The prodigal had been at last admitted to Prior Street on a footing of his own. He blossomed out in perpetual previous engagements whenever he was asked to dine; but he had made a bargain with Majendie by which he claimed unlimited opportunity for seeing Edie as the price of his promise to reform. This time Majendie was obliged to intimate to him that his reform must be regarded as the price of his admission.

For, this time, in the long year of his exile, the prodigal's prodigality had exceeded the measure of all former years. And, to his intense surprise, he found that Majendie drew the line somewhere. In consequence of this, and of the "entanglement" to which Majendie had once referred, the aspect of Gorst's affairs was peculiarly dark and threatening.

In the spring of the year they gathered to their climax. One afternoon Gorst appeared in Majendie's office, sat down with a stricken air, and appealed to his friend to help him out.

"I thought you _were_ out," said Majendie.

"So I am. It's because I'm so well out that I'm in for it. Evans's have turned her off. She's down on her luck--and--well--you see, _now_ she wants me to marry her."

"I see. Well--"

"Well, of course I can't. Maggie's a dear little thing, but--you see--I'm not the first."

"You're sure of that?"

"Certain. She confessed, poor girl. Besides, I knew it. I'm not a brute.

I'd marry her if I'd been the first and only one. I'd marry her if I were sure I'd be the last. I'd marry her, as it is, if I cared enough for her.

Always provided I could keep her. But you know--"

"You don't care and you can't keep her. What are you going to do for her?"

Gorst in his anguish glared at Majendie.

"I can't do anything. That's the d.a.m.nedest part of it. I'm simply cleaned out, till I get a berth somewhere."

Majendie looked grave. This time the prodigal had devoured his living.

"You're going to leave her there, then. Is that it?"

"No, it isn't. There's another fellow who'd marry her, if she'd have him, but she won't. That's it."

"Because she's fond of you, I suppose?"

"Oh, I don't know about being fond," said Gorst sulkily. "She's fond of anybody."

"And what do you want me to do?"

"I'd be awfully glad if you'd go and see her."

"See her?"

"Yes, and explain the situation. I can't. She won't let me. She goes mad when I try. She keeps on worrying at it from morning to night. When I don't go, she writes. And it knocks me all to pieces."

"If she's that sort, what good do you suppose I'll do by seeing her?"

"Oh, she'll listen to reason from any one but me. And there are things you can say to her that I can't. I say, will you?"

"I will if you like. But I don't suppose it will do one atom of good. It never does, you know. Where does the woman live?"

He took down the address on the visiting-card that Gorst gave him.

Between six and seven that evening he presented himself at one of many tiny, two-storied, red brick and stucco houses that stood in a long flat street, each with a narrow mat of gra.s.s laid before its bay-window. It was the new quarter of the respectable milliners and clerks; and Majendie gathered that the prodigal had taken some pains to lodge his Maggie with decent people. He reasoned farther that such an arrangement could only be possible, given the complete rupture of their relations.

A clean, kindly woman opened the door. She admitted with some show of hesitation that Miss Forrest was at home, and led him to a sitting-room on the upper floor. As he followed her he heard a door open; a dress rustled on the landing, and another door opened and shut again.

Maggie was not in the room as Majendie entered. From signs of recent occupation he gathered that she had risen up and fled at his approach.

The woman went into the adjoining room and returned, politely embarra.s.sed. "Miss Forrest is very sorry, sir, but she can't see anybody."

He wrote his name on Gorst's card and sent her back with it.

Then Maggie came to him.

He remembered long afterwards the manner of her coming; how he heard her blow her poor nose outside the door before she entered; how she stood on the threshold and looked at him, and made him a stiff little bow; how she approached shyly and slowly, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her sides, and her eyes fixed on him in terror, as if she were drawn to him against her will; how she held Gorst's card tight in her poor little hand; how her eyes had foreknowledge of his errand and besought him to spare her; and how in her awkwardness she yet preserved her inimitable grace.

He could hardly believe that this was the girl he had once seen in Evans's shop when he was buying flowers for Anne. The girl in Evans's shop was only a pretty girl. Maggie, at five-and-twenty, living under Gorst's "protection," and attired according to his taste, was almost (but not quite) a pretty lady. Maggie was neither inhumanly tall, nor inhumanly slender; she was simply and supremely feminine. She was dressed delicately in black, a choice which made brilliant the beauty of her colouring. Her hair was abundant, fawn-dark, laced with gold. Her face was a full short oval. Its whiteness was the tinged whiteness of pure cream, with a rose in it that flamed, under Maggie's swift emotions, to a sudden red. She had soft grey eyes dappled with a tawny green. Her little high-arched nose was sensitive to the constant play of her upper lip; and that lip was so short that it couldn't always cover the tips of her little white teeth. Majendie judged that Maggie's mouth was the prettiest feature in her face, and there was something about it that reminded him, preposterously, of Anne. The likeness bothered him, till he discovered that it lay in that trick of the lifted lip. But the small charm that was so brief and divine an accident in Anne was perpetual in Maggie. He thought he should get tired of it in time.

Maggie had been crying. Her sobs had left her lips still parted; her eyelids were swollen; there were little ashen shades and rosy flecks all over her pretty face. Her diminutive muslin handkerchief was limp with her tears. As he looked at her he realised that he had a painful and disgusting task before him, and that there would be no intelligence in the girl to help him out.

He bade her sit down; for poor Maggie stood before him humbly. He told her briefly that his friend, Mr. Gorst, had asked him to explain things to her, and he was beginning to explain them, very gently, when Maggie cut him short.

"It's not that I want to be married," she said sadly. "Mr. Mumford would _marry_ me."

"Well--then--" he suggested, but Maggie shook her head. "Isn't he nice to you, Mr. Mumford?"

"He's nice enough. But I can't marry 'im. I won't. I don't love 'im. I can't--Mr. Magendy--because of Charlie."

She looked at him as if she thought he would compel her to marry Mr.

Mumford.

"Oh dear--" said Maggie, surprised at herself, as she began to cry again.

She pressed the little muslin handkerchief to her eyes; not making a show of her grief; but furtive, rather, and ashamed.

And Majendie took in all the pitifulness of her sweet, predestined nature. Pretty Maggie could never have been led astray; she had gone out, fervent and swift, dream-drunk, to meet her destiny. She was a creature of ardours, of tenderness, and of some perverse instinct that it would be crude to call depravity. Where her heart led, her flesh, he judged, had followed; that was all. Her brain had been pa.s.sive in her sad affairs.

Maggie had never schemed, or calculated, or deliberated. She had only felt.

"See here," he said. "Charlie _can't_ marry you. He can't marry anybody."

"Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, he's too poor."

"I know he's poor."

"And you wouldn't be happy if he did marry you. He couldn't make you happy."

"I'd be unhappy, then."