L. Meade - A Sweet Girl Graduate

“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: