Hugh Walpole

“ Maggie went back to her chair. After that, she sat there during the slow evolution of Eternity; Eternity unrolled itself before her, on and on and on, grey limitless mist and space, comfortless, lifeless, hopeless. She had been for many weeks leading a thoroughly unwholesome life in that old house with those old women. She did not herself know how unhealthy it had been, but she knew that she missed the wide fields and downs of Glebeshire, the winds that blew from the sea round Borhedden, the air that swirled and raced up and down the little stony strata of St. Dreot. ”

“ Maggie broke in: "You couldn't leave Skeaton, Paul. You know you couldn't. It would just break your heart. All the work of your life has been here—everything you've ever done. And Grace too."
"No, no, you're wrong," said Paul vigorously. "A change is probably what I need. I've been too long in the same place. Time goes so fast that one doesn't realise. And for Grace, too, I expect a change will be better."
"And do you think," said Maggie, "that Grace will ever live with me now in the same house when she knows that I've driven you from Skeaton? Grace is quite right. ”

“ Maggie brought out, staring at Mr. Magnus.
"Ah, if you see that, you don't understand her," he answered. "How should you—yet? She cares so deeply for her religion that she wishes naturally any one whom she loves to share it with her. But if you don't—"
"If you don't?" cried Maggie, springing up from her seat and facing him.
"I'm sure she would wish to influence no one," he continued gravely. "You've seen for yourself how apart her life is. She is too conscious of the necessity for her own liberty—"
"It isn't liberty, it's slavery," Maggie caught him up passionately. ”

“ They are nothing in the eyes of God, who understands all our weaknesses. And you must learn to know Him, dear. That is my only prayer now. If I am taken, if I go before the great day—if it be His will—then I pray always, now that I may leave you in my place, waiting for Him as I have waited, trusting Him as I have trusted ... you saw to-night what it means to us, what it must mean to any one who has listened. There were times, years ago, when I had not turned to God, when I did not care, when I thought of earthly love ... God drew me to Himself ... You too must come, Maggie—you must come. ”

“ Just then old Martha came out with a lamp in her hand, and standing upon a chair, lit the great ugly gas over the middle of the door.
"Why, Miss Maggie," she said in her soft, surprised whisper, looking as she always did, beyond the girl, into darkness.
"I've been out," said Maggie, defiantly.
"Not all alone, miss?"
"All alone," said Maggie. "Why not? I can look after myself."
"Well, there's your uncle waiting in the drawing-room—just come," said the old woman, climbing down from the chair with that silent imperturbable discontent that always frightened Maggie.
"Uncle Mathew! Here! ”

“ Here a deserted bandstand, there a railway station, here a dead haunt for pierrots, there a closed and barred cinema house, here a row of stranded bathing-machines, there a shuttered tea-house—and not a living soul in sight. In front of them was a long long stretch of sand, behind them to right and left the huddled tenements of the town, in front of them, beyond the sand, the grey sea—and again not a living soul in sight. The railway line wound its way at their side, losing itself in the hills and woods of the horizon.
"There are not many people about, are there?" said Maggie. ”

“ But it all seemed to him now incredibly old, childish and even fantastic, as though here, in the middle of London, he had suddenly stepped into a little wood with a witch, a cottage and a boiling cauldron. Such things could not frighten, of course—he was no longer a child—and yet because he had once been frightened some impression of alarm and dismay hovered over him.
During all his normal years abroad he had forgotten the power of superstition, of dreams and omens; he knew now, as he faced his father, that the power was real enough. ”

“ Maggie Cardinal, at the time, was nineteen years of age. She was neither handsome nor distinguished, plain indeed, although her mild, good-natured eyes had in their light a quality of vitality and interest that gave her personality; her figure was thick and square—she would be probably stout one day. She moved like a man. Behind the mildness of her eyes there was much character and resolve in her carriage, in the strong neck, the firm breasts, the mouth resolute and determined. She had now the fine expectation of her youth, her health, her optimism, her ignorance of the world. ”

“ Maggie wondered, as she looked about her, how she could have raised in her own imagination, around the Chapel and its affairs, so formidable an atmosphere of terror and tyrannic discipline. Here gathered together were a few women, tired, pale, many of them uneducated, awaiting like children the opening of a box, the springing into flower of a dry husk of a seed, the raising of the curtain on some wonderful scene. Maggie, as she looked at them, knew that they must be disappointed, and her heart ached for them all, yes, even for Amy Warlock, her declared enemy. ”

“ Maggie, when she was nearly home, halted suddenly. She stopped as when on the threshold of a room that should be empty one sees waiting a stranger. If at the end of all this she should lose Martin! ...
There was the stranger who had come to her now and would not again depart. She recognised the sharp pain, the almost unconscious pulling back on the sudden edge of a dim pit, as something that would always be with her now—always. One knows that in the second stage of a great intimacy one's essential loneliness is only redoubled by close companionship. ”

“ He clung to his decision with the utmost resolve as though it were his last plank of respectability.
"I can't believe," he said to her with great solemnity, "that things can really go wrong. I know too much. It isn't men like me who go under. No. No."
He saw then her white face and strange grey ghostly eyes as though her soul had gone somewhere on a visit and the house was untenanted. He felt again the gulp in his throat. He bent forward, resting his fat podgy hand on her knee.
"Don't you worry, Maggie dear. I've always noticed that things are never bad for long. ”

“ But Aunt Anne only smiled her dim cold smile, gave her cold hand into the girl's warm one and said, "Good afternoon, Caroline. I hope your father and mother are well." "They're dears, you know," Caroline said to Maggie; "I do admire your Aunt Anne; she keeps to herself so. I wish I could keep to myself, but I never was able to. Poor mother used to say when I was quite little, 'You'll only make yourself cheap, Carrie, if you go on like that. Don't make yourself cheap, dear.' But what I say is, one's only young once and the people who don't want one needn't have one." ”

“ It was something, at any rate, that she was out of the Chapel, away from Mr. Crashaw's piercing eyes, Mr. Thurston's rasping voice, Mr. Warlock's reproachful melancholy. She felt this evening as though by struggling with all her strength she could shut the gates upon new experiences that were fighting to enter into her soul, but must, at all costs to her own happiness, be defeated. No such thing as ghosts, no such thing as a God, be He kind, tender, cruel or loving—nothing but what one can see, can touch, can confront with one's physical strength. ”

“ This girl, whom Maggie was never to see again hung as a picture in the rooms of her mind for the rest of her life—the youth, the desperate anxiety as of one who throws her last piece upon the gaming-table, the poverty of the shabby black dress, the real physical austerity and asceticism of the white cheeks and the thin arms and pale hands—this figure remained a symbol for Maggie. She used to wonder in after years, when fortune had carried her far enough away from all this world, what had happened to that girl. ”

“ Maggie smiled back, and then, overcome by so poignant a feeling of loneliness, tempted, too, almost irresistibly to run down the steps, join them on the sand, build castles, play with the babies, she hurried away lest she should give way.
"I must be pretending at being married," she thought to herself. "I don't feel married at all. I'm not natural. If I were sitting on the sand digging I'd be quite natural. No wonder Grace thinks me tiresome. But how does one get older and grown up? What is one to do?" ”

“ Larks, lost in golden mist, circled in space; Maggie could feel upon her face and neck and hands the warm moisture; the soil under her feet, now hard, now soft, seemed to tremble with some happy anticipation; the moor, wrapped in its misty colour, had no bounds; the world was limitless space with hidden streams, hidden suns.
The moor had a pathetic attraction for her, because not very long ago a man and a woman had been lost, only a few steps from Borhedden Farm, in the mist—lost their way and been frozen during the night. Poor things! lovers, perhaps, they had been. ”

“ There had been many days when life had been unpleasant, and in the last year, as his miserliness had grown upon him, his ill-temper at any fancied extravagance had been almost that of an insane man, but Maggie knew very little of the affairs of other men and it seemed to her that every one had some disadvantage with which to grapple. She did not pretend to care for her father, she was very lonely because the villagers hated him, but she had always made the best of everything because she had never had an intimate friend to tell her that that was a foolish thing to do. ”

“ I shall find work and make myself useful somewhere, but I shall always love Martin just as I do now."
"You're very young," said Miss Avies, touched in spite of herself. "Later on you'll find some one much better than young Warlock."
"Perhaps I shall," said Maggie. "But what's the use of that if he isn't Martin? I've heard people say that before—some one's 'better' or 'stronger' or 'wiser.'—But what has that got to do with it? I love Martin because he's Martin. He's got a weak character you say. That's why he wants me, and I want to be wanted more than anything on earth." ”

“ A figure to whom this world offered only opportunities for sin and failure and defeat, but a figure to whom this world was the merest shadow hiding, as a shade hides a lamp, the life within. Wretched enough with its bad health, its growing corpulence, its weak mouth, its furtive desires, but despising, nevertheless, the strong, healthy figure beside it. Thurston was right. Men are not born to be free, but to fight, to the very death, for the imprisonment and destruction of all that is easiest and most physically active and most pleasant to the sight and touch ... ”

“ The curtains were not drawn and where the curve of the hill fell away the sky was faintly yellow; some cold stars like points of ice pierced the higher blue; carelessly, as though with studied indifference, flakes of snow fell, turning grey against the lamp-lit windows, then vanishing utterly. Maggie, going to the window, saw a dark shapeless figure beyond the glass. For an instant she was invaded by the terror of her surprised loneliness, then she remembered her father and the warm kitchen, then realised that this figure in the dark must be her Uncle Mathew. ”

“ Here were two niggers with banjoes, then a stout lady with a harmonium, then a gentleman drawing pictures on the sand; here again a man with sweets on a tray, here, just below Maggie, a funny old woman with a little hut where ginger-beer and such things were sold. The noise was deafening; the wind stirred the sand curiously so that it blew up and about in little wreaths and spirals. Everything and everybody seemed to be covered with the grit of this fine small sand; it was in Maggie's eyes, nose, and mouth as she watched. ”

“ More than ever before she realised how far Katherine Mark was from the world in which she, Maggie, had during all these months been living. Katherine Mark was Real—Real in her beautiful quiet clothes, in her assurance, her ease, the sense that she gave that she knew life and love and business and all the affairs of men at first hand, not only seen through a mist of superstition and ignorance, or indeed not seen at all. ”

“ Dear Miss Maggie,
I know you are not "Miss Maggie" now, but that is the only way that I can think of you. I expect that you have quite forgotten me, and perhaps you don't want to hear from me, but I must not lose sight of you altogether. I haven't so many friends that I can lose one without a word. I don't know quite what to begin by telling you. I ought to ask you questions about yourself, I suppose, but I know that your aunts hear from you from time to time and they give me news from your letters. I hear that you are happily married and are quite settled down to your new life. ”

“ Suddenly Miss Avies said, "What do you do with yourself all day?"
Maggie laughed. "Try and make myself less careless, Miss Avies."
Miss Avies replied, "You'll never make yourself less careless. We are as we are."
"But don't you think," said Maggie, "that one can cure one's faults?"
"One gets rid of one only to make room for another ... But that doesn't matter. The point is that one should have an ambition. What's your ambition, child?"
Maggie didn't answer. Her ambition was Martin, but she couldn't tell Miss Avies so. ”

“ God chooses His time. Be with me, Martin, for a little while even though I may seem old to you and foolish. Perhaps things will come back to you that you have long forgotten. You were once pledged and it was a vow that is not easily removed—but it is enough for the present if you will be with me a little, give me some of your time—give the old days a chance to come back." He laid his hand upon his son's.
The sudden touch of the dry, hot, trembling skin filled Martin's heart with the strangest confusion of affection, embarrassment and some familiar pathos. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On that other London arrival of hers the terminus had been a boiling cauldron of roar and rattle. Now everything was dead and asleep. No trains moved; they slept, ancient monsters, chained down with dirt and fog. Two or three porters crept slothfully as though hypnotised. The face of the great clock, golden in the dusk, dominated, like a heathen god, the scene. Maggie asked a porter the way to the Station Hotel. He showed her; she climbed stairs, pushed back swing doors, trod oil-clothed passages, and arrived at a tired young woman who told her that she could have a room. ”

“ The bare ugliness of the building with its stone walls, its rows of wooden seats, its grey windows, its iron-hung gas-lamps, its ugly desk and platform, was veiled now in a thin steaming heat that rose mistily above the heads of the kneeling congregation and seemed to hide strange shapes and shadows in its shifting depths. Every one was swimming in an uncertain world; the unreality grew with the heat. Maggie herself, at the end of Mr. Warlock's prayer, felt that her test of a real solid and unimaginative world was leaving her. ”

“ No one ever understood him. He could have done great things if—if—some one had looked after him a little. But he hadn't any one. That was my fault. I didn't want you and Paul to think I don't blame myself. I do all the time. I can't promise to be better in the future because I've promised so often and I never am. But I am sorry."
Grace said nothing for a moment. Her hands trembled more than ever. Then, without looking up, she murmured as though to her sewing:
"Oh no. Maggie ... no one blames you, I'm sure." ”

“ She began to tell him of those old days, of the Vicarage, of the holes in the floor and the ceiling, of her loneliness and the way the villagers used to talk, of her solitary walks and looking down on to Polchester from the hill-top, of her father's sudden death, of Uncle Mathew ...
"He's a funny old codger," said Martin. "What does he do?"
"I don't know," said Maggie. "I really don't know how he lives I'm afraid it's something rather bad."
"I've known men like that," said Martin, "plenty, but it's funny that one of them should be connected with you. ”

“ Warlock.
"You needn't mind mother," said Amy Warlock. "For some time now she's been completely paralysed. She can't speak or move. But she likes to be downstairs, to see the world a bit. It's sad after the way that she used to enjoy life. Father's death was a great shock to her."
It was sad. Maggie remembered how fond she had been of her food. Like a waxen image! Like a waxen image! The whole room was ghoulish and unnatural.
"I've asked you to come and see me, Mrs. Trenchard," continued Miss Warlock, "not because we can have any wish to meet, I am sure. We have never liked one another. ”

“ Maggie noticed then that Grace shivered and the whole of her face worked with an odd emotion of horror and disgust.
"He should have been shut up somewhere," she said. "It's disgraceful letting him walk about everywhere just like any one else."
"Shut up!" cried Maggie. "Oh, no! I don't think any one ought to be shut up for anything."
"My dear Maggie!" said Paul in his fatherly protecting voice. "No prisons? Think what would become of us all."
"Oh!" said Maggie impatiently, "I'm not practical of course, I don't know what one should do, but I do know that no one should be shut up." ”

“ If you care for me nothing else matters. God will see to the rest."
"I don't like leaving things to other people," Maggie said slowly. "Now I suppose I've shocked you. But there you are; I shall always be shocking you."
"Nothing that you can say will shock me," he answered firmly. "Do you know that that's part of the charm you have for me, you dear little wild thing? If you will come and live with me perhaps you will see how God works, how mysterious are His ways, and what He means to do for you—"
Maggie shivered: "Oh, now you're talking like Aunt Anne. ”

“ Grace turned the strange pale yellow that was her colour when she was disturbed.
"Maggie," she said, "I warn you that if you go to see this abandoned woman you will be insulting Paul and myself before the whole town."
"She is my friend," said Maggie.
"She is a wicked woman," said Grace, breathing very heavily, "and you're a wicked woman if you go to see her. You have already made Paul miserable."
"That is untrue," Maggie said fiercely. "It is I that have been miserable. Not that it hasn't been my own fault. I should never have married Paul." ”