He had, as so many clergymen have, a great deal of the child in him, a remoteness from actual life, and a tremendous ignorance of the rough-and-tumble brutality and indecency of things.It had not been difficult for Grace, because of his laziness, his childishness, and his harmless conceited good-nature to obtain a very real dominion over him, and until now that dominion had never seriously been threatened.
Now, however, new impulses were stirring in his soul.Maggie saw it, Grace saw it, before the end of the summer the whole parish saw it.
He was uneasy, dissatisfied, suffering under strange moods whose motives he concealed from all the world.In his sleep he cried Maggie's name with a passion that was a new voice in him.When she awoke and heard it she trembled, and then lay very still...
And what a summer that was! To Maggie who had never, even in London, mingled with crowds it was an incredible invasion.The invasion was incredible, in the first place, because of the suddenness with which it fell upon Skeaton.One day Maggie noticed that announcements were pasted on to the Skeaton walls of the coming of a pierrot troupe..."The Mig-Mags." There was a gay picture of fine beautiful pierrettes and fine stout pierrots all smiling together in a semi-circle.Then on another hoarding it was announced that the Theatre Royal, Skeaton, would shortly start its summer season, and would begin with that famous musical comedy, "The Girl from Bobo's."Then the Pier Theatre put forward its claim with a West End comedy.
The Royal Marine Band announced that it would play (weather permitting) in the Pergola on the Leas every afternoon, 4.20-6.
Other signs of new life were the Skeaton Roller-Skating Rink, The Piccadilly Cinema, Concerts in the Town Hall, and Popular Lectures in the Skeaton Institute.There was also a word here and there about Wanton's Bathing Machines, Button's Donkeys, and Milton and Rowe's Char-a-bancs.
Then, on a sunny day in June the invasion began.The little railway by the sea was only a loop-line that connected Skeaton with Lane-on-Sea, Frambell, and Hooton.The main London line had its Skeaton station a little way out of the town, and the station road to the beach passed the vicarage.Maggie soon learnt to know the times when the excursion trains would pour their victims on to the hot, dry road.Early in the afternoon was one time, and she would see them eagerly, excitedly hurrying to the sea, fathers and mothers and babies, lovers and noisy young men and shrieking girls.Then in the evening she would see them return, some cross, some too tired to speak, some happy and singing, some arguing and disputing, babies crying-all hurrying, hurrying lest the train should be missed.At first she would not penetrate to the beach.She understood from Paul and Grace that one did not go to the beach during the summer months;at any rate, not the popular beach.There was Merton Sand two miles away.One might go there...it was always deserted.This mysterious "one" fascinated Maggie's imagination.So many times a day Grace said "Oh, I don't think one ought to." Maggie heard again and again about the trippers, "Oh, one must keep away from there, you know."In fact the Skeaton aristocracy retired with shuddering gestures into its own castle.Life became horribly dull.The Maxses, the Constantines, and the remainder of the Upper Ten either went away or hid themselves in their grounds.
Once or twice there would be a tennis party, then silence...
This summer was a very hot one; the little garden was stifling and the glass bottles cracked in the sun.
"I want to get out.I want to get out," cried Maggie-so she went down to the sea.She went surreptitiously; this was the first surreptitious thing she had done.She gazed from the Promenade that began just beyond the little station and ran the length of the town down upon the sands.The beach was a small one compared with the great stretches of Merton and Buquay, and the space was covered now so thickly with human beings that the sand was scarcely visible.It was a bright afternoon, hot but tempered with a little breeze.The crowd bathed, paddled, screamed, made sand-castles, lay sleeping, flirting, eating out of paper bags, reading, quarrelling.Here were two niggers with banjoes, then a stout lady with a harmonium, then a gentleman drawing pictures on the sand; here again a man with sweets on a tray, here, just below Maggie, a funny old woman with a little hut where ginger-beer and such things were sold.The noise was deafening; the wind stirred the sand curiously so that it blew up and about in little wreaths and spirals.Everything and everybody seemed to be covered with the grit of this fine small sand; it was in Maggie's eyes, nose, and mouth as she watched.
She hated the place--the station, the beach, the town, and the woods--even more than she had done before.She hated the place--but she loved the people.
The place was sneering, self-satisfied, contemptuous, inhuman, like some cynical, debased speculator making a sure profit out of the innocent weaknesses of human nature.As she turned and looked she could see the whole ugly town with the spire of St.John's-Paul's church, raised self-righteously above it.
The town was like a prison hemmed in by the dark woods and the oily sea.She felt a sudden terrified consciousness of her own imprisonment.It was perhaps from that moment that she began to be definitely unhappy in her own life, that she realised with that sudden inspiration that is given to us on occasion, how hostile Grace was becoming, how strange and unreal was Paul, and how far away was every one else!
Just below her on the sand a happy family played-some babies, two little boys digging, the father smoking, his hat tilted over his eyes against the sun, the mother finding biscuits in a bag for the youngest infant.It was a very merry family and full of laughter.
