Out in the open air Maggie was aware that she was trembling from head
to foot, but a determined idea that she must get Aunt Elizabeth home at
once drove her like a goad. Very strange it was out here, the air
ringing with the clamour of bells. The noise seemed deafening, whistles
blowing from the river, guns firing and this swinging network of bells
echoing through the fog. Figures, too, ran with lights, men singing,
women laughing, all mysteriously in the tangled darkness.
They were joined at once by Aunt Anne, who said:
"God has called him home," by which Maggie understood that Mr. Warlock
was dead.
They went home in silence. Inside the hall Aunt Elizabeth began to cry.
Aunt Anne put her arm around her and led her away; they seemed
completely to forget Maggie, leaving her standing in the dark hall by
herself.
She found a candle and went up to her room. The noise in the streets
had ceased quite suddenly as though some angry voice had called the
world to order.
Maggie undressed and lay down in her bed. She lay there staring in
front of her without closing her eyes. She watched the grey dawn, then
the half-light, then, behind her blind, bright sunshine. The fog was no
more.
The strangest fancies and visions passed through her brain during that
time. She saw Mr. Warlock hanging forward like a sack of clothes, the
blood trickling stealthily across his beard. Poor old man! What were
the others all thinking now? Were they sorry or glad? Were they
disappointed or relieved? After all, he had, perhaps, spoken the truth
so far as he was himself concerned. God had come for him. He was now it
might be happy somewhere at peace and at rest. Then like a flash of
lightning across the darkness came the thought of Martin. What had he
said? "If anything happened to his father--"
The terror of that made her heart stop beating. She wanted instantly to
go to him and see what he was doing. She even rose from her bed,
stumbled in the darkness towards her dressing-table, then remembered
where she was and what time and went back and sat upon her bed.
She sat there, her fingers tightly pressed together, staring in front
of her until the morning came. She felt at her heart a foreboding worse
than any pain that she had ever known. She determined that, directly
after breakfast, whatever the aunts would say, she would go to his
house and demand to see him. She did not mind who might try to prevent
her, she would fight her way through them all. Only one look, one word
of assurance from him, and then she could endure anything. That she
must have or she would die.
At last Martha knocked on the door; she had her bath, dressed, still
with this terrible pain at her heart.
She was alone at breakfast, she drank some coffee, then went up to the
drawing-room to think for a moment what course she should pursue. The
room was flooded with sunlight that struck the fire into a dead,
lifeless yellow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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