itself so thoroughly that it had almost ceased to be romantic. The Trenchard blood in her made her a little impatient of unfulfilled romances.

"Don't you think, Maggie, dear," she said gently, "that it would be better to forget him?"