The Captives Part 81

MY DEAR PAUL,--I have been very wrong indeed not to write to you before this. It's only of a piece with all my other bad behaviour to you, and it's very late now to saw that I am ashamed. I will tell you the truth, which is that on the day I left you I had received a letter telling me that the friend of whom I have often told you was in England, very ill, and with no one to care for him. I had to go. I don't know whether it was right or wrong--wrong I suppose--but I always knew that if he ever wanted me I SHOULD go. I've always been truthful to you about that.

When I came here I found that he was in horrible lodgings, very ill indeed, and with no one to look after him. I HAD to stay, and now for a week he has been between life and death. He had pneumonia some weeks ago and went out too soon. His heart also is bad. I believe now he can get well if great care is taken.

Dear Paul, I don't know what to say to you. I have a bedroom in this house and every one is very kind to me, but you will think me very wicked. I can't help it. I can't come back to you and Grace. Perhaps later when he is quite well I shall be able to, but I don't think so.

You don't need me; I have never been satisfactory to you, only a worry.

Grace will never be able to live with me again, and I can't stay in Skeaton any more after Uncle Mathew's death. It has all been a wretched mistake, Paul, our marriage, hasn't it? It was my fault entirely. I shouldn't have married you when I knew that I would always love Martin.

I thought then that I should be able to make you happy. If now I felt that I could I would come back at once, but you know as well as I do that, after this, we shall never be happy together again. I blame myself so much but I can't act differently. Perhaps when Martin is well he will not want me at all, but even then I don't think I could come back. Isn't it better that at least I should stay away for a time? You can say that I am staying with friends in London. You will be happier without me, oh, much happier--and Grace will be happier too. Perhaps you will think it better to forget me altogether and then your life will be as it was before you met me.

I won't ask you to forgive me for all the trouble I have been to you. I don't think you can. But I can't do differently now. Your affectionate MAGGIE.

She felt when she had finished it that it was miserably inadequate, but at least it was truthful. As she wrote it her old feelings of tenderness and affection for Paul came back in a great flood. She saw him during the many, many times when he had been so good to her. She was miserable as she finished it, but she knew that there was nothing else to do. And he would know it too.

A day later a long letter came from Paul. It was very characteristic.

It began by saying that of course Maggie must return at once.

Throughout, the voice was that of a grieved and angry elder talking to a wicked and disobedient child. She saw that, far beyond everything else, it was his pride that was wounded, wounded as it had never been before. He could see nothing but that. Did she realise, he asked her, what she was doing? Sinning against all the laws of G.o.d and man. If she persisted in her wickedness she would be cut off from all decent people. No one could say that he had not shown her every indulgence, every kindness, every affection. Even now he was ready to forgive her, but she must come back at once, at once. Her extreme youth excused much, and both he and Grace realised it.

Through it all the strain--did she not see what she was doing? How could she behave so wickedly when she had been given so many blessings, when she had been shown the happiness of a Christian home? ...

It was not a letter to soften Maggie's resolve. She wrote a short reply saying that she could not come. She thought then that he would run up to London to fetch her. But he did not. He wrote once more, and then, for a time, there was silence.

She had little interval in which to think about Paul; Martin soon compelled her attention. He was well enough now to be up. He would lie all day, without moving except to take his meals, on the old red sofa, stretched out there, his arms behind his head, looking at Maggie with a strange taunting malicious stare as though he were defying her to stand up to him. She did stand up to him, although it needed all her strength, moral and physical. He was attacking her soul and she was saving his ...

He said no more about his going away. He accepted it as a fact that she was there and that she would stay there. He had changed his position and was fighting her on another ground.

Maggie had once, years before, read in a magazine, a story about a traveller and a deserted house. This traveller, lost, as are all travellers in stories, in a forest, benighted and hungry, saw the lights of a house.

He goes forward and finds a magnificent mansion, blazing with light in every window, but apparently deserted. He enters and finds room after room prepared for guests. A fine meal is laid ready and he enjoys it.

He discovers the softest of beds and soon is fast asleep; but when he is safely snoring back creep all the guests out of the forest, hideous and evil, warped and deformed, maimed and rotten with disease. They had left the house, that he might be lured in it, knowing that he would never come whilst they were there. And so they creep into all the rooms, flinging their horrible shadows upon the gleaming walls, and gradually they steal about the bed ...

Maggie forgot the end of the story. The traveller escaped, or perhaps he did not. Perhaps he was strangled. But that moment of his awakening, when his startled eyes first stared upon those horrible faces, those deformed bodies, those evil smiles! What could one do, one naked and defenceless against so many?

Maggie thought of this story during Martin's convalescence. She seemed to see the evil guests, crowding back, one after the other into his soul, and as they came back they peeped out at her, smiling from the lighted windows. She saw that his plan was to thrust before her the very worst of himself. He said: "Well, I've tried to get rid of her and she won't go. That's her own affair, but if she stays, at least she shall see me as I am. No false sentimental picture. I'll cure her."

It was the oldest trick in the world, but to Maggie it was new enough.

At first she was terrified. In spite of her early experience with her father, when she had learnt what wickedness could be, she was a child in all knowledge of the world. Above all she knew very little about her own s.e.x and its relation with men. But she determined that she must take the whole of Martin; in the very first days of her love she had resolved that, and now that resolution was to be put to the test. Her terrified fear was lest the things that he told her about himself should affect her love for him. She had told him years before: "It isn't the things you've done that I mind or care about: it's you, not actions that matter." But his actions were himself, and what was she to do if all these things that he said were true?

Then she discovered that she had indeed spoken the truth. Her love for him did not change; it rather grew, helped and strengthened by a maternal pity and care that deepened and deepened. He seemed to her a man really possessed, in literal fact, by devils. The story of the lighted house was the symbol, only he, in the bitterness and defiance of his heart, had invited the guests, not been surprised by them.

He pretended to glory in his narration, boasting and swearing what he would do when he would return to the old scenes, how happy and triumphant he had been in the midst of his filth--but young and ignorant though she was she saw beneath this the misery, the shame, the bitterness, the ignominy. He was down in the dust, in a despair furious and more self-accusing than anything of which she had ever conceived.

Again and again, too, although this was never deliberately stated, she saw that he spoke like a man caught in a trap. He did not blame any one but himself for the catastrophe of his life, but he often spoke, in spite of himself, like a man who from the very beginning had been under some occult influence. He never alluded now to his early days but she remembered how he had once told her that that "Religion" had "got" him from the very beginning, and had weighted all the scales against him.

It was as though he had said: "I was told from the very beginning that I was to be made a fighting-ground of. I didn't want to be that. I wasn't the man for that. I was chosen wrongly."

He only once made any allusion to his father's death, but Maggie very soon discovered that that was never away from his mind. "I loved my father and I killed him," he said one day, "so I thought it wise not to love any one again."

Gradually a picture was created in Maggie's mind, a picture originating in that dirty, dark room where they were. She saw many foreign countries and many foreign towns, and in all of them men and women were evil. The towns were always in the hour between daylight and dark, the streets twisted and obscure, the inhabitants furtive and sinister.

The things that those inhabitants did were made quite plain to her. She saw the dancing saloons, the women naked and laughing, the men drunken and besotted, the gambling, the quarrelling, drugging, suicide--all under a half-dead sky, stinking and offensive.

One day, at last, she laughed.

"Martin," she cried, "don't let's be so serious about it. You can't want to go back to that life--it's so dull. At first I was frightened, but now!--why it's all the same thing over and over again."

"I'm only telling you," he said; "I don't say that I do want to go back again. I don't want anything except for you to go away. I just want to go to h.e.l.l my own fashion."

"You talk so much about going to h.e.l.l," she said. "Why, for ten days now you've spoken of nothing else. There are other places, you know."

"You clear out and get back to your parson," he said. "You must see from what I've told you it isn't any good your staying. I've no money.

My health's gone all to billyoh! I don't want to get better. Why should I? Perhaps I did love you a little bit--once--in a queer way, but that's all gone now. I don't love any one on this earth. I just want to get rid of this almighty confusion going on in my head. I can't rest for it. I'd finish myself off if I had pluck enough. I just haven't."

"Martin," she said, "why did you write all those letters to me?"

"What letters?" he asked.

"Those that Amy stopped--the ones from abroad."

"Oh, I don't know," he looked away from her. "I was a bit lonely, I suppose."

"Tell me another thing," she said. "These weeks I've been here have I bored you?"

"I've been too ill to tell ... How do I know? Well, no, you haven't.

You're such a queer kid. You're different from any other human--utterly different. No, you haven't bored me--but don't think from that I like having you here. I don't--you remind me of the old life. I don't want to think of it more than I must. You'll admit I've been trying to scare you stiff in all I've told you, and I haven't scared you. It's true, most of it, but it isn't so d.a.m.ned sensational as I've tried to make it ... But, all the same, what's the use of your staying? I don't love you, and I'm never likely to. I've told you long ago you're not the sort of woman to attract me physically. You never did. You're more like a boy. Why should you ruin your own life when there's nothing to gain by it? You will ruin it, you know, staying on here with me. Every one thinks we're living together. Have you heard from your parson?"

"Yes," said Maggie.

"What does he say?"

"He says I've got to go back at once."

"Well, there you are."

"But don't you see, Martin, I shouldn't go back to him even if I left you. I've quite decided that. He'll never be happy with me unless I love him, which I can't do, and there's his sister who hates me. And he's just rooted in Skeaton. I can't live there after Uncle Mathew!"

"Tell me about that."

"No," she said, shrinking back. "I'll never tell any one. Not even you."

"Now, look here," he went on, after a pause. "You must see how hopeless it is, Maggie. You've got nothing to get out of it. As soon as I'm well enough I shall go off and leave you. You can't follow me, hunting me everywhere. You must see that."

"Yes, but what you don't, Martin, see," she answered him, "is that I've got some right to think of my own happiness. It's quite true what you say, that if you get well and decide you don't want to see me I won't follow you. Of course I won't. Perhaps one day you will want me all the same. But I'm happy only with you, and so long as I don't bore you I'm going to stay. I've always been wrong with every one else, stupid and doing everything I shouldn't. But with you it isn't so. I'm not stupid, and however you behave I'm happy. I can't help it. It's just so."

"But how can you be happy?" he said, "I'm not the sort for any one to be happy with. When I've been drinking I'm impossible. I'm sulky and lazy, and I don't want to be any better either. You may think you're happy these first few weeks, but you won't be later on."

"Let's try," said Maggie, laughing. "Here's a bargain, Martin. You say I don't bore you. I'll stay with you until you're quite well. Then if you don't want me I'll go and not bother you until you ask for me. Is that a bargain?"

"You'd much better not," he said.

"Oh, don't think I'm staying," she answered, "because I think you so splendid that I can't leave you. I don't think you splendid at all. And it's not because I think myself splendid either. I'm being quite selfish about it. I'm staying simply because I'm happier so."