"There!" said Mabel comfortably; and then, "Well, what do you really think?"
Maggie smiled reflectively.
"That"s exactly what I don"t know myself in the very least. As I said, all this seems to me more like a dream--and a very bad one. I think it"s the ... the nastiest thing," she added vindictively, "that I"ve ever come across; I don"t want to hear one word more about it as long as I live."
"But--"
"Oh, my dear, why can"t we be all just sensible and normal? I love doing just ordinary little things--the garden, and the chickens, and the cat and dog and complaining to the butcher. I cannot imagine what anybody wants with anything else. Yes; I suppose I do, in a sort of way, believe Mr. Cathcart. It seems to me, granted the spiritual world at all--which, naturally, I do grant--far the most intelligent explanation. It seems to me, intellectually, far the most broad-minded explanation; because it really does take in all the facts--if they are facts--and accounts for them reasonably. Whereas the subjective--self business--oh, it"s frightfully clever and ingenious--but it does a.s.sume such a very great deal. It seems to me rather like the people who say that electricity accounts for everything--electricity! And as for the imagination theory--well, that"s what appeals to me now, emotionally--because I happen to be in the chickens and butcher mood; but it doesn"t in the least convince me. Yes; I suppose Mr. Cathcart"s theory is the one I ought to believe, and, in a way, the one I do believe; but that doesn"t in the least prevent me from feeling it extraordinarily unreal and impossible. Anyhow, it doesn"t matter much."
Again she leaned back comfortably, smiling to herself, and there was a long silence.
It was a divinely beautiful August evening. From where they sat little could be seen except the long vista of the path, arched with hazels, whence the cat had now disappeared, ending in three old brick steps, wide and flat, lichened and mossed, set about with flower-pots and leading up to the yew walk. But the whole air was full of summer sound and life and scent, heavy and redolent, streaming in from the old box-lined kitchen-garden on their right beyond the hedge and from the orchard on the left. It was the kind of atmosphere suggesting Nature in her most sensible mood, full-blooded, normal, perfectly fulfilling her own vocation; utterly unmystical, except by very subtle interpretation; unsuggestive, since she was already saying all that could be said, and following out every principle by which she lived to the furthest confine of its contents. It presented the same kind of rounded-off completion and satisfactoriness as that suggested by an entirely sensuous and comfortable person. There were no corners in it, no vistas hinting at anything except at some perfectly normal lawn or set garden, no mystery, no implication of any other theory or glimpse of theory except that which itself proclaimed.
Something of its air seemed now to breathe in Maggie"s expression of contentment, as she smiled softly and happily, clasping her arms behind her head. She looked perfectly charming, thought Mabel; and she laid a hand delicately on her friend"s knee, as if to share in the satisfaction--to verify it by partic.i.p.ation, so to speak.
"It doesn"t seem to have done you much harm," she said.
"No, thank you; I"m extremely well and very content. I"ve looked through the door once, without in the least wishing to; and I don"t in the least want to look again. It"s not a nice view."
"But about--er--religion," said the younger girl rather awkwardly.
"Oh! religion"s all right," said Maggie. "The Church gives me just as much of all that as is good for me; and, for the rest, just tells me to be quiet and not bother--above all, not to peep or pry. Listeners hear no good of themselves: and I suppose that"s true of the other senses too. At any rate, I"m going to do my best to mind nothing except my own business."
"Isn"t that rather unenterprising?"
"Certainly it is; that"s why I like it.... Oh! Mabel, I do want to be so absolutely ordinary all the rest of my life. It"s so extremely rare and original, you know. Didn"t somebody say that there was nothing so uncommon as common sense? Well, that"s what I"m going to be. A genius!
Don"t you understand?--the kind that is an infinite capacity for taking pains, not the other sort."
"What is the other sort?"
"Why, an infinite capacity for doing without them. Like Wagner, you know. Well, I wish to be the Bach sort--the kind of thing that anyone ought to be able to do--only they can"t."
Mabel smiled doubtfully.
"Lady Laura was saying--" she began presently.
Maggie"s face turned suddenly severe.
"I don"t wish to hear one word."
"But she"s given it up," cried the girl. "She"s given it up."
"I"m glad to hear it," said Maggie judicially. "And I hope now that she"ll spend the rest of her days in sackcloth--with a scourge," she added. "Oh, did I tell you about Mrs. Nugent?"
"About the evening Laurie came home? Yes."
"Well, that"s all right. The poor old dear got all sorts of things on her mind, when it leaked out. But I talked to her, and we went up together and put flowers on the grave, and I said I"d have a ma.s.s said for Amy, though I"m sure she doesn"t require one. The poor darling!
But ... but ... (don"t think me brutal, please) _how_ providential her death was! Just think!"
"Mrs. Baxter"s coming home by the 6.10, isn"t she?"
Maggie nodded.
"Yes; but you know you mustn"t say a word to her about all this. In fact she won"t have it. She"s perfectly convinced that Laurie overworked himself--Laurie, overworked!--and that that was just all that was the matter with him. Auntie"s what"s called a sensible woman, you know, and I must say it"s rather restful. It"s what I want to be; but it"s a far-off aspiration, I"m afraid, though I"m nearer it than I was."
"You mean she doesn"t think anything odd happened at all?"
"Just so. Nothing at all odd. All very natural. Oh, by the way, Laurie swears he never put his nose inside her room that night, but I"m absolutely certain he did, and didn"t know it."
"Where is Mr. Lawrence?"
"Auntie made him go abroad."
"And when does he come back?"
There was a perceptible pause.
"Mr. Lawrence comes back on Sat.u.r.day evening," said Maggie deliberately.
_Other books by Robert Hugh Benson_
_The Light Invisible_
_By What Authority?_
_The King"s Achievement_
_The History of Richard Reynall, Solitary_
_The Queen"s Tragedy_
_The Religion of the Plain Man_
_The Sanct.i.ty of the Church_
_The Sentimentalists_
_Lord of the World_
_A Mirror of Shalott, composed of tales told at a symposium_
_Papers of a Pariah_
_The Conventionalists_