"No, mummy, it wasn't. It wasn't naughty 't all."

She pondered, gravely working out her case. "I'd be sorry if it was
naughty."

Majendie laughed.

"If you laugh every time she's naughty, how am I to make her learn?"

Majendie held out his hand. "Come here, Peggy."

Peggy came and cuddled against him, smiling sidelong mischief at her
mother.

"Look here, Peggy, if you eat too much sugar, you'll be ill; and if
you're ill, mummy'll be unhappy. See?"

"I'm sorry, daddy."

Peggy's mouth shook; she turned, and hid her face against his breast.

"There, there," he said, petting her. "Look at mummy; she's happy now."

Peggy's face peeped out, but it was not at her mother that she looked.

"Are you happy, daddy?"

He stooped, and kissed her, and left the room.

And then Peggy said, "I'm sorry, mummy. Why did daddy go away?"

"I don't know, darling."

"Do you think he will come back again?"

"Darling, I don't know."

"You'd like him to come back, wouldn't you, mummy?"

"Of course, Peggy."

"Then I'll go and tell him."

She trotted downstairs to the study, and came back shaking her head
sadly.

"Daddy isn't coming. Naughty daddy."

"Why do you say that, Peggy?"

"Because he won't come when you want him to."

"Perhaps he's busy."

"Yes," said Peggy thoughtfully. "I fink he's busy." She sat very quiet on
a footstool, thinking. "I fink," she said presently, "I'd better go and
tell daddy he isn't naughty, else he'll be dreff'ly unhappy."

And she trotted downstairs and up again.

"Daddy sends his love, mummy, and he _is_ busy. S'all I take your love to
him?"

That was how it went on, now Peggy was older. That was how she made her
mother's heart ache.

Anne was in terror for the time when Peggy would begin to see. For that,
and for her own inability to teach her the stupendous difference between
right and wrong.

But one day Peggy ran to her mother, crying as if her heart would break.

"Oh, muvver, muvver, kiss me," she sobbed. "I did kick daddy! Kiss me."

She flung her arms round Anne's knees, as if clinging for protection
against the pursuing vision of her sin.

"Hush, hush, darling," said Anne. "Perhaps daddy didn't mind."

But Peggy howled in agony. "Y-y-yes, he did. I hurted him, I hurted him.
He minded ever so."

"My little one," said Anne, "my little one!" and clung to her and
comforted her.

She saw that Peggy's little mind recognised no sin except the sin against
love; that Peggy's little heart could not conceive that love should
refuse to forgive her and kiss her.

And Anne did not refuse.

Thus her terror grew. If it was to come to Peggy that way, her knowledge
of the difference, what was Peggy to think when she grew older? When she
began to see?

That was how Anne grew soft.

Her very body was changing into the beauty of her motherhood. The
sweetness of her face, arrested in its hour of blossom, had unfolded and
flowered again. Her mouth had lost its sad droop, and for Peggy there
came many times laughter, and many times that lifting of the upper lip,
the gleam of the white teeth, and the play of the little amber mole that
Majendie loved and Anne was ashamed of.

She had become for her child that which she had been for her husband
in her strange, immortal moments of surrender, a woman warmed and
transfigured by a secret fire. Her new beauty remained, like a brooding
charm, when the child was not with her.

And as the seasons, passing, made her more and more a woman dear and
desirable, Majendie's passion for her became almost insane through its
frustration.

Anne was aware of the insanity without realising its cause. He avoided
her touch, and she wondered why. Her voice, heard in another room, drew
his heart after her in longing. At the worst moments, to get away from
her, he went out of the house. And she wondered where. Hours of
stupefying depression were followed by fits of irritability that
frightened her. And then she wished that he would not go to the Hannays,
and eat things that disagreed with him.

Little Peggy helped to make his misery more unendurable. She was always
running to and fro between her father and her mother, with questions
concerning kisses and other endearments, till he, too, wondered what she
would make of it when she began to see. Everything conspired against him.
Peggy's formidable innocence was re-enforced by the still more formidable
innocence of her mother. Anne positively flaunted before him the
spectacle of her maternal passion. She showered her tendernesses on the
child, without measuring their effect on him, for whom she had none. She
did not allow herself to wonder how he felt, when he sat there hungry,
looking on, while the little creature, greedy for caresses, was given her
fill of love.

And when he was tortured by headache, she brought him an effervescing
drink, and considered that she had done her duty.

A worse headache than usual had smitten him one late Sunday afternoon in
August. A Sunday afternoon that made (but for Majendie and his headache)
a little sacred idyl, so golden was it, so holy and so happy, with Peggy
trotting between her father's and mother's knees, and the prodigal,
burning with penitence, upstairs in Edie's room, singing _Lead, Kindly
Light_, in a heavenly tenor.

Peggy tugged at Majendie's coat.

"Sing, daddy, sing! Mummy, make daddy sing."

"I can't make him sing, darling," said Anne, who was making soft eyes at
Peggy, and curling her mouth into the shape it took when it sent kisses
to her across the room.

Instead of singing, Majendie, with his eyes on Anne, flung his arms round
Peggy and lifted her up and covered her little face with kisses. The
child lay across his knees with her head thrown back and her legs
struggling, and laughed for terror and delight.

Anne spoke with some austerity. "Put her down, Walter; I don't care for
all this hugging and kissing. It excites the child."

Peggy was put down. But when bed-time came she achieved an inimitable
revenge. Anne had to pick her up from the floor to carry her to bed. At
first Peggy refused to be carried; then she surrendered on conditions
that brought the blood to her mother's face.

From her mother's arms Peggy's head hung down as she struggled to say
good-night a second time to daddy. He rose, and for a moment he and Anne
stood linked together by the body of their child.

And Peggy reiterated, "I'll be a good girl, mummy, if you'll kiss daddy."

Anne raised her face to his and closed her eyes, and Majendie felt her
soft lips touch his forehead without parting.

That night, when he refused his supper, she looked up anxiously.

"Are you not well, Walter?"

"I've got a splitting headache."

"You'd better take some anti-pyrine."

"I'm damned if I'll take any anti-pyrine."

"Well, don't, dear; but you needn't be so violent."

"I beg your pardon."

He cooled his hands against a jug of iced water, and pressed them to his
forehead.

She left her place and came and sat beside him. "Come," she said in the
sweet voice that pierced him, "come and lie down in the study." She laid
her hand on his shoulder, and he rose and followed her.

She made him lie down on the sofa in the study, and put cushions under
his head, and brought him the anti-pyrine. She sat beside him and dabbed
eau-de-cologne all over his forehead, and blew on it with her soft
breath. She paused, and sat very still, watching him, for a moment that
seemed eternity. She didn't like the flush on his cheek nor the queer
burning brilliance in his eyes. She was afraid he was in for a bad
illness, and fear made her kind.

"Tell me how you feel, dear," she said gently. She was determined to be
very gentle with him.

"Can't you see how I feel?" he answered.

She laid her firm, cool hand upon his forehead; and he gave a cry, the
low cry she had once heard and dreamed of afterwards. He flung up his
arm, and caught at her hand, and dragged it down, and held it close
against his mouth, and kissed it.

She drew in her breath. Her hand stiffened against his in her effort to
withdraw it; and when he had let it go, she turned from him and left him
without a word.

He threw himself face downwards on the cushions, wounded and ashamed.




CHAPTER XXV


It was Friday evening, the Friday that followed that Sunday when
Majendie's hope had risen at the touch of his wife's hand, and died
again under her repulse.

Friday was the day which Maggie Forrest marked in her calendar sometimes
with a query and sometimes with a cross. The query stood for "Will he
come?" The cross meant "He came." To-night there was no cross, though
Maggie had brushed her hair till it shone again, and put on her best
dress, and laid out her little table for tea, and sat there waiting, like
the ladies in those houses where he went; like Mrs. Hannay or Mrs.
Ransome who bought her embroidery; or like that grand lady with the
title, who had come with Mrs. Ransome--the lady who had bought more
embroidery than anybody, the scent on whose clothes was enough, Maggie
said, to take your breath away.

Maggie loved her tea-table. She embroidered beautiful linen cloths for
it. Every Friday it was decked as an altar dedicated to the service of a
god--in case he came.

He hadn't come. It was past eight, yet Maggie left the altar standing
with the cloth on it, and waited. It would be terrible if the god should
come and find no altar. Once, even at this late hour, he had come.

The house was very quiet. Mrs. Morse was out marketing, and Maggie was
alone. Friday was market night in Scale. She wondered if he would
remember that, and come. Her heart beat violently with the thought that
he might be beginning to come late. The others had come late when they
began to love her.

She had forgotten them, or only cared to remember such of their ways as
threw light on Mr. Majendie's. For he was, as yet, obscure to her.

It seemed to her that a new thing had come to her, a thing marvellously
and divinely new, this, that she should be waiting, counting hours, and
marking days on calendars, measuring her own pulses with a hand, now on
her heart, now on her throbbing forehead, and wondering what could be the
matter with her. Maggie was six-and-twenty; but ever since she was nine
she had been waiting and wondering. For there always had been somebody
whom Maggie loved insanely. First it was the little boy who lived in the
house opposite, at home. He had abandoned Maggie's society, and broken
her heart on the day when he "went into trousers." Then it was the big
boy in her father's shop who gave her chocolates one day and snubbed her
cruelly the next. Then it was the young man who came to tune the piano
in the back parlour. Then the arithmetic master in the little
boarding-school they sent her to. And then (for Maggie's infatuations
rose rapidly in the social scale) it was one of the young gentlemen who
"studied" at the Vicarage. He was engaged to Maggie for a whole term; and
he went away and jilted her, so that Maggie's heart was broken a second
time. At last, on an evil day for Maggie, it was one of the gentlemen
(not so young) staying up at "the big house." He watched for Maggie in
dark lanes, and followed her through the fields at evening, till one
evening he made her turn and follow her heart and him. And so Maggie went
on her predestined way.

For after him there was the gentleman who came to Madame Ponting's, and
after him, Mr. Gorst, who came to Evans's, and after Mr. Gorst--Last year
Maggie could not have believed that there could be another after him. For
each of these persons she would willingly have died. To each of them her
soul leaped up and bowed itself, swept forward like a flame bowed and
driven by the wind.

As long as each loved her, the flame burned steadily and still. Maggie's
soul was appeased for a season. As each left her, the flame died out in
tears, and her pulses beat feebly, and her life languished. Maggie went
from flame to flame; for the hours when there was nobody to love simply
dropped into the darkness and were forgotten. She left off living when
she had to leave off loving. To be sure there was always Mr. Mumford. He
was a tobacconist, and he lived over the shop in a house fronting the
pier, a unique and dominant situation. And he was prepared to overlook
the past and make Maggie his wife and mistress of the house fronting the
pier. Unfortunately, Maggie did not love him. You couldn't love Mr.
Mumford. You could only be sorry for him.

But though Maggie went from flame to flame, there were long periods of
placidity when she loved nothing but her work, and was as good as gold.
Maggie's father wouldn't believe it. He had never forgiven her, not even
when the doctor told him that there was no sense in which the poor girl
could be held responsible; they should have looked after her better, that
was all. Maggie's father, the grocer, did not deal in smooth, extenuating
phrases. He called such madness sin. So did Maggie in her hours of peace
and sanity. She was terrified when she felt it coming on, and hid her
face from her doom. But when it came she went to meet it, uplifted,
tremulous, devoted, carrying her poor scorched heart in her hand for
sacrifice.

Each time that she loved, it was as if her former sins had been blotted
out; for there came a merciful forgetfulness that renewed, almost, her
innocence. Her heart had its own perverted constancy. No lover was like
her last lover, and for him she rejected and repudiated the past.

And each time that she loved she was torn asunder. She gave herself in
pieces; her heart first, then her soul, then, if it must needs be, her
body. The finest first, then all that was left of her. That was her
unique merit, what marked her from the rest.

Majendie, she divined by instinct, had recognised her quality. He was the
only one who had. And he had asked nothing of her. She would have lived
miserably for Charlie Gorst. She would have died with joy for Mr.
Majendie. And Maggie feared death worse than life, however miserable.

But there was something in her love for Majendie that revealed it as a
thing apart. It had not made her idle. Her passion for Mr. Majendie
blossomed and flowered, and ran over in beautiful embroidery. That
industry ministered to it. Her heart was set on having those little sums
to send him every week; for that was the only way she could hope to
approach him of her own movement. She loved the curt little notes in
which Majendie acknowledged the receipt of each postal order. She tied
them together with white ribbon, and treasured them in a little box under
lock and key. All the time, she knew he had a wife and child, but her
fancy refused to recognise Mrs. Majendie's existence. It allowed him to
have a child, but not a wife. She knew that he spent his Saturdays and
Sundays with them at his home. He never came, or could come, on a
Saturday or Sunday, and Maggie refused to consider the significance of
this. She simply lived from Friday to Friday. No other day in the week
existed for Maggie. All other days heralded it, or followed in its train.
The blessed memory of it rested upon Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday and
Thursday glowed and vibrated with its coming; Mondays and Tuesdays were
forlorn and grey. Terrible were the days which followed a Friday when he
had not come.

He had not come last Friday, nor the Friday before that. She had always a
comfortable little theory to cheat herself with, to account for his not
coming. He had been ill last Friday; that, of course, was why he had not
come, Maggie knew. She did not like to think he was ill; but she did like
to think that only illness could prevent his coming. And she had always
believed what she liked.

The presumption in Maggie's mind amounted to a certainty that he would
come to-night.

And at nine o'clock he came.

Her eyes shone as she greeted him. There was nothing about her to remind
him of the dejected, anæmic girl who had sat shivering over the fire last
September. Maggie had got all her lights and colours back again. She was
lifted from her abasement, glorified. And yet, for all her glory, Maggie,
on her good behaviour, became once more the prim young lady of the lower
middle class. She sat, as she had been used to sit on long, dull Sunday
afternoons in the parlour above the village shop, bolt upright on her
chair, with her meek hands folded in her lap. But her eyes were fixed on
Majendie, their ardent candour contrasting oddly with the stiff modesty
of her deportment.

"Have you been ill?" she asked.

"Why should I have been ill?"

"Because you didn't come."

"You mustn't suppose I'm ill every time I don't come. I might be a
chronic invalid at that rate."

He hadn't realised how often he came. _He_ didn't mark the days with
crosses in a calendar.

"But you _were_ ill, this time, I know."

"How do you know?"

The processes of Maggie's mind amused him. It was such a funny, fugitive,
burrowing, darting thing, Maggie's mind, transparent and yet secret in
its ways.

"I know, because I saw--" she hesitated.

"Saw what?"

"The light in your window."

"My window?"

"Yes. The one that looks out on the garden at the back. It was twelve
o'clock on Sunday night, and on Monday night the light was gone, and I
knew that you were better."

"As it happens, you saw the light in my sister's room. She's always ill."

"Oh," said Maggie; and her face fell with the fall of her great argument.

"Sometimes," he said, "the light burns all night long."

"Yes," said Maggie, musing; "sometimes it burns all night long. But in
the room above that room, there's a little soft light that burns all
night, too. That's your room."

"No, that's my wife's room."

Maggie became thoughtful. "I used to think that was where your little
girl sleeps, because of the night-light. Then your room's next it."
Maggie desired to know all about the blessed house that contained him.

"That's the spare room," he said, laughing.

"Goodness! what a lot of rooms. Then yours is the one next the nursery,
looking on the street. Fancy! That little room."

Again she became thoughtful. So did he.

"I say, Maggie, how did you know those lights burned all night?"

"Because I saw them."

"You can't see them."

"Yes, you can; from the little alley that goes along at the back."

He hadn't thought of the alley. Nobody ever passed that way after dark;
it ended in a blind wall.

"What were you doing there at twelve o'clock at night?"

He looked for signs of shame and confusion on Maggie's face. But Maggie's
face was one flame of joy. Her eyes were candid.

"Walking up and down," she said. "I was watching."

"Watching?"

"Your window."

"You mustn't, Maggie. You mustn't watch people's windows. They don't like
it. It doesn't do."

The flame was troubled; but not the lucid candour of Maggie's eyes. "I
had to. I thought you were ill. I came to make sure. I was all alone. I
didn't let anybody see me. And when I saw the light I was frightened. And
I came again the next night to see. I didn't think you'd mind. It's not
as if I'd come to the front door, or written letters, was it?"

"No. But you must never do that again, mind. How did you know the house?"

Maggie hung her head. "I saw your little girl go in there."

"Were you 'watching'?"

"N-no. It was an accident."

"How did you know it was my little girl?"

"I saw you walking with her, one Saturday, in the Park. It was an
accident--really. I was taking my work to that lady who buys from
me--Mrs. 'Anny."

"I see."

"You're not angry with me, Mr. Magendy?"

"Of course not. What made you think I was?"

"Your face. You would be angry if I followed you. But I wouldn't do such
a thing. I've never followed any one--never. And I wouldn't do it now,
not if I was paid," she protested.

"It's all right, Maggie, it's all right."

Maggie clasped her knees and sat thinking. She seemed to know by
intuition when it was advantageous to be silent, and when to speak. But
Majendie was thinking, too. He was wondering whether he was not being a
little too kind to Maggie; whether a little unkindness would not be a
salutary change for both of them. Why couldn't the girl marry Mr.
Mumford? He didn't want to profit by the transaction. He would have
gladly paid Mr. Mumford to marry her, and take her away.

He put his hand over his eyes as a veil for his thoughts; and when he
took it away again, Maggie had risen and was going on soundless feet
towards the door.

"Don't go," she said, "I'll be back in a minute."

He flung himself back in the chair and waited. The minutes dragged. He
had wanted Maggie away; and now she had gone he wanted her back again.

Maggie did not stay away long enough to give him time to discover how
much he wanted her. She came back, carrying a tray with cups and a
steaming coffee pot, and set it on the table.

A fragrance of strong coffee filled the room. The service of the god had
begun.

She stood close against his side, yet humbly, as she handed him his cup.
"It's nice and strong," she said. "Drink it. It'll do your head good."

And she sat down opposite him, and watched him drink it.

Maggie's watching face was luminous and tender. In her eyes there was the
look that love gives for his signal--love that, in that moment, was pure
and sweet as a mother's. She was glad to think that the coffee was
strong, and would do his head good. She had no other thought in her mind,
at that moment.

After the coffee she brought matches and cigarettes, which she offered
shyly. Nature had given her an immortal shyness, born of her extreme
humility.

"They're all right," she said, "Charlie smoked them." (Charlie was at
times a useful memory.)

She struck a match and prepared to light the cigarette. This she did
gravely and efficiently, with no sign of feminine consciousness or
coquetry. It was part of the solemn evening service of the god. And, as
he smoked, the devotee retreated to her chair and watched him.

"Maggie," he said, "supposing Mr. Mumford was to come in?"

"He won't. Sunday's _his_ day; or would be, if I let him 'ave a day."

"Why don't you?"

She shook her head. "I've seen nobody."

There was silence for five minutes.

"Mr. Magendy--"

"Majendie, Maggie, Majendie."

"Mr. Mashendy--I'm beginning to be afraid."

"What are you afraid of?"

"What I've always told you about. That awful feeling. It's coming on
again, I think."

"It won't come, Maggie, it won't come. Don't think about it, and it won't
come."

He didn't understand very clearly what Maggie was talking about; but he
remembered that, last September, after her illness, she had been afraid
of something. And he remembered that he had comforted her with some such
words as these.

"Yes," said she, "but I feel it coming."

"Maggie, you oughtn't to live alone like this. See here, you ought to
marry. You ought to marry Mr. Mumford. Why don't you?"

"I don't want to marry anybody. And I don't love him."

"Well, don't think about that other thing. Don't think about it. You'll
be all right."

"I won't think," said Maggie, and thought profoundly.

"Mr. Majendie," she said suddenly.

"Madam."

"You mustn't be afraid. I shall never do anything I know you wouldn't
like me to."

"All right. Only don't think too much about that, either."

"I can't help thinking. You've been so good to me."

"I should try and forget that, too, a little more, if I were you. I'm
only paying some of Mr. Gorst's debts for him."

The name called up no colour to her cheek. Maggie had forgotten Gorst,
and all _he_ had done for her.

"And you're paying me back."

She shook her head. "I can't ever pay you back."

Poor little girl! Was that what her mind was always running on?

There was silence again between them. And then Majendie looked at Maggie.

She was sitting very still, as if she were waiting for something, and yet
content. Her eyes were swimming, as if with tears; but there were no
tears in them. Her face was reddening, as if with shame, but there was no
shame in it. She seemed to be listening, dazed and enchanted, to her own
secret, the running whisper of her blood. Her lips were parted, and, as
he looked at her, they closed and opened again in sympathy with the
delicate tremors that moved her throat under her rounded chin. In her
brooding look there was neither reminiscence nor foreboding; it was the
look of a creature surrendered wholly to her hour.

As he looked at her his nerves sent an arrow of warning, a hot tremor
darting from heart to brain.

"I must go now, Maggie," he said.

When he stood up, his knees shook under him.

"Not yet," said Maggie. "I'm all alone in the house, and I'm afraid."

"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said roughly. "I've got to go."

He strode towards the door while Maggie stared after him in terror. She
understood nothing but that he was going to leave her. What had she done
to drive him away?

"You're ill," she cried, as she followed him, panting in her fright.

He pushed her back gently from the threshold.

"Don't be a little fool, Maggie. I'm not ill."

Out in the street, five yards from Maggie's door, he battled with a
vision of her that almost drove him back again. "It was I who was a
fool," he thought. "I shall go back. Why not? She is predestined. Why not
I as well as anybody else?"

All the way to his own door an insistent, abominable voice kept calling
to him, "Why not? Why not?"

He went with noiseless footsteps up his own stairs, past the dark doors
below, past Edith's open door where the lamp still burned brightly beyond
the threshold. At Anne's door he paused.

It stood ajar in a dim light. He pushed it softly open and went in.

Anne and her child lay asleep under the silver crucifix.

Peggy had been taken into Anne's bed, and had curled herself close up
against her mother's side. Her arm lay on Anne's breast; one hand
clutched the border of Anne's nightgown. The long thick braid of Anne's
hair was flung back on the pillow, framing the child's golden head in
gold.

His eyes filled with tears as he looked at them. For a moment his heart
stood still. Why not he as well as anybody else? His heart told him why.

As he turned he sighed. A sigh of longing and tenderness, and of
thankfulness for a great deliverance. Above all, of thankfulness.




CHAPTER XXVI


The light burned in Edith's room till morning; for her spine kept sleep
from her through many nights. They no longer said, "She is better, or
certainly no worse." They said, "She is worse, or certainly no better."
The progress of her death could be reckoned by weeks and measured by
inches. Soon they would be giving her morphia, to make her sleep.
Meanwhile she was terribly awake.

She heard her brother's soft footsteps as he passed her door. She heard
him pause on the upper landing and creep into the room overhead. She
heard him go out again and shut himself up in the little room beyond.
There came upon her an awful intuition of the truth.

The next day she sent for him.

"What is it, Edie?" he said.

She looked at him with loving eyes, and asked him as Maggie had asked,
"Are you ill?"

He started. The question brought back to him vividly the scene of the
night before; brought back to him Maggie with her love and fear.

"What is it? Tell me," she insisted.

He owned to headaches. She knew he often had them.

"It's not a bit of use," she said, "trying to deceive _me_. It's not
headaches. It's Anne."

"Poor Anne. I think she's all right. After all, she's got the child, you
know."

"Yes. _She_'s got Peggy. If I could see you all right, too, I should die
happy."

"Don't worry about me. I'm not worth it."

She gazed at him searchingly, confirmed in her intuition. That was the
sort of thing poor Charlie used to say.

"It's my fault," she said. "It always has been."

"Angel, if you could lay everybody's sins on your own shoulders, you
would."

"I mean it. You were right and I was wrong. Ah, how one pays! Only
_you_'ve had to pay for my untruthfulness. I can see it now. If I'd done
as you asked me, in the beginning, and told her the truth--"

"She wouldn't have married me. No, Edie. You're assuming that I've lived
to regret that I married her. I never have regretted it for one single
moment. Not for myself, that is. For her, yes. Granted that I'm as
unhappy as you please, I'd rather be unhappy with her than happy without
her. See?"

"Walter--if you keep true to her, I believe you'll have your happiness
yet. I don't know how it's coming. It may come very late. But it's bound
to come. She's good--"

He assented with a groan. "Oh, much _too_ good."

"And the goodness in her must recognise the goodness in you; when she
understands. I believe she's beginning to understand. She doesn't know
how much she understands."

"Understands what?"

"Your goodness. She loved you for it. She'll love you for it again."

"My dear Edie, you're the only person who believes in my goodness--you
and Peggy."

"I and Peggy. And Charlie and the Hannays. And Nanna and the
Gardners--and God."

"I wish God would give Anne a hint that He thinks well of me."

"Dear--if you keep true to her--He will."

If he kept true to her! It was the second time she had said it. It was
almost as if she had divined what had so nearly happened.

"I think," she said, "I'd like to talk to Anne, now, while I can talk.
You see, once they go giving me morphia"--she closed her eyes. "Just let
me lie still for half an hour, and then bring Anne to me."

She lay still. He watched her for an hour. And he knew that in that hour
she had prayed.

He found Anne sitting on the nursery floor, playing with Peggy. "Edie
wants you," he said, loosening Peggy's little hands as they clung about
his legs.

"Mother must go, darling," said she.

But all Peggy said was, "Daddy'll stay."

He did not stay long. He had to restrain himself, to go carefully with
Peggy, lest he should help her to make her mother's heart ache.

Anne found Nanna busied about the bed. Nanna was saying, "Is that any
easier, Miss Edie?"

"It's heavenly, Nanna," said Edie, stifling a moan. "Oh dear, I hope in
the next world I shan't feel as if my spine were still with me, like
people when their legs are cut off."

"Miss Edie, what an idea!"

"Well, Nanna, you can't tell whether it mayn't be so. Anne, dear, you've
got such a nice, pretty body, why have you such a withering contempt for
it? It behaves so well to you, too. That's more than I can say of mine;
and yet, I believe I shall quite miss it when it's gone. At any rate, I
shall be glad that I was decent to the poor thing while it was with me.
Run away now, please, Nanna, and shut the door."

Nanna thought she knew why Miss Edie wanted the door shut. She, too, had
her intuitive forebodings. She was aware, the whole household was aware,
that the mistress cared more for her child than for the husband who had
given it her. Their master's life was not altogether happy. They wondered
many times how he was going to stand it.

"Anne" said Edith, "I'm uneasy about Walter."

"You need not be," said Anne.

"Why? Aren't you?"

"I know he hasn't been well lately--"

"How can you expect him to be well when he's so unhappy?"

Anne was silent.

"How long is it going to last, dear? And where is it going to end?"

"Edith, you needn't be afraid. I shall never leave him."

That was not what Edith was afraid of, but she did not say so.

"How can I," Anne went on, "when I believe the Church's doctrine of
marriage?"

"Do you? Do you believe that love is a provision for the soul's
redemption of the body? or for the body's redemption of the soul?"

"I believe that, having married Walter, whatever he is or does, I cannot
leave him without great sin."

"Then you'll be shocked when I tell you that if your husband were a bad
man, I should be the first to implore you to leave him, though he is my
brother. Where there can be no love on either side there's no marriage,
and no sacrament. That's _my_ profane belief."

"And when there's love on one side only?"

"The sacrament is there, offered by the loving person, and refused by the
unloving. And that refusal, my dear child, may, if you like, be a great
sin--supposing, of course, that the love is pure and devoted. I hardly
know which is the worst sin, then, to refuse to give, or to refuse to
take it; or to take it, and then throw it away. What would you think if
Peggy hardened her little heart against you?"

"My Peggy!"

"Yes, your Peggy. It's the same thing. You'll see it some day. But I want
you to see it now, before it's too late."

"Edie, if you'd only tell me where I've failed! If you're thinking of
our--our separation--"

"I was not. But, since you _have_ mentioned it, I can't help reminding
you that you fell in love with Walter because you thought he was a saint.
And so I don't see what's to prevent you now. He's qualifying. He mayn't
be perfect; but, in some ways, a saint couldn't very well do more. Has it
never occurred to that you are indulging the virtue that comes easiest to
you, and exacting from him the virtue that comes hardest? And he has
stood the test."

"It was his own doing--his own wish."

"Is it? I doubt it--when he's more in love with you than he was before he
married you."

"That's all over."

"For you. Not for him. He's a man, as you may say, of obstinate
affections."

"Ah, Edie--you don't know."

"I know," said Edith, "you're perfectly sweet, the way you take my
scoldings. It's cowardly of me, when I'm lying here safe, and you can't
scold back again. But I wouldn't do it if I didn't love you."

"I know--I know you love me."

"But I couldn't love you so much, if I didn't love Walter more."

"You well may, Edie. He's been a good brother to you."

"Some day you'll own he's been as good a husband as he's been a brother.
Better; for it's a more difficult post, my dear. I don't really think my
body, spine and all, can have tried him more than your spirit."

"What have I done? Tell me--tell me."

"Done? Oh, Nancy, I hate to have to say it to you. What haven't you done?
There's no way in which you haven't hurt and humiliated him. I'm not
thinking of your separation--I'm thinking of the way you've treated him,
and his affection for you and Peggy. You won't let him love you. You
won't even let him love his little girl."

"Does he say that?"

"Would he say it? People in my peculiar position don't require to have
things said to them; they _say them_. You see, if I didn't say them now
I should have to get up out of my grave and do it, and that would be ten
times more disagreeable for you. It might even be very uncomfortable for
me."

"Edie, I wish I knew when you were serious."

"Well, if I'm not serious now, when _shall_ I be?"

Anne smiled. "You're very like Walter."

"Yes. He's every bit as serious as I am. And he's getting more and more
serious every day."

"Oh, Edie, you don't understand. I--I've suffered so terribly."

"I do understand. I've gone through it--every pang of it--and it's all
come back to me again through your suffering--and I know it's been worse
for you. I've told him so. It's because I don't want you to suffer more
that I'm saying these awful things to you."

"Oh! _Am_ I to suffer more?"

"I believe that's the only way your happiness can come to you--through
great suffering. I'm only afraid that the suffering may come through
Peggy, if you don't take care."

"Peggy--"

It was her own terror put into words.

"Yes. That child has a terrible capacity for loving. And for her that
means suffering. She loves you. She loves her father. Do you suppose she
won't suffer when she sees? Her little heart will be torn in two between
you."

"Oh, Edith--I cannot bear it."

She hid her face from the anguish.

"You needn't. That's it. It rests with you."

"With me? If you would only tell me how."

"I can't tell you anything. It'll come. Probably in the way you least
expect it. But--it'll come."

"Edie, I feel as if you held us all together. And when you've gone--"

"You mean when _it's_ gone. When it's 'gone,'" said Edie, smiling. "I
shall hold you together all the more. You needn't sigh like that."

"Did I sigh?"

As Anne stooped over the bed she sighed again, thinking how Edith's
loving arms used to leap up and hold her, and how they could never hold
anything any more.

Of all the things that Edith said to her that afternoon, two remained
fixed in Anne's memory: how Peggy would suffer through overmuch
loving--she remembered that saying, because it had confirmed her terror;
and how love was a provision for the soul's redemption of the body, or
for the body's redemption of the soul. This she remembered, because she
did not understand it.

That was in August. Before the month was out they were beginning to give
Edith morphia.

In September Gorst came to see her for the last time.

In October she died in her brother's arms.

In the days that followed, it was as if her spirit, refusing to depart
from them, had rested on the sister she had loved. Spirit to spirit,
she stooped, kindling in Anne her own dedicated flame. In the white
death-chamber, and through the quiet house, the presence of Anne, moving
with a hushed footfall, was like the presence of a blessed spirit. Her
face was as a face long hidden upon the heart of peace. Her very grief
aspired; it had wings, lifting her towards her sister in her heavenly
place.

For Anne, in the days that followed, was possessed by a great and burning
charity. Mrs. Hannay called and was taken into the white room to see
Edith. And Anne's heart went out to Mrs. Hannay, when she spoke of the
beauty and goodness of Edith; and to Lawson Hannay, when he pressed her
hand without speaking; and to Gorst, when she saw him stealing on tiptoe
from Edith's room, his face swollen and inflamed with grief. Her heart
went out to all of them, because they had loved Edith.

And to her husband her heart went out with a tenderness born of an
immense pity and compassion. For the first three days, Majendie gave no
sign that he was shaken by his sister's death. But on the evening of the
day they buried her, Anne found him in the study, sitting in his low
chair by the fire, his head sunk, his body bowed forward over his knees,
convulsed with a nervous shivering. He started and stared at her
approach, and straightened himself suddenly. She held out her hand. He
looked at it dumbly, as if unwilling or afraid to take it.

"My dear," she said softly.

Then she knelt beside him, and drew his head down upon her breast, and
let it rest there.




CHAPTER XXVII


It was a Thursday night in October, three weeks after Edith's death. Anne
was in her room, undressing. She moved noiselessly, with many tender
precautions, for fear of waking Peggy, and for fear of destroying the
peace that possessed her own soul like heavenly sleep. It was the mystic
mood that went before prayer.

In those three weeks Anne felt that she had been brought very near to
God. She had not known such stillness and content since the days at
Scarby that had made her life terrible. It was as if Edith's spirit in
bliss had power given it to help her sister, to draw Anne with it into
the divine presence.

And the dead woman bound the living to each other also, as she had said.
How she bound them Anne had not realised until to-day. It was Mrs.
Elliott's day, her Thursday. Anne had spent half an hour in Thurston
Square, and had come away with a cold, unsatisfactory feeling towards
Fanny. Fanny, for the first time, had jarred on her. She had so plainly
hesitated between condolence and congratulation. She seemed to be
secretly rejoicing in Edith Majendie's death. Her manner intimated
clearly that a burden had been removed from her friend's life, and that
the time had now come for Anne to blossom out and enjoy herself. Anne had
been glad to get away from Fanny, to come back to the house in Prior
Street and to find Walter waiting for her. Fanny, in spite of her
intellectual rarity, lacked the sense that, after all, _he_ had, the
sense of Edith's spiritual perfection. Strangely, inconsistently,
incomprehensibly, he had it. He and his wife had that in common, if they
had nothing else. They were bound to each other by Edith's dear and
sacred memory, an immaterial, immortal tie. They would always share their
knowledge of her. Other people might take for granted that her terrible
illness had loosened, little by little, the bond that held them to her.
They knew that it was not so. They never found themselves declining on
the mourner's pitiful commonplaces, "Poor Edie"; "She is released"; "It's
a mercy she was taken." It was their tribute to Edith's triumphant
personality that they mourned for her as for one cut off in the fulness
of a strong, beneficent life.

For those three weeks Anne remained to her husband all that she had been
on the night of Edith's burial.

And, as she felt that nobody but her husband understood what she had lost
in Edith, she realised for the first time his kindred to his sister. She
forced herself to dwell on his many admirable qualities. He was
unselfish, chivalrous, the soul of honour. On his chivalry, which touched
her more nearly than his other virtues, she was disposed to put a very
high interpretation. She felt that, in his way, he acknowledged her
spiritual perfection, also, and reverenced it. If their relations only
continued as they were, she believed that she would yet be happy with
him. To think of him as she had once been obliged to think was to profane
the sorrow that sanctified him now. She was persuaded that the shock of
Edith's death had changed him, that he was ennobled by his grief. She
could not yet see that the change was in herself. She said to herself
that her prayers for him were answered.

For it was no longer an effort, painful and perfunctory, to pray for her
husband. Since Edith's death she had prayed for him, as she had prayed in
the time of reconciliation that followed her first discovery of his sin.
She was horrified when she realised how in six years her passion of
redemption had grown cold. It was there that she had failed him, in
letting go the immaterial hold by which she might have drawn him with her
into the secret shelter of the Unseen. She perceived that in those years
her spiritual life had suffered by the invasion of her earthly trouble.
She had approached the silent shelter with cries of supplication for
herself and for her child, the sweet mortal thing she had loved above all
mortal things. Every year had made it harder for her to reach the sources
of her help, hardest of all to achieve the initiatory state, the
nakedness, the prostration, the stillness of the dedicated soul. Too many
miseries cried and strove in her. She could no longer shut to her door,
and bar the passage to the procession of her thoughts, no longer cleanse
and empty her spirit's house for the divine thing she desired to dwell
with her.

And now she was restored to her peace; lifted up and swept, effortless,
into the place of heavenly help. Anne's soul had no longer to reach out
her hand and feel her way to God, for it was God who sought for her and
found her. She heard behind her, as it were, the footsteps of the divine
pursuing power. Once more, as in the mystic days before her marriage, she
had only to close her eyes, and the communion was complete. At night,
when her prayer was ended, she lay motionless in the darkness, till she
seemed to pass into the ultimate bliss, beyond the reach of prayer. There
were moments when she felt herself to be close upon the very vision of
God, the beatitude of the pure.

After these moments Anne found herself contemplating her own inviolate
sanctity.

There was in Anne an immense sincerity, underlying a perfect tangle of
minute deceptions and hypocrisies. She was not deceived as to the supreme
event. She was truly experiencing the great spiritual passion which,
alone of passions, is destined to an immortal satisfaction. She had all
but touched the end of the saint's progress. But she was ignorant, both
of the paths that brought her there, and the paths that had led and might
again lead, her feet astray.

Each night, when she closed her bedroom door, she felt that she was
entering into a sanctuary. She was profoundly, tenderly grateful to her
husband for the renunciation that made that refuge possible to her. She
accepted her blessed isolation as his gift.

This Thursday had been a day of little lacerating distractions. She had
gone through it thirsting for the rest and surrender, the healing silence
of the night.

She undressed slowly, being by nature thorough and deliberate in all her
movements.

She was standing before her looking-glass, about to unpin her hair, when
she heard a low knock at her door. Majendie had been detained, and was
late in coming to take his last look at Peggy before going to bed.

Anne opened the door softly, and signed to him to make no noise. He stole
on tiptoe to the child's cot, and stood there for a moment. Then he came
and sat down in the chair by the dressing-table, where Anne was standing
with her arms raised, unpinning her hair. Majendie had always admired
that attitude in Anne. It was simple, calm, classic, and superbly
feminine. Her long white wrapper clothed her more perfectly than any
dress.

He sat looking at the quick white fingers untwisting the braid of hair.
It hung divided into three strands, still rippling with the braiding,
still dull with its folded warmth. She combed the three into one sleek
sheet that covered her like a veil, drawn close over head and shoulders.
Her face showed smooth and saint-like between the cloistral bands.
Majendie thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than that face
and hair, with their harmonies of dull gold and sombre white.

"I like you," he said; "but isn't the style just a trifle severe?"

Anne said nothing. She was trying to forget his presence while she yet
permitted it.

"Do you mind my looking at you like this?"

"No."

(They spoke in low voices, for fear of waking the sleeping child.)

She took up her brush, and with a turn of her head swept her hair forward
over one shoulder. It hung in one mass to her waist. Then she began to
brush it.

The first strokes of the brush stirred the dull gold that slept in its
ashen furrows. A shining undulation passed through it, and broke, at the
ends, as it were, into a curling golden foam. Then Anne stood up and
tossed it backwards. Her brush went deep and straight, like a
ploughshare, turning up the rich, smooth swell of the under-gold; it went
light on the top, till numberless little threads of hair rippled, and
rose, and knitted themselves, and lay on her head like a fine gold net;
then, with a few swift swimming movements, upwards and outwards. It
scattered the whole mass into drifting strands and flying wings and soft
falling feathers, and, under them, little tender curls of flaxen down.
With another stroke of the brush and a shake of her head, Anne's hair
rose in one whorl and fell again, and broke into a shower of woven spray;
pure gold in every thread.

Majendie held out a shy hand and caught the receding curl of it. Its
faint fragrance reached him, winging a shaft of memory. His nerves shook
him, and he looked away.

Anne had been cool and business-like in every motion, unconscious of her
effect, unconscious almost of him. Now she gathered her hair into one
mass, and began plaiting it rapidly, desiring thus to hasten his
departure. She flung back the stiff braid, and laid her finger on the
extinguisher of the shaded lamp, as a hint for him to go.

"Anne," he whispered, "Anne--"

The whisper struck fear into her.

She faced him calmly, coldly; not unkindly. Unkindness would have given
him more hope than that pitiless imperturbability.

"Have you anything to say to me?" she said.

"No."

"Well, then, will you be good enough to go?"

"Do you really mean it?"

"I always mean what I say. I haven't said my prayers yet."

"And when you have said them?"

She had turned out the lamp, so that she might not see his unhappy face.
She did not see it; she only saw her spiritual vision destroyed and
scattered, and the havoc of dreams, resurgent, profaning heavenly sleep.

"Please," she whispered, "please, if you love me, leave me to myself."

He left her; and her heart turned after him as he went, and blessed him.

"He is good, after all," her heart said.

But Majendie's heart had hardened. He said to himself, "She is too much
for me." As he lay awake thinking of her, he remembered Maggie. He
remembered that Maggie loved him, and that he had gone away from her
and left her, because he loved Anne. And now, because he loved Anne, he
would go to Maggie. He remembered that it was on Fridays that he used to
go and see her.

Very well, to-morrow night would be Friday night.

To-morrow night he would go and see her.

And yet, when to-morrow night came, he did not go. He never went until
December, when Maggie's postal orders left off coming. Then he knew that
Maggie was ill again. She had been fretting. He knew it; although, this
time, she had not written to tell him so.

He went, and found Maggie perfectly well. The postal orders had not come,
because the last lady, the lady with the title, had not paid her. Maggie
was good as gold again, placid and at peace.

"Why," he asked himself bitterly, "why did I not leave her to her peace?"

And a still more bitter voice answered, "Why not you, as well as anybody
else?"




BOOK III




CHAPTER XXVIII


Eastward along the Humber, past the brown wharves and the great square
blocks of the warehouses, past the tall chimneys and the docks with
their thin pine-forest of masts, there lie the forlorn flat lands of
Holderness. Field after field, they stretch, lands level as water, only
raised above the river by a fringe of turf and a belt of silt and sand.
Earth and water are of one form and of one colour, for, beyond the brown
belt, the widening river lies like a brown furrowed field, with a clayey
gleam on the crests of its furrows. When the grey days come, water and
earth and sky are one, and the river rolls sluggishly, as if shores and
sky oppressed it, as if it took its motion from the dragging clouds.

Eleven miles from Scale a thin line of red roofs runs for a field's
length up the shore, marking the neck of the estuary. It is the fishing
hamlet of Fawlness. Its one street lies on the flat fields low and
straight as a dyke.