The Helpmate Part 54

Mumford. You could only be sorry for him.

But though Maggie went from flame to flame, there were long periods of placidity when she loved nothing but her work, and was as good as gold.

Maggie's father wouldn't believe it. He had never forgiven her, not even when the doctor told him that there was no sense in which the poor girl could be held responsible; they should have looked after her better, that was all. Maggie's father, the grocer, did not deal in smooth, extenuating phrases. He called such madness sin. So did Maggie in her hours of peace and sanity. She was terrified when she felt it coming on, and hid her face from her doom. But when it came she went to meet it, uplifted, tremulous, devoted, carrying her poor scorched heart in her hand for sacrifice.

Each time that she loved, it was as if her former sins had been blotted out; for there came a merciful forgetfulness that renewed, almost, her innocence. Her heart had its own perverted constancy. No lover was like her last lover, and for him she rejected and repudiated the past.

And each time that she loved she was torn asunder. She gave herself in pieces; her heart first, then her soul, then, if it must needs be, her body. The finest first, then all that was left of her. That was her unique merit, what marked her from the rest.

Majendie, she divined by instinct, had recognised her quality. He was the only one who had. And he had asked nothing of her. She would have lived miserably for Charlie Gorst. She would have died with joy for Mr.

Majendie. And Maggie feared death worse than life, however miserable.

But there was something in her love for Majendie that revealed it as a thing apart. It had not made her idle. Her pa.s.sion for Mr. Majendie blossomed and flowered, and ran over in beautiful embroidery. That industry ministered to it. Her heart was set on having those little sums to send him every week; for that was the only way she could hope to approach him of her own movement. She loved the curt little notes in which Majendie acknowledged the receipt of each postal order. She tied them together with white ribbon, and treasured them in a little box under lock and key. All the time, she knew he had a wife and child, but her fancy refused to recognise Mrs. Majendie's existence. It allowed him to have a child, but not a wife. She knew that he spent his Sat.u.r.days and Sundays with them at his home. He never came, or could come, on a Sat.u.r.day or Sunday, and Maggie refused to consider the significance of this. She simply lived from Friday to Friday. No other day in the week existed for Maggie. All other days heralded it, or followed in its train.

The blessed memory of it rested upon Sat.u.r.day and Sunday. Wednesday and Thursday glowed and vibrated with its coming; Mondays and Tuesdays were forlorn and grey. Terrible were the days which followed a Friday when he had not come.

He had not come last Friday, nor the Friday before that. She had always a comfortable little theory to cheat herself with, to account for his not coming. He had been ill last Friday; that, of course, was why he had not come, Maggie knew. She did not like to think he was ill; but she did like to think that only illness could prevent his coming. And she had always believed what she liked.

The presumption in Maggie's mind amounted to a certainty that he would come to-night.

And at nine o'clock he came.

Her eyes shone as she greeted him. There was nothing about her to remind him of the dejected, anaemic girl who had sat s.h.i.+vering over the fire last September. Maggie had got all her lights and colours back again. She was lifted from her abas.e.m.e.nt, glorified. And yet, for all her glory, Maggie, on her good behaviour, became once more the prim young lady of the lower middle cla.s.s. She sat, as she had been used to sit on long, dull Sunday afternoons in the parlour above the village shop, bolt upright on her chair, with her meek hands folded in her lap. But her eyes were fixed on Majendie, their ardent candour contrasting oddly with the stiff modesty of her deportment.

"Have you been ill?" she asked.

"Why should I have been ill?"

"Because you didn't come."

"You mustn't suppose I'm ill every time I don't come. I might be a chronic invalid at that rate."

He hadn't realised how often he came. _He_ didn't mark the days with crosses in a calendar.

"But you _were_ ill, this time, I know."

"How do you know?"

The processes of Maggie's mind amused him. It was such a funny, fugitive, burrowing, darting thing, Maggie's mind, transparent and yet secret in its ways.

"I know, because I saw--" she hesitated.

"Saw what?"

"The light in your window."

"My window?"

"Yes. The one that looks out on the garden at the back. It was twelve o'clock on Sunday night, and on Monday night the light was gone, and I knew that you were better."

"As it happens, you saw the light in my sister's room. She's always ill."

"Oh," said Maggie; and her face fell with the fall of her great argument.

"Sometimes," he said, "the light burns all night long."

"Yes," said Maggie, musing; "sometimes it burns all night long. But in the room above that room, there's a little soft light that burns all night, too. That's your room."

"No, that's my wife's room."

Maggie became thoughtful. "I used to think that was where your little girl sleeps, because of the night-light. Then your room's next it."

Maggie desired to know all about the blessed house that contained him.

"That's the spare room," he said, laughing.

"Goodness! what a lot of rooms. Then yours is the one next the nursery, looking on the street. Fancy! That little room."

Again she became thoughtful. So did he.

"I say, Maggie, how did you know those lights burned all night?"

"Because I saw them."

"You can't see them."

"Yes, you can; from the little alley that goes along at the back."

He hadn't thought of the alley. n.o.body ever pa.s.sed that way after dark; it ended in a blind wall.

"What were you doing there at twelve o'clock at night?"

He looked for signs of shame and confusion on Maggie's face. But Maggie's face was one flame of joy. Her eyes were candid.

"Walking up and down," she said. "I was watching."

"Watching?"

"Your window."

"You mustn't, Maggie. You mustn't watch people's windows. They don't like it. It doesn't do."

The flame was troubled; but not the lucid candour of Maggie's eyes. "I had to. I thought you were ill. I came to make sure. I was all alone. I didn't let anybody see me. And when I saw the light I was frightened. And I came again the next night to see. I didn't think you'd mind. It's not as if I'd come to the front door, or written letters, was it?"

"No. But you must never do that again, mind. How did you know the house?"

Maggie hung her head. "I saw your little girl go in there."

"Were you 'watching'?"

"N-no. It was an accident."