At this point she would discover that she was beckoning back to her the figures of that other world. They must not come ... the two worlds must not join or she was lost ... she turned her back from her memories and her desires.
During this winter there were the two affairs of Mr. Toms and Caroline.
Maggie carried out her resolve of calling on Mr. Toms. She did it one dark afternoon a few days before Christmas, moved, it must be confessed, partly by a sense of exasperation with Grace. Grace had been that day quite especially tiresome. She had a cold, and a new evening dress had cost twice as much as it ought to have done. Mitch had broken into eczema, and Mrs. Constantine had overruled her at a committee meeting. With a flood of disconnected talk she had overwhelmed Maggie until the girl felt as though her head had been thrust into a bag of flour. Through it all there had been an undercurrent of complaint as though Maggie were responsible.
Early in the afternoon Grace declared that her head was splitting and retired to her bedroom. Maggie, in a state of blinded and deafened exasperation, remembered Mr. Toms and decided to call on him. She found a neat little house standing in a neat little garden near the sea just beyond the end of the Promenade, or The Leas, as the real Skeatonian always called it. Miss Toms and Mr. Toms were sitting in a very small room with a large fire, a pale grey wallpaper, and a number of brightly-painted wooden toys arranged on a shelf running round the room. The toys were of all kinds--a farm, cows and sheep, tigers and lions, soldiers and cannon, a church and a butcher"s shop, little green tufted trees, and a Noah"s ark. Mr. Toms was sitting, neat as a pin, smiling in an armchair beside the fire, and Miss Toms near him was reading aloud.
Maggie saw at once that her visit embarra.s.sed Miss Toms terribly. It was an embarra.s.sment that she understood perfectly, so like her own feelings on so many occasions. This put her at once at her ease, and she was the old, simple, direct Maggie, her face eager with kindness and understanding. Mr. Toms smiled perpetually but shook hands like the little gentleman he was.
Maggie, studying Miss Toms" face, saw that it was lined with trouble--an ugly face, grave, severe, but brave and proud. Maggie apologised for not coming before.
"I would have come--" she began.
"Oh, you needn"t apologise," said Miss Toms brusquely. "They don"t call on us here, and we don"t want them to."
"They don"t call," said Mr. Toms brightly, "because they know I"m queer in the head, and they"re afraid I shall do something odd. They told you I was queer in the head, didn"t they?"
Strangely enough this statement of his "queerness," although it brought a lump into Maggie"s throat, did not disturb or confuse her.
"Yes," she said, "they did. I asked who you were after I had seen you in the road that day."
"I"m not in the least dangerous," said Mr. Toms. "You needn"t be afraid. Certain things seem odd to me that don"t seem odd to other people--that"s all."
"The fact is, Mrs. Trenchard," said Miss Toms, speaking very fast and flushing as she spoke, "that we are very happy by ourselves, my brother and I. He is the greatest friend I have in the world, and I am his. We are quite sufficient for one another. I don"t want to seem rude, and it"s kind of you to have come, but it"s better to leave us alone--it is indeed."
"Well, I don"t know," bald Maggie, smiling. "You see, I"m a little queer myself--at least I think that most of the people here are coming to that conclusion. I"m sure I"m more queer than your brother. At any rate I can"t do you any harm, and we may as well give it a trial, mayn"t we?"
Mr. Toms clapped his hands with so sudden a noise that Maggie jumped.
"That"s right," he said. "That"s the way I like to hear people talk.
You shall judge for yourself, and WE"LL judge for ourselves." His voice was very soft and pleasant. The only thing at all strange about him was his smile, that came and went like the ripple of firelight on the wall.
"You"d like to know all about us, wouldn"t you? Well, until ten years ago I was selling corn in the City. Such a waste of time! But I took it very seriously then and worked, worked, worked. I worked too hard, you know, much too hard, and then I was ill--ill for a long time. When I was better corn didn"t seem to be of any importance, and people thought that very odd of me. I was confused sometimes and called people by their wrong names, and sometimes I said what was in my head instead of saying what was in my stomach. Every one thought it very odd, and if my dear sister hadn"t come to the rescue they would have locked me up--they would indeed!"
"Shut me up and never let me walk about--all because I didn"t care for corn any more."
He laughed his little chuckling laugh. "But we beat them, didn"t we, Dorothy? Yes, we did--and here we are! Now, you tell us your history."
Miss Toms had been watching Maggie"s face intently while her brother spoke, and the clear steady candour of Maggie"s eyes and her calm acceptance of all that the little man said must have been rea.s.suring.
"Now. Jim," she said, "don"t bother Mrs. Trenchard. You can"t expect her to tell us her history when she"s calling for the first time."
"Why not expect me to?" said Maggie. "I"ve got no history. I lived in Glebeshire most of my life with my father, who was a clergyman. Then he died and I lived with two aunts in London. Then I met Paul and he married me, and here I am!"
"That"s not history," said Mr. Toms a little impatiently. "However, I won"t bother you now. You"re only a child, I see. And I"m very glad to see it. I don"t like grown up people."
"How do you like Skeaton?" asked Miss Toms, speaking more graciously than she had done.
"Oh I shall like it, I expect," said Maggie. "At least I shall like the people. I don"t think I shall ever like the place--the sand blows about, and I don"t like the woods."
"Yes, they"re greasy, aren"t they?" said Mr. Toms, "and full of little flies. And the trees are dark and never cool--"
They talked a little while longer, and then Maggie got up to say good-bye. When she took Mr. Tom"s hand and felt his warm confident pressure, and saw his large trusting eyes looking into hers, she felt a warmth of friendliness, also it seemed to her that she had known him all her life.
Miss Toms came with her to the door. They looked out into the dark. The sea rustled close at hand, far on the horizon a red light was burning as though it were a great fire. They could hear the wave break on the beach and sigh in the darkness as it withdrew.
"I shall come again," said Maggie.
"Don"t you be too sure," said Miss Toms. "We shall quite understand if you don"t come, and we shan"t think the worse of you. Public opinion here is very strong. They don"t want to be unkind to Jim, but they think he ought to be shut up ...Shut up!" Maggie could feel that she was quivering. "Shut up!"
Maggie tossed her head.
"Anyway, they haven"t shut me up yet," she said.
"Well--good-night," said Miss Toms, after a little pause in which she appeared to be struggling to say more.
She told Grace and Paul at supper that night that she had been to see the Toms. She saw Grace struggling not to show her disapproval and thought it was nice of her.
"Do you really think--?" said Grace. "Oh, perhaps, after all--"
"Paul," said Maggie, "do you not want me to see the Toms?"
Paul was distressed.
"No, it isn"t that ...Miss Toms is a very nice woman. Only--"
"You think it"s not natural of me to take an interest in some one who"s a little off his head like Mr. Toms."
"Well, dear, perhaps there is something--"
Maggie laughed. "I"m a little off my head too. Oh! you needn"t look so shocked, Grace. You know you think it, and every one else here thinks it too. Now, Grace, confess. You"re beginning to be horrified that Paul married me."
"Please, Maggie--" said Paul, who hated scenes. Grace was always flushed by a direct attack. Her eyes gazed in despair about her while she plunged about in her mind.
"Maggie, you mustn"t say such things--no, you mustn"t. Of course it"s true that you"ve got more to learn than I thought. You ARE careless, dear, aren"t you? You remember yesterday that you promised to look in at Pett.i.ts and get a reel of cotton, and then of course Mr. Toms is a good little man--every one says so--but at the same time he"s QUEER, you must admit that, Maggie; indeed it wasn"t really very long ago that he asked Mrs. Maxse in the High Street to take all her clothes off so that he could see what she was really made of. Now, that ISN"T nice, Maggie, it"s odd--you can"t deny it. And if you"d only told me that you hadn"t been to Pett.i.ts I could have gone later myself."
"If it isn"t one thing," said Maggie, "it"s another. I may be a child and careless, and not be educated, and have strange ideas, but if you thought, Grace, that it was going to be just the same after Paul was married as before you were mistaken. Three"s a difficult number to manage, you know."
"Oh, if you mean," said Grace, crimsoning, "that I"m better away, that I should live somewhere else, please say so openly. I hate this hinting. What I mean to say is I can leave to-morrow."
"My dear Grace," said Paul hurriedly, "whoever thought such a thing? We couldn"t get on without you. All that Maggie meant was that it takes time to settle down. So it does."
"That isn"t all I meant," said Maggie slowly. "I meant that I"m not just a child as you both think. I"ve got a life of my own and ideas of my own. I"ll give way to you both in lots of things so long as it makes you happy, but you"re not--you"re not going to shut me up as you"d like to do to Mr. Toms."
Perhaps both Grace and Paul had a sharp troubling impression of having caught some strange creature against their will. Maggie had risen from the table and stood for the moment by the door facing them, her short hair, standing thick about her head, contrasting with her thick white neck, her body balanced clumsily but with great strength, like that of a boy who has not yet grown to his full maturity. She tossed her head back in a way that she had and was gone.
The Caroline affair was of another sort. Some days after Christmas, Maggie went to have tea with Caroline. She did not enjoy it at all. She felt at once that there was something wrong with the house. It was full of paintings in big gold frames, looking-gla.s.ses, and marble statues, and there was a large garden that had an artificial look of having been painted by some clever artist in the course of a night. Maggie did not pay a long visit. There were a number of men present; there was also a gramophone, and after tea they turned up the carpet in the dining-room and danced.
Caroline, in spite of her noise and laughter, did not seem to Maggie to be happy. She introduced her for a moment to the master of the house, a stout red-faced man who looked as though he had lost something very precious, but was too sleepy to search for it. He called Caroline "Sweet," and she treated him with patronage and contempt. Maggie came away distressed, and she was not surprised to hear, a day or two later, from Grace that Mrs. Purdie was "fast" and had been rude to Mrs.
Constantine.