The fire was heavy and sullen; the wind howled; that old familiar beating of the twigs upon the pane seemed to reiterate to Maggie that this was her last evening. She pretended to read. She had found a heavy gilt volume of Paradise Lost with Dore"s pictures. She read these words:
Beyond this flood a frozen Continent Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail; which on firm land Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice, A gulf profound as that Serbonian bay Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk; the parching Air Burns froze, and cold performs the effect of Fire.
Further again, words caught her eye.
Thus roving on In confused march forlorn, th" adventurous Bands With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found No rest; through many a dark and drearie Vaile They pa.s.sed, and many a Region dolorous. O"er many a frozen, many a fiery Alpe, Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens and shades of death, A Universe of death, which G.o.d by curse Created evil, for evil only good Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breaks Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than Fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire.
She did not care for reading, most especially she did not care for poetry, but to-night she saw the picture. Up to the very bounds of the house this waste country, filled with beasts of prey, animals with fiery eyes and incredible names, the long stretch of snow and ice, the black water with no stars reflected in it, the wind.
A coal crashed in the fire; she gave a little cry.
"My dear, what is it?" said Aunt Anne. Then, with a little shake of her shoulders, she added: "There"s a horrid draught. Perhaps you forgot to close the kitchen-door when you came away, Maggie dear."
Maggie flushed. Of course she had forgotten. She left the room, crossed the hall. Yes, there was the door, wide open. She locked it, the place was utterly cold and desolate. She closed the door, stood for a moment in the little hall.
"I don"t care what"s going to happen!" she cried aloud. So ended her life in that house.
CHAPTER III
THE LONDON HOUSE
It was strange after this that the start on the London journey should be so curiously unexciting; it was perhaps the presence of Aunt Anne that reduced everything to an unemotional level. Maggie wondered as she sat in the old moth-eaten, whisky-smelling cab whether her Aunt Anne was ever moved about anything. Then something occurred that showed her that, as yet, she knew very little about her aunt. As, clamping down the stony hill, they had a last glimpse at the corner of the two Vicarage chimneys, looking above the high hedge like a pair of inquisitive lunatics, Maggie choked. She pressed her hands together, pushed her hair from her face and, in so doing, touched her black hat.
"Your hat"s crooked, Maggie dear," said her aunt gently. The girl"s hot hands clutched the soft packet of sandwiches and a little black handbag that yesterday Aunt Anne had bought for her in the village. It was a shabby little bag, and had strange habits of opening when it was not expected to do so and remaining shut when something was needed from it.
It gaped now and, just as the cab climbed Cator Hill, it fell forward and flung the contents on to the floor. Maggie, blushing, looked up expecting a reproof. She saw that her aunt"s eyes were fixed upon the view; as upon the day of her arrival, so now. Her face wore a look of rapture. She drank it in.
Maggie also took the last joy of the familiar scene. The Vicarage, like a grey crouching cat, lay basking on the green hill. The sunlight flooded the dark wood; galleons of clouds rolled like lumbering vessels across the blue sky.
"It"s lovely, isn"t it?" whispered Maggie.
"Beautiful--beautiful," sighed her aunt.
"I"ve always loved just this view. I"ve often walked here just to see it," Maggie said.
Aunt Anne sat back in her seat.
"It"s been hard for me always to live in London. I love the country so."
"So do I," said Maggie, pa.s.sionately.
For a moment they were together, caught up by the same happiness.
Then Aunt Anne said:
"Why, your bag, dear! The things are all about the place."
Maggie bent down. When she looked up again they had dipped down on the other side of the hill.
Maggie had only once in all her life been in a train, but on this present occasion she did not find it very thrilling. It was rather like being in anything else, and her imagination exercised itself upon the people in the carriage rather than the scenery outside. She was at first extremely self-conscious and fancied that every one whispered about her. Then, lulled by the motion of the train and the warmth, she slept; she was more deeply exhausted by the events of the last week than she knew, and throughout the day she slumbered, woke, and slumbered again.
Quite suddenly she awoke with a definite shock to a new world. Evening had come; there were lights that rushed up to the train, stared in at the window, and rushed away again. On every side things seemed to change places in a general post, trees and houses, hedges and roads, all lit by an evening moon and wrapt in a white and wavering mist. Then the town was upon them, quite instantly; streets ran like ribbons into grey folds of buildings; rows of lamps, scattered at first, drew into a single point of dancing flame; towers and chimneys seemed to jump from place to place as though they were trying to keep in time with the train; a bell rang monotonously; wreaths of smoke rose lazily against the stars and fell again.
When at last she found herself, a tiny figure, standing upon the vast platform under the high black dome, the noise and confusion excited and delighted her. She rose to the waves of sound as a swimmer rises in the sea, her heart beat fast, and she was so eagerly engaged in looking about her, in staring at the hurrying people, in locating the shrill screams of the engines, in determining not to jump when the carriages jolted together, that her little black bag opened unexpectedly once more and spilled a handkerchief, a hand-mirror, a paper packet of sweets, a small pair of scissors, and a shabby brown purse upon the station-floor. She was greatly confused when an old gentleman helped her to pick them up. The little mirror was broken.
"Oh! it"s bad luck!" she cried, staring distressfully at the old man.
He smiled, and would have certainly been very agreeable to her had not Aunt Anne, who had been finding their boxes and securing a cab, arrived and taken Maggie away. "You shouldn"t speak to strange gentlemen, dear," said Aunt Anne.
But Maggie did not listen. It was characteristic of Anne Cardinal that she should secure the only four-wheeler in the station, rejecting the taxi-cabs that waited in rows for her pleasure. Had Maggie only known, her aunt"s choice was eloquent of their future life together. But Maggie did not know and did not care. Her excitement was intense. That old St. Dreot life had already swung so far behind her that it was like a fantastic dream; as they rumbled through the streets, the cries, the smells, the lights seemed arranged especially for her. She could not believe that they had all been, just like this, before her arrival. As with everything, she was busy imagining the World behind this display, the invisible Circle inside the circle that she saw.
They came into the Strand, and the ma.s.ses of moving people seemed to her like somnambulists walking without reason or purpose. She felt as though there would suddenly come a great hole in the middle of the street into which the cab would tumble. The noise seemed to her country ears deafening, and when, suddenly, the lighted letters of some advertis.e.m.e.nt flashed out gigantic against the sky, she gave a little scream. She puzzled her aunt by saying:
"But it isn"t really like this, is it?"
To which Aunt Anne could only say:
"You"re hungry and tired, dear, I expect."
With one last outrending scream the whole world seemed to fling itself at the window, open because Aunt Anne thought the cab "had a smell."
"Oosh--O O S H." "OOSH." ... Maggie drew back as though she expected some one to leap in upon them. Then, with that marvellous and ironical gift of contrast that is London"s secret, they were suddenly driven into the sleepiest quiet; they stumbled up a street that was like a cave for misty darkness and m.u.f.fled echoes. The cab"s wheels made a riotous clatter.
A man posting a letter in a pillar-box was the only figure in the street. The stars shone overhead with wonderful brilliance, and a little bell jangled softly close at hand. All the houses were tall and secret, with high white steps and flat faces. A cat slipped across the street; another swiftly followed it.
St. Dreot"s seemed near at hand again and Ellen the cook not so far away. Maggie felt a sudden forlornness and desolation.
"What a very quiet street!" she whispered, as though she were afraid lest the street should hear.
They stopped before one of the flat-faced houses; Aunt Anne rang the bell, and an old woman with a face like a lemon helped the cabman with the boxes. Maggie was standing in a hall that smelt of damp and geraniums. It was intensely dark, and a shrill scream from somewhere did not make things more pleasant.
"That"s Edward the parrot," said Aunt Anne. "Take care not to approach him too closely, dear, because he bites."
Then they went upstairs, Maggie groping her way and stumbling at the sharp corners. The darkness grew; she knocked her knee on the corner of something, cried out, and a suddenly opened door threw a pale green light upon a big picture of men in armour attacking a fortified town beneath a thundery sky. This picture wavered and faltered, hung as it was upon a thin cord strained to breaking-point. Maggie reached the security of the room beyond the pa.s.sage, her shoulders bent a little as though she expected to near at every instant the crashing collapse of the armoured men. Her eyes unused to the light, she stumbled into the room, fell into some one"s arms, felt that her poor hat was crooked and her cheeks burning, and then was rebuked, as it seemed, by the piercing cry of Edward the parrot from the very bowels of the house.
She stammered something to the man who had held her and then let her go. She was confused, hot and angry. "They"ll think me an idiot who can"t enter a room properly." She glared about her and felt as though she had been taken prisoner by some strange people who lived under the sea. She was aware, when her eyes were accustomed to the dim light, that the entrance of herself and her aunt had interrupted the conversation of three people. Near the fireplace sat a little woman wearing black mittens and a white lace cap; standing above her with his arm on the mantelpiece was a thin, battered-looking gentleman with large spectacles, high, gaunt features and a very thin head of hair; near the door was the man against whom Maggie had collided. She saw that he was young, thick-set and restless. She noticed even then his eyes, bright and laughing as though he were immensely amused. His mouth opened and closed again, his eyes were never still, and he made fierce dumb protests with his body, jerking it forward pulling it back, as a rider strives to restrain an unruly horse. Maggie was able to notice these things, because during the first moments her Aunt Anne entirely held the stage. She advanced to the fireplace with her halting movement, embraced the little lady by the fire with a soft and unimpa.s.sioned clasp.
"Well, Elizabeth, here we are, you see," turned to the thin gentleman saying, "Why you, Mr. Magnus! I thought that you were still in Wiltshire!" then from the middle of the room addressing the stout young man: "I"m very glad to see you, Mr. Warlock."
Maggie fancied that the three persons were nervous of her aunt; the stout young man was amused perhaps at the general situation, but Mr.
Magnus by the fireplace showed great emotion, the colour mounting into his high bony cheeks and his nostrils twitching like a horse"s. Maggie had been always very observant, and she was detached enough now to notice that the drawing-room was filled with ugly and c.u.mbrous things and yet seemed unfurnished. Although everything was old and had been there obviously for years, the place yet reminded one of a bare chamber into which, furniture had just been piled without order or arrangement.
Opposite the door was a large and very bad painting of the two sisters as young girls, sitting, with arms encircled, in low dresses, on the seash.o.r.e before a grey and angry sea, and Uncle Mathew as a small, shiny-faced boy in tight short blue trousers, carrying a bucket and spade, and a smug, pious expression. The room was lit with gas that sizzled and hissed in a protesting undertone; there was a big black cat near the fire, and this watched Maggie with green and fiery eyes.
She stood there by the door tired and hungry; she felt unacknowledged and forgotten.
"I know I shall hate it," was her thought; she was conscious of her arms and her legs; her ankle tickled in her shoe, and she longed to scratch it. She sneezed suddenly, and they all jumped as though the floor had opened beneath them.