Circulating Library.She dressed quietly and in excellent taste--in grey or black and white.She had jolly brown eyes and a dimple in the middle of her chin.She was ready to discuss any question with any one, was marvellously broad-minded and tolerant, and although she was both poor and generous, always succeeded in making her little flat in Soho Square pretty and attractive.
Her chief fault, perhaps, was that she cared for no one especially--she had neither lovers nor parents nor sisters nor brothers, and to all her friends she behaved with the same kind geniality, welcoming one as another.She was thus aloof from them all and relied upon no one.The centre of her life was, of course, her religion, but of this she never spoke, although strangely enough no one doubted the intensity of her belief and the reality of her devotion.
She was a determined follower of Mr.Warlock; what he said she believed, but here, too, there seemed to be no personal attachment.
She did not allow criticism of him in her own presence, but, on the other hand, she never spoke as though it would distress her very greatly to lose him.He was a sign, a symbol...If one symbol went another could be found.
To Martin she was the one out-standing proof of the reality of the Chapel.All the others--his sister, Miss Avies, Thurston, Crashaw, the Miss Cardinals, yes, and his father too, were, in one way or another, eccentric, abnormal, but Miss Pyncheon was the sane every-day world, the worldly world, the world of drinks and dinners, and banks and tobacconists, and yet she believed as profoundly as any of them.What did she believe? She was an Inside Saint, therefore she must have accepted this whole story of the Second Coming and the rest of it.Of course women would believe anything...
Nevertheless...
He scarcely listened to their chatter.He was forcing himself not to look at his sister, and yet Thurston's news seemed so extraordinary to him that his eye kept stealing round to her to see whether she were still the same.Could she have accepted him, that bounder and cad and charlatan? He felt a sudden cold chill of isolation as though in this world none of the ordinary laws were followed."By God, I am a stranger here," he thought.It was not until after dinner that night that he was alone with his father.He had resolved on many fine things in the interval.He was going to "have it out with him," "to put his foot down," "to tell him that such a thing as Thurston's marriage to his sister was perfectly impossible." And then, for the thousandth time since his return to England he felt strangely weak and irresolute.He did wish to be "firm" with his father, but it would have been so much easier to be firm had he not been so fond of him."Soft, sentimental weakness," he called it to himself, but he knew that it was something deeper than that, something that he would never be able to deny.
He went into his father's study that night with a strange dismal foreboding as though he were being drawn along upon some path that he did not want to follow.What was his father mixed up with all this business for? Why were such men as Thurston in existence? Why couldn't life be simple and straightforward with people like his father and himself and that girl Maggie alone somewhere with nothing to interfere? Life was never just as you wanted it, always a little askew, a little twisted, cynically cocking its eye at you before it vanished round the corner? He didn't seem to be able to manage it.
Anyway, he wasn't going to have that fellow Thurston marrying his sister.
He found his father lying back in his arm-chair fast asleep, looking like a dead man, his long thin face pale with fatigue, his eyelids a dull grey, his mouth tightly closed as though in a grim determination to pursue some battle.And at the sight of him thus worn out and beaten Martin's affection flooded his heart.He stood opposite his father looking at him and loving him more deeply than he had ever done before.
"I will take him away from all this," was his thought, "these Thurstons and all--out of all this...We'll go off abroad somewhere.And I'll make him fat and happy."Then his father suddenly woke up, with a start and a cry: "Where am I?"...Then he suddenly saw Martin."Martin," he said, smiling.
Martin smiled back and then began at once: "Father, this isn't true about Thurston, is it?"He saw, as he had often done before, that his father had to call himself up from some world of vision before he could realise even his surroundings.Martin he recognised intuitively with the recognition of the spirit, but he seemed to take in the details of the room slowly, one by one, as though blinded by the light.
"Ah--I've been dreaming," he said, still smiling at Martin helplessly and almost timidly."I'm so tired these days--suddenly--Iusen't to be..." He put his hand to his forehead, then laid it on Martin's knee, and the strength and warmth of that seemed suddenly to fill him with vigour.
"You're never tired, are you?" he asked as a child might ask an elder.
"Very seldom," answered Martin, "I say, father, what is all this about Thurston?""Thurston...Why, what's he been doing?""He says he's engaged to Amy." The disgust of the idea made Martin's words, against his will, sharp and angry.
"Does he?...Yes, I remember.He spoke to me about it.""Of course it's simply his infernal cheek..."Mr.Warlock sighed."I don't know, I'm sure.Amy seemed to wish it."Martin felt then more strongly than before the Something that drove him.It said to him: "Now, then...here's a thing for you to make a row about--a big row.And then you can go off with Maggie." But, on the other hand, there was Something that said: "Don't hurt him.
Don't hurt him.You may regret it all your life if..."If what? He didn't know.He was always threatened with regretting things all his life.The blow was always going to fall.And that pleasant very British phrase came back to him, "He would put his foot down"--however--he was very angry--very angry.
