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Updated: June 3, 2025
Maggie stumbled her way towards the staircase, then, seeing Grace's terrified eyes, filled with a horror that she, Maggie Cardinal, should cause any one to look at her like that, she ran clumsily upstairs, shutting herself into her bedroom. During the next fortnight the dominant element in the situation was Grace's terror. Skeaton was already beginning to forget the story of the suicide.
My aunts, very much they needed me, and I was selfish and wouldn't give them what they wanted, and tried to escape from them. You and Grace don't need me. Nobody wants anything here in Skeaton. You're all full. It isn't my fault, Paul, but everything seems to me dead here. They don't mean anything they say in Church, and the Church doesn't mean anything either.
You could have knocked me down with less than a feather when I saw it in the Skeaton News, 'That can't be my Margaret Cardinal, I said, and yet it seemed so strange the two names and all. Well, and then I found it really WAS the same. I WAS astonished. You of all people the wife of a parson! However, you know your own mind best, and I'm sure Mr. Trenchard's a very lucky man.
She slept, lying back in the blue armchair in front of the fire, with only the leaping flames as light to the room. Strange and dim but unspeakably sweet were her dreams. It seemed that she had escaped for ever from Paul and Grace and Skeaton, and that in some strange way Martin was back with her again, the same old Martin, with his laugh and the light in his eyes and his rough red face.
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.
Already, in spite of herself, in spite of her consciousness of the melodrama and meretricious glitter of the scene, her heart was beating. She was more deeply moved, even now, than she had ever been by all the services of the Skeaton Church. And Thurston had learnt his job by this time. Softly one of the violins played the tune.
How good she had been to him and for how many years! When they were happy it seemed natural that she should look after him, but now, in the middle of this scandal he saw that it should have been he who looked after her. He had not looked after her. Of course, now they would have to leave Skeaton and he knew what that departure would mean to Grace. She was suspicious of new places and new people.
Let's be happy, Paul please." She was shivering. She looked back with a terrified, reluctant glance to the drawer where Mr. Magnus' letter was, then she went downstairs. Soon after they started for Little Harben. The last days in Skeaton had scarcely been happy ones. Grace had erected an elaborate scaffolding of offended dignity and bitter misery.
Her heart felt a dim distant triumph when she saw that he was so hungry, but it was too early to feel triumph yet. She came to the table and began to eat, although she felt no hunger. "You're married, aren't you?" he asked suddenly. "Yes," she answered. "Where's your husband?" "A place called Skeaton." "Well, you'd better get back there to-night " "I'm staying in London for a day or two."
She heard a good deal of an old Mr. Toms, "a little queer in his head, poor man," who seemed to figure in the outskirts of Skeaton society as a warning and a reassurance. The thought gradually occurred to her that this kindly genial clergyman might perhaps find her some work in Skeaton. He even himself hinted at something ... She might be some one's secretary or housekeeper.
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