The Captives Part 77

THE DARK ROOM

It was after midnight when Maggie was turned out on to the long grim platform of the London station. On that other London arrival of hers the terminus had been a boiling cauldron of roar and rattle. Now everything was dead and asleep. No trains moved; they slept, ancient monsters, chained down with dirt and fog. Two or three porters crept slothfully as though hypnotised. The face of the great clock, golden in the dusk, dominated, like a heathen G.o.d, the scene. Maggie asked a porter the way to the Station Hotel. He showed her; she climbed stairs, pushed back swing doors, trod oil-clothed pa.s.sages, and arrived at a tired young woman who told her that she could have a room.

Arrived there, herself somnambulistic, she flung off her clothes, crept into bed, and was instantly asleep.

Next morning she kept to her room; she went down the long dusty stairs before one o'clock because she was hungry, and she discovered the restaurant and had a meal there; but all the time she was expecting Martin to appear. Every step seemed to be his, every voice to have an echo of his tones. Then in the dusky afternoon she decided that she would be cowardly no longer. She started off on her search for No. 13A Lynton Street, King's Cross.

She searched through a strange blue opaque light which always afterwards she recollected as accompanying her with mystery, as though it followed her about deliberately veiling her from the rest of the world. She felt different from them all; she found an omnibus that was going to King's Cross, but when she was inside it and looked at the people around her she felt of them all that they had no reality beside the intensity of her own search. She, hot like a fiery coal, existed in a land of filmy ghosts. She repeated to herself over and over, "No. 13A Lynton Street, King's Cross."

She got out opposite the huge station and looked about her. She saw a policeman and went across to him.

"Can you tell me where Lynton Street is, please?" she asked him.

He smiled. "Yes, miss. Down on your right, then first to your right again."

She thanked him and wanted for a silly moment to remain with him. She wanted to stand there where she was, on the island, she couldn't go back, she was afraid to go forward. Then the moment left her and she moved on. When she saw Lynton Street written up her heart gave a strange little whirr and then tightened within herself, but she marched on and found 13A. A dirty house, pots with ferns in the two grimy windows, and the walls streaky with white stains against the grey. The door was ajar and, pushing it a little, she saw a servant-girl on her knees scrubbing the floor. At the noise of her step the girl looked up.

"Is Mr. Warlock here?" Maggie asked, but the words were choked in her throat.

"Wot d'ye sye?" the girl asked.

Maggie repeated her question.

"Yes--'e's upstairs. Always is. Fust floor, second door on yer left."

Maggie went up. She found the door. She knocked. There was no answer.

She pushed the door, peered through and looked in. She saw a room with a dirty grimy window, a broken faded red sofa, a deal table. No one there.

She entered and stood listening. A door beyond her opened and a man came in. She knew at once that it was Martin. Her thoughts followed one another in strange flurried inconsequence. Yes, it was Martin. He was fatter than he had been--fat and ill. Very ill. His face was pale, his hair, thinner than before, unbrushed. He was wearing an old dirty blue suit with a coat that b.u.t.toned over the waistcoat like a seaman's jacket. Yes, he was ill and fat and unkempt, but it was Martin. At that reiterated a.s.surance in the depths of her soul she seemed to sink into a marvellous certain tranquillity--so certain that she shed, as it were with a gesture, all the unhappiness and doubt and desolation with which the last years had burdened her.

She had "touched" Martin again, and with that "touch" she was safe. It did not matter how he treated her nor whether he wanted her. She was sane and happy and whole again as she had not been since he left her.

Meanwhile he looked at her across the dark room, frowning.

"Who is it?" he asked. "What do you want?"

The sound of his voice moved her pa.s.sionately. For how long she had ached and yearned for it! He spoke more huskily, with a thicker tone than he had done, but it was the same voice, rough a little and slow.

"Don't you know me, Martin?" she said, laughing for sheer happiness.

She saw before she spoke that he had recognised her. He said nothing, staring at her across the table; and she, held by some safe instinct, did not move from where she was.

At last he said:

"Well ... What do you want?"

"Oh, Martin, don't you recognise me? I'm Maggie."

He nodded. "Yes, I know. You mustn't come here, though. We've nothing to say to one another nowadays--no, nothing." He didn't look at her; his eyes were turned towards the grimy window.

She had an astonishing sense of her possession of him. She laughed and came close to the table.

"I'm not going away, Martin ... not until we've had a talk. Nothing can make me. So there!"

He was looking at her again.

"Why, you've cut your hair!" he said.

"Yes." she said.

Then he turned roughly right round upon her as though he meant to end the matter once and for all.

"Look here! ... I do mean what I say--" He was cut off then by a fit of coughing. He leant back against the wall and fought with it, his hand against his chest. She made no movement and said no word while the attack lasted.

He gasped, recovering his breath, then, speaking in a voice lower than before: "I mean what I say. I don't want you. I don't want any one.

There's nothing for us to say to one another. It's only waste of time."

"Yes," she answered. "That's your side of the question. There's also mine. Once before you had your own way and I was very miserable about it. Now it's my turn. I'm going to stay here until we've talked."

He turned, his face working angrily, upon her.

"You can't stay here. It's impossible. What do you do it for when I tell you I don't want you? First my sister ... then you ... come here spying. Well, now you're seen what it's like, haven't you? Very jolly, isn't it? Very handsome? You'd better go away again, then. You've seen all you've wanted to."

"I'm not going away," repeated Maggie, "I didn't come to spy. You know that. Of course you can turn me out, but you'll have to use force."

"Oh, no, I won't," he answered. "There are other ways."

He disappeared into the other room. A moment later he returned; he was wearing a soft black hat and a shabby grey overcoat.

"You'll get tired of waiting, I expect," he said, and, without looking at her but just touching her arm as he brushed past her, he left the room. She heard him descend the stairs. Then the street-door closed.

She sat down upon the shabby red sofa and looked about her. What a horrible room! Its darkness was tainted with a creeping coldness that seemed to steal in wavering gusts from wall to wall. The carpet was faded to a nondescript colour and was gashed into torn strips near the fireplace. No pictures were on the walls from which the wall-paper was peeling. He had done nothing whatever to make it more habitable.

He must have been staying there for several weeks, and yet there were no signs of any personal belongings. Nothing of himself to be seen!

Nothing! It was as though in the bitterness of his spirit he had said that he would not touch such a spot save, of necessity, with his body.

It should remain, so far as he might go, for ever tenantless.

She felt that. She seemed to be now marvellously perceptive. Until an hour ago she had been lost, ostracised; now she was at home again, clear in purpose, afraid of no one and of nothing. Strangely, although his sickness both of body and soul touched her to the very depths of her being, her predominant sensation was of happiness. She had found him again! Oh, she had found him again! Nothing, in this world or the next, counted in comparison with that. If she were close to him she would make him well, she would make him rich, she would make him happy.

Where he had been, what he had done, mattered nothing. Where she had been, what she had done, nothing. Nothing in their two lives counted but their meeting again, and she who had been always so shy and so diffident felt no doubt at all about his returning to her. There would be a fight. As she looked around the gradually darkening room she realised that. It might be a long fight and a difficult one, but that she would win she had no doubt. It had been preordained that she should win. No one on this earth or above it could beat her.

Gradually she became more practical. Slowly she formed her plans.

First, what had Martin done? Perhaps he had told the woman of the house that she, Maggie, was to be turned out, did she not, of herself, go away. No, Martin would not do that. Maggie knew quite confidently that he would never allow any one to insult her. Perhaps Martin would not come back at all. Perhaps his hat and his coat were his only possessions. That was a terrible thought! Had he gone, leaving no trace, how would she ever find him again? She remembered then that he had gone straight downstairs and out of the house. He had not spoken to the landlady. That did not look like a permanent departure. But she would make certain.

She pushed open the other door and peeped into the further room. She saw a dirty unmade bed, a tin washhand stand, and an open carpet-bag filled with soiled linen. No, he would come back.

She sat there thinking out her plans. She was suddenly clear, determined, resourceful, all the things that she had never been in her life before. First she must see the landlady; next she must go to the shops--but suppose he should return while she was there, pack his bag and leave for ever? She must risk that. She thought that he would not return at once because he would want, as he said, "to tire her out."

"To tire her out!" She laughed at that. She looked about the room and decided how she would improve it. She nodded to herself. Yes, and the bedroom too. All this time she was so happy that she could scarcely prevent herself from singing aloud.

She went out, down the dark stairs, and found the maid, under a swinging candle-flame, still scrubbing. How strange that in that short s.p.a.ce of time, when the whole of life had altered for her, that girl had been on her knees scrubbing!