The Captives Part 32

Aunt Anne nodded her head.

"I know you won't, dear," she said. "Don't be out late to-day. We shall be anxious about you."

Maggie had made a promise and was terrified when she thought of it.

Suppose her aunt did not get better for years and years?

People often had long lingering illnesses with no apparent change in their condition. To Maggie a promise was an utterly final thing. She could not dream that one ever broke one's word. She trembled now when she thought of what she had done. She had been entrapped after all and by her own free will.

In her little room as she was putting on her hat she suddenly prayed to a G.o.d, of whom she knew nothing, that her aunt might get better soon.

She started out on her great adventure with a strange self-a.s.surance as though loving Martin had given her the wisdom of all the ages.

Turning down the street towards the Strand she found almost at once a taxi-cab drawn up, as though it had been waiting there especially for her like an eloping coach in a romantic tale. A fat red-faced fellow with a purple nose, a cloth cap and a familiar vague eye, as though he always saw further than he intended, waited patiently for her to speak.

Boldly, as though she had done such things all her life, she said, "Fourteen Bryanston Square." Then she slipped in and was hidden from the gay world. She sat there, her hands on her lap staring at the three crimson rolls in the neck of her driver. She was thinking of nothing, nothing at all. Did she struggle to think? Only words would come, "Martin," or "Bryanston Square," or "cab," again and again, words that did not mean anything but physical sensations. "Martin" hot fire at the throat, "Bryanston Square" an iron rod down the spine, and "cab" dust and ashes in the eyes.

She tried to look at herself in the little mirror opposite her, but she could only catch the corner of her cheek and half her hat. But she minded less about her appearance now. If Martin could love her it did not matter what others thought--nevertheless she pulled her hat about a little and patted her dress. The cab stopped and she felt desperately lonely. Did any one care about her anywhere? No, no one. She could have cried with pity at the thought of her own loneliness.

"One and sixpence, Miss," said the cabman in so husky a voice.

She gave it to him.

"What's this?" he asked, looking at it.

"One and sixpence," she answered timidly, wondering at his sarcastic eye.

"Oh well, o' course," he said, looking her all over.

She knew instinctively that he demanded more. She found another sixpence. "Is that enough?" she asked.

He seemed ashamed.

"If I 'adn't a wife sick--" he began.

She ran up the high stone steps and rang a bell. The episode with the driver had disturbed her terribly. It had shown in what a foreign world she was. All her self-confidence was gone. She had to take a pull at herself and say: "Why, Maggie, you might be ringing the dentist's bell at this moment."

That helped her, and then the thought of Martin. She saw his boyish smile and felt the warm touch of his rough hand. When the maid was there instead of the green door, she almost said: "Is Martin in?"

But she behaved very well.

"Mrs. Mark?" she said in precisely the voice required.

The maid smiled and stood aside. And then into what a world she entered! A world of comfort and rea.s.surance, of homeliness and kindliness, without parrots and fierce-eyed cats and swaying pictures of armoured men--a world of urbanity and light and s.p.a.ce. There was a high white staircase with brown etchings in dark frames on the white walls. There was a thick soft carpet and a friendly fat grandfather clock. Many doors but none of them mysterious, all ready to be opened.

She climbed the staircase and was shown into a room high and gaily coloured and full of flowers. She saw the deep curtains, blue silk shot with purple, the chairs of blue silk and a bowl of soft amber light hanging from the ceiling. A ma.s.s of gold-red chrysanthemums flamed against the curtains. Several people were gathered round a tea-table near the fire.

She stood lost on the thick purple carpet under the amber light, all too brilliant for her. She had come from a world of darkness, owl-like she must blink before the blaze. Some one came forward to her, some one so kind and comforting, so easy and unsurprised that Maggie suddenly felt herself steadied as though a friend had put an arm around her.

Before she had felt: "This light--I am shabby." Now she felt, "I am with friendly people." She was surprised at the way that she was suddenly at her ease.

Mrs. Mark was not beautiful, but she had soft liquid eyes and her hand that held Maggie's was firm and warm and strong.

"Let me introduce you," said Mrs. Mark. "That is Miss Trenchard, and that Mr. Trenchard. This is my husband. Philip, this is Miss Cardinal."

Miss Trenchard must be forty, Maggie thought. She was plump and thick-set, with a warm smile. Then Mr. Trenchard was a clergyman--he would be stout were he not so broad. His face was red, his hair snowy white, but he did not look old.

He smiled at Maggie as though he had known her all his life. Then there was Mr. Mark, who was stocky and thick, and reminded Maggie of Martin, although his face was quite different, he looked much cleverer and not such a boy; he was not, in fact, a boy at all. "I'm sure he thinks too hard," decided Maggie, who had habits of making up her mind at once about people.

"Well, there's no one to be frightened about here," she decided. And indeed there was not! It was as though they had all some especial reason for being nice to her. Perhaps they saw that she was not in her own world here. And yet they did not make her feel that. She drank in the differences with great gulps of appreciation, but it was not they who insisted.

Here were light and colour and s.p.a.ce above all--rest. Nothing was about to happen, no threat over their heads that the roof would fall beneath one's feet, that the floor would sink. No sudden catching of the breath at the opening of a door, no hesitation about climbing the stairs, no surveillance by the watching Thomas, no distant clanging of the Chapel bell. How strange they all seemed, looking back from this safe harbour.

The aunts, the Warlocks, Thurston, Mr. Crashaw, Caroline--all of them.

There the imagination set fire to every twig--here the imagination was not needed, because everything occurred before your eyes.

She did not figure it all out in so many words at once, but the contrast of the two worlds was there nevertheless. Why had she been so anxious, so nervous, so distressed? There was no need. Had she not known that this other world existed? Perhaps she had not. She must never again forget it ...

Katherine Mark was so kind and friendly, her voice so soft and her interest so eager, that Maggie felt that she could tell her anything.

But their talk was not to come just yet--first there must be general conversation.

The clergyman with the white hair and the rosy face laughed a great deal in a schoolboy kind of way, and every time that he laughed his sister, who was like a pippin apple with her sunburnt cheeks, looked at him with protecting eyes.

"She looks after him in everything," said Maggie to herself. He was called Paul by them all.

"He's my cousin, you know, Miss Cardinal," said Mrs. Mark. "And yet I scarcely ever see him. Isn't it a shame? Grace makes everything so comfortable for him ..."

Grace smiled, well pleased.

"It's Paul's devotion to his parish ..." she said in calm, happy, self-a.s.sured voice, as though she'd never had a surprise in her life.

"I'm sure it isn't either of those things," thought Maggie to herself.

"He's lazy."

Lazy but nice. She had never seen a clergyman so healthy, so happy so clean and so kind. She smiled across the table at him.

"Do you know Skeaton?" he asked her. Skeaton! Where had she heard of the place? Why, of course, it was Caroline!

"Only yesterday I heard of it for the first time," she said. "A friend of mine knows some one there."

"Beastly place," said Mr. Mark. "Sand always blowing into your eyes."

Mr. and Mrs. Trenchard got up to go.

He stood a moment holding Maggie's hand. "If ever you come to Skeaton, Miss Cardinal," he said, "we shall be delighted ..." His eyes she noticed were light blue like a baby's. She felt that he liked her and would not forget her.

"Come, Paul," said Miss Trenchard, rather sharply Maggie fancied.

Soon afterwards Philip departed. "Must finish that beastly thing," he a.s.sured his wife.

"It's an article," Katherine Mark explained. "He's always writing about politics. I hate them, so he pretends to hate them too. But he doesn't really. He loves them."