THE DARK ROOM
It was after midnight when Maggie was turned out on to the long grim platform of the London station.On that other London arrival of hers the terminus had been a boiling cauldron of roar and rattle.Now everything was dead and asleep.No trains moved; they slept, ancient monsters, chained down with dirt and fog.Two or three porters crept slothfully as though hypnotised.The face of the great clock, golden in the dusk, dominated, like a heathen god, the scene.Maggie asked a porter the way to the Station Hotel.He showed her; she climbed stairs, pushed back swing doors, trod oil-clothed passages, and arrived at a tired young woman who told her that she could have a room.
Arrived there, herself somnambulistic, she flung off her clothes, crept into bed, and was instantly asleep.
Next morning she kept to her room; she went down the long dusty stairs before one o'clock because she was hungry, and she discovered the restaurant and had a meal there; but all the time she was expecting Martin to appear.Every step seemed to be his, every voice to have an echo of his tones.Then in the dusky afternoon she decided that she would be cowardly no longer.She started off on her search for No.13A Lynton Street, King's Cross.
She searched through a strange blue opaque light which always afterwards she recollected as accompanying her with mystery, as though it followed her about deliberately veiling her from the rest of the world.She felt different from them all; she found an omnibus that was going to King's Cross, but when she was inside it and looked at the people around her she felt of them all that they had no reality beside the intensity of her own search.She, hot like a fiery coal, existed in a land of filmy ghosts.She repeated to herself over and over, "No.13A Lynton Street, King's Cross."She got out opposite the huge station and looked about her.She saw a policeman and went across to him.
"Can you tell me where Lynton Street is, please?" she asked him.
He smiled."Yes, miss.Down on your right, then first to your right again."She thanked him and wanted for a silly moment to remain with him.
She wanted to stand there where she was, on the island, she couldn't go back, she was afraid to go forward.Then the moment left her and she moved on.When she saw Lynton Street written up her heart gave a strange little whirr and then tightened within herself, but she marched on and found 13A.A dirty house, pots with ferns in the two grimy windows, and the walls streaky with white stains against the grey.The door was ajar and, pushing it a little, she saw a servant-girl on her knees scrubbing the floor.At the noise of her step the girl looked up.
"Is Mr.Warlock here?" Maggie asked, but the words were choked in her throat.
"Wot d'ye sye?" the girl asked.
Maggie repeated her question.
"Yes--'e's upstairs.Always is.Fust floor, second door on yer left."Maggie went up.She found the door.She knocked.There was no answer.She pushed the door, peered through and looked in.She saw a room with a dirty grimy window, a broken faded red sofa, a deal table.No one there.
She entered and stood listening.A door beyond her opened and a man came in.She knew at once that it was Martin.Her thoughts followed one another in strange flurried inconsequence.Yes, it was Martin.
He was fatter than he had been--fat and ill.Very ill.His face was pale, his hair, thinner than before, unbrushed.He was wearing an old dirty blue suit with a coat that buttoned over the waistcoat like a seaman's jacket.Yes, he was ill and fat and unkempt, but it was Martin.At that reiterated assurance in the depths of her soul she seemed to sink into a marvellous certain tranquillity--so certain that she shed, as it were with a gesture, all the unhappiness and doubt and desolation with which the last years had burdened her.
She had "touched" Martin again, and with that "touch" she was safe.
It did not matter how he treated her nor whether he wanted her.She was sane and happy and whole again as she had not been since he left her.
Meanwhile he looked at her across the dark room, frowning.
"Who is it?" he asked."What do you want?"The sound of his voice moved her passionately.For how long she had ached and yearned for it! He spoke more huskily, with a thicker tone than he had done, but it was the same voice, rough a little and slow.
"Don't you know me, Martin?" she said, laughing for sheer happiness.
She saw before she spoke that he had recognised her.He said nothing, staring at her across the table; and she, held by some safe instinct, did not move from where she was.
At last he said:
"Well...What do you want?"
"Oh, Martin, don't you recognise me? I'm Maggie."He nodded."Yes, I know.You mustn't come here, though.We've nothing to say to one another nowadays--no, nothing." He didn't look at her; his eyes were turned towards the grimy window.
She had an astonishing sense of her possession of him.She laughed and came close to the table.
"I'm not going away, Martin...not until we've had a talk.
Nothing can make me.So there!"
He was looking at her again.
"Why, you've cut your hair!" he said.
"Yes." she said.
Then he turned roughly right round upon her as though he meant to end the matter once and for all.
"Look here!...I do mean what I say--" He was cut off then by a fit of coughing.He leant back against the wall and fought with it, his hand against his chest.She made no movement and said no word while the attack lasted.
He gasped, recovering his breath, then, speaking in a voice lower than before: "I mean what I say.I don't want you.I don't want any one.There's nothing for us to say to one another.It's only waste of time.""Yes," she answered."That's your side of the question.There's also mine.Once before you had your own way and I was very miserable about it.Now it's my turn.I'm going to stay here until we've talked."He turned, his face working angrily, upon her.