THE CHARIOT OF FIRE
When Jane, scolded by Aunt Anne for an untidy appearance, gave notice and at once departed, Maggie felt as though the ground was giving way under her feet.
A week until the New Year, and no opportunity of hearing from Martin during that time.Then she laughed at herself:
"You're losing your sense of proportion, my dear, over this.Laugh at yourself.What's a week?"She did laugh at herself, but she had not very much to base her laughter upon.Martin's last letters had been short and very uneasy.
She had already, in a surprising fashion for one so young, acquired a very wise and just estimate of Martin's character.
"He's only a boy," she used to say to herself and feel his elder by at least twenty years.Nevertheless the thought of his struggling on there alone was not a happy one.She longed, even though she might not advise him, to comfort him.She was beginning to realise something of her own power over him and to see, too, the strange mixture of superstition and self-reproach and self-distrust that overwhelmed him when she was not with him.She had indeed her own need of struggle against superstition.Her aunts continued to treat her with a quiet distant severity.Aunt Elizabeth, she fancied, would like to have been kind to her, but she was entirely under the influence of her sister, and there, too, Maggie was generous enough to see that Aunt Anne behaved as she did rather from a stern sense of duty than any real unkindness.Aunt Anne could not feel unkindly;she was too far removed from human temper and discontent and weakness.Nevertheless she had been deeply shocked at the revelation of Maggie's bad behaviour, and it was a shock from which, in all probability she would never recover.
"WE'LL never be friends again." Maggie thought, watching her aunt's austere composure from the other side of the dining-table.She was sad at the thought of that, remembering moments--that first visit to St.Dreot's, the departure in the cab, the night when she had sat at her aunt's bedside--that had given glimpses of the kind human creature Aunt Anne might have been had she never heard of the Inside Saints.
Maggie, during these last days, did everything that her aunts told her.She was as good and docile as she could be.But, oh! there were some dreary hours as she sat, alone, in that stuffy drawing-room, trying to sew, her heart aching with loneliness, her needle always doing the wrong thing, the clock heavily ticking, Thomas watching her from the mat in front of the fire, and the family group sneering at her from the wall-paper.
It was during these hours that superstitious terrors gained upon her.Could it be possible that all those women whom she had seen gathered together in Miss Avies's room really expected God to come when the clock struck twelve on the last night of the year? It was like some old story of ghosts and witches that her nurse used to tell her when she was a little girl at St.Dreot's.And yet, in that dark dreary room, almost anything seemed possible.After all, if there was a God, why should He not, one day, suddenly appear? And if He wished to spare certain of His servants, why should He not prepare them first before He came? There were things just as strange in the Old and New Testament.But if He did come, what would His Coming be like? Would every one be burnt to death or would they all be summoned before some judgment and punished for the wicked things they had done? Would her father perhaps return and give evidence against her? And poor Uncle Mathew, how would he fare with all his weaknesses? Her efforts at laughing at herself rescued her from some of the more incredible of these pictures.Nevertheless the uncertainty remained and only increased her loneliness.Had Martin been there in five minutes they would, together, have chased all these ghosts away.But he was not there.And at the thought of him she would have to set her mouth very firmly, indeed, to prevent her lips from trembling.She took out her ring and kissed it, and looked at the already tattered copy of the programme of the play to which they had been, and recalled every minute of their walks together.
Christmas Day was a very miserable affair.There were no presents and no festivities.They went to Chapel and Mr.Thurston preached the sermon.Maggie did, however, receive one letter.It was from Uncle Mathew.He wrote to her from some town in the north.He didn't seem very happy, and asked her whether she could possibly lend him five pounds.Alluding with a characteristic vagueness to "business plans of the first importance that were likely to mature very shortly."She told Aunt Anne that she wanted five pounds of her money, but she did not say for what she needed them.
Aunt Anne gave her the money at once without a word--as though she said: "We have given up all control of you except to see that you behave decently whilst you are still with us."When the fog arrived it seemed to penetrate every nook and corner of the house.The daily afternoon walk that Maggie took with Aunt Elizabeth was cancelled because of the difficulty of finding one's way from street to street and "because some rude man might steal one's money in the darkness," and Maggie was not sorry.Those walks had not been amusing, Aunt Elizabeth having nothing to say and being fully occupied with keeping an eye on Maggie, her idea apparently being that the girl would suddenly dash off to freedom and wickedness and be lost for ever.Maggie had no such intention and developed during these weeks a queer motherly affection for both the aunts, so lost they were and helpless and ignorant of the world! "My dear," said Maggie to herself, "you're a bit of a fool as far as common-sense goes, but you're nothing to what they are, poor dears."She tried to improve herself in every way for their benefit, but her memory was no better.She forgot all the things that were, in their eyes, the most important--closing doors, punctuality for meals, neat stitches, careful putting away of books and clothes.