The Captives Part 8

"And the other one?"

"That is young Mr. Warlock--he is the son of our minister."

"Does he live near here?"

"He lives just now with his parents. Of late years he has been abroad."

"He doesn't look like the son of a minister," said Maggie.

"No, I'm afraid--" Aunt Elizabeth suddenly stopped. "His father has been minister of our chapel for twenty years. He is a great and wonderful man."

"Where is the chapel?"

"Very near at hand. You will see it to-morrow. To-morrow is Sunday."

There was a long pause. Maggie knew that now was the time when she should say something friendly and affectionate. She could say nothing.

She stared at her aunt, then at a long mirror that faced her bed, then at the lighted sky. She felt warmly grateful, eager to show all the world that she would do her best, that she was ready to give herself to this new life with all her soul and strength--she could say nothing.

They waited.

At last her aunt said:

"Good-night, dear Maggie."

"Good-night, Aunt Elizabeth."

She stole away, leaving the candle upon the chest of drawers; the cat followed her, swinging his tail.

Left alone, Maggie felt the whole sweep of her excitement. She was exhausted, her body felt as though it had been trampled upon, she was so tired that she could scarcely drag her clothes from her, but the exaltation of her spirit was beyond and above all this. Half undressed she stood before the long mirror. She had never before possessed a long looking-gla.s.s, and now she seemed to see herself as she really was for the first time. Was she very ugly and unattractive? Yes, she must be with that stumpy body, those thick legs and arms, that short nose and large mouth. And she did not know what to do to herself to make herself attractive. Other girls knew but she had never had any one who could tell her. Perhaps she would make girl friends now who would show her.

But, after all, she did not care. She was herself. People who did not like her could leave her--yes they could, and she would not stir a finger to fetch them back.

Then, deep down in her soul, she knew that she wanted success, a magnificent life, a great future. Nay more, she expected it. She had force and strength, and she would compel life to give her what she wanted. She laughed at herself in the gla.s.s. She was happy, almost triumphant, and for no reason at all.

She went to her windows and opened them; there came up to her the tramping progress of the motor-omnibuses. They advanced, like elephants charging down a jungle, nearer, nearer, nearer. Before the tramp of one had pa.s.sed another was advancing, and then upon that another--ceaselessly, advancing and retreating.

In her nightdress she leaned out of the window, poised, as it seemed to her, above a swaying carpet of lights.

Life seemed to hold every promise in store for her.

She crossed to her bed, drew the clothes about her and, forgetting her supper, forgetting all that had happened to her, her journey, her fainting, the young man, Edward the parrot, she fell into a slumber as deep, as secure, as death itself.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHAPEL

Maggie woke next morning to a strange silence. Many were the silent mornings that had greeted her at St. Dreots, but this was silence with a difference; it was the silence, she was instantly aware, of some one whose very soul was noise and tumult. She listened, and the sudden chirping of some sparrows beyond her window only accentuated the sense of expectation. She had never, in all her days, been so conscious of Sunday.

She was almost afraid to move lest she should break the spell.

She lay in bed and thought of the preceding evening. Her fainting fit seemed to her now more than ever unfortunate; it had placed her at a disadvantage with them all. She could imagine the stout young man returning to his home and saying: "Their niece has arrived. Seems a weak little thing. Fainted right off there in the drawing-room." Or her aunts saying anxiously to one another: "Well, I didn't know she was as delicate as that. I hope she won't be always ill," ... and she wasn't delicate--no one stronger. She had never fainted before. The silliness of it!

The next thing that disturbed her was the comfort and arrangement of everything. Certainly the drawing-room had not been very orderly, full of old things badly placed, but this bedroom was clean and tidy, and the supper last night, so neat on its tray with everything that she could want! She could feel the order and discipline of the whole house.

And she had never, in all her life, been either orderly or disciplined.

She had never been brought up to be so. How could you be orderly when there were holes in the bedroom ceiling and the kitchen floor, holes that your father would never trouble to have mended?

Her aunts would wish her to help in the house and she would forget things. There pa.s.sed before her, in that Sunday quiet, a terrible procession of the things that she would forget. She knew that she would not be patient under correction, especially under the correction of her Aunt Anne. Already she felt in her a rebellion at her aunt's aloofness and pa.s.sivity. After all, why should she treat every one as though she were G.o.d? Maggie felt that there was in her aunt's att.i.tude something sentimental and affected. She hated sentiment and affectation in any one. She was afraid, too, that Anne bullied Aunt Elizabeth. Maggie was sorry for Aunt Elizabeth but, with all the arrogance of the young, a little despised her. Why did she tremble and start like that? She should stand up for herself and not mind what her sister said to her.

Finally, there was something about the house for which Maggie could not quite account, some uneasiness or expectation, as though one knew that there was some one behind the door and was therefore afraid to open it.

It may have been simply London that was behind it. Maggie was ready to attribute anything to the influence of that tremendous power, but her own final impression was that the people in this house had for too long a time been brooding over something. "It would do my aunts a lot of good to move somewhere else," she said to herself. "As Aunt Anne loves the country so much I can't think why she doesn't live there." There were many things that she was to learn before the end of the day.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a little whirr and clatter, which, thin and distant though it was, penetrated into her room. The whirr was followed by the voice, clear, self-confident and cheerful, of a cuckoo.

Maggie was in an instant out of bed, into the pa.s.sage and standing, in her nightdress, before a high, old cuckoo-clock that stood at the top of the stairs. The wooden bird, looking down at her in friendly fas.h.i.+on, "cuckooed" eight times, flapped his wings at her and disappeared. It is a sufficient witness to Maggie's youth and inexperience that she was enraptured by this event. It was not only that she had never seen a cuckoo-clock before; she had, for that matter, never heard of the existence of such a thing. It gave her greater happiness than any bare mechanical discovery could have done.

The bird seemed to have come to her, in the friendliest way, to remove some of the chilly pa.s.sivity of the house. Her greatest fear since her arrival had been that this was a house "in which nothing was ever going to happen," and that "she would never get out of it." "It will be just as it has been all my life, seeing nothing, doing nothing--only instead of father it will be the aunts." The bird seemed to promise her adventure and excitement. To most people it would have been only a further sign of an old-fas.h.i.+oned household far behind the times. To Maggie it was thrilling and encouraging. He would remind her every hour of the day of the possibility of fun in a world that was full of surprises. She heard suddenly a step behind her and a dry voice saying:

"Your hot water, Miss Maggie."

She turned round, blus.h.i.+ng at being caught staring up at a cuckoo-clock like a baby in her nightdress, to face the wrinkled old woman who the night before had brought her, with a grudging countenance, her supper.

Maggie had thought then that this old Martha did not like her and resented the extra work that her stay in the house involved; she was now more than ever sure of that dislike.

"I thought I was to be called at half-past seven."

"Eight on Sundays," said the old woman. "I hope you're better this morning, miss."

Maggie felt this to be deeply ironical and flushed.

"I'm quite well, thank you," she said stiffly. "What time is breakfast on Sundays?"

"The prayer-bell rings at a quarter to nine, miss."

They exchanged no more conversation.

At a quarter to nine a shrill, jangling bell rang out and Maggie hurried down the dark staircase. She did not know where the dining-room was, but by good chance she caught sight of Aunt Elizabeth's little body moving hurriedly down the pa.s.sage and hastened after her. She arrived only just in time. There, standing in a row before four chairs, their faces red and s.h.i.+ning, their hands folded in front of them, were the domestics; there, with a little high desk in front of her, on the other side of the long dining-room table was Aunt Anne; here, near the door, were two chairs obviously intended for Aunt Elizabeth and Maggie.

Maggie in her haste pushed the door, and it banged loudly behind her; in the silent room the noise echoed through the house. It was followed by a piercing scream from Edward, whom, Maggie concluded, it had awakened. All this confused her very much and gave her anything but a religious state of mind.

What followed resembled very much the ceremonies with which her father had been accustomed to begin the day, except that her father, with one eye on the bacon, had gabbled at frantic pace through the prayers and Aunt Anne read them very slowly and with great beauty. She read from the Gospel of St. John: "These things I command you, that ye love one another ..."; but the clear, sweet tones of her voice gave no conviction of a love for mankind.

Maggie looking from that pale remote face to the roughened cheeks and plump body of the kitchen-maid felt that here there could be no possible bond. When they knelt down she was conscious, as she had been since she was a tiny child, of two things--the upturned heels of the servants' boots and the discomfort to her own knees. These two facts had always hindered her religious devotions, and they hindered them now. There had always been to her something irresistibly comic in those upturned heels, the dull flat surfaces of these cheap shoes. In the kitchen-maid's there were the signs of wear; Martha's were new and s.h.i.+ning; the house-maid's were smart and probably creaked abominably.

The bodies above them sniffed and rustled and sighed. The vacant, stupid faces of the shoes were Aunt Anne's only audience. Maggie wondered what the owners of those shoes felt about the house. Had they a sense of irritation too or did they perhaps think about nothing at all save their food, their pay and their young man or their night out?

The pain to her knees pierced her thoughts; the prayers were very long?--Aunt Anne's beautiful voice was interminable.

Breakfast was quiet and silent. Edward, who received apparently a larger meal on Sundays than at ordinary times, chattered happily to himself, and Maggie heard him say complacently, "Poor Parrot?--Poor Parrot. How do you do? How do you do?"

"Service is at eleven o'clock, dear," said Aunt Anne. "We leave the house at ten minutes to eleven."