You mustn't stay outside--you are asked, you are invited--perhaps you
will be compelled ..."
The voice sank: Maggie's teeth chattered in her head from the cold, and
her foot had gone to sleep. She felt obstinate and rebellious and
frightened, she could not think clearly, and the words that came from
her, suddenly, seemed to her not to be her own.
"Aunt Anne, I want to do everything that you and Aunt Elizabeth think I
should, but I must be myself, mustn't I? I'm grown up now; I've got my
three hundred pounds and I don't think I want to be religious. I'm very
grateful to you and Aunt Elizabeth, but I'm not a help to you much, I'm
afraid. I know I'm very careless, I do want to be better, and that's
all the more reason, perhaps, why I should go out and earn my own
living. I'd learn more quickly then. But I do love you and Aunt
Elizabeth ..."
She broke off; she did not love them. She knew that she did not. The
only human being in all the world whom she loved was Martin.
Nevertheless there did come to her suddenly then a new tenderness for
her aunt; the actual sight of her pain in the Chapel had deeply touched
her and now her eagerness for escape was mingled with a longing to be
affectionate and good.
But Aunt Anne did not seem to have heard.
"Are you sure you're not cold, dear?"
"No, aunt."
Their hands touched.
"But you are. Put that rug over you. That one at the end of the bed.
I'm quiet now. I think perhaps I shall sleep a little."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Perhaps turn the lamp down, dear. That's it. A little more. Now, if
you'd just raise my pillow. There, behind my head. That's the way! Why,
what a good nurse you are!"
Maggie, as tenderly as she could, turned the pillow, patted it, placed
it beneath her aunt's head. She was close against her aunt's face, and
the eyes seemed suddenly so fierce and urgent, so insistent and
powerful, that seeing them was like the discovery of some blazing fire
in an empty house. Most of all, they were terrified eyes. Maggie went
back to her chair. After that, she sat there during the slow evolution
of Eternity; Eternity unrolled itself before her, on and on and on,
grey limitless mist and space, comfortless, lifeless, hopeless. She had
been for many weeks leading a thoroughly unwholesome life in that old
house with those old women. She did not herself know how unhealthy it
had been, but she knew that she missed the wide fields and downs of
Glebeshire, the winds that blew from the sea round Borhedden, the air
that swirled and raced up and down the little stony strata of St.
Dreot. Now she had been kept indoors, had had no fun of any kind, had
looked forward to Mr. Magnus as her chief diversion. Then Martin had
come, and suddenly she had seen how dangerously her life was hemming
her in. She was losing courage. She would soon be afraid to speak for
herself at all; she would soon ...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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