He moved away from her, as he had done once before.
"Anyway, it doesn't matter," he said. "I've killed him by the way I've been behaving to him all these months. I'm going away where I can't do any harm."
She desperately calmed herself, speaking very quietly.
"Listen, Martin. You haven't done him any harm. He's happier now than he's been for years. I know he is. And that doesn't touch us. You can't leave me now. Where you go I must go."
"No," he answered. "No, Maggie. I ought to have gone before. I knew it then, but I know it absolutely now. Everything I touch I hurt, so I mustn't touch anything I care for."
She put her hands out towards him; words had left her. She would have given her soul for words and she could say nothing.
She was surrounded with a hedge of fright and terror and she could not pass it.
He seemed to see then in her eyes her despair. For an instant he recognised her. Their eyes met for the first time; she felt that she was winning. She began eagerly to speak: "Listen, Martin dear. You can't do me any harm. You can only hurt me by leaving me. I've told you before. Just think of that and only that."
The door opened and Aunt Anne came in.
He turned to her very politely. "I beg your pardon for coming, Miss Cardinal," he said. "I know what you must think of me, but it's all right. I've only come to say good-bye to Maggie. It's all right. Neither you nor Maggie will be bothered with me again."
He turned to the open door. Aunt Anne stood aside to let him pass. Maggie said:
"Martin, don't go! Martin, don't leave me! Don't leave me, Martin!"
He seemed to break then in his resolution.
"It's better. It's better," he cried, as though he were shouting himself down, and then pushing Aunt Anne with his arm he hurried out almost running, his steps stumbling down the stairs.
Maggie ran to the door. Her aunt stopped her, holding her back.
"It's better, Maggie dear," she said very gently, repeating Martin's words.
The sound of the hall door closing echoed through the house.
Maggie struggled, crying again and again: "Let me go! Let me go! I must go with him! I can't live without him! Let me go!"
She fought then, and with one hand free hit Aunt Anne's face, twisting her body. Then, suddenly weak, so that she saw faintness coming towards her like a cloak, she whispered:
"Oh, Aunt Anne, let me go! Oh, Aunt Anne, let me go! Please, please, let me go!"
Suddenly the house was darkened, at her feet was a gulf of blackness, and into it she tumbled, down, far down, with a last little gasping sigh of distress.
PART III
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 . . .
