The Captives Part 71

"For my sake? But why? I wanted to see him. I was trying to see him in London. Oh, Grace, what did he say?"

"What did he say? Well, fancy! As though I could remember. He said he'd come to see you, and when I said he couldn't, he went away again."

"Said he couldn't? But why couldn't he?"

"Really, Maggie, your tone is extraordinary. Fancy what Paul would say if he heard you. He wouldn't like it, I'm sure. I said that after the way he'd behaved last time he came here you didn't want to see him again."

"You said that? Oh, Grace! How did you dare!" "Now, Maggie, don't you look like that. I've done nothing, I'm sure."

"Did you say that I'd said that I didn't want to see him again?"

Grace shrank back behind the tea-things.

"Yes, I did ... Maggie, you frighten me."

"I hope I do ... You're wicked, you're wicked. Yes, you are. Where is he now?"

"He's at the 'Sea Dog.' That dirty public house on the sea-front--near Tunstalls--Where are you going?"

"I'm going to him of course." Maggie turned and looked at Grace. Grace was fascinated as a rabbit is by a snake. The two women stared at one another.

"How strange you are, Grace," Maggie said. "You seem to like to be cruel!" Then she went out. When the door was closed Grace found "that she was all in a perspiration." Her hand trembled so that when she tried to pour herself another cup of tea--just to fortify herself--she poured it into the saucer. And the tea was cold--no use now.

When she rose at last to go in and seek consolation from Paul her knees were trembling so that she staggered across the floor. This couldn't go on. No, it could not. To be frightened in one's own house! Absurd ...

Really the girl had looked terrible ... Murder ... That's what it had looked like. Something must be done.

Murmuring aloud to herself again and again "Something must be done" as she crossed the hall, she walked slowly, her hand to her heart, ponderously, as though she were walking in the dark. Then, as soon as she had opened the study door she began, before she could see her brother: "Oh, Paul, I'm so frightened. It's Maggie. She's very angry.

Fancy what she said."

Maggie meanwhile had gone straight up to her bedroom and found her black hat and her waterproof. Her one thought now was lest he should have caught the five o'clock train and gone back to London. Oh! how hurt he would be with her, how terribly hurt! The thought of the pain and loneliness that he would feel distressed her so bitterly that she could scarcely put on her hat, she was so eager to run and find him.

She felt, at the thought of his fruitless journey through the rain, the tenderest affection for him, maternal and loving, so that she wanted to have him with her at once and to see him in warm clothes beside the fire, drinking whisky if he liked, and she would give him all the money she possessed.

She had still touched very little of her own three hundred pounds. He should have as much of that as he liked. The death of Aunt Anne had shown her how few people in the world there were for her to love. After all, the aunts and Uncle Mathew had needed her as no one else had done.

She made little plans; she would, perhaps, go back with him to London for a little time. There was, after all, no reason why she should remain in this horrible place for ever. And Paul now seemed not to care whether she went or stayed.

She ran out into the wind and the rain. She was surprised by the force and fury of it. It would take time and strength to battle down the High Street. Poor Uncle Mathew! To walk all the way in the rain and then to be told that she would not see him! She could imagine him turning away down the drive, bitterly disappointed ...

Probably he had come to borrow money, and she had promised that she would not fail him. When she reached the High Street she was soaked.

She felt the water dripping down her neck and in her boots. At the corner of the High Street by the bookseller's she was forced to pause, so fiercely did the wind beat up from the Otterson Road, that runs openly to the sea. Maggie had not even in Glebes.h.i.+re known so furious a day and hour when the winds tossed and raged but never broke into real storm. It was the more surprising. She had to pause for a moment to remember where Turnstall's the butcher was, then, suddenly recalling it, she turned off the High Street and found her way to the mean streets that ran behind the Promenade. Still she met no one. It might have been a town abandoned by all human life and given over to the wind and rain and the approaching absorption of the sea. It was now dark and the lamp at the end of the street blew gustily and with an uncertain flare.

Maggie found Turnstall's, its shop lit and Mr. Turnstall himself, stout and red-faced, behind his b.l.o.o.d.y counter. She went in and asked him where "The Sea Dog" might be. He explained to her that it was close at hand, on the right, looking over the Promenade. She found it at last because it had an old-fas.h.i.+oned creaking wooden sign with a blue sailor painted on it. Timidly she stepped into the dark uneven pa.s.sage. To the right of her she could see a deserted room with wooden trestles and a table. The bar must be near because she could hear voices and the clinking of gla.s.ses, but, in spite of those sounds the house seemed very dead. Through the walls and rooms she could hear the pounding beat of the sea. She walked to the end of the pa.s.sage and there found an old wrinkled man in riding breeches and a brightly-coloured check s.h.i.+rt.

"Can you tell me where a gentleman, Mr. Cardinal, is staying?" she asked.

He was obviously very deaf; she had to shout. She repeated her question, adding. "He came from London to-day."

A stout middle-aged woman appeared. "What is it?" she asked. "The old man's stone deaf. He can't hear at all."

"I was wondering," said Maggie, "whether you could tell me where I could find a Mr. Cardinal. He came down from London to-day and is staying here."

"Cardinal ... Cardinal?" The woman thought, scratching her head. "Was it Caldwell you meant?"

"No," said Maggie. "Cardinal."

"I'll go and see." The woman disappeared, whilst the old man brushed past Maggie as though she were a piece of furniture; he departed on some secret purpose of his own.

"What a horrible place!" thought Maggie. "Uncle must be in a bad way if he comes here. I never should sleep for the noise of the sea."

The woman returned. "Yes. 'E's here. No. 5. Come this afternoon. Up the stairs and second door on the right."

The stairs to which she pointed offered a gulf of darkness. The woman was gone. The noises from the bar had ceased. The only sound in the place was the thundering of the sea, roaring, as it seemed, at the very foot of the house.

Maggie climbed the stairs. Half-way up she was compelled to pause. The darkness blinded her; she had lost the reflection from the lamp below and, above her, there was no light at all. She advanced slowly, step by step, feeling her way with a hand on the rickety bannisters. At the top of the stair there was a gleam of light and, turning to the right, she knocked on the second door. There was no answer and she knocked again.

Listening, the noise of the sea was now so violent that she fancied that she might not have heard the answer so she turned the handle of the door and pushed it open. She was met then by a gale of wind, a rush of the sea that seemed as imminent as though she were on the sh.o.r.e itself and a dim grey light that revealed nothing in the room to her but only shapes and shadows.

She knew at once that the windows must be wide open; she could hear some papers rustling and something on the wall tapped monotonously.

"Uncle Mathew!" she whispered, and then she called more loudly.

"Uncle Mathew! Uncle Mathew!"

There was no answer and suddenly a strange, quite unreasoning terror caught her by the throat. It was all that she could do not to cry out and run down to the gas-lit pa.s.sage. She held herself there by sheer force; the smell of the sea was now very strong; there was a tang of rotten seaweed in it.

As she remained there she could see more clearly, but it seemed that the room was full of some dim obscuring mist. She moved forward into the room, knocked her knee against a table, and then as the panic gained upon her called more loudly, "Uncle... Uncle. Are you in? Where are you? It's I, Maggie."

"Oh well... of course he isn't here," she said to herself. "He's downstairs." And yet, strangely, something seemed to persuade her that he was there; it was as though he were maliciously hiding from her to tease her.

Feeling her way cautiously, her hands before her face, she moved forward to close the windows, thinking that she must shut out that abominable sound of the sea and the stale stink of the seaweed. She was suddenly caught by a sweep of rain that wetted her hair and face and neck. She started back and touched a piece of damp cloth. She turned, and there, very close to her but above her and staring over her head, was Uncle Mathew's face. It was so close to her that she could have touched it by putting up her hand. It was white-grey and she would not have seen it at all had she not been very near to it.

She realised nothing, but she felt that her knees were trembling and that she would fall if she did not steady herself. She put out her hand and clutched damp heavy thick cloth, cloth that enwrapped as it seemed some weighty substance like stone or brick.

She pa.s.sed her hand upwards and suddenly the damp cloth gave way beneath her fingers, sinking inwards against something soft and flabby.

She sprang away. She stood for one shuddering moment, then she screamed again and again, shrieking and running, as it were for her life, out of the room, down the pa.s.sage. She could not find the staircase. Oh! she could not find the staircase! She stood there, leaning against the damp wall, crying: "Oh help! Help! Quickly!"

There were steps and voices, then the woman whom she had seen before appeared at the turn of the stair holding a lamp.

"What is it?" she asked, raising the light high. Maggie did not answer, only leaning there and staring down.

"You'd better come, Bill," the woman said. "There's something wrong up 'ere."

The woman came up the stairs followed by two men; they moved cautiously as though, they expected to find something terrible round the next corner.

"What is it?" said the woman again when she came up to Maggie. But Maggie made no answer. They pushed past her and went into the room.

Maggie followed them. She saw the room obscured by mist; she heard some whispering and fumbling, then a match was struck; there was a bead-like flare followed suddenly by the flaming of a candle. In the quick light the room was bright. Maggie saw her uncle hanging from some projection in the rough ceiling. A chair was overturned at his feet. His body was like a bag of old clothes, his big boots turning inwards towards one another. His face was a dull grey and seemed cut off from the rest of his body by the thick blue m.u.f.fler that encircled his neck. He was grinning at her; the tip of his tongue protruded at her between his teeth. She noticed his hands that hung heavily like dead fish.

After that she knew no more save that the sea seemed to rush in a great flood, with a sudden vindictive roar, into the room.