The Helpmate Part 51

"I haven't seen anybody this time," said Maggie, "for six months."

"Not even Mr. Mumford?"

"Oh, no, not him. I don't want to see him." And her thoughts ran back to where they started from.

"It hasn't come lately," said Maggie, "it hasn't come for quite a long time."

"What hasn't come?"

"What I've been telling you--what I'm afraid of."

"It won't come, Maggie," he said quickly. (He might have been her father or the doctor.)

"If it does, it'll be worse now."

"Why should it be?"

"Because I can't get away from it. I've nowhere to go to. Other girls have got their friends. I've got n.o.body. Why, Mr. Majendie--think--there isn't a place in this whole town where I can go to for a cup of tea."

"You'll make friends."

She shook her head, guarding her little air of tragic wisdom.

Mrs. Morse popped her head in at the door, and out again.

"Is that woman kind to you?"

"Yes, very kind."

"She looks after you well?"

"Looks after me? I don't want looking after."

"Takes care of you, I mean. Gives you plenty of nice nourishing things to eat?"

"Yes, plenty of nice things. And she comes and sits with me sometimes."

"You like her?"

"I love her."

"That's all right. You see, you _have_ got a friend, after all."

"Yes," said Maggie mournfully; and he saw that her thoughts were with Gorst. "But it isn't the same thing, is it?"

Majendie could not honestly say it was; so he smiled, instead.

"It's a shame," said she, "to go on like this when you've been so good to me."

"If I wasn't, you couldn't do it, could you? But what you want me to understand is that, however good I've been, I haven't made things more amusing for you."

"No, no," said Maggie vehemently, "I didn't mean that. Indeed I didn't.

I only wanted you to know--"

"How good _you_'ve been. Is that it? Well, because you're good, there's no reason why you should be dull. Is there?"

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

"See here, supposing that, instead of sending me all you earn, you keep some of it to play with? Get Mrs. What's-her-name to go with you to places."

"I don't want to go to places," she said. "I want to send it all to you."

He lapsed again into his formula. "There really is no reason why you should."

"I want to. That's a reason, isn't it?" said she. She said it shyly, tentatively, solemnly almost, as if it were some point in an infant's metaphysics. There was no a.s.surance in her tone, nothing to remind him that Maggie had been the spoiled child of pleasure whose wants were always reasons; nothing to suggest the perverted consciousness of power.

"Well--" He straightened himself stiffly for departure.

"Are you going?" she said.

"I must."

"Will you--come again?"

"Yes, I'll come, if you want me."

He saw again how piteous, how ill she looked. A pang of compa.s.sion went through him. And after the pang there came a warm, delicious tremor. It recalled the feeling he used to have when he did things for Edith, a sensation singularly sweet and singularly pure.

It was consolation in his misery to realise that any one could want him, even poor, perverted Maggie.

Maggie said nothing. But the flame rose in her face.

Downstairs Majendie found Mrs. Morse waiting for him at the door. "What's been the matter with her?" he asked.

"I don't rightly know, sir. But between you and me, I think she's fretted herself ill."

"Well, you've got to see that she doesn't fret, that's all."

He gave into her palm an earnest of the reward of vigilance.

That night he sent off the embroidered pieces to Mrs. Hannay, and the embroidered frock to Mrs. Ransome; with a note to each lady recommending Maggie, and Maggie's beautiful and innocent art.

CHAPTER XXIV

As Majendie declined more and more on his inferior friendships, Anne became more and more dependent on the Eliotts and the Gardners. Her evenings would have been intolerable without them. Edith no longer needed her. Edith, they still said, was growing better, or certainly no worse; and Mr. Gorst spent his evenings in Prior Street with Edie. The prodigal had made his peace with Anne, and came and went unquestioned. He was bent on making up for his long loss of Edie, and for the still longer loss of her that had to be. They felt that his brilliant presence kept the invading darkness from her door.