THE BATTLE OF SKEATON
FIRST YEAR
Afterwards, when Maggie looked back she was baffled.She tried to disentangle the events between that moment when Grace, holding the lamp in her hand, blinked at them as they came across the lawn, and that other most awful moment when, in Paul's study, Grace declared final and irrevocable war.
Between those two events ran the history of more than two years, and there was nothing stranger than the way that the scene in the garden and the scene in the study seemed to Maggie to be close together.
What were the steps, she used to ask herself afterwards, that led to those last months of fury and tragedy and disaster? Was it my fault?
Was it hers? Was it Paul's? What happened? If I had not done this or that, if Grace had not said--no, it was hopeless.She would break off in despair.Isolated scenes appeared before her, always bound, on either side, by that prologue and that finale, but the scenes would not form a chain.She could not connect; she would remain until the end bewildered as to Grace's motives.She never, until the day of her death, was to understand Grace.
"She was angry for such little things," she said afterwards.
"She hated me to be myself." The two years in retrospect seemed to have passed with incredible swiftness, the months that followed them were heavy and slow with trouble.But from the very first, that is, from the moment when Grace saw Paul kiss Maggie in the evening garden, battle was declared.Maggie might not know it, but it was so-and Grace knew it very well.
It may be said, however, in Grace's defence that she gave Maggie every chance.She marvelled at her own patience.For two years after that moment, when she decided that Maggie was "queer," and that her beloved Paul was in real danger of his losing his soul because of that "queerness," she held her hand.She was not naturally a patient woman-she was not introspective enough to be that--and she held no brief for Maggie.Nevertheless for two whole years she held her hand...
They were, all three, in that ugly house, figures moving in the dark.Grace simply knew, as the months passed, that she disliked and feared Maggie more and more; Paul knew that as the months passed-well, what he knew will appear in the following pages.And Maggie?
She only knew that it needed all her endurance and stubborn will to force herself to accept this life as her life.She must-she must.To give way meant to run away, and to run away meant to long for what she could not have, and loneliness and defeat.She would make this into a success; she would care for Paul although she could not give him all that he needed.She would and she could...Every morning as she lay awake in the big double-bed with the brass knobs at the bed-foot winking at her in the early light she vowed that she would justify her acceptance of the man who lay sleeping so peacefully beside her.Poor child, her battle with Grace was to teach her how far her will and endurance could carry her...
Grace, on her side, was not a bad woman, she was simply a stupid one.She disliked Maggie for what seemed to her most admirable reasons and, as that dislike slowly, slowly turned into hatred, her self-justification only hardened.
Until that moment, when she saw a faded patch of wall-paper on the wall instead of her mother's portrait, she had no doubts whatever about the success of what she considered her choice.Maggie was a "dear," young, ignorant, helpless, but the very wife for Paul.Then slowly, slowly, the picture changed.Maggie was obstinate, Maggie was careless, Maggie was selfish, idle, lazy, irreligious-at last, Maggie was "queer."Then, when in the dusk of that summer evening, she saw Paul kiss Maggie, as the moths blundered about her lamp, her stolid unimaginative heart was terrified.This girl, who was she? What had she been before they found her? What was this strange passion in Paul isolating him from her, his sister? This girl was dangerous to them all-a heathen.They had made a terrible mistake.Paul had been from the first bewitched by some strange spell, and the, his sister, had aided the witch.
And yet, to her credit be it remembered, for two years, she fought her fears, superstitions, jealousies, angers.That can have been no easy thing for a woman who had always had her own way.But Maggie helped her.There were many days during that first year at any rate when Grace thought that the girl was, after all, only the simple harmless child that she had first found her.
It was so transparently clear that Maggie bore no malice against any one in the world, that when she angered Grace she did so always by accident, never by plan-it was only unfortunate that the accidents should occur so often.
Maggie's days were from the very first of the utmost regularity.
Breakfast at 8.30, then an interview with the cook (Grace generally in attendance here), then shopping (with Grace), luncheon at 1.30, afternoon, paying calls or receiving them, dinner 7.45, and after dinner, reading a book while Paul and Grace played bezique, or, if Paul was busy upon a sermon or a letter (he wrote letters very slowly), patience with Grace.This regular day was varied with meetings, choir practices, dinner-parties, and an occasional Penny Reading.
In this framework of the year it would have appeared that there was very little that could breed disturbance.There were, however, little irritations.Maggie would have given a great deal could she have been allowed to interview the cook in the morning alone.
It would seem impossible to an older person that Grace's presence could so embarrass Maggie; it embarrassed her to the terrible extent of driving every idea out of her head.
When Maggie had stammered and hesitated and at last allowed, the cook to make a suggestion, Grace would say."You mustn't leave it all to cook, dear.Now what about a nice shepherd's pie?"The cook, who hated Grace, would toss her head.
"Impossible to-day, Mum...Quite impossible.""Oh, do you think so?" Maggie would say.
This was the cook's opportunity.