Maggie flushed. Of course she had forgotten. She left the room, crossed the hall. Yes, there was the door, wide open. She locked it, the place was utterly cold and desolate. She closed the door, stood for a moment in the little hall.
"I don't care what's going to happen!" she cried aloud. So ended her life in that house.
CHAPTER III
THE LONDON HOUSE
It was strange after this that the start on the London journey should be so curiously unexciting; it was perhaps the presence of Aunt Anne that reduced everything to an unemotional level. Maggie wondered as she sat in the old moth-eaten, whisky-smelling cab whether her Aunt Anne was ever moved about anything. Then something occurred that showed her that, as yet, she knew very little about her aunt. As, clamping down the stony hill, they had a last glimpse at the corner of the two Vicarage chimneys, looking above the high hedge like a pair of inquisitive lunatics, Maggie choked. She pressed her hands together, pushed her hair from her face and, in so doing, touched her black hat.
"Your hat's crooked, Maggie dear," said her aunt gently. The girl's hot hands clutched the soft packet of sandwiches and a little black handbag that yesterday Aunt Anne had bought for her in the village. It was a shabby little bag, and had strange habits of opening when it was not expected to do so and remaining shut when something was needed from it. It gaped now and, just as the cab climbed Cator Hill, it fell forward and flung the contents on to the floor. Maggie, blushing, looked up expecting a reproof. She saw that her aunt's eyes were fixed upon the view; as upon the day of her arrival, so now. Her face wore a look of rapture. She drank it in.
Maggie also took the last joy of the familiar scene. The Vicarage, like a grey crouching cat, lay basking on the green hill. The sunlight flooded the dark wood; galleons of clouds rolled like lumbering vessels across the blue sky.
"It's lovely, isn't it?" whispered Maggie.
"Beautiful—beautiful," sighed her aunt.