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- Author: L. T. Meade
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“It’s nice to be alone,” she said softly under her breath, “it’s nice and yet it isn’t nice. Nancy irritated me dreadfully this evening. I don’t like stories about good people. I don’t wish to think about good people. I am determined that I will not allow my thoughts to dwell on that unpleasant Priscilla Peel, and her pathetic poverty, and her burst of heroics. It is too trying to hear footsteps in that room. No, I will not think of that room nor of its inmate. Now, if I could only go to sleep!”
Maggie curled herself up in her luxurious chair, arranged a soft pillow under her head and shut her eyes. In this attitude she made a charming picture: her thick black lashes lay heavily on her pale cheeks; her red lips were slightly parted; her breathing came quietly. By and by repose took the place of tension— her face looked as if it were cut out of marble. The excitement and unrest, which her words had betrayed, vanished utterly; her features were beautiful, but almost expressionless.
This lasted for a short time, perhaps ten minutes; then a trivial circumstance, the falling of a coal in the grate, disturbed the light slumber of the sleeper. Maggie stirred restlessly and turned her head. She was not awake, but she was dreaming. A faint rose tint visited each cheek, and she clenched one hand, then moved it, and laid it over the other. Presently tears stole from under the black eyelashes and rolled down her cheeks. She opened her eyes wide; she was awake again; unutterable regret, remorse, which might never be quieted, filled her face.
Maggie rose from her chair, and, going across the room, sat down at her bureau. She turned a shaded lamp, so that the light might fall upon the pages of a book she was studying, and, pushing her hands through her thick hair, she began to read a passage from the splendid Prometheus Vinctus of Æschylus:
“O divine ether, O swift-winged winds!”
She muttered the opening lines to herself, then turning the page began to translate from the Greek with great ease and fluency:
“O divine ether, and swift-winged winds,
O flowing rivers, and ocean with countless-dimpling smile,
Earth, mother of all, and the all-seeing circle of the sun, to you I call;
Behold me, and the things that I, a god, suffer at the hands of gods.
Behold the wrongs with which I am worn away, and which I shall suffer through endless time.
Such is the shameful bondage which the new ruler of the Blessed Ones has invented for me.
Alas! Alas! I bewail my present and future misery——”
Any one who had seen Maggie in her deep and expressionless sleep but a few minutes before would have watched her now with a sensation of surprise. This queer girl was showing another phase of her complex nature. Her face was no longer lacking in expression, no longer stricken with sorrow nor harrowed with unavailing regret. A fine fire filled her eyes; her brow, as she pushed back her hair, showed its rather massive proportions. Now, intellect and the triumphant delight of overcoming a mental difficulty reigned supreme in her face. She read on without interruption for nearly an hour. At the end of that time her cheeks were burning like two glowing crimson roses.
A knock came at her door; she started and turned round petulantly.
“It’s just my luck,” muttered Maggie. “I’d have got the sense of that whole magnificent passage in another hour. It was beginning to fill me: I was getting satisfied— now it’s all over! I’d have had a good night if that knock hadn’t come— but now— now I am Maggie Oliphant, the most miserable girl at St. Benet’s, once again.”
The knock was repeated. Miss Oliphant sprang to her feet.
“Come in,” she said in a petulant voice.
The handle of the door was slowly turned, the tapestry curtain moved forward and a little fair-haired girl, with an infantile expression of face and looking years younger than her eighteen summers, tripped a few steps into the room.
“I beg your pardon, Maggie,” she said. “I had not a moment to come sooner— not one really. That stupid Miss Turner chose to raise the alarm for the fire brigade. Of course I had to go, and I’ve only just come back and changed my dress.”
“You ought to be in bed, Rosalind; it’s past eleven o’clock.”
“Oh, as if that mattered! I’ll go in a minute. How cozy you look here.”
“My dear, I am not going to keep you out of your beauty sleep. You can admire my room another time. If you have a message for me, Rosalind, let me have it, and then— oh, cruel word, but I must say it, my love— Go!”
Rosalind Merton had serene baby-blue eyes; they looked up now full at Maggie. Then her dimpled little hand slid swiftly into the pocket of her dress, came out again with a quick, little, frightened dart and deposited a square envelope with some manly writing on it on the bureau, where Maggie had been studying Prometheus Vinctus. The letter covered the greater portion of the open page. It seemed to Maggie as if the Greek play had suddenly faded and gone out of sight behind a curtain.
“There,” said Rosalind, “that’s for you. I was at Kingsdene to-day— and— I— I said you should have it, and I— I promised that I’d help you, Maggie. I— yes— I promised. I said I would help you, if you’d let me.”
“Thank you,” replied Miss Oliphant in a lofty tone. The words came out of her lips with the coldness of ice. “And if I need you— I— promise— to ask your help. Where did you say you met Mr. Hammond?”
Maggie took up her letter and opened it slowly.
“At Spilman’s. He was buying something for his room. He——” Rosalind blushed all over her face.
Maggie took her letter out of its envelope. She looked at the first two or three words, then laid it, open as it was, on the table.
“Thank you, Rosalind,” she said in her usual tone. “It was kind of you to bring this, certainly; but Mr. Hammond would have done better— yes, undoubtedly better— had he sent his letter by post. There would have been no mystery about it then, and I should have received it at least two hours ago. Thank you, Rosalind, all the same— good night.”
Rosalind Merton stepped demurely out of the room. In the corridor, however, a change come over her small childish face. Her blue eyes became full of angry flame and she clenched her baby hand and shook it in the direction of the closed door.
“Oh, Maggie Oliphant, what a deceiver you are!” she murmured. “You think that I’m a baby and notice nothing, but I’m on the alert now, and I’ll watch— and watch. I don’t love you any longer, Maggie Oliphant. Who loves being snubbed? Oh, of course, you pretend you don’t care about that letter! But I know you do care; and I’ll get hold of all your secrets before many weeks are over, see if I don’t!”
THE KINDEST AND MOST COMFORTING WAY
Maggie was once more alone. She stood quite still for nearly half a minute in the center of her room. Her hands were clasped tightly together. The expression of her face and her attitude showed such intense feeling as to be almost theatrical. This was no acting, however; it was Maggie’s nature to throw herself into attitudes before spectators or alone. She required some vent for all her passionate excitement, and what her girl friends called Miss Oliphant’s poses may have afforded her a certain measure of relief.
After standing still for these few seconds, she ran to the door and drew the bolt; then, sinking down once more in her easy-chair, she took up the letter which Rosalind Merton had brought her and began to read the contents. Four sides of a sheet of paper were covered with small, close writing, the neat somewhat cramped hand which at that time characterized the men of St. Hilda’s College.
Maggie’s eyes seemed to fly over the writing; they absorbed the sense, they took the full meaning out of each word. At last all was known to her, burnt in, indeed, upon her brain.
She crushed the letter suddenly in one of her hands, then raised it to her lips and kissed it; then fiercely, as though she hated it, tossed it into the fire. After this she sat quiet, her hands folded meekly, her head slightly bent. The color gradually left her cheeks. She looked dead tired and languid. After a time she arose, and, walking very slowly across her room, sat down by her bureau and drew a sheet of paper before her. As she did so her eyes fell for a moment on the Greek play which had fascinated her an hour ago. She found herself again murmuring some lines from Prometheus Vinctus:
“O divine ether, and swift-winged winds——”
She interrupted herself with a petulant movement.
“Folly!” she murmured, pushing the book aside. “Even glorious, great thoughts like those don’t satisfy me. Whoever supposed they would? What was I given a heart for? Why does it beat so fiercely, and long, and love? and why is it wrong— wrong of me to love? Oh, Annabel Lee! oh, darling! if only your wretched Maggie Oliphant had never known you!”
Maggie dashed some heavy tears from her eyes. Then, taking up her pen, she began to write.
“HEATH HALL,
“ST. BENET’S.
“DEAR MR. HAMMMOND: I should prefer that you did not in future give letters for me to any of my friends here. I do not wish to receive them through the medium of any of my fellow-students. Please understand this. When you have anything to say to me, you can write in the ordinary course of post. I am not ashamed of any slight correspondence we may have together; but I refuse to countenance, or to be in any sense a party to, what may even seem underhand.
“I shall try to be at the Marshalls’ on Sunday afternoon, but I have nothing to say in reply to your letter. My views are unalterable.
“Yours sincerely,
“MARGARET OLIPHANT.”
Maggie did not read the letter after she had written it. She put it into an envelope and directed it. Here was a large and bold hand and the address was swiftly written
“GEOFFREY HAMMOND, ESQ.,
“St. Hilda’s,
“Kingsdene.”
She stamped her letter and, late as it was, took it down herself and deposited it in the post-bag.
The next morning, when the students strolled in to breakfast, many pairs of eyes were raised with a new curiosity to watch Priscilla Peel. Even Maggie, as she drank her coffee and munched a piece of dry toast, for she was a very poor eater, could not help flashing a keen and interested glance at the young girl as she came into the room.
Prissie was the reverse of fashionable in her attire; her neat brown cashmere dress had been made by Aunt Raby. The hemming, the stitching, the gathering, the frilling which went to make up this useful garment were neat, were even exquisite; but then, Aunt Raby was not gifted with a stylish cut. Prissie’s hair was smoothly parted, but the thick plait on the back of the neck was by no means artistically coiled.
The girl’s plain, pale face was not set off by the severity of her toilet; there was no touch of spring or brightness anywhere, no look or note which should belong to one so young, unless it was the extreme thinness of her figure.
The curious eyes of the students were raised when she appeared and one or two laughed and turned their heads away. They had heard of her exploit of the night before. Miss Day and Miss Marsh had repeated this good story. It had impressed them at the time, but they did not tell it to others in an impressive way, and the girls, who had not seen Prissie, but had only heard the tale, spoke of her to one another as an “insufferable little prig.”
“Isn’t it too absurd,” said Rosalind Merton, sidling up to Maggie and casting some disdainful glances at poor Priscilla, “the conceit of some people! Of all forms of conceit, preserve me from the priggish style.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Maggie, raising her eyes and speaking in her lazy voice. “Are there any prigs about? I don’t see them. Oh, Miss Peel”— she jumped up hastily— “won’t you sit here by me? I have been reserving this place for you, for I have been so anxious to know if you would do me a kindness. Please sit down, and I’ll tell you what it is. You needn’t wait, Rosalind. What I have got to say is for Miss
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