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.
