He said no more about his going away. He accepted it as a fact that she was there and that she would stay there. He had changed his position and was fighting her on another ground.
Maggie had once, years before, read in a magazine, a story about a traveller and a deserted house. This traveller, lost, as are all travellers in stories, in a forest, benighted and hungry, saw the lights of a house.
He goes forward and finds a magnificent mansion, blazing with light in every window, but apparently deserted. He enters and finds room after room prepared for guests. A fine meal is laid ready and he enjoys it. He discovers the softest of beds and soon is fast asleep; but when he is safely snoring back creep all the guests out of the forest, hideous and evil, warped and deformed, maimed and rotten with disease. They had left the house, that he might be lured in it, knowing that he would never come whilst they were there. And so they creep into all the rooms, flinging their horrible shadows upon the gleaming walls, and gradually they steal about the bed . . .
Maggie forgot the end of the story. The traveller escaped, or perhaps he did not. Perhaps he was strangled. But that moment of his awakening, when his startled eyes first stared upon those horrible faces, those deformed bodies, those evil smiles! What could one do, one naked and defenceless against so many?
Maggie thought of this story during Martin's convalescence. She seemed to see the evil guests, crowding back, one after the other into his soul, and as they came back they peeped out at her, smiling from the lighted windows. She saw that his plan was to thrust before her the very worst of himself. He said: "Well, I've tried to get rid of her and she won't go. That's her own affair, but if she stays, at least she shall see me as I am. No false sentimental picture. I'll cure her."
It was the oldest trick in the world, but to Maggie it was new enough. At first she was terrified. In spite of her early experience with her father, when she had learnt what wickedness could be, she was a child in all knowledge of the world. Above all she knew very little about her own sex and its relation with men. But she determined that she must take the whole of Martin; in the very first days of her love she had resolved that, and now that resolution was to be put to the test. Her terrified fear was lest the things that he told her about himself should affect her love for him. She had told him years before: "It isn't the things you've done that I mind or care about: it's you, not actions that matter." But his actions were himself, and what was she to do if all these things that he said were true?
Then she discovered that she had indeed spoken the truth. Her love for him did not change; it rather grew, helped and strengthened by a maternal pity and care that deepened and deepened. He seemed to her a man really possessed, in literal fact, by devils. The story of the lighted house was the symbol, only he, in the bitterness and defiance of his heart, had invited the guests, not been surprised by them.
He pretended to glory in his narration, boasting and swearing what he would do when he would return to the old scenes, how happy and triumphant he had been in the midst of his filth--but young and ignorant though she was she saw beneath this the misery, the shame, the bitterness, the ignominy. He was down in the dust, in a despair furious and more self-accusing than anything of which she had ever conceived.
Again and again, too, although this was never deliberately stated, she saw that he spoke like a man caught in a trap. He did not blame any one but himself for the catastrophe of his life, but he often spoke, in spite of himself, like a man who from the very beginning had been under some occult influence. He never alluded now to his early days but she remembered how he had once told her that that "Religion" had "got" him from the very beginning, and had weighted all the scales against him. It was as though he had said: "I was told from the very beginning that I was to be made a fighting-ground of. I didn't want to be that. I wasn't the man for that. I was chosen wrongly."
He only once made any allusion to his father's death, but Maggie very soon discovered that that was never away from his mind. "I loved my father and I killed him," he said one day, "so I thought it wise not to love any one again."
Gradually a picture was created in Maggie's mind, a picture originating in that dirty, dark room where they were. She saw many foreign countries and many foreign towns, and in all of them men and women were evil. The towns were always in the hour between daylight and dark, the streets twisted and obscure, the inhabitants furtive and sinister.
The things that those inhabitants did were made quite plain to her. She saw the dancing saloons, the women naked and laughing, the men drunken and besotted, the gambling, the quarrelling, drugging, suicide--all under a half-dead sky, stinking and offensive.
One day, at last, she laughed.
"Martin," she cried, "don't let's be so serious about it. You can't want to go back to that life--it's so dull. At first I was frightened, but now!--why it's all the same thing over and over again."
"I'm only telling you," he said; "I don't say that I do want to go back again. I don't want anything except for you to go away. I just want to go to hell my own fashion."
"You talk so much about going to hell," she said. "Why, for ten days now you've spoken of nothing else. There are other places, you know."
"You clear out and get back to your parson," he said. "You must see from what I've told you it isn't any good your staying. I've no money. My health's gone all to billyoh! I don't want to get better. Why should I? Perhaps I did love you a little bit--once--in a queer way, but that's all gone now. I don't love any one on this earth. I just want to get rid of this almighty confusion going on in my head. I can't rest for it. I'd finish myself off if I had pluck enough. I just haven't."
"Martin," she said, "why did you write all those letters to me?"
"What letters?" he asked.
"Those that Amy stopped--the ones from abroad."
"Oh, I don't know," he looked away from her. "I was a bit lonely, I suppose."
"Tell me another thing," she said. "These weeks I've been here have I bored you ?"
"I've been too ill to tell . . . How do I know? Well, no, you haven't. You're such a queer kid. You're different from any other human--utterly different. No, you haven't bored me--but don't think from that I like having you here. I don't--you remind me of the old life. I don't want to think of it more than I must. You'll admit I've been trying to scare you stiff in all I've told you, and I haven't scared you. It's true, most of it, but it isn't so damned sensational as I've tried to make it . . . But, all the same, what's the use of your staying? I don't love you, and I'm never likely to. I've told you long ago you're not the sort of woman to attract me physically. You never did. You're more like a boy. Why should you ruin your own life when there's nothing to gain by it? You will ruin it, you know, staying on here with me. Every one thinks we're living together. Have you heard from your parson?"
"Yes," said Maggie.
"What does he say?"
"He says I've got to go back at once."
"Well, there you are."
"But don't you see, Martin, I shouldn't go back to him even if I left you. I've quite decided that. He'll never be happy with me unless I love him, which I can't do, and there's his sister who hates me. And he's just rooted in Skeaton. I can't live there after Uncle Mathew!"
"Tell me about that."
"No," she said, shrinking back. "I'll never tell any one. Not even you."
"Now, look here," he went on, after a pause. "You must see how hopeless it is, Maggie. You've got nothing to get out of it. As soon as I'm well enough I shall go off and leave you. You can't follow me, hunting me everywhere. You must see that."
"Yes, but what you don't, Martin, see," she answered him, "is that I've got some right to think of my own happiness. It's quite true what you say, that if you get well and decide you don't want to see me I won't follow you. Of course I won't. Perhaps one day you will want me all the same. But I'm happy only with you, and so long as I don't bore you I'm going to stay. I've always been. wrong with every one else, stupid and doing everything I shouldn't. But with you it isn't so. I'm not stupid, and however you behave I'm happy. I can't help it. It's just so."
"But how can you be happy?" he said, "I'm not the sort for any one to be happy with. When I've been drinking I'm impossible. I'm sulky and lazy, and I don't want to be any better either. You may think you're happy these first few weeks, but you won't be later on."
"Let's try," said Maggie, laughing. "Here's a bargain, Martin. You say I don't bore you. I'll stay with you until you're quite well. Then if you don't want me I'll go and not bother you until you ask for me. Is that a bargain?"
"You'd much better not," he said.
"Oh, don't think I'm staying," she answered, "because I think you so splendid that I can't leave you. I don't think you splendid at all. And it's not because I think myself splendid either. I'm being quite selfish about it. I'm staying simply because I'm happier so."
"You'd much better not," he repeated.
"Is that a bargain?"
"Yes, if you like," he answered, looking at her with puzzled eyes. It was the first long conversation that they had had. After it, he was no nicer than before. He never kissed her, he never touched her, he seldom talked to her; when she talked, he seemed to be little interested. For hours he lay there, looking in front of him, saying nothing. When the little doctor came they wrangled and fought together but seemed to like one another.
Through it all Maggie could see that he was riddled with deep shame and self-contempt and haunted, always, by the thought of his father. She longed to speak to him about his father's death, but as yet she did not dare. If once she could persuade him that that had not been his fault, she could, she thought, really help him. That was the secret canker at his heart and she could not touch it.
Strangely, as the days passed, the years that had been added to him since their last meeting seemed to fall away. He became to her more and more the boy that he had been when she had known him before. In a thousand ways he showed it, his extraordinary youth and inexperience in spite of all that he had been and done. She felt older now than he and she loved him the more for that. Most of all she longed to get him away from this place where he was. Then one day little Abrams said to her:
"He'll never get well here."
"That's what I think," she said.
"Can't you carry him off somewhere? The country's the place for him- -somewhere in the South."
Her heart leapt.
"Oh, Glebeshire!" she cried.
"Well, that's not a bad place," he said. "That would pick him up."
At once she thought, night and day, of St. Dreot's. A very hunger possessed her to get back there. And why not? For one thing, it would be so much cheaper. Her money would not last for ever, and Mrs. Brandon robbed her whenever possible. She determined that she would manage it. At last, greatly fearing it, she mentioned it to him, and to her surprise he did not scorn it.
"I don't care," he said, looking at her with that curious puzzled expression that she often saw now in his eyes, "I'm sick of this room. That's a bargain, Maggie, you can put me where you like until I'm well. Then I'm off."
She had a strange superstition that Borhedden was fated to see her triumph. She had wandered round the world and now was returning again to her own home. She remembered a Mrs. Bolitho who had had the farm in her day. She wrote to her, and two days later received a letter saying that there was room for them at Borhedden if they wished.
She was now all feverish impatience. Dr. Abrams said that Martin could be moved if they were very careful. All plans were made. Mrs. Brandon and the ugly little doctor both seemed quite sorry that they were going, and Emily even sniffed and wiped her eye with the corner of her apron. The world seemed now to be turning a different face to Maggie. Human beings liked her and were no longer suspicious to her as they had been before.
She felt herself how greatly she had changed. It was as though, until she had found Martin again, everything had been tied up in her, constrained. She had been some one lost and desolate. Nevertheless, how difficult these days were! Through all this time she spoke to him no affectionate word nor touched him with an affectionate gesture. She was simply a good-humoured companion, laughing at him, assuming, through it all, an off-hand indifference that meant for her so difficult a pretence that she thought he must discover it. He did not; he was in many ways more simple than she. She laid to sleep his suspicions. She could feel his relief that she was not romantic, that she wanted nothing whatever from him. He was ill--therefore was often churlish. He tried to hurt her again and again with cruel words and then waited to see whether she were hurt. She never showed him. He treated her with contempt, often not answering her questions, laughing at her little stupidities, complaining of her forgetfulness and, sometimes, her untidiness-- telling her again and again to "go back to her parson."
She gave no sign. She fought her way. But it hurt; she could not have believed that anything could hurt so much. She was being always drawn to him, longing to put her arm around him, to dare to kiss him, risking any repulse. He seemed so young, so helpless, so unhappy. Every part of him called to her, his hair, his eyes, his voice, his body. But she held herself in, she never gave way, she was resolute in her plan.
On their last evening in Lynton Street, for five minutes, he was suddenly kind to her, almost the old Martin speaking with the old voice. She held her breath, scarcely daring to let herself know how happy she was.
