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."
