The Captives | Page 8

as it were, concealing some scene that was being
played behind them. But beyond and above all other sensations she was
conscious of her liberty. She struggled against this; she should be
conscious, before everything, of her father's loss. But she was not. It
meant to her at present not so much the loss of a familiar figure as the
sudden juggling, by an outside future, of all the regular incidents and
scenes of her daily life, as at a pantomime one sees by a transformation
of the scenery, the tables, the chairs, and pictures the walls dance to an
unexpected jig. She was free, free, free--alone but free. What form her
life would take she did not know, what troubles and sorrows in the
future there might be she did not care--to-morrow her life would begin.
Although unsentimental she was tender-hearted and affectionate, but
now, for many years, her life with her father had been a daily battle of
ever-increasing anger and bitterness. It may be that once he had loved
her; that had been in those days when she was not old enough to love
him . . . since she had known him he had loved only money. She would
have loved him had he allowed her, and because he did not she bore
him no grudge. She had always regarded her life, sterile and
unprofitable as it was, with humour until now when, like a discarded
dress, it had slipped behind her. She did not see it, even now, with
bitterness; there was no bitterness for anything in her character.
As they walked Uncle Mathew was considering her for the first time.
On the other occasions when he had stayed in his brother's house he
had been greatly occupied with his own plans--requests for money
(invariably refused) schemes for making money, plots to frighten his

brother out of one or other of his possessions. He had been frankly
predatory, and that plain, quiet girl his niece had been pleasant
company but no more. Now she was suddenly of the first importance.
She would in all probability inherit a considerable sum. How much
there might be in that black box under the bed one could not say, but
surely you could not be so relentless a miser for so long a period
without accumulating a very agreeable amount. Did the girl realise that
she would, perhaps, be rich? Uncle Mathew licked his lips with his
tongue. So quiet and self-possessed was she that you could not tell
what she was thinking. Were she only pretty she might marry anybody.
As it was, with that figure . . . But she was a good girl. Uncle Mathew
felt kind and tender-hearted towards her. He would advise her about
life of which he had had a very considerable experience, and of which,
of course, she knew nothing. His heart was warm, although it would
have been warmer still had he been able to drink a glass of something
before starting out.
"And what will you do now, my dear, do you think?" he asked.
They had left the deep lanes and struck across the hard-rutted fields. A
thin powder of snow lay upon the land, and under the yellow light of
the winter sky the surface was blue, shadowed with white patches
where the snow had fallen more thickly. The trees and hedges were
black and hard against the white horizon that was tightly stretched like
the paper of a Japanese screen. The smell of burning wood was in the
air, and once and again a rook slowly swung its wheel, cutting the air as
it flew. The cold was so pleasantly sharp that it was the best possible
thing for Uncle Mathew, who was accustomed to an atmosphere of
hissing gas, unwashen glasses, and rinds of cheese.
Maggie did not answer his question but herself asked one.
"Uncle Mathew, do you believe in religion?"
"Religion, my dear?" answered her uncle, greatly startled at so unusual
a question. "What sort of religion?"
"The kind of religion that father preached about every Sunday--the

Christian religion."
"To tell you the truth, my dear," he answered confidentially, "I've never
had much time to think about it. With some men, you see, it's part of
their lives, and with others--well, it isn't. My lines never ran that way."
"Was father very religious when he was young?"
"No, I can't say that he was. But then we never got on, your father and I.
Our lines didn't run together at all. But I shouldn't have called him a
religious man."
"Then all this time father has been lying?"
Her uncle gazed at her apprehensively. He did not wish to undermine
her faith in her father on the very day after his death, but he was so