Maggie sat down, gathering her dressing-gown close about her. She was
not even now drawn right out of her dream, and the room seemed
fantastic, to rise and fall a little, and to be filled with sound, just
out of hearing. For a time she was so sleepy that she nodded on her
chair, and the green lamp swelled and quivered and the very bed seemed
to sway in the dark, but soon the cold air cleared her head, and she
was wide awake, staring before her at the grey window-panes. Her aunt
did not for a long time speak again. Maggie sat there her mind a maze
of the Chapel, old Crashaw, Miss Avies, and Martin. Slowly the cold
crept into her feet and her hands, but her head now was burning hot.
Then suddenly her aunt began to talk in a dreamy rather lazy voice, not
her natural daily tone which was always very sharp and clear. She
talked on and on; sometimes her sentences were confused and unfinished,
sometimes they seemed to Maggie to have no meaning; once or twice the
voice dropped so low that Maggie did not catch the words, but always
there was especial urgency behind the carelessness as though every word
were being spoken for a listener's benefit--a listener who sat perhaps
with pencil and notebook somewhere in the dark behind them.
"So sorry ... so sorry, Maggie dear ... so sorry," the words ran up and
down. "I hadn't meant to take you away before the service was over.
Elizabeth could have ... sometimes my pain is very bad and I have to
lie down, you know. But it's nothing--nothing really--only I'm glad,
rather, that you should share all our little troubles, because then
you'll know us better, won't you? Dear Maggie, there's been something
between us all this time, hasn't there? Ever since our first
meeting--and it's partly been my fault. I wasn't good at first, I
wanted to be kind, but I was stiff and shy. You wouldn't think that I'm
shy? I am, terribly. I always have been since I was very little, and
just to enter a room when other people are there makes me so
embarrassed ... I remember once when mother was alive her scolding me
because I wouldn't come in to a tea-party. But I couldn't; I stood
outside the door in an agony, doing everything to make myself go
in--but I couldn't ... But now I've come to love you, dear, although of
course you have your faults. But they are faults of your age,
carelessness, selfishness. They are nothing in the eyes of God, who
understands all our weaknesses. And you must learn to know Him, dear.
That is my only prayer now. If I am taken, if I go before the great
day--if it be His will--then I pray always, now that I may leave you in
my place, waiting for Him as I have waited, trusting Him as I have
trusted ... you saw to-night what it means to us, what it must mean to
any one who has listened. There were times, years ago, when I had not
turned to God, when I did not care, when I thought of earthly love ...
God drew me to Himself ... You too must come, Maggie--you must come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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