第55章

MR.CRASHAW

Uncle Mathew saw Maggie back to her door, kissed her and left her.

On their way home he did not once mention Martin Warlock to her.

He left her as he heard the bolt turn in the door, hurrying away as though he did not want to be seen.Maggie went in to find old Martha with her crabbed face watching her sourly.But she did not care, nothing could touch her now.Even the old woman, cross with waiting by the fading kitchen fire, noticed the light in the girl's eyes.

She had always thought the girl hard and ungracious, but now that face was soft, and the mouth smiling over its secret thoughts, and the eyes sleepy with happiness.

Maggie could have said: "I'm wild with joy, Martha.I know what love is.I had never thought that it could be like this.Be kind to me because it's the greatest night of my life."Martha said: "There's some milk hotted for you, Miss, and some biscuits.There on the table by the stairs.""Oh, I don't want anything, Martha, thank you!""Your aunt said you was to have it."

Maggie drank it down, Martha watching her.Then she went upstairs softly, as though her joy might awaken the whole house.She lay wide-eyed on her bed for hours, then fell into a heavy sleep, deep, without dreams.

When, in the quieter light of the morning, she considered the event, she had no doubts nor hesitations.She loved Martin and Martin loved her.Soon Martin would marry her and they would go away.Her aunt would be sorry of course, and his father, perhaps, would be angry, but the sorrow and anger would be only for a little while.Then Martin and she would live happily together always--happily because they were both sensible people, and her own standard of fidelity and trust was, she supposed, also his.She did not think very deeply about what he had said to her; it only meant that he wanted to escape from his family, a desire in which she could completely sympathise.She had loved him, as she now saw, from the first moment of meeting, and she would love him always.She would never be alone again, and although Martin had told her that he was weak, and she knew something about men, she was aware that their love for one another would be a thing apart, constant, unfaltering, eternal.She had read no modern fiction; she knew nothing about psychology: she was absolutely happy...

And then in that very first day she discovered that life was not quite so simple.In the first place, she wanted Martin desperately and he did not come; and although she had at once a thousand sensible reasons for the impossibility of his coming, nevertheless strange new troubles and suspicions that she had never known before rose in her heart.She had only kissed him once; he had only held her in his arms for a few moments...She waited, looking from behind the drawing-room curtains out into the street.How could he let the whole day go by? He was prevented, perhaps, by that horrible sister of his.When the dusk came and the muffin-man went ringing his bell down the street she felt exhausted as though she had been running for miles...

Then with sudden guilty realisation of the absorption that had held her all day she wondered how much her aunt had noticed.

During the afternoon when she had been watching the streets from behind the curtain Aunt Elizabeth had sat sewing, Thomas the cat lumped before the fire, the whole room bathed in afternoon silence.

Maggie had watched as though hypnotized by the street itself, marking the long squares of light, the pools of shadow, the lamp-posts, the public-house at the corner, the little grocer's shop with cases of oranges piled outside the door, the windows on the second floor of the dressmaker's, through which you could see a dummy-figure and a young woman with a pale face and shiny black hair, who came and glanced out once and again, as though to reassure herself that the gay world was still there.

The people, the horses and carts, the cabs went on their way.

Often it seemed that this figure must be Martin's--now this--now this...And on every occasion Maggie's heart rose in her breast, hammered at her eyes, then sank again.Over and over she told to herself every incident of yesterday's meeting.Always it ended in that same wonderful climax when she was caught to his breast and felt his hand at her neck and then his mouth upon hers.She could still feel against her skin the rough warm stuff of his coat and the soft roughness of his cheek and the stiff roughness of his hair.She could still feel how his mouth had just touched hers and then suddenly gripped it as though it would never let it go; then she had been absorbed by him, into his very heart, so that still now she felt as though with his strong arms and his hard firm body he was around her and about her.

Oh, she loved him! she loved him! but why did he not come? Had he been able only to pass down the street and smile up to her window as he went that would have been something.It would at least have reassured her that yesterday was not a dream, an invention, and that he was still there and thought of her and cared for her...

She pulled herself together.At the sound of the muffin-man's bell she came back into her proper world.She would be patient; as she had once resolved outside Borhedden Farm, so now she swore that she would owe nothing to any man.

If she should love Martin Warlock it would not be for anything that she expected to get from him, but only for the love that she had it in her to give.If good came of it, well, if not, she was still her own master.

But more than ever now was it impossible to be open with her aunts.

How strange it was that from the very beginning there had been concealments between Aunt Anne and herself.Perhaps if they had been open to one another at the first all would have been well.Now it was too late.