Margaret Maliphant

by Alice Vansittart Strettel Carr

I did not say anything. I could not have spoken a word. He stood a moment with his face turned from me, and then he said "Good-day," abruptly, and walked down the road.

Without looking after him I went on my way. I had forgotten where I was going; a great weight hung at my heart. Yet nothing had happened. I had stupidly harped on a matter which, I might have seen, annoyed him; he had been annoyed, and he had been sorry for it. What was there in that? Nothing. No, it was not that anything had happened, it was that nothing had happened; it was that every little thing that occurred day by day showed me more clearly that nothing could happen, that I had no hold, that the ground was slipping away from under my feet.

I walked mechanically forward, I was giddy, the air danced around me, and my heart went beating about in its cage. I kept repeating to myself that I had not said what I had meant to say, that if I had said what I had meant to say all would have been well. I felt instinctively that I had not touched at the root of the matter; but I did not know that I could not have touched at the root of the matter, that I should not have dared to go within miles of it.

And still I went on under the leafy trees, with that unexplained hunger within me, until, as in a dream, I stood upon the broad steps of the Manor gate-way. Was it forgiveness that I wanted of him? He would only have wondered to hear me say that it was needed. What was it that I wanted?

I rang the great bell, which sounded so emptily through the hall. The sound called me back to myself, but even as the words of the message that I had come to deliver formed themselves upon my lips, a sudden resolve formed itself within my heart.

When the door opened, instead of merely giving my message, I asked if the squire was at home. I dare say the man was astonished. It did not occur to me to think whether he was or not; I had not had enough experience of the world to think much of such a matter; and my purpose burned too bright in me for such reflections.

I was shown through the great hall, which Frank Forrester had so cleverly decorated with flags and garlands on the night of the county ball, to the long room beyond that looked out onto the fine lawn through three great deep-embrasured windows that enclosed the landscape in their dark oak frames. I leaned upon one of the faded cushions of the window-seat and looked out to the garden. It was laid out in a large square of lawn, with a broad old-fashioned flower-bed flanking it on either side; but to the belt of trees towards the marsh it was free, and through the trees one had glimpses of the wide, sad land, with the sea in the distance, that we saw from the Grange; to the right of the lawn was the ruin of the thirteenth-century chapel, the tall, slender arch of the chancel, and the graceful little turret of the bell-tower standing out against the elms and sycamores.

How well I remembered that night of the ball, when we had strayed out into the moonlight—the squire and I—and when I had envied Joyce for having a lover! Yes, I had wondered to myself whether I should ever have a lover who would speak to me like that in the moonlight with his heart in his voice.

Joyce's white dress had fluttered in the shade of that dark ruin—cold as the shrouds of the ghosts who might have peopled it. I remembered that now, as though it had been an evil omen. But then nothing had seemed to me cold. I had envied Joyce for having a lover. Did I still envy her her lover?

A step sounded in the hall, and I stood up holding my basket with the jelly in it; my heart was beating a little with the strangeness of the place, for of the squire I was not afraid.