THE WITCH

THE WITCH

CHAPTER I

THE THREE VISITS

On a spring day, early in March of the next year, 1908, Mathew Cardinal thought that he would go and discover how his niece was prospering. He had seen nothing of her for a very long time.

He did not blame himself for this, but then he never blamed himself for anything. A fate, often drunken and always imbecile, was to blame for everything that he did, and he pitied himself sincerely for having to be in the hands of such a creature. He happened to be just now very considerably frightened about himself, more frightened than he had been for a very long time, so frightened in fact that he had drunk nothing for weeks. For many years he had been leading a see-saw existence, and the see-saw had been swung by that mysterious force known as Finance. He had a real gift for speculation, and had he been granted from birth a large income he might have ended his days as a Justice of the Peace and a Member of Parliament. Unfortunately he had never had any private means, and he had never been able to make enough by his mysterious speculations to float him into security—"Let me once get so far," he would say to himself, "and I am a made man." But drink, an easy tolerance of bad company, and a rather touching conceit had combined to divorce him from so fine a destiny. He had risen, he had fallen, made a good thing out of this tip, been badly done over that, and missed opportunity after opportunity through a fuddled brain and an overweening self-confidence.

Last year for several months everything had succeeded; it was during that happy period that he had visited Maggie. Perhaps it was well for his soul that success had not continued. He was a man whom failure improved, having a certain childish warmth of heart and simplicity of outlook when things went badly with him. Success made him abominably conceited, and being without any morality self-confidence drove him to disastrous lengths. Now once more he was very near destruction and he knew it, very near things like forging and highway robbery, and other things worse than they. He knew that he was very near; he peered over into the pit and did not wish to descend. He was not a bad man, and had he not believed himself to be a clever one all might yet have been well. The temptation of his cleverness lured him on. A stroke of the pen was a very simple thing...

To save his soul he thought that he would go and see Maggie. His affection for her, conceited and selfish though it was, was the most genuine thing in him. For three-quarters of the year he forgot her, but when life went badly he thought of her again—not that he expected to get anything out of her, but she was good to him and she knew nothing about his life, two fine bases for safety.

"What have they been doing to her, those damned hypocrites, I wonder," was his thought. He admired, feared, and despised his sisters. "All that stuff about God" frightened him in spite of himself, and he knew, in his soul, that Anne was no hypocrite.

He rang the bell and faced Martha. He had dressed himself with some care and was altogether more tidy just then, having a new mistress who cared about outside appearances. Also, having been sober for nearly two months, he looked a gentleman.

"Is my niece at home?" he asked, blinking because he was frightened of Martha.

She did not seem to be prepared to let him in.

"Miss Maggie has been very ill," she said, frowning at him.

"Ill?" That really hurt him. He stammered, "Why? ... When?"

She moved aside then for him to pass into the hall. He came into the dark stuffy place.

"Yes," said Martha. "Just after Christmas. Brain-fever, the doctors said. They thought she'd die for weeks. Had two doctors ... You can't see her, sir," she ended grumpily.

Then Aunt Anne appeared, coming through the green-baize door.

"Why, Mathew," she said. Mathew thought how ill she looked.

"They're all ill here," he said to himself.

"So Maggie's ill," he said, dropping his eyes before her as he always did.

"Yes," Aunt Anne answered. "She was very ill indeed, poor child. I'm glad to see you, Mathew. It's a long time since you've been."

He thought she was gentler to him than she had been, so, mastering his fear of her, fingering his collar, he said:

"Can't I see her?"

"Well, I'm not ... I think you might. It might do her good. She wants taking out of herself. She comes down for an hour or two every day now. I'll go and see." She left him standing alone there. He looked around him, sniffing like a dog. How he hated the house and everything in it! Always had ... You could smell that fellow Warlock's trail over everything. The black cat, Tom, came slipping along, looked for a moment as though he would rub himself against Mathew's stout legs, then decided that he would not. Mysterious this place like a well, with its green shadows. No wonder the poor child had been ill here. At the thought of her being near to death Mathew felt a choke in his throat. Poor child, never had any fun all her life and then to die in a green well like this. And his sisters wouldn't care if she did, hard women, hard women. Funny how religion made you hard, darn funny. Good thing he'd been irreligious all his life. Think of his brother Charles! There was religion for you, living with his cook and preaching to her next morning. Bad thing religion!

Aunt Anne returned, coming down the stairs with that queer halting gait of hers.

"Maggie's in the drawing-room," she said. "She'll like to see you."

As they went up, Aunt Anne said: "Be careful with her, Mathew. She's still very weak. Don't say anything to upset her?"

He mumbled something in his throat. Couldn't trust him. Of course they couldn't. Never had ... Fine sort of sisters they were.

Maggie was sitting by the fire, a shawl over her shoulders. By God, but she looked ill. Mathew had another gulp in his throat. Poor kid, but she did look ill. Poor kid, poor kid.

"Sorry you've been bad, Maggie," he said.

She looked up, smiling with pleasure, when she saw who it was. Yes, she was really pleased to see him. But how different a smile from the old one! No blood behind it, none of that old Maggie determination. He was filled with compassion. He took a chair close beside her and sat down, leaning towards her, his large rather sheepish eye gazing at her.

"What's been the matter?" he asked.

"I don't know," Maggie said. "I was suddenly ill one day, and after that I didn't know any more for weeks. But I'm much better now."

"Well, I'm delighted to hear that anyway," he said heartily. He was determined to cheer her up. "You'll be as right as rain presently."

"Of course I shall. I've felt so lazy, as though I didn't want to do anything. Now I must stir myself."

"Have the old women been good to you?" he asked, dropping his voice.

"Very," she answered.

"Not bothering you about all their religious tommy-rot?"

She looked down at her hands.

"No," she said.

"And that hypocritical minister of theirs hasn't been at you again?"

"Mr. Warlock's dead," she answered very quietly.

"Warlock dead!" Uncle Mathew half rose from his chair in his astonishment. "That fellow dead! Well, I'm damned, indeed I am. That fellow—! Well, there's a good riddance! I know it isn't good form to speak about a man who's kicked the bucket otherwise than kindly, but he was a weight on my chest that fellow was, with his long white beard and his soft voice ... Well, well. To be sure! Whatever will my poor sisters do? And what's happened to that young chap, his son, nice lad he was, took dinner with us that day last year?"

"He's gone away," said Maggie. Mathew, stupid though he was, heard behind the quiet of Maggie's voice a warning. He flung her a hurried surreptitious look. Her face was perfectly composed, her hands still upon her lap. Nevertheless he said to himself, "Danger there, my boy! Something's happened there!"

And yet his curiosity drove him for a moment further.

"Gone, has he? Where to?"

"He went abroad," said Maggie, "after his father's death. I don't know where he's gone."

"Oh, did he? Pity! Restless, I expect—I was at his age."

There was a little pause between them when Maggie sat very quietly looking at her hands. Then, smiling, she glanced up and said:

"But tell me about yourself, Uncle Mathew. You've told me nothing."

He fidgeted a little, shifting his thick legs, stroking his nose with his finger.

"I don't know that I've anything very good to tell you, my dear. Truth is, I haven't been doing so very well lately."

"Oh, Uncle, I'm sorry!"

"It's nothing to make yourself miserable about, my dear. I always turn my corners. Damn rocky ones they are sometimes too. Everything's turned itself wrong these last weeks, either too soon or too late. I don't complain, all the same it makes things a bit inconvenient. Thank you for that five pounds you sent me, my dear, very helpful it was I can tell you."

"Do you want another five pounds?" she asked him. He struggled with himself. His hesitation was so obvious that it was quite touching. She put her hand on his knee.

"Do have another five pounds, Uncle. It won't be difficult for me at all. I've been spending nothing all these weeks when I've been ill. Please do."

He shook his head firmly.

"No, my dear, I won't. As I came along I said to myself, 'Now, you'll be asking Maggie for money, and when she says "Yes" you're not to take it'—and so I'm not going to. I may be a rotter—but I'm not a rotten rotter."

He clung to his decision with the utmost resolve as though it were his last plank of respectability.

"I can't believe," he said to her with great solemnity, "that things can really go wrong. I know too much. It isn't men like me who go under. No. No."

He saw then her white face and strange grey ghostly eyes as though her soul had gone somewhere on a visit and the house was untenanted. He felt again the gulp in his throat. He bent forward, resting his fat podgy hand on her knee.

"Don't you worry, Maggie dear. I've always noticed that things are never bad for long. You've still got your old uncle, and you're young, and there are plenty of fish in the sea ... there are indeed. You cheer up! It will be all right soon."

She put her hands on his.

"Oh I'm not—worrying." But as she spoke a strange strangled little sob had crept unbidden into her throat, choking her.

He thought, as he got up, "It's that damned young feller I gave dinner to. I'd like to wring his neck."

But he said no more, bent closer and kissed her, said he was soon coming again, and went away.

After he had gone the house sank into its grey quiet again. What was Maggie thinking? No one knew. What was Aunt Anne thinking? No one knew ... But there was something between these two, Maggie and Aunt Anne. Every one felt it and longed for the storm to burst. Bad enough things outside with Mr. Warlock dead, members leaving right and left, and the Chapel generally going to wrack and ruin, but inside!

Old Martha, who had never liked Maggie, felt now a strange, uncomfortable pity for her. She didn't want to feel pity, no, not she, pity for no one, and especially not for an ugly untidy girl like that, but there it was, she couldn't help herself! Such a child that girl, and she'd been as nearly dead as nothing, and now she was suffering, suffering awful ... Any one could see ... All that Warlock boy. Martha had seen him come stumbling down the stairs that day and had heard Maggie's cry and then the fall. Awful noise it made. Awful. She'd stood in the hall, looking up the stairs, her heart beating like a hammer. Yes, just like a hammer! Then she'd gone up. It wasn't a nice sight, the poor girl all in a lump on the floor and Miss Anne just as she always looked before one of her attacks, as though she were made of grey glass from top to toe ...

But Martha hadn't pitied Maggie then. Oh, no. Might as well die as not. Who wanted her? No one. Not even her young man apparently.

Better if she died. But slowly something happened to Martha. Not that she was sentimental. Not in the least. But thoughts would steal in—steal in just when you were at your work. The girl lying there so good and patient—all the pots and pans winking at you from the kitchen-wall. Must remember to order that ketchup—cold last night in bed—think another blanket ... yes, very good and patient. Can't deny it. Always smiles just that same way. Smiles at every one except Miss Arne. Won't smile at her. Wonder why not? Something between those two. What about dinner? A little onion fry—that's the thing these damp days—Onion fry—Onion Fry. ONION FRY ... One last look back before the world is filled with the sense, smell, and taste of it.—Poor girl, so white and so patient—the young man will never come back—never ... never ... ONION FRY.

No; no one knew what Maggie was thinking. No one found out until Maggie had her second visitor, Miss Avies.

When Martha opened the door to Miss Avies she was astonished. Miss Avies hadn't been near the house since old Warlock died. What was she wanting here now, with her stiff back and bossy manner.

"I don't know whether you can see—"

"Oh nonsense, it's Maggie Cardinal I want to see. She's now in the drawing-room sitting on a chair with a shawl on by the fire. Don't tell me!"

Martha quivered with anger. "The doctor's orders is—"

"I'm going to be doctor to-day," she said, and strode inside. She went upstairs and found Aunt Elizabeth sitting with Maggie.

"How do you do, Miss Cardinal?" They shook hands, Miss Avies standing over Aunt Elizabeth like the boa constrictor raised above the mouse.

"That's all right ... No, I don't want to see your sister. And to be quite honest, I don't want to see you either. It's your niece I want to see. And alone—"

"Certainly—it's only the doctor said—"

"Not to excite her. I know. But I'm not going to excite her. I'm going to give her some medicine. You come back in half an hour from now. Will you? That's right. Thank you so much."

Aunt Elizabeth, unhappy, uncomfortable, filled with misgivings, as in these days she always was, left the room.

"Well, there ... that's right," said Miss Avies, settling herself in the opposite side of the fire from Maggie and looking at her with not unfriendly eyes. "How are you?"

"Oh much better, thank you," said Maggie. "Ever so much better."

"No, you're not," said Miss Avies. "And you're only lying when you say you are. You'll never get better unless you do what I tell you—"

"What's that?" asked Maggie.

"Face things. Face everything. Have it all out. Don't leave a bit of it alone, and then just keep what's useful."

"I don't quite know what you mean," said Maggie—but the faint colour had faded from her cheeks and her hands had run together for protection.

Miss Avies's voice softened—"I'm probably going away very soon," she said, "going away and not coming back. All my work's over here. But I wanted to see you before I went. You remember another talk we had here?"

"Very well," said Maggie.

"You remember what I told you?"

"You told me not to stay here," said Maggie.

"Yes, I did," said Miss Avies, "and I meant it. The matter with you is that you've been kept here all this time without any proper work to do and that's been very bad for you and made you sit with your hands folded in front of you, your head filling with silly fancies."

Maggie couldn't help smiling at this description of herself.

"Oh, you smile," said Miss Avies vigorously, "but it's perfectly true."

"Well, it's all right now." said Maggie, "because I am going away—as soon as ever I'm well enough." "What to do?" asked Miss Avies.

"I don't quite know yet," said Maggie.

"Well, I know," said Miss Avies. "You're going away to brood over that young man."

Maggie said nothing.

"Oh I know ... It seems cruel of me to speak of it just when you've had such a bad time, but it's kindness really. If I don't force you to think it all out and face it properly you'll be burying it in some precious spot and always digging it up to look at it. You face it, my girl. You say to yourself—well, he wasn't such a wonderful young man after all. I can lead my life all right without him—of course I can. I'm not going to be dependent on him and sigh and groan and waste away because I can't see him. I know what it is. I've been through it myself."

Then there was a pause; then Maggie suddenly looked up and smiled.

"But you're quite wrong, Miss Avies. I've no intention of not facing Martin, and I've no intention either of having my life ruined because he's not here. At first, when I was very ill, I was unhappy, and then I saw how silly I was."

"Why?" said Miss Avies with great pleasure. "You've got over it already! I must say I'm delighted because I never thought much of Martin Warlock if you want to know, my dear. I always thought him a weak young man, and he wouldn't have done you any good. I'm delighted—indeed I am."

"That's not true either," said Maggie quietly. "If by getting over it you mean that I don't love Martin you're quite wrong. I loved him the first moment I saw him and I shall love him in just the same way until I die. I don't think it matters what he does or where he is so far as loving him goes. But that doesn't mean I'm sitting and pining. I'm not."

Miss Avies looked at her with displeasure.

"It's the same thing then," she said. "You may fancy you're going to lead an ordinary life again, but all the time you'll just be waiting for him to come back."

"No," said Maggie, "I shall not. I've had plenty of time for thinking these last weeks, and I've made up my mind to his never coming back—never at all. And even if he did come back he mightn't want me. So I'm not going to waste time about it. I shall find work and make myself useful somewhere, but I shall always love Martin just as I do now."

"You're very young," said Miss Avies, touched in spite of herself. "Later on you'll find some one much better than young Warlock."

"Perhaps I shall," said Maggie. "But what's the use of that if he isn't Martin? I've heard people say that before—some one's 'better' or 'stronger' or 'wiser.'—But what has that got to do with it? I love Martin because he's Martin. He's got a weak character you say. That's why he wants me, and I want to be wanted more than anything on earth."

"Why, child," said Miss Avies, astonished. "How you've grown these last weeks!"

"Do you want to know how I love Martin," said Maggie, "so that there shall be no mistake about it? Well, I can't tell you. I couldn't tell any one. I don't know how I love him, but I know that I shall never change or alter all my life—even though he never comes back again. I've given over being silly," she went on. "There were days and days at first when I just wanted to die. But now I'm going to make my own life and have a good time—and never stop loving Martin for one single second."

"Supposing," said Miss Avies, "some one wanted to marry you? Would you?"

"It would depend," said Maggie; "if I liked him and he really wanted me and I could help him I might. Only, of course, I'd tell him about Martin first."

She went on after a little pause: "You see, Miss Avies, I haven't been very happy with my aunts, and I always thought it was their fault that I wasn't. But during these weeks when I've been lying in bed I saw that it was my own fault for being so gloomy about everything. Now that I've got Martin—"

"Got him!" interrupted Miss Avies; "why, you've only just lost him!"

"No, I haven't," answered Maggie. "He didn't go away because he hated me or was tired of me, he went away because he didn't want to do me any harm, and I think he cared for me more just at that minute than he'd ever done before. So I've nothing to spoil my memory of him. I daresay we wouldn't have got on well, together, I don't think I would ever have fascinated him enough to keep him with me for very long—but now I know that he loved me at the very moment he went away and wasn't thinking how ugly I was or what a nasty temper I had or how irritating I could be."

"But, my dear child," said Miss Avies, astonished. "How can you say you loved one another if you were always quarrelling and expecting to part?" "We weren't always quarrelling," said Maggie. "We weren't together enough, but if we had been it wouldn't have meant that we didn't love one another. I don't think we'd ever been very happy, but being happy together doesn't seem to me the only sign of love. Love seems to me to be moments of great joy rising from every kind of trouble and bother. I don't call tranquillity happiness."

"Well, you have thought things out," said Miss Avies, "and all of us considering you so stupid—"

"I'm not going to squash myself into a corner any more," said Maggie. "Why should I? I find I'm as good as any one else. I made Martin love me—even though it was only for a moment. So I'm going to be shy no longer."

"And here was I thinking you heart-broken," said Miss Avies.

"I'm going out into the world," said Maggie half to herself. "I'm going to have adventures. I've been in this house long enough. I'm going to see what men and women are really like—I know this isn't real here. And I want to discover about religion too. Since Martin went away I've felt that there was something in it. I can't think what and the aunts can't think either; none of you know here, but some one must have found out something. I'm going to settle what it all means."

"You've got your work cut out," said Miss Avies. "I'll come and see you again one day soon."

"Yes, do," said Maggie.

When Miss Avies had gone Maggie realised that she had been talking with bravado—in fact she hid her head in the cushion of the chair and cried for at least five minutes. Then she sat up and wiped her eyes because she heard Aunt Anne coming. When Aunt Anne came towards her now she was affected with a strange feeling of sickness. She told herself that that was part of her illness. She did not hate Aunt Anne. For some weeks, when she had risen slowly from the nightmare that the first period of her illness had been, she hated Aunt Anne, hated her fiercely, absorbingly, desperately. Then suddenly the hatred had left her, and had she only known it she was from that moment never to hate any one again. A quite new love for Martin was suddenly born in her, a love that was, as yet, like the first faint stirring of the child in the mother's womb. This new love was quite different from the old; that had been acquisitive, possessive, urgent, restless, and often terribly painful; this was tranquil, sure, utterly certain, and passive. The immediate fruit of it was that she regarded all human creatures with a lively interest, an interest too absorbing to allow of hatred or even active dislike. Her love for Martin was now like a strong current in her soul washing away all sense of irritation and anger. She regarded people from a new angle. What were they all about? What were they thinking? Had they too had some experience as marvellous as her meeting with and parting from Martin? Probably; and they too were shy of speaking of it. Her love for Martin slowly grew, a love now independent of earthly contact and earthly desire, a treasure that would be hers so long as life lasted, that no one could take from her.

She no longer hated Aunt Anne, but she did not intend to live with her any more. So soon as she was well enough she would go. That moment of physical contact when Aunt Anne had held her back made any more relation between them impossible. There was now a great gulf fixed.

The loneliness, the sense of desperate loss, above all the agonising longing for Martin, his step, his voice, his smile—she faced all these and accepted them as necessary companions now on her life's journey, but she did not intend to allow them to impede progress. She wondered now about everybody. Her own experience had shown her what strange and wonderful things occur to all human beings, and, in the face of this, how could one hate or grudge or despise? She had a fellowship now with all humanity.

But she was as ignorant about life as ever. The things that now she wanted to know! About Aunt Anne, for instance. How had she been affected by Mr. Warlock's death and the disappointment of her expectations? The Chapel now apparently was to be taken over by Thurston, who had married Amy Warlock and was full of schemes and enterprises. Maggie knew that the aunts went now very seldom to Chapel, and the Inside Saints were apparently in pieces. Was Aunt Anne utterly broken by all this? She did not seem to be so. She seemed to be very much as she had been, except that she was in her room now a great deal. Her health appeared, on the whole, to be better than it had been. And what was Aunt Elizabeth thinking? And Martha? And Miss Avies? And Caroline Smith? ...

No, she must get out into the world and discover these things for herself. She did not know how the way of escape would come, but she was certain of its arrival.

It arrived, and through her third visitor. Her third visitor was Mrs. Mark.

When Katherine Mark came in Maggie was writing to Uncle Mathew. She put aside her writing-pad with a little exclamation of surprise. Mrs. Mark, the very last person in all the world whom she had expected to see! As she saw her come in she had a swift intuition that this was Destiny now that was dealing with her, and that a new scene, involving every sort of new experience and adventure, was opening before her. More than ever before she realised how far Katherine Mark was from the world in which she, Maggie, had during all these months been living. Katherine Mark was Real—Real in her beautiful quiet clothes, in her assurance, her ease, the sense that she gave that she knew life and love and business and all the affairs of men at first hand, not only seen through a mist of superstition and ignorance, or indeed not seen at all.

"This is what I want," something in Maggie called to her.

"This will make me busy and quiet and sensible—at last—"

When Katherine Mark sat down and took her hand for a moment, smiling at her in the kindliest way, Maggie felt as though she had known her all her life.

"Oh! I'm so glad you've come!" she cried spontaneously; and then, as though she felt she'd gone too far, she blushed and drew back.

But Katherine held her hand fast.

"I wrote," she said, "some weeks ago to you, and your aunt answered the letter saying you were very ill. Then, as I heard nothing of you, I was anxious and came to see what had happened. You've not kept your word, Maggie, you know. We were to have been great friends, and you've never been near me."

At the use of her Christian name Maggie blushed with pleasure.

"I couldn't come," she said. "I didn't want to until—until—until some things had settled themselves."

"Well—and they have?" asked Katherine.

"Yes—they have," said Maggie.

"What's been the matter?" asked Katherine.

"I was worried about something, and then I was ill," said Maggie.

"And you're not worried now?" said Katherine.

"I'm not going to give in to it, anyway," said Maggie. "As soon as I'm well, I'm off. I'll find some work somewhere."

"I've got a plan," said Katherine. "It came into my head the moment I saw you sitting there. Will you come and stay with us for a little?"

That sense that Maggie had had when she saw Katherine of fate having a hand in all of this deepened now and coloured her thoughts, so that she could feel no surprise but only a curious instinct that she had been through all this scene before.

"Stay with you!" she cried. "Oh, I should love to!"

"That's good," said Katherine. "Your aunts won't mind, will they?"

"They can't keep me," said Maggie. "I'm free. But they won't want to. Our time together is over—"

"I'll come and fetch you to-morrow," said Katherine. "You shall stay with us until you're quite well, and then we'll find some work for you."

"Why are you good to me like this?" Maggie asked.

"I'm not good to you," Katherine answered, laughing. "It's simply selfish. It will be lovely for me having you with me."

"Oh, you don't know," said Maggie, throwing up her head.

"No, I don't think I'll come. I'm frightened. I'm not what you think. I'm untidy and careless and can't talk to strangers. Perhaps I'll lose you altogether as a friend if I come."

"You'll never do that," said Katherine, suddenly bending forward and kissing her. "I don't change about people. It's because I haven't any imagination, Phil says."

"I shall make mistakes," Maggie said. "I've never been anywhere. But I don't care. I can look after myself."

The thought of her three hundred pounds (which were no longer three hundred) encouraged her. She kissed Katherine.

"I don't change either," she said.

She had a strange conversation with Aunt Anne that night, strange as every talk had always been because of things left unsaid. They faced one another across the fireplace like enemies who might have been lovers; there had been from the very first moment of this meeting a romantic link between them which had never been defined. They had never had it out with one another, and they were not going to have it out now; but Maggie, who was never sentimental, wondered at the strange mixture of tenderness, pity, affection, irritation and hostility that she felt.

"Aunt Anne, I'm going away to-morrow," said Maggie.

"To-morrow!" Aunt Anne looked up with her strange hostile arrogance. "Oh no, Maggie. You're not well yet."

"Mrs. Mark," said Maggie, "the lady I told you about, is coming in a motor to fetch me. She will take me straight to her house, and then I shall go to bed."

Aunt Anne said nothing.

"You know that it's better for me to go," said Maggie. "We can't live together any more after what happened. You and Aunt Elizabeth have been very very good to me, but you know now that I'm a disappointment. I haven't ever fitted into the life here. I never shall."

"The life here is over," said Aunt Anne. "Everything is over—the house is dead. Of course you must go. If you feel anger with me now or afterwards remember that I have lost every hope or desire I ever had. I don't want your pity. I want no one's pity. I wanted once your affection, but I wanted it on my own terms. That was wrong. I do not want your affection any longer; you were never the girl I thought you. You're a strange girl, Maggie, and you will have, I am afraid, a very unhappy life."

"No, I will not," said Maggie. "I will have a happy life."

"That is for God to say," said Aunt Anne.

"No, it is not," said Maggie. "I can make my own happiness. God can't touch it, if I don't let Him."

"Maggie, you're blasphemous," said Aunt Anne, but not in anger.

"I'm not," said Maggie. "When I came here first I didn't believe in God, but now—I'm not sure. There's something strange, which may be God for all I know. I'm going to find out. If He has the doing of everything then He's taken away all I cared for, and I'm not going to give Him the satisfaction of seeing that it hurt; if He didn't do it, then it doesn't matter."

"You'll believe in Him before you die, Maggie," said Aunt Anne. "It's in you, and you won't escape it. I thought it was I who was to bring you to Him, but I was going too fast. The Lord has His own time. You'll come to Him afterwards."

"Oh," cried Maggie. "I'm so glad I'm going somewhere where it won't be always religion, where they'll think of something else than the Lord and His Coming. I want real life, banks and motor-cars and shops and clothes and work ..."

She stopped suddenly.

Aunt Anne was doing what Maggie had never seen her do before, even in the worst bouts of her pain—she was crying ... cold solitary lonely tears that crept slowly, reluctantly down her thin cheeks.

"I meant to do well. In everything I have done ill ... Everything has failed in my hands—"

Once again, as long before at St. Dreot's, Maggie could do nothing.

There was a long miserable silence, then Aunt Anne got up and went away.

Next day Katherine came in a beautiful motor-car to fetch Maggie. Maggie had packed her few things. Bound her neck next her skin was the ring with three pearls ...

She said good-bye to the house: her bedroom beneath which the motor-omnibuses clanged, the sitting-room with the family group, the passage with the Armed Men, the dark hall with the green baize door ... then good-bye to Aunt Elizabeth (two kisses), Aunt Anne (one kiss), Martha, Thomas the cat, the parrot ... all, everything, good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!

May I never see any of you again. Never, never, never, never! ...

She was helped into the car, rugs were wrapped round her, there was a warm cosy smell of rich leather, a little clock ticked away, a silver vase with red and blue flowers winked at her, and Katherine was there close beside her ...

Never again, never again! And yet how strange, as they turned the corner of the street down into the Strand, Maggie felt a sudden pang of regret, of pathos, of loneliness, as though she were leaving something that had loved her dearly, and leaving it without a word of friendliness.

"Poor dear!" She wanted to return, to tell it ... to tell it what? She had made her choice. She was plunging now into the other half of the world, and plunging not quite alone, because she was taking Martin with her.

"I do hope you won't mind, dear," said Katherine. "My cousin Paul—the clergyman you met once—is staying with us. He and his sister. No one else."

"Oh, I shan't mind," said Maggie. Her fingers, inside her blouse, tightly clutched the little pearl ring.

CHAPTER II

PLUNGE INTO THE OTHER HALF

For a week Maggie was so comfortable that she could think of nothing but that. It must be remembered that she had never before known what comfort was, never at St. Dreot's, never at Aunt Anne's, and these two places had been the background of all her life.

She had never conceived of the kind of way that she now lived. Her bedroom was so pretty that it made her almost cry to look at it: the wall-paper scattered with little rosy trees, the soft pink cretonne on the chairs, the old bureau with a sheet of glass covering its surface that was her dressing-table, the old gold mirror—all these things were wonders indeed. She was ordered to have breakfast in bed; servants looked after her with a kindliness and ease and readiness to help that she had never dreamed of as possible. The food was wonderful; there was the motor ready to take her for a drive in the afternoon, and there was the whole house at her service, soft and cosy and ordered so that it seemed to roll along upon its own impulse without any human agency.

"I believe if every one went away and left it," she thought, "it would go on in exactly the same way."

Figures gradually took their places in front of this background. The principals at first were Katherine and Philip, Henry and Millicent, Katherine's brother and sister, Mr. Trenchard senior, Katherine's father, Lady Rachel Seddon, Katherine's best friend, and Mr. Faunder, Katherine's uncle. She saw at once that they all revolved around Katherine; if Katherine were not there they would not hold together at all. They were all so different—so different and yet so strangely alike. There was, for instance, Millicent Trenchard, whom Maggie liked best of them all after Katherine. Millie was a young woman of twenty-one, pretty, gay, ferociously independent, enthusiastic about one thing after another, with hosts of friends, male and female, none of whom she took very seriously. The love of her life, she told Maggie almost at once, was Katherine. She would never love any one, man or woman, so much again. She lived with her mother and father in an old house in Westminster, and Maggie understood that there had been some trouble about Katherine's marriage, so that, although it happened three years ago, Mrs. Trenchard would not come to see Katherine and would not allow Katherine to come and see her.

Then there was Henry, a very strange young man. He was at Cambridge and said to be very clever. He did indeed seem to lead a mysterious life of his own and paid very little attention to Maggie, asking her once whether she did not think The Golden Ass wonderful, and what did she think of Petronius; and when Maggie laughed and said that she was glad to say she never read anything, he left her in an agitated horror. Lady Rachel Seddon was very grand and splendid, and frightened Katherine. She was related to every kind of duke and marquis, and although that fact did not impress Maggie in the least, it did seem to remove Lady Rachel into quite another world.

But they were all in another world—Maggie discovered that at once. They had, of course, every sort of catch-word and allusion and joke that no one but themselves and the people whom they brought into the house understood; Katherine was kindness itself. Philip too (he seemed to Maggie a weak, amiable young man) took a lot of trouble about her, but they did not belong to her nor she to them.

"And why should they?" said Maggie to herself. "I must look on it as though I were staying at a delightful hotel and were going on with my journey very soon."

There was somebody, however, who did not belong any more than Maggie did, and very soon he became Maggie's constant companion—this was the Rev. Paul Trenchard, Katherine's cousin.

From the very moment months ago, when Maggie and he had first met in Katherine's drawing-room, they had been friends. He had liked her, Maggie felt, at once. She on her side was attracted by a certain childlike simplicity and innocence. This very quality, she soon saw, moved the others, Philip and Henry and Mr. Trenchard senior, to derision. They did not like the Rev. Paul. They chaffed him, and he was very easily teased, because he was not clever and did not see their jokes. This put Maggie up in arms in his defence at once. But they had all the layman's distrust of a parson. They were all polite to him, of course, and Maggie discovered that in this world politeness was of the very first importance, so that you really never said what you thought nor did what you wanted to. They frankly could not understand why Katherine asked the parson to stay, but because they loved Katherine they were as nice to him as their natures would allow them to be. Paul did not apparently notice that they put him outside their life. He was always genial, laughed a great deal when there WAS no reason to laugh at all, and told simple little stories in whose effect he profoundly believed. He was supported in his confidence by his sister Grace, who obviously adored him. She too was "outside" the family, but she seemed to be quite happy telling endless stories of Paul's courage and cleverness and popularity. She did indeed believe that Skeaton-on-Sea, where Paul had his living, was the hub of the universe, and this amused all the Trenchard family very much indeed. It must not be supposed that Paul and his sister were treated unkindly. They were shown the greatest courtesy and hospitality, but Maggie knew that that was only because it was the Trenchard tradition to do so, and not from motives of affection or warmth of heart.

They could be warm-hearted; it was wonderful to see the way that they all adored Katherine, and they had many friends for whom they would do anything, but the Rev. Paul seemed to them frankly an ass, and they would be glad when he went away.

He did not seem to Maggie an ass. She thought him the kindest person she had ever known, kinder even than Katherine, because with Katherine there was the faintest suspicion of patronage; no, not of patronage—that was unfair ... but of an effort to put herself in exactly Maggie's place so that she might understand perfectly what were Maggie's motives. With Paul Trenchard there was no effort, no deliberate slipping out of one world into another one. He was frankly delighted to tell Maggie everything—all about Skeaton-on-Sea and its delights, about the church and its marvellous east window, about the choir and the difficulties with the choir-boys and the necessity for repairing the organ, about the troubles with the churchwardens, especially one Mr. Bellows, who, in his cantankerous and dyspeptic objections to everything that any one proposed, became quite a lively figure to Maggie's imagination, about the St. John's Brotherhood which had been formed to keep the "lads" out of the public-houses and was doing so well, about the Shakespeare Reading Society and a Mrs. Tempest (who also became a live figure in Maggie's brain), "a born tragedian" and wonderful as Lady Macbeth and Katherine of Aragon. Skeaton slowly revealed itself to Maggie as a sunny sparkling place, with glittering sea, shining sand, and dark cool woods, full of kindliness, too, and friendship and good-humour. Paul and Grace Trenchard seemed to be the centre of this sunshine. How heartily Paul laughed as he recounted some of the tricks and escapades of his "young scamps." "Dear fellows," he would say, "I love them all ..." and Grace sat by smiling and nodding her head and beaming upon her beloved brother.

To Maggie, fresh from the dark and confused terrors of the Chapel, it was all marvellous. Here was rest indeed, here, with Martin cherished warmly in her heart, she might occupy herself with duties and interests. Here surely she would be useful to "somebody." She heard a good deal of an old Mr. Toms, "a little queer in his head, poor man," who seemed to figure in the outskirts of Skeaton society as a warning and a reassurance. ("No one in Skeaton thinks of him in any way but tenderly.") Maggie wondered whether he might not want looking after ...

The thought gradually occurred to her that this kindly genial clergyman might perhaps find her some work in Skeaton. He even himself hinted at something ... She might be some one's secretary or housekeeper.

About Grace Trenchard Maggie was not quite so sure. She was kindness itself and liked to hold Maggie's hand and pat it—but there was no doubt at all that she was just a little bit tiresome. Maggie rebuked herself for thinking this, but again and again the thought arose. Grace was in a state of perpetual wonder, everything amazed her. You would not think to look at her flat broad placidity that she was a creature of excitement, and it might be that her excitement was rather superficial. She would say: "Why! Just fancy, Maggie! ... To-day's Tuesday!" Then you wondered what was coming next and nothing came at all. She had endless stories about her adventures in the streets of London, and these stories were endless because of all the details that must be fitted in, and then the details slipped out of her grasp and winked at her maliciously as they disappeared. The fact was perhaps that she was not very clever, but then Maggie wasn't very clever either, so she had no right to criticise Miss Trenchard, who was really as amiable as she could be. Henry Trenchard said once to Maggie in his usual scornful way:

"Oh, Grace! ... She's the stupidest woman in Skeaton, which means the stupidest woman in the world."

The Trenchards, Maggie thought, were rather given to scorning every one save themselves. Even Philip, who was not a Trenchard, had caught the habit. Katherine, of course, despised no one and liked every one, but that was rather tiresome too.

In fact at the end of her first week Maggie thought that as soon as possible she would find a room for herself somewhere and start to earn her living. She discovered that she was developing a new sensitiveness. When she was living with the aunts she had not minded very seriously the criticisms made upon her; she had indeed been disappointed when Aunt Anne had not admired her new dress, and she had hated Amy Warlock's rudeness, but that was because Martin had been involved. This new sensitiveness worried her; she hated to care whether people laughed at the way she came into a room or whether she expressed foolish opinions about books and pictures. She had always said just what she thought, but now, before Philip's kindly attention and Mr. Trenchard senior's indulgence (he wrote books and articles in the papers), she hated her ignorance. Paul Trenchard knew frankly nothing about Art. "I know what I like," he said, "and that's enough for me." He liked Watts's pictures and In Memoriam and Dickens, and he heard The Messiah once a year in London if he could leave his parish work. He laughed about it all. "The souls of men! The souls of men!" he would say. "That is what I'm after, Miss Cardinal. You're not going to catch them with the latest neurotic novel, however well it's written."

Oh, he was kind to her! He was kinder and kinder and kinder. She told him everything—except about Martin. She told him all about her life at St. Dreot's and her father and Uncle Mathew, the aunts and the Chapel.

He was frankly shocked by the Chapel. "That's not the way to get into heaven," he said. "We must be more patient than that. The daily round, the daily task, that's the kind."

His physical presence began to pervade all her doings. He was not handsome, but so clean, so rosy, and so strong. No mystery about him, no terrors, no invasions from the devil. Everything was clear and certain. He knew just where he was and exactly whither he was going. One afternoon, when they were out in the motor together, he took Maggie's hand under the rug and he held it so calmly, so firmly, with so kindly a benevolence that she could not be frightened or uncomfortable. He was like a large friendly brother ...

One day he called her Maggie. He blushed and laughed. "I'm so sorry," he said. "It slipped out. I caught it from Katherine."

"Oh, please, ... never mind," she answered. "Miss Cardinal's so stiff."

"Then you must call me Paul," he said.

A little conversation that Maggie had after this with Millicent showed her in sharp relief exactly where she stood in relation to the Trenchard family. They had been out in the motor together. Millie had been shopping and now they were rolling back through the Park.

"Are you happy with us, Maggie?" Millicent suddenly asked.

"Very happy," Maggie answered.

"Well, I hope you are," said Millicent. "I don't think that as a family we're very good at making any one happy except ourselves. I think we're very selfish."

"No, I don't think you're selfish," said Maggie, "but I think you're sufficient for yourselves. I don't fancy you really want any one from outside."

"No, I don't think the others do. I do though. You don't suppose I'm going to stay in the Trenchard bosom for ever, do you? I'm not, I assure you. But what you've said means that you don't really feel at home with us."

"I don't think I want to feel at home with you," Maggie answered. "I don't belong to any of you. Contrast us, for instance. You've got everything—good looks, money, cleverness, position. You can get what you like out of life. I've got nothing. I'm plain, poor, awkward, uneducated—and yet you know I wouldn't change places with any one. I'd rather be myself than any one alive."

"Yes, you would," said Millicent, nodding her head. "That's you all over. I felt it the moment you came into the house. You're adventurous. We're not. Katherine was adventurous for a moment when she married Philip, but she soon slipped back again. But you'll do just what you want to always."

"I shall have to," said Maggie, laughing. "There's no one else to do it for me. It isn't only that I don't belong to you—I've never belonged to any one, only one person—and he's gone now. I belong to him—and he'll never come back."

"Were you frightfully in love?" asked Millie, deeply interested.

"Yes," said Maggie.

"He oughtn't to have gone away like that," said Millicent.

"Yes, he ought," said Maggie. "He was quite right. But don't let's bother about that. I've got to find some place now where I can work. The worst of it is I'm so ignorant. But there must be something that I ran do."

"There's Paul," said Millie.

"What do you mean?" asked Maggie.

"Oh, he cares like anything for you. You must have noticed. It began after the first time he met you. He was always asking about you. Of course every one's noticed it."

"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 nigger-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 amusement. 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 attitude 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 glass, her evening frock off, brushing her short thick hair before the glass.

"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 passed apparently through a love affair that could have led to no possible good—solve the difficulty, make Maggie safe for life, and pass 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?"

"No, I don't," said Maggie, moving away from Katherine. "And I should have to tell Paul about him. I'd tell Paul the exact truth, that if I married him it was because I liked him and I thought we'd be good friends. I see quite clearly that I can't sit for ever waiting for Martin to come back, and the sooner I settle to something the better. If Paul wants a friend I can be one, but I should never love him—even though Martin wasn't there. And as to the managing, I'm dreadfully careless and forgetful."

"You'd soon learn," said Katherine.

"Do you think I should?" asked Maggie. "I don't know, I'm sure. As to Grace, I think we'd get on all right. There's a greater difficulty than that though."

"What?" asked Katherine as Maggie hesitated.

"Religion," said Maggie. "Paul's a clergyman and I don't believe in his religion at all. Two months ago I'd have said I hated all religion—and so would you if you'd had a time like me. But since Martin's gone I'm not so sure. There's some-thing I want to find out... But Paul's found out everything. He's quite sure and certain. I'd have to tell him I don't believe in any of his faith."

"Tell him, of course," said Katherine. "I think he knows that already. He's going to convert you. He looks forward to it. If he hadn't been so lazy he'd have been a missionary."

"Tell me about Skeaton," said Maggie.

"I've only been there once," said Katherine. "Frankly, I didn't like it very much, but then I'm so used to the Glebeshire sea that it all seemed rather tame. There was a good deal of sand blowing about the day I was there, but Paul's house is nice with a garden and a croquet-lawn, and—and—Oh! very nice, and nice people next door I believe."

"I'm glad it's not like Glebeshire," said Maggie. "That's a point in its favour. I want to be somewhere where everything is quiet and orderly, and every one knows their own mind and all the bells ring at the right time and no one's strange or queer, and—most of all—where no one's afraid of anything. All my life I've been with people who were afraid and I've been afraid myself. Now Paul and Grace are not afraid of anything."

"No, they're not," said Katherine, laughing.

Suddenly Maggie broke out:

"Katherine! Tell me truly. Does Paul want me, does he need me? Does he indeed?"

The storm of appeal in Maggie's voice made Katherine suddenly shy; there was a hint at loneliness and desolation there that was something beyond her reach. She wanted to help. She was suddenly frightened at her urging of Paul's suit. Something seemed to say to her: "Leave this alone. Don't take the responsibility of this. You don't understand ..."

But another voice said: "Poor child ... all alone, penniless, without a friend. What a chance for her! Paul such a kind man."

So she kissed Maggie, and said: "He wants you dreadfully, Maggie dear."

Maggie's cheeks flushed.

"That's nice," she said in her most ordinary voice. "Because no one ever has before, you know."

Paul's proposal came the very next day. It came after luncheon in a corner of the drawing-room.

Maggie knew quite well that it was coming. She was lying in a long chair near the fire, a shawl over her knees. It was a blustering day at the end of February. The windows rattled, and the wind rushing down the chimney blew the flame into little flags and pennants of colour.

Paul came and stood by the fire, warming his hands, his legs spread out. Maggie looked at him with a long comprehensive glance that took him in from head to foot. She seemed to know then that she was going to marry him. A voice seemed to say to her: "Look at him well. This is the man you're going to live with. You'd better realise him."

She did realise him; his white hair, his rosy cheeks, his boyish nose and mouth and rounded chin, his broad chest, thick long legs and large white hands—soft perhaps, but warm and comfortable and safe. Maggie could think of little else as she looked at him but of how nice it would be to lay her head back on that broad chest, feel his arms around her, and forget—forget—forget!

That was what she needed—forgetfulness and work ... She did not love him—no, not one little atom. She had never felt less excitement about anybody, but she liked him, respected him, and trusted him. And he wanted her, wanted her desperately, Katherine had said, that was the chief thing of all.

"Maggie!" he said suddenly, turning round to her. "Would you ever think of marrying me?"

She liked that directness and simplicity, characteristic of him.

She looked up at him.

"I don't think I'd be much of a success, Paul," she said.

He saw at once from that that she did not intend instantly to refuse him. His rosy cheeks took on an added tinge of colour and he caught a chair, drew it up to her long one and sat down, bending eagerly towards her.

"Leave that to me," he said.

"I oughtn't to think of it," she answered, shaking her head. "And for very good reasons. For one thing I'm not in love with you, for another I'm not religious, and for a third I'm so careless that I'd never do for your wife."

"Of course I knew about the first," he said eagerly. "I knew you didn't love me, but that will come, Maggie. It MUST come ..."

Maggie shook her head. "I love some one else," she said, "and I always will. But he's gone away and will never come back. I've made up my mind to that. But if he did come back and wanted me I couldn't promise that I wouldn't—" She broke off. "You can see that it wouldn't do."

"No, I can't see," he said, taking her hand. "I can see that you like me, Maggie. I can see that we're splendid friends. If your other—friend—has left you altogether, then—well, time makes a great difference in those things. I think after we'd been together a little—Oh, Maggie, do!" he broke off just like a boy. "Do! We suit each other so well that we MUST be happy, and then Grace likes you—she likes you very much. She does indeed."

"Let's leave Grace out of this," Maggie said firmly. "It's between you and me, Paul. It's nobody else's affair. What about the other two objections? I don't believe in your faith at all, and I'm unpunctual and forgetful, and break things."

Strangely she was wanting him urgently now to reassure her. She realised that if now he withdrew she would be faced with a loneliness more terrible than anything that she had known since Martin had left her. The warm pressure of his hand about hers reassured her.

"Maggie dear," he said softly, "I love you better because you're young and unformed. I can help you, dear, and you can help me, of course; I'm a dreadful old buffer in many ways. I'm forty, you know, and you're such a child. How old are you, Maggie?"

"Twenty," she said.

"Twenty! Fancy! And you can like an old parson—well, well ... If you care for me nothing else matters. God will see to the rest."

"I don't like leaving things to other people," Maggie said slowly. "Now I suppose I've shocked you. But there you are; I shall always be shocking you."

"Nothing that you can say will shock me," he answered firmly. "Do you know that that's part of the charm you have for me, you dear little wild thing? If you will come and live with me perhaps you will see how God works, how mysterious are His ways, and what He means to do for you—"

Maggie shivered: "Oh, now you're talking like Aunt Anne. I don't want to feel that I'm something that some one can do what he likes with. I'm not."

"No. I know you're not," Paul answered eagerly. "You're very independent. I admire that in you—and so does Grace—"

"Would Grace like us to marry?" asked Maggie.

"It's the desire of her heart," said Paul.

"But how can you want to marry me when you know I don't love you?"

"Love's a strange thing. Companionship can make great changes. You like me. That is enough for the present. I can be patient. I'm not an impetuous man."

He was certainly not. He was just a large warm comfortable creature far, far from the terrified and strangely travelled soul of Martin ... Insensibly, hardly realising what she did, Maggie was drawn towards Paul. He drew close to her, moved on to the sofa, and then with one arm about her let her head rest against his chest. Maggie could neither move nor speak. She only felt a warm comfort, an intense desire for rest.

Very, very gently he bent down and kissed her forehead. The clock ticked on. The flames of the fire spurted and fell. Maggie's eyes closed, she gave a little sigh, and soon, her cheek against his waistcoat, like a little child, was fast asleep.

The engagement was a settled thing. Every one in the house was relieved. Maggie herself felt as though she had found lights and safety, running from a wood full of loneliness and terror. She was sharp enough to see how relieved they all were that she was 'settled.' They were true kindly people, and now they were more kind to her than ever: that showed that they had been uneasy about her. She was 'off their hands now.'

Maggie, when she saw this in the faces of Philip and Mr. Trenchard, and even of Millicent, was glad that she was engaged. She was somebody's now; she had friends and a home and work now, and she would banish all that other world for ever. For ever? ... How curious it was that from the moment of her engagement her aunts, their house, the Chapel, and the people around it began to press upon her attention with a pathos and sentiment that she had never felt before. She went to see the aunts, of course, and sat in the old drawing-room for half-an-hour, and they were kind and distant. They were glad that she was to be married; they hoped that she would be happy. Aunt Anne looked very ill, and there was a terrible air of desertion about the house as though all the life had gone out of it. Maggie came away very miserable. Then she said to herself: "Now, look here. You're in a new house now. You've got to think of nothing but that—nothing, nothing, nothing ..."

She meant Martin. She might think of Martin (how indeed could she help it?) but she was not to long for him. No, no ... not to long for him. She did wish that she could go to sleep more quickly when she went to bed.

Paul and Grace were very kind to her. Paul was just the big elder brother that she loved him to be. No more sentiment than that. A kiss morning, a kiss evening, that was all. Grace behaved to them both with a motherly indulgence. Maggie saw that she considered that she had arranged the whole affair. There were signs that she intended to arrange everything for Maggie. Well, it was rather pleasant just now to have things arranged for you. Maggie had only one wish—that Grace would not take so long to explain everything. Maggie always ran ahead of her long before she had finished her involved sentences and then had to curb her impatience. However one would get used to Grace; one would have to because she was going to live with them after they were married. Maggie had hoped that it would be otherwise, but it was at once obvious that neither Paul nor Grace dreamt of being separated.

The wedding was to be as soon as possible, and very, very quiet. In a little church close by, no bridesmaids, everything very simple. Maggie was glad of that. She would have hated a church full of staring people. She enjoyed immensely buying her trousseau. Paul was very generous with his money; it was evident that Grace thought him too generous. Maggie and Katherine went together to buy things, and Katherine was a darling. Maggie fancied that Katherine was not quite easy in her mind about her share in the affair.

"You won't expect Skeaton to be wildly exciting, Maggie dear, will you?" she said. "You'll find plenty to do and there are lots of nice people, I'm sure, and you'll come up and stay with us here."

"I think it sounds delightful," said Maggie. "If you'd lived for years in St. Dreot's, Katherine, you wouldn't talk about other places being dull. It isn't excitement I want. It's work."

"Don't you let Grace bully you," said Katherine.

"Bully me? Grace?" Maggie was very astonished. "Why, she's the kindest old thing. She wants me to do everything."

"So she says," said Katherine doubtfully. "But she's very jealous of Paul. How much she'll really like giving up her authority when it comes to the point I don't know. You stick up to her. Paul's weak."

"I don't think he is." said Maggie rather indignantly. "Grace always does what he says." "Yes, just now," said Katherine.

And Maggie had one funny little conversation with Henry Trenchard. That wild youth catching her alone one day said abruptly:

"What the devil have you done it for?"

"Done what?" asked Maggie, her heart beating a little faster. Strangely Henry reminded her of Martin. He alone of all the Trenchards had something that was of that other world.

"Engaged yourself to Paul," said Henry.

"Why shouldn't I?" asked Maggie.

"You don't love him—of course you couldn't. You're not his sort in the least. You're worth a million Pauls."

This was so odd for Henry, who was certainly not given to compliments, that Maggie burst out laughing.

"Yes, you may laugh," said Henry. "I know what I'm talking about. Have you ever seen Paul asleep after dinner?"

"No," said Maggie.

"I wish you had. That might have saved you. Have you ever seen Grace lose her temper?"

"No," said Maggie, this time a little uneasily.

"Look here," he came close to her, staring at her with those eyes of his that could be very charming when he liked. "Break it off. Say you think it's a mistake. You'll be miserable."

"Indeed I shan't," said Maggie, tossing her head. "Whatever happens I'm not going to be miserable. No one can make me that."

"So you think," Henry frowned. "I can't think what you want to be married for at all. These days women can have such a good time, especially a woman with character like you. If I were a woman I'd never marry."

"You don't understand," said Maggie. "You haven't been lonely all your life as I have, and you're not afraid of making yourself cheap and—and—looking for some one who doesn't want—you. It's so easy for you to talk. And Paul wants me—really he does—"

"Yes, he does," said Henry slowly. "He's in love with you all right. I'm as sorry for Paul as I am for you."

Maggie laughed. "It's very kind of you to be sorry," she said, "but you needn't trouble. I believe we can look after ourselves."

For a quarter of an hour after this conversation she was a little uneasy. He was a clever boy, Henry; he did watch people. But then he was very young, It was all guesswork with him.

She became now strangely quiescent; her energy, her individuality, her strength of will seemed, for the time, entirely to have gone. She surrendered herself to Grace and Paul and Katherine and they did what they would with her.

Only once was she disturbed. Two nights before the wedding she dreamt of Martin. It did not appear as a dream at all. It seemed to her that she had been asleep and that she suddenly woke. She was gazing, from her bed, into her own room, but at the farther end of it instead of the wall with the rosy trees and the gold mirror was another room. This room was strange and cheerless with bare boards, a large four-poster bed with faded blue hangings, two old black prints with eighteenth-century figures and a big standing mirror. In front of the bed, staring into the mirror, was Martin, He was dressed shabbily in a blue reefer coat. He looked older than when she had seen him last, was stouter and ill, with white puffy cheeks and dark shadows under his eyes. She saw him very clearly under the light of two candles that wavered a little in the draught.

He was staring into the mirror, absorbed apparently in what he saw there. She cried his name and he seemed to start and turn towards the door listening. Then the picture faded. She woke to find herself sitting up in bed crying his name ...

In the morning she drove this dream away from her, refusing to think of it or listen to it, but somewhere far down in her soul something trembled.

The wedding was over so quickly that she scarcely realised it. There was the stuffy little church, very empty and dusty, with brass plates on the wall. She could hear, in the street, rumblings of carts and the rattle of wheels; somewhere a barrel-organ played. The clergyman was a little man who smiled upon her kindly. When Paul put the ring on her finger she started as though for a moment she awoke from a dream. She was glad that he looked so clean and tidy. Grace was wearing too grand a hat with black feathers. In the vestry Paul kissed her, and then they walked down the aisle together. She saw Katherine and Millie and Henry. Her fingers caught tightly about Paul's stout arm, but she would have been more at home she thought with Uncle Mathew just then.

It was a nice bright spring day, although the wind blew the dust about. They had a meal in Katherine's house and some one made a speech, and Maggie drank some champagne. She hoped she looked nice in her grey silk dress, and then caught sight of herself in a glass and thought she was as ever a fright.

"My little wild thing—mine now," whispered Paul. She thought that rather silly; she was not a wild thing, but simply Maggie Cardinal. Oh, no! Maggie Trenchard ... She did not feel Maggie Trenchard at all and she did not suppose that she ever would.

They were to have a fortnight alone at Skeaton before Grace came. Maggie was glad of that. Paul was really nicer when Grace was not there.

They were all very kind to her. They had given her good presents—Millie some silver brushes, Henry some books, Philip a fan, and Katherine a most beautiful dressing-bag. Maggie had never had such things before. But she could have wished for something from her own people. She had written to Uncle Mathew but had not heard from him.

At the very last moment, on the morning of the wedding day, a present came from the aunts—an old box for handkerchiefs. The cover was inlaid with sea-shells and there was a little looking-glass inside.

Very soon it was all over and then to her own intense surprise she was alone in the train with Paul. What had she expected? She did not know—but somehow not this.

They were in a first-class carriage. Paul was doing the thing nobly. He sat close to her, his broad knee against her dress. How broad his knee was, a great expanse of black shining cloth. He took her hand and rested it on the expanse, and, at the touch of the stuff and the throb of the warm flesh beneath it, she shivered a little and would wish to have drawn her hand away. He seemed so much larger than she had expected; from his knee to his high shining white collar was an immense distance and midway there was a thick gold watch-chain rising and falling as he breathed. He smelt very faintly of tooth-powder.

But on the whole she was comfortable; only the thin gold ring round her finger felt strange. Deep in a little pocket inside her blouse was the ring with the three little pearls.

"I do hope, Maggie darling," he said, "you don't think it strange our not going somewhere else for our honeymoon. My lads will be expecting me back—I was kept longer in London than I should have been—by you, you little witch. My witch now—"

He put his arm round her waist and urged her head towards his coat. But her hat, her beautiful hat that had cost so much more than she had ever spent on a hat before, was in the way. It struck into his chin. They were both uncomfortable and then, thank heaven, the train slowed down; they were at a station and some one got into their carriage, a stout man, all newspaper and creases to his trousers. That, in the circumstances, was a great relief and soon Maggie dozed, seeing the telegraph wires and the trees like waving hands through a mist of sleep.

As she fell asleep she realised that this was only the second time in all her life that she had been in a train. Some one bawled in her car "Skeaton! Skeaton!" and she looked up to find a goat-faced porter gazing at her through the window. She was on a storm-driven platform, her husband's arm was through hers, she was being helped into an old faded cab. Now they were driving down a hill, under a railway-arch, along a road with villas and trees, trees and villas, and then villas alone. What a wind! The bare branches were in a frenzy, and from almost every villa blew little pennons of white curtains. "They like to have their windows open any way," she thought. Paul said very little; he was obviously nervous of how she would take it all. She took it all very well.

"What pretty houses!" she said. "And here are the shops!"

Only a few—a sweet-shop, a grocer's, a stationer's with "Simpson's Library" on the door, a post-office.

"The suburbs," said Paul.

What a wind! It rolled up the road like a leaping carpet, you could almost see its folds and creases. No one about—not a living soul.

"The cab I ordered never came. Lucky thing there was one there," said Paul.

Not a soul about. Does any one live here? She could not see much through the window, and she could hear nothing because the glass rattled so.

"Here we are!" The cab stopped with a jerk. Here they were then. A gate swung to behind them, there was a little drive with bushes on either side of it and then the house.

Not a very handsome house, Maggie thought. A dull square grey with chimneys like ears in exactly the right places. Some pieces of paper were whirled up and down by the wind, they danced about the horse's feet. She noticed that the door-handles needed polishing. A cavernous hall, a young girl with untidy hair and a yelping dog received them.

"That's Mitch!" said Paul. "Dear old Mitch. How are you, dear old fellow? Down Mitch! Down! There's a good dog."

The young girl was terrified of Maggie. She gulped through her nose.

"I've put tea in the study, sir," she said.

"Tea at once, little woman, eh?" said Paul. "I'm dying for some. Thank you, Emily. All well? That's right. Dear, dear, It IS nice to be home again."

Yes, he was nervous, poor Paul. She felt a great tenderness for him, but she could not say the right words. She should have said: "It is nice," but it was not. The hall was so cold and dark, and all over the house windows were rattling.

They went straight into the study. What a room! It reminded Maggie at once, in its untidiness and discomfort, of her father's, study, and that thought struck a chill into her very heart, so that she had to pause for a moment and control herself. There were piles of newspapers heaped up against the shelves; books run to the ceiling, old, old books with the covers tumbling off them. On the stone mantelpiece was a perfect litter—old pipes, bundles of letters, a ball of string, some yellow photographs, a crucifix and a small plant dead and shrivelled in its pot.

"Now then, darling. Hurrah for some tea!"

She poured it out and he watched her in an ecstasy. Strangely she began to be frightened and a little breathless, as though the walls of the room were slowly closing in. The tea had been standing a long time, it was very strong and chill.

The house was a firing-ground of rattle and whirs, but there were no human sounds anywhere. There was dust all over the room.

They had said nothing for some time.

He spoke suddenly, his voice husky and awkward, as though he were trying a new voice for the first time.

"Maggie!" he said. "Don't sit so far away. Come over here."

She crossed over to him. He, with an arm that seemed to be suddenly of iron, pulled her on to his knee. She was rebellious. Her whole body stiffened. She did not want this, she did not want this! Some voice within cried out: "Take care! Take care!" ... He pressed her close to him; he kissed her furiously, savagely, her eyes, her mouth, her cheek. She could feel his heart pounding beneath his clothes like a savage beast. His hands were all about her; he was crushing her so that she was hurt, but she did not feel that at all; there was something else ...

With all her might she fought down her resistance. This was her duty. She must obey. But something desolate and utterly, utterly lonely crept away and cried bitterly, watching her surrender.

CHAPTER III

SKEATON-ON-SEA

She was swinging higher, higher, higher—swinging with that delightful rhythm that one knows best in dreams, lazily, idly, and yet with purpose and resolve. She was swinging far above the pain, the rebellion, the surrender. That was left for ever; the time of her tears, of her loneliness was over. Above her, yet distant, was a golden cloud, soft, iridescent, and in the heart of this lay, she knew, the solution of the mystery; when she reached it the puzzle would be resolved, and in a wonderful tranquillity she could rest after her journey. Nearer and nearer she swung; the cloud was a blaze of gold so that she must not look, but could feel its warmth and heat already irradiating about her. Only to know! ... to connect the two worlds, to find the bridge, to destroy the gulf!

Then suddenly the rhythm changed. She was descending again; slowly the cloud diminished, a globe of light, a ball of fire, a dazzling star. The air was cold, her eyes could not penetrate the dark; with a sigh she awoke.

It was early morning, and a filmy white shadow pervaded the room. For a moment she did not know where she was; she saw the ghostly shadows of chairs, of the chest of drawers, of a high cupboard. Then the large picture of "The Crucifixion," very, very dim, reminded her. She knew where she was; she turned and saw her husband sleeping at her side, huddled, like a child, his face on his arm, gently breathing, in the deepest sleep. She watched him. There had been a moment that night when she had hated him, hated him so bitterly that she could have fought him and even killed him. There had been another moment after that, when she had been so miserable that her own death seemed the only solution, when she had watched him tumble into sleep and had herself lain, with burning eyes and her flesh dry and hot, staring into the dark, ashamed, humiliated. Then the old Maggie had come to her rescue, the old Maggie who bade her make the best of her conditions whatever they might be, who told her there was humour in everything, hope always, courage everywhere, and that in her own inviolable soul lay her strength, that no one could defeat her did she not defeat herself.

Now, most strangely, in that early light, she felt a great tenderness for him, the tenderness of the mother for the child. She put out her hand, touched his shoulder, stroked it with her hand, laid her head against it. He, murmuring in his sleep, turned towards her, put his arm around her and so, in the shadow of his heart, she fell into deep, dreamless slumber.

At breakfast that morning she felt with him a strange shyness and confusion. She had never been shy with him before. At the very first she had been completely at her ease; that had been one of his greatest attractions for her. But now she realised that she would be for a whole fortnight alone with him, that she did not know him in the least, and that he himself was strangely embarrassed by his own discoveries that he was making.

So they, both of them, took the world that was on every side of them, put it in between them and left their personal relationship to wait for a better time.

Maggie was childishly excited. She had, for the first time in her life, a house of her own to order and arrange; by the middle of that first afternoon she had forgotten that Paul existed.

She admitted to herself at once, so that there should be no pretence about the matter, that the house was hideous. "Yes, it's hideous," she said aloud, standing in the middle of the dining-room and looking about her. It never could have been very much of a house, but they (meaning Paul and Grace) had certainly not done their best for it.

Maggie had had no education, she had not perhaps much natural taste, but she knew when things and people were sympathetic, and this house was as unsympathetic as a house could well be. To begin with, the wall-papers were awful; in the dining-room there was a dark dead green with some kind of pink flower; the drawing-room was dressed in a kind of squashed strawberry colour; the wall-paper of the staircases and passages was of imitation marble, and the three bedrooms were pink, green, and yellow, perfect horticultural shows.

It was the distinctive quality of all the wall-papers that nothing looked well against them, and the cheap reproductions in gilt frames, the religious prints, the photographs (groups of the Rev. Paul at Cambridge, at St. Ermand's Theological College, with the Skeaton Band of Hope) were all equally forlorn and out of place.

It was evident that everything in the house was arranged and intended to stay for ever where it was, the chairs against the walls, the ornaments on the mantelpieces, the photograph-frames, the plush mats, the bright red pots with ferns, the long blue vases, and yet the impression was not one of discipline and order. Aunt Anne's house had been untidy, but it had had an odd life and atmosphere of its own. This house was dead, utterly and completely dead. The windows of the dining-room looked out on to a lawn and round the lawn was a stone wall with broken glass to protect it. "As though there were anything to steal!" thought Maggie. But then you cannot expect a garden to look its best at the beginning of April. "I'll wait a little," thought Maggie. "And then I'll make this house better. I'll destroy almost everything in it."

About mid-day with rather a quaking heart Maggie penetrated the kitchen. Here were gathered together Alice the cook, Emily the housemaid, and Clara the between maid.

Alice was large, florid, and genial. Nevertheless at once Maggie distrusted her. No servant had any right to appear so wildly delighted to see a new mistress. Alice had doubtless her own plans. Emily was prim and conceited, and Clara did not exist. Alice was ready to do everything that Maggie wanted, and it was very apparent at once that she had not liked "Miss Grace."

"Ah, that'll be much better than the way Miss Grace 'ad it, Mum. In their jackets, Mum, very well. Certainly. That would be better."

"I think you'd better just give us what seems easiest for dinner, Cook," said Maggie, thereby handing herself over, delivered and bound.

"Very well, Mum—I'm sure I'll do my best," said Alice.

Early on that first afternoon she was taken to see the Church. For a desperate moment her spirits failed her as she stood at the end of the Lane and looked. This was a Church of the newest red brick, and every seat was of the most shining wood. The East End window was flaming purple, with a crimson Christ ascending and yellow and blue disciples amazed together on the ground. Paul stood flushed with pride and pleasure, his hand through Maggie's arm.

"That's a Partright window," he said with that inflection that Maggie was already beginning to think of as "his public voice."

"I'm afraid, Paul dear," said Maggie, "I'm very ignorant."

"Don't know Partright? Oh, he's the great man of the last thirty years—did the great East window of St. Martin's, Pontefract. We had a job to get him I can tell you. Just look at that purple."

"On the right you'll see the Memorial Tablet to our brave lads who fell in the South African War—Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—very appropriate. Brave fellows, brave fellows! Just behind you, Maggie, is the Mickleham Font, one of the finest specimens of modern stone-work in the county—given to us by Sir Joseph Mickleham—Mickleham Hall, you know, only two miles from here. He used to attend morning service here frequently. Died five years ago. Fine piece of work!"

Maggie looked at it. It was enormous, a huge battlement of a font in dead white stone with wreaths of carved ivy creeping about it.

"It makes one feel rather shivery," said Maggie.

"Now you must see our lectern," said Paul eagerly.

And so it continued. There was apparently a great deal to be said about the Lectern, and then about the Choir-Screen, and then about the Reredos, and then about the Pulpit, and then about the Vestry, and then about the Collecting-Box for the Poor, and then about the Hassocks, and finally about the Graveyard ... To all this Maggie listened and hoped that she made the proper answers, but the truth of the matter was that she was cold and dismayed. The Chapel had been ugly enough, but behind its ugliness there had been life; now with the Church as with the house there was no life visible. Paul, putting his hand on her shoulder, said:

"Here, darling, will be the centre of our lives. This is our temple. Round this building all our happiness will revolve."

"Yes, dear," said Maggie. She was taken then for a little walk. They went down Ivy Road and into Skeaton High Street. Here were the shops. Mr. Bloods, the bookseller's, Tunstall the butcher, Toogood the grocer, Father the draper, Minster the picture-dealer, Harcourt the haberdasher, and so on. Maggie rather liked the High Street; it reminded her of the High Street in Polchester, although there was no hill. Out of the High Street and on to the Esplanade. You should never see an Esplanade out of the season, Katherine had once said to Maggie. That dictum seemed certainly true this time. There could be no doubt that this Esplanade was not looking its best under the blustering March wind. Here a deserted bandstand, there a railway station, here a dead haunt for pierrots, there a closed and barred cinema house, here a row of stranded bathing-machines, there a shuttered tea-house—and not a living soul in sight. In front of them was a long long stretch of sand, behind them to right and left the huddled tenements of the town, in front of them, beyond the sand, the grey sea—and again not a living soul in sight. The railway line wound its way at their side, losing itself in the hills and woods of the horizon.

"There are not many people about, are there?" said Maggie. Nor could she wonder. The East wind cut along the desolate stretches of silence, and yet how strange a wind! It seemed to have no effect at all upon the sea, which rolled in sluggishly with snake-like motion, throwing up on the dim colourless beach a thin fringe of foam, baring its teeth at the world in impotent discontent.

"Oh! there's a boy!" cried Maggie, amazed at her own relief. "How often do the trains come in?" she asked.

"Well, we don't have many trains in the off-season," said Paul. "They put on several extra ones in the summer."

"Oh, what's the sand doing?" Maggie cried.

She had seen sand often enough in her own Glebeshire, but never sand like this. Under the influence of the wind it was blowing and curving into little spirals of dust; a sudden cloud, with a kind of personal animosity rose and flung itself across the rails at Maggie and Paul. They were choking and blinded—and in the distance clouds of sand rose and fell, with gusts and impulses that seemed personal and alive.

"What funny sand!" said Maggie again. "When it blows in Glebeshire it blows and there's a perfect storm. There's a storm or there isn't. Here—" She broke off. She could see that Paul hadn't the least idea of what she was speaking.

"The sand is always blowing about here," he said. "Now what about tea?"

They walked back through the High Street and not a soul was to be seen.

"Does nobody live here?" asked Maggie.

"The population," said Paul quite gravely, "is eight thousand, four hundred and fifty-four."

"Oh, I see," said Maggie.

They had tea in the dusty study again.

"I'm going to change this house," said Maggie.

"Change it?" asked Paul. "What's my little girl going to do?"

"She's going to destroy ever so many things," said Maggie.

"You'd better wait," said Paul, moving a little away, "until Grace comes back, dear. You can consult with her."

Maggie said nothing.

Next day Mrs. Constantine, Miss Purves, and Mrs. Maxse came to tea.
They had tea in the drawing-room all amongst the squashed strawberries. Three large ferns in crimson pots watched them as they ate. Maggie thought: "Grace seems to have a passion for ferns." She had been terribly nervous before the ladies' arrival—that old nervousness that had made her tremble before Aunt Anne at St. Dreot's, before the Warlocks, before old Martha. But with it came as always her sense of independence and individuality.

"They can't eat me," she thought. It was obvious at once that they did not want to do anything of the kind. They were full of kindness and curiosity. Mrs. Constantine took the lead, and it was plain that she had been doing this all her life. She was a large black and red woman with clothes that fitted her like a uniform. Her hair was of a raven gleaming blackness, her cheeks were red, her manner so assured and commanding that she seemed to Maggie at once like a policeman directing the traffic. The policeman of Christian Skeaton she was, and it did not take Maggie two minutes to discover that Paul was afraid of her. She had a deep bass voice and a hearty laugh.

"I can understand her," thought Maggie, "and I believe she'll understand me."

Very different Miss Purves. If Mrs. Constantine was the policeman of Skeaton, Miss Purves was the town-crier. She rang her bell and announced the news, and also insisted that you should tell her without delay any item of news that you had collected.

In appearance she was like any old maid whose love of gossip has led her to abandon her appearance. She had obviously surrendered the idea of attracting the male, and flung on her clothes—an old black hat, a grey coat and skirt—with a negligence that showed that she cared for worthier things. She gave the impression that there was no time to be lost were one to gather all the things in life worth hearing.

If Mrs. Constantine stood for the police and Miss Purves the town-crier, Mrs. Maxse certainly represented Society. She was dressed beautifully, and she must have been very pretty once. Her hair was now grey, but her cheeks had still a charming bloom. She was delicate and fragile, rustling and scented, with a beautiful string of pearls round her neck (this, in the daytime, Maggie thought very odd), and a large black hat with a sweeping feather. Her voice was a little sad, a little regretful, as though she knew that her beautiful youth was gone and was making the best of what she had.

She told Maggie that "she couldn't help" being an idealist.

"I know it's foolish of me," she said in her gentle voice, smiling her charming smile. "They all tell me so. But if life isn't meant to be beautiful, where are we? Everything must have a meaning, mustn't it, Mrs. Trenchard, and however often we fail—and after all we are only human—we must try, try again. I believe in seeing the best in people, because then they live up to that. People are what we make them, don't you think?"

"The woman's a fool," thought Maggie. Nevertheless, she liked her kindness. She was so strangely driven. She wished to think of Martin always, never to forget him, but at the same time not to think of the life that was connected with him. She must never think of him as some one who might return. Did that once begin all this present life would be impossible—and she meant to make this new existence not only possible but successful. Therefore she was building, so hard as she could, this new house; the walls were rising, the rooms were prepared, every window was barred, the doors were locked, no one from outside should enter, and everything that belonged to it—Paul, Grace, the Church, these women, Skeaton itself, her household duties, the servants, everything and every one was pressed into service. She must have so much to do that she could not think, she must like every one else so much that she could not want any one else—that other world must be kept out, no sound nor sight of it must enter ... If even she could forget Martin. What had he said to her. "Promise me whatever I am, whatever I do, you will love me always"—and she had promised. Here she was married to Paul and loving Martin more than ever! As she looked at Mrs. Constantine she wondered what she would say did she know that. Nevertheless, she had not deceived Paul ... She had told him. She would make this right. She would force this life to give her what she needed, work and friends and a place in the world. Her face a little white with her struggle to keep her house standing, she turned to her guests. She was afraid that she did not play the hostess very well. She felt as though she were play-acting. She repeated phrases that she had heard Katherine Mark use, and laughed at herself for doing so. She suspected that they thought her very odd, and she fancied that Mrs. Constantine looked at her short hair with grave suspicion.

Afterwards, when she told Paul this, he was rather uncomfortable.

"It'll soon be long again, dear, won't it?" he said.

"Don't you like it short then?" she asked.

"Of course I like it, but there's no reason to be unusual, is there? We don't want to seem different from other people, do we, darling?"

"I don't know," said Maggie. "We want to be ourselves. I don't think I shall ever grow my hair long again. It's so much more comfortable like this."

"If I ask you, dear," said Paul.

"No, not even if you ask me," she answered, laughing.

She noticed then, for the first time, that he could look sulky like a small school-boy.

"Why, Paul," she said. "If you wanted to grow a beard I shouldn't like it, but I shouldn't dream of stopping you."

"That's quite different," he answered. "I should never dream of growing a beard. Grace won't like it if you look odd."

"Grace isn't my teacher," said Maggie with a sudden hot hostility that surprised herself.

She discovered, by the way, very quickly that the three ladies had no very warm feelings for Grace. They showed undisguised pleasure at the thought that Maggie would now be on various Committees instead of her sister-in-law.

"It will be your place, of course, as wife of the vicar," said Mrs. Constantine. "Hitherto Miss Trenchard—"

"Oh, but I couldn't be on a Committee," cried Maggie. "I've never been on one in my life. I should never know what to do."

"Never been on a Committee!" cried Miss Purves, quivering with interest. "Why, Mrs. Trenchard, where have you been all this time?"

"I'm only twenty," said Maggie. They certainly thought it strange of her to confess to her age like that. "At home father never had any Committees, he did it all himself, or rather didn't do it."

Mrs. Constantine shook her head. "We must all help you," she said. "You're very young, my dear, for the responsibilities of this parish."

"Yes, I am," said Maggie frankly. "And I'll be very glad of anything you can tell me. But you mustn't let me be Treasurer or Secretary of anything. I should never answer any of the letters, and I should probably spend all the money myself."

"My dear, you shouldn't say such things even as a joke," said Mrs. Constantine.

"But it isn't a joke," said Maggie. "I'm terribly muddleheaded, and I've no idea of money at all. Paul's going to teach me."

Paul smiled nervously.

"Maggie will soon fit into our ways," he said.

"I'm sure she will." said Mrs. Constantine very kindly, but as though she were speaking to a child of ten.

The bell rang and Mr. Flaunders the curate came in. He was very young, very earnest, and very enthusiastic. He adored Paul. He told Maggie that he thought that he was the very luckiest man in the world for having, so early in his career, so wonderful a man as Paul to work under. He had also adored Grace, but very quickly showed signs of transferring that adoration to Maggie.

"Miss Trenchard's splendid," he said. "I do admire her so, but you'll be a great help to us all. I'm so glad you've come."

"Why, how do you know?" asked Maggie. "You've only seen me for about two minutes."

"Ah, one can tell," said Mr. Flaunders, sighing.

Maggie liked his enthusiasm, but she couldn't help wishing that his knees wouldn't crack at unexpected moments, that he wasn't quite so long and thin, and that he wouldn't leave dried shaving-soap under his ears and in his nostrils. She was puzzled, too, that Paul should be so obviously pleased with the rather naif adoration. "Paul likes you to praise him," she thought a little regretfully.

So, for the moment, these people, the house and the Church, fitted in her World. For the rest of the fortnight she was so busy that she never went on to the beach nor into the woods. She shopped every morning, feeling very old and grown-up, she went to tea with Mrs. Constantine and Mrs. Maxse, and she sat on Paul's knee whenever she thought that he would like her to. She sat on Paul's knee, but that did not mean that, in real intimacy, they approached any nearer to one another. During those days they stared at one another like children on different sides of a fence. They were definitely postponing settlement, and with every day Maggie grew more restless and uneasy. She wanted back that old friendly comradeship that there had been before their marriage. He seemed now to have lost altogether that attitude to her. Then on the very day of Grace's return the storm broke. It was tea-time and they were having it, as usual, in his dusty study. They were sitting someway apart—Paul in the old leather armchair by the fire, his thick body stretched out, his cheerful good-humoured face puckered and peevish.

Maggie stood up, looking at him.

"Paul, what's the matter?" she asked.

"Matter," he repeated. "Nothing."

"Oh yes, there is ... You're cross with me."

"No, I'm not. What an absurd idea!" He moved restlessly, turning half away, not looking at her. She came close up to him.

"Look here, Paul. There is something the matter. We haven't been married a fortnight yet and you're unhappy. Whatever else we married for we married because we were going to be friends. So you've just got to tell me what the trouble is."

"I've got my sermon to prepare," he said, not looking at her, but half rising in his chair. "You'd better go, darling."

"I'm not going to," she answered, "until you've told me why you're worrying."

He got up slowly and seemed then as though he were going to pass her. Suddenly he turned, flung his arms round her, catching her, crushing her in his arms, kissing her wildly.

"Love ... love me ... love me," he whispered. "That's what's the matter. I didn't know myself before I married you, Maggie. All these years I've lived like a fish and I didn't know it. But I know it now. And you've got to love me. You're my wife and you've got to love me."

She would have given everything that she had then to respond. She felt an infinite tenderness and pity for him. But she could not. He felt that she could not. He let her go and turned away from her. She thought for a moment wondering what she ought to say, and then she came up to him and gently put her hand on his shoulder.

"Be patient, Paul," she said. "You know we agreed before we married that we'd be friends at any rate and let the rest come. Wait ..."

"Wait!" he turned round eagerly, clutching her arm. "Then there is a chance, Maggie? You can get to love me—you can forget that other man?"

She drew back. "No, you know I told you that I should never do that. But he'll never come back nor want me again and I'm very fond of you, Paul—fonder than I thought. Don't spoil it all now by going too fast—"

"Going too fast!" he laughed. "Why, I haven't gone any way at all. I haven't got you anywhere. I can hardly touch you. You're away from me all the time. You're strange—different from every one ..."

"I don't know anything about women. I've learnt a lot about myself this week. It isn't going to be as easy as I thought."

She went up to him, close to him, and said almost desperately: "We MUST make this all right, Paul. We can if we try. I know we can."

He kissed her gently with his old kindness. "What a baby you are. You didn't know what you were in for ... Oh, we'll make it all right."

They sat close together then and drank their tea. After all, Grace would be here in an hour! They both felt a kind of relief that they would no longer be alone.

Grace would be here in an hour! Strange how throughout all these last days Maggie had been looking forward to that event with dread. There was no definite reason for fear; in London Grace had been kindness itself and had shown real affection for Maggie. Within the last week she had written two very affectionate letters. What was this, then, that hung and hovered? It was in the very air of the house and the garden and the place. Grace had left her mark upon everything and every one, even upon the meagre person of Mitch the dog. Especially upon Mitch, a miserable creeping fox-terrier with no spirits and a tendency to tremble all over when you called him. He had attached himself to Maggie, which was strange, because animals were not, as a rule, interested in her. Mitch followed her about, looking up at her with a yellow supplicating eye. She didn't like him and she would be glad when Grace collected him again—but why did he tremble?

She realised, in the way that she had of seeing further than her nose, that Grace was going to affect the whole of her relations with Paul, and, indeed, all her future life. She had not realised that in London. Grace had seemed harmless there and unimportant. Already here in Skeaton she seemed to stand for a whole scheme of life.

Maggie had moved and altered a good many of the things in the house. She had discovered a small attic, and into this she had piled pell-mell a number of photographs, cheap reproductions, cushions, worsted mats, and china ornaments. She had done it gaily and with a sense of clearing the air.

Now as Grace's hour approached she was not so sure.

"Well, I'm not afraid," she reassured herself with her favourite defiance. "She can't eat me. And it's my house."

Paul had not noticed the alterations. He was always blind to his surroundings unless they were what he called "queer."

There was the rattle of the cab-wheels on the drive and a moment later Grace was in the hall.

"Dear Paul—Maggie, dear ..."

She stood there, a very solid and assured figure. She was square and thick and reminded Maggie to-day of Mrs. Noah; her clothes stood cut out around her as though they had been cut in wood. She had her large amiable smile, and the kiss that she gave Maggie was a wet, soft, and very friendly one.

"Now I think I'll have tea at once without taking my hat off. In Paul's study? That's nice ... Maggie, dear, how are you? Such a journey! But astonishing! Just fancy! I got into Charing Cross and then—! Why! Here's the study! Fancy! ... Maggie, dear, how are you? Well? That's right. Why, there's tea! That's right. Everything just as it was. Fancy! ..." She took off her gloves, smiled, seated herself more comfortably, then began to look about the room. Suddenly there came: "Why, Paul, where's the Emmanuel football group?"

There was a moment's silence. Maggie felt her heart give a little bump, as it seemed to her, right against the roof of her mouth. Paul (so like him) had not noticed that the football group had vanished. He stared at the blank place on the wall where it had once been.

"Why, Grace ... I don't know. I never noticed it wasn't there."

"I took it down," said Maggie. "I thought there were too many photographs. It's in the attic."

"In the attic? ... Fancy! You put it away, did you, Maggie? Well, fancy! Shan't I make the tea, Maggie, dear? That tea-pot, it's an old friend of mine. I know how to manage it."

They changed seats. Grace was as amiable as ever, but now her eyes flashed about from place to place all around the room.

"Why, this is a new kind of jam. How nice! As I was saying, I got into Charing Cross and there wasn't a porter. Just fancy! At least there was a porter, an old man, but when I beckoned to him he wouldn't move. Well, I was angry. I can tell you, Paul, I wasn't going to stand that, so I-what nice jam, dear. I never knew Mitchell's had jam like this!"

"I didn't get it at Mitchell's," said Maggie. "I've changed the grocer. Mitchell hasn't got anything, and his prices are just about double Brownjohn's ..."

"Brownjohn!" Grace stared, her bread and jam suspended. "Brownjohn! But, Maggie dear, he's a dissenter."

"Oh. Maggie!" said Paul. "You should have told me!"

"Why!" said Maggie, bewildered. "Father never minded about dissenters. Our butcher in St. Dreot's was an atheist and—"

"Well, well," said Grace, her eyes still flashing about like goldfish in a pool. "You didn't know, dear. Of course you didn't. I'm sure we can put it right with Mitchell, although he's a sensitive man. I'll go and see him in the morning. I am glad I'm back. Well, I was telling you ... Where was I? ... about the porter—"

Something drove Maggie to say:

"I'd rather have a good grocer who's a dissenter than a bad one who goes to church—"

"Maggie," said Paul, "you don't know what you're saying. You don't realise what the effect in the parish would be."

"Of course she doesn't," said Grace consolingly. "She'll understand in time. As I was saying, I was so angry that I caught the old man by the arm and I said to him, 'If you think you're paid to lean up against a wall and not do your duty you're mightily mistaken, and if you aren't careful I'll report you—that's what I'll do,' and he said—what were his exact words? I'll remember in a minute. I know he was very insulting, and the taxi-cabman—why, Paul, where's mother's picture?"

Grace's eyes were directed to a large space high above the mantelpiece. Maggie remembered that there had been a big faded oil-painting of an old lady in a shawl and spectacles, a hideous affair she had thought it. That was now reposing in the attic. Why had she not known that it was a picture of Paul's mother? She would never have touched it had she known. Why had Paul said nothing? He had not even noticed that it was gone.

Paul stared, amazed and certainly—yes, beyond question—frightened.

"Grace—upon my word—I've been so busy since my return—"

"Is that also in the attic?" asked Grace.

"Yes, it is," said Maggie. "I'm so sorry. I never knew it was your mother. It wasn't a very good painting I thought, so I took it down. If I had known, of course, I never would have touched it. Oh Grace, I AM so sorry."

"It's been there," said Grace, "for nearly twenty years. What I mean to say is that it's always been there. Poor mother. Are there many things in the attic, Maggie?"

At that moment there was a feeble scratching on the door. Paul, evidently glad of anything that would relieve the situation, opened the door.

"Why, it's Mitch!" cried Grace, forgetting for the moment her mother. "Fancy! It's Mitch! Mitch, dear! Was she glad to see her old friend back again? Was she? Darling! Fancy seeing her old friend again? Was she wanting her back?"

Mitch stood shivering in the doorway, then, with her halting step, the skin of her back wrinkled with anxiety, she crossed the room. For a moment she hesitated, then with shamefaced terror, slunk to Maggie, pressed up against her, and sat there huddled, staring at Grace with yellow unfriendly eyes.

CHAPTER IV

GRACE

Not in a day and not in a night did Maggie find a key to that strange confusion of fears, superstitions, and self-satisfactions that was known to the world as Grace Trenchard. Perhaps she never found it, and through all the struggle and conflict in which she was now to be involved she was fighting, desperately, in the dark. Fight she did, and it was this same conflict, bitter and tragic enough at the time, that transformed her into the woman that she became ... and through all that conflict it may be truly said of her that she never knew a moment's bitterness—anger, dismay, loneliness, even despair-bitterness never.

It was not strange that Maggie did not understand Grace; Grace never understood herself nor did she make the slightest attempt to do so. It would be easy enough to cover the ground at once by saying that she had no imagination, that she never went behind the thing that she saw, and that she found the grasping of external things quite as much as she could manage. But that is not enough. Very early indeed, when she had been a stolid-faced little girl with a hot desire for the doll possessed by her neighbour, she had had for nurse a woman who rejoiced in supernatural events. With ghost stories of the most terrifying kind she besieged Grace's young heart and mind. The child had never imagination enough to visualise these stories in the true essence, but she seized upon external detail-the blue lights, the white shimmering garments, the moon and the church clock, the clanking chain and the stain of blood upon the board.

These things were not for her, and indeed did she allow her fancy to dwell, for a moment, upon them she was besieged at once by so horrid a panic that she lost all control and self-possession. She therefore very quickly put those things from her and thenceforth lived in the world as in a castle surrounded by a dark moat filled with horrible and slimy creatures who would raise a head at her did she so much as glance their way.

She decided then never to look, and from a very early age those quarters of life became to her "queer," indecent, and dangerous. All the more she fastened her grip upon the things that she could see and hold, and these things repaid her devotion by never deceiving her or pretending to be what they were not. She believed intensely in forms and repetitions; she liked everything to be where she expected it to be, people to say the things that she expected them to say, clocks to strike at the right time, and trains to be up to the minute. With all this she could never be called an accurate or careful woman. She was radically stupid, stupid in the real sense of the word, so that her mind did not grasp a new thought or fact until it had been repeated to her again and again, so that she had no power of expressing herself, and a deep inaccuracy about everything and every one which she endeavoured to cover by a stream of aimless lies that deceived no one. She would of course have been very indignant had any one told her that she was stupid. She hated what she called "clever people" and never had them near her if she could help it. She was instantly suspicious of any one who liked ideas or wanted anything changed. With all this she was of an extreme obstinacy and a deep, deep jealousy. She clung to what she had with the tenacity of a mollusc. What she had was in the main Paul, and her affection for him was a very real human quality in her.

He was exactly what she would have chosen had she been allowed at the beginning a free choice. He was lazy and good-tempered so that he yielded to her on every possible point, he was absolutely orthodox and never shocked her by a thought or a word out of the ordinary, he really loved her and believed in her and said, quite truly, that he would not have known what to do without her.

It seems strange then that it should have been in the main her urgency that led to the acquisition of Maggie. During the last year she had begun to be seriously uneasy. Things were not what they had been. Mrs. Constantine and others in the parish were challenging her authority, even the Choir boys were scarcely so subservient as they had been, and, worst of all, Paul himself was strangely restive and unquiet. He talked at times of getting married, wondered whether she, Grace, wouldn't like some one to help her in the house, and even, on one terrifying occasion, suggested leaving Skeaton altogether. A momentary vision of what it would be to live without Paul, to give up her kingdom in Skeaton, to have to start all over again to acquire dominion in some new place, was enough for Grace.

She must find Paul a wife, and she must find some one who would depend upon her, look up to her, obey her, who would, incidentally, take some of the tiresome and monotonous drudgery off her shoulders. The moment she saw Maggie she was resolved; here was just the creature, a mouse of a girl, no parents, no money, no appearance, nothing to make her proud or above herself, some one to be moulded and trained in the way she should go. To her great surprise she discovered that Paul was at once attracted by Maggie: had she ever wondered at anything she would have wondered at this, but she decided that it was because she herself had made the suggestion. Dear Paul, he was always so eager to fall in with any of her proposals.

Her mind misgave her a little when she saw that he was really in love. What could he see in that plain, gauche, uncharming creature? See something he undoubtedly did. However, that would wear off very quickly. The Skeaton atmosphere was against romance and Paul was too lazy to be in love very long. Once or twice in the weeks before the wedding Grace's suspicions were aroused.

Maggie seemed to be an utter little heathen; also it appeared that she had had some strange love affair that she had taken so seriously as actually to be ill over it. That was odd and a little alarming, but the child was very young, and once married-there she'd be, so to speak!

It was not, in fact, until that evening of her arrival in Skeaton that she was seriously alarmed. To say that that first ten minutes in Paul's study alarmed her is to put it mildly indeed. As she looked at the place where her mother's portrait had been, as she stared at the trembling Mitch cowering against Maggie's dress, she experienced the most terrifying, shattering upheaval since the day when as a little girl of six she had been faced as she had fancied, with the dripping ghost of her great-uncle William. Not at once, however, was the battle to begin. Maggie gave way about everything. She gave way at first because she was so confident of getting what she wanted later on. She never conceived that she was not to have final power in her own house; Paul had as yet denied her nothing. She moved the pictures and the pots and the crochet work down from the attic and replaced them where they had been-or, nearly replaced them. She found it already rather amusing to puzzle Grace by changing their positions from day to day so that Grace was bewildered and perplexed.

Grace said nothing—only solidly and with panting noises (she suffered from shortness of breath) plodded up and down the house, reassuring herself that all her treasures were safe.

Maggie, in fact, enjoyed herself during the weeks immediately following Grace's return. Paul seemed tranquil and happy; there were no signs of fresh outbreaks of the strange passion that had so lately frightened her. Maggie herself found her duties in connection with the Church and the house easier than she had expected. Every one seemed very friendly. Grace chattered on with her aimless histories of unimportant events and patted Maggie's hand and smiled a great deal. Surely all was very well. Perhaps this was the life for which Maggie was intended.

And that other life began to be dim and faint-even Martin was a little hidden and mysterious. Strangely she was glad of that; the only way that this could be carried through was by keeping the other out of it. Would the two worlds mingle? Would the faces and voices of those spirits be seen and heard again? Would they leave Maggie now or plan to steal her back? The whole future of her life depended on the answer to that ...

During those weeks she investigated Skeaton very thoroughly. She found that her Skeaton, the Skeaton of Fashion and the Church, was a very small affair consisting of two rows of villas, some detached houses that trickled into the country, and a little clump of villas on a hill over the sea beyond the town. There were not more than fifty souls all told in this regiment of Fashion, and the leaders of the fifty were Mrs. Constantine, Mrs. Maxse, Miss Purves, a Mrs. Tempest (a large black tragic creature), and Miss Grace Trenchard—and they had for their male supporters Colonel Maxse, Mr. William Tempest, a Mr. Purdie (rich and idle), and the Reverend Paul. Maggie discovered that the manners, habits, and even voices and gestures of this sacred Fifty were all the same. The only question upon which they divided was one of residence. The richer and finer division spent several weeks of the winter abroad in places like Nice and Cannes, and the poorer contingent took their holiday from Skeaton in the summer in Glebeshire or the Lake District. The Constantines and the Maxses were very fine indeed because they went both to Cannes in the winter and Scotland in the summer. It was wonderful, considering how often Mrs. Constantine was away from Skeaton, how solemn and awe-inspiring an impression she made and retained in the Skeaton world. Maggie discovered that unless you had a large house with independent grounds outside the town it was impossible to remain in Skeaton during the summer months. Oh! the trippers! ...Oh! the trippers! Yes, they were terrible-swallowed up the sands, eggshells, niggers, pierrots, bathing-machines, vulgarity, moonlight embracing, noise, sand, and dust. If you were any one at all you did not stay in Skeaton during the summer months-unless, as I have said, you were so grand that you could disregard it altogether.

It happened that these weeks were wet and windy and Maggie was blown about from one end of the town to the other. There could be no denying that it was grim and ugly under these conditions. It might be that when the spring came there would be flowers in the gardens and the trees would break out into fresh green and the sands would gleam with mother-of-pearl and the sea would glitter with sunshine. All that perhaps would come. Meanwhile there was not a house that was not hideous, the wind tore screaming down the long beaches carrying with it a flurry of tempestuous rain, whilst the sea itself moved in sluggish oily coils, dirt-grey to the grey horizon. Worst of all perhaps were the deserted buildings at other times dedicated to gaiety, ghosts of places they were with torn paper flapping against their sides and the wind tearing at their tin-plated roofs. Then there was the desolate little station, having, it seemed, no connection with any kind of traffic-and behind all this the woods howled and creaked and whistled, derisive, provocative, the only creatures alive in all that world.

Between the Fashion and the Place the Church stood as a bridge.

Centuries ago, when Skeaton had been the merest hamlet clustered behind the beach, the Church had been there-not the present building, looking, poor thing, as though it were in a perpetual state of scarlet fever, but a shabby humble little chapel close to the sea sheltered by the sandy hill.

The present temple had been built about 1870 and was considered very satisfactory. It was solid and free from draughts and took the central heating very well. The graveyard also was new and shiny, with no bones in it remoter than the memories of the present generation could compass. The church clock was a very late addition—put up by subscription five years ago-and its clamour was so up to date and smart that it was a cross between the whistle of a steam-engine and a rich and prosperous dinner-bell.

All this was rightly felt to be very satisfactory. As Miss Purves said: "So far as the dear Church goes, no one had any right to complain about anything."

When Maggie had first arrived in Skeaton her duties with regard to the Church were made quite plain to her. She was expected to take one of the classes in Sunday school, to attend Choir practice on Friday evening, to be on the Committees for Old Women's Comforts, Our Brave Lads' Guild, and the Girls' Friendly Society, to look after the flowers for the Altar, and to attend Paul's Bible Class on Wednesdays.

She had no objection to any of these things-they were, after all, part of her "job." She found that they amused her, and her life must be full, full, full. "No time to think—No time to think," some little voice far, far within her cried. But on Grace's return difficulties at once arose. Grace had, hitherto, done all these things. She had, as she called it, "Played a large part in the life of our Church." She was bored with them all, the Choir practices, the Committees, the Altar flowers, and the rest; she was only too pleased that Maggie should do the hard work—it was quite fair that she, Grace, should have a rest. At the same time she did not at all want to surrender the power that doing these things had given her. She did not wish Maggie to take her place, but she wanted her to support the burden-very difficult this especially if you are not good at "thinking things out."

Grace never could "think things out." It seemed as though her thoughts loved wilfully to tease and confuse her. Then when she was completely tangled, and bewildered, her temper rose, slowly, stealthily, but with a mighty force behind it; suddenly as a flood bursts the walls that have been trying to resist it, it would sweep the chambers of her mind, submerging, drowning the flock of panic-stricken little ideas.

She then would "lose her temper" so much to her own surprise that she at once decided that some one else must be responsible. A few days after her return she decided that she "must not let these things go," so she told Maggie that she would attend the Committee of Old Women's Comforts and be responsible for the Choir practice. But on her return to these functions she found that she was bored and tired and cross; they were really intolerable, she had been doing them for years and years and years. It was too bad that Maggie should suffer her to take them on her shoulders. What did Maggie think she was a clergyman's wife for? Did Maggie imagine that there were no responsibilities attached to her position?

Grace did not say these things, but she thought them. She did not of course admit to herself that she wanted Maggie both to go and not to go. She simply knew that there was a "grievance" and Maggie was responsible for it. But at present she was silent ...

The next factor in the rapidly developing situation was Mr. Toms. One day early in April Maggie went for a little walk by herself along the lane that led to Marsden Wood. Marsden Wood was the most sinister of all the woods; there had once been a murder there, but even had there not, the grim bleakness of the trees and bushes, the absence of all clear paths through its tangles and thickets made it a sinister place. She turned at the very edge of the wood and set her face back towards Skeaton.

The day had been wild and windy with recurrent showers of rain, but now there was a break, the chilly April sun broke through the clouds and scattered the hedges and fields with primrose light.

Faintly and with a gentle rhythm the murmur of the sea came across the land and the air was sweet with the sea-salt and the fresh scent of the grass after rain. Maggie stood for a moment, breathing in the spring air and watching the watery blue thread its timid way through banks of grey cloud. A rich gleam of sunlight struck the path at her feet.

She saw then, coming towards her, a man and a woman. The woman was ordinary enough, a middle-aged, prim, stiffly dressed person with a pale shy face, timid in her walk and depressed in mouth and eyes. The man was a stout, short, thick-set fellow with a rosy smiling face. At once Maggie noticed his smile. He was dressed very smartly in a black coat and waist-coat and pepper-and-salt trousers. His bowler was cocked a little to one side. She passed them and the little round man, looking her full in the face, smiled so happily and with so radiant an amiability that she was compelled to respond. The woman did not look at her.

Long after she had left them she thought of the little man's smile. There was something that, in spite of herself, reminded her both of Uncle Mathew and Martin. She felt a sudden and warm kinship, something that she had not known since her arrival in Skeaton. Had she not struggled with herself every kind of reminiscence of her London life would have come crowding about her. This meeting was like the first little warning tap upon the wall ...

On her return she spoke of it.

"Oh," said Paul, "that must have been poor little Mr. Toms with his sister."

"Poor?" asked Maggie.

"Yes. He's queer in his head, you know," said Paul. "Quite harmless, but he has the strangest ideas."

Maggie noticed then that Grace shivered and the whole of her face worked with an odd emotion of horror and disgust.

"He should have been shut up somewhere," she said. "It's disgraceful letting him walk about everywhere just like any one else."

"Shut up!" cried Maggie. "Oh, no! I don't think any one ought to be shut up for anything."

"My dear Maggie!" said Paul in his fatherly protecting voice. "No prisons? Think what would become of us all."

"Oh!" said Maggie impatiently, "I'm not practical of course, I don't know what one should do, but I do know that no one should be shut up."

"Chut-chut—" said Grace.

Now this "Chut, chut," may seem a very little thing, but very little things are sometimes of great importance. Marriages have been wrecked on an irritating cough and happy homes ruined by a shuffle. Grace had said "Chut, chut," for a great many years and to many people. It expressed scorn and contempt and implied a vast store of superior knowledge. Grace herself had no idea of the irritating nature of this exclamation, she would have been entirely amazed did you explain to her that it had more to do with her unpopularity in Skeaton than any other thing. She had even said "Chut, chut," to Mrs. Constantine.

But she said it to Maggie more than to any other person. When she had been in the house a few days she said to her brother:

"Paul, Maggie's much younger than I had supposed."

"Oh, do you think so?" said Paul.

"Yes, I do. She knows nothing about anything. She's been nowhere. She's seen nobody ... Poor child."

It was the "poor child" position that she now, during these first weeks, adopted. She was very, very kind to Maggie. As she explained to Mrs. Maxse, she really was very fond of her—she was a GOOD girl. At the same time ... Well! ... Mrs. Maxse would understand that Paul can hardly have known what he was marrying. Ignorance! Carelessness! Strange ideas! Some one from the centre of Africa would have known more ... and so on. Nevertheless, she was a GOOD girl ... Only she needed guidance. Fancy, she had taken quite a fancy to poor Mr. Toms! Proposed to call on his sister. Well, one couldn't help that. Miss Toms was a regular communicant ... Nevertheless ... she didn't realise, that was it. Of course, she had known all kinds of queer people in London. Paul and Grace had rescued her. The strangest people. No, Maggie was an orphan. She had an uncle, Grace believed, and two aunts who belonged to a strange sect. Sex? No, sect. Very queer altogether.

Mrs. Maxse went home greatly impressed.

"The girl's undoubtedly queer," she told her husband.

"The parson's got a queer sort of wife," Colonel Maxse told his friends in the Skeaton Conservative Club. "He rescued her from some odd sort of life in London. No. Don't know what it was exactly. Always was a bit soft, Trenchard."

Maggie had no idea that Skeaton was discussing her. She judged other people by herself. Meanwhile something occurred that gave her quite enough to think about.

She had understood from Grace that it was expected of her that she should be at home on one afternoon in the week to receive callers. She thought it a silly thing that she should sit in the ugly drawing-room waiting for people whom she did not wish to see and who did not wish to see her, but she was told that it was one of her duties, and so she would do it. No one, however, had any idea of the terror with which she anticipated these Friday afternoons. She had never been a very great talker, she had nothing much to say unless to some one in whom she was interested. She was frightened lest something should happen to the tea, and she felt that they were all staring at her and asking themselves why her hair was cut short and why her clothes didn't fit better. However, there it was. It was her duty.

One Friday afternoon she was sitting alone, waiting. The door opened and the maid announced Mrs. Purdie. Maggie remembered that she had been told that Mr. Alfred Purdie was the richest man in Skeaton, that he had recently married, and was but now returned from his honeymoon.

Mrs. Purdie entered and revealed herself as Caroline Smith. For a moment, as Maggie looked upon that magnificent figure, the room turned about her and her eyes were dim. She remembered, as though some one were reminding her from a long way off, that Caroline had once told her that she was considering the acceptance of a rich young man in Skeaton.

She remembered that at the time she had thought the coincidence of Caroline and Paul Trenchard strange. But far stronger than any such memory was the renewed conviction that she had that fate did not intend to leave her alone. She was not to keep the two worlds apart, she was not to be allowed to forget.

The sight of Caroline brought Martin before her so vividly that she could have cried out. Instead she stood there, quietly waiting, and showed no sign of any embarrassment.

Caroline was dressed in peach-coloured silk and a little black hat. She was not confused in the least. She seized Maggie's hand and shook it, talking all the time.

"Well now, I'm sure you're surprised to see me," she said, "and perhaps you're not too glad either. Alfred wanted to come too, but I said to him, 'No, Alfred, this will be just a little awkward at first, for Maggie Trenchard's got a grievance, and with some reason, too, so you'd better let me manage it alone the first meeting.' Wasn't I right? Of course I was. And you can just say right out now, Maggie, exactly what's in your mind. It's not my fault that we're both in the same town. I'm sure you'd much rather never set eyes on me again, and I'm sure I can quite understand if you feel like that. But there it is. I told you long ago in London that Alfred was after me, and I was in two minds about it-but of course I didn't dream you were going to marry a parson. You could have knocked me down with less than a feather when I saw it in the Skeaton News, 'That can't be my Margaret Cardinal,' I said, and yet it seemed so strange the two names and all. Well, and then I found it really WAS the same. I WAS astonished. You of all people the wife of a parson! However, you know your own mind best, and I'm sure Mr. Trenchard's a very lucky man. So you can just start off and curse me, Maggie, as much as you like."

The strange thing was that as Maggie listened to this she felt a desire to embrace rather than curse. Of course Caroline had done her harm, she had, perhaps ruined Martin's life as well as her own, but the mistake had been originally Maggie's in trusting Caroline with more confidence than her volatile nature would allow her to hold. And now, as she looked at Caroline and saw that pretty pink and white face, the slim beautiful body, the grace and gaiety, and childish amiability, her whole soul responded. Here was a friend, even though an indiscreet one, here was some one from home, the one human being in the whole of Skeaton who knew the old places and the old people, the Chapel, and the aunts—and Martin. She knew at once that it would have been far safer had Caroline not been there, that the temptation to discuss Martin would be irresistible, that she would yield to it, and that Caroline was in no way whatever to be trusted-she realised all these things, and yet she was glad.

"I don't want to curse you, Caroline," said Maggie. "Sit down. Tea will be here in a minute. I was very unhappy about what you did, but that's all a long time ago now, and I was to blame too."

"Oh, that's just sweet of you," said Caroline, running over and giving Maggie an impulsive kiss. "I said to Alfred, 'Maggie may be angry. I don't know how she'll receive me, I'm sure. She had the sweetest nature always, and it isn't like her to bear a grudge. But whatever way it is, I'll have to take it, because the fact is I deserve it.' But there you are, simply angelic and I'm ever so glad. The fact is I was ridicilous in those days. I don't wonder you lost your patience with me, and it was just like your honest self to be so frank with me. But marriage has just taught me everything. What I say is, every one ought to be married; no one knows anything until they're married. It's amazing what a difference it makes, don't you think so? Why, before I was married I used to chatter on in the most ridicilous way (Caroline always said ridicilous) and now-but there I go, talking of myself, and it's you I want to hear about. Now, Maggie, tell me—" But the sudden entrance of Grace and Paul checked, for the moment, these confidences. Caroline did not stay long this first time. She talked a little, drank some tea, ate a biscuit, smiled at Paul and departed. She felt, perhaps, that Grace did not approve of her. Grace had not seen her before, certainly she would not approve of the peach-coloured dress and the smile at Paul. And then the girl talked too much. She had interrupted Grace in the middle of one of her stories.

When Caroline had departed (after kissing Maggie affectionately) Grace said:

"And so you knew her before, Maggie?"

"I knew her in London," said Maggie.

"I like her," said Paul. "A bright young creature."

"Hum!" said Grace.

That was a wonderful spring evening, the first spring evening of the year. The ugly garden swam in a mist faintly cherry-colour; through the mist a pale evening sky, of so rich a blue that it was almost white, was shadowing against a baby moon sharply gold. The bottles on the wall were veiled by the evening mist; a thrush sang in the little bush at the end of the lawn.

Paul whispered to Maggie: "Come out into the garden."

She went with him, frightened; she could feel his arm tremble against her waist; his cold hard fingers caught hers. No current ran from her body to his. They were apart, try as she may. When they had walked the length of the lawn he caught her close to him, put his hand roughly up to her neck and, bending her head towards his, kissed her. She heard his words, strangled and fierce.

"Love me, Maggie-love me-you must—"

When he released her, looking back towards the dark house, she saw Grace standing there with a lamp in her hand.

Against her will she shared his feeling of guilt, as, like children caught in a fault, they turned back towards the house.

CHAPTER V

THE BATTLE OF SKEATON

FIRST YEAR

Afterwards, when Maggie looked back she was baffled. She tried to disentangle the events between that moment when Grace, holding the lamp in her hand, blinked at them as they came across the lawn, and that other most awful moment when, in Paul's study, Grace declared final and irrevocable war.

Between those two events ran the history of more than two years, and there was nothing stranger than the way that the scene in the garden and the scene in the study seemed to Maggie to be close together. What were the steps, she used to ask herself afterwards, that led to those last months of fury and tragedy and disaster? Was it my fault? Was it hers? Was it Paul's? What happened? If I had not done this or that, if Grace had not said—no, it was hopeless. She would break off in despair. Isolated scenes appeared before her, always bound, on either side, by that prologue and that finale, but the scenes would not form a chain. She could not connect; she would remain until the end bewildered as to Grace's motives. She never, until the day of her death, was to understand Grace.

"She was angry for such little things," she said afterwards.

"She hated me to be myself." The two years in retrospect seemed to have passed with incredible swiftness, the months that followed them were heavy and slow with trouble. But from the very first, that is, from the moment when Grace saw Paul kiss Maggie in the evening garden, battle was declared. Maggie might not know it, but it was so-and Grace knew it very well.

It may be said, however, in Grace's defence that she gave Maggie every chance. She marvelled at her own patience. For two years after that moment, when she decided that Maggie was "queer," and that her beloved Paul was in real danger of his losing his soul because of that "queerness," she held her hand. She was not naturally a patient woman-she was not introspective enough to be that—and she held no brief for Maggie. Nevertheless for two whole years she held her hand...

They were, all three, in that ugly house, figures moving in the dark. Grace simply knew, as the months passed, that she disliked and feared Maggie more and more; Paul knew that as the months passed—well, what he knew will appear in the following pages. And Maggie? She only knew that it needed all her endurance and stubborn will to force herself to accept this life as her life. She must-she must. To give way meant to run away, and to run away meant to long for what she could not have, and loneliness and defeat. She would make this into a success; she would care for Paul although she could not give him all that he needed. She would and she could... Every morning as she lay awake in the big double-bed with the brass knobs at the bed-foot winking at her in the early light she vowed that she would justify her acceptance of the man who lay sleeping so peacefully beside her. Poor child, her battle with Grace was to teach her how far her will and endurance could carry her...

Grace, on her side, was not a bad woman, she was simply a stupid one. She disliked Maggie for what seemed to her most admirable reasons and, as that dislike slowly, slowly turned into hatred, her self-justification only hardened.

Until that moment, when she saw a faded patch of wall-paper on the wall instead of her mother's portrait, she had no doubts whatever about the success of what she considered her choice. Maggie was a "dear," young, ignorant, helpless, but the very wife for Paul. Then slowly, slowly, the picture changed. Maggie was obstinate, Maggie was careless, Maggie was selfish, idle, lazy, irreligious—at last, Maggie was "queer."

Then, when in the dusk of that summer evening, she saw Paul kiss Maggie, as the moths blundered about her lamp, her stolid unimaginative heart was terrified. This girl, who was she? What had she been before they found her? What was this strange passion in Paul isolating him from her, his sister? This girl was dangerous to them all-a heathen. They had made a terrible mistake. Paul had been from the first bewitched by some strange spell, and she, his sister, had aided the witch.

And yet, to her credit be it remembered, for two years, she fought her fears, superstitions, jealousies, angers. That can have been no easy thing for a woman who had always had her own way. But Maggie helped her. There were many days during that first year at any rate when Grace thought that the girl was, after all, only the simple harmless child that she had first found her.

It was so transparently clear that Maggie bore no malice against any one in the world, that when she angered Grace she did so always by accident, never by plan-it was only unfortunate that the accidents should occur so often.

Maggie's days were from the very first of the utmost regularity. Breakfast at 8.30, then an interview with the cook (Grace generally in attendance here), then shopping (with Grace), luncheon at 1.30, afternoon, paying calls or receiving them, dinner 7.45, and after dinner, reading a book while Paul and Grace played bezique, or, if Paul was busy upon a sermon or a letter (he wrote letters very slowly), patience with Grace. This regular day was varied with meetings, choir practices, dinner-parties, and an occasional Penny Reading.

In this framework of the year it would have appeared that there was very little that could breed disturbance. There were, however, little irritations. Maggie would have given a great deal could she have been allowed to interview the cook in the morning alone.

It would seem impossible to an older person that Grace's presence could so embarrass Maggie; it embarrassed her to the terrible extent of driving every idea out of her head.

When Maggie had stammered and hesitated and at last allowed, the cook to make a suggestion, Grace would say. "You mustn't leave it all to cook, dear. Now what about a nice shepherd's pie?"

The cook, who hated Grace, would toss her head.

"Impossible to-day, Mum ... Quite impossible."

"Oh, do you think so?" Maggie would say.

This was the cook's opportunity.

"Well, for you, Mum, I'll see if it can't be managed. Difficult as it is."

Grace's anger boiled over.

"That woman must go," she insisted.

"Very well," said Maggie.

Cook after cook appeared and vanished. They all hated Grace.

"You're not very good at keeping servants, are you, Maggie, dear?" said Grace.

Then there was the shopping. Grace's conversation was the real trouble here. Grace's stories had seemed rather a joke in London, soon, in Skeaton, they became a torture. From the vicarage to the High Street was not far, but it was far enough for Grace's narrative powers to stretch their legs and get a healthy appetite for the day's work. Grace walked very slowly, because of her painful breathing. Her stout stolid figure in its stiff clothes (the skirt rather short, thick legs in black stockings and large flat boots), marched along. She had a peculiar walk, planting each foot on the ground with deliberate determination as though she were squashing a malignant beetle, she was rather short-sighted, but did not wear glasses, because, as she said to Maggie, "one need not look peculiar until one must." Her favourite head-gear was a black straw hat with a rather faded black ribbon and a huge pin stuck skewer-wise into it. This pin was like a dagger.

She peered around her as she walked, and for ever enquired of Maggie, "who that was on the other Bide of the road." Maggie, of course, did not know, and there began then a long cross-questioning as to colour, clothes, height, smile or frown. Nothing was too small to catch Grace's interest but nothing caught it for long. Maggie, at the end of her walk felt as though she were beset by a whirl of little buzzing flies. She noticed that Paul had, from, long habit, learnt to continue his own thoughts during Grace's stories, and she also tried to do this, but she was not clever at it because Grace would suddenly stop and say, "Where was I, Maggie?" and then when Maggie was confused regard her suspiciously, narrowing her eyes into little thin points. The shopping was difficult because Grace would stand at Maggie's elbow and say: "Now, Maggie, this is your affair, isn't it? You decide what you want," and then when Maggie had decided, Grace simply, to show her power, would say: "Oh, I don't think we'd better have that ... No, I don't think we'll have that. Will you show us something else, please?"-and so they had to begin all over again.

Nevertheless, throughout their first summer Maggie was almost happy; not QUITE happy, some silent but persistent rebellion at the very centre of her heart prevented her complete happiness. What she really felt was that half of her-the rebellious, questioning, passionate half of her-was asleep, and that at all costs, whatever occurred, she must keep it asleep. That was her real definite memory of her first year-that, through it all, she was wilfully, deliberately drugged.

Every one thought Paul very strange that summer. Mr. Flaunders, the curate, told Miss Purves that he was very "odd." "He was always the most tranquil man-a sunny nature, as you know, Miss Purves. Well now, I assure you, he's never the same from one minute to another. His temper is most uncertain, and one never can tell of what he's thinking. You know he took the Collects in the wrong order last Sunday, and last night he read the wrong lesson. Two days ago he was quite angry with me because I suggested another tune for 'Lead Kindly Light'-unlike himself, unlike himself."

"To what do you attribute this, Mr. Flaunders?" said Miss Purves. "You know our vicar so well."

"I'm sure I can't tell what it is," said Mr. Flaunders, sighing.

"Can it be his marriage?" said Miss Purves.

"I'm sure," said Mr. Flaunders, flushing, "that it can be nothing to do with Mrs. Trenchard. That's a fine woman, Miss Purves, a fine woman."

"She seems a little strange," said Miss Purves. "Why doesn't she let her hair grow? It's hardly Christian as it is."

"It's her health, I expect," said Mr. Flaunders.

Paul was very gentle and good to Maggie all that summer, better to her than any human being had ever been before. She became very fond of him, and yet it was not, apparently, her affection that he wanted. He seemed to be for ever on the verge of asking her some question and then checking himself. He was suddenly silent; she caught him looking at her in odd, furtive ways.

He made love to her and then suddenly checked himself, going off, leaving her alone. During these months she did everything she could for him. She knew that she was not satisfying him, because she could give him only affection and not love. But everything that he wanted her to do she did. And they never, through all those summer months, had one direct honest conversation. They were afraid.

She began to see, very clearly, his faults. His whole nature was easy, genial, and, above all, lazy. He liked to be liked, and she Was often astonished at the pleasure with which he received compliments. He had a conceit of himself, not as a man but as a clergyman, and she knew that nothing pleased him so much as when people praised his "good-natured humanity."

She saw him "play-acting," as she called it, that is, bringing forward a succession of little tricks, a jolly laugh, an enthusiastic opinion, a pretence of humility, a man-of-the-world air, all things not very bad in themselves, but put on many years ago, subconsciously as an actor puts on powder and paint. She saw that he was especially sensitive to lay opinion, liked to be thought a good fellow by the laymen in the place. To be popular she was afraid that he sometimes sacrificed his dignity, his sincerity and his pride. But he was really saved in this by his laziness. He was in fact too lazy to act energetically in his pursuit of popularity, and the temptation to sink into the dirty old chair in his study, smoke a pipe and go to sleep, hindered again and again his ambition. He had, as so many clergymen have, a great deal of the child in him, a remoteness from actual life, and a tremendous ignorance of the rough-and-tumble brutality and indecency of things. It had not been difficult for Grace, because of his laziness, his childishness, and his harmless conceited good-nature to obtain a very real dominion over him, and until now that dominion had never seriously been threatened.

Now, however, new impulses were stirring in his soul. Maggie saw it, Grace saw it, before the end of the summer the whole parish saw it. He was uneasy, dissatisfied, suffering under strange moods whose motives he concealed from all the world. In his sleep he cried Maggie's name with a passion that was a new voice in him. When she awoke and heard it she trembled, and then lay very still ...

And what a summer that was! To Maggie who had never, even in London, mingled with crowds it was an incredible invasion. The invasion was incredible, in the first place, because of the suddenness with which it fell upon Skeaton. One day Maggie noticed that announcements were pasted on to the Skeaton walls of the coming of a pierrot troupe ... "The Mig-Mags." There was a gay picture of fine beautiful pierrettes and fine stout pierrots all smiling together in a semi-circle. Then on another hoarding it was announced that the Theatre Royal, Skeaton, would shortly start its summer season, and would begin with that famous musical comedy, "The Girl from Bobo's."

Then the Pier Theatre put forward its claim with a West End comedy. The Royal Marine Band announced that it would play (weather permitting) in the Pergola on the Leas every afternoon, 4.20-6. Other signs of new life were the Skeaton Roller-Skating Rink, The Piccadilly Cinema, Concerts in the Town Hall, and Popular Lectures in the Skeaton Institute. There was also a word here and there about Wanton's Bathing Machines, Button's Donkeys, and Milton and Rowe's Char-a-bancs.

Then, on a sunny day in June the invasion began. The little railway by the sea was only a loop-line that connected Skeaton with Lane-on-Sea, Frambell, and Hooton. The main London line had its Skeaton station a little way out of the town, and the station road to the beach passed the vicarage. Maggie soon learnt to know the times when the excursion trains would pour their victims on to the hot, dry road. Early in the afternoon was one time, and she would see them eagerly, excitedly hurrying to the sea, fathers and mothers and babies, lovers and noisy young men and shrieking girls. Then in the evening she would see them return, some cross, some too tired to speak, some happy and singing, some arguing and disputing, babies crying-all hurrying, hurrying lest the train should be missed. At first she would not penetrate to the beach. She understood from Paul and Grace that one did not go to the beach during the summer months; at any rate, not the popular beach. There was Merton Sand two miles away. One might go there ... it was always deserted. This mysterious "one" fascinated Maggie's imagination. So many times a day Grace said "Oh, I don't think one ought to." Maggie heard again and again about the trippers, "Oh, one must keep away from there, you know."

In fact the Skeaton aristocracy retired with shuddering gestures into its own castle. Life became horribly dull. The Maxses, the Constantines, and the remainder of the Upper Ten either went away or hid themselves in their grounds.

Once or twice there would be a tennis party, then silence ...

This summer was a very hot one; the little garden was stifling and the glass bottles cracked in the sun.

"I want to get out. I want to get out," cried Maggie-so she went down to the sea. She went surreptitiously; this was the first surreptitious thing she had done. She gazed from the Promenade that began just beyond the little station and ran the length of the town down upon the sands. The beach was a small one compared with the great stretches of Merton and Buquay, and the space was covered now so thickly with human beings that the sand was scarcely visible. It was a bright afternoon, hot but tempered with a little breeze. The crowd bathed, paddled, screamed, made sand-castles, lay sleeping, flirting, eating out of paper bags, reading, quarrelling. Here were two niggers with banjoes, then a stout lady with a harmonium, then a gentleman drawing pictures on the sand; here again a man with sweets on a tray, here, just below Maggie, a funny old woman with a little hut where ginger-beer and such things were sold. The noise was deafening; the wind stirred the sand curiously so that it blew up and about in little wreaths and spirals. Everything and everybody seemed to be covered with the grit of this fine small sand; it was in Maggie's eyes, nose, and mouth as she watched.

She hated the place—the station, the beach, the town, and the woods—even more than she had done before. She hated the place—but she loved the people.

The place was sneering, self-satisfied, contemptuous, inhuman, like some cynical, debased speculator making a sure profit out of the innocent weaknesses of human nature. As she turned and looked she could see the whole ugly town with the spire of St. John's-Paul's church, raised self-righteously above it.

The town was like a prison hemmed in by the dark woods and the oily sea. She felt a sudden terrified consciousness of her own imprisonment. It was perhaps from that moment that she began to be definitely unhappy in her own life, that she realised with that sudden inspiration that is given to us on occasion, how hostile Grace was becoming, how strange and unreal was Paul, and how far away was every one else!

Just below her on the sand a happy family played-some babies, two little boys digging, the father smoking, his hat tilted over his eyes against the sun, the mother finding biscuits in a bag for the youngest infant. It was a very merry family and full of laughter. The youngest baby looked up and saw Maggie standing all alone there, and crowed. Then all the family looked up, the boys suspended their digging, father tilted back his hat, the mother shyly smiled.

Maggie smiled back, and then, overcome by so poignant a feeling of loneliness, tempted, too, almost irresistibly to run down the steps, join them on the sand, build castles, play with the babies, she hurried away lest she should give way.

"I must be pretending at being married," she thought to herself. "I don't feel married at all. I'm not natural. If I were sitting on the sand digging I'd be quite natural. No wonder Grace thinks me tiresome. But how does one get older and grown up? What is one to do?"

She did not trust herself to go down to the sands again that summer. The autumn came, the woods turned to gold, the sea was flurried with rain, and the Church began to fill the horizon. The autumn and the winter were the times of the Church's High Festival. Paul, as though he were aware that he had, during these last months, been hovering about strange places and peering into dark windows, busied himself about the affairs of his parish with an energy that surprised every one.

Maggie was aware of a number of young women of whom before she had been unconscious. Miss Carmichael, Misses Mary and Jane Bethel, Miss Clarice Hendon, Miss Polly Jones ... some of these pretty girls, all of them terribly modern, strident, self-assured, scornful, it seemed to Maggie. At first she was frightened of them as she had never been frightened of any one before. They did look at her, of course, as though they thought her strange, and then they soon discovered that she knew nothing at all about life.

Their two chief employments, woven in, as it were, to the web of their church assistance, were Love and Mockery-flirtations, broken engagements, refusals, acceptances, and, on the other hand, jokes about everybody and everything. Maggie soon discovered that Grace was one of their favourite Aunt Sallies; this made her very angry, and she showed so plainly her indignation on the first occasion of their wit that they never laughed at Grace in Maggie's presence again.

Maggie felt, after this, very tender and sympathetic towards Grace, until she discovered that her good sister-in-law was quite unaware that any one laughed at her and would have refused to believe it had she been told. At the same time there went strangely with this confidence an odd perpetual suspicion. Grace was for ever on guard against laughter, and nothing made her more indignant than to come into a room and see that people suddenly ceased their conversation. Maggie, however, did try this autumn to establish friendly relations with Grace. It seemed to her that it was the little things that were against the friendliness rather than the big ones. How she seriously blamed herself for an irritation that was really childish. Who, for instance, a grown woman and married, could do other than blame herself for being irritated by Grace's habit of not finishing her sentences. Grace would say:

"Maggie, did you remember to-oh well, it doesn't matter—"

"Remember what, Grace?"

"No, really it doesn't matter. It was only that—"

"But Grace, do tell me, because otherwise you'll be blaming me for something I ought to have done."

"Blaming you! Why, Maggie, to hear you talk any one would think that I was always scolding you. Of course if that's what you feel—"

"No, no, I don't. But I'm so careless. I forget things so. I don't want to forget something that I ought to do."

"Yes, you are careless, Maggie. That's quite true. It's one of your faults."

(Strange how willing we are ourselves to admit a fault and irritated when a friend agrees about it with us.)

"Oh, I'm not always careless," said Maggie.

"Often you are, dear, aren't you? You must learn. I'm sure you'll improve in time. I wonder whether-but no, I decided I wouldn't bother, didn't I? Still perhaps, after all—No, I daresay it's wiser to leave it alone."

Another little thing that the autumn emphasised was Grace's inability to discover when a complaint or a remonstrance was decently deceased. One evening Paul, going out in a hurry, asked Maggie to give Grace the message that Evensong would be at 6.30 instead of 7 that day. Maggie forgot to give the message and Grace arrived at the Church during the reading of the second lesson.

"Oh Grace, I'm so sorry!" said Maggie.

"It doesn't matter," said Grace; "but how you could forget, Maggie, is so strange! Do try not to forget things. I know it worries Paul. For myself I don't care, although I do value punctuality and memory—I do indeed. What I mean is that it isn't for my own happiness that I mind—"

"I don't want to forget," said Maggie. "One would think to hear you, Grace, that you imagine I like forgetting."

"Really, Maggie," said Grace, "I don't think that's quite the way to speak to me."

And again and again throughout the long winter this little episode figured.

"You'll remember to be punctual, won't you, Maggie? Not like the time when you forgot to tell me."

"You'll forgive me reminding you, Maggie, but I didn't want it to be like the time you forgot to give me—"

"Oh, you'd better not trust to Maggie, Paul. Only the other day when you gave her the message about Evensong—"

Grace meant no harm by this. Her mind moved slowly and was entangled by a vast quantity of useless lumber. She was really shocked by carelessness and inaccuracy because she was radically careless and inaccurate herself but didn't know it.

"If there's one thing I value it's order." she would say, but in struggling to remember superficial things she forgot all essentials. Her brain moved just half as slowly as everything else.

That winter was warm and muggy, with continuous showers of warm rain that seamed to change into mud in the air as it fell.

The Church was filled with the clammy mist of its central heating. Maggie, as she sat through service after service, watched one headache race after another. The air was full of headache; she asked once that a window might be kept open. "That would mean Death in Skeaton. You don't understand the Skeaton air," said Grace.

"That's because I don't get enough of it," said Maggie. She found herself looking back to the Chapel services with wistful regret. What had there been there that was not here? Here everything was ordered, arranged, in decent sequence, in regular symmetry and progression. And yet no one seemed to Maggie to listen to what they were saying, and no one thought of the meaning of the words that they used.

And if they did, of what use would it be? The affair was all settled; heaven was arrayed, parcelled out, its very streets and courts mapped and described. It was the destination of every one in the building as surely as though they were travelling to London by the morning express. They were sated with knowledge of their destiny—no curiosity, no wonder, no agitation, no fear. Even the words of the most beautiful prayers had ceased to have any meaning because the matter had been settled so long ago and there was nothing more to be said. How that Chapel had throbbed with expectation, with amaze, with curiosity, with struggle! Foolish much of it perhaps, stifling it had seemed then in its superstition. Maggie had been afraid then, so afraid that she could not sleep at nights. How she longed now for that fear to return to her!

At this point she would discover that she was beckoning back to her the figures of that other world. They must not come ... the two worlds must not join or she was lost ... she turned her back from her memories and her desires.

During this winter there were the two affairs of Mr. Toms and Caroline.

Maggie carried out her resolve of calling on Mr. Toms. She did it one dark afternoon a few days before Christmas, moved, it must be confessed, partly by a sense of exasperation with Grace. Grace had been that day quite especially tiresome. She had a cold, and a new evening dress had cost twice as much as it ought to have done. Mitch had broken into eczema, and Mrs. Constantine had overruled her at a committee meeting. With a flood of disconnected talk she had overwhelmed Maggie until the girl felt as though her head had been thrust into a bag of flour. Through it all there had been an undercurrent of complaint as though Maggie were responsible.

Early in the afternoon Grace declared that her head was splitting and retired to her bedroom. Maggie, in a state of blinded and deafened exasperation, remembered Mr. Toms and decided to call on him. She found a neat little house standing in a neat little garden near the sea just beyond the end of the Promenade, or The Leas, as the real Skeatonian always called it. Miss Toms and Mr. Toms were sitting in a very small room with a large fire, a pale grey wallpaper, and a number of brightly-painted wooden toys arranged on a shelf running round the room. The toys were of all kinds—a farm, cows and sheep, tigers and lions, soldiers and cannon, a church and a butcher's shop, little green tufted trees, and a Noah's ark. Mr. Toms was sitting, neat as a pin, smiling in an armchair beside the fire, and Miss Toms near him was reading aloud.

Maggie saw at once that her visit embarrassed Miss Toms terribly. It was an embarrassment that she understood perfectly, so like her own feelings on so many occasions. This put her at once at her ease, and she was the old, simple, direct Maggie, her face eager with kindness and understanding. Mr. Toms smiled perpetually but shook hands like the little gentleman he was.

Maggie, studying Miss Toms' face, saw that it was lined with trouble—an ugly face, grave, severe, but brave and proud. Maggie apologised for not coming before.

"I would have come—" she began.

"Oh, you needn't apologise," said Miss Toms brusquely. "They don't call on us here, and we don't want them to."

"They don't call," said Mr. Toms brightly, "because they know I'm queer in the head, and they're afraid I shall do something odd. They told you I was queer in the head, didn't they?"

Strangely enough this statement of his "queerness," although it brought a lump into Maggie's throat, did not disturb or confuse her.

"Yes," she said, "they did. I asked who you were after I had seen you in the road that day."

"I'm not in the least dangerous," said Mr. Toms. "You needn't be afraid. Certain things seem odd to me that don't seem odd to other people—that's all."

"The fact is, Mrs. Trenchard," said Miss Toms, speaking very fast and flushing as she spoke, "that we are very happy by ourselves, my brother and I. He is the greatest friend I have in the world, and I am his. We are quite sufficient for one another. I don't want to seem rude, and it's kind of you to have come, but it's better to leave us alone—it is indeed."

"Well, I don't know," bald Maggie, smiling. "You see, I'm a little queer myself—at least I think that most of the people here are coming to that conclusion. I'm sure I'm more queer than your brother. At any rate I can't do you any harm, and we may as well give it a trial, mayn't we?"

Mr. Toms clapped his hands with so sudden a noise that Maggie jumped.

"That's right," he said. "That's the way I like to hear people talk. You shall judge for yourself, and WE'LL judge for ourselves." His voice was very soft and pleasant. The only thing at all strange about him was his smile, that came and went like the ripple of firelight on the wall. "You'd like to know all about us, wouldn't you? Well, until ten years ago I was selling corn in the City. Such a waste of time! But I took it very seriously then and worked, worked, worked. I worked too hard, you know, much too hard, and then I was ill—ill for a long time. When I was better corn didn't seem to be of any importance, and people thought that very odd of me. I was confused sometimes and called people by their wrong names, and sometimes I said what was in my head instead of saying what was in my stomach. Every one thought it very odd, and if my dear sister hadn't come to the rescue they would have locked me up—they would indeed!"

"Shut me up and never let me walk about—all because I didn't care for corn any more."

He laughed his little chuckling laugh. "But we beat them, didn't we, Dorothy? Yes, we did—and here we are! Now, you tell us your history."

Miss Toms had been watching Maggie's face intently while her brother spoke, and the clear steady candour of Maggie's eyes and her calm acceptance of all that the little man said must have been reassuring.

"Now. Jim," she said, "don't bother Mrs. Trenchard. You can't expect her to tell us her history when she's calling for the first time."

"Why not expect me to?" said Maggie. "I've got no history. I lived in Glebeshire most of my life with my father, who was a clergyman. Then he died and I lived with two aunts in London. Then I met Paul and he married me, and here I am!"

"That's not history," said Mr. Toms a little impatiently. "However, I won't bother you now. You're only a child, I see. And I'm very glad to see it. I don't like grown up people."

"How do you like Skeaton?" asked Miss Toms, speaking more graciously than she had done.

"Oh I shall like it, I expect," said Maggie. "At least I shall like the people. I don't think I shall ever like the place—the sand blows about, and I don't like the woods."

"Yes, they're greasy, aren't they?" said Mr. Toms, "and full of little flies. And the trees are dark and never cool—"

They talked a little while longer, and then Maggie got up to say good-bye. When she took Mr. Tom's hand and felt his warm confident pressure, and saw his large trusting eyes looking into hers, she felt a warmth of friendliness, also it seemed to her that she had known him all her life.

Miss Toms came with her to the door. They looked out into the dark. The sea rustled close at hand, far on the horizon a red light was burning as though it were a great fire. They could hear the wave break on the beach and sigh in the darkness as it withdrew.

"I shall come again," said Maggie.

"Don't you be too sure," said Miss Toms. "We shall quite understand if you don't come, and we shan't think the worse of you. Public opinion here is very strong. They don't want to be unkind to Jim, but they think he ought to be shut up ...Shut up!" Maggie could feel that she was quivering. "Shut up!"

Maggie tossed her head.

"Anyway, they haven't shut me up yet," she said.

"Well—good-night," said Miss Toms, after a little pause in which she appeared to be struggling to say more.

She told Grace and Paul at supper that night that she had been to see the Toms. She saw Grace struggling not to show her disapproval and thought it was nice of her.

"Do you really think—?" said Grace. "Oh, perhaps, after all—"

"Paul," said Maggie, "do you not want me to see the Toms?"

Paul was distressed.

"No, it isn't that ...Miss Toms is a very nice woman. Only—"

"You think it's not natural of me to take an interest in some one who's a little off his head like Mr. Toms."

"Well, dear, perhaps there is something—"

Maggie laughed. "I'm a little off my head too. Oh! you needn't look so shocked, Grace. You know you think it, and every one else here thinks it too. Now, Grace, confess. You're beginning to be horrified that Paul married me."

"Please, Maggie—" said Paul, who hated scenes. Grace was always flushed by a direct attack. Her eyes gazed in despair about her while she plunged about in her mind.

"Maggie, you mustn't say such things—no, you mustn't. Of course it's true that you've got more to learn than I thought. You ARE careless, dear, aren't you? You remember yesterday that you promised to look in at Pettits and get a reel of cotton, and then of course Mr. Toms is a good little man—every one says so—but at the same time he's QUEER, you must admit that, Maggie; indeed it wasn't really very long ago that he asked Mrs. Maxse in the High Street to take all her clothes off so that he could see what she was really made of. Now, that ISN'T nice, Maggie, it's odd—you can't deny it. And if you'd only told me that you hadn't been to Pettits I could have gone later myself."

"If it isn't one thing," said Maggie, "it's another. I may be a child and careless, and not be educated, and have strange ideas, but if you thought, Grace, that it was going to be just the same after Paul was married as before you were mistaken. Three's a difficult number to manage, you know."

"Oh, if you mean," said Grace, crimsoning, "that I'm better away, that I should live somewhere else, please say so openly. I hate this hinting. What I mean to say is I can leave to-morrow."

"My dear Grace," said Paul hurriedly, "whoever thought such a thing? We couldn't get on without you. All that Maggie meant was that it takes time to settle down. So it does."

"That isn't all I meant," said Maggie slowly. "I meant that I'm not just a child as you both think. I've got a life of my own and ideas of my own. I'll give way to you both in lots of things so long as it makes you happy, but you're not—you're not going to shut me up as you'd like to do to Mr. Toms."

Perhaps both Grace and Paul had a sharp troubling impression of having caught some strange creature against their will. Maggie had risen from the table and stood for the moment by the door facing them, her short hair, standing thick about her head, contrasting with her thick white neck, her body balanced clumsily but with great strength, like that of a boy who has not yet grown to his full maturity. She tossed her head back in a way that she had and was gone.

The Caroline affair was of another sort. Some days after Christmas, Maggie went to have tea with Caroline. She did not enjoy it at all. She felt at once that there was something wrong with the house. It was full of paintings in big gold frames, looking-glasses, and marble statues, and there was a large garden that had an artificial look of having been painted by some clever artist in the course of a night. Maggie did not pay a long visit. There were a number of men present; there was also a gramophone, and after tea they turned up the carpet in the dining-room and danced.

Caroline, in spite of her noise and laughter, did not seem to Maggie to be happy. She introduced her for a moment to the master of the house, a stout red-faced man who looked as though he had lost something very precious, but was too sleepy to search for it. He called Caroline "Sweet," and she treated him with patronage and contempt. Maggie came away distressed, and she was not surprised to hear, a day or two later, from Grace that Mrs. Purdie was "fast" and had been rude to Mrs. Constantine.

One day early in the spring Grace announced that Maggie ought not to go and see Mrs. Purdie any more. "There are all sorts of stories," said Grace. "People say—Oh, well, never mind. They have dancing on Sunday."

"But she's an old friend of mine," said Maggie.

"You have others to think of beside yourself, Maggie," said Grace. "And there is the Church."

"She's an old friend of mine," repeated Maggie, her mouth set obstinately.

"I will ask Paul what he thinks," said Grace.

"Please," said Maggie, her colour rising into her cheeks, "don't interfere between Paul and me. I'll speak to him myself."

She did. Paul maintained the attitude of indifference that he had adopted during the last six months.

"But would you rather I didn't go?" asked Maggie, aggravated.

"You must use your judgment," said Paul.

"But don't you see that I can't leave a friend just because people are saying nasty things."

"There's your position in the parish," said Paul.

"Oh, Paul!" Maggie cried. "Don't be so aggravating! Just say what you really think."

"I'm sorry I'm aggravating," said Paul patiently.

It was this conversation that determined Maggie. She had been coming, through all the winter months, to a resolution. She must be alone with Paul, she must have things out with him. As the months had gone they had been slipping further and further apart. It had been Paul who had gradually withdrawn into himself. He had been kind and thoughtful but reserved, shy, embarrassed. She understood his trouble, but at her first attempt to force him to speak he escaped and placed Grace between them. Well, this summer should see the end of that. They must know where they stood, and for that they must be alone ...

One day, early in June, Paul announced that he thought of exchanging duties, for the month of August, with a Wiltshire clergyman. This was Maggie's opportunity. Finding him alone in his study, she attacked.

"Paul, did you mean Grace to come with us to Little Harben in August?"

"Of course, dear. She has nowhere else to go."

"Well, she mustn't come. I've given way about everything since we were married. I'm not going to give way about this. That month we are to be alone."

"Alone!" said Paul. "But we're always alone."

"We're never alone," said Maggie, standing with her legs apart and her hands behind her back. "I don't mean to complain about Grace. She's been very good to me, I know, and I've got much to be grateful for. All the same she's not coming to Little Harben. She's got you all the rest of the year. She can give you up for a month."

"But Maggie—" said Paul.

"No, I'm quite determined about this. I may be a child and a fool, but I know what I'm talking about this time. You're not happy. You never talk to me as you used to. There are many things we ought to have out, but Grace is always there in the daytime and at night you're too tired. If we go on like this we'll be strangers in another six months."

He turned round to stare at her, and she saw in his eyes an odd excited light.

"Maggie," he said in a low voice. "If we go alone to Little Harben does it mean that you think—you can begin to love me?"

She turned her eyes away. "I don't know. I don't know about myself, I only know that I want us to be happy and I want us to be close together—as we were before we were married. It's all gone wrong somehow; I'm sure it's my fault. It was just the same with my father and my aunts. I couldn't say the things to them I wanted to, the things I really felt, and so I lost them. I'm going to lose you in the same way if I'm not careful."

He still looked at her strangely. At last, with a sigh, he turned back to his desk.

"I'll speak to Grace," he said. That night the storm broke.

During supper Grace was very quiet. Maggie, watching her, knew that Paul had spoken to her. Afterwards in the study the atmosphere was electric. Grace read The Church Times, Paul the Standard, Maggie Longfellow's Golden Legend, which she thought foolish.

Grace looked up. "So I understand, Maggie, that you don't want me to come with you and Paul this summer?"

Maggie, her heart, in spite of herself, thumping in her breast, faced a Grace transfigured by emotion. That countenance, heavily, flabbily good-natured, the eyes if stupid, also kind, was now marked and riven with a flaming anger.

But Maggie was no coward. With her old gesture of self-command she stilled her heart. "I'm very sorry, Grace," she said. "But it's only for a month. I want to be alone with Paul."

Grace, her hands fumbling on the arms of her chair as though she were blind, rose.

"You've hated my being here, Maggie ... all this time I've seen it. You've hated me. You don't know that you owe everything to me, that you couldn't have managed the house, the shops, the servants—nothing, nothing. This last year I've worked my fingers to the bone for you and Paul. What do you think I get out of it? Nothing. It's because I love Paul ... because I love Paul. But you've hated my doing things better than you, you've wanted me to fail, you've been jealous, that's what you've been. Very well, then, I'll go. You've made that plain enough at any rate. I'll leave to-morrow. I won't wait another hour. And I'll never forgive you for this—never. You've taken Paul away from me ... all I've ever had. I'll never forgive you—never, never, never."

"Grace, Grace," cried Paul.

But she rushed from the room.

Maggie looked at her husband.

"Why, Paul," she said, "you're frightened. Grace doesn't mean it. She won't go to-morrow—or ever. There's nothing to be frightened of."

His red cheeks were pale. His hands trembled.

"I do so hate quarrels," he said.

Maggie went up to him and rather timidly put her hand on his arm.

"We'll have a lovely time at Harben," she said. "Oh, I do want you to be happy, Paul."

CHAPTER VI

THE BATTLE OF SKEATON

SECOND YEAR

Strangely enough Maggie felt happier after this disturbance. Grace, in the weeks that followed, was an interesting confusion of silent and offended dignity and sudden capitulations because she had some news of fussing interest that she must impart. Nevertheless she was deeply hurt. She was as tenacious of her grievances as a limpet is of its rock, and she had never been so severely wounded before. Maggie, on her side, liked Grace better after the quarrel. She had never really disliked her, she had only been irritated by her.

She thought it very natural of her to be angry and jealous about Paul. She was determined that this month at Little Harben should put everything right. Looking back over these past years she blamed herself severely. She had been proud, self-centred, unfeeling. She remembered that day so long ago at St. Dreot's when Aunt Anne had appealed for her affection and she had made no reply. There had been many days, too, in London when she had been rebellious and hard. She thought of that night when Aunt Anne had suffered so terribly and she had wanted only her own escape. Yes—hard and unselfish that was what she had been, and she had been punished by losing Martin.

Already here, just as before in London, she was complaining and angry, and unsympathetic. She did care for Paul—she could even love Grace if she would let her. She would make everything right this summer and try and be a better, kinder woman.

Then, one morning, she found a letter on the breakfast table. She did not recognise the handwriting; when she opened it and saw the signature at the end for a moment she also did not recognise that. "William Magnus." ... Then—why, of course! Mr. Magnus! She saw him standing looking down at her with his mild eyes, staring through his large spectacles.

Her heart beat furiously. She waited until breakfast was over, then she took it up to her bedroom.

The letter was as follows:

Dear Miss Maggie,

I know you are not "Miss Maggie" now, but that is the only way that I can think of you. I expect that you have quite forgotten me, and perhaps you don't want to hear from me, but I must not lose sight of you altogether. I haven't so many friends that I can lose one without a word. I don't know quite what to begin by telling you. I ought to ask you questions about yourself, I suppose, but I know that your aunts hear from you from time to time and they give me news from your letters. I hear that you are happily married and are quite settled down to your new life. I'm very glad to hear that, although it isn't quite the life that I would have prophesied for you. Do you like Skeaton? I've never cared much for seaside resorts myself, but then I'm a queer cranky old man, and I deserve all I get. I wish I could tell you something cheerful about all your friends here, but I'm afraid I can't. Your aunt is so brave and plucky that probably she said nothing to you in her last letter about how ill she has been, but she's just had a very bad bout, and at one time we were afraid that we were going to lose her. You can imagine how anxious we all were. But she is better again now, although very much shattered. The Chapel is closed. There's a piece of news for you! It never recovered from poor Warlock's death; he was the spirit that gave it life, and although he may have had his dreams and imaginations that deceived him, there was some life in that building that I have never found anywhere else and shall never find again. You remember that Amy Warlock married that scamp Thurston. Well, she has left him and has come back to live with her mother. She had a rather bad experience, I'm afraid, poor woman, but she says nothing to any one about it. She and the old lady have moved from this part of London and have gone to live somewhere in Kensington. Some one saw Martin Warlock in Paris the other day. I hear that he has been very seriously ill and is greatly changed, looking years older. I can say, now that you are happily married, that I am greatly relieved that you were not engaged to him. You won't think this presumptuous of a man old enough to be your father, will you? I am sure he had many good things in him, but he was very weak and not fitted to look after you. But he had a good heart, I'm sure, and his father's death was a great shock to him. Thurston, I hear, is having revival meetings up and down the country. Miss Avies, I believe, is with him. You remember Miss Pyncheon? She and many other regular attendants at the Chapel have left this neighbourhood. The Chapel is to be a cinematograph theatre, I believe. There! I have given you all the gossip. I have not said more about your aunts because I want you to come up one day to London, when you have time, and see them. You will do that, won't you? I expect you are very busy—I hope you are. I would like to have a line from you, but please don't bother if you have too much to do.

Always your friend,

WILLIAM MAGNUS.

When Maggie saw Martin's name the other writing on the page transformed itself suddenly into a strange pattern of webs and squares. Nevertheless she pursued her way through this, but without her own agency, as though some outside person were reading to her and she was not listening.

She repeated the last words "Always your friend, William Magnus" aloud solemnly twice. Her thoughts ran in leaps and runs, hurdle-race-wise across the flat level of her brain. Martin. Old. Ill. Paris. Those walls out there and the road-man with a spade—little boy walking with him—chattering—it's going to be hot. The light across the lawn is almost blue and the beds are dry. His room. The looking-glass. Always tilts back when one tries to see one's hair. Meant to speak about it. Martin. Ill. Paris. Paris. Trains. Boats. How quickly could one be there? No time at all. Paris. Never been to Paris. Perhaps he isn't there now ...

At that definite picture she controlled her mind again. She pulled it up as a driver drags back a restive horse. Her first real thought was: "How hard that this letter should have come now when I was just going to put everything right with Paul." Her next: "Poor Paul! But I don't care for him a bit ... I don't care for any one but Martin. I never did." Her next: "Why did I ever think I did?" And her next: "Why did I ever do this?" She knew with a strange calm certainty that from this moment she would never be rid of Martin's presence again. She had maintained for more than a year a wonderful make-believe of indifference. She had fancied that by, pushing furiously with both hands one could drive things into the past. But Fate was cleverer than that. What he wanted to keep he kept for you—the weaving of the pattern in the carpet might be your handiwork, but the final design was settled before ever the carpet was begun. Not that any of these fine thoughts ever entered Maggie's head. All that she thought was "I love Martin. I want to go to him. He's ill. I've got to do my duty about Paul." She settled upon that last point. She bound her mind around it, fast and secure like thick cord. She put Mr. Magnus' letter away in the shell-covered box, the wedding-present from the aunts; in this box were the programme of the play that she had been to with Martin, the ring with the three pearls, Martin's few letters, and some petals of the chrysanthemum, dry and faded, that she had worn on the great day of the matinee. Something had warned her that it was foolish to keep Martin's letters, but why should she not? She had never hidden her love for Martin. Then, standing in the middle of the room, close beside the large double-bed, with a football-group and "The Crucifixion" staring down upon her, she had her worst hour. Nothing in all life could have moved her as did that picture of Martin's loneliness and sickness. Wave after wave of persuasion swept over her: "Go! Go now! Take the train to Paris. You can find out from Mr. Magnus where he was living. He is sick. He needs you. You swore to him that you would never desert him, and you have deserted him. They don't want you here. Grace hates you, and Paul is too lazy to care!"

At the thought of Paul resolution came to her. She looked up at the rather fat, amiable youth with the stout legs and the bare knees in the football photograph, and prayed to it: "Paul, I'm very lonely and tempted. Care for me even though I can't love you as you want. Don't give me up because I can't let you have what some one else has got. Let's be happy, Paul—please."

She was shivering. She looked back with a terrified, reluctant glance to the drawer where Mr. Magnus' letter was, then she went downstairs.

Soon after they started for Little Harben. The last days in Skeaton had scarcely been happy ones. Grace had erected an elaborate scaffolding of offended dignity and bitter misery. She was not bitterly miserable, indeed she enjoyed her game, but it was depressing to watch Paul give way to her. He was determined to leave her in a happy mind. Any one could have told him that the way to do that was to leave her alone altogether. Instead he petted her, persuading her to eat her favourite pudding, buying her a new work-box that she needed, dismissing a boy from the choir (the only treble who was a treble) because he was supposed to have made a long-nose at Grace during choir-practice.

He adopted also a pleading line with her. "Now, Grace dear, don't you think you could manage a little bit more?"

"Do you think you ought to go out in all this rain, Grace dear?"

"Grace, you look tired to death. Shall I read to you a little?"

He listened to her stories with a new elaborate attention. He laughed heartily at the very faintest glimmer of a joke. Through it all Grace maintained an unreleased solemnity, a mournful superiority, a grim forbearance.

Maggie, watching, felt with a sinking heart that she was beginning to despise Paul.

His very movement as he hurried to place a cushion for Grace sent a little shiver down her back. "Oh, don't do it, Paul!" she heard herself cry internally, but she could say nothing. She had won her victory about Harben. She could only now be silent. Still, she bore no grudge at all against Grace. She even liked her.

Grace made many sinister allusions to her fancied departure. "Ah, in November ... Oh! of course I shall not be here then!" or, "That will be in the autumn then, won't it? You'd better give it to some one who will be here at the time." With every allusion she scored a victory. It was evident that Paul was terrified by the thought that she should leave him. He did not see what he would do without her. His world would tumble to pieces.

"But she hasn't the remotest intention of going," said Maggie. "She'll never go."

"Well, I don't know. It would be strange without her, Maggie, I must confess. You see, all our lives we've been together—all our lives."

Nevertheless he felt perhaps some relief, in spite of himself, when they were safely in a train for Little Harben. It was rather a relief, just for a day or two, not to see Grace's reproachful face. Yes, it was. He was quite gay, almost like the boy he used to be. Little Harben was one of the smallest villages in Wiltshire and its Rectory one of the most dilapidated. The Rectory was sunk into the very bottom of a green well. Green hills rose on every side above it, green woods pressed in all around it, a wild, deserted green garden crept up to the windows and clambered about the old walls. There was hardly any furniture in the house, and many many windows all without curtains. Long looking-glasses reflected the green garden at every possible angle so that all the lights and shadows in the house were green. There was a cat with green eyes, and the old servant was so aged and infirm that she was, spiritually if not physically, covered with green moss.

From their bedroom they could see the long green slope of the hill. Everywhere there was a noise of birds nestling amongst the leaves, of invisible streams running through the grass, of branches mysteriously cracking, and, always, in the distance some one seemed to be chopping with an axe. If you pushed a window open multitudes of little insects fell in showers about you. All the roses were eaten with green flies.

"What a place!" said Maggie; nevertheless it was rather agreeable after the sand of Skeaton.

During the first three days they preserved their attitude of friendly distance. On the fourth evening Maggie desperately flung down her challenge. They were sitting, after supper, in the wild deserted garden. It was a wonderful evening, faintly blue and dim crocus with flickering silver stars. The last birds twittered in the woods; the green arc of the hill against the evening sky had a great majesty of repose and rest. "Now, Paul!" said Maggie.

"What is it, dear?" but he slowly changed colour and looked away from her, out into the wood.

"We've got to face it some time," she said. "The sooner, then, the better—"

"Face what?" he asked, dropping his voice as though he were afraid that some one would overhear.

"You and me." Maggie gathered her resources together. "Before we were married we were great friends. You were the greatest friend I ever had except Uncle Mathew. And now I don't know what we are."

"Whose fault is that?" he asked huskily. "You know what the matter is. You don't love me. You never have ... Have you?" He suddenly ended, turning towards her.

She saw his new eagerness and she was frightened, but she looked at a little bunch of stars that twinkled at her above the dark elms and took courage.

"I'm very bad at explaining my feelings," she said. "And you're not very good either, Paul. I know I am very fond of you, and I feel as though it ought to be so simple if I were wiser or kinder. I've been thinking for weeks about this, and I want to say that I'm ready to do anything that will make you happy."

"You'll love me?" he asked.

"I'm very fond of you, and I always will be."

"No, but love."

"A word like that isn't important. Affection—"

"No. It's love I want."

She turned away from him, pressing her hands together, staring into the wood that was sinking into avenues of dark. She couldn't answer him. He came over to her. He knelt on the dry grass, took her head between his hands, and kissed her again and again and again.

She heard him murmur: "Maggie ... Maggie ... Maggie. You must love me. You must. I've waited so long. I didn't know what love was. God in His Mercy forgive me for the thoughts I've had this year. You've tormented me. Tantalised me. You're a witch. A witch. You're so strange, so odd, so unlike any one. You've enchanted me. Love me. Maggie ... Love me ... Love me."

She caught his words all broken and scattered. She felt his heart beating against her body, and his hands were hot to the touch of her cold cheek. She felt that he was desperate and ashamed and pitiful. She felt, above all else, that she must respond—and she could not. She strove to give him what he needed. She caught his hands, and then, because she knew that she was acting falsely and the whole of her nature was in rebellion, she drew back. He felt her withdraw. His hands dropped.

She burst into tears, suddenly hiding her face in her hands as she used to do when she was a little girl.

"Oh, Paul," she wept. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm wicked. I can't—"

He got up and stood with his back to her, looking towards the night sky that flashed now with stars.

She controlled herself, feeling desperately that their whole future together hung on the approaching minutes. She went up to him, standing at first timidly behind him, then putting her hand through his arm.

"Paul. It isn't so hopeless. If I can't give you that I can give you everything else. I told you from the first that I couldn't help loving Martin. All that kind of love I gave to him, but we can be friends. I want a friend so badly. If we're both lonely we can come together closer and closer, and perhaps, later on—"

But she could not go on. She knew that she would never forget Martin, that she would never love Paul. These two things were so clear to her that she could not pretend. As the darkness gathered the wood into its arms and the last twitter of the birds sank into silence, she felt that she too was being caught into some silent blackness. The sky was pale green, the stars so bright that the rest of the world seemed to lie in dim shadow. She could scarcely see Paul now; when he spoke his voice came, disembodied, out of the dusk.

"You'll never forget him, then?" at last he asked.

"No."

"You're strange. You don't belong to us. I should have seen that at the beginning. I knew nothing about women and thought that all that I wanted—oh God, why should I be so tempted? I've been a good man ..." Then he came close to her and put his hand on her shoulder and even drew her to him. "I won't bother you any more, Maggie. I'll conquer this. We'll be friends as you want. It isn't fair to you—"

She felt the control that he was keeping on himself and she admired him. Nevertheless she knew, young though she was, that if she let him go now she was losing him for ever. The strangest pang of loneliness and isolation seized her. If Paul left her and Martin wasn't there, she was lonely indeed. She saw quite clearly how his laziness would come to his aid. He would summon first his virtue and his religion, and twenty years of abstinence would soon reassert their sway; then he would slip back into the old, lazy, self-complacent being that he had been before. Staring into the dark wood she saw it all. She could completely capture him by responding to his passion. Without that she was too queer, too untidy, too undisciplined, to hold him at all. But she could not lie, she could not pretend.

She kissed him.

"Paul, let's be friends, then. Splendid friends. Oh! we will be happy!"

But as he kissed her she knew that she had lost him.

Paul was very kind to her during their stay at Little Harben, but they recovered none of that old friendship that had been theirs before they married. Too many things were now between them. By the end of that month Maggie longed to return to Skeaton. It was not only that she felt crushed and choked by the strangling green that hemmed in the old house—the weeds and the trees, and the plants seemed to draw in the night closer and closer about the windows and doors—but also solitude with Paul was revealing to her, in a ruthless, cruel manner, his weaknesses. They were none of them, perhaps, very terrible, but she did not wish to see them. She would like to shut her eyes to them all. If she lost that friendly kindness that she felt for him then indeed she had lost everything. She felt as though he were wilfully trying to tug it away from her.

Why was it that she had never shrunk from the faults of Martin and Uncle Mathew—faults so plain and obvious—and now shrunk from Paul's? Paul's were such little ones—a desire for praise and appreciation, a readiness to be cheated into believing that all was well when he knew that things were very wrong, an eagerness to be liked even by quite worthless people, sloth and laziness, living lies that were of no importance save as sign-posts to the cowardice of his soul. Yes, cowardice! That was the worst of all. Was it his religion that had made him cowardly? Why was Maggie so terribly certain that if the necessity for physical defence of her or some helpless creature arose Paul would evade it and talk about "turning the other cheek"? He was so large a man and so soft—a terrific egoist finally, in the centre of his soul, an egoist barricaded by superstitions and fears and lies, but not a ruthless egoist, because that demanded energy.

And yet, with all this, he had so many good points. He was a child, a baby, like so many clergymen. Even her father could have been defended by that plea ...

He was not radically bad, he was radically good, but he had never known discipline or real sorrow or hardship. Wrapped in cotton wool all his life, spoilt, indulged, treated by the world as men treat women. His effeminacy was the result of his training because he had always been sheltered. Now his contact with Maggie was presenting him for the first time with Reality. Would he face and grapple with it, or would he slip away, evade it, and creep back into his padded castle?

The return to Skeaton and the winter that followed it did not answer that question. Maggie, Grace, and Paul were figures, guarded and defended, outwardly friendly. Grace behaved during those months very well, but Maggie knew that this was a fresh sign of hostility. The "Chut-Chut," "My dear child," and the rest that had been so irritating had been after all signs of intimacy. They were now withdrawn. Maggie made herself during that winter and the spring that followed as busy as possible. She ruthlessly forbade all thoughts of Martin, of the aunts, of London; she scarcely saw Caroline, and the church was her fortress. She seemed to be flung from service to service, to be singing in the choir (she had no voice), asking children their catechism, listening to Paul's high, rather strained, voice reading the lessons, talking politely to Mrs. Maxse or one of the numerous girls, knitting and sewing (always so badly), and above all struggling to remember the things that she was for ever forgetting. Throughout this period she was pervaded by the damp, oily smell of the heated church, always too hot, always too close, always too breathless.

She had many headaches; she liked them because they held back her temptation to think of forbidden things.

Gradually, although she did not know it, the impression gained ground that she was "queer." She had not been to the Toms' often, but she was spoken of as their friend. She had seen Caroline, who was now considered by the church a most scandalous figure, scarcely at all, but it was known that she was an old friend. Above all, it was understood that the rector and his wife were not happy.

"Oh, she's odd—looks more like a boy than a woman. She never says anything, seems to have no ideas. I don't believe she's religious really either."

She knew nothing of this. She did not notice that she was not asked often to other houses. People were kind (the Skeaton people were neither malicious nor cruel) but left her more and more alone. She said to herself again and again: "I must make this a success—I must"—but the words were becoming mechanical. It was like tramping a treadmill: she got no further, only became more and more exhausted. That spring and summer people noticed her white face and strange eyes. "Oh, she's a queer girl," they said.

The summer was very hot with a little wind that blew the sand everywhere. Strange how that sand succeeded in penetrating into the very depth of the town. The sand lay upon the pavement of the High Street so that your feet gritted as you walked. The woods and houses lay for nearly two months beneath a blazing sun. There was scarcely any rain. The little garden behind the Rectory was parched and brown; the laurel bushes were grey with dust. They saw very few people that summer; many of their friends had escaped.

Maggie, thinking of the green depths of Harben a year ago, longed for its coolness; nevertheless she was happy to think that she would never have to see Harben again.

As she had foretold, laziness settled upon Paul. What he loved best was to sink into his old armchair in the dusty study and read old volumes of Temple Bar and the Cornhill. He had them piled at his side; he read article after article about such subjects as "The Silkworm Industry" and "Street Signs of the Eighteenth Century." He was very proud of his sermons, but now he seldom gave a new one. He always intended to. "Don't let any one disturb me to-night, Maggie," he would say at supper on Fridays. "I've got my sermon." But on entering the study he remembered that there was an article in Temple Bar that he must finish. He also read the Church Times right through, including the advertisements. Grace gradually resumed her old functions.

She maintained, however, an elaborate pretence of leaving everything to Maggie. Especially was she delighted when Maggie forgot something. When that happened she said nothing; her mouth curled a little. She treated Maggie less and less to her garrulous confidences. They would sit for hours in the drawing-room together without exchanging a word. Maggie and Paul had now different bedrooms. Early in the autumn Maggie had a little note from Mr. Magnus. It said:

"You have not written to any of us for months. Won't you come just for a night to see your aunts? At least let us know that you are happy."

She cried that night in bed, squeezing her head into the pillow so that no one should hear her. She seemed to have lost all her pluck. She must do something, but what? She did not know how to deal with people. If they were kind and friendly there were so many things that she could do, but this silent creeping away from her paralysed her. She remembered how she had said to Katherine: "No one can make me unhappy if I do not wish it to be." Now she did not dare to think how unhappy she was. She knew that they all thought her strange and odd, and she felt that strangeness creeping upon her. She MUST be odd if many people thought her so. She became terribly self-conscious, wondering whether her words and movements were strange.

She was often so tired that she could not drag one foot after another.

A few weeks before Christmas something happened. A terrible thing, perhaps—but she was delivered by it ...

She was sitting one afternoon a few weeks before Christmas in the drawing-room alone with Grace. It was her "At Home" day, a Friday afternoon. Grace was knitting a grey stocking, a long one that curled on her lap. She knitted badly, clumsily, twisting her fingers into odd shapes and muddling her needles. Now and then she would look up as though she meant to talk, and then remembering that it was Maggie who was opposite to her she would purse her lips and look down again. The fire hummed and sputtered, the clock ticked, and Grace breathed in heavy despairing pants over the difficulties of her work. The door opened and the little maid, her eyes nervously wandering towards Grace, murmured, "Mr. Cardinal, mum."

The next thing of which Maggie was conscious was Uncle Mathew standing clumsily just inside the door shifting his bowler hat between his two hands.

The relief of seeing him was so great that she jumped up and ran towards him crying, "Oh, Uncle Mathew! I'm so glad! At last!"

He dropped his bowler in giving her his hand. She noticed at once that he was looking very unhappy and had terribly run to seed.

He was badly shaved, his blue suit was shabby and soiled. He was fatter, and his whole body was flabby and uncared for. Maggie saw at once that he had been drinking, not very much, but enough to make him a little uncertain on his feet and unsteady in his gaze. Maggie, when she saw him, felt nothing but a rush of pity and desire to protect him. Very strangely she felt the similarity between him and herself. Nobody wanted either of them—they must just love one another because there was no one else to love them.

She was aware then that Grace had risen and was standing looking at them both.

She turned round to her saying, "Grace, this is my uncle. You've heard me speak of him, haven't you? He was very kind to me when I was a little girl ... Uncle, this is my sister-in-law, Miss Trenchard."

Uncle Mathew smiled and, rather unsteadily, came forward; he caught her hand in both his damp, hot ones. "Very pleased to meet you, Miss Trenchard. I know you've been very good to my little Maggie; at least when I say 'my little Maggie' she's not mine any longer. She belongs to your brother now, doesn't she? Of course she does. I hope you're well."

Maggie realised then the terrified distress in Grace's eyes. The grey stocking had fallen to the ground, and Grace stared at Uncle Mathew in a kind of fascinated horror. She realised of course at once that he was what she would call "tipsy." He was not "tipsy," but nevertheless "tipsy" enough for Grace. Maggie saw her take in every detail of his appearance—his unshaven cheeks, the wisps of hair over the bald top of his head, the spots on his waistcoat, the mud on his boots, and again as she watched Grace make this summary, love and protection for that unhappy man filled her heart. For unhappy he was! She saw at once that he had had a long slide downhill since his last visit to her. He was frightened—frightened immediately now of Grace and the room and the physical world—but frightened also behind these things at some spectre all his own. Grace sat down and tried to recover herself. She began to talk in her society voice. Maggie knew that she was praying, over and over again, with a monotony possible only to the very stupid, that there would be no callers that afternoon.

"And so you know Glebeshire, Mr. Cardinal! Fancy! I've never been there—never been there in my life. Fancy that! Although so many of my relations live there. I once nearly went down, one wet Christmas, and I was going to stay with my aunt, but something happened to prevent me. I think I caught a cold at the time. I can't quite remember. But fancy you knowing Glebeshire so well!"

All this came out in a voice that might have issued from a gramophone, so little did it represent Grace's real feelings or emotions. Maggie knew so well that inside her head these exclamations were rising and falling: "What a horrible man! What a dreadful man! Maggie's uncle! We're lost if any one calls! Oh! I do hope no one calls!"

It was obvious meanwhile that Mathew was urgently wishing for a moment alone with Maggie. He looked at her with pleading eyes, and once he winked towards Grace. He talked on, however, running some of his words into one another and paying very little attention to anything that Grace might say: "No, I haven't seen my little niece, Miss Trenchard, for a long time—didn't like to interfere, in a way. Thought she'd ask for me when she wanted me. We've always been the greatest friends. I'm a bachelor, you see—never married. Not that I'd like you to fancy that I've no interest in the other sex, far from it, but I'm a wanderer by nature. A wife in every port, perhaps. Well, who knows? But one's lonely at times, one is indeed. A pretty tidy little place you've got here. Yes, you have—with a garden too."

Paul came in, and Maggie saw him start as Mathew's stout figure surprised him. She felt then a rush of hostility against Paul. It was as though, at every point, she must run in fiercely to defend her uncle.

Meanwhile Grace's worst fears were realised. The little maid announced Miss Purves and Mrs. Maxse. A terrible half-hour followed. Miss Purves, as soon as she understood that this strange man was Mrs. Trenchard's uncle, was all eager excitement, and Uncle Mathew, bewildered by so many strangers, confused by a little unsteadiness in his legs that would have been nothing had he not been in a small room crowded with furniture, finally clasped Mrs. Maxse by the shoulder in his endeavour to save himself from tumbling over the little table that held the cakes and bread-and-butter. His hot, heavy hand pressed into Mrs. Maxse's flesh, and Mrs. Maxse, terrified indeed, screamed.

He began to apologise, and in his agitation jerked Miss Purves' cup of tea from the table on to the floor.

After that he realised that it would be better for him to go. He began elaborate apologies. Paul saw him to the door. He gripped Paul by the hand. "I'm delighted to have met you," he said in full hearing of the trembling ladies. "You've given me such a good time. Give my little Maggie a good time too. She's not looking over well. Send her up to London to stay with me for a bit."

Maggie saw him to the gate. In the middle of the little drive he stopped, turning towards her, leaning his hands heavily upon her. "Maggie dear," he said, "I'm in a bad way, a very bad way. You won't desert me?"

"Of course I won't," she answered. "I may want your help in a week or two."

He looked dismally about him, at the thick, dull laurel bushes and the heavy, grey sky. "I don't like this place, Maggie," he said, "and all those women. It's religion again, and it's worse than that Chapel. You don't seem to be able to get away from religion. You're not happy, my dear."

"Yes, I am," she answered firmly.

"No, you're not. And I'm not. But it will be all right in the end, I've no doubt. You'll never desert me, Maggie."

"I'll never desert you," Maggie answered.

He bent down and kissed her, his breath whisky-laden. She kissed him eagerly, tenderly. For a moment she felt that she would go with him, just as she was, and leave them all.

"Uncle," she said, "you understand how it is, don't you? We'd have asked you to stay if we'd known."

"Oh, that's all right." He looked at her mysteriously. "That new sister-in-law of yours was shocked with me. They wouldn't have me in the house. I saw that. And I only had one glass at the station. I'm not much of a man in society now. That's the trouble ... But next time I'll come down and just send you a line and you'll come to see me in my own little place—won't you? I'm in the devil of a mess, Maggie, that's the truth, and I don't know how to get out of it. I've been a bit of a fool, I have."

She saw the look of terror in his eye again.

"Would some money—" she suggested.

"Oh, I'm afraid it's past five pounds now, my dear." He sighed heavily. "Well, I must be getting along. You'll catch your death of cold standing out here. We ought to have been together all this time, you know. It would have been better for both of us."

He kissed her again and left her. She slowly returned into the house. Curiously, he had made her happier by his visit. Her pluck returned. She needed it. Grace was now stirred by the most active of all her passions—fear.

Nevertheless Grace and Paul behaved very well. Maggie understood the shock that visit must have given them. She watched Grace imagining the excited stories that would flow from the lips of Miss Purves and Mrs. Maxse. She was determined, however, that Grace and Paul should not suffer in silence—and Uncle Mathew must be vindicated.

At supper that night she plunged:

"Uncle Mathew's been very ill," she began, "for a long time now. He wasn't himself this afternoon, I'm afraid. He was very upset at some news that he'd just had. And then meeting so many strangers at once—"

Maggie saw that Grace avoided her eyes.

"I don't think we'll discuss it, Maggie, if you don't mind. Mr. Cardinal was strange in his behaviour, certainly. It was a pity that Miss Purves came. But it's better not to discuss it."

"I don't agree," said Maggie. "If you think that I'm ashamed of Uncle Mathew you're quite wrong. He's very unhappy and lonely—" She felt her voice tremble. "He hasn't got any one to look after him—"

Grace's hand was trembling as she nervously crumbled her bread. Still without looking at Maggie she said:

"By the way, you did the church flowers this morning didn't you, eh?"

Maggie turned white and, as always on these occasions, her heart thumped, leaping, as it seemed, into the very palms of her hands.

"But it was to-morrow—" she began.

"You remember that I told you three days ago that it was to be this morning instead of the usual Thursday because of the Morgans' wedding."

"Oh, Grace, I'm so sorry! I had remembered, I had indeed, and then Lucy suddenly having that chill—."

Paul struck in. "Really, Maggie, that's too bad. No flowers to-morrow? Those others were quite dead yesterday. I noticed at evensong ... Really, really. And the Morgans' wedding!"

Maggie sat there, trembling.

"I'm very sorry," she said, almost whispering. Why did fate play against her? Why, when she might have fought the Uncle Mathew battle victoriously, had Grace suddenly been given this weapon with which to strike?

"I'll go and do them now," she said. "I can take those flowers out of the drawing-room."

"It's done," Grace slowly savouring her triumph. "I did them myself this afternoon."

"Then you should have told me that!" Maggie burst out. "It's not fair making me miserable just for your own fun. You don't know how you hurt, Grace. You're cruel, you're cruel!"

She had a horrible fear lest she should burst into tears. To save that terrible disaster she jumped up and ran out of the room, hearing behind her Paul's admonitory "Maggie, Maggie!"

It is to be expected that Mrs. Maxse and Miss Purves made the most of their story. The Rector's wife and a drunken uncle! No, it was too good to be true ... but it was true, nevertheless. Christmas passed and the horrible damp January days arrived. Skeaton was a dripping covering of emptiness—hollow, shallow, deserted. Every tree, Maggie thought, dripped twice as much as any other tree in Europe. It remained for Caroline Purdie to complete the situation. One morning at breakfast the story burst upon Maggie's ears. Grace was too deeply moved and excited to remember her hostility. She poured out the tale.

It appeared that for many many months Caroline had not been the wife she should have been. No; there had been a young man, a Mr. Bennett from London. The whole town had had its suspicions, had raised its pointing finger, had peeped and peered and whimpered. The only person who had noticed nothing was Mr. Purdie himself. He must, of course, have seen that his house was filled with noisy young men and noisier young women; he must have realised that his bills were high, that champagne was drunk and cards were played, and that his wife's attire was fantastically gorgeous. At any rate, if he noticed these things he said nothing. He was a dull, silent, slow-thinking man, people said. Then one day he went up to London or rather, in the manner of the best modern problem play, he pretended to go, returned abruptly, and discovered Caroline in the arms of Mr. Bennett.

He flung Mr. Bennett out of the bedroom window, breaking his leg and his nose, and that was why every one knew the story. What he said to Caroline was uncertain. He did not, however, pack her off, as Miss Purves said he should have done, but rather kept her in the big ugly house, just as he had done before, only now without the young men, the young women, the champagne and the flowers.

"I must go and see her," said Maggie when she heard this story.

Grace turned the strange pale yellow that was her colour when she was disturbed.

"Maggie," she said, "I warn you that if you go to see this abandoned woman you will be insulting Paul and myself before the whole town."

"She is my friend," said Maggie.

"She is a wicked woman," said Grace, breathing very heavily, "and you're a wicked woman if you go to see her. You have already made Paul miserable."

"That is untrue," Maggie said fiercely. "It is I that have been miserable. Not that it hasn't been my own fault. I should never have married Paul."

"No, you should not," said Grace, breathing as though she had been running very hard. "And for that I was partly to blame. But fancy what you've done since you've been with us! Just fancy! It's terrible ... never a greater mistake ... never, never."

Maggie tossed her head. "Well, if it was a mistake," she said, "the end of pretending has come at last. I've been trying for nearly two years now to go your way and Paul's. I can't do it. I can't alter myself. I've tried, and I can't. It's no use. Grace, we'd never get on. I see it's been hopeless from the first. But you shan't make Paul hate me. You've been trying your hardest, but you shan't succeed. I know that I'm stupid and careless, but it's no use my pretending to be good and quiet and obedient. I'm not good. I'm not quiet. I'm not obedient. I'm going to be myself now. I'm going to have the friends I want and do the things I want."

Grace moved back as though she thought that Maggie were going to strike her.

"You're wicked," she said. "What about those letters in your drawer? You've never loved Paul."

"So you've been opening my drawers?" said Maggie. "You're worse than I, Grace. I never opened any one's drawers nor read letters I shouldn't. But it doesn't matter. There's nothing I want to hide. Paul knows all about it. I'm not ashamed."

"No, you're not," Grace's eyes were large with terror. "You're ashamed at nothing. You've made every one in the place laugh at us. You've ruined Paul's life here—yes, you have. But you don't care. Do you think I mind for myself? But I love Paul, and I've looked after him all his life, and he was happy until you came—yes, he was. You've made us all laughed at. You're bad all through, Maggie, and the laws of the Church aren't anything to you at all."

There was a pause. Maggie, a little calmer, realised Grace, who had sunk into a chair. She saw that stout middle-aged woman with the flat expressionless face and the dull eyes. She saw the flabby hands nervously trembling, and she longed suddenly to be kind and affectionate.

"Oh, Grace," she cried. "I know I've been everything I shouldn't, only don't you see I can't give up my friends? And I told Paul before we married that I'd loved some one else and wasn't religious. But perhaps it isn't too late. Let's be friends. I'll try harder than ever before—"

Then she saw, in the way that Grace shrank back, her eyes staring with the glazed fascination that a bird has for a snake, that there was more than dislike and jealousy here, there was the wild unreasoning fear that a child has for the dark.

"Am I like that?" was her own instinctive shuddering thought. Then, almost running, she rushed up to her bedroom.

CHAPTER VII

DEATH OF AUNT ANNE

Maggie, after that flight, faced her empty room with a sense of horror. Was there, truly, then, something awful about her? The child (for she was indeed nothing more) looked into her glass, standing on tip-toe that she might peer sufficiently and saw her face, pale, with its large dark eyes rimmed by the close-clipped hair. Was she then awful? First her father, then her aunts, then the Warlocks, now Grace and Paul—not only dislike but fright, terror, alarm!

Her loneliness crushed her in that half-hour as it had never crushed her since that day at Borhedden. She broke down altogether, kneeling by the bed and her head in her pillow sobbing: "Oh, Martin, I want you! Martin, I want you so!"

When she was calmer she thought of going down to Paul and making another appeal to him, but she knew that such an appeal could only end in his asking her to change herself, begging her to be more polite to Grace, more careful and less forgetful, and of course to give up such people as the Toms and Caroline, and then there would come, after it all, the question as to whether she intended to behave better to himself, whether she would be more loving, more ... Oh no! she could not, she could not, she could not!

She saw the impossibility of it so plainly that it was a relief to her and she washed her face and brushed her hair and plucked up courage to regard herself normally once more. "I'm not different," she said to the looking-glass. "There's no reason for Grace to make faces." She saw that the breach between herself and Grace had become irreparable, and that whatever else happened in the future at least it was certain that they would never be friends again.

She went downstairs prepared to do battle ...

Next morning she paid her visit to Caroline. It was a strange affair. The girl was sitting alone in her over-gorgeous house, her hands on her lap, looking out of the window, an unusual position for her to be in.

Caroline was at first very stiff and haughty, expecting that Maggie had come to scold her. "I just looked in to sec how you were," said Maggie.

"You might have come before," answered Caroline. "It's years since you've been near me."

"I didn't like all those people you had in your house," said Maggie. "I like it better now there's no one in it."

That was not, perhaps, very tactful of her. Caroline flushed.

"I could have them all here now if I wanted to ask them," she answered angrily.

"Well, I'm very glad you'd rather be without them," said Maggie. "They weren't worthy of you, Caroline."

"Oh! What's the use going on talking like this!" Caroline broke out. "Of course you've heard all about everything. Every one has. I can't put my nose outside the door without them all peering at me. I hate them all—all of them—and the place too, and every one in it."

"I expect you do—" said Maggie sympathetically.

"Nasty cats! As though they'd never done anything wrong all their days. It was mostly Alfred's fault too. What does he expect when he leaves me all alone here week after week eating one's heart out. One must do something with one's time. Just like all men! At first there's nothing too good for you, then when they get used to it they can't be bothered about anything. I wonder what a man thinks married life is? Then to listen to Alfred, you'd think we were still living in the days of the Good Queen Victoria—you would indeed. Wouldn't let me go up to London alone! There's a nice thing for you. And all because he did let me go once and I meant to stay with mother and mother was away. So I had to sleep at a hotel. Why shouldn't I sleep at a hotel! I'm not a baby. And now he keeps me here like a prisoner. Just as though I were in jail."

"Is he unkind to you?" asked Maggie.

"No, he isn't. It's his horrible kindness I can't stand. He won't divorce me, he won't let me go away, he just keeps me here and is so kind and patient that I could kill him. I shall one day. I know I shall." She stood for a moment, pouting and looking out of the window. Then suddenly she turned and, flinging her arms around Maggie, burst into tears.

"Oh, Maggie! I'm so miserable ... I'm so miserable, Maggie! Why did I ever come here? Why did I ever marry? I was so happy at home with mother."

Maggie comforted her, persuading her that all would soon be well, that people very quickly forgot their little pieces of scandal, and that so long as she did not run away or do anything really desperate all would come right. Maggie discovered that Caroline had escaped from her crisis with an increased respect and even affection for her husband. She was afraid of him, and was the sort of woman who must be afraid of her husband before her married life can settle into any kind of security.

"And I thought you'd altogether abandoned me!" she ended.

"I wasn't coming while all those people were about," said Maggie.

"You darling!" cried Caroline, kissing her. "Just the same as you used to be. I was angry I can tell you when month after month went by and you never came near me. I used to tell people when they asked me that you were odd. 'She's not a bit like other people,' I would say; 'not a bit and it's no use expecting her to be. She's always been queer. I used to know her in London.' They do think you odd here, darling. They do indeed. No one understands you. So odd for a clergyman's wife. Well, so you are, aren't you? I always tell them you had no bringing up."

Caroline in fact very quickly recovered her flow. As soon as she found that Maggie was not shocked she reasserted her old superiority. Before the visit was over she had rather despised Maggie for not being shocked. At Maggie's departure, however, she was very loving.

"You will come soon again, darling, won't you? It's no use asking you to dinner because, of course, your husband won't come. But look in any afternoon—or we might go for a drive in the motor. Good-bye—good-bye."

Maggie, on her return, found Grace looking at the mid-day post in the hall. She always did this in a very short-sighted way, taking up the letters one by one, holding each very close to her eyes, and sniffing at it as though she were trying to read through the envelope. This always irritated Maggie, although her own letters were not very many. To-night, when she heard the hall door open, she turned and dropped the letters, giving that especial creaking little gasp that she always did when she was startled.

"Oh, it's you, Maggie, is it? Where've you been?"

"I've been to see Mrs. Purdie," Maggie said defiantly.

Grace paused as though she were going to speak, then turned on her heel. But just as she reached the sitting-room door she said, breathing heavily:

"There's a telegram for you there."

Maggie saw it lying on the table. She picked it up and hesitated. A wild beating of the heart told her that it must be from Martin. She didn't know what told her this except that now for so long she had been expecting to see a telegram lying in just this way on the table, waiting for her. She took it up with a hand that trembled. She tore it open and read:

"Come at once. Your aunt dying. Wishes to see you. Magnus."

No need to ask which aunt. When one aunt was mentioned it was Aunt Anne—of course. Oh, poor Aunt Anne! Maggie longed for her, longed to be with her, longed to be kind to her, longed to comfort her. And Mr. Magnus and Martha and Aunt Elizabeth and the cat—she must go at once, she must catch a train after luncheon.

She went impetuously into her husband's study.

"Oh, Paul!" she cried. "Aunt Anne's dying, and I must go to her at once."

Paul was sitting in his old armchair before the fire; he was wearing faded brown slippers that flapped at his heels; his white hair was tangled; his legs were crossed, the fat broad thighs pressing out against the shiny black cloth of his trousers. He was chuckling over an instalment of Anthony Trollope's "Brown Jones and Robinson" in a very ancient Cornhill.

He looked up, "Maggie, you know it's my sermon-morning—interruptions—" He had dropped the Cornhill, but not fast enough to hide it from her.

She looked around at the dirty untidiness of the study. "It's all my fault, this," she thought. "I should have kept him clean and neat and keen on his work. I haven't. I've failed."

Then her next thought was: "Grace wouldn't let me—"

The study, in fact, was more untidy than ever, the pictures were back in their places whence Maggie had once removed them.

Husband and wife looked at one another. If she felt: "I've not managed my duty," he felt perhaps: "What a child she is after all!" But between them there was the gulf of their past experience.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said, yawning. "Is she an old lady?"

"No, she's not," said Maggie, breathing very quickly. "I love her very much. I've been thinking, Paul, I've not been good about my relations all this time. I ought to have seen them more. I must go up to London at once."

"If your aunt's bad and wants you, I suppose you must," he answered. He got up and came over to her. He kissed her suddenly.

"You'll be wanting some money," he said. "Don't be long away. I'll miss you."

She caught the 2.30 train. It seemed very strange to her to be sitting in it alone after the many months when she had been always either with Grace or Paul. An odd sense of adventure surrounded her, and she felt as though she were now at last approaching the climax to which the slow events of the last two years had been leading. When she had been a little girl one of the few interesting books in the house had been The Mysteries of Udulpho. She could see the romance now, with its four dumpy volumes, the F's so confusingly like S's, the faded print, and the yellowing page.

She could remember little enough of it, but there had been one scene near the beginning of the story when the heroine, Emily, looking for something in the dusk, had noticed some lines pencilled on the wainscot; these mysterious pencilled lines had been the beginning of all her troubles, and Maggie, as a small girl, had approached sometimes in the evening dusk the walls of her attic to see whether there too verses had been scribbled. Now, obscure in the corner of her carriage, she felt as though the telegram had been a pencilled message presaging some great event that would shortly change her life.

It was a dark and gloomy day, misty with a gale of wind that blew the smoke into curls and eddies against the sky. There seemed to be a roar about the vast London station that threatened her personally, but she beat down her fears, found a taxi, and gave the driver the well-remembered address.

As they drove along she felt how much older, how much older she was then than when she was last in London. Then she had been ignorant of all life and the world, now she felt that she was an old, old woman with an infinite knowledge of marriage and men and women and the way they lived. She looked upon her aunts and indeed all that world that had surrounded the Chapel as something infinitely childish, and for that reason rather sweet and touching. She could be kind and friendly even to Amy Warlock she thought. She wished that she had some excuse so that she might stay in London a week or two. She felt that she could stretch her limbs and breathe again now that she was out of Grace's sight.

And she would find out Uncle Mathew's address and pay him a surprise visit ... She laughed in the cab and felt gay and light-hearted until she remembered the cause of her visit. Poor, poor Aunt Anne! Oh, she did hope that she would be well enough to recognise her and to show pleasure at seeing her. The cab had stopped in the well-remembered street before the same old secret-looking house. Nothing seemed to have changed, and the sight of it all brought Martin back to her with so fierce a pang that for a moment breath seemed to leave her body. It was just near here, only a few steps away, that he had suddenly appeared, as though from the very paving-stones, when she had been with Uncle Mathew, and then had gone to supper with him. It was from this door that he had run on that last desperate day. She looked up at the windows; the blinds were not down; her aunt was yet alive; she paid the taxi and rang the bell.

The door was opened by Martha, who seemed infinitely older and more wrinkled than on the last occasion, her old face was yellow like drawn parchment and her thin grey hairs were pasted back over her old skull; she was wearing black mittens.

"Miss Maggie!" and there was a real welcome in her voice. Maggie was drawn into the dark little hall that smelt of cracknel biscuits and lamp oil, there was the green baize door, and then suddenly the shrill cry of the parrot, and then, out of the dark, the fiery eyes of Thomas the cat.

"Oh, Miss Maggie!" said Martha. "Or I suppose I should say 'Mrs.' now. It's a long, long time ..."

"Yes, it is," said Maggie. "How is my aunt?"

"If she lives through the night they'll be surprised," Martha answered, wheezing and sighing. "Yes, the doctor says—' If Miss Cardinal sees morning,' he says—" Then as Maggie hesitated at the bottom of the staircase. "If you'd go straight to the drawing-room, Miss, Mum, Mr. Magnus is waiting tea for you there."

Maggie went up, past the Armed Men into the old room. She could have kissed all the things for their old remembered intimacy and friendliness, the pictures, the books, the old faded carpet, the fire-screen, the chairs and wall-papers. There, too, was Mr. Magnus, looking just as he used to look, with his spectacles and his projecting ears, his timid smile and apologetic voice. He did seem for a moment afraid of her, then her boyish air, her unfeigned pleasure and happiness at being back there again, and a certain childish awkwardness with which she shook hands and sat herself behind the little tea-table reassured him:

"You're not changed at all," he told her. "Isn't that dreadful?" she said; "when all the way in the cab I've been telling myself how utterly different I am."

"I suppose you feel older?" he asked her.

"Older! Why, centuries!"

"You don't look a day," he said, smiling at her.

"That's my short hair," she answered, smiling back at him, "and not being able to wear my clothes like a grown woman. It's a fact that I can't get used to long skirts, and in Skeaton it's bad form to cross your knees. I try and remember—" she sighed. "The truth is I forget everything just as I used to."

"How is Aunt?" she asked him. He looked very grave, and behind his smiles and welcome to her she saw that he was a tired and even exhausted man.

"They don't think she can live through the night," he answered her, "but, thank God, she's out of all pain and will never suffer any more. She's tranquil in her mind too, and the one thing she wanted to put her quiet was to see you. She's been worrying about you for months. Why didn't you come up to see us all this time, Maggie? That wasn't kind of you."

"No, it wasn't," said Maggie. "But I didn't dare."

"Didn't dare?" he asked, astonished.

"No, there were things all this would have reminded me of too badly. It wasn't safe to be reminded of them."

"Haven't you been happy, then, there?" he asked her almost in a whisper.

"Oh, I don't know," she didn't look up at him. "I made a mistake in doing it. It was my fault, not theirs. No, I haven't been happy if you want to know. And I shan't be. There's no chance. It's all wrong; they all hate me. I seem to them odd, mad, like a witch they used to burn in the old days. And I can't alter myself. And I don't want to."

It was amazing what good it did her to bring all this out. She had said none of it to any one before.

"Oh dear, oh dear," sighed Mr. Magnus. "I hadn't known. I thought it was all going so well. But don't tell your aunt this. When she asks you, say you're very, very happy and it's all going perfectly. She must die at peace. Will you, my dear, will you?"

His almost trembling anxiety touched her.

"Why, dear Mr. Magnus, of course I will. And I am happy now that I'm back with all of you. All I want is for people to be fond of me, you know, but there's something in me—" She jumped up and stood in front of him. "Mr. Magnus! You're wise, you write books, you know all about things, tell me—tell me the absolute truth. Am I odd, am I queer, am I like a witch that ought to be burnt at the stake?"

He was deeply touched. He put his hands on her shoulders, then suddenly drew her to him and kissed her.

"I don't find you odd, my dear, but then, God forgive me, I'm odd myself. We're all rather odd in this house, I'm afraid. But don't you worry, Maggie. You're worth a wagon-load of ordinary people."

She drew slowly away. She sighed.

"I wish Paul and Grace only thought so," she said.

They had a quiet little tea together; Maggie was longing to ask Mr. Magnus questions about himself, but she didn't dare to do so. He wrapped himself in a reserved friendly melancholy which she could not penetrate. He looked so much older, so much more faded, as though the heat and fire had gradually stolen away from him and left him only the grey ghost of what he had been.

"Are you writing any books, Mr. Magnus?" she asked him.

"Any books?" he answered smiling. "Surely one would be enough, my dear. I have one half-finished as a matter of fact, but it's not satisfactory. If it weren't for the bread and butter I don't think I'd ever tackle it again. Or rather the bread, I should say. It's precious little butter it brings in."

"What's it called?" she asked.

"'The Toad in the Hole,'" he said.

"What a funny name! What does it mean?"

"I don't know." He shook his head. "It meant something when I began it, but the meaning doesn't seem important now."

In a little while he left her, saying: "Now if I were you I'd take a little nap, and later on I'll wake you and we'll go and see your aunt."

She slept, lying back in the blue armchair in front of the fire, with only the leaping flames as light to the room. Strange and dim but unspeakably sweet were her dreams. It seemed that she had escaped for ever from Paul and Grace and Skeaton, and that in some strange way Martin was back with her again, the same old Martin, with his laugh and the light in his eyes and his rough red face. He had come into the room—he was standing by the door looking at her; she ran to him, her hands stretched out, cries of joy on her lips, but oven as she reached him there was a cry through the house: "Your Aunt Anne is dead! Your Aunt Anne is dead!" and all the bells began to toll, and she was in the Chapel again and great crowds surged past her. Aunt Anne's bier borne on high above them all. She cried aloud, and woke to find Mr. Magnus standing at her side; one glance at him told her that he was in terrible distress.

"You must come at once," he said. "Your aunt may have only a few minutes to live."

She followed him, still only half-awake, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles, and feeling as though she were continuing that episode when Martha had led her at the dead of night into her aunt's bedroom.

The chill of the passages however woke her fully, and then her one longing and desire was that Aunt Anne should be conscious enough to recognise her and be aware of her love for her.

The close room, with its smell of medicines and eau-de-Cologne and its strange breathless hush, frightened her just as it had done once before. She saw again the religious picture, the bleeding Christ and the crucifix, the high white bed, the dim windows and the little table with the bottles and the glasses. It was all as it had been before. Her terror grew. She felt as though no power could drag her to that bed. Something lurked there, something horrible and unclean, that would spring upon her and hold her down with its claws ...

"Maggie!" said the clear faint voice that she knew so well. Her terror left her. She did not notice Aunt Elizabeth, who was seated close to the bed, nor Mr. Magnus, nor the nurse, nor the doctor. She went forward unafraid.

"Doctor, would you mind ..." the voice went on. "Three minutes alone with my niece ..." The doctor, a stout red-faced man, said something, the figures, all shadowy in the dim light, withdrew.

Maggie was aware of nothing except that there was something of the utmost urgency that she must say. She came close to the bed, found a chair there, sat down and bent forward. There her aunt was lying, the black hair in a dark shadow across the pillow, the face white and sharp, and the eyes burning with a fierce far-seeing light.

They had the intense gaze of a blind man to whom sight has suddenly been given: he cries "I see! I see!" stretching out his arms towards the sun, the trees, the rich green fields. She turned her head and put both her hands about Maggie's; she smiled.

Maggie said, "Oh, Aunt Anne, do you feel bad?"

"No dear. I'm in no pain at all. Now that you've come I'm quite happy. It was my one anxiety." Her voice was very faint, so that Maggie had to lean forward to catch the words.

"You'll have thought me unkind all this time," said Maggie, "not to have come, but it hasn't been unkindness. Many times I've wanted, but there seemed to be so much to do that it wasn't RIGHT to come away."

"Are you happy, dear?" Aunt Anne said in her ghostly whisper.

"Very, very happy," said Maggie, remembering what Mr. Magnus had said to her.

Aunt Anne sighed. "Ah, that's good. It was my one worry that you mightn't be happy. I was all wrong about you, Maggie, trying to push you my way instead of letting you go your own. I should have waited for God to show His direction. But I was impatient—and if you were unhappy—" She broke off and for a moment Maggie thought that she would speak no more. She lay there, with her eyes closed, like a waxen image.

She went on again: "I've always loved you, Maggie, from the very first, but I was so impatient for you to come to God. I thought He would reveal Himself and you not be ready. He did reveal Himself, but not as I had thought. He came that night and took Mr. Warlock with Him—that was true, Maggie, that night. All true—All true. God will show you His way. It will be revealed to you. Heaven and its glories. God and His dear Son ..."

She stopped again and lay with her eyes closed.

Maggie timidly, at last, said:

"Aunt Anne, I want you to forgive me for all my wickedness. I didn't mean to be wicked, but I just couldn't say my feelings out loud. I was shy of them somehow. I still am, perhaps. Maybe I always will be. But I just want to say that I know now how good you were to me all that time and I'm grateful from my heart."

"You'll get better won't you, Aunt Anne, and then I'll come often? I'm shy to say my feelings, but I love you. Aunt Anne, for what you've been to me."

She stopped. There was a deathly stillness in the chamber. The lamp had sunk low and the fire was a gold cavern. Dusk stole on stealthy feet from wall to wall. Aunt Anne did not, it seemed, breathe. Her hands had dropped from Maggie's and her arms lay straight upon the sheet. Her eyes were closed.

Suddenly she whispered:

"Dear Maggie ... Maggie ... My Lord and my God ... My Master ..."

Then very faintly: "The Lord is my Shepherd ... My Shepherd ... He shall lead me forth ... beside the pastures ... my rod and my staff ... The Lord ..."

She gave a little sigh and her head rolled to one side.

Maggie, with a startled fear, was suddenly conscious that she was alone in the room. She went to the door and called for the doctor. As they gathered about the bed the caverns of the fire fell with the sharp sound of a closing door.

Next morning Maggie wrote to Paul telling him that her aunt was dead, that the funeral would be in two days' time, and that she would stay in London until that was over. She had not very much time just then to think of the house and the dead woman in it, because on the breakfast-table there was this letter for her.

23 CROMWELL RD., KENSINGTON, March 12, 1912.

DEAR MRS. TRENCHARD,

I hear that you have come to London to visit your aunt. I have been hoping for some time past to have an opportunity of seeing you. I am sure that you will have no wish at all to see me; at the same time I do beg you to give me half an hour at the above address. Five o'clock to-morrow would be a good time. Please ask for Miss Warlock.

Believe me, Yours faithfully, AMY WARLOCK.

Maggie stared at the signature, then, with a thickly beating heart, decided that of course she would go. She was not afraid but—Martin's sister! What would come of it? The house was strangely silent; Aunt Elizabeth sniffed into her handkerchief a good deal; Mr. Magnus, his face strained with a look of intense fatigue, went out about some business. The blinds of the house wore down and all the rooms were bathed in a green twilight.

About quarter past four Maggie went down into the Strand and found a cab. She gave the address and off they went. Sitting in the corner of the cab she seemed to be an entirely passive spectator of events that were being played before her. She knew, remotely, that Aunt Anne's death had deeply affected her, that coming back to the old house had deeply affected her, and that this interview with Amy Warlock might simply fasten on her the fate that she had for many months now seen in front of her. She could not escape; and she did not want to escape.

They found the house, a very grimy looking one, in the interminable Cromwell Road. Maggie rang a jangling bell, and the door was ultimately opened by a woman with sleeves turned up at the elbows and a dirty apron.

"Is Miss Warlock at home?" The woman sniffed.

"I expect so," she said. "Most times she is. What name?"

"Mrs. Trenchard," Maggie said.

She was admitted into a hall that smelt of food and seemed in the half-light to be full of umbrellas. The woman went upstairs, but soon returned to say that Miss Warlock would see the lady. Maggie found that in the sitting-room the gas was dimly burning. There was the usual lodging-house furniture, and on a faded red sofa near the fire old Mrs. Warlock was lying. Maggie could not see her very clearly in the half-light, but there was something about her immobility and the stiffness of her head (decorated as of old with its frilly white cap) that reminded one of a figure made out of wax. Maggie turned to find Amy Warlock standing close to her.

"Mrs. Thurston—" Maggie began, hesitating.

"You may not know," said Amy Warlock, "that I have retained my maiden name. Sit down, won't you? It is good of you to have come."

The voice was a little more genial than it had been in the old days. Nevertheless this was still the old Amy Warlock, stiff, masculine, impenetrable.

"I hope your aunt is better," she said.

"My aunt is dead," answered Maggie.

"Dear me, I'm sorry to hear that. She was a good woman and did many kind actions in her time."

There was something very unpleasant about that room, with the yellow light, the hissing gas, and the immobile figure on the sofa. Maggie looked in the direction of old Mrs. Warlock.

"You needn't mind mother," said Amy Warlock. "For some time now she's been completely paralysed. She can't speak or move. But she likes to be downstairs, to see the world a bit. It's sad after the way that she used to enjoy life. Father's death was a great shock to her."

It was sad. Maggie remembered how fond she had been of her food. Like a waxen image! Like a waxen image! The whole room was ghoulish and unnatural.

"I've asked you to come and see me, Mrs. Trenchard," continued Miss Warlock, "not because we can have any wish to meet, I am sure. We have never liked one another. But I have something on my conscience, and I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you. I don't suppose you have heard that very shortly I intend to enter a nunnery at Roehampton."

"And your mother?" asked Maggie.

"Mother will go into a Home," answered Miss Warlock.

There was a strange little sound from the sofa like a rat nibbling behind the wainscot.

"I must tell you," said Miss Warlock, speaking apparently with some difficulty, "that I have done you a wrong. Shortly after my father's death my brother wrote to you from Paris."

"Wrote to me?" repeated Maggie.

"Yes—wrote to you through me. I destroyed the letters. He wrote then five times in rather swift succession. I destroyed all the letters."

Maggie said nothing.

"I destroyed the letters," continued Amy Warlock, "because I did not wish you and my brother to come together. I did not wish you to, simply out of hatred for you both. I thought that my brother killed my father—whom—whom—I loved. I knew that the one human being whom Martin had ever loved beside his father was yourself. He did love you, Mrs. Trenchard, more truly than I had believed it in his power to love any one. I think you could have made him happy—therefore I did not wish you to meet again."

There was a pause. Maggie said at last:

"Were there no other letters?"

"Yes," said Miss Warlock. "One this summer. For more than a year there was nothing; then this summer, a little one. I destroyed that too."

"What did it say?" asked Maggie.

"It said that the woman to whom he had been married was dead. He said that if you didn't answer this letter he would understand that you would not want to hear from him any more. He had been very ill."

"Where did he write that?"

"In Paris."

"And where is he now?"

"I don't know. I have heard from him no more."

Maggie got up and stood, her head raised as though listening for something.

"You've been very cruel, Miss Warlock," she said.

"Perhaps I have," said Miss Warlock. "But you cannot judge until you know with what reason I hated my brother. It is a very old story. However, now I hate no one. I will not apologise for what I have done. I do not want your forgiveness. I had to absolve my conscience."

"And you have no idea where he is now?"

"I have no idea. He may be dead for all I know."

Maggie shivered. "If you have any more information you will give it me?"

"I will give it you."

"This is my address." Maggie gave her a card.

They said good-day, looking for one moment, face to face, eye to eye.

Then Maggie turned and went. Her eyes were dim so that she stumbled on the stairs. In the street she walked, caring nothing of her direction, seeing only Martin.

CHAPTER VIII

DEATH OF UNCLE MATHEW

Grace, during the days that Maggie was in London, regained something of her old tranquillity. It was wonderful to her to be able to potter about the house once more mistress of all that she surveyed and protected from every watching eye. She had had, from her very earliest years, a horror of being what she called "overlooked."

She had a habit of stopping, when she had climbed halfway upstairs, of suddenly jerking her head round to see whether any one were looking at her. You would have sworn, had you seen her, that she was deeply engaged upon some nefarious and underhand plot; yet it was not so-she was simply going to dust some of her hideous china treasures in her bedroom.

Always after breakfast there was this pleasant ritual. She would plod all round the house, duster in hand, picking things up, giving them a little flick and putting them back again, patting treasures that she especially loved, sighing heavily with satisfaction at the pleasant sight of all her possessions tranquilly in their right places. As she looked around the ugly sitting-room and saw the red glazed pots with the ferns, the faded football-groups, the worsted mats and the china shepherdesses, a rich warm feeling rose in her heart and filled her whole body. It was like a fine meal to a hungry man: every morning at half-past nine she was hungry in this fashion, and every morning by eleven o'clock she was satisfied. Her thick body thus promenaded the house; she was like a stolid policeman in female attire, going his rounds to see that all was well. From room to room she went, pausing to pant for breath on the stairs, stumbling always because of her short sight at the three dark little steps just outside Paul's bedroom, always sitting down on her bed "to take a breath" and to get a full gaze at the crucifix of bright yellow wood, that hung just under her mother's picture. Tramp, tramp, tramp round the house she went.

It was incredible how deeply Maggie had interfered with this ritual. She had certainly not intended to do so. After that first effort to change certain things in the house she had retired from the battle, had completely capitulated. Nevertheless she had interfered with all Grace's movements and, as the terror of her grew, it seemed to pervade every nook and corner of the house, so that Grace felt that she could go nowhere without that invasion. Oh, how she resented it, and how afraid she was! After Paul and Maggie returned from that summer holiday she saw that Paul too felt Maggie's strangeness. To Grace, from the beginning of that autumn, every movement and gesture of Maggie's was strange. The oddity of her appearance, her ignorance of everything that seemed to Grace to be life, her strange, half-mocking, half-wondering attitude to the Church and its affairs ("like a heathen in Central Africa"), her dislike of the Maxses and the Pynsents and her liking for the Toms and Caroline Purdie, her odd silences and still odder speeches, all these things increased the atmosphere that separated her from the rest of the world.

Then came the day when Grace, dusting in Maggie's bedroom, discovered the bundle of letters. She read them, read them with shame at her own dishonesty and anger at Maggie for making her dishonest. To her virgin ignorance the passion in them spoke of illicit love and the grossest immorality. Her heart burnt with a strange mingling of envy, jealousy, loneliness, shame, and eagerness to know more ...

Then came Uncle Mathew's visit; then Caroline Purdie's disgrace. The count was fully charged. Maggie, that strange girl found in the heart of London's darkness, alone, without friends or parents, was a witch, a devilish, potion-dealing witch, who might, at any time, fly through the night-sky on a broom-stick as surely as any mediaeval old hag. These visions might be exaggerated for many human beings, not so for Grace. Having no imagination she was soaked in superstition. She clung to a few simple pictures, and was exposed to every terror that those pictures could supply.

Maggie now haunted her day and night. Everywhere she could feel Maggie's eyes piercing her. A thousand times an hour she looked up to see whether Maggie were not there in the room watching her. She hated her now with terror that was partly fear for her own safety, partly love and jealousy for Paul, partly outraged modesty and tradition, partly sheer panic.

She had, as yet, said very little to Paul. She waited the right moment. Maggie's absence showed her how deep and devastating this fear had been. She saw that it embraced the whole life of Paul and herself in Skeaton. She had grown fond of Skeaton; she was a woman who would inevitably care for anything when she had become thoroughly accustomed to its ways and was assured that it would do her no harm.

She liked the shops and the woods, the sand and the sea. Above all, she adored the Church. During a large part of every day she was there, pottering about, talking to the caretaker, poking her nose into the hymn-books to see whether the choir-boys had drawn pictures in them, rubbing the brasses, making tidy the vestry. The house too she loved, and the garden and the bottles on the wall. She might have known that she was not popular in the place, she cannot have failed to realise that she had no woman friend and that she was seldom invited to dinner. This did not matter to her. Her affections—and they were very real and genuine—were all for her brother. Had she Paul she wanted no one else. That was enough.

And now it might be that they would have to leave the place. Already the talk about Maggie was intolerable. Grace heard it on every side. After Mathew Cardinal's visit the talk rose to a shriek. Grace knew that those sudden silences on her entrance into the room meant lively and excited discussion. "How terrible for the poor rector!" "Such an odd girl—taken out of the slums." "Yes, quite drunk. He knocked Mrs. Maxse down." "Oh I assure you that she went to see Caroline Purdie the very day after. She did indeed ..."

Yes. Grace knew all about it. Unless things changed Paul would have to go. His life was ruined by this girl.

Nevertheless for a whole happy week the world seemed to sink back into its old accustomed apathy. The very house seemed to take on its old atmosphere. Paul came out of his study and went about paying calls. That hour, from six to seven, when he was at home to his parishioners seemed once again to be crowded with anxious old women and men out of work and girls in trouble. He took Grace with him on his rounds. Every one was very friendly. Grace was able to reassume some of her old importance.

Her old flow of conversation—checked recently by the sense of Maggie's strangeness—returned to her. In the morning she would stand by her brother's study-table, duster in hand, and pour out her heart.

"You know, Paul, it's all very well, you may say what you like, but if Mrs. Maxse thinks she's going to have the whole of that second pew she's mistaken. It's only for a week or two that she's got the Broadbents staying with her, and I know what she's after. Just fancy! What she wants is to put the Broadbents in that second seat the two Sundays they're here and then stick to it after they're gone. Just fancy what Miss Beats and Miss Hopwood will feel about it! What I mean is that they've had that seat for nearly eight years and now to be turned out! But I assure you, Paul, from what Linda Maxse said to me yesterday I believe she intends that, I do indeed. She thinks Miss Beats and Miss Hopwood will get used to sitting somewhere else after two Sundays. 'I'm sure they won't mind—poor old things,' she said only yesterday. 'Poor old things.' Just fancy! Why, Mary Beats is very little older than I. You'll have to put your foot down about it, you will, indeed, Paul. Yes, you will. Give Linda Maxse an inch and she takes a mile, I always said—and this is just the kind of thing ..."

So happily Grace ran on and Paul looked up from his desk at her, digging his fingers into his white hair, smiling at her in just the old confidential way that he used to have before Maggie came.

She revived, too, her old habit of talking to herself. This had always been an immense relief to her—it had helped her to feel reassurance. Lately she had felt that Maggie was overhearing her and was laughing at her; this had checked her and made her suspicious. Now as she began to mount the stairs she would murmur to herself: "It might be better to tell Jenny to go to Bartletts. After all, it's quicker that way, and she'll be able to tell the boy to bring the things back. She needn't wait. All the same she's stupid, she'll make a muddle of it as likely as not. And Womball's boy is livelier than Bartletts'. That's something after all. But if she goes out at two-thirty she'll never be back by four—unless she went by Smith's lane of course—she might do that ... Oh, dear, these stairs are a trial ... yes, she might do that, and then she'd only be an hour altogether. I'll suggest that ..."

Her murmur was a cheerful monotonous sound accompanying her as she went. She would stop and rub the side of her nose with her thumb, considering. In the house, when there was no fear of callers, she wore large loose slippers that tap-tapped as she went. In the evenings she sat in Paul's study all amongst the Cornhills, The Temple Bars, and The Bible Concordances. They were very cosy and happy, and she talked incessantly. For some reason she did not dare to ask him whether he were not happier now that Maggie was away. She did not dare. There was not the complete confidence that there had been. Paul was strange a little, bewitched by Maggie's strangeness ... There was something there that Grace did not understand. So she said nothing, but she tried to convey to him, in the peculiar warmth of her good-night kiss, what she felt.

Then Maggie returned. She came back in her black clothes and with her pale face. Her aunt had died. She was more alone even than before. She was very quiet, and agreed to everything that Grace said. Nevertheless, although she agreed, she was more antagonistic than she had been. She had now something that intensely preoccupied her. Grace could see that she was always thinking about something that had nothing to do with Skeaton or Paul or the house. She was more absent-minded than ever, forgot everything, liked best to sit in her bedroom all alone.

"Oh, she's mad!" said Grace. "She's really mad! Just fancy if she should go right off her head!" Grace was now so desperately frightened that she lay awake at night, sweating, listening to every sound. "If she should come and murder me one night," she thought. Another thought she had was: "It's just as though she sees some one all the time who isn't there."

Then came 13th March, that dreadful day that would be never forgotten by Grace so long as she lived. During the whole of the past week Skeaton had been delivered up to a tempest of wind and rain. The High Street, emptied of human beings, had glittered and swayed under the sweeping storm. The Skeaton sea, possessing suddenly a life of its own, had stormed upon the Skeaton promenade, and worried and lashed and soaked that hideous structure to within an inch of its unnatural life. Behind the town the woods had swayed and creaked, funeral black against the grey thick sky. Across the folds the rain fell in slanting sheets with the sibilant hiss of relentless power and resolve.

After luncheon, on this day the 13th, Maggie disappeared into the upper part of the house and Grace settled down on the drawing-room sofa to a nice little nap. She fell asleep to the comforting patter of rain upon the windows and the howling of the storm down the chimney. She dreamt, as she often did, about food.

She was awakened, with a sudden start, by a sense of apprehension. This happened to her now so often that there was nothing strange in it, but she jumped up, with beating heart, from the sofa, crying out: "What's happened? What's the matter?"

She realised that the room had grown darker since she fell asleep, and although it was early still there was a sort of grey twilight that stood out against a deeper dusk in the garden beyond.

"What is it?" she said again, and then saw that Jenny, the maid, was standing in the doorway.

"Well, Jenny?" she asked, trying to recover some of her dignity.

"It's a man, mum," said the little girl. (Grace had got her cheap from an orphanage.) "A gentleman, mum. He's asking for Mrs. Trenchard. 'E give me 'is card. Oh, mum, 'e is wet too!"

She had scarcely finished, and Grace had only taken the card, when Mathew Cardinal came forward out of the hall. He was a dim and mysterious figure in that half-light, but Grace could see that he was more battered and shabby than on his last visit. His coat collar was turned up. She could only very vaguely see his face, but it seemed to her strangely white when before it had been so grossly red.

She was struck by his immobility. Partly perhaps because she had been roused from sleep and was yet neither clear nor resolved, he seemed to her some nightmare figure. This was the man who was responsible for all the trouble and scandal, this was the man who threatened to drive Paul and herself from her home, this was the blackguard who had not known how to behave in decent society. But behind that was the terror of the mystery that enveloped Maggie—the girl's uncle, the man who had shared in her strange earlier life, and made her what she now was. As he stood there, motionless, silent, the water dripping from his clothes, Grace was as frightened as though he had already offered her personal violence or held a pistol to her head.

"What do you want?" she asked hoarsely, stepping back to the sofa. Jenny had left the room.

"I want to see my niece," he answered, still without moving. She recognised then, strangely, in his voice a terror akin to her own. He also was afraid of something. Of what? It was not that his voice shook or that his tongue faltered. But he was terrified ... She could feel his heart thumping behind the words.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You can't see her. She's upstairs resting."

She did not know whence the resolution had come that he was not, in any case, to see Maggie; she did not know what catastrophe she anticipated from their meeting. She was simply resolved, as though acting under the blind orders of some other power, that Maggie should not see him and that he should leave the house at once.

"I must see her," he said, and the desperate urgency in his voice would have touched any one less terrified than Grace. "I must."

"I'm sorry," she answered. The fear in his voice seemed now to give her superiority over him. "It's impossible."

"Oh no," he said. "If she's here it can't be impossible. She'd want to see me. We have things ... I must ... You don't understand, Miss Trenchard."

"I only know," said Grace, "that after what occurred on your last visit here, Mr. Cardinal, Maggie said that she would never see you again."

"That's a lie!" he said.

She made no answer. Then at last he said pitifully:

"She didn't really say that, did she?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. But you can understand after what occurred—"

He came suddenly forward, the water trickling from him on to the carpet.

"You swear that's true?"

She could see now his face and realised that he was, indeed, desperate—breathless as though he had been running from some one.

"Yes, that's true," she answered.

"Maggie said that."

"Those were Maggie's words."

"Oh, well, I'm done ..." He turned away from her as though her announcement had settled something about which he had been in doubt. "It isn't like Maggie ... But still she hasn't written. She saw I was hard up last time. All I deserve ... All I deserve." He turned round to Grace again. "I can't quite believe it, Miss Trenchard. It doesn't sound like Maggie, but perhaps you've influenced her ... That's likely. If she should change her mind I'm at the 'Sea Dog.' Not much of a place. Quiet though. Yes, well. You might tell her not to bother. I'm finished, you see, Miss Trenchard. Yes, down. You'll be glad to hear it, I've no doubt. Well, I mustn't stay talking. I wish Maggie were happier though. She isn't happy, is she?"

The question was so abrupt that Grace was startled.

"I should hope so—Mr. Cardinal," she said.

"Oh, no, she isn't. I know. Always this religion she gets into. If it isn't one sort it's another. But she's a good girl. Don't you forget that. Well, I must be going. Good day. Good day."

He was actually gone, leaving a little pool of water on the carpet behind him. Grace sat down on the sofa again. What a horrible man! What a horrible man! But she had been wrong to say that about Maggie. Yes, she had. But he had taken her by surprise. Oh dear! How her heart was beating! And how strange he had looked. She could scarcely breathe. She sat there lost in stupefied wonder. At last tea came in, and with it Paul and Maggie. Grace felt ashamed and frightened. Why was Maggie always making her do things of which she was ashamed? It was as though the girl had power over her ... absurd, of course. Nevertheless, as she poured out the tea she was haunted by that man's eyes. Yes, he had undoubtedly been very unhappy. Yes, in great trouble.

Maggie sat quietly there. Paul was preoccupied with a letter that must, he had decided, be written to The Church Times. It was a letter about Churchwardens and their growing independence. He finished his tea hurriedly, but before he left the room, looking at Maggie rather wistfully, suddenly he bent down and kissed her. She glanced up at him, smiling.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Grace?" she asked.

Then, as it were without her own desire, Grace was compelled to speak. "There's something I ought to tell you—" she began awkwardly. Then she stopped. Maggie was troubled. She knew that when Grace was uncomfortable every one else was uncomfortable.

"What have I done now?" she said rather sharply.

"It's nothing that you've done," answered Grace also sharply. "I'm sure I don't know, Maggie, why you should always think that I'm scolding you. No, I don't indeed. It's nothing that you've done. Your uncle came to see you this afternoon."

"Uncle Mathew?" Maggie jumped up from her chair. "Came here?"

"Yes."

"And wanted to see me? Oh, Grace, why didn't you tell me?"

"I have told you ... There's nothing to make a fuss about, Maggie. Really, you needn't look like that—as though I were always doing something wrong. I only did it for your sake."

"For my sake? But why? I wanted to see him. I was trying to see him in London. Oh, Grace, what did he say?"

"What did he say? Well, fancy! As though I could remember. He said he'd come to see you, and when I said he couldn't, he went away again."

"Said he couldn't? But why couldn't he?"

"Really, Maggie, your tone is extraordinary. Fancy what Paul would say if he heard you. He wouldn't like it, I'm sure. I said that after the way he'd behaved last time he came here you didn't want to see him again."

"You said that? Oh, Grace! How did you dare!" "Now, Maggie, don't you look like that. I've done nothing, I'm sure."

"Did you say that I'd said that I didn't want to see him again?"

Grace shrank back behind the tea-things.

"Yes, I did ... Maggie, you frighten me."

"I hope I do ... You're wicked, you're wicked. Yes, you are. Where is he now?"

"He's at the 'Sea Dog.' That dirty public house on the sea-front—near Tunstalls—Where are you going?"

"I'm going to him of course." Maggie turned and looked at Grace. Grace was fascinated as a rabbit is by a snake. The two women stared at one another.

"How strange you are, Grace," Maggie said. "You seem to like to be cruel!" Then she went out. When the door was closed Grace found "that she was all in a perspiration." Her hand trembled so that when she tried to pour herself another cup of tea—just to fortify herself—she poured it into the saucer. And the tea was cold—no use now.

When she rose at last to go in and seek consolation from Paul her knees were trembling so that she staggered across the floor. This couldn't go on. No, it could not. To be frightened in one's own house! Absurd ... Really the girl had looked terrible ... Murder ... That's what it had looked like. Something must be done.

Murmuring aloud to herself again and again "Something must be done" as she crossed the hall, she walked slowly, her hand to her heart, ponderously, as though she were walking in the dark. Then, as soon as she had opened the study door she began, before she could see her brother: "Oh, Paul, I'm so frightened. It's Maggie. She's very angry. Fancy what she said."

Maggie meanwhile had gone straight up to her bedroom and found her black hat and her waterproof. Her one thought now was lest he should have caught the five o'clock train and gone back to London. Oh! how hurt he would be with her, how terribly hurt! The thought of the pain and loneliness that he would feel distressed her so bitterly that she could scarcely put on her hat, she was so eager to run and find him. She felt, at the thought of his fruitless journey through the rain, the tenderest affection for him, maternal and loving, so that she wanted to have him with her at once and to see him in warm clothes beside the fire, drinking whisky if he liked, and she would give him all the money she possessed.

She had still touched very little of her own three hundred pounds. He should have as much of that as he liked. The death of Aunt Anne had shown her how few people in the world there were for her to love. After all, the aunts and Uncle Mathew had needed her as no one else had done. She made little plans; she would, perhaps, go back with him to London for a little time. There was, after all, no reason why she should remain in this horrible place for ever. And Paul now seemed not to care whether she went or stayed.

She ran out into the wind and the rain. She was surprised by the force and fury of it. It would take time and strength to battle down the High Street. Poor Uncle Mathew! To walk all the way in the rain and then to be told that she would not see him! She could imagine him turning away down the drive, bitterly disappointed ...

Probably he had come to borrow money, and she had promised that she would not fail him. When she reached the High Street she was soaked. She felt the water dripping down her neck and in her boots. At the corner of the High Street by the bookseller's she was forced to pause, so fiercely did the wind beat up from the Otterson Road, that runs openly to the sea. Maggie had not even in Glebeshire known so furious a day and hour when the winds tossed and raged but never broke into real storm. It was the more surprising. She had to pause for a moment to remember where Turnstall's the butcher was, then, suddenly recalling it, she turned off the High Street and found her way to the mean streets that ran behind the Promenade. Still she met no one. It might have been a town abandoned by all human life and given over to the wind and rain and the approaching absorption of the sea. It was now dark and the lamp at the end of the street blew gustily and with an uncertain flare.

Maggie found Turnstall's, its shop lit and Mr. Turnstall himself, stout and red-faced, behind his bloody counter. She went in and asked him where "The Sea Dog" might be. He explained to her that it was close at hand, on the right, looking over the Promenade. She found it at last because it had an old-fashioned creaking wooden sign with a blue sailor painted on it. Timidly she stepped into the dark uneven passage. To the right of her she could see a deserted room with wooden trestles and a table. The bar must be near because she could hear voices and the clinking of glasses, but, in spite of those sounds the house seemed very dead. Through the walls and rooms she could hear the pounding beat of the sea. She walked to the end of the passage and there found an old wrinkled man in riding breeches and a brightly-coloured check shirt.

"Can you tell me where a gentleman, Mr. Cardinal, is staying?" she asked.

He was obviously very deaf; she had to shout. She repeated her question, adding. "He came from London to-day."

A stout middle-aged woman appeared. "What is it?" she asked. "The old man's stone deaf. He can't hear at all."

"I was wondering," said Maggie, "whether you could tell me where I could find a Mr. Cardinal. He came down from London to-day and is staying here."

"Cardinal ... Cardinal?" The woman thought, scratching her head. "Was it Caldwell you meant?"

"No," said Maggie. "Cardinal."

"I'll go and see." The woman disappeared, whilst the old man brushed past Maggie as though she were a piece of furniture; he departed on some secret purpose of his own.

"What a horrible place!" thought Maggie. "Uncle must be in a bad way if he comes here. I never should sleep for the noise of the sea."

The woman returned. "Yes. 'E's here. No. 5. Come this afternoon. Up the stairs and second door on the right."

The stairs to which she pointed offered a gulf of darkness. The woman was gone. The noises from the bar had ceased. The only sound in the place was the thundering of the sea, roaring, as it seemed, at the very foot of the house.

Maggie climbed the stairs. Half-way up she was compelled to pause. The darkness blinded her; she had lost the reflection from the lamp below and, above her, there was no light at all. She advanced slowly, step by step, feeling her way with a hand on the rickety bannisters. At the top of the stair there was a gleam of light and, turning to the right, she knocked on the second door. There was no answer and she knocked again. Listening, the noise of the sea was now so violent that she fancied that she might not have heard the answer so she turned the handle of the door and pushed it open. She was met then by a gale of wind, a rush of the sea that seemed as imminent as though she were on the shore itself and a dim grey light that revealed nothing in the room to her but only shapes and shadows.

She knew at once that the windows must be wide open; she could hear some papers rustling and something on the wall tapped monotonously.

"Uncle Mathew!" she whispered, and then she called more loudly.

"Uncle Mathew! Uncle Mathew!"

There was no answer and suddenly a strange, quite unreasoning terror caught her by the throat. It was all that she could do not to cry out and run down to the gas-lit passage. She held herself there by sheer force; the smell of the sea was now very strong; there was a tang of rotten seaweed in it.

As she remained there she could see more clearly, but it seemed that the room was full of some dim obscuring mist. She moved forward into the room, knocked her knee against a table, and then as the panic gained upon her called more loudly, "Uncle... Uncle. Are you in? Where are you? It's I, Maggie."

"Oh well... of course he isn't here," she said to herself. "He's downstairs." And yet, strangely, something seemed to persuade her that he was there; it was as though he were maliciously hiding from her to tease her.

Feeling her way cautiously, her hands before her face, she moved forward to close the windows, thinking that she must shut out that abominable sound of the sea and the stale stink of the seaweed. She was suddenly caught by a sweep of rain that wetted her hair and face and neck. She started back and touched a piece of damp cloth. She turned, and there, very close to her but above her and staring over her head, was Uncle Mathew's face. It was so close to her that she could have touched it by putting up her hand. It was white-grey and she would not have seen it at all had she not been very near to it.

She realised nothing, but she felt that her knees were trembling and that she would fall if she did not steady herself. She put out her hand and clutched damp heavy thick cloth, cloth that enwrapped as it seemed some weighty substance like stone or brick.

She passed her hand upwards and suddenly the damp cloth gave way beneath her fingers, sinking inwards against something soft and flabby. She sprang away. She stood for one shuddering moment, then she screamed again and again, shrieking and running, as it were for her life, out of the room, down the passage. She could not find the staircase. Oh! she could not find the staircase! She stood there, leaning against the damp wall, crying: "Oh help! Help! Quickly!"

There were steps and voices, then the woman whom she had seen before appeared at the turn of the stair holding a lamp.

"What is it?" she asked, raising the light high. Maggie did not answer, only leaning there and staring down.

"You'd better come, Bill," the woman said. "There's something wrong up 'ere."

The woman came up the stairs followed by two men; they moved cautiously as though, they expected to find something terrible round the next corner.

"What is it?" said the woman again when she came up to Maggie. But Maggie made no answer. They pushed past her and went into the room. Maggie followed them. She saw the room obscured by mist; she heard some whispering and fumbling, then a match was struck; there was a bead-like flare followed suddenly by the flaming of a candle. In the quick light the room was bright. Maggie saw her uncle hanging from some projection in the rough ceiling. A chair was overturned at his feet. His body was like a bag of old clothes, his big boots turning inwards towards one another. His face was a dull grey and seemed cut off from the rest of his body by the thick blue muffler that encircled his neck. He was grinning at her; the tip of his tongue protruded at her between his teeth. She noticed his hands that hung heavily like dead fish.

After that she knew no more save that the sea seemed to rush in a great flood, with a sudden vindictive roar, into the room.

CHAPTER IX

SOUL OF PAUL

Nothing so horrible had ever happened to Paul before, nothing ...

He felt as though he had committed a murder; it was as though he expected arrest and started at every knock on the door. Nothing so horrible ...

It was, of course, in all the Skeaton papers. At the inquest it appeared that Mathew Cardinal had imitated the signature of a prosperous City friend; had he not chosen his own way out he would have discovered the arduous delights of hard labour. But he had chosen suicide and not "while of unsound mind." Yes, the uncle of the Rector's wife ... Yes, The Rector's Wife's Uncle ... Yes, The Rector's Wife's Uncle!

Sho discovered him, bumped right into him in the dark. What a queer story—like a novel. Oh, but she had always been queer—Trenchard had picked her up somewhere in a London slum; well, perhaps not a slum exactly but something very like it. Why did he marry her? Perhaps he had to. Who knows? These clergymen are sly dogs. Always the worst if the truth were known ...

So it went on. For nine whole days (and nights) it was the only topic in Skeaton. Paul caught the fringe of it. He had never known very much about his fellow-beings. He had always taken the things that they said to him as the true things, when they smiled he had thought that they meant their smiles. And why not? ... since he always meant his. He had always been too lazy to dislike people, and his digestion had been too good and his ambition too slender to urge him towards spite and malice. He had believed that he was on excellent terms with all the world.

Now that was changed. He was watched, he knew, with curious, inquisitive, critical glances. Through no fault of his own he was soiled and smirched. That hearty confident laugh of his must be checked. He was afraid. Yes, he was afraid. He sat in his study and trembled at the thought of meeting his congregation. He had done nothing and yet his reputation was no longer clean. But he was afraid, also, of something else. He saw, desperately against his will, the central picture. He saw the body hanging in the dark room, Maggie tumbling against it, the cries, the lights, the crowd ... He saw it all, hour after hour. He was not an imaginative man, but it seemed to him that he had actually been present at this scene. He had to attend the inquest. That had been horrible. With all eyes upon him he stood up and answered their detestable questions. He had trembled before those eyes. Suddenly the self-confidence of all his life had left him. He had stammered in his replies, his hands had trembled and he had been forced to press them close to his sides. He had given his answers as though he were a guilty man.

He came then slowly, in the silence of his study, to the consideration of Grace and Maggie. This would kill Grace. She had altered, in a few days, amazingly; she would meet nobody, but shut herself into her bedroom. She would not see the servants. She looked at Paul as though she, like the rest of the world, blamed him. Paul loved Grace. He had not known before how much. They had been together all their lives and he had taken her protection and care of him too much for granted. How good she had been to him and for how many years! When they were happy it seemed natural that she should look after him, but now, in the middle of this scandal he saw that it should have been he who looked after her. He had not looked after her. Of course, now they would have to leave Skeaton and he knew what that departure would mean to Grace. She was suspicious of new places and new people. Strange to think now that almost the only person of whom she had not been suspicious was Maggie.

Maggie! His mind slowly wheeled round to her. He rose from his chair and began clumsily to parade the room. He walked up and down the study as though with closed eyes, his large body bumping against corners of tables and chairs. Maggie! He looked back, as of late he had often done, to those days in his cousin's house in London. What had happened to the Maggie whom he had known there?

He saw her again, so quiet, so ready to listen and learn, so modest, and yet with a humour and sense of appreciation that had promised well for the future. A child—an ignorant, charming, uneducated child, that is what she had seemed. He admitted now that his heart, always too soft and too gentle perhaps, had been touched beyond wisdom. She had seemed to need just the protection and advice that he had been fitted to give her. Then, as though in the darkness of the night, the change had been made; from the moment of entering into Skeaton there had been a new Maggie. He could not tell himself, because he was not a man clever at psychology, in what the change consisted. Had he been pressed he would have said perhaps that he had known the old Maggie intimately, that nothing that she could say or do astonished him, but that this new Maggie was altogether a stranger. Time had not altered that; with the passing months he had known her less and less. Why, at their first meeting long ago in Katherine's house he had known her better than he knew her now. He traced the steps of their history in Skeaton; she had eluded him always, never allowing him to hold her for more than a moment, vanishing and appearing again, fantastic, in some strange lighted distance, hurting him and disappointing him ... He stopped in his walk, bewildered. He saw, with a sudden flash, that she had never appeared so fascinating to him as when she had been strangest. He saw it now at the moment when she seemed more darkly strange, more sinister and dangerous than ever before.

He realised, too, at the same sharp moment the conflict in which he was engaged. On the one side was all his life, his sloth and ease and comfort, his religion, his good name, his easy intercourse with his fellow-men, Grace, intellectual laziness, acceptance of things as they most easily are, Skeaton, regular meals, good drainage, moral, physical and spiritual, a good funeral and a favourable obituary in The Skeaton Times. On the other hand unrest, ill-health, separation from Grace, an elusive and never-to-be-satisfied pursuit, scandal and possible loss of religion, unhappiness ... At least it was to his credit that he realised the conflict; it is even further to his credit that he grasped and admitted the hopelessness of it. He knew which way he would go; even now he was tired with the thought of the struggle; he sank into his shabby chair with a sigh of weariness; his hand stretched out instinctively for an easy volume. But oh, Maggie! how strange and fascinating at that moment she appeared to him, with her odd silences, her flashes of startled surprise, her sense of being half the day in another world, her kindness to him and then her sudden terror of him, her ignorance and then the conviction that she gave suddenly to him that she knew more than he would ever know, above all, the way that some dark spirit deep down in him supported her wild rebellions, her irreverences, her irreligion, her scorn of tradition. Oh! she was a witch! Grace's word for her was right, but not Grace's sense of it. The more Grace was shocked the more tempting to him the witch became. It had seemed to him, that day in Katherine's drawing-room, so slight a thing when she had said that she did not love him, he had no doubt but that he could change that. How could a child, so raw and ignorant, resist such a man? And yet she had resisted. That resistance had been at the root of the trouble. Whichever way things went now, he was a defeated man.

The door opened and Grace came in. Looking at her he realised that she would never understand the struggle through which he had been timorously wading, and saw that she was further away from him than she had ever been before. He blamed her too. She had had no right to refuse that man to Maggie. Had she allowed Maggie to see him none of this might have occurred. The man was a forger and would, had he lived, have gone to prison, but there would not then have been the same open scandal. No, he blamed Grace. It might be that their old absolutely confident intimacy would never be renewed. He felt cold and lonely. He bent forward, putting some coal on the fire, breaking it up into a cheerful blaze. Then he looked up at her, and his heart was touched. She looked to-day an old woman. Her hair was untidy and her face was dull grey in colour. Her eyes moved restlessly round the room, wandering from picture to picture, from the mantelpiece to the chairs, from the chairs to the book-shelves, as though she sought in the sight of these well-remembered things some defence and security.

"Is your head better?" he asked her, not meeting her eyes, because the dull pain in them disturbed him.

"Not much," she said. "It's very bad, my head. I've taken aspirin. I didn't eat anything yesterday. Nothing at all except some bread and milk, and very little of that ... I couldn't finish it. I felt I'd be sick. I said to Emily, 'Emily, if I eat any more of that I'll be sick,' and Emily advised me not to touch it. What I mean is that if I'd eaten any more I'd have been really sick—at least that's what I felt like."

Her restless eyes came suddenly to a jerking pause as though some one had caught and gripped them. She was suddenly dramatic. "Oh. Paul, what are we going to do?" she cried.

Paul was irritated by that. He hated to be asked direct questions as to policy.

"What do you mean what are we going to do?" he asked.

"Why, about this—about everything. We shall have to leave Skeaton, you know. Fancy what people are saying!"

Suddenly, as though the thought of the scandal was too much for her, her knees gave way and she flopped into a chair.

"Well, let them say!" he answered vigorously. "Grace, you're making too much of all this. You'll be ill if you aren't careful. Pull yourself together." "Of course we've got to go," she answered. "If you think that we can go on living here after all that's happened—"

"Well, why not?" he interrupted. "We haven't done anything. It's only—"

"I know what you're going to say." (It was one of Grace's most irritating habits that she finished other people's sentences for them in a way that they had not intended) "that if they look at it properly they'll see that it wasn't our fault. But will they look at it properly? Of course they won't. You know what cats they are. They're only waiting for a chance. What I mean is that this is just the chance they've been waiting for."

"How can you go on and every time you preach they'll be looking up at you and saying 'There's a brother of a murderer'? Why, fancy what you'd feel!"

Paul jumped in his chair. "What do you mean, Grace? The brother of a murderer?"

"What else am I?" Grace began to warm her podgy hands. "It came out at the inquest that I wouldn't see the man, didn't it? Maggie thinks me a murderer. I see it in her eyes every time. What I mean to say, Paul, is, What are you going to do about Maggie?"

Grace's voice changed at that question. It was as though that other trouble of the scandal were nothing to her compared with this matter of Maggie's presence. Paul turned and looked at her. She dropped her voice to a whisper and went on:

"I won't stay with Maggie any more. No, no, no! You must choose, Paul, between Maggie and me. What I mean is that it simply isn't safe in the same house with her. You may not have noticed it yourself, but I've seen it coming on a long time. I have indeed. She isn't right in her head, and she hates me. She's always hated me. She'd like to do me an injury. She follows me round the house. She's always watching me, and now that she thinks that I killed her uncle it's worse. I'm not safe, Paul, and that's the truth. She hides in my room behind the curtains waiting for me. It's my safety you've got to consider. It's me or her. I know she's your wife, but what I mean is that there'll be something awful happening if you aren't careful."

Grace, as she spoke, was a woman in the very heart of a desperate panic. Her whole body trembled; her face was transfixed as though she saw Maggie standing in front of her there with a knife. No one looking at her could deny that she was in mortal terror—no affectation here. And Paul loved her. He came over to her and put his arm round her; she caught hold of his hand, clutched it desperately. When he felt the trembling of her body beneath his hand his love for her and protective care of her overwhelmed him.

"Grace, dear, it's all right," he said. "You're exaggerating all this. Maggie wouldn't hurt a fly—indeed, she wouldn't. She has her faults, perhaps, but cruelty isn't one of them. You must remember that she's had a bad time lately losing her aunt and then finding her uncle in that horrible way. After all, she's only a child. I know that you two haven't got on well together, and I daresay that it has been very largely my fault; but you mustn't be frightened like that. No harm shall come to you so long as I am alive—no harm whatever."

But she stared in front of her, like a woman in a dream, repeating—

"No, no, Paul. Either she goes or I go. She's your wife. She must stay. Then I must go. I can't stand it; I can't indeed. I'm not sleeping; I'm not indeed. It isn't fair to ask it. What I mean is that it isn't fair to me."

Although he had known Grace for years he still believed her threats and promises. "My sister's an obstinate woman," he would say, although had he looked truly into his experience he must have seen that she changed her mind more frequently by far than she changed her clothes. He thought that now she meant what she said; indeed, on his own side he really did not see how in the future Maggie and Grace could continue to live in the same house. But, as Grace had said, he was married to Maggie and therefore it was Grace that must go. Then when he confronted the fact of Grace's departure he could not endure it. No, he could not. Had Maggie been everything to him that she might have been, bad she been his true wife, had she loved him, had she—oh! a thousand things she might have been!—then perhaps life would be possible without Grace. But now! ... at the thought of being alone for ever with Maggie a strange passion, mingled of fascination and fear, affection and sensuality, cowardice and excitement, pervaded him. What would their life together be? Then he turned to Grace as the very rock of his safety.

"Oh, Grace, you mustn't go—you mustn't think of going. Whatever should I do without you?"

A dull flush of gratification coloured her cheeks.

"Either she goes or I," she repeated. "It can't go on. You must see that it can't. Fancy what people must be thinking!"

As always, he postponed the issue. "We'll settle something. Don't you worry, dear. You go and lie down. That's what you want—a thorough good rest."

She plodded off. For himself he decided that fresh air was what he needed. He went for a stroll. As soon as he was in the Charleston Road that led to the High Street he was pleased with the day. Early spring; mild, faint haze, trees dimly purple, a bird clucking, the whisper of the sea stirring the warm puddles and rivulets across the damp dim road. Warm, yes, warm and promising. Lent ... tiresome. Long services, gloomy sermons. Rebuking people, scolding them—made them angry, did them no good. Then Easter. That was better. Jolly hymns. "Christ is risen! Christ is risen!" Jolly flowers—primroses, crocuses—(no, they were earlier). They'll have forgotten about Maggie's uncle by then. Live it down—that's the thing. Give them a good genial sermon this Sunday. Show them he wasn't caring ... If only the women would get on together. Women—women. How difficult they were! Yes, Sunday would be difficult—facing them all. He knew what they'd be thinking. He wanted to be jolly again. Jolly. That was the thing. Joking with Grace, jolly even with Maggie. Jolly with his congregation. Jolly with God. Why wasn't he left alone? Had been until Maggie came. Maggie like a stone flung into a frosty pool! Broke everything up, simply because she was unlike other people. He'd married her because he thought he could make her into what he pleased. Well, it had been the other way. Oh, she was queer, queer, queer.

He stopped, his large boots in a warm puddle. He felt the warm sun hot through the damp mist. He wanted to take her into his arms, to hug her, above all to feel her response. To feel her response, that was what, for years now, he had been wanting, and never once had she responded. Never once. She let him do as he pleased, but she was passive. She didn't love him. Grace loved him, but how dull Grace was! Dull—it was all dull! Grace was dull, Skeaton was dull, the church was dull—God was dull! God? Where was God? He looked around. There was no God. To what had he been praying all these years? He had not been praying. His congregation had not been praying. They were all dead and God was dead too.

He looked up and saw that his boots were in a puddle. He walked on. For a moment, the mists of sloth and self-indulgence that had for years obscured his vision had shifted and cleared, but even as he moved they settled down and resolved themselves once more. The muscles of Paul's soul were stiff with disuse. Training is a lengthy affair and a tiresome business to the stout and middle-aged.

The hedges gave way to houses; he was in the High Street. He saw then, plastered at intervals on the hoardings, strange phenomena. It was the colour that first attracted him—a bright indecent pink with huge black lettering. Because it was the offseason in Skeaton other announcements were few. All the more prominent then the following:

THE KINGSCOTE BEETHEEN WILL HOLD A RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL IN THE TOWN
OF SKEATON-ON-SEA FROM APRIL 10 TO 16.——-SERVICES 10 A.M., 3 P.M. SPECIAL SONG SERVICE, 7.30 P.M. DAILY All are Cordially Invited. ADDRESSES BY REV. JOHN THURSTON. REV. WILLIAM CRASHAW. SISTER AVIES.

Paul stared at this placard with horror and disgust in his soul. For the moment Maggie and Grace and all the scandal connected with them was forgotten. This was terrible. By temperament, tradition, training, he loathed and feared every phase of religion known to him as "Methodistic." Under this term he included everything that was noisy, demonstrative, ill-bred and melodramatic. Once when an undergraduate at Cambridge he had gone to some meeting of the kind. There had been impromptu prayers, ghastly pictures of hell-fire, appeals to the undergraduates to save themselves at once lest it be too late, confessions and appeals for mercy. The memory of that evening still filled him with physical nausea. It was to him as though he had seen some gross indecent act in public or witnessed some horrible cruelty.

Maggie had told him very little about the Chapel and its doings, and he had shrunk from asking her any questions, but everything that was odd and unusual in her behaviour he attributed to her months under that influence. As he stared at the flaunting pink sheet he felt as though it were a direct personal assault on himself and his church.

And yet he knew that he could do nothing. Once before there had been something of the kind in Skeaton and he had tried with others to stop it. He had failed utterly; the civic authorities in Skeaton seemed almost to approve of these horrors. He looked at the thing once more and then turned back towards home. Something must be done... Something must be done ... but, as on so many earlier occasions in his life, he could face no clear course of action.

That Saturday evening he tried to change his sermon. He had determined to deliver a very fine address on "Brotherly Love" and then, most fortunately, he had discovered a five-years' old sermon that would, with a little adaptation, exactly fit the situation.

To-night he was sick of his adaptation. The sermon had not been a good one at the first, and now it was a tattered thing of shreds and patches. He tried to add to it some sentences about the approaching "Revival." No sentences would come. What a horrible fortnight it had been! He looked back upon his district visiting, his meetings, his choir-practices with disgust. Something had come in between himself and his people. Perhaps the relationship had never been very real? Founded on jollity. An eagerness to accept anybody's mood for one's own if only that meant jollity. What had he thought, standing in the puddle that afternoon? That they were all dead, he and his congregation and God, all dead together? He sank into his chair, picked up the Church Times, and fell asleep.

Next morning as he walked into the choir this extraordinary impression that his congregation was dead persisted. As he recited the "Confession" he looked about him. There was Mr. Maxse, and there Miss Purves. Every one was in his and her appointed place; old Colonel Rideout with the purple gills not kneeling because of his gout; young Edward Walter, heir to the sugar factory, not kneeling because he was lazy; sporting Mr. Harper, whose golf handicap was +3, not kneeling because to do so would spoil the crease of his trousers; old Mrs. Dean with her bonnet and bugles, the worst gossip in Skeaton, her eyes raised to heaven; the Quiller girls with their hard red colour and their hard bright eyes; Mr. Fortinum, senior, with his County Council stomach and his J.P. neck; the dear old Miss Fursleis who believed in God and lived accordingly; young Captain Trent, who believed in his moustache and lived accordingly ... Oh yes, there they all were—and there, too, were Grace and Maggie kneeling side by side.

Maggie! His eyes rested upon her. Her face suddenly struck him as being of extraordinary beauty. He had never thought her beautiful before; very plain, of course. Every one knew that she was plain. But to-day her face and profile had the simplicity, the purity, the courage of a Madonna in one of the old pictures—or, rather, of one of those St. John the Baptist boys gazing up into the face of the Christ—child as it lay in its mother's arms. He finished the "Confession" hurriedly—Maggie's face faded from his view; he saw now only a garden of hats and heads, the bright varnished colour of the church around and about them all.

He gave out the psalms; there was a rustle of leaves, and soon shrill, untrained voices of the choir-boys were screaming the chant like a number of baby steam-whistles in competition.

When he climbed into the pulpit he tried again to discover Maggie's face as he had already seen it. He could not; it had been, perhaps, a trick of light and, in any case, she was hidden now behind the stout stolidity of Grace. He looked around at the other faces beneath him and saw them settle themselves into their customary expressions of torpor, vacuity and expectation. Very little expectation! They knew well enough, by this time, the kind of thing to expect from him, the turn of phrase, the rise and fall of the voice, the pause dramatic, the whisper expostulatory, the thrust imperative, the smile seductive.

He had often been told, as a curate, that he was a wonderful preacher. His round jolly face, his beaming smile, a certain dramatic gift, had helped him. "He is so human," he had heard people say. For many years he had lived on that phrase. For the first time in his life, this morning he distrusted his gift. He was out of touch with them all—because they were dead, killed by forms and repetitions and monotony. "We're all dead, you know, and I'm dead too. Let's close the doors and seal this church up. Our day is over." He said of course nothing of the kind. His sermon was stupid, halting and ineffective.

"Naturally," as Colonel Rideout said over his port at lunch, "when a feller's wife's uncle has just hung himself in public, so to speak, it does take the wind out of you. He usen't to preach badly once. Got stale. They all do."

As Paul dismissed the congregation with the Blessing he felt that everything was over. He was more completely miserable than he had ever been. He had in fact never before been really miserable except when he had the toothache. And now, also, the custom of years made it impossible for him to be miserable for long. He had had no real talk with Maggie since the inquest. Maggie came into his study that afternoon. Their conversation was very quiet and undemonstrative; it happened to be one of the most important conversations in both their lives, and, often afterwards, Paul looked back to it, trying to retrace in it the sentences and movements with which it had been built up. He could never recover anything very much. He could see Maggie sitting in a way that she had on the edge of her chair, looking at him and looking also far beyond him. He knew afterwards that this was the last moment in his life that he had any contact with her. Like a witch, like a ghost, she had come into his life; like a witch, like a ghost, she went out of it, leaving him, for the remainder of his days, a haunted man.

As he looked at her he realised that she had aged in this last fortnight. Yes, that horrible affair had taken it out of her. She seemed to have recovered self-control at some strange and unnatural cost—as though she had taken some potion or drug.

She began by asking Grace's question:

"Paul, what are we going to do?"

But she did not irritate him as Grace had done. His one idea was to help her; unfortunately he had himself thought out nothing clearly.

"Well, Maggie," he answered, smiling, "I thought you might help me about that. I want your advice. I thought—well, as a matter of fact I hadn't settled anything—but I thought that I might get a locum for a month or two and we might go abroad for a trip perhaps. To Paris, or Venice, or somewhere."

"And then come back?" she asked.

"For a time—yes—certainly," he answered.

"I don't think I can ever come back to Skeaton," she said in a whisper, as though speaking to herself. He could see that she was controlling herself and steadying her voice with the greatest difficulty. "Of course I must come, Paul, if you want me to. It's been all my fault from the very beginning——"

"Oh no," he broke in, "it hasn't."

"Yes, it has. I've just spoilt your life and Grace's. You were both very happy until I came. I had no right to marry you when I didn't love you. I didn't know then all I know now. But that's no excuse. I should have known. I was younger than most girls are, though."

Paul said:

"But Maggie, you're not to blame yourself at all. I think if we were somewhere else than Skeaton it would be easier. And now after what has happened—"

Maggie broke in: "You couldn't leave Skeaton, Paul. You know you couldn't. It would just break your heart. All the work of your life has been here—everything you've ever done. And Grace too."

"No, no, you're wrong," said Paul vigorously. "A change is probably what I need. I've been too long in the same place. Time goes so fast that one doesn't realise. And for Grace, too, I expect a change will be better."

"And do you think," said Maggie, "that Grace will ever live with me now in the same house when she knows that I've driven you from Skeaton? Grace is quite right. She's just to feel as she does about me."

"Then Grace must go," said Paul firmly, looking at Maggie and feeling that the one thing that he needed was that she should be in his arms and he kissing her. "Maggie, if we go away, you and I, right away from all of this, perhaps then you can—you will—" he stopped.

She shook her head. "Never, Paul. Never. Do you know what I've seen this last week? That I've left all those who really wanted me. My aunts, very much they needed me, and I was selfish and wouldn't give them what they wanted, and tried to escape from them. You and Grace don't need me. Nobody wants anything here in Skeaton. You're all full. It isn't my fault, Paul, but everything seems to me dead here. They don't mean anything they say in Church, and the Church doesn't mean anything either. The Chapel was wrong in London too, but it was more right than the Church here is. I don't know what religion is or where it is: I don't know anything now except that one ought to be with the people who want one and not with the people who don't. Aunt wanted me and I failed her. Uncle wanted me and I—I—I—"

She broke down, crying, her head in her arms. He went over to her and put his arms around her. At his touch she shrank a little, and when he felt that he went away from her and stood, silently, not knowing what to do.

"Maggie, don't—don't, Maggie. I can't bear to hear you cry."

"I've done all wrong—I've done all wrong," she answered him. "I've been wrong always."

His helplessness was intolerable. He knew that she would not allow him to touch her. He went out closing the door softly behind him.

CHAPTER X

THE REVIVAL

Maggie cried for a little while, then, slowly recovering, realised that she was alone in the room. She raised her head and listened; then she dried her eyes and stood up, wondering what she should do next.

During the last week she had spent all her energy on one thing alone—to keep back from her the picture of Uncle Mathew's death. That at all costs she must not see. There it was, just behind her, hovering with all its detail, at her elbow. All day and most of the night she was conscious of it there, but she would not turn and look. Uncle Mathew was dead—that was all that she must know. Aunt Anne was dead too. Martin had written to her, and then, because she had not answered, had abandoned her. Paul and Grace were to be driven out of Skeaton because of her. Grace hated her; Paul would never love her unless she in return would love him—and that she would never do because she loved Martin. She was alone then.

She had made every one unhappy—Aunt Anne, Uncle Mathew, Paul, Grace; the best thing that she could do now was to go away and hide herself somewhere.

That, at least, she saw very clearly and she clung to it. If she went away Paul and Grace need not leave Skeaton; soon they would forget her and be happy once more as they had been before she came. But where should she go? All her life she had depended upon her own self-reliance, but now that had left her. She felt as though she could not move unless there was some one somewhere who cared for her. But there was no one. Katherine Mark. No, she certainly could never go there again. Behind all this was the constant preoccupation that she must not look, for an instant, at Uncle Mathew's death. If she did everything would break ... She must not. She must not. She must not.

She went up to her bedroom, took from their box Martin's letters and the ring with the three pearls, and the tattered programme. She sat on her bed and turned them over and over. She was bewildered and scarcely knew where she was. She repeated again and again: "I must go away at once ... I must go away at once."

Then as though moved by some compelling force that she did not recognise she fell on her knees beside the bed, crying: "Martin, Martin, I want you. I don't know where you are but I must find you. Martin, tell me where you are. I'll go to you anywhere. Martin, where are you? Where are you?"

It may not have been a vocal cry; perhaps she made no sound, but she waited, there on her knees, hearing very clearly the bells ringing for evening service and seeing the evening sun steal across her carpet and touch gently, the pictures on the wall. Gradually as she knelt there, calm and reassurance came back to her. She felt as though he, somewhere lost in the world, had heard her. She laid her cheek upon the quilt of the bed and, for the first time since Uncle Mathew's death, her thoughts worked in connected order, her courage returned to her, and she saw the room and the sun and the trees beyond the window as real objects, without the mist of terror and despair that had hitherto surrounded her.

She rose from her knees as though she were withdrawing from a horrible nightmare. She could remember nothing of the events of the last week save her talk with Paul that afternoon. She could recall nothing of the inquest, nor whether she had been to Church, nor any scene with Grace.

"So long as I'm alive and Martin's alive it's all right," she thought. She knew that he was alive. She would find him. She put away the things into the box again; she had not yet thought what she would do, but, in some way, she had received during those few minutes in her room a reassurance that she was not alone.

She went out into the spring dusk. She chose the road towards Barnham Wood because it was lonely there and the hedges were thin; you could feel the breath of the sea as it blew across the sparse fields. The hush of an English Sunday evening enfolded the road, the wood, the fields. The sun was very low and the saffron light penetrated the dark lines of the hedges and hung like a curtain of misty gold before the approaches to the wood. The red-brown fields rolled to the horizon and lay, like a carpet, at the foot of the town huddled against the pale sky.

She was near the wood, and could see the little dark twisted cone-strewn paths that led into the purple depths, when a woman came out of it towards her. She saw that it was Miss Toms. It seemed quite natural to see her there because it was on this same road that she had first met the lady and her brother. Miss Toms also did not seem at all surprised. She shook Maggie warmly by the hand.

"You said that I wouldn't come often to see you," said Maggie.

"And it's been true. Things have been more difficult for me than I knew at the time."

"That's all right," said Miss Toms.

"But I ought to tell you," said Maggie, "that although I haven't been to see you, I've felt as though you and your brother were my friends, more than any one in this place. And that's been a great help to me."

They started to walk down the road together.

"You've been in trouble," said Miss Toms. "Of course I've heard about it. I would have liked to come and see you but I didn't know how your sister-in-law would like it."

She put her arm through Maggie's.

"My dear," she said, "don't be discouraged. Because Skeaton is dead it doesn't mean that all the world is. And remember this. The world's view of any one is never the right one. I know that the world thinks my brother's mad, but I know that he's a lot saner than most people. The world thinks your uncle was a rascal, but if you can remember one good thing he did you know he wasn't, and I'm sure you can remember many good things."

"It isn't that," said Maggie. "It is that I seem to have done everything wrong and made every one I had to do with unhappy."

"Nonsense," said Miss Toms. "I'm sure if they've been unhappy it's their own fault. Isn't the evening air lovely? At times like these I wonder that Skeaton can dare to exist. You'll come and see us one day, won't you?"

"I think—I don't know," said Maggie; "I may be going away."

Miss Toms gave her a penetrating look.

"I daresay you're right. Skeaton's not the place for you. I saw that the first time we met. Well, whatever you do, don't lose your pluck. You're yourself, you know, and you're as good as anybody else. Don't you forget that. Because a lot of people say a thing it doesn't mean it's true, and because a set of idiots think a thing shocking it doesn't mean that it's shocking. Think how wrong people have always been about everything!"

They turned down a side lane and arrived in the High Street. The street was very empty. In the fading light a large pink poster attracted Maggie's attention. She went close to it and read the announcement of the Revival services.

When she read the names of Thurston and Mr. Crashaw and Miss Avies it seemed to her incredible, and then at the same time as something that she had always expected.

"Oh," she cried, "it's coming here!" She was strangely startled as though the sign of Thurston's name was strange forewarning.

"What's coming?" asked Miss Toms.

She read the notice.

"I don't know what you think," said Miss Toms, "but that kind of thing's humbug if you ask me."

"Oh!" Maggie cried. "It's so strange. I knew those people in London. I used to go to their services. And now they're coming here!"

She could not explain to Miss Toms the mysterious assurance that she had of the way that her former world was drawing near to her again. She could see now that never for a moment since her arrival in Skeaton had it let her alone, slowly invading her, bit by bit driving in upon her, forcing her to retire ...

It was quite dark now. Because it was Sunday evening the shops were closed. Only behind some of the curtained windows dim lights burned. Very clearly the sea could be heard breaking upon the shore. The last note of the bell from the Methodist Chapel echoed across the roofs and stones.

"Good-night," said Miss Toms.

"Good-night," said Maggie.

She turned back towards home hearing, as she went, Thurston's voice, seeing beyond all the thick shadow of Martin's body, keeping pace with her, as it seemed, step by step with her as she went.

She turned into the Rectory drive. She heard with a startled shiver the long gate swing screaming behind her, she could smell very faintly the leaves of the damp cold laurel bushes that pressed close in upon her. It was as though some one were walking with her and whispering in her ear: "They're coming! They're coming! They've got you! They've got you!"

She opened the hall door; the hall was all dark; some one was there. Maggie gave a little cry. A match was struck and revealed the white face of Grace. The two women stared at one another.

Grace had returned from Church; she was wearing her ugly black hat with the red velvet.

"It's all right," said Maggie, "I've been for a walk."

"Oh—I didn't know," gasped Grace, still staring. "I thought—yes, of course. Fancy, you've been for a walk!"

Still staring as though she could keep Maggie at bay only by the power of her vision she backed on to Paul's study door, turned the handle, and disappeared. The hall was in darkness again. Maggie stumbled her way towards the staircase, then, seeing Grace's terrified eyes, filled with a horror that she, Maggie Cardinal, should cause any one to look at her like that, she ran clumsily upstairs, shutting herself into her bedroom.

During the next fortnight the dominant element in the situation was Grace's terror. Skeaton was already beginning to forget the story of the suicide. Maggie was marked for ever now as "queer and strange," but Paul was not blamed; he was rather, pitied and even liked the more. But Grace could not forget. Maggie intended perhaps to murder her in revenge for her uncle's death; well, then, she must be murdered ... She would not leave her brother. She could not consider the future. She knew that she could not live in the same house with Maggie for long, but she would not go and Maggie would not go ... What was to happen?

Poor Grace, the tortures that she suffered during those weeks will not be understood by persons with self-confidence and a hearty contempt for superstition.

She paid the penalty now for the ghosts of her childhood—and no one could help her.

Maggie saw that Paul was, with every day, increasingly unhappy. He had never been trained to conceal his feelings, and although he tried now he succeeded very badly. He would come into her room in the early morning hours and lie down beside her. He would put his arms around her and kiss her, and, desperately, as though he were doing it for a wager, make love to her. She felt, desperate also on her side, that she could comfort and make him happy, if only he would want something less from her than passion. But always after an hour or a little more, he crept away again to his own room, disappointed, angered, frustrated. These hours were the stranger because, during the day, he showed her nothing of this mood, but was kindly and friendly and distant.

She would have done anything for him; she tried sometimes to be affectionate to him, but always, at once, he turned upon her with a hungry, impassioned look ...

She knew, without any kind of doubt, that the only way that she could make him happy again was to leave him. His was not a nature to brood, for the rest of his days, on something that he had lost.

Only once did he make any allusion to the coming Revival services. He burst out one day, at luncheon: "The most scandalous thing!" he said. "We had them here once, years ago, and the harm they did no one would believe. I've been to Tamar about it; he can do nothing, unless they disturb the public peace, of course. He had the impertinence to tell me that they behaved very well last time they were here!"

"I don't like that man," said Grace. "I don't believe he makes his money properly. Look at the clothes Mrs. Tamar wears! What I mean is, I don't like his wife at all."

"It's very hard," said Paul, his voice trembling with indignation, "that when men and women have been working for years to bring Christ into the hearts of mankind that mountebanks and hypocrites should be allowed to undo the work in the space of a night. I know this man Thurston. They've had letters in the Church Times about him." "Fancy!" said Grace, "and still he dares show his face."

"But do they really do so much harm?" asked Maggie. "I should have thought if they only came once for a week in ten years they couldn't make any real effect on anybody—"

"Maggie, dear," said Paul gently, "you don't understand."

As the day of the Revival approached, Maggie knew that she would go to one of the services. She was now in a strange state of excitement. The shock of her uncle's death had undoubtedly shaken her whole balance, moral, physical, and mental. The fortnight that had followed it, when she had clung like a man falling from a height and held by a rocky ledge to the one determination not to look either behind or in front of her, had been a strain beyond her strength.

She did not know; she did not feel any weakness; she felt rather a curious atmosphere of light and expectation as though that cry to Martin in her bedroom had truly been answered. And she felt more than this. Old Magnus had once said to her: "I don't know what religion is except that it is a fight—and some people join in because they want to, some are forced to join in whether they want to or no, some just leave it alone, and some (most) don't know there's one going on at all. But if you don't join in you seem to me to have wasted your time."

She had not understood in the least what he meant; she did not understand now; but, thinking of his words, it did seem to her that she was sharing in some conflict. The vast armies hidden from her by mist, the contested ground also hidden, but the clash of arms clearly to be heard. Her own part of a struggle seemed to be round her love for Martin; it was as though, if she could get some realisation of that, she would have won her way to a vantage-point whence she could visualise the next place. She did not think this out. She only felt in her heart a little less lonely, a little less wicked and selfish, a little less deserted, as though she were drawing nearer to some hidden fire and could feel the first warm shadow of the flames.

She made one more appeal to Grace on the very morning of the first day of the Revival.

After breakfast Maggie came into the drawing-room and found Grace sitting there sewing.

She stood, timidly, in her old attitude, her hands clasped in front of her, like a child saying her lesson.

"I beg your pardon, Grace."

Grace looked up. She had of course been conscious of Maggie ever since her entrance into the room. Her hands had trembled and her heart leapt furiously.

"Why, Maggie—" she said.

"I'm afraid I'm disturbing you," said Maggie, "but we haven't really said anything to one another for the last fortnight. I don't suppose that you want me to say anything now, but things get worse and worse if no one says anything, don't they?" Now that she had begun she went on quickly: "I wanted to say, Grace, how sorry I am for the trouble and unhappiness that you and Paul have had during the last fortnight through me. I've been nothing but a trouble to you since I first came here, but it wasn't that that I wanted to say. I couldn't bear that you should think that I was just selfishly full of my own affairs and didn't understand how you and Paul must feel about—about my uncle. Not that I mean," she went on rather fiercely, raising her head, "that he was to blame. No one ever understood him. He could have done great things if—if—some one had looked after him a little. But he hadn't any one. That was my fault. I didn't want you and Paul to think I don't blame myself. I do all the time. I can't promise to be better in the future because I've promised so often and I never am. But I am sorry."

Grace said nothing for a moment. Her hands trembled more than ever. Then, without looking up, she murmured as though to her sewing:

"Oh no. Maggie ... no one blames you, I'm sure."

There was another pause, then Grace said:

"I think I'm not well. No, I can't be well because I'm not sleeping, although I've taken aspirin more, I'm sure, than I ought to. What I mean is that they say it's bad for your heart. Of course things have been very unfortunate, from the beginning one might say, but I'm sure it's not been any one's fault exactly. What I mean is that these things never are ... No, they aren't really. I expect we all want a change."

"What are you frightened of me for, Grace," asked Maggie.

Grace started as though Maggie had indeed dropped a bomb at her feet. She looked up at Maggie, wildly, her eyes staring about the room as though she were looking for some exit of escape.

"Frightened?" she repeated.

"Yes, you are," said Maggie. "That's what worries me most. No one's ever been frightened of me before—at least I don't think any one has." Maggie laughed. "Why, Grace, it seems so funny any one being frightened of me. I couldn't hurt any one if I wanted to, and I'm sure I never want to unless it's Mrs. Maxse. Be angry with me as much as you like, Grace, but don't be frightened of me. Why, that's ridiculous!"

It was the worst word to have chosen. Grace flushed a dull unwholesome purple.

"I'm sorry you think me ridiculous, Maggie," she said. "Perhaps I am. I'm sure I don't know. Yes, perhaps I am. What I mean is that what's ridiculous to one is not ridiculous to another. You're a strange girl, Maggie, and you and I will never get on. No, never. But all I ask is that you should make Paul happy. That is enough for me. I care for nothing else. He isn't very happy just now. What I mean is that any one can see he isn't eating his meals properly."

"Oh, Grace," cried Maggie. "I didn't mean that you were ridiculous. I meant that any one being frightened of me was ridiculous. Anyway, I'm very sorry that I've made you and Paul unhappy. That's all."

She turned and went.

It was the most lovely of April days, soft, primrose-coloured, the sea-breeze gently tempered by mist-veiled sun. Maggie sat at her bedroom window overlooking the drive and the blue-grey field that ran to the woods. She knew that there would be no difficulty about her escape to the Revival meeting. Paul had arranged that there should be an evening service at the Church at the same hour, an act of rather Un-Christian defiance. Maggie sat there, looking down in a condition of strange bewildering excitement on to the laurel bushes. It was wonderful to think that in another half-hour she would see Miss Avies once more, hear those wild hymns again, catch the stridency of Thurston's voice; all these things spoke of Martin. She felt as though he were stealing towards her out of the dusk, it was as though, without any reason, she expected to find him at the service ... although she knew that he could not be there.

She heard the Church bell begin to ring, then the hall-door opened and Paul came out. He had on his soft black hat, he was carrying his Bible and prayer-book under his arm. He stood, for a moment, beside the hall-door as though he were listening or expecting something. She had a strange impulse to run down to him; so strong was it that she got up and moved to the door. Then slowly she came back to the window and stood looking down upon him. Suddenly, as though he felt her gaze, he glanced up, saw her, and waved to her. She waved back to him. He turned and walked quickly away, she heard the gate swing, screaming behind him.

She waited for a little, then put on her hat and coat and went out. She knew the Flower Street Hall, a place occasionally used by touring Companies, Wandering Lecturers, Charitable Concerts, and other casual festivals. It was at the far end of the town towards the end of the Promenade.

The town, dim in the first dusk, hummed with loiterers, girls released from the shops walking with their young men, middle-aged couples sauntering out to take a last whiff of the sea before going in to the evening meal, one or two visitors from the Hotel strolling across to the beach to watch the first evening stars and the rising moon. Pianos were playing, children shouting over the last game of the day; all hushed into a coloured mild tranquillity. In the fields beyond the houses the quiet was absolute.

Maggie found the building. The facade was blazing with electric light. A huge poster, of the now familiar pink, declared:

GRAND RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL. All are invited. IS ALL WELL WITH YOU,
BROTHER?

There was a crowd about the doors, and continually, with giggles and shamefaced laughter, couples broke away and climbed the steps into the Hall. Maggie, feeling that all eyes were upon her, entered the building. In the vestibule two grave-faced women in black bonnets handed papers with prayers and hymns to every newcomer. Maggie took hers, a door was opened in front of her, and she went in. The auditorium was a large one, semicircular in shape, with tiers of seats rising circus-fashion to a ceiling decorated with silver stars and pink naked cherubs. The stage had upon it a table, some chairs, and a reading-desk draped in crimson cloth. Below the stage was a small orchestra, consisting of two fiddles, a cornet, drum, and a piano. There was also what seemed to Maggie a small choir, some women dressed in white and some men in black coats and white bow ties. Across the stage were suspended broad white bands of cloth with "Come to Jesus!" "Come now!" "He is waiting for you!" in big black letters.

The hall seemed very full, and was violently illuminated with electric light. Maggie took this in as she stood very timidly just inside the door. A steward came forward and showed her a corner-seat. She saw, then, with a dramatic flash of recognition, Thurston and Mr. Crashaw sitting behind the table; then, with a still stranger emotion, Miss Avies as one of the white-robed choir. The sight of those three familiar faces seemed to close, finally and definitely, the impression that she had had during all those last weeks. They had "got" her again, and yet not they, but the power behind them. It seemed only five minutes ago that she had sat in the London Chapel and heard old Crashaw scream "Punishment! Punishment! Punishment!" She turned half in her seat as though she expected to see Aunt Anne and Aunt Elizabeth sitting one on either side of her. She looked at Thurston; he had coarsened very much since she had seen him last. He was fatter, his cheeks stained with an unnaturally high colour, his eyes brighter and sharper and yet sensual too. He was smarter than he had been, his white bow tie stiff and shapely, his cuffs clean and shining, his hair very carefully brushed back from his high and bony forehead. His sharp eyes darted all over the building, and Maggie felt as though at any moment she would be discovered. Crashaw looked more like a decrepit monkey than ever, huddled up in his chair, his back bow-shaped. He breathed into his hands as though he wanted to warm them, and looked at nobody. Miss Avies Maggie could not see clearly.

Her eyes wandered over the audience. She saw many townspeople whom she knew, and she realised, for the first time, that tomorrow everywhere it would be said that the Rector's wife had been at the Revival meeting.

And how different an audience from the old London one. Every one had come on this occasion to see a show, and it was certainly a show that they were going to see. Maggie had entered during a pause, and all the faces that were there wore that look of expectation that demands the rising of the curtain. Soon, Maggie felt, they would stamp and whistle did the play not begin.

Thurston rose and announced:

"My brothers, we will sing hymn No. 14 on the paper."

Maggie looked and discovered that it was the hymn that had once moved her so dramatically in London with the words

By all Thy sores and bloody pain
Come down and heal our sins again.

and with the last refrain:

By the blood, by the blood, by the blood of the Lamb
We beseech Thee.

Already, in spite of herself, in spite of her consciousness of the melodrama and meretricious glitter of the scene, her heart was beating. She was more deeply moved, even now, than she had ever been by all the services of the Skeaton Church.

And Thurston had learnt his job by this time. Softly one of the violins played the tune. Then Thurston said:

"The first verse of this hymn will be sung by the choir alone. The congregation is asked to stand and then to join in the second verse. The fourth verse will be sung by the soloist."

The audience rose. There was a hush of expectation throughout the building. The choir, to the accompaniment of the fiddlers alone, sang the first verse. They had been well selected and trained. Thurston obviously spared no expense. For the second verse, the whole orchestra combined, the drum booming through the refrain. At first the congregation was timid, but the tune was simple and attractive. The third verse was sung by every one, and Maggie found herself, almost against her will, joining in. At the fourth verse there was again the hush of expectation, then a soprano, thin and clear, accompanied again by one violin, broke the silence.

There was no doubt that this was very moving. Men and women sat down at the hymn's close quite visibly affected.

Thurston got up then and read a lesson from the Bible. He read from the Revelations:

"After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter."

"And immediately I was in the Spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne."

"And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold."

Thurston had worked hard during these last years, he had immensely improved his accent, and his h's were all in their right places. He read very dramatically, dropping his voice to a whisper, then pausing and staring in front of him as though he saw God only a few yards away. The people of Skeaton had had few opportunities of any first-class dramatic entertainment. When Thurston finished there passed through the building a wave of excitement, a stir, a faint murmur. An old woman next to Maggie wiped her eyes. "Lovely!" Maggie heard her whisper. "Lovely!"

They sang, then, another hymn, accompanied by the orchestra. This was a dramatic hymn with a fiery martial tune:

The Lord of War He cometh down With Sword and Shield and Armour Bright, His armies all behind him Frown, Who can withstand His Light?

Chorus. Trumpets Blare, The drum-taps Roll, Prepare to meet Thy God, Oh Soul! Prepare! Prepare! Prepare to meet Thy God, oh Soul!

Never before had the men and women of Skeaton heard such hymns. The Revival of ten years ago, lacking the vibrant spirit of Mr. John Thurston, had been a very different affair. This was something quite new in all Skeaton experience. Red-hot expectation flamed now in every eye. Maggie could feel that the old woman next to her was trembling all over.

Thurston announced:

"Brother Crashaw will now deliver an address."

Brother Crashaw, his head still lowered, very slowly got up from his seat. He moved as though it were only with the utmost difficulty and power of self-will that his reluctant body could be compelled into action. He crept rather than walked from his chair to the reading-desk, then very very painfully climbed on to the high platform. Maggie, watching him, remembered that earlier time when he had climbed into just such another desk. She remembered also that day at her aunts' house when he had flirted with Caroline and shown himself quite another Brother Crashaw. He had aged greatly since then. He seemed now to be scarcely a man at all. Then suddenly, with a jerk, as though a string had been pulled from behind, he raised his face and looked at them all. Yes, that was alive. Monkey's mask you might call it, but the eyes behind the yellow lids flamed and blazed. No exaggeration those words. A veritable fire burned there, a fire, it might be, of mere physical irritation and savage exasperation at the too-rapid crumbling of the wilfully disobedient body, a glory, perhaps, of obstinate pride and conceit, a fire of superstition and crass ignorance, but a fire to be doubted of no man who looked upon it.

When he spoke his voice was harsher, angrier, more insulting than it had been before. He spoke, too, in a hurry, tumbling his words one upon another as though he were afraid that he had little mortal time left to him and must make the most of what he had got.

From the first he was angry, rating the men of Skeaton as they had never been rated before. And they liked it. They even revelled in it; it did them no harm and at the same time tickled their skins. Sometimes a preacher at the Methodist Chapel had rated them, but how mild and halting a scolding compared with the fury of this little man. As he continued they settled into their seats with the conviction that this was the best free show that they had ever enjoyed in all their lives. They had been afraid at first that it would not keep up its interest. They had agreed with one another that they would go in "just for a quarter of an hour to see what it was like." Now they were willing that it should continue all night.

"What came ye out for to see?" he screamed at them. "Came out to see? Ye didn't come out at all. None of you. That's what I've come to tell you. For years you've been leading your lazy, idle, self-indulgent lives, eating and drinking, sleeping, fornicating, lying with your neighbours' wives, buying and selling, living like hogs and swine. And is it for want of your being told? Not a bit of it. You are warned again and again and again. Every day gives you signs and wonders had you got eyes to see them and you will not see. Well, be it on your own heads. Why should I care for your miserable, shrivelled-up, parched little souls? Why should I care when I watch you all, with your hanging stomachs and your double chins, marching straight into such a hell as you've never conceived of. I know what's coming to you. I know what's in store for those well-filled stomachs of yours. I can see you writhing and screaming and wailing, 'Why didn't somebody tell us? Why didn't somebody tell us?' Somebody has told you. Somebody's telling you now. And will you listen? Not a bit of it. You'll have heard the music to-night, the drums and the trumpets, you'll have joined in the singing, and to-night you'll go back and tell your friends: 'Yes, we had a fine evening. You ought to go. It's worth while and costs you nothing.' And to-morrow you will have forgotten everything. But I tell you that every man, woman, and child in this building stands in as desperate peril as though his house was on fire over his head and there was no way out."

He stopped for a moment to get breath, leaning forward over the desk and panting. Over the building there was a great silence. Maggie was stirred beyond any earlier experience. She did not know whether he were charlatan or no. She did not care. She had lived for more than two years in Skeaton, where everything and every one was dead. Now here was life. The evidence of it reassured her, whispering to her that Martin still lived, that he could be found, even that he was coming to her. Her nervous excitement increased. The emotion of the people around her, the bands, the singing, all seemed to cry to her, "He is coming! He is coming! He is coming!" ... but it was Martin now and not God.

Old Crashaw, having recovered his breath, went on: he continued for some time to abuse them all, screaming and beating the wooden desk with his fists—then suddenly he changed, his voice softened, his eyes were milder, there was something wistful and pathetic in his old ugly yellow face.

"I know that you came in here to-night, all of you, just as you might into a picture-house or a theatre. Entrance free. Well, then, why not? Had we charged half-a-crown there wouldn't have been one of you. Half-a-crown and the most important thing in life. I say the most important—I say the only important thing in life. A man's soul, its history and growth. What do you know of the soul, you ask me? How do you know there is one? Well, I can only tell you my news. If a man comes into your town and tells you that there is an army marching down upon it to destroy it he may be true or he may not. If he is true then, when you don't listen to him you are doomed. If you do listen the preparation to meet that army will at any rate do you no harm even though the army doesn't exist."

"I tell you that the Soul exists, that God exists, and that one day God and the Soul will meet. You say that hasn't been proved, and until it is proved you will spend your time over other things that you know to be true. Try it at least, give it a chance. Why not? You give other things a chance, marriage, doctors, trades, amusements. Why not the Soul? Don't listen to any one else's definition of religion. Don't believe in it. Make your own. Find out for yourself. My children, I am an old man, I am shortly to die. If I have scolded forgive me. Let me leave with you my blessing, and my earnest prayer that you will not pass by God on the other side. The day will come when you cannot pass Him by. Meet Him first of your own accord and then when that other day comes He will know you as a friend ..."

The old man's voice faltered, failed, stopped. He himself seemed to be deeply affected. Was it acting? Maggie could not tell. At any rate he was old and ill and very shortly to die ...

The woman next her was crying rubbing the knuckles of her shabby old gloves in her eyes, the bugles on her bonnet shaking like live things.

She snuffled through her nose to Maggie "Beautiful—beautiful—I 'aven't 'eard such preaching since I don't know when."

Thurston again rose.

"A solo will now be sung," he said. "After the singing of the solo there will be a prayer offered, then a procession, headed by the choir, will be formed to march, with lanterns, through the town, as a witness to the glory of God. It is hoped that those of the congregation who have received comfort and help during this service will join in the procession. There will be a collection for the expenses of the Mission at the door."

Maggie watching him wondered. Of what was he thinking? Was there any truth in him? Had he, perhaps, behind the sham display and advertisement that he had been building felt something stirring? Was he conscious, against his own will, of his falsehood? Had he, while building only his own success, made a discovery? She looked at him. The dramatic mask hid him from her. She could not, tell what he was.

The soprano, who had sung a verse of the hymn earlier in the evening, now undertook "Hear my Prayer." Very beautifully she sang it.

"Hear my prayer, Oh, God, incline Thine ear, Thyself from my distresses do not hide ..."

The voice rose, soaring through the building to meet the silver stars and the naked cherubs on the ceiling. "The enemy shouteth ... The enemy shouteth ..."

Skeaton sat enraptured. Women let the tears stream down their faces, men blew their noses.

Once again the voice arose.

"Hear my prayer, Oh, God, incline Thine ear ..."

It was Maggie's voice, Maggie's cry. From the very heart of the charlatanism she cried out, appealing to a God who might exist or no, she could not tell, but who seemed now to be leading her by the hand. She saw Aunt Anne at St. Dreot's whispering "The Lord is my Shepherd. He shall lead me ..."

In a dream she shared in the rest of the ceremony. In a dream she passed with the others out of the building. The sea air blew about her; down the promenade she could see the people, she could see the silver stars in the sky, the faint orange light of the lanterns, the dim stretch of the sand, and then the grey sea. She heard the splash and withdrawal of the tide, the murmur of many voices, the singing of the distant hymn, the blare of the trumpet.

Strange and mysterious, the wind blowing through it all like a promise of beauty and splendour to come ...

She turned in the starlit dark, separated herself from the crowd, and hurried home.

In the hall on the table under the lamp she saw a letter. She saw that it was addressed to her and that the writing was Amy Warlock's. Before she picked it up she stood there listening. The house was very still. Grace and Paul had probably begun supper. She picked up the letter and went up to her bedroom.

As though she were scanning something that she had already seen, she read:

I made you a promise and I will now fulfil it.

My brother, Martin, arrived in London three days ago. He is staying at No. 13A Lynton Street, King's Cross.

I have seen him but he has told me that he does not wish to see me again. He is very ill; his heart is bad and his lungs are affected. He has also spent all his money. I mentioned your name but he did not seem to be at all interested. I think it fair to tell you this lest you should have a fruitless journey. I have now kept my promise to you, unwisely perhaps. AMY WARLOCK.

Maggie sat down on the bed and considered. There was a train at 10.30 reaching London about midnight. She could just catch it if she were quick. She found a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote:

DEAR PAUL—I have to go to London suddenly on very urgent business. I will write to you from there. Good-bye. MAGGIE.

She propped this up against the looking-glass. She put a few things, including the box with Martin's letters and the ring into a little bag, put on her hat and coat and went downstairs. She waited for a moment in the hall but there was no sound anywhere. She went out down the dark drive.

As she passed along the lonely road she heard the gate, screaming faintly, behind her.