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 Peel’s
ears.”
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.”