"He's married the wrong woman, my dear. That's what's the matter with
him."

"I knew he would. He was born to do it."

"Thank goodness," said Mrs. Hannay, "he's got the child."

"Oh--the child!"

She intimated by a shrug how much she thought of that consolation.




CHAPTER XXI


The new firm of Hannay & Majendie promised to do well. Hannay had a
genius for business, and Majendie was carried along by the inspiration
of his senior partner. Hannay was the soul of the firm and Majendie its
brain. He was, Hannay maintained, an ideal partner, the indefatigable
master of commercial detail.

The fourth year of his marriage found Majendie supremely miserable at
home; and established, in his office, before a fair, wide prospect of
financial prosperity. The office had become his home. He worked there
early and late, with a dumb, indomitable industry. For the first time in
his life Majendie was beginning to take an interest in his business.
Disappointed in the only form of happiness that appealed to him, he
applied himself gravely and steadily to shipping, finding some personal
satisfaction in the thought that Anne and Peggy would benefit by this
devotion. There was Peggy's education to be thought of. When she was
older they would travel. There would be greater material comfort and a
wider life for Anne. He himself counted for little in his schemes. At
thirty-five he found himself, with all his flames extinguished, settling
down into the dull habits and the sober hopes of middle age.

To the mind of Gorst, the spectacle of Majendie in his office was, as he
informed him, too sad for words. To Majendie's mind nothing could well be
sadder than the private affairs of Gorst, to which he was frequently
required to give his best attention.

The prodigal had been at last admitted to Prior Street on a footing of
his own. He blossomed out in perpetual previous engagements whenever he
was asked to dine; but he had made a bargain with Majendie by which he
claimed unlimited opportunity for seeing Edie as the price of his promise
to reform. This time Majendie was obliged to intimate to him that his
reform must be regarded as the price of his admission.

For, this time, in the long year of his exile, the prodigal's prodigality
had exceeded the measure of all former years. And, to his intense
surprise, he found that Majendie drew the line somewhere. In consequence
of this, and of the "entanglement" to which Majendie had once referred,
the aspect of Gorst's affairs was peculiarly dark and threatening.

In the spring of the year they gathered to their climax. One afternoon
Gorst appeared in Majendie's office, sat down with a stricken air, and
appealed to his friend to help him out.

"I thought you _were_ out," said Majendie.

"So I am. It's because I'm so well out that I'm in for it. Evans's have
turned her off. She's down on her luck--and--well--you see, _now_ she
wants me to marry her."

"I see. Well--"

"Well, of course I can't. Maggie's a dear little thing, but--you see--I'm
not the first."

"You're sure of that?"

"Certain. She confessed, poor girl. Besides, I knew it. I'm not a brute.
I'd marry her if I'd been the first and only one. I'd marry her if I were
sure I'd be the last. I'd marry her, as it is, if I cared enough for her.
Always provided I could keep her. But you know--"

"You don't care and you can't keep her. What are you going to do for
her?"

Gorst in his anguish glared at Majendie.

"I can't do anything. That's the damnedest part of it. I'm simply cleaned
out, till I get a berth somewhere."

Majendie looked grave. This time the prodigal had devoured his living.
"You're going to leave her there, then. Is that it?"

"No, it isn't. There's another fellow who'd marry her, if she'd have him,
but she won't. That's it."

"Because she's fond of you, I suppose?"

"Oh, I don't know about being fond," said Gorst sulkily. "She's fond of
anybody."

"And what do you want me to do?"

"I'd be awfully glad if you'd go and see her."

"See her?"

"Yes, and explain the situation. I can't. She won't let me. She goes mad
when I try. She keeps on worrying at it from morning to night. When I
don't go, she writes. And it knocks me all to pieces."

"If she's that sort, what good do you suppose I'll do by seeing her?"

"Oh, she'll listen to reason from any one but me. And there are things
you can say to her that I can't. I say, will you?"

"I will if you like. But I don't suppose it will do one atom of good. It
never does, you know. Where does the woman live?"

He took down the address on the visiting-card that Gorst gave him.

Between six and seven that evening he presented himself at one of many
tiny, two-storied, red brick and stucco houses that stood in a long flat
street, each with a narrow mat of grass laid before its bay-window. It
was the new quarter of the respectable milliners and clerks; and Majendie
gathered that the prodigal had taken some pains to lodge his Maggie with
decent people. He reasoned farther that such an arrangement could only be
possible, given the complete rupture of their relations.

A clean, kindly woman opened the door. She admitted with some show of
hesitation that Miss Forrest was at home, and led him to a sitting-room
on the upper floor. As he followed her he heard a door open; a dress
rustled on the landing, and another door opened and shut again.

Maggie was not in the room as Majendie entered. From signs of recent
occupation he gathered that she had risen up and fled at his approach.

The woman went into the adjoining room and returned, politely
embarrassed. "Miss Forrest is very sorry, sir, but she can't see
anybody."

He wrote his name on Gorst's card and sent her back with it.

Then Maggie came to him.

He remembered long afterwards the manner of her coming; how he heard her
blow her poor nose outside the door before she entered; how she stood on
the threshold and looked at him, and made him a stiff little bow; how she
approached shyly and slowly, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her
sides, and her eyes fixed on him in terror, as if she were drawn to him
against her will; how she held Gorst's card tight in her poor little
hand; how her eyes had foreknowledge of his errand and besought him to
spare her; and how in her awkwardness she yet preserved her inimitable
grace.

He could hardly believe that this was the girl he had once seen in
Evans's shop when he was buying flowers for Anne. The girl in Evans's
shop was only a pretty girl. Maggie, at five-and-twenty, living under
Gorst's "protection," and attired according to his taste, was almost
(but not quite) a pretty lady. Maggie was neither inhumanly tall, nor
inhumanly slender; she was simply and supremely feminine. She was dressed
delicately in black, a choice which made brilliant the beauty of her
colouring. Her hair was abundant, fawn-dark, laced with gold. Her face
was a full short oval. Its whiteness was the tinged whiteness of pure
cream, with a rose in it that flamed, under Maggie's swift emotions, to a
sudden red. She had soft grey eyes dappled with a tawny green. Her little
high-arched nose was sensitive to the constant play of her upper lip; and
that lip was so short that it couldn't always cover the tips of her
little white teeth. Majendie judged that Maggie's mouth was the prettiest
feature in her face, and there was something about it that reminded him,
preposterously, of Anne. The likeness bothered him, till he discovered
that it lay in that trick of the lifted lip. But the small charm that
was so brief and divine an accident in Anne was perpetual in Maggie. He
thought he should get tired of it in time.

Maggie had been crying. Her sobs had left her lips still parted; her
eyelids were swollen; there were little ashen shades and rosy flecks all
over her pretty face. Her diminutive muslin handkerchief was limp with
her tears. As he looked at her he realised that he had a painful and
disgusting task before him, and that there would be no intelligence in
the girl to help him out.

He bade her sit down; for poor Maggie stood before him humbly. He told
her briefly that his friend, Mr. Gorst, had asked him to explain things
to her, and he was beginning to explain them, very gently, when Maggie
cut him short.

"It's not that I want to be married," she said sadly. "Mr. Mumford would
_marry_ me."

"Well--then--" he suggested, but Maggie shook her head. "Isn't he nice to
you, Mr. Mumford?"

"He's nice enough. But I can't marry 'im. I won't. I don't love 'im. I
can't--Mr. Magendy--because of Charlie."

She looked at him as if she thought he would compel her to marry Mr.
Mumford.

"Oh dear--" said Maggie, surprised at herself, as she began to cry again.

She pressed the little muslin handkerchief to her eyes; not making a show
of her grief; but furtive, rather, and ashamed.

And Majendie took in all the pitifulness of her sweet, predestined
nature. Pretty Maggie could never have been led astray; she had gone out,
fervent and swift, dream-drunk, to meet her destiny. She was a creature
of ardours, of tenderness, and of some perverse instinct that it would be
crude to call depravity. Where her heart led, her flesh, he judged, had
followed; that was all. Her brain had been passive in her sad affairs.
Maggie had never schemed, or calculated, or deliberated. She had only
felt.

"See here," he said. "Charlie _can't_ marry you. He can't marry anybody."

"Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, he's too poor."

"I know he's poor."

"And you wouldn't be happy if he did marry you. He couldn't make you
happy."

"I'd be unhappy, then."

"Yes. And he'd be unhappy, too. Is that what you want?"

"No--no--no! You don't understand."

"I'll try to. What do you want? Tell me."

"To help him."

"You can't help him," he said softly.

"I couldn't help him if 'e was rich. I can help him if he's poor."

He smiled. "How do you make that out, Maggie?"

"Well--he ought to marry a lady, I know. But he can't marry a lady. She'd
cost him pounds and pounds. If he married me I'd cost him nothing. I'd
work for him."

Majendie was startled at this reasoning. Maggie was more intelligent than
he had thought.

She went on. "I can cook, I can do housework, I can sew. I'm learning
dressmaking. Look--" She held up a coarse lining she had been stitching
at when he came. From its appearance he judged that Maggie was as yet a
novice in her art.

"I'd work my fingers to the bone for him."

"And you think he'd be happy seeing you do that? A gentleman can't let
his wife work for him. He has to work for her." He paused. "And there's
another reason, Maggie, why he can't marry you."

Maggie's head drooped. "I know," she said. "But I thought--if he was
poor--he wouldn't mind so much. They don't, sometimes."

"I don't think you quite know what I mean."

"I do. You mean he's afraid. He won't trust me. He doesn't think I'm very
good. But I would be--if he married me--I would--I would indeed."

"Of course you would. Whatever happens you're going to be good. That
wasn't what I meant by the other reason."

Her face flamed. "Has he left off caring for me?"

He was silent, and the flame died in her face.

"Does he care for somebody else?"

"It would be better for you if you could think so."

"_I_ know," she said; "it's the lady he used to send flowers to. I
thought it was all right. I thought it was funerals."

She sat very still, taking it in.

"Is he going to marry her?"

"No. He isn't going to marry her."

"She's not got enough money, I suppose. _She_ can't help him."

"You must leave him free to marry somebody who can."

He waited to see what she would do. He expected tears, and a storm of
jealous rage. But all Maggie did was to sit stiller than ever, while her
tears gathered, and fell, and gathered again.

Majendie rose. "I may tell Mr. Gorst that you accept his explanation?
That you understand?"

"Am I never to see him again?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Nor write to him?"

"It's better not. It only worries him."

She looked round her, dazed by the destruction of her dream.

"What am I to do, then? Where am I to go to?"

"Stay where you are, if you're comfortable. Your rent will be paid for
you, and you shall have a small allowance."

"But who's going to give it me?"

"Mr. Gorst would, if he could. As he cannot, I am."

"You mustn't," said she. "I can't take it from you."

He had approached this point with a horrible dread lest she should
misunderstand him.

"Better to take it from me than from him, or anybody else," he said
significantly; "if it must be."

But Maggie had not misunderstood.

"I can work," she said. "I can pay a little _now_."

"No, no. Never mind about that. Keep it--keep all you earn."

"I can't keep it. I'll pay you back again. I'll work my fingers to the
bone."

"Oh, not for me" he said, laughing, as he took up his hat to go.

Maggie lifted her sad head, and faced him with all her candour.

"Yes," she said, "for you."




CHAPTER XXII


Majendie owned to a pang of shame as he turned from Maggie's door. In
justice to Gorst it could not be said that he had betrayed the
passionate, perverted creature. And yet there was a sense in which
Maggie's betrayal cried to Heaven, like the destruction of an innocent.
Majendie's finer instinct had surrendered to the charm of her appealing
and astounding purity, by which he meant her cleanness from the mercenary
taint. He had seen himself contending, grossly, with a fierce little
vulgar schemer, who (he had been convinced) would hang on to poor Gorst's
honour by fingers of a murderous tenacity. His own experience helped him
to the vision. And Maggie had come to him, helpless as an injured child,
and feverish from her hurt. He had asked her what she had wanted with
Gorst, and it seemed that what Maggie wanted was "to help him."

He said to himself that he wouldn't be in Gorst's place for a good deal,
to have that on his conscience.

As it happened, the prodigal's conscience was by no means easy. He called
in Prior Street that evening to learn the result of his friend's
intervention. He submitted humbly to Majendie's judgment of his conduct.
He agreed that he had been a brute to Maggie, that he might certainly do
worse than marry her, and that his best reason for not marrying her was
his knowledge that Maggie was ten times too good for him. He was only
disposed to be critical of his friend's diplomacy when he learned that
Majendie had not succeeded in persuading Maggie to marry Mr. Mumford.
But, in the end, he allowed himself to be convinced of the futility, not
to say the indecency, of pressing Mr. Mumford upon the girl at the moment
of her fine renunciation. He admitted that he had known all along that
Maggie had her own high innocence. And when he realised the extent to
which Majendie had "got him out of it," his conscience was roused by a
salutary shock of shame.

But it was to Edith that he presented the perfection of his penitence.
From his stillness and abasement she gathered that, this time, her
prodigal had fallen far. That night, before his departure, he confirmed
her sad suspicions.

"It's awfully good of you," he said stiffly, "to let me come again."

"Good of me? Charlie!" Her eyes and voice reproached him for this
strained formality.

"Yes. Mrs. Majendie's perfectly right. I've justified her bad opinion of
me."

"I don't know that you've justified it. I don't know what you've done. No
more does she, my dear. And you didn't think, did you, that Walter and I
were going to give you up?"

"I'd have forgiven you if you had."

"I couldn't have forgiven myself, or Walter."

"Oh, Walter--if it hadn't been for him I should have gone to pieces this
time. He's pulled me out of the tightest place I ever was in."

"I'm sure he was very glad to do it."

"I wish to goodness I could do the same for him."

"Why do you say that, Charlie?"

The prodigal became visibly embarrassed. He seemed to be considering the
propriety of a perfect frankness.

"I say, you don't mind my asking, do you? Has anything gone wrong with
him and Mrs. Majendie?"

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, you see, I've got a sort of notion that she doesn't understand
him. She's never realised in the least the stuff he's made of. He's the
finest man I know on God's earth, and somehow, it strikes me that she
doesn't see it."

"Not always, I'm afraid."

"Well--see here--you'll tell her, won't you, what he's done for me?
That ought to open her eyes a bit. You can give me away as much as
ever you like, if you want to rub it in. Only tell her that I've chucked
it--chucked it for good. He's made me loathe myself. Tell her that I'm
not as bad as she thinks me, but that I probably would be if it hadn't
been for him. And you, Edie, only I'm going to leave you out of it."

"You certainly may."

"It's because she knows all that already; and the point is to get her to
appreciate him."

Edith smiled. "I see. And I'm to make what I like of you, if I can only
get her to appreciate him?"

"Yes. Tell her that, as far as I'm concerned, I respect her attitude
profoundly."

"Very well. I'll tell her just what you've told me."

She spoke of it the next day, when Anne came to read to her in the
afternoon. Anne was as punctual as ever in her devotion, but the passion
of it had been transferred to Peggy. The child was with them, playing
feebly at her mother's knee, and Anne's mood was propitious. She listened
intently. It was the first time that she had brought any sympathy into a
discussion of the prodigal.

"Did he tell you," said she, "what Walter did for him?"

"No."

"Nor what had happened?"

"No. I didn't like to ask him. Whatever it was, it has gone very deep
with him. Something has made a tremendous difference."

"Has it made him change his ways?"

"I believe it has. You see, Nancy, that's what Walter was trying for. He
always had that sort of hold on him. That was why he was so anxious not
to have him turned away."

Anne's face was about to harden, when Peggy gave the sad little cry that
brought her mother's arms about her. Peggy had been trying vainly to
climb into Anne's lap. She was now lifted up and held there while her
feet trampled the broad maternal knees, and her hands played with Anne's
face; stroking and caressing; smoothing her tragic brow to tenderness;
tracing with soft, attentive fingers the line of her small, close mouth,
until it smiled.

Anne seized the little hands and kissed them. "My lamb," she said, "what
are you doing to your poor mother's face?" She did not see, as Edith saw,
that Peggy, a consummate little sculptor, was moulding her mother's face
into the face of love.

"I should never have dreamed," said Anne, "of turning him away, if I had
thought he was really going to reform. Besides, I was afraid he would be
bad for Walter."

"It didn't strike you that Walter might be good for him?"

"It struck me that I had to be strong for Walter."

"Ah, Walter can be strong for all of us." She paused on that, to let it
sink in. Anne's face was thoughtful.

"Anne, if you believed that all I've said to you was true, would you
still object to having Charlie here?"

"Certainly not. I would be the first to welcome him."

"Then, will you write to him of your own accord, and tell him that, if
what I've told you is true, you'll be glad to see him? He knows why you
couldn't receive him before, dear, and he respects you for it."

Anne thought better of Mr. Gorst for that respect. It was the proper
attitude; the attitude she had once vainly expected Majendie to take.

"After all, what have I to do with it? He comes to see you."

"Yes, dear; but I shan't always be here for him to see. And if I thought
that you would help Walter to look after him--will you?"

"I will do what I can. My little one!"

Anne bowed her head over the soft forehead of her little one. She had a
glad and solemn vision of herself as the protector of the penitent. It
was in keeping with all the sanctities and pieties she cherished. She had
not forgotten that Canon Wharton (a saint if ever there was one) had
enjoined on her the utmost charity to Mr. Gorst, should he turn from his
iniquity.

She was better able to admit the likelihood of that repentance because
Mr. Gorst had never stood in any close relation to her. His iniquity had
not profoundly affected her. But she found it impossible to realise that
Majendie's influence could count for anything in his redemption. Where
her husband was concerned Anne's mind was made up, and it refused to
acknowledge so fine a merit in so gross a man. She was by this time
comfortably fixed in her attitude, and any shock to it caused her
positive uneasiness. Her attitude was sacred; it had become one of the
pillars of her spiritual life. She was constrained to look for
justification lest she should put herself wrong with God.

She considered that she had found it in Majendie's habits, his silences,
his moods, the facility of his decline upon the Hannays and the Ransomes.
He was determined to deteriorate, to sink to their level.

To-night, when he remarked tentatively that he thought he would dine at
the Hannays', she made an effort to stop him.

"Must you go?" said she. "You are always dining with them."

"Why?--do you mind?" said he.

"Well--when it's night after night--"

"Is it that you mind my dining with the Hannays, or my leaving you?"

"I mind both."

"Oh--if I'd thought you wanted me to stay--"

She made no answer, but rose and led the way to the dining-room.

He followed. Her arm had touched him as she passed him in the doorway,
and his heart beat thickly, as he realised the strength of her dominion
over him. She had only to say "Stay," and he stayed; or "Come," and she
could always draw him to her. He had never turned away. His very mind was
faithful to her. It had not even conceived, and it would have had
difficulty in grasping, the idea of happiness without her.

To-night he was profoundly moved by this intimation of his wife's desire
to have him with her. His surprise and satisfaction made him curiously
shy. He sat through two courses without speaking, without lifting his
eyes from his plate; brooding over their separation. He was wondering
whether, after all, it had been so inevitable; whether he had
misunderstood her; whether, if he had had the sense to understand, he
might not have kept her. It was possible she had been wounded by his
absences. He had never explained them. He could not tell her that she
had made him afraid to be alone with her.

The situation, which he had accepted so obediently, had been more than
a mere mortal man could endure. Especially in the terrible five minutes
after dinner, before they settled for the evening, when each sat waiting
to see if the other had anything to say. Sometimes Majendie would take up
his book and Anne her work. She would sew, and sew, patient, persistent,
in her tragic silence. And when he could bear it no longer, he would put
down his book and go quietly away, to relieve the intolerable constraint
that held her. Sometimes it was Anne who read, while he smoked and
brooded. Then, in the warm, consenting stillness of the summer evenings
(they were now in June), her presence seemed to fill the room; he was
possessed by the sense of it; by the sound of her breathing; by the
stirring of her body in the chair, or of her fingers on the pages of her
book; and he would get up suddenly and leave her, dragging his passion
from the sight of her.

As he considered these things, many perplexities, many tendernesses,
stirred in him and kept him still.

Anne watched him from the other end of the table, and her thoughts
debased him. He seemed to her disagreeably incommunicative, and she had
found an ignoble explanation of his mood. There had been too much salt in
the soup, and now there was something wrong with the salmon. He had not
responded to her apology for these accidents, and she supposed that they
had been enough to spoil his evening with her.

She had come to consider him a creature grossly wedded to material
things.

"It's a pity you stayed," said she. "Mrs. Hannay would have given you a
better dinner."

He had nothing to say to so preposterous a charge. His eyes were fixed
more than ever on his plate. She saw his face flush as he bowed his head
in eating; she allowed her fancy to rest in its morbid abhorrence of the
act, and in its suspicion of its grossness. She went on, lashed by her
fancy. "I cannot understand your liking to go there so much, when you
might go to the Eliotts or the Gardners. They're always asking you, and
you haven't been near them for a year."

"Well, you see, the Hannays let me do what I like. They don't bother me."

"Do the Eliotts bother you?"

"They bore me. Horribly."

"And the Gardners?"

"Sometimes--a little."

"And Canon Wharton? No. I needn't ask."

He laughed. "You needn't. _He_ bores me to extinction."

"I'm sorry it is my friends who are so unfortunate."

"It's your husband who's unfortunate. He is not an intellectual person.
Nor a spiritual one, either, I'm afraid."

He looked up. Anne had finished her morsel, and her fingers played
irritably with the hand-bell at her side. Poor Majendie's abstraction had
combined with his appetite to make him deplorably slow over his dinner.
She still sat watching him, pure from appetite, in resignation that
veiled her contempt of the male hunger so incomprehensibly prolonged. He
had come to dread more than anything those attentive, sacrificial eyes.

"I'm awfully sorry," he said, "to keep you waiting."

She rang the bell. "Will you have the lamp lit in the drawing-room or the
study?"

He looked at her. There was no lamp for him in her eyes.

"Whichever you like. I think I shall go over to the Hannays', after all."

He went; and by the lamp in the drawing-room Anne sat and brooded in her
turn.

She said to herself: "It's no use my trying to keep him from them. It
only irritates him. He lets me see plainly that he prefers their society
to mine. I don't wonder. They can flatter him and kow-tow to him, and I
cannot. He can be a little god to them; and he must know what he is to
me. We haven't a thought in common--not a feeling--and he cannot bear to
feel himself inferior. As for me--if I've married beneath me, I must pay
the penalty."

But there was no penalty for her in these reflections. They satisfied
her. They were part of the curious mental process by which she justified
herself.




CHAPTER XXIII


Up to that moment when he had looked across the dinner table at Anne,
Majendie had felt secure in the bonds of his marriage. Anne's repugnance
had broken the natural tie; but up to that moment he had never doubted
that the immaterial link still held. If at times her presence was a
bodily torment, at other times he felt it as a spiritual protection. His
immense charity made allowance for all the extraordinary attitudes of
Anne. In his imagination they reduced themselves to one, the attitude of
inscrutable physical repugnance. He had accepted (as he had told himself
so often) the situation she had created. It appeared to him, of all
situations, the crudest and most simple. It had its merciful limits. The
discomfort of it, once vague, had grown, to his thwarted senses, almost
brutally defined. He could at least say, "It was here the trouble began,
and here, therefore, it shall end."

He thought he had sounded the depths of her repugnance, and could measure
by it his own misery. He said, "At any rate I know where I am"; and he
believed that if he stayed where he was, if he respected his wife's
prejudices, her prejudices would be bound to respect him. He could not
make her love him, but at least he considered that he had justified his
claim to her respect.

And now she had opened his eyes, and he had looked at her, and seen
things that had not (till that moment) come into his vision of their
separation. He saw subtler hostilities, incurable, indestructible
repugnances, attitudes at which his charity stood aghast. The situation
(so far from being crude and simple) involved endless refinements and
complexities of torture. He despaired now of ever reaching her.

Majendie had caught his first clear sight of the spiritual ramparts.

"I'm not good enough for her," he said. She had kept him with her that
evening, not because she wanted him to stay, but because she wanted him
to understand.

He had shown her that he understood by going to the friends for whom he
was good enough, who were good enough for him.

He went more than ever now, sometimes to the Ransomes, oftener to Gorst,
oftenest of all to Lawson Hannay. He liked more than ever to sit with
Mrs. Hannay; to lean up against the everlasting soft cushion she
presented to his soreness. More than ever he liked to talk to her of
simple things; of their acquaintance; of Edith, who had been a little
better, certainly no worse, this summer; of Peggy, of Peggy's future and
her education. He would sit for hours on Mrs. Hannay's sofa, his body
leaning back, his head bowed forward, his chin sunk on his breast,
listening attentively, yet with a dazed and rather stupid expression, to
Mrs. Hannay's conversation. His own was sometimes monotonous and a little
dull. He was growing even physically heavy. But Mrs. Hannay did not seem
to mind.

There was a certain justice in Anne's justification. He didn't
consciously prefer the Hannays' society to hers; but he actually found it
more agreeable, and for the reasons she suspected. They did worship him;
and their worship did make him feel superior, perhaps when he was least
so. They did flatter him; for, as Mrs. Hannay said, "He needed a little
patting on the back, now and then, poor fellow." And perhaps he was
really sinking a little to her level; he had so lost his sense of her
vulgarity.

He used to wonder how it was that she had kept Lawson straight. Perfectly
straight, Lawson had been, ever since his marriage. Possibly, probably,
if he had married a wife too inflexibly refined, he would have deviated
somewhat from that perfect straightness. His tastes had always been a
little vulgar. But there was no reason why he should go abroad to gratify
them when he possessed the paragon of amenable vulgarity at home. The
Gardners, whose union was almost miraculously complete, were not in their
way more admirably mated. And Lawson's reform must have been a stiff job
for any woman to tackle at the start.

A woman of marvellous ingenuity and tact. For she had kept Lawson
straight without his knowing it. She had played off one of Lawson's
little weaknesses against the other; had set, for instance, his fantastic
love of eating against his sordid little tendency to drink. Lawson
was now a model of sobriety.

And as she kept Lawson straight without his knowing it, she helped
Majendie, too, without his knowing it, to hold his miserable head up. She
ignored, resolutely, his attitude of dejection. She reminded him that if
he could make nothing else out of his life he could make money. She
convinced him that life, the life of a prosperous ship-owner in Scale,
was worth living, as long as he had Edith and Anne and Peggy to make
money for, especially Peggy.

And Majendie became more and more absorbed in his business, and more and
more he found his pleasure in it; in making money, that is to say, for
the persons whom he loved.

He had come even to find pleasure in making it for a person whom he did
not love, and hardly knew. He provided himself with one punctual and
agreeable sensation every week when he sent off the cheque for the small
sum that was poor Maggie's allowance. Once a week (he had settled it),
not once a month. For Maggie might (for anything he knew) be thriftless.
She might feast for three days, and then starve; and so find her sad way
to the street.

But Maggie was not thriftless. First at irregular intervals, weeks it
might be, or months, she had sent him various diminutive sums towards the
payment of her debt. Maggie was strictly honourable. She had got a little
work, she said, and hoped soon to have it regularly. And soon she began
to return to him, weekly, the half of her allowance. These sums he put by
for her, adding the interest. Some day there would be a modest hoard for
Maggie. He pleased himself, now and then, by wondering what the girl
would do with it. Buy a wedding-gown perhaps, when she married Mr.
Mumford. Time, he felt, was Mr. Mumford's best ally. In time, when she
had forgotten Gorst, Maggie would marry him.

Maggie's small business entailed a correspondence out of all proportion
to it. He had not yet gone to see her. Some day, he supposed, he would
have to go, to see whether the girl, as he phrased it vaguely, was
"really all right." With little creatures like Maggie you never could be
sure. There would always be the possibility of Gorst's successor, and he
had no desire to make Maggie's maintenance easier for him. He had made
her independent of all iniquitous sources of revenue.

At last, suddenly, the postal orders and the letters ceased; for three
weeks, four, five weeks. Then Majendie began to feel uneasy. He would
have to look her up.

Then one morning, early in September, a letter was brought to him at the
office (Maggie's letters were always addressed to the office, never to
his house). There was no postal order with it. For three weeks Maggie
had been ill, then she had been very poorly, very weak, too weak to sit
long at work. And so she had lost what work she had; but she hoped to get
more when she was strong again. When she was strong the repayments would
begin again, said Maggie. She hoped Mr. Majendie would forgive her for
not having sent any for so long. She was very sorry. But, if it wasn't
too much to ask, she would be very glad if Mr. Majendie would come some
day and see her.

He sent her an extra remittance by the bearer, and went to see her the
next day. His conscience reproached him for not having gone before.

Mrs. Morse, the landlady, received him with many appearances of relief.
In her mind he was evidently responsible for Maggie. He was the guardian,
the benefactor, the sender of rent.

"She's been very ill, sir," said Mrs. Morse; "but she wouldn't 'ave you
written to till she was better."

"Why not?"

"I'm sure I can't say, sir, wot 'er feeling was."

It struck him as strange and pathetic that Maggie could have a feeling.
He was soon to know that she had little else.

He found her sitting by a fire, wrapped in a shawl. It slipped from her
as she rose, as she leaped, rather, from her seat like one unnerved by a
sudden shock. He stooped and picked up the shawl before he spoke, that he
might give the poor thing time to recover herself.

"Did I startle you?" he said.

Maggie was still breathing hard. "I didn't think you'd come."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," she said weakly, and sat down again. Maggie was very
weak. She was not like the Maggie he remembered, the creature of
brilliant flesh and blood. Maggie's flesh was worn and limp; it had a
greenish tint; her blood no longer flowed in the cream rose of her face.
She had parted with the sources of her radiant youth.

She seemed to him to be suffering from severe anæmia. A horrible thought
came to him. Had the little thing been starving herself to save enough to
repay him?

"What have you been doing to yourself, Maggie?" he said brusquely.

Maggie looked frightened. "Nothing," she said.

"Working your fingers to the bone?"

She shook her head. "I was no good at dressmaking. They wouldn't have
me."

"Well--" he said kindly.

"There are a great many things I can do. I can make wreaths and crosses
and bookays. I made them at Evans's. I could go back there. Mr. Evans
would have me. But Mrs. Evans wouldn't." She paused, surveying her
immense resources. "Or I could do the flowers for people's parties.
I used to. Do you think--perhaps--they'd have me?"

Maggie's pitiful doubt was always whether "they" would "have" her.

"Yes," he said, smiling at her pathos, "perhaps they would."

"Or I could do embroidery. I learned, years ago, at Madame Ponting's.
I could go back. Only Madame wouldn't have me." (Maggie was palpably
foolish; but her folly was adorable.)

"Why wouldn't she have you?"

Maggie reddened, and he forbore to press the unkind inquiry. He gathered
that Maggie's ways had been not unknown to Madame Ponting, "years ago."

"Would you like to see some of my embroidery?"

He assented gravely. He did not want to turn Maggie from the path of
industry, which was to her the path of virtue.

She went to a cupboard, and returned with her arms full of little rolls
and parcels wrapped in paper. She unfolded and spread on the table
various squares, and strips, and little pieces, silk and woollen stuffs,
and canvas, exquisitely embroidered. There were flowers in most of the
patterns--flowers, as it appeared, of Maggie's fancy.

"I say, did you do all that yourself, Maggie?"

"Yes, that's what I _can_ do. I make the patterns out of me head, and
they're mostly flowers, because I love 'em. It's pretty, isn't it?" said
Maggie, stroking tenderly a pattern of pansies, blue pansies, such as she
had never sold in Evans's shop.

"Very pretty--very beautiful."

"I've sold lots--to a lady, before I was ill. See here."

Maggie unfolded something that was pinned in silver paper with a peculiar
care. It was a small garment, in some faint-coloured silk, embroidered
with blue pansies (always blue pansies).

"That's a frock," said she, "for a little girl. You've got a little
girl--a little fair girl."

He reddened. How the devil, he wondered, does she know that I have a
little fair girl? "I don't think it would fit her," he said.

Maggie reddened now.

"Oh--I don't want you to buy it. I don't want you to buy anything. Only
to tell people."

So much he promised her. He tried to think of all the people he could
tell. Mrs. Hannay, Mrs. Ransome, Mrs. Gardner--no, Mrs. Gardner was
Anne's friend. If Anne had been different he could have told Anne. He
could have told her everything. As it was--No.

He rose to go, but, instead of going, he stayed and bought several pieces
of embroidery for Mrs. Hannay, and the frock, not for Peggy, but for Mrs.
Ransome's little girl. They haggled a good deal over the price, owing
to Maggie's obstinate attempts to ruin her own market. (She must always
have been bent on ruining herself, poor child.) Then he tried to go
again, and Mrs. Morse came in with the tea-tray, and Maggie insisted on
making him a cup of tea, and of course he had to stay and drink it.

Maggie revived over her tea-tray. Her face flushed and rounded again to
an orb of jubilant content. And he asked her if she were happy. If she
liked her work.

She hesitated. "It's this way," she said. "Sometimes I can't think of
anything else. I can sit and sit at it for weeks on end. I don't want
anything else. Then, all of a sudden, something comes over me, and I
can't put in another stitch. Sometimes--when it comes--I'm that tired,
it's as if I 'ad weights on me arms, and I couldn't 'old them up to sew.
And sometimes, again, I'm that restless, it's as if you'd lit a fire
under me feet. I'm frightened," said Maggie, "when I feel it coming. But
I'm only tired now."

She broke off; but by the expression of her face, he saw that her
thoughts ran underground. He wondered where they would come out again.

"I haven't seen anybody this time," said Maggie, "for six months."

"Not even Mr. Mumford?"

"Oh, no, not him. I don't want to see him." And her thoughts ran back to
where they started from.

"It hasn't come lately," said Maggie, "it hasn't come for quite a long
time."

"What hasn't come?"

"What I've been telling you--what I'm afraid of."

"It won't come, Maggie," he said quickly. (He might have been her father
or the doctor.)

"If it does, it'll be worse now."

"Why should it be?"

"Because I can't get away from it. I've nowhere to go to. Other girls
have got their friends. I've got nobody. Why, Mr. Majendie--think--there
isn't a place in this whole town where I can go to for a cup of tea."

"You'll make friends."

She shook her head, guarding her little air of tragic wisdom.

Mrs. Morse popped her head in at the door, and out again.

"Is that woman kind to you?"

"Yes, very kind."

"She looks after you well?"

"Looks after me? I don't want looking after."

"Takes care of you, I mean. Gives you plenty of nice nourishing things to
eat?"

"Yes, plenty of nice things. And she comes and sits with me sometimes."

"You like her?"

"I love her."

"That's all right. You see, you _have_ got a friend, after all."

"Yes," said Maggie mournfully; and he saw that her thoughts were with
Gorst. "But it isn't the same thing, is it?"

Majendie could not honestly say it was; so he smiled, instead.

"It's a shame," said she, "to go on like this when you've been so good to
me."

"If I wasn't, you couldn't do it, could you? But what you want me to
understand is that, however good I've been, I haven't made things more
amusing for you."

"No, no," said Maggie vehemently, "I didn't mean that. Indeed I didn't.
I only wanted you to know--"

"How good _you_'ve been. Is that it? Well, because you're good, there's
no reason why you should be dull. Is there?"

"I don't know," said Maggie simply.

"See here, supposing that, instead of sending me all you earn, you keep
some of it to play with? Get Mrs. What's-her-name to go with you to
places."

"I don't want to go to places," she said. "I want to send it all to you."

He lapsed again into his formula. "There really is no reason why you
should."

"I want to. That's a reason, isn't it?" said she. She said it shyly,
tentatively, solemnly almost, as if it were some point in an infant's
metaphysics. There was no assurance in her tone, nothing to remind him
that Maggie had been the spoiled child of pleasure whose wants were
always reasons; nothing to suggest the perverted consciousness of power.

"Well--" He straightened himself stiffly for departure.

"Are you going?" she said.

"I must."

"Will you--come again?"

"Yes, I'll come, if you want me."

He saw again how piteous, how ill she looked. A pang of compassion went
through him. And after the pang there came a warm, delicious tremor. It
recalled the feeling he used to have when he did things for Edith, a
sensation singularly sweet and singularly pure.

It was consolation in his misery to realise that any one could want him,
even poor, perverted Maggie.

Maggie said nothing. But the flame rose in her face.

Downstairs Majendie found Mrs. Morse waiting for him at the door. "What's
been the matter with her?" he asked.

"I don't rightly know, sir. But between you and me, I think she's fretted
herself ill."

"Well, you've got to see that she doesn't fret, that's all."

He gave into her palm an earnest of the reward of vigilance.

That night he sent off the embroidered pieces to Mrs. Hannay, and the
embroidered frock to Mrs. Ransome; with a note to each lady recommending
Maggie, and Maggie's beautiful and innocent art.




CHAPTER XXIV


As Majendie declined more and more on his inferior friendships, Anne
became more and more dependent on the Eliotts and the Gardners. Her
evenings would have been intolerable without them. Edith no longer
needed her. Edith, they still said, was growing better, or certainly no
worse; and Mr. Gorst spent his evenings in Prior Street with Edie. The
prodigal had made his peace with Anne, and came and went unquestioned. He
was bent on making up for his long loss of Edie, and for the still longer
loss of her that had to be. They felt that his brilliant presence kept
the invading darkness from her door.

Autumn passed, and winter and spring, and in summer Edith was still with
them.

Anne was no longer a stranger in her husband's house since her child had
been born in it; but in the long light evenings, after Peggy had been put
to bed at six o'clock, Peggy's mother was once more alien and alone. It
was then that she would get up and leave her husband (why not, since he
left her?) and slip from Prior Street to Thurston Square; then that she
moved once more superbly in her superior circle. She was proud of her
circle. It was so well defined; and if the round was small, that only
meant that there was no room in it for borderlands and other obscure and
undesirable places. The commercial world, so terrifying in its
approaches, remained, and always would remain, outside it. Sitting in
Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room she forgot that the soul of Scale on Humber
was given over to tallow, and to timber, and Dutch cheeses. But for her
constant habit of depreciation, she could almost have forgotten that her
husband was only a ship-owner, and a ship-owner who had gone into a
horrible partnership with Lawson Hannay. It appeased her to belittle him
by comparisons. He had no spiritual fineness and fire like Canon Wharton,
no intellectual interests like Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. She had long
ago noticed his inability to converse with any brilliance; she was now
aware of the heaviness, the physical slowness, that was growing on him.
He was losing the personal distinction that had charmed her once, and
made her proud to be seen with him at gatherings of the fastidious in
Thurston Square.

Her fancy, still belittling him, ranked him now with the dull business
men of Scale. In a few years, she said, he will be like Lawson Hannay.

A change was coming over her. She was no longer apathetic. Now that she
saw less of her husband she thought more frequently of him, if only to
his disparagement. At times the process was unconscious; at times, when
she caught her thoughts dealing thus uncharitably with him, she was
touched by a pang of contrition and of shame. At times she was pulled up
in her thinking with a sudden shock. She said to herself that he used to
be so different, and her heart would turn gently to the man he used to
be. Then, as in the sad days of her bridal home-coming, the dear immortal
memory of him rose up before her, and pleaded mercy for the insufferably
mortal man. She saw him, with the body and the soul that had been once so
familiar to her, slender, alert, and strong, a creature of appealing
goodness and tenderness and charm. And she was troubled with a great
longing for the presence of the thing she had so loved. She yearned even
for signs of the old brilliant, startling personality, in face of the
growing dulness that she saw. She found herself recalling with a smile
sayings of his that had once vexed and now amused her. For Anne was
softer.

At times she was aware of a new source of uneasiness. She was accustomed
to judge all things in relation to the spiritual life. She had no other
measure of their excellence. She had found profit for her soul in its
divorce from her husband. She had persuaded herself that since she could
not raise him, she herself would have sunk if she had clung to him or let
him cling. She had felt that their tragic rupture strengthened the tie
between her soul and God. But more than once lately, she had experienced
difficulty in reaching her refuge, her place of peace. Something
threatened her former inviolable security. The ramparts of the spiritual
life were shaken. Her prayers, that were once an ascension of flamed and
winged powers carrying her to heaven, had become mere clamorous
petitions, drawing down the things of heaven to earth. Night and morning
the same passionate prayer for herself and her child, the same prayer for
her husband, painful and perfunctory; but not always now the same sense
of absolution, of supreme and intimate communion. It was as if a veil,
opaque but intangible, were drawn between her spirit and the Unseen. She
thought it had come of living in perpetual contact with Walter's
deterioration.

Yet Anne was softer.

Her love for Peggy had become more and more an engrossing passion, as
Majendie left her more and more to the dominion of her motherhood. He had
seen enough of the effect of rivalry. It was Anne's pleasure to take
Peggy from her nurse and wash her and dress her, to tend her fine limbs,
and comb her pale soft hair. It was as if her care for the little tender
body had taught her patience and gentleness towards flesh and blood; as
if, through the love it invoked, some veil was torn for her, and she saw,
wrought in the body of her child, the wonder of the spirit's fellowship
with earth.

She dreaded the passing of the seasons, as they would take with them each
some heart-rending charm of Peggy's infancy. Now it would be the ceasing
of her pretty, helpless cry, as Peggy acquired mastery over things; now
the repudiation of her delicious play, as Peggy's intellect perceived its
puerility; and now the leaving off for ever of the speech that was
Peggy's own, as Peggy adopted the superstition of the English language.
A few years and Peggy would have cast off pinafores, a very few more, and
Peggy would be at a boarding-school; and before she left it she would
have her hair up. There was a pang for Peggy's mother in looking
backward, and in looking forward pang upon intolerable pang.

But Peggy was in no hurry to grow up. Her delicacy prolonged her babyhood
and its sweet impunity. The sad state of Peggy's little body accounted
for all the little sins that weighed on Peggy's mother's soul. You
couldn't punish Peggy. An untender look made her tremble; at a harsh word
she cried till she was sick. When Peggy committed sin she ran and told
her mother, as if it were some wonderful and interesting experience. Anne
was afraid that she would never teach the child the difference between
right and wrong.

In this, by some strange irony, Majendie, for all his self-effacement,
proved more effectual than Anne.

They were all three in the drawing-room one Sunday afternoon at tea-time.
It was Peggy's hour. And in that hour she had found her moment, when her
parents' backs were turned to the tea-table. The moment over, she came to
Majendie, shivering with delight.

"Oh, daddy, daddy," she cried, "I did 'teal some sugar. I did 'teal it my
own self, and eated it all up."

Peggy had been forbidden to touch the sugar basin ever since one very
miserable day.

"Oh, Peggy, Peggy," said her mother, "that was very naughty."