Maggie sat quietly there.Paul was preoccupied with a letter that must, he had decided, be written to The Church Times.It was a letter about Churchwardens and their growing independence.He finished his tea hurriedly, but before he left the room, looking at Maggie rather wistfully, suddenly he bent down and kissed her.She glanced up at him, smiling.
"Is there anything I can do for you, Grace?" she asked.
Then, as it were without her own desire, Grace was compelled to speak."There's something I ought to tell you--" she began awkwardly.Then she stopped.Maggie was troubled.She knew that when Grace was uncomfortable every one else was uncomfortable.
"What have I done now?" she said rather sharply.
"It's nothing that you've done," answered Grace also sharply."I'm sure I don't know, Maggie, why you should always think that I'm scolding you.No, I don't indeed.It's nothing that you've done.
Your uncle came to see you this afternoon.""Uncle Mathew?" Maggie jumped up from her chair."Came here?""Yes."
"And wanted to see me? Oh, Grace, why didn't you tell me?""I have told you...There's nothing to make a fuss about, Maggie.
Really, you needn't look like that--as though I were always doing something wrong.I only did it for your sake.""For my sake? But why? I wanted to see him.I was trying to see him in London.Oh, Grace, what did he say?""What did he say? Well, fancy! As though I could remember.He said he'd come to see you, and when I said he couldn't, he went away again.""Said he couldn't? But why couldn't he?"
"Really, Maggie, your tone is extraordinary.Fancy what Paul would say if he heard you.He wouldn't like it, I'm sure.I said that after the way he'd behaved last time he came here you didn't want to see him again.""You said that? Oh, Grace! How did you dare!" "Now, Maggie, don't you look like that.I've done nothing, I'm sure.""Did you say that I'd said that I didn't want to see him again?"Grace shrank back behind the tea-things.
"Yes, I did...Maggie, you frighten me.""I hope I do...You're wicked, you're wicked.Yes, you are.Where is he now?""He's at the 'Sea Dog.' That dirty public house on the sea-front--near Tunstalls--Where are you going?"
"I'm going to him of course." Maggie turned and looked at Grace.
Grace was fascinated as a rabbit is by a snake.The two women stared at one another.
"How strange you are, Grace," Maggie said."You seem to like to be cruel!" Then she went out.When the door was closed Grace found "that she was all in a perspiration." Her hand trembled so that when she tried to pour herself another cup of tea--just to fortify herself--she poured it into the saucer.And the tea was cold--no use now.
When she rose at last to go in and seek consolation from Paul her knees were trembling so that she staggered across the floor.This couldn't go on.No, it could not.To be frightened in one's own house! Absurd...Really the girl had looked terrible...Murder...That's what it had looked like.Something must be done.
Murmuring aloud to herself again and again "Something must be done"as she crossed the hall, she walked slowly, her hand to her heart, ponderously, as though she were walking in the dark.Then, as soon as she had opened the study door she began, before she could see her brother: "Oh, Paul, I'm so frightened.It's Maggie.She's very angry.Fancy what she said."Maggie meanwhile had gone straight up to her bedroom and found her black hat and her waterproof.Her one thought now was lest he should have caught the five o'clock train and gone back to London.Oh! how hurt he would be with her, how terribly hurt! The thought of the pain and loneliness that he would feel distressed her so bitterly that she could scarcely put on her hat, she was so eager to run and find him.She felt, at the thought of his fruitless journey through the rain, the tenderest affection for him, maternal and loving, so that she wanted to have him with her at once and to see him in warm clothes beside the fire, drinking whisky if he liked, and she would give him all the money she possessed.
She had still touched very little of her own three hundred pounds.
He should have as much of that as he liked.The death of Aunt Anne had shown her how few people in the world there were for her to love.After all, the aunts and Uncle Mathew had needed her as no one else had done.She made little plans; she would, perhaps, go back with him to London for a little time.There was, after all, no reason why she should remain in this horrible place for ever.And Paul now seemed not to care whether she went or stayed.
She ran out into the wind and the rain.She was surprised by the force and fury of it.It would take time and strength to battle down the High Street.Poor Uncle Mathew! To walk all the way in the rain and then to be told that she would not see him! She could imagine him turning away down the drive, bitterly disappointed...
Probably he had come to borrow money, and she had promised that she would not fail him.When she reached the High Street she was soaked.
She felt the water dripping down her neck and in her boots.At the corner of the High Street by the bookseller's she was forced to pause, so fiercely did the wind beat up from the Otterson Road, that runs openly to the sea.Maggie had not even in Glebeshire known so furious a day and hour when the winds tossed and raged but never broke into real storm.It was the more surprising.She had to pause for a moment to remember where Turnstall's the butcher was, then, suddenly recalling it, she turned off the High Street and found her way to the mean streets that ran behind the Promenade.Still she met no one.It might have been a town abandoned by all human life and given over to the wind and rain and the approaching absorption of the sea.It was now dark and the lamp at the end of the street blew gustily and with an uncertain flare.