"Nothing more?" asked Maggie, consumed with annoyance.
"He"s been to the theatre once or twice.... Dear Laurie! I"m glad he"s recovering his spirits."
Maggie was very angry indeed. She thought it abominable of the boy to treat his mother like that. And then there was the shooting--not much, indeed, beyond the rabbits, which the man who acted as occasional keeper told her wanted thinning, and a dozen or two of wild pheasants--yet this shooting had always been done, she understood, at Christmas, ever since Master Laurie had been old enough to hold a gun.
She determined to write him a letter.
When breakfast was over, with a resolved face she went to her room.
She would really tell this boy a home-truth or two. It was a--a sister"s place to do so. The mother, she knew well enough, would do no more than send a little wail, and would end by telling the dear boy that, of course, he knew best, and that she was very happy to think that he was taking such pains about his studies. Someone must point out to the boy his overwhelming selfishness, and it seemed that no one was at hand but herself. Therefore she would do it.
She did it, therefore, politely enough but unmistakably; and as it was a fine morning, she thought that she would like to step up to the village and post it. She did not want to relent; and once the letter was in the post-box, the thing would be done.
It was, indeed, a delicious morning. As she pa.s.sed out through the iron gate the trees overhead, still with a few brown belated leaves, soared up in filigree of exquisite workmanship into a sky of clear November blue, as fresh as a hedge-sparrow"s egg. The genial sound of c.o.c.k-crowing rose, silver and exultant, from the farm beyond the road, and the tiny street of the hamlet looked as clean as a Dutch picture.
She noticed on the right, just before she turned up to the village on the left, the grocer"s shop, with the name "Nugent" in capitals as bright and flamboyant as on the depot of a merchant king. Mr. Nugent could be faintly descried within, in white shirt-sleeves and an ap.r.o.n, busied at a pile of cheeses. Overhead, three pairs of lace curtains, each decked with a blue bow, denoted the bedrooms. One of them must have been Amy"s. She wondered which....
All up the road to the village, some half-mile in length, she pondered Amy. She had never seen her, to her knowledge; but she had a tolerably accurate mental picture of her from Mrs. Baxter"s account.... Ah! how could Laurie? How could he...? Laurie, of all people! It was just one more example....
After dropping her letter into the box at the corner, she hesitated for an instant. Then, with an odd look on her face, she turned sharply aside to where the church tower p.r.i.c.ked above the leafless trees.
It was a typical little country church, with that odor of the respectable and rather stuffy sanct.i.ty peculiar to the cla.s.s; she had wrinkled her nose at it more than once in Laurie"s company. But she pa.s.sed by the door of it now, and, stepping among the wet gra.s.ses, came down the little slope among the headstones to where a very white marble angel clasped an equally white marble cross. She pa.s.sed to the front of this, and looked, frowning a little over the intolerable taste of the thing.
The cross, she perceived, was wreathed with a spray of white marble ivory; the angel was a German female, with a very rounded leg emerging behind a kind of b.u.t.ton; and there, at the foot of the cross, was the inscription, in startling black--
AMY NUGENT
THE DEAR AND ONLY DAUGHTER
OF
AMOS AND MARIA NUGENT
OF STANTONS
DIED SEPTEMBER 21st 1901
RESPECTED BY ALL
_"I SHALL SEE HER BUT NOT NOW."_
Below, as vivid as the inscription, there stood out the maker"s name, and of the town where he lived.
So she lay there, reflected Maggie. It had ended in that. A mound of earth, cracking a little, and sunken. She lay there, her nervous fingers motionless and her stammer silent. And could there be a more eloquent monument of what she was...? Then she remembered herself, and signed herself with the cross, while her lips moved an instant for the repose of the poor girlish soul. Then she stepped up again on to the path to go home.
It was as she came near the church gate that she understood herself, that she perceived why she had come, and was conscious for the first time of her real att.i.tude of soul as she had stood there, reading the inscription, and, in a flash, there followed the knowledge of the inevitable meaning of it all.
In a word it was this.
She had come there, she told herself, to triumph, to gloat. Oh! she spared herself nothing, as she stood there, crimson with shame, to gloat over the grave of a rival. Amy was nothing less than that, and she herself--she, Margaret Marie Deronnais--had given way to jealousy of this grocer"s daughter, because ... because ... she had begun to care, really to care, for the man to whom she had written that letter this morning, and this man had scarcely said one word to her, or given her one glance, beyond such as a brother might give to a sister. There was the naked truth.
Her mind fled back. She understood a hundred things now. She perceived that that sudden anger at breakfast had been personal disappointment--not at all that lofty disinterestedness on behalf of the mother that she had pretended. She understood too, now, the meaning of those long contented meditations as she went up and down the garden walks, alert for plantains, the meaning of the zeal she had shown, only a week ago, on behalf of a certain hazel which the gardener wanted to cut down.
"You had better wait till Mr. Laurence comes home," she had said. "I think he once said he liked the tree to be just there."
She understood now why she had been so intuitive, so condemnatory, so critical of the boy--it was that she was pa.s.sionately interested in him, that it was a pleasure even to abuse him to herself, to call him selfish and self-centered, that all this lofty disapproval was just the sop that her subconsciousness had used to quiet her uneasiness.
Little scenes rose before her--all pa.s.sed almost in a flash of time--as she stood with her hand on the medieval-looking latch of the gate, and she saw herself in them all as a proud, unmaidenly, pharisaical prig, in love with a man who was not in love with her.
She made an effort, unlatched the gate, and moved on, a beautiful, composed figure, with great steady eyes and well-cut profile, a model of dignity and grace, interiorly a raging, self-contemptuous, abject wretch.
It must be remembered that she was convent-bred.
II
By the time that Laurie"s answer came, poor Maggie had arranged her emotions fairly satisfactorily. She came to the conclusion, arrived at after much heart-searching, that after all she was not yet actually in love with Laurie, but was in danger of being so, and that therefore now that she knew the danger, and could guard against it, she need not actually withdraw from her home, and bury herself in a convent or the foreign mission-field.
She arrived at this astonishing conclusion by the following process of thought. It may be presented in the form of a syllogism.
All girls who are in love regard the beloved as a spotless, reproachless hero.
Maggie Deronnais did not regard Laurie Baxter as a spotless, reproachless hero.
_Ergo._ Maggie Deronnais was not in love with Laurie Baxter.
Strange as it may appear to non-Catholic readers, Maggie did not confide her complications to the ear of Father Mahon. She mentioned, no doubt, on the following Sat.u.r.day, that she had given way to thoughts of pride and jealousy, that she had deceived herself with regard to a certain action, done really for selfish motives, into thinking she had done it for altruistic motives, and there she left it. And, no doubt, Father Mahon left it there too, and gave her absolution without hesitation.
Then Laurie"s answer arrived, and had to be dealt with, that is, it had to be treated interiorly with a proper restraint of emotions.
"My dear Maggie," he wrote;
Why all this fury? What have I done? I said to mother that I didn"t know for certain whether I could come or not, as I had a lot to do. I don"t think she can have given you the letter to read, or you wouldn"t have written all that about my being away from home at the one season of the year, etc. Of course I"ll come, if you or anybody feels like that. Does mother feel upset too? Please tell me if she ever feels that, or is in the least unwell, or anything. I"ll come instantly. As it is, shall we say the 20th of December, and I"ll stay at least a week. Will that do?
Yours, L.B.
This was a little overwhelming, and Maggie wrote off a penitent letter, refraining carefully, however, from any expressions that might have anything of the least warmth, but saying that she was very glad he was coming, and that the shooting should be seen to.
She directed the letter; and then sat for an instant looking at Laurie"s--at the neat Oxford-looking hand, the artistic appearance of the paragraphs, and all the rest of it.
She would have liked to keep it--to put it with half a dozen others she had from him; but it seemed better not.