Out in the open air Maggie was aware that she was trembling from head to foot, but a determined idea that she must get Aunt Elizabeth home at once drove her like a goad.Very strange it was out here, the air ringing with the clamour of bells.The noise seemed deafening, whistles blowing from the river, guns firing and this swinging network of bells echoing through the fog.Figures, too, ran with lights, men singing, women laughing, all mysteriously in the tangled darkness.
They were joined at once by Aunt Anne, who said:
"God has called him home," by which Maggie understood that Mr.
Warlock was dead.
They went home in silence.Inside the hall Aunt Elizabeth began to cry.Aunt Anne put her arm around her and led her away; they seemed completely to forget Maggie, leaving her standing in the dark hall by herself.
She found a candle and went up to her room.The noise in the streets had ceased quite suddenly as though some angry voice had called the world to order.
Maggie undressed and lay down in her bed.She lay there staring in front of her without closing her eyes.She watched the grey dawn, then the half-light, then, behind her blind, bright sunshine.The fog was no more.
The strangest fancies and visions passed through her brain during that time.She saw Mr.Warlock hanging forward like a sack of clothes, the blood trickling stealthily across his beard.Poor old man! What were the others all thinking now? Were they sorry or glad?
Were they disappointed or relieved? After all, he had, perhaps, spoken the truth so far as he was himself concerned.God had come for him.He was now it might be happy somewhere at peace and at rest.Then like a flash of lightning across the darkness came the thought of Martin.What had he said? "If anything happened to his father--"The terror of that made her heart stop beating.She wanted instantly to go to him and see what he was doing.She even rose from her bed, stumbled in the darkness towards her dressing-table, then remembered where she was and what time and went back and sat upon her bed.
She sat there, her fingers tightly pressed together, staring in front of her until the morning came.She felt at her heart a foreboding worse than any pain that she had ever known.She determined that, directly after breakfast, whatever the aunts would say, she would go to his house and demand to see him.She did not mind who might try to prevent her, she would fight her way through them all.Only one look, one word of assurance from him, and then she could endure anything.That she must have or she would die.
At last Martha knocked on the door; she had her bath, dressed, still with this terrible pain at her heart.
She was alone at breakfast, she drank some coffee, then went up to the drawing-room to think for a moment what course she should pursue.The room was flooded with sunlight that struck the fire into a dead, lifeless yellow.
As she stood there she heard through the open door voices in the hall.But before she had heard the voices she knew that it was Martin.
Martha was expostulating, her voice following his step up the hall.
"I shall go and tell my mistress," Maggie heard.
Then Martin came in.