She looked up, smiling with pleasure, when she saw who it was.Yes, she was really pleased to see him.But how different a smile from the old one! No blood behind it, none of that old Maggie determination.He was filled with compassion.He took a chair close beside her and sat down, leaning towards her, his large rather sheepish eye gazing at her.
"What's been the matter?" he asked.
"I don't know," Maggie said."I was suddenly ill one day, and after that I didn't know any more for weeks.But I'm much better now.""Well, I'm delighted to hear that anyway," he said heartily.He was determined to cheer her up."You'll be as right as rain presently.""Of course I shall.I've felt so lazy, as though I didn't want to do anything.Now I must stir myself.""Have the old women been good to you?" he asked, dropping his voice.
"Very," she answered.
"Not bothering you about all their religious tommy-rot?"She looked down at her hands.
"No," she said.
"And that hypocritical minister of theirs hasn't been at you again?""Mr.Warlock's dead," she answered very quietly.
"Warlock dead!" Uncle Mathew half rose from his chair in his astonishment."That fellow dead! Well, I'm damned, indeed I am.That fellow--! Well, there's a good riddance! I know it isn't good form to speak about a man who's kicked the bucket otherwise than kindly, but he was a weight on my chest that fellow was, with his long white beard and his soft voice...Well, well.To be sure! Whatever will my poor sisters do? And what's happened to that young chap, his son, nice lad he was, took dinner with us that day last year?""He's gone away," said Maggie.Mathew, stupid though he was, heard behind the quiet of Maggie's voice a warning.He flung her a hurried surreptitious look.Her face was perfectly composed, her hands still upon her lap.Nevertheless he said to himself, "Danger there, my boy! Something's happened there!"And yet his curiosity drove him for a moment further.
"Gone, has he? Where to?"
"He went abroad," said Maggie, "after his father's death.I don't know where he's gone.""Oh, did he? Pity! Restless, I expect--I was at his age."There was a little pause between them when Maggie sat very quietly looking at her hands.Then, smiling, she glanced up and said:
"But tell me about yourself, Uncle Mathew.You've told me nothing."He fidgeted a little, shifting his thick legs, stroking his nose with his finger.
"I don't know that I've anything very good to tell you, my dear.
Truth is, I haven't been doing so very well lately.""Oh, Uncle, I'm sorry!"
"It's nothing to make yourself miserable about, my dear.I always turn my corners.Damn rocky ones they are sometimes too.
Everything's turned itself wrong these last weeks, either too soon or too late.I don't complain, all the same it makes things a bit inconvenient.Thank you for that five pounds you sent me, my dear, very helpful it was I can tell you.""Do you want another five pounds?" she asked him.He struggled with himself.His hesitation was so obvious that it was quite touching.
She put her hand on his knee.
"Do have another five pounds, Uncle.It won't be difficult for me at all.I've been spending nothing all these weeks when I've been ill.
Please do."
He shook his head firmly.
"No, my dear, I won't.As I came along I said to myself, 'Now, you'll be asking Maggie for money, and when she says "Yes" you're not to take it'--and so I'm not going to.I may be a rotter--but I'm not a rotten rotter."He clung to his decision with the utmost resolve as though it were his last plank of respectability.
"I can't believe," he said to her with great solemnity, "that things can really go wrong.I know too much.It isn't men like me who go under.No.No."He saw then her white face and strange grey ghostly eyes as though her soul had gone somewhere on a visit and the house was untenanted.
He felt again the gulp in his throat.He bent forward, resting his fat podgy hand on her knee.
"Don't you worry, Maggie dear.I've always noticed that things are never bad for long.You've still got your old uncle, and you're young, and there are plenty of fish in the sea...there are indeed.You cheer up! It will be all right soon."She put her hands on his.
"Oh I'm not--worrying." But as she spoke a strange strangled little sob had crept unbidden into her throat, choking her.
He thought, as he got up, "It's that damned young feller I gave dinner to.I'd like to wring his neck."But he said no more, bent closer and kissed her, said he was soon coming again, and went away.
After he had gone the house sank into its grey quiet again.What was Maggie thinking? No one knew.What was Aunt Anne thinking? No one knew...But there was something between these two, Maggie and Aunt Anne.Every one felt it and longed for the storm to burst.Bad enough things outside with Mr.Warlock dead, members leaving right and left, and the Chapel generally going to wrack and ruin, but inside!
Old Martha, who had never liked Maggie, felt now a strange, uncomfortable pity for her.She didn't want to feel pity, no, not she, pity for no one, and especially not for an ugly untidy girl like that, but there it was, she couldn't help herself! Such a child that girl, and she'd been as nearly dead as nothing, and now she was suffering, suffering awful...Any one could see...All that Warlock boy.Martha had seen him come stumbling down the stairs that day and had heard Maggie's cry and then the fall.Awful noise it made.Awful.She'd stood in the hall, looking up the stairs, her heart beating like a hammer.Yes, just like a hammer! Then she'd gone up.It wasn't a nice sight, the poor girl all in a lump on the floor and Miss Anne just as she always looked before one of her attacks, as though she were made of grey glass from top to toe...
But Martha hadn't pitied Maggie then.Oh, no.Might as well die as not.Who wanted her? No one.Not even her young man apparently.