Chapter II

NATURE is very merciful so soon as a certain pitch of agony, whether physical or mental, has once been reached, and pours upon the tortured nerves a narcotic which, while not destroying the consciousness of pain, yet renders it bearable.

So soon as their last talk that night was over — a talk in which Marion did at last manage to make clear, at any rate, the reasons for which she felt herself compelled to act as she intended to act, an extreme weariness came upon her, and she went up to bed half blind with sleep. No sooner, too, was she in bed, than that sleep reasserted itself irresistibly, and she neither dreamed nor moved till morning.

The first thing of which she was aware in the morning, as her consciousness slowly rose out of those bottomless- gulfs of darkness in which she had lain and rested all night, was the figure of Maggie herself putting down the breakfast tray by her bedside.

" There, my dearest girl," she said in a voice that showed no emotion beyond that of ordinary cheerfulness, " I've brought up your breakfast. It's after half-past eight. And you must try to get a sleep again afterwards. And Maximilian's gone on a visit to a farm. He went early this morning."

Marion felt a light kiss on her forehead: and the door shut.

She did indeed feel extraordinarily tired still; but 269 the sense of nervous tension that had been so keen last night, culminating in the almost unbearable effort she had made to be frank with Maggie at last — this was gone; and languor had succeeded. She dozed off again almost immediately: and woke ten minutes later, hearing the sound of wheels outside her window. Then she roused herself to eat.

She had only taken the resolution to tell Maggie everything, as she came down in the train last evening; driven to it by the sense of strain and the emotions through which she had passed. First she had gone to Mr. Harrison's house in Hampstead. He had been kind; but he appeared not to understand that it was the fact itself that she could never again sing that caused her such torment, and not the effects resulting from that fact. His effort at condolence centred chiefly round the prospective loss of her income; and so soon as she realised that she sought for no more consolation from him.

Her interview with von Giinther affected her very much more. He had broken down and wept, frankly; yet even he, between his tears, appeared to lament the loss that art was suffering, rather than that of which Marion herself was conscious. He remembered himself at the end, and called her his " poor dear child " repeatedly: he had even sought to gather her to his ample breast.

Finally the interview with Max had been the climax, following that with Sir John.

She had called him up on the telephone, begging him to come at once to the house on Campden Hill: and within half an hour he was there, a little pale, and quite bewildered. At first he had seemed incapable of taking it in: he had said repeatedly that there must be some mistake; he had begged her to consult other medical authorities; finally, so soon as he cried out that the thing was ludicrously impossible, Marion had seen that he understood it was a fact.

He had been marvellously tender after that. He and he alone, it seemed to Marion, understood where the agony lay; and that it was the simple truth that she could never sing again, at any rate as she had sung, could never appear in Opera again, and interpret the parts which she had made so particularly her own, that was stabbing her soul. He and he alone appeared to have even the least conception of what pain she was suffering.

" But, my darling," he had said, " after all it is you yourself that matters. And you are just the same, aren't you? — as you were before. It's all there still: only you... you can't express it."

His eyes had dwelt on hers with a very appealing pathos, as if seeking reassurance.

" Why, Max," she said, " of course I am. And that, in one way, is the most dreadful thing of all."

At the end she had utterly broken down, and clung to him as a child to an elder brother, crying her heart out.

" But you understand! Oh! I knew you would, Max: I knew you would! "

Then, on the way home, after he had seen her into the train at Liverpool Street, she had taken her resolution.

A number of only half understood reasons had contributed to it. For, first, she was beginning to realise now that there remained to her but two persons in the world in whom she could find comfort, and that from one of them she had already forfeited any claim to comfort. Everything else was gone: her art had broken down under her: henceforth she could be receptive only, no longer active; and to an artist who has once tasted the joy of successful activity, receptivity means but little. Her friends were gone; she knew that: for she knew that all whose acquaintance she had made in the last year, with the possible exception of Sir Robert Mainwaring, had admired and loved her only for her art: they had never got beyond that, to herself. There was Norah Merival, for instance: well, in a sense they were friends; they had reached the Christian name stage months ago: yet it did not even occur to her to turn to Norah, or to send her any message: she proposed, only, to write in a day or two from Standing and to relate the heartbreaking news. There were but two people in the world who had penetrated, she believed, beyond her expression to herself, who loved her for what she was, and not merely for what she could do; and of these two, as has been said, one had been grossly deceived as to her true nature. It was intolerable, then, that this should last any longer. She was in desperate straits now: she must face the truth at last: she must know whether or no Maggie could forgive her: she could no longer bear to live, as had been quite tolerable in the midst of distraction and excitement, on what might prove completely false pretences.

rAs she lay in bed this morning she began now to review the scene of last night; and to be amazed, as she had not been clear-headed enough to be amazed before, at the apparently boundless charity of her friend. She had always thought that the scene of the final revelation would be far more painful, and that the limits of Maggie's often rather vague benevolence would disclose themselves at last. For she had believed, as most persons do when they begin to secede from devotion, that devotional characters do not go deep: she had been at any rate inclined to suspect that Maggie's religion was only a very superior kind of pastime, that she regarded her rosaries and her little books and her " hours " and all the rest, as offering a pleasant and emotional kind of personal occupation; and that beyond them there was not very much except ordinary humanity, and ordinary humanity, as is well known, is a rather touchy and venomous kind of thing when its pride or its personal feelings are injured. She had honestly therefore expected an exceedingly painful scene, with a good deal of anger and righteous bitterness: she had looked for reproaches, or hysterical weeping, or even denunciation; and in place she had met with tears indeed, but tears of real sympathy and love, with caresses, and with self-reproach. It was her first glimpse of this that had broken down her own defiant pose, and sent her suddenly to her knees.

It was a charming little room in which Marion lay and considered these things. It pretended to be nothing other than what it was — a front bedroom on the first floor of an English stone cottage. The walls were distempered with white, except where, on the inner partition wall a black oak beam crossed the space diagonally from roof to floor. The floor, again of oak, was uneven, and as solid as iron; and upon it lay a couple of squares of cool matting. The furniture was of the simplest possible old mahogany; the bed, also of mahogany, was a cut-down four-poster. The hangings were entirely sprigged chintz: Marion, in a previous month of opulence, had replaced the original rep by these patterns, produced straight from the old blocks of Georgian days; and had caused them to be lined with a peculiar tint of yellow which she loved. A prie-Dieu stood against the inner wall, and above it, attached to the beam, hung an ivory crucifix which Maggie had given her. On the table in the centre of the room stood a glass vase filled with roses; and through the open windows the summer breeze flowed in, rustling the ivy, stirring the chintz curtains and filling the room with scented coolness.

Yet it was only to her physical senses that the sweetness of it all appealed: in her heart was that great bitterness of her loss, even increased, as she thought of it, when she remembered how she had lain here at a certain week end two months ago, and regarded her life as it then presented itself. She had sung Isolde on the previous Thursday: she would sing Elsa on the following Tuesday; and her heart had exulted and danced with the flickering sunlight that moved on the floor from the single light-curtained window that looked over the garden. She had pretended even to congratulate herself on getting away from London into this sweet serenity: yet she had known with humorous delight that she enjoyed the serenity only as a child who waits for sheer pleasure of anticipation, before plunging again into a sunlit sea.

And now the serenity mocked her: and anticipation was dead.

When she was dressed at last she came very quietly downstairs, half fearing to hear Maggie call to her; but there was no sign of her; and, relieved that the ordeal of another talk was at any rate postponed for the present, she peeped into the garden before going out; and that too was empty; so she went out quickly on tiptoe. She wanted to think a great deal, not indeed as to the substance of what she would say, but as to its presentation. She had been too abrupt last night, she thought: that was why she had such a reaction: she must be as positive to-day, but quieter: she must marshal her reasons more persuasively: she must show that, under the circumstances nothing else could be expected of her.

She had been out about ten minutes when Jenny's rosy face peeped from the kitchen door, and then hastily withdrew: but a minute later out came not merely Jenny's head, but her entire person: and she bore a salver in her hand.

Marion wondered vaguely what the maid was bringing; it might be a telegram from Max; but she remembered to smile encouragingly at Jenny as an acknowledgment that the salver had not been forgotten.

" Please, Miss, Miss Brent left this note for you. I put it on the chest in the "

" Left it! What do you mean? — Where is — Give it me."

A sudden unreasoning pang shot through her; she thought ( for a moment that Maggie had left her, even while she knew that it was impossible. Jenny, slightly alarmed, handed her the salver and she snatched at the note and tore it open.

" MY DEAREST,

" I don't know if you'll ever forgive me; but I'm going off to London to see Mr. Merival. I telegraphed to him the first thing this morning. Please don't be angry with me: but I felt I must hear from his own lips that he understands what he is asking you to do. I cannot bring myself to believe that he will refuse the promises when he knows what it all means. I dared not tell you what my plan was: because I knew you would forbid me. The pony-cart is just coming round; and I must not write any more if I am to catch the train. My dearest; don't be angry. You know how much I love you.

" Yours,

" M. B."

She read it through twice; and her face was white as she realised all it would mean. It appeared to her certain that Max would think it was at her instigation that Maggie had gone up; and in that moment, all the repressed impatience that she had ever felt towards her friend and her odd unaccountable impulses, surged up like a tide in her heart. It was intolerable that her confidence should be betrayed like this, and her plans interfered with.

" What's the time? " she whispered sharply, twisting her wrist to look at her watch. " Half-past ten. It's too late. No, it isn't. Jenny, send Charlie here at once. I want him to take a telegram. He must go on his bicycle. Fetch him. I'll get a telegraph form."

She rose so swiftly that the little maid shrank aside.

" Go quick," she said; and hurried into the house.

Her hands shook so much that she could scarcely draw out the form from the paper-case in the parlour. Maggie, for once, had remembered to fill the case; and she had done so with such fervour and completeness that everything was wedged together.

Then she wrote, quickly.

" M. Merival, Cheriton House, Park Lane, London, W.

" Refuse — to — see — Maggie. — Important. — Writing. — Tenterden."

With this in her hand she hurried out again on to the lawn, in time to see Charlie, with Jenny behind him, emerging from the vegetable patch, and putting on his coat as he came.

" Got your bicycle? That's right. Take this as fast as you can to the telegraph-office. Got sixpence? That's all right. By the way, is the pony-cart back? Who drove it?"

" Please, Miss," said Charlie. " Jim drove it this morning as I had a deal to do in the garden."

" Who's Jim? Oh! it doesn't matter. It's not back yet? "

" No, Miss: I think there was some shopping to do, Miss."

She nodded.

'* That's all right. Go as quick as you can, please."

She waited till she heard the gate clash. Then, slowly but still trembling a little, she went back to her chair among the roses, and sat down.

Really this interference was intolerable. She had given in too much to Maggie: that was the truth of the matter. Of course she owed a great deal to her, and that was the reason of her taking so subordinate a place, and even of confiding in her yesterday; but there was a limit in all things, and that limit had been reached.

She grew angrier and angrier as she sat and brooded; and, once more, all those tiny touches of irritation that she had felt so often for Maggie's vague and helpless ways, surged up and exploded. She had felt them so often, although sometimes a sense of humour had saved her from expressing them strongly even to herself. For instance when Maggie dropped her books two or three times from her lap, when she missed trains, when she addressed Rhadamanthus with a loud aside suddenly, in the midst of an interesting conversation, when she began to hum, like a bee in a bottle, as Marion was playing a soft passage — all these things, so small in themselves, now combined in her mind as one more cause for anger and contempt. And it was this helpless disorderly person who had dared to betray her confidence and interfere on her behalf as if she were a child and could not look after herself. Why, who was Maggie after all? Which, as a matter of fact, had been the more practical and successful in life, Marion who had taken London by storm, who had had her picture in a hundred photograph-shops, who had bowed to roaring audiences in Covent Garden, who had made her way, and, indeed, a small fortune as well — or Maggie, who had done nothing but waste money left her by her parents, who was simply unable to look out a train in Bradshaw, who made innumerable rules and never kept them, who fussed amiably over servant-maids who probably laughed at her behind her back, who dressed like a governess, who wrote an illegible handwriting — who, in short, muddled every relation of life and every duty with which she was faced? And it was this incompetent, vague, feeble creature who had dared to interfere.

Presently, again, she began to calculate once more whether the telegram would really reach Max in time: it would be a few minutes one side or the other. In any case her having sent it would be a kind of guarantee that Maggie had not gone to see him with her connivance. But she grew a little nervous; and stood up again after a few minutes to go to the side gate and see whether Charlie were coming back; and, as she did so, heard steps running down the street of the little hamlet, towards the cottage. Vaguely she thought that it was like Charlie's rustic running: but, obviously it could not be, as he was gone on a bicycle. As she began to move towards the gate — a pair of double doors that gave entrance straight into the garden from the road — they suddenly shook; then opened, and Charlie burst in.

His face was working oddly, as if with mingled grief and pleasure and excitement; and she caught her lip in her teeth, as her manner was. Had he met a mad bull? Was the telegraph-office wrecked? Vague possibilities passed through her mind.

" Please, Miss," panted Charlie, " there's been an accident "

" What? "

" Miss Brent, Miss. She was run into this morning, in the pony-cart. Taken to the doctor's house, Miss. Met his boy as I was coming down the village. Says she's dying, Miss."

Maggie was murmuring unintelligibly to herself, as

Marion sat by her in the little darkened front bedroom of the doctor's house: her little fat hands, lying outside the coverlet, twitched and writhed, as if she were helping out some explanation with ineffectual gestures.

Marion had learned the main facts by now.

As the pony-cart, late of course, as usual, and driven by the incompetent Jim, Charlie's youngest brother, had turned the corner into the space by Standing station, a motor-car, coming out, had run straight into it. The pony had saved himself cleverly by a wild twist that had brought the wheel of the little cart over a white stone meant to mark the dangerous corner after dark, and, simultaneously the car had struck the cart. The pony had instantly tried to bolt and Maggie had been tossed out, straight under the wheels of the car; and these had passed over her body. It was nobody's fault, or, rather it was everybody's: it was the chauffeur's fault for coming out so fast; it was Jim's for going in so fast: it was Maggie's for telling him to: it was the pony's for not sacrificing himself: it was the railway company's for not widening the entrance to their yard: it was the road-surveyor's for not compelling them to it. Lastly, it was Maggie's, again, for dawdling so long and finishing her note to Marion. If she had started in proper time, nothing would have happened.

Marion was alone with her now: but the door was open, and, in the next room, waited the incapable but well-intentioned country doctor. Father Denny had come over with Marion and had done all that was possible, and was now below, waiting in the front room for a signal that could not be long delayed: he had absolved and anointed her: he waited now only to commend her soul to God. A little crowd, gathered in the street, gossiped and watched the windows. At the corner of the lane stood the pony and the trap, under the care of Charlie who had ridden over on his forgotten bicycle and sent Jim home in tears. The voices of the little gossiping crowd now and again came to Marion's ears through the open windows and the drawn lace curtains, as she sat and watched. There was nothing to be done. Maggie was unconscious and not in any pain.

There was no dominant emotion or train of thought in the girl's mind. She was just passive, and watched a thousand thoughts defile before her. This unfamiliar figure in the bed simply was not Maggie in any sense which she could recognise except in fleeting glimpses. Her head was bandaged and her sparse hair lay untidily over the linen: her black dress hung over a chair where the doctor's servant had laid it; and a little tumbled linen only showed about her throat.

The thoughts that went so swiftly and confusedly, and yet with a dreadful smoothness, through Marion's mind, were of every kind, great and small: she could not detach or unravel them. She thought of the pony; of the corner by the station that she knew so well; of Maggie's note to her this morning that she had torn up in indignation; of Max wraiting in London; of the copy of Lohengrm that lay in the music-chest at home; of the quality of the very cheap and pathetically correct lace-curtains that hung over the windows; of the doctor's frayed shirt-cuff; of Mrs. Grant and Jenny: she wondered when Mrs. Grant would be here; she wondered how long Maggie would live, yet she pictured her also as if she were in the train which she ought to have caught: she looked at the cheap gilded clock, and calculated that the train must have arrived at Liverpool Street twenty minutes ago; she looked at Maggie's left hand on the coverlet, and wondered what the ring was, with the bloodstone, on the little finger.

One thought alone there was that recurred steadily, like a grey background of sky seen from a train as it passes through broken woods, and that was the thought of her own loneliness. She did not pity herself for it: she could not feel any emotion of that kind at present. She simply regarded it as a fact. Her world now, that had been reduced to two persons who really mattered, was on the point of being reduced to one. This time yesterday there had been Max and Maggie. Presently there would be only Max. It was surely strange that she should be so lonely as that! Ah! but all her other friends had only been united to her through her music, and her music was gone: she must not forget that; and she would make no more friends: she had nothing else by which to attract them: she was not really pretty: she was not really clever. She had had a voice, but that had been taken from her by the God who was now taking Maggie too.

Then she began to think about the lace-curtains again: they could not be more than one and tenpence a yard: that is to say, that if the curtains were

Ah! was Maggie speaking again?...

She leaned her head nearer her friend, and whispered her name, in her hoarse voice. But the grey face on the pillow only twitched a little, and the lips moved inaudibly.

Marion began, passionlessly, to consider the immediate future. With the remote future she had no concern: that was in Max's hands; but the immediate was in her own. The next three or four days would be accounted for, inevitably... but when these were over, and she came back to the cottage alone, what must be done? She could not afford to keep up both the little houses; she might not be able even to afford one, and certainly not the Campden Hill house. Neither could she go abroad now, as she had half consented to do with Maggie; she would be alone, and she would not have enough money. Perhaps it would be better to stay at Standing for the present: there was not a human being in the world whom she could ask to give her hospitality. But Mrs. Grant would probably have to go: she received thirty pounds a year, which would mean a good deal to herself, now. The piano must certainly go: she ought to be able to get a good price for it: it was nearly new, and she would not really need it, in any case.

So she sat, silent, thinking. Somewhere in the universe there was pain beyond bearing, but it did not actually envelop her yet. That would come later, no doubt. At present she was neither heartless nor emotional: she merely existed and contemplated facts as they passed before her without any volition of her own. It was as if she dreamed.

Suddenly Maggie's eyes opened. Her glasses had been taken off: and her eyes looked odd and childish without them. For an instant there was no knowledge in them; and then it came, and she smiled, murmuring something, as if greatly content.

The smile was at once sweet and terrifying.