Maggie was suddenly less afraid of the whole family.She looked up then at Martin as though she thus would prove her new courage and, he glancing across at the same moment, they smiled.He left his father's side and, coming over to her, sat down close to her.He dropped his voice in speaking to her.
"I've been wanting to see you," he said.
"Why?" she asked him.
"Well," he answered, smiling at her as though he wanted to tell her something privately."I feel as though we'd got a lot to tell one another...I'm a stranger here really quite as much as you.""No, you're not," she said."You can't be so MUCH a stranger anywhere because you've been all over the world and are ready for anything.""And you?"
"I don't seem to manage the simplest things.Aunt Elizabeth and Iget lost the moment we move outside the door...Do you like my dress?" she asked him.
"Why!" he said, obviously startled by such a question."It's--it's splendid!""No, you know it isn't," she answered quickly, dropping her voice into a confidential statement."It's all wrong.I thought you'd know why as you've been everywhere.Caroline Smith helped me to choose it, and it looked all right until I wore it.It's me...I'm hopeless to fit.Caroline says so.I don't care about clothes--if only I looked just like anybody else I'd never bother again--but it's so tiresome to have taken so much trouble and then for it to be all wrong."Martin was then aware of many things--that this was a strange unusual girl, that she reassured him as to her interest, her vitality, her sincerity as no girl had ever done before, that his sister was aware of their intimate conversation and that she resented it, and that he must see this girl again and as soon as possible.He was as liable as any young man in the world to the most sudden and most violent enthusiasms, but they had been enthusiasms for a pretty face, for a sensual appeal, for a sentimental moment.
Here there was no prettiness, no sensuality, no sentiment.There was something so new that he felt like Cortez upon his peak in Darien.
"It's all right," he reassured her urgently."It's all right.Ipromise you it is.The great thing is to look yourself.And you'll never be the least like any one else." He meant that to be the first open declaration of his own particular discovery of her, but he was aware that his sentence could have more than one interpretation.
Uncomfortably conscious then of his sister's regard of them, he looked up and said:
"Amy, Miss Cardinal's been telling me how confusing London is to her.You've got as good an idea of London as any one in the world.
You should take her to one or two places and show her things."Amy Warlock, every line of her stiff body firing at them both her hostility, answered:
"Oh, I don't think Miss Cardinal would care for me as a guide._I_shouldn't be able to show her interesting things.We have scarcely, I should fancy, enough in common.Miss Cardinal's interests are, Iimagine, very different from my own."
The tone, the words, fell into the sudden silence like a lighted match into water.Maggie, her head erect, her voice, in spite of herself, trembling a little, answered:
"Why, Miss Warlock, I shouldn't think of troubling you.It's very kind of your brother, but one must make one's discoveries for oneself, mustn't one?...I am already beginning to find my way about."After that the tea-party fell into complete disruption.Maggie, although she did not look, could feel Martin's anger like a flame beside her.She was aware that Aunt Anne and Mr.Warlock were, like some beings from another world, distant from the general confusion.
Her one passionate desire was to get up and leave the place; to her intense relief she heard Aunt Anne's clear voice:
"I think, Mrs.Warlock, we must be turning homewards.Shall I send you those papers about the Perteway's Mission?...Such splendid work.I think it would interest you."It was as though a hole had suddenly opened in the floor of the neat little drawing-room and they were all hurrying to leave without, if possible, tumbling into it.There was a general shaking of hands.
Mrs.Warlock said kindly to Maggie:
"Do come soon again, dear.It does an old lady good to see young faces."Martin was near the door.He almost crushed Maggie's hand in his: "Imust see you--soon," he whispered.
Free from the house Maggie and her aunt walked home in complete silence.Maggie's heart was a confusion of rage, surprise, loneliness and pride.No one had ever behaved like that to her before.And what had she done? What was there about her that people hated?...Why?...Why? She felt as though, in some way, it had all been Aunt Anne's fault.Why did not Aunt Anne speak? Well, if they all hated her she would go on her own way.She did not care.
But alone in her room, her face, indignant, proud, quivering, surprising her in the long mirror by its strangeness, and causing her to feel, because it did not seem to belong to her, more lonely than ever, she burst out:
"I can't stand it.I CAN'T stand it.I'll get away...so soon as ever I can!"