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
