The Captives Part 85

"But I want you," he said, his voice still very low. She looked up, her eyes lit as though with some sudden recognition.

"If you really mean that," she said, "say it again. If you don't mean it, don't humbug me. I won't be humbugged any more."

"I haven't humbugged you--ever," he answered. "You're the only person I've always been absolutely straight with. I've always, from the very beginning, told you to have nothing to do with me. It's more true than ever now. I've been trying ever since you came back to me in London to get you to leave me. But it's too late. I can't fight it any more ... I loved you all the time I was abroad. I oughtn't to have written to you, but I did. I came back to London with the one hope of seeing you, but determined not to."

"I loved you more than ever when you came into my lodging there, but I was sick and hadn't any money, besides all my other failings ... It's the only decent thing I've ever really tried to do, to keep you away from me, and now I've failed in that. When I came in and found you were gone this afternoon I thought I'd go crazy."

"I'm not going to struggle any more. If you go away I'll follow you wherever you go. I may as well try to give up keeping you out of it.

It's like keeping myself out of it."

Slowly she took her hat and coat off again.

"Well, then," she said, "I'd better stay, I suppose."

He suddenly sat down, his face white. She came across to him.

She put her hand on his forehead.

"You'd better go to bed, Martin, dear. I'll bring your tea in."

He caught her hand. She knelt down, put her arms round him, and so they stayed, cheek to cheek, for a long time.

When he had gone to his room she sat in the arm-chair by the fire, her hands idly folded on her lap. She let happiness pour in upon her as water floods in upon a dried and sultry river-bed. She was pa.s.sive, her tranquillity was rich and full, too full for any outward expression.

She was so happy that her heart was weighted down and seemed scarcely to beat. It was not, perhaps, the exultant happiness that she had expected this moment to bring her.

When, in after days, she looked back to that quiet half-hour by the fire she saw that it was then that she had pa.s.sed from girlhood into womanhood. The first chapter of her life was, at that moment's laying of her hand on Martin's forehead, closed. The love for him that filled her so utterly was in great part maternal. It was to be her destiny to know the deep tranquil emotions of life rather than the pa.s.sionate and transient. She was perhaps the more blessed in that.

Even now, at the very instant of her triumph, she deceived herself in nothing. There were many difficulties ahead for her. She had still to deal with Paul: Martin was not a perfect character, nor would he suddenly become one. Above all that strange sense of being a captive in a world that did not understand her, some one curious and odd and alien--that would not desert her. That also was true of Martin. It was true--strangely true--of so many of the people she had known--of the aunts, Uncle Mathew, Mr. Magnus, of Paul and of Grace, of Mr. Toms, and even perhaps of Thurston and Amy Warlock--all captives in a strange country, trying to find the escape, each in his or her own fas.h.i.+on, back to the land of their birth.

But the land was there. Just as the lion, whose roar very faintly she could hear through the thick walls, remembered in his cage the jungles and mountains of his happiness, so was she aware of hers. The land was there, the fight to get hack to it was real.

She smiled to herself, looking back on the years. Many people would have said that she had had no very happy time since that sudden moment of her father's death, but it did not seem to her, in retrospect, unhappy. There had been unhappy times, tragic times, but life was always bringing forward some magnificent moment, some sudden flash of splendour that made up for all the rest. How could you be bitter about people when you were all in the same box, all as ignorant, as blind, as eager to do well, as fallible, as brave, as mistaken?

The thoughts slipped dimly through her mind. She was too happy to trace them truly. She had never been one for conscious philosophy.

Nevertheless she did not doubt but that life was worth while, that there was something immortal in her, and that the battle was good to fight--but what it really came to was that she loved Martin, and that at last some one needed her, that she need never be lonely any more.

Mrs. Bolitho stepped in with the tea.

"I'll take it in to him," Maggie said, standing up and stretching out her arms for the tray.

The woman looked at her and gave a little "Ah!" of satisfaction, as though, at length, she saw in Maggie's eyes that for--which she had been searching.

"Why, I do believe," she said, "that walk's done 'ee good."

"I do believe," Maggie said, laughing, "it has."

Carrying the tray carefully she went through into Martin's room.