THE CHOICE
She waited for some time alone in the hall listening for she knew not what.Her departure from the Chapel had been too abrupt to allow her in a moment to shake off the impression of it--above all, the impression of Mr.Crashaw standing there, his arms stretched out to her, his eyes burning her through and through with the urgent insistence of his discovery.
She was tired, her head ached horribly, she would have given everything at that moment for a friend who would care for her and protect her from her own wild fears.She did not know of what she was afraid, but she knew that she felt that she would rather do anything than spend the night in that house.And yet what could she do? How could she escape? She knew that she could not.Oh! if only Martin would come! Where was he? Why could he not carry her off that very night? Why did he not come?
She gazed desperately about her.Could she not leave the house there and then? But where should she go? What could she do without a friend in London? She stood there, clasping and unclasping her hands, looking up at the black stairs, listening for some sound from above, fancying a ghost in every darkening corner of the place.
Then her common sense reasserted itself.It was something, at any rate, that she was out of the Chapel, away from Mr.Crashaw's piercing eyes, Mr.Thurston's rasping voice, Mr.Warlock's reproachful melancholy.She felt this evening as though by struggling with all her strength she could shut the gates upon new experiences that were fighting to enter into her soul, but must, at all costs to her own happiness, be defeated.No such thing as ghosts, no such thing as a God, be He kind, tender, cruel or loving--nothing but what one can see, can touch, can confront with one's physical strength.She had been to a service at a Methodist chapel, her aunt had been ill, to-morrow there would be daylight and people hurrying down the street about their business, work and shops and food and sun...No such thing as ghosts! Nothing but what you can see!
"And I'll get some work without wasting a minute," she thought, nodding her head."In a shop if necessary--or I could be a governess--and then when he is free, Martin will be with me."She climbed on a chair and turned down the hall-gas as she had seen Martha do.She went to the door and slipped the chain into its socket and turned the lock.She listened for a moment before she started upstairs, she saw Mr.Crashaw's eyes in the dark--she heard his voice.
"Punishment! Punishment!..."
She suddenly started to run up the black stairs, stumbled, ran faster through the passage under the picture of the armed men, arrived at last in her room, breathless.
During her undressing she stopped sometimes to listen.Her aunt's bedroom was on the floor below hers, and she certainly could hear nothing through the closed doors, and yet she fancied, as she stood there, that the sound of sobbing came up to her and, twice, a sharp cry.
"I suppose I'm terribly selfish," she thought, "I ought to want to go and help Aunt Anne, and I don't." No, she didn't.She wanted to run away from the house, miles and miles and miles.She climbed into bed and thought of her escape.If Miss Trenchard did not answer her letter, then she could go off to Uncle Mathew, greatly though she disliked the thought of that; then she could live on her three hundred pounds and look about until she found work or Martin came for her.
But so ignorant was she of the world that she did not in the least know how she could get her three hundred pounds.But Uncle Mathew would know.She thought of him standing in the doorway at the hotel, holding up a glass, then she thought of Martin, and so fell asleep.
She woke suddenly to find some one standing in her open doorway and holding up a candle.That some one was old Martha, looking strange enough in a nightdress, her scanty grey hairs untidily about her neck and a dirty red shawl over her shoulders.Maggie blinked at the light and sat up in bed.
"What is it?" she asked.
"It's your aunt, Miss--Miss Anne.She's very bad.She wants you to go to her."Maggie got out of bed, put on her dressing-gown and slippers and followed the servant.
As she hurried along the dark passage she was still only half-awake;her soul had not returned into her body, but her body was awake and vibrating with the knowledge that the soul was soon coming to it, and coming to it with great news, with the consciousness of a marvellous experience.For at the instant when Martha awoke her she had been dreaming of Martin, dreaming of him physically, so that it was his body against hers, his hand hot and dry in hers cool and soft, his cheek rough and strong against hers smooth and pale.There had been no sentimentality or weakness in her dream.They had been confident and sure and defiant together, and it had been real life for her, so real that this dream life in which now she moved down the shadowy passage was about her as green water is about one when one swims under waves.
It was only slowly, as the cold air of the house at night cleared her eyes and her throat and her breast, that she came to the world consciousness again and surrendered her lover back to the shades and felt a sudden frightened fear lest, after all, she should never really know that ecstasy of which she had just been dreaming.
Nevertheless it was still with a great consciousness of Martin that she entered her aunt's bedroom.Before she entered she turned round for a moment to Martha.