The Captives Part 84

The circus was quite close to the farm.

"I do hope," said Mrs. Bolitho to Martin, "that the roaring of the animals won't disturb you."

It did not disturb him. He seemed to like it, and went out and stood there watching all the labours of the gipsies and the tent men, and even went into "The Green Boar" and drank a gla.s.s of beer with Mr.

Marquis, the proprietor of the circus.

On the third day after their arrival there was a proper Glebeshire mist. It was a day, also, of freezing, biting cold, such a day as sometimes comes in of a Glebeshire May--cold that seems, in its damp penetration, more piercing than any frost.

The mist came rolling up over the moor in wreaths and spirals of shadowy grey, sometimes shot with a queer dull light as though the sun was fighting behind it to beat a way through, sometimes so dense and thick that standing at the door of the farm you could not see your hand in front of your face. It was cold with the chill of the sea foam, mysterious in its ever-changing intricacies of shape and form, lifting for a sudden instant and showing green gra.s.s and the pale spring flowers in the border by the windows, then charging down again with fold on fold of vapour thicker and thicker, swaying and throbbing with a purpose and meaning of its own. Early in the afternoon Mrs. Bolitho took a peep at her lodgers. She did not intend to spy--she was an honest woman--but she shared most vividly the curiosity of all the village about "these two queer ignorant children," as she called them.

Standing in the bow-window of her own little parlour she could see the bow-window and part of the room on the opposite side of the house-door.

Maggie and Martin stood there looking out into the mist. The woman could see Maggie's face, dim though the light was, and a certain haunting desire in it tugged at Mrs. Bolitho's tender heart. "Poor worm," she thought to herself, "she's longing for him to say something to her and he won't." They were talking. Then there was a pause and Martin turned away. Maggie's eyes pa.s.sionately besought him. What did she want him to do--to say? Mrs. Bolitho could see that the girl's hands were clenched, as though she had reached, at last, the very limits of her endurance. He did not see. His back was half turned to her. He did not speak, but stood there drumming with his hands on the gla.s.s.

"Oh, I could shake him," thought Mrs. Bolitho's impatience. For a time Maggie waited, never stirring, her eyes fixed, her body taut.

Then she seemed suddenly to break, as though the moment of endurance was past. She turned sharply round, looking directly out of her window into Mrs. Bolitho's room--but she didn't see Mrs. Bolitho.

That good woman saw her smile, a strange little smile of defiance, pathos, loneliness, cheeriness defeated. She vanished from her window although he stood there. A moment later, in a coat and hat, she came out of the front door, stood for a moment on the outskirts of the mist looking about her, then vanished on to the moor.

"She oughtn't to be out in this," thought the farmer's wife. "It's dangerous."

She waited a little, then came and knocked on the door of the other sitting-room. She met Martin in the doorway.

"Oh, Mrs. Bolitho," he said, "I thought I'd go to the circus for half an hour."

"Very well, sir," she said.

He too disappeared. She sat in her kitchen all the afternoon busily mending the undergarments of her beloved James. But her thought were not with her husband. She could not get the picture of those two young things standing at the window facing the mist-drunk moor out of her head. The sense that had come to the farm with Martin's entry into it of something eerie and foreboding increased now with every tick of the heavy kitchen clock. She seemed to listen now for sounds and portents.

The death-tick on the wall--was that foolish? Some men said so, but she knew better. Had she not heard it on the very night of her grandfather's death? She sat there and recounted to herself every ghost-story that, in the course of a long life, had come her way. The headless horseman, the coach with the dead travellers, the three pirates and their swaying gibbets, the ghost of St. Dreot's churchyard, the Wailing Woman of Clinton, and many, many others, all pa.s.sed before her, making pale her cheek and sending her heart in violent beats up and down the scale.

The kitchen grew darker and darker. She let the underclothes lie upon her lap. Soon she must light the lamp, but meanwhile, before the oven she let her fancies overwhelm her, luxuriating in her terror.

Suddenly the kitchen-door was flung open. She started up with a cry.

Martin stood there and in a voice, so new to her that she seemed never to have heard it before, he shouted, "Where's Maggie?"

She stood up in great agitation. He came towards her and she saw that his face was violent with agitation, with a kind of rage.

"Where's Maggie?" he repeated.

She saw that he was shaking all over and it was as though he did not know who she was.

"Maggie?" she repeated.

"My wife! My wife!" he cried, and he shouted it again as though he were proclaiming some fact to the whole world.

"She went out," said Mrs. Bolitho, "about three hours back I should think."

"Went out!" he stormed at her. "And in this?"

Then, before she could say another word, he was gone. It was in very truth like an apparition.

She sat there for some time staring in front of her, still shaken by the violence of his interruption. She went then to the kitchen-door and listened--not a sound in the house. She went farther, out through the pa.s.sage to the hall-door. She opened it and looked out. A sea of driving mist, billowing and driving as though by some internal breeze, met her.

"Poor things," she said to herself. "They shouldn't be out in this."

She shut the door and went back into the house. She called, "Jim! Jim!

Where are you?" At last he came, stumping up from some mysterious labour in the lower part of the house.

"What is't?" he said, startled by her white face and troubled eyes.

"The two of them," she said, "have gone out on to the moor in this mist. It isn't safe."

"Whatever for?" he asked.

"How should I know? She went out first and now he's after her. 'Tisn't safe, Jim. You'd best follow them."

He didn't argue with her, being an obedient husband disciplined by many years of matrimony.

"Well, I'll go," he said slowly. "Best take William, though."

He went off in search of his man.

But Bolitho need not trouble. Half an hour later Maggie returned, stood in the sitting-room looking about her, took off her jacket and hat, then, pursuing her own thoughts, slowly put them on. She was then about to leave the room when the door burst open and Martin tumbled in. He stood at the doorway staring at her, his mouth open. "Why!" he stammered. "I thought ... I thought ... you were out--" She looked at him crossly.

"You shouldn't have gone out--an afternoon like this. If I'd been here--"

"Well, you weren't. You shouldn't have gone out either for the matter of that. And I was at the circus--a d.a.m.ned poor one too. Your things are soaking," he added, suddenly looking up at her. "You talk about me.

You'd better go and change."

"I'm going out again," she said.

"Out again?"

"Yes ... There's a train at Clinton at seven. I'm catching that."

"A train?" He stared at her, completely bewildered.

"Yes. That's what I went out to get my head clear about. Martin, you've beaten me. After all these years you have. After all my fine speeches, too."

He began to drum on the window. He tried to speak casually.

"I haven't beaten you, Maggie."

"Yes, you have. I said you wouldn't be able to send me away. Well, you've managed to and in the only way you could--by your silence. You haven't opened your mouth for a fortnight. You're better now, too, and Mrs. Bolitho will look after you. I was determined to hang on to you, but I find I can't. I'm going back to London to get some work."

His hand dropped from the window. Then, with his head turned from her and his voice so low that she could scarcely hear the--

"No, Maggie, don't go."

She smiled across at him. "There's no need to be polite, Martin. We're both of us beyond that by this time. I'll come back if you really want me. You know that I always will, but at last, after all these years, I've found a sc.r.a.p of self-respect. Here am I always bundling about--first the aunts, then you, then Paul, then you again, and n.o.body wanting me. I don't suppose," she said laughing, "that there can be anybody less wanted in the world. So I'm just going to look after myself now. It's quite time I did."