第70章

THE PROPHET IN HIS OWN HOME

Martin walked into the street with a confused sense of triumph and defeat, that confusion that comes to all sensitive men at the moment when they are stepping, against their will, from one set of conditions into another.He had gone into that house, only half an hour ago, determined to leave Maggie for ever--for his good and hers.He came back into the street realising that he was now, perhaps for the first time, quite definitely involved in some relation with her--good, bad, safe, dangerous he did not know--but involved.He had intended to tell her nothing of his marriage--and he had told her.He had intended to treat their whole meeting as something light, passing, inconsiderable--he had instead treated it as something of the utmost gravity.He had intended, above all, to prove to himself that he could do what he wished--he had found that he had no power.

And so, as he stepped through the dim gold-dust of the evening light he was stirred with an immense sense of having stepped, definitely at last, across the threshold of new adventure and enterprise.All kinds of problems were awaiting solution--his relation to his father, his mother, his sister, his home, his past, his future, his sins and his weaknesses--and he had meant to solve them all, as he had often solved them in the past, by simply cutting adrift.But now, instead of that, he had decided to stay and face it all out, he had confessed at last that secret that he had hidden from all the world, and he had submitted to the will of a girl whom he scarcely knew and was not even sure that he liked.

He stopped at that for a moment and, standing in a little pool of purple light under the benignant friendliness of a golden moon new risen and solitary, he considered it.No, he did not know whether he liked her--it was interest rather that drew him, her strangeness, her strength and loneliness, young and solitary like the moon above him--and yet--also some feeling softer than interest so that he was suddenly touched as he thought of her and spoke out aloud: "I'll be good to her--whatever happens, by God I'll be good to her," so that a chauffeur near him turned and looked with hard scornful eyes, and a girl somewhere laughed.With all his conventional dislike of being in any way "odd" he walked hurriedly on, confused and wondering more than ever what it was that had happened to him.Always before he had known his own mind--now, in everything, he seemed to be pulled two ways.It was as though some spell had been thrown over him.

It was a lovely evening and he walked slowly, not wishing to enter his house too quickly.He realised that he had, during the last weeks, found nothing there but trouble.And if Maggie wished, in spite of what he had told her, to go on with him? And if his father, impatient at last, definitely asked him to stay at home altogether and insisted on an answer? And if his gradually increasing estrangement with his sister broke into open quarrel? And if, strangest of all, this religious business, that in such manifestations as the Chapel service of last night he hated with all his soul, held him after all?

He was in Garrick Street, outside the curiosity shop, his latchkey in his hand.He stopped and stared down the street as he had done once before, weeks ago.Was not the root of all his trouble simply this, that he was becoming against his will interested, drawn in?

That there were things going on that his common sense rejected as nonsense, but that nevertheless were throwing out feelers like the twisting threats of an octopus, touching him now, only faintly, here for a second, there for a second, but fascinating, holding him so that he could not run away? Granted that Thurston was a charlatan, Miss Avies a humbug, his sister a fool, his father a dreamer, Crashaw a fanatic, did that mean that the power behind them all was sham? Was that force that he had felt when he was a child simply eager superstition? What was behind this street, this moon, these hurrying figures, his own daily life and thoughts? Was there really a vast conspiracy, a huge involving plot moving under the cardboard surface of the world, a plot that he had by an accident of birth spied upon and discovered?

Always, every day now, thoughts, suspicions, speculations were coming upon him, uninvited, undesired, from somewhere, from some one.He did not want them he wanted only the material physical life of the ordinary man.It must be because he was idling.He would get work at once, join with some one in the City, go abroad again...

but perhaps even then he would not escape.Thoughts like those of the last weeks did not depend for their urgency on place or time.

And Maggie, she was mixed up in it all.He was aware, as he hesitated before opening the door, of the strangest feeling of belonging to her, not love, nor passion, not sentiment even.Only as though he had suddenly realised that with new perils he had received also new protection.

He went upstairs with a feeling that he was on the eve of events that would change his whole world.