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- Author: L. T. Meade
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Rosalind retired in dudgeon to the other end of the room, and, if the laughing and muttering continued, they now only reached Maggie and Priscilla in the form of very distant murmurs.
“How pale you look,” said Maggie, turning to the girl, “and how cold you are! Yes, I am quite sure you are bitterly cold. Now you shall have a good breakfast. Let me help you. Please do. I’ll go to the side-table and bring you something so tempting; wait and see.”
“You mustn’t trouble really,” began Prissie.
Miss Oliphant flashed a brilliant smile at her. Prissie found her words arrested, and, in spite of herself, her coldness began to thaw. Maggie ran over to the side-table and Priscilla kept repeating under her breath:
“She’s not true— she’s beautiful, but she’s false; she has the kindest, sweetest, most comforting way in the world, but she only does it for the sake of an aesthetic pleasure. I ought not to let her. I ought not to speak to her. I ought to go away, and have nothing to do with her proffers of goodwill, and yet somehow or other I can’t resist her.”
Maggie came back with some delicately carved chicken and ham and a hot cup of delicious coffee.
“Is not this nice?” she said. “Now eat it all up and speak to me afterward. Oh, how dreadfully cold you do look!”
“I feel cold— in spirit as well as physically,” retorted Priscilla.
“Well, let breakfast warm you— and— and— a small dose of the tonic of sympathy, if I may dare to offer it.”
Priscilla turned her eyes full upon Miss Oliphant.
“Do you mean it?” she said in a choked kind of voice. “Is that quite true what you said just now?”
“True? What a queer child! Of course it is true. What do you take me for? Why should not I sympathize with you?”
“I want you to,” said Prissie. Tears filled her eyes; she turned her head away. Maggie gave her hand a squeeze.
“Now eat your breakfast,” she said. “I shall glance through my letters while you are busy.”
She leaned back in her chair and opened several envelopes. Priscilla ate her chicken and ham, drank her coffee and felt the benefit of the double tonic which had been administered in so timely a fashion. It was one of Miss Oliphant’s peculiarities to inspire in those she wanted to fascinate absolute and almost unreasoning faith for the time being. Doubts would and might return in her absence, but in the sunshine of her particularly genial manner they found it hard to live.
After breakfast the girls were leaving the room together when Miss Heath, the principal of the hall in which they resided, came into the room. She was a tall, stately woman of about thirty-five and had seen very little of Priscilla since her arrival, but now she stopped to give both girls a special greeting. Her manners were very frank and pleasant.
“My dear,” she said to Prissie, “I have been anxious to cultivate your acquaintance. Will you come and have tea with me in my room this afternoon? And, Maggie, dear, will you come with Miss Peel?”
She laid her hand on Maggie’s shoulder as she spoke, looked swiftly into the young girl’s face, then turned with a glance of great interest to Priscilla.
“You will both come,” she said. “That is right. I won’t ask any one else. We shall have a cozy time together, and Miss Peel can tell me all about her studies, and aims, and ambitions.”
“Thank you,” said Maggie, “I’ll answer for Miss Peel. We’ll both come; we shall be delighted.”
Miss Heath nodded to the pair and walked swiftly down the long hall to the dons’ special entrance, where she disappeared.
“Is not she charming?” whispered Maggie. “Did I not tell you you would fall in love with Dorothea?”
“But I have not,” said Priscilla, coloring. “And I don’t know whether she is charming or not.”
Maggie checked a petulant exclamation which was rising to her lips. She was conscious of a curious desire to win her queer young companion’s goodwill and sympathy.
“Never mind,” she said, “the moment of victory is only delayed. You will tell a very different story after you have had tea with Dorothea this evening. Now, let us come and look at the notice-boards and see what the day’s program is. By the way, are you going to attend any lectures this morning?”
“Yes, two,” said Prissie— “one on Middle History, from eleven to twelve, and I have a French lecture afterward.”
“Well, I am not doing anything this morning. I wish you were not. We might have taken a long walk together. Don’t you love long walks?”
“Oh, yes; but there is no time for anything of that sort here— nor——” Priscilla hesitated. “I don’t think there’s space for a very long walk here,” she added. The color rushed into her cheeks as she spoke and her eyes looked wistful.
Maggie laughed.
“What are your ideas in regard to space, Miss Peel? The whole of Kingsdeneshire lies before us. We are untrammeled and can go where we please. Is not that a sufficiently broad area for our roamings?”
“But there is no sea,” said Priscilla. “We should never have time to walk from here to the sea, and nothing— nothing else seems worth while.”
“Oh, you have lived by the sea?”
“Yes, all my life. When I was a little girl, my home was near Whitby, in Yorkshire, and lately I have lived close to Lyme— two extreme points of England, you will say; but no matter, the sea is the same. To walk for miles on the top of the cliffs, that means exercise.”
“Ah,” said Maggie with a sigh, “I understand you— I know what you mean.”
She spoke quickly, as she always did under the least touch of excitement. “Such a walk means more than exercise; it means thought, aspiration. Your brain seems to expand then and ideas come. Of course you don’t care for poor flat Kingsdeneshire.”
Priscilla turned and stared at Miss Oliphant. Maggie laughed; she raised her hand to her forehead.
“I must not talk any more,” she said, turning pale and shrinking into herself. “Forgive my rhapsodies. You’ll understand what they are worth when you know me better. Oh, by the way, will you come with me to Kingsdene on Sunday? We can go to the three o’clock service at the chapel and afterward have tea with some friends of mine— the Marshalls— they’d be delighted to see you.”
“What chapel is the service at?” inquired Priscilla.
“What chapel? Is there a second? Come with me, and you will never ask that question again. Get under the shade of St. Hilda’s— see once those fretted roofs and those painted windows. Listen but once to that angel choir, and then dare to ask me what chapel I mean when I invite you to come and taste of heaven beforehand.”
“Thank you,” said Priscilla, “I’ll come. I cannot be expected to know about things before I have heard of them, can I? But I am very much obliged to you, and I shall be delighted to come.”
A NEW LIFE
The vice-principal’s room at Heath Hall was double the size of those occupied by the students. Miss Heath had, of course, a separate sleeping apartment. Her delightful sitting-room, therefore, had not the curtained-off effect which took slightly from the charm of the students’ rooms. In summer Miss Heath’s room was beautiful, for the two deep bay windows— one facing west, the other south— looked out upon smoothly kept lawns and flower-beds, upon tall elm trees and also upon a distant peep of the river, for which Kingsdene was famous, and some of the spires and towers of the old churches. In winter, too, however— and winter had almost come now— the vice-principal’s room had a unique effect, and Priscilla never forgot the first time she saw it. The young girl stepped across the threshold of a new life on this first evening. She would always remember it.
It was getting dark, and curtains were drawn round the cozy bays, and the firelight blazed cheerfully.
Prissie was a little before rather than behind her time, and there was no one in the room to greet her when she entered. She felt so overmastered by shyness, however, that this was almost a relief, and she sank down into one of the many comfortable chairs with a feeling of thankfulness and looked around her.
The next moment a servant entered with a lamp, covered with a gold silk shade. She placed it on a table near the fire, and lit a few candles, which stood on carved brackets round the walls. Then Prissie saw what made her forget Miss Heath and her shyness and all else— a great bank of flowers, which stretched across one complete angle of the room. There were some roses, some chrysanthemums, some geraniums. They were cunningly arranged in pots, but had the effect at a little distance of a gay, tropical garden. Prissie rushed to them, knelt down by a tall, white Japanese chrysanthemum and buried her face in its long, wavy petals.
Prissie had never seen such flowers, and she loved all flowers. Her heart swelled with a kind of wonder; and when, the next moment, she felt a light and very soft kiss on her forehead she was scarcely surprised.
“My dear child,” said Miss Heath, “I am so sorry I was not in the room when you came in; but never mind, my flowers gave you welcome.”
“Yes,” said Prissie, standing up pale and with a luminous light in her eyes.
“You love flowers?” said Miss Heath, giving her a keen glance.
“Oh, yes; but I did not know— I could not guess— that any flower could be as beautiful as this,” and she touched the great white chrysanthemum with her finger.
“Yes, and there are some flowers even more wonderful. Have you ever seen orchids?”
“No.”
“Then you have something to live for. Orchids are ordinary flowers spiritualized. They have a glamor over them. We have good orchid shows sometimes at Kingsdene. I will take you to the next.”
The servant brought in tea, and Miss Heath placed Prissie in a comfortable chair, where she was neither oppressed by lamplight nor firelight.
“A shy little soul like this will love the shade,” she said to herself. “For all her plainness this is no ordinary girl, and I mean to draw her out presently. What a brow she has, and what a light came into her eyes when she looked at my white chrysanthemum.”
There came a tap at the door, and Maggie Oliphant entered, looking fresh and bright. She gave Prissie an affectionate glance and nod and then began to busy herself, helping Miss Heath with the tea. During the meal a little pleasant murmur of conversation was kept up. Miss Heath and Maggie exchanged ideas. They even entered upon one or two delicate little skirmishes, each cleverly arguing a slight point on which they appeared to differ. Maggie could make smart repartees, and Miss Heath could parry her graceful young adversary’s home thrusts with excellent effect.
They talked of one or two books which were then under discussion; they said a little about music and a word or two with regard to the pictures which were just then causing talk among the art critics in London. It was all new to Prissie, this “light, airy, nothing” kind of talk. It was not study; could it be classed under the head of recreation?
Prissie was accustomed to classify everything, but she did not know under what head to put this pleasant conversation. She was bewildered, puzzled. She listened without losing a word. She forgot herself absolutely.
Miss Heath, however, who knew Maggie Oliphant, but did not know Prissie, was observant of the silent young stranger through all the delights of her pleasant talk. Almost imperceptibly she got Prissie to say a word or two. She paused when she saw a question in Prissie’s eyes, and her timid and gentle words were listened to with deference. By slow degrees Maggie was the silent one and Priscilla and Miss Heath held the field between them.
“No, I have never been properly educated,” Prissie was saying. “I have never gone to a high school. I don’t do things in the regular fashion. I was so afraid I should not be able to pass the entrance examination for St. Benet’s. I was delighted when I found that I had done so.”
“You passed the examination creditably,” said Miss Heath. “I have looked through your papers. Your answers were not stereotyped. They were much better; they were thoughtful. Whoever has educated you, you have been well taught. You can think.”
“Oh, yes, my dear friend, Mr. Hayes, always said that was the first thing.”
“Ah, that accounts for it,” replied Miss Heath. “You have had the advantage of listening to a cultivated man’s conversation. You ought to
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