Maggie, on her return, found Grace looking at the mid-day post in the hall.She always did this in a very short-sighted way, taking up the letters one by one, holding each very close to her eyes, and sniffing at it as though she were trying to read through the envelope.This always irritated Maggie, although her own letters were not very many.To-night, when she heard the hall door open, she turned and dropped the letters, giving that especial creaking little gasp that she always did when she was startled.
"Oh, it's you, Maggie, is it? Where've you been?""I've been to see Mrs.Purdie," Maggie said defiantly.
Grace paused as though she were going to speak, then turned on her heel.But just as she reached the sitting-room door she said, breathing heavily:
"There's a telegram for you there."
Maggie saw it lying on the table.She picked it up and hesitated.Awild beating of the heart told her that it must be from Martin.She didn't know what told her this except that now for so long she had been expecting to see a telegram lying in just this way on the table, waiting for her.She took it up with a hand that trembled.
She tore it open and read:
"Come at once.Your aunt dying.Wishes to see you.Magnus."No need to ask which aunt.When one aunt was mentioned it was Aunt Anne--of course.Oh, poor Aunt Anne! Maggie longed for her, longed to be with her, longed to be kind to her, longed to comfort her.And Mr.Magnus and Martha and Aunt Elizabeth and the cat--she must go at once, she must catch a train after luncheon.
She went impetuously into her husband's study.
"Oh, Paul!" she cried."Aunt Anne's dying, and I must go to her at once."Paul was sitting in his old armchair before the fire; he was wearing faded brown slippers that flapped at his heels; his white hair was tangled; his legs were crossed, the fat broad thighs pressing out against the shiny black cloth of his trousers.He was chuckling over an instalment of Anthony Trollope's "Brown Jones and Robinson" in a very ancient Cornhill.
He looked up, "Maggie, you know it's my sermon-morning--interruptions--" He had dropped the Cornhill, but not fast enough to hide it from her.
She looked around at the dirty untidiness of the study."It's all my fault, this," she thought."I should have kept him clean and neat and keen on his work.I haven't.I've failed."Then her next thought was: "Grace wouldn't let me--"The study, in fact, was more untidy than ever, the pictures were back in their places whence Maggie had once removed them.
Husband and wife looked at one another.If she felt: "I've not managed my duty," he felt perhaps: "What a child she is after all!"But between them there was the gulf of their past experience.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said, yawning."Is she an old lady?""No, she's not," said Maggie, breathing very quickly."I love her very much.I've been thinking, Paul, I've not been good about my relations all this time.I ought to have seen them more.I must go up to London at once.""If your aunt's bad and wants you, I suppose you must," he answered.
He got up and came over to her.He kissed her suddenly.
"You'll be wanting some money," he said."Don't be long away.I'll miss you."She caught the 2.30 train.It seemed very strange to her to be sitting in it alone after the many months when she had been always either with Grace or Paul.An odd sense of adventure surrounded her, and she felt as though she were now at last approaching the climax to which the slow events of the last two years had been leading.
When she had been a little girl one of the few interesting books in the house had been The Mysteries of Udulpho.She could see the romance now, with its four dumpy volumes, the F's so confusingly like S's, the faded print, and the yellowing page.
She could remember little enough of it, but there had been one scene near the beginning of the story when the heroine, Emily, looking for something in the dusk, had noticed some lines pencilled on the wainscot; these mysterious pencilled lines had been the beginning of all her troubles, and Maggie, as a small girl, had approached sometimes in the evening dusk the walls of her attic to see whether there too verses had been scribbled.Now, obscure in the corner of her carriage, she felt as though the telegram had been a pencilled message presaging some great event that would shortly change her life.
It was a dark and gloomy day, misty with a gale of wind that blew the smoke into curls and eddies against the sky.There seemed to be a roar about the vast London station that threatened her personally, but she beat down her fears, found a taxi, and gave the driver the well-remembered address.
As they drove along she felt how much older, how much older she was then than when she was last in London.Then she had been ignorant of all life and the world, now she felt that she was an old, old woman with an infinite knowledge of marriage and men and women and the way they lived.She looked upon her aunts and indeed all that world that had surrounded the Chapel as something infinitely childish, and for that reason rather sweet and touching.She could be kind and friendly even to Amy Warlock she thought.She wished that she had some excuse so that she might stay in London a week or two.She felt that she could stretch her limbs and breathe again now that she was out of Grace's sight.
And she would find out Uncle Mathew's address and pay him a surprise visit...She laughed in the cab and felt gay and light-hearted until she remembered the cause of her visit.Poor, poor Aunt Anne!