"My dear," said Nancy Banister that same evening--"my dear and beloved
Maggie, we have both been guilty of a huge mistake."
"What is that?" asked Miss Oliphant. She was leaning back in a deep
easy-chair, and Nancy, who did not care for luxurious seats, had perched
herself on a little stool at her feet. Nancy was a small,
nervous-looking person; she had a zealous face, and eager, almost too
active movements. Nancy was the soul of bustling good-nature, of
brightness and kindness. She often said that Maggie Oliphant's laziness
rested her.
"What is it?" said Maggie, again. "How are we in the wrong, Nance?"
She lifted her dimpled hand as she spoke, and contemplated it with a
slow, satisfied sort of smile.
"We have made a mistake about Miss Peel, that is all; she is a very
noble girl."
"Oh, my dear Nance! Poor little Puritan Prissie! What next?"
"It is all very fine to call her names," replied Nancy--here she sprang
to her feet--"but _I_ couldn't do what she did. Do you know that she
absolutely and completely turned the tables on that vulgar Annie Day and
that pushing, silly little Lucy Marsh. I never saw any two look smaller
or poorer than those two when they skedaddled out of her room. Yes,
that's the word--they skedaddled to the door, both of them, looking as
limp as a cotton dress when it has been worn for a week, and one almost
treading on the other's heels; and I do not think Prissie will be
worried by them any more."
"Really, Nancy, you look quite pretty when you are excited! Now, what
did this wonderful Miss Peel do? Did she box the ears of those two
detestable girls? If so, she has my hearty congratulations."
"More than that, Maggie--that poor, little, meek, awkward, slim creature
absolutely demolished them. Oh! she did it in such a fine, simple,
unworldly sort of way. I only wish you had seen her! They were
twitting her about not going in for all the fun here, and, above
everything, for keeping her room so bare and unattractive. You know she
has been a fortnight here to-day, and she has not got an extra thing--
not one. There isn't a room in the Hall like hers--it's so bare and
unhomelike. What's the matter, Maggie?"
"You needn't go on, Nancy: if it's about the room, I don't want to hear
it. You know I can't--I can't bear it."
Maggie's lips were trembling, her face was white, she shaded her eyes
with her hand.
"Oh, my darling, I am so sorry. I forgot--I really did! There, you
must try and think it was any room. What she did was all the same.
Well, those girls had been twitting her. I expect she's had a nice
fortnight of it! She turned very white, and at last her blood was up,
and she just gave it to them. She opened her little trunk. I really
could have cried. It was such a poor, pathetic sort of receptacle to be
capable of holding all one's worldly goods, and she showed it to them--
empty! `You see,' she said, `that I have no pictures nor ornaments
here!' Then she turned the contents of her purse into her hand. I
think, Maggie, she had about thirty shillings in the world, and she
asked Lucy Marsh to count her money, and inquired how many things she
thought it would purchase at Spilman's. Then, Maggie, Priscilla turned
on them. Oh, she did not look plain, then, nor awkward either. Her
eyes had such a splendid, good, brave sort of light in them. And she
said she had come here to work, and she meant to work, and her room must
stay bare, for she had no money to make it anything else. `But,' she
said, `I am not afraid of you, but I _am_ afraid of hurting those'--
whoever `those' are--`those'--oh, with such a ring on the word--`who
have sent me here!'
"After that the two girls skedaddled; they had had enough of her, and I
expect, Maggie, your little Puritan Prissie will be left in peace in the
future."
"Don't call her my little Puritan," said Maggie. "I have nothing to say
to her."
Maggie was leaning back again in her chair now; her face was still pale,
and her soft eyes looked troubled.
"I wish you wouldn't tell me heroic stories, Nancy," she remarked, after
a pause. "They make me feel so uncomfortable. If Priscilla Peel is
going to be turned into a sort of heroine, she'll be much more
unbearable than in her former character."
"Oh, Maggie, I wish you wouldn't talk in that reckless way, nor pretend
that you hate goodness. You know you adore it--you know you do! You
know you are far and away the most lovable and bewitching, and the--the
very best girl at St Benet's."
"No, dear little Nance, you are quite mistaken. Perhaps I'm
bewitching--I suppose to a certain extent I am, for people always tell
me so--but I'm _not_ lovable, and I'm _not_ good. There, my dear, do
let us turn from that uninteresting person--Maggie Oliphant. And so,
Nancy, you are going to worship Priscilla Peel in future?"
"Oh, dear no! that's not my way. But I'm going to respect her very
much. I think we have both rather shunned her lately, and I _did_ feel
sure at first that you meant to be very kind to her, Maggie."
Miss Oliphant yawned. It was her way to get over emotion very quickly.
A moment before her face had been all eloquent with feeling; now its
expression was distinctly bored, and her lazy eyes were not even open to
their full extent.
"Perhaps I found her stupid," she said, "and so for that reason dropped
her. Perhaps I would have continued to be kind if she had reciprocated
attentions, but she did not. I am glad now, very glad, that we are
unlikely to be friends, for, after what you have just told me, I should
probably find her insupportable. Are you going, Nancy?"
"Yes, I promised to have cocoa with Annie Day. I had almost forgotten.
Good-night, Maggie."
Nancy shut the door softly behind her, and Maggie closed her eyes for a
moment with a sigh of relief.
"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 check, and she clenched one hand, then moved it, and laid it over
the other. Presently tears stoic 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 Aeschylus--
"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--"
Anyone 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 cosy 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 came 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!"