She sometimes thought she would spend all her Three Hundred Pounds on clothes...To-day, as soon as she was out of the house and had turned the corner into King William Street, she slipped on her ring.
She kissed it before she put her glove on.He was waiting there looking like a happy schoolboy, that way that she loved him to look.
That slow crooked smile of his, something that broke up his whole face into geniality and friendliness, how she adored him when he looked like that! He was wearing clothes of some rough red-brown stuff and a black knitted tie--She was carrying something, a little parcel in tissue paper.She pressed it into his hand when they met.He opened it, just like a boy, chuckling, his eyes shining, his fingers tearing the paper in his eagerness.Her present was a round locket of thin plain gold and inside was the funniest little black faded photograph of Maggie, her head only, a wild untidy head of hair, a fat round schoolgirl face--a village snapshot of Maggie taken in St.Dreot's when she was about fifteen.
"It's all I had," she said."I remembered it the other day and Ifound it.A travelling photographer took it one day.He came to the village and every one was taken, father and all.It's very bad but it was the only one.""It's wonderful," said Martin, and truly it was wonderful.It had caught by a marvellous chance, in spite of its shabby faded darkness, the very soul of Maggie.Was it her hair, her untidy hair, or the honesty of her eyes, or the strength and trustiness of her mouth? But then it was to any one who did not know her the bad dim photograph of an untidy child, to any one who did know her the very stamp and witness of Maggie and all that she was.Maggie had spent twenty-five shillings on the locket (she had had three pounds put away from her allowance in her drawer).
It was a very simple locket, thin plain gold round and smooth, but good, and it would last.
"You darling," whispered Martin."There couldn't have been anything more like you if you'd been taken by the grandest photographer in London."They started off towards Shaftesbury Avenue where the theatre was, and as they went a funny little incident occurred.They were both too happy to talk and Maggie was too happy even to think.Suddenly she was aware that some one was coming towards her whom she knew.
She looked and tugged herself from that world of Martin and only Martin in which she was immersed.It was the large, smiling, rosy-cheeked, white-haired clergyman, Mr.Trenchard.Yes, certainly it was he.He had recognised her and was stopping to speak to her.
Martin moved on a little and stood waiting for her.She was confused and embarrassed but pleased too because he seemed glad to see her.
He looked the very picture of a well-dressed, kindly, genial friend who had known her all his life.He was wearing a beautifully shining top-hat and his stiff white collar gleamed.Yes, he was glad to see her and he said so.He remembered her name."Miss Cardinal," he called her.How had she been? What had she been doing? Had she seen Mrs.Mark? He was staying with his sister at Brown's Hotel in Somewhere--she didn't catch the name of the street.His sister would be so glad if she would come and see them one day.Would she come?
He wouldn't tie her down, but she had only to write and say she was coming...
He took her hand and held it for a moment and looked in her eyes with the kindliest friendliest regard.He was glad to have seen her.
He should tell his sister...
He was gone and Maggie really could not be sure what she had said.
Something very silly she could be certain.Stupid the pleasure that his few words had given her, but she felt once again, as she had felt in Katherine Mark's drawing-room, the contact with that other world, that safe, happy, comfortable, assured world in which everything was exactly what it seemed.She was glad that he liked her and that his sister liked her.Then she could not be so wild and odd and uncivilised as she often was afraid that she was.She rejoined Martin with a little added glow in her cheeks.
"Who was that?" Martin asked her rather sharply.
She told him.
"One of those humbugging parsons," he said."He stood over you as though he'd like to eat you.""Oh, I'm sure he's not a humbug," she answered.
"You'd be taken in by anybody," he told her.
"Oh, no, I shouldn't," she said."Now forget him."And they did.By the time they had reached Piccadilly Circus they were once more deep, deep in one another.They were back in their dark and gleaming wood.
The Lyric Theatre was their destination.Maggie drew a breath as they stepped into the hall where there stood two large stout commissionaires in blue uniforms, gold buttons, and white gloves.
People pushed past them and hurried down the stairs on either side as though a theatre were a Nothing.Maggie stood there fingering her gloves and feeling lonely.The oil painting of a beautiful lady with a row of shining teeth faced her.There were also some palms and a hole in the wall with a man behind it.
Soon they too passed down the stairs, curtains were drawn back, and Maggie was sitting, quite suddenly, in a large desert of gold and red plush, with emptiness on every side of it and a hungry-looking crowd of people behind a wooden partition staring at her in such a way that she felt as though she had no clothes on.She gave a hurried glance at these people and turned round blushing.
"Why don't they sit with us?" she whispered to Martin.
"They're the Pit and we're the Stalls," he whispered to her, but that comforted her very little.
"Won't people come and sit where we are?" she asked.
"Oh yes; we're early," he told her.