第54章

"Do you know you're a wonderful girl?" he said."I knew you were from the first moment I saw you.You're the most independent person I've ever known.You can't guess how I admire that! And all the same you're not happy, are you? You want to get out of it, don't you?"She thought for a little while before she nodded her head.

"I suppose as a fact." she said, "I do.If you want to know--and you mustn't tell anybody--I've posted a letter to a lady whom I met once who told me if ever I wanted anything to write to her.I've asked her for some work.I've got three hundred pounds of my own.It isn't very much, I know, but I could start on it...I don't want to do wrong to my aunts, who are very kind to me, but I'm not happy there.

It wouldn't be true to say I'm happy.You see," she dropped her voice a little, "they want to make me religious, and I've had so much of that with father already.I feel as though they were pressing me into it somehow, and that I should wake up one morning and find I should never escape again.There's so much goes on that Idon't understand.And it isn't only the chapel.Aunt Anne's very quiet, but she makes you feel quite helpless sometimes.And perhaps one will get more and more helpless the longer one stays.I don't want to be helpless ever--nor religious!" she ended.

"Why, that's just my position," he continued eagerly."I came home as happily as anything.I'd almost forgotten all that had been when I was a boy, how I was baptized and thought I belonged to God and was so proud and stuck up.That all seems nonsense when you're roughing it with other men who think about nothing but the day's work.Then I came home meaning to settle down.I wanted to see my governor too.I've always cared for him more than any one else in the world...but I tell you now I simply don't know what's going on at home.They want to catch me in a trap.That's what it feels like.To make me what I was as a kid.It's strange, but there's more in it than you'd think.You wouldn't believe the number of times I've thought of my young days since I've been home.It's as though some one was always shoving them up in front of my face.All I want, you know, is to be jolly.To let other people alone and be let alone myself.I wouldn't do any one any harm in the world--I wouldn't really.But it's as though father wanted me to believe all the things he believes, so that he could believe them more himself.

Perhaps it's the same with your aunt..." Then he added, "But they're sick people.That explains a lot.""Sick?" asked Maggie.

"Yes.My governor's got heart--awfully bad.He might go off at any moment if he had a shock.And your aunt--don't you know?""No," said Maggie.

"Cancer.They all say so.I thought you'd have known.""Oh!" Maggie drew in her breath.She shuddered."Poor Aunt Anne! Oh, poor Aunt Anne! I didn't know."She felt a sudden rush of confused emotion.A love for her aunt, desire to help her, and at the same time shrinking as though she saw the whole house which had been, from the first, unhappy to her was now diseased and evil and rotten.The hot life in her body told her against her moral will that she must escape, and her soul, moving in her and speaking to her, told her that now, more than ever, she must stay.

"Oh, poor, poor Aunt Anne," she said again.

He moved and put his arm around her.He had meant it simply as a movement of sympathy and protection, but when he felt the warmth of her body against his, when he realised how she went to him at once with the confidence and simplicity of a child, when he felt the hot irregular beat of her heart, his own heart leapt, his arm was strengthened like a barrier of iron against the world.

He had one moment of desperate resistance, a voice of protest calling to him far, far away.His hand touched her neck; he raised her face to his and kissed her, once gently, kindly, then, passionately again and again.

She shivered a little, as though surrendering something to him, then lay quite still in his arms.

"Maggie! Maggie!" he whispered.

Then she raised her head and herself kissed him.

There was a noise on the door.They separated; the door opened and in the sudden light a figure was visible holding a glass.

For a blind instant Maggie, returning from her other world, thought it the figure of Mr.Palmer of Rugeley.

It was, of course, Uncle Mathew.