“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!”

Chapter Eight
The Kindest and Most Comforting Way

Maggie was once more alone. She stood quite still for nearly half a minute in the centre 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 characterised 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 colour 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 Hammond —

“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. Hers 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 only 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 afterwards. 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 sympathise 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 leant 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 anyone else. We shall have a cosy 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, colouring. “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 programme 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 afterwards.”

“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 colour rushed into her cheeks as she spoke, and her eyes looked wistful.

Maggie laughed.

“What are your ideas with regard to space, Miss Peel? The whole of Kingsdene-shire lies before us. We are untrammelled, 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 Kingsdene-shire.”

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 afterwards 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.”