第88章

"Well, I'm glad you're happy," he said, looking at her wistfully.He got up and stood awkwardly looking at her.

"I want you to promise me something," he said, "that's really what Icame for.I want you to promise that you won't in any case leave your aunts before the New Year."She got up, looked at him and gave him her hand.

"Yes," she said."I promise that."

The year had only a week or two more to run and she was not afraid of that little space of time.He seemed to want to say something more, but after hesitating he suddenly made a bolt for the door and she could hear him stumbling downstairs.

She forgot him almost as soon as he had left the house, but his words nevertheless brought her to consider her aunts.Next morning at breakfast time she had a further reason to consider them.Aunt Elizabeth met her, when she came downstairs, with a very grave face.

"Your aunt's had a terrible night," she said."She's insisted on coming downstairs--I told her not.She never listens to anything Isay."

Maggie could see that something more than ordinary had occurred.

Aunt Elizabeth was on the edge of tears, and in so confused a state of mind that she put sugar into her egg, and then ate it with a puzzled air as though she could not be sure why it tasted so strange.When Aunt Anne came in it was plain enough that she had wrestled with demons during the night.Maggie had often seen her before battling with pain and refusing to be defeated.Now she looked as though she had but risen from the dead.It was a ghost in very truth that stood there; a ghost in black silk dress with white wristbands and a stiff white collar, black hair, so tightly drawn back and ordered that it was like a shining skull-cap.Her face was white, with the effect of a chalk drawing into which live, black, burning eyes had been stuck.But it was none of these things that frightened Maggie.It was the expression somewhere in the mouth, in the eyes, in the pale bony hands, that spoke of some meeting with a torturer whose powers were almost omniscient--almost, but not quite.

Pain, sheer physical, brutal pain, came into the room hulking, steering behind Aunt Anne's shoulder.It grinned at Maggie and said, "You haven't begun to feel what I can do yet, but every one has his turn.You needn't flatter yourself that you're going to escape."When Aunt Anne moved now it was with infinite caution, as though she were stalking her enemy and was afraid lest any incautious gesture should betray her into his ambush.No less marked than her torture was her courage and the expectation that sustained that courage.She had her eyes set upon something very sure and very certain.Maggie was afraid to think what that expectation might be.But Maggie had grown during these last weeks.She did not now kiss her aunt and try to show an affection which was not so genuine as she would have liked it to be by nervous little demonstrations.She said gravely:

"I am so sorry, Aunt Anne, that you have had so bad a night.Shall Istay this morning and read to you?"

Even as she spoke she realised with sharp pain what giving up her meeting with Martin meant.

"What were you going to do, dear?" asked Aunt Anne, her eyes seeing as ever far beyond Maggie and the room and the house.As she spoke Thomas, the cat, came forward and began rubbing himself very gently, as though he were whispering something to his mistress, against her dress.Maggie had an impulse, so strong that it almost defeated her, to burst out with the whole truth.She almost said: "I'm going out to meet Martin Warlock, whom I love and with whom I'm going to live." She hated deceit, she hated lies.But this was some one else's secret as well as her own, and telling the truth now would only lead to much pain and distress, and then more lies and more deceit.

So she said:

"I'm going to Piccadilly to get some things for Aunt Elizabeth.""Yes," said Aunt Elizabeth, "she saves me a great deal of trouble.

She's a good girl."

"I know she's a good girl," said Aunt Anne softly.

It was strange to remember the time not so long ago when to run out of the house and post a letter had seemed a bold defiant thing to do threatened with grave penalties.The aunts had changed their plans about her and had given her no reasons for doing so.No reasons were ever given in that house for anything that was done.The more Maggie went out, the more she was drawn in.

On her way to Martin that morning the figure of Aunt Anne haunted her.She felt for a brief moment that she would do anything, yes, even surrender Martin, to ease her aunt's pain.And then she knew that she would not, and she called herself cruel and selfish and felt for an instant a dark shadow threatening her because she was so.But when she saw Martin outside Hatchard's she forgot it all.It was a strange thing that during those weeks they neither of them asked any questions about their home affairs.It was as though they both inwardly realised that there was trouble for them of every kind waiting outside and that they could only definitely realise their happiness by building a wall around themselves.They knew perhaps in their secret hearts, or at any rate Martin knew, that they could not hold their castle for long.But is not the gift of three perfect weeks a great thing for any human being to be given--and who has the temerity, the challenging audacity, to ask with confidence for even so much?

On this particular morning Martin said to her:

"Before we get into the 'bus, Maggie, you've got to come into a shop with me." He was especially boyish and happy and natural that morning.It was strange how his face altered when he was happy.His brow was clear, his eyes were bright, and he had a kind of crooked confident smile that must have won anybody's heart.His whole carriage was that of a boy who was entering life for the first time with undaunted expectation that it could give him nothing but the best and jolliest things.Maggie as she looked at him this morning caught her breath with the astonishing force of her love for him.