第23章

THE CHAPEL

Maggie woke next morning to a strange silence.Many were the silent mornings that had greeted her at St.Dreots, but this was silence with a difference; it was the silence, she was instantly aware, of some one whose very soul was noise and tumult.She listened, and the sudden chirping of some sparrows beyond her window only accentuated the sense of expectation.She had never, in all her days, been so conscious of Sunday.

She was almost afraid to move lest she should break the spell.

She lay in bed and thought of the preceding evening.Her fainting fit seemed to her now more than ever unfortunate; it had placed her at a disadvantage with them all.She could imagine the stout young man returning to his home and saying: "Their niece has arrived.

Seems a weak little thing.Fainted right off there in the drawing-room." Or her aunts saying anxiously to one another: "Well, Ididn't know she was as delicate as that.I hope she won't be always ill,"...and she wasn't delicate--no one stronger.She had never fainted before.The silliness of it!

The next thing that disturbed her was the comfort and arrangement of everything.Certainly the drawing-room had not been very orderly, full of old things badly placed, but this bedroom was clean and tidy, and the supper last night, so neat on its tray with everything that she could want! She could feel the order and discipline of the whole house.And she had never, in all her life, been either orderly or disciplined.She had never been brought up to be so.How could you be orderly when there were holes in the bedroom ceiling and the kitchen floor, holes that your father would never trouble to have mended?

Her aunts would wish her to help in the house and she would forget things.There passed before her, in that Sunday quiet, a terrible procession of the things that she would forget.She knew that she would not be patient under correction, especially under the correction of her Aunt Anne.Already she felt in her a rebellion at her aunt's aloofness and passivity.After all, why should she treat every one as though she were God? Maggie felt that there was in her aunt's attitude something sentimental and affected.She hated sentiment and affectation in any one.She was afraid, too, that Anne bullied Aunt Elizabeth.Maggie was sorry for Aunt Elizabeth but, with all the arrogance of the young, a little despised her.Why did she tremble and start like that? She should stand up for herself and not mind what her sister said to her.Finally, there was something about the house for which Maggie could not quite account, some uneasiness or expectation, as though one knew that there was some one behind the door and was therefore afraid to open it.It may have been simply London that was behind it.Maggie was ready to attribute anything to the influence of that tremendous power, but her own final impression was that the people in this house had for too long a time been brooding over something."It would do my aunts a lot of good to move somewhere else," she said to herself."As Aunt Anne loves the country so much I can't think why she doesn't live there."There were many things that she was to learn before the end of the day.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a little whirr and clatter, which, thin and distant though it was, penetrated into her room.The whirr was followed by the voice, clear, self-confident and cheerful, of a cuckoo.Maggie was in an instant out of bed, into the passage and standing, in her nightdress, before a high, old cuckoo-clock that stood at the top of the stairs.The wooden bird, looking down at her in friendly fashion, "cuckooed" eight times, flapped his wings at her and disappeared.It is a sufficient witness to Maggie's youth and inexperience that she was enraptured by this event.It was not only that she had never seen a cuckoo-clock before; she had, for that matter, never heard of the existence of such a thing.It gave her greater happiness than any bare mechanical discovery could have done.The bird seemed to have come to her, in the friendliest way, to remove some of the chilly passivity of the house.Her greatest fear since her arrival had been that this was a house "in which nothing was ever going to happen," and that "she would never get out of it." "It will be just as it has been all my life, seeing nothing, doing nothing--only instead of father it will be the aunts." The bird seemed to promise her adventure and excitement.To most people it would have been only a further sign of an old-fashioned household far behind the times.To Maggie it was thrilling and encouraging.He would remind her every hour of the day of the possibility of fun in a world that was full of surprises.She heard suddenly a step behind her and a dry voice saying:

"Your hot water, Miss Maggie."

She turned round, blushing at being caught staring up at a cuckoo-clock like a baby in her nightdress, to face the wrinkled old woman who the night before had brought her, with a grudging countenance, her supper.Maggie had thought then that this old Martha did not like her and resented the extra work that her stay in the house involved; she was now more than ever sure of that dislike.

"I thought I was to be called at half-past seven.""Eight on Sundays," said the old woman."I hope you're better this morning, miss."Maggie felt this to be deeply ironical and flushed.

"I'm quite well, thank you," she said stiffly."What time is breakfast on Sundays?""The prayer-bell rings at a quarter to nine, miss."They exchanged no more conversation.