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 h.o.a.rd 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 anaemia. 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 a.s.sented 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 st.i.tch. 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.