Meggie

“ Meggie did as she was bid, and Archie slammed the door after her, and bolted it, laughing uproariously. You may be sure the poor little girl soon found how cruelly she had been hoaxed, and ran back again. She knocked at the door, crying, "O Cousin Archie, do let me in! The snow isn't nice at all; it's so cold it freezes my feet. ”

“ Heavy autumn sunshine lay in translucent planes across the kneeling people. Alayne had come to love this little church, its atmosphere of simplicity, of placid acceptance of all she questioned. She kept her eyes on the prayer-book which Eden and she shared. Grandmother, in a husky whisper, directly behind them, was asking Meggie for a peppermint. ”

“ His mother is sure that her son is dead; her daughter tries in vain to persuade her that all is well; Meggie takes her lover’s body from the river and lays it on the grass; she will sleep with him in the same grave at Gamrie.
In A, B, the drowned body is found in the cleft of a rock, the clifting or clintin of a craig; in C 4 neath a buss of brume, that stanza belonging, as most of the copy does, to the preceding ballad; cf. J 14, K 11 of No 214. The bride ties three links of her hair, which is three quarters long, round Willie’s waist, and draws him out of the water, B 2, C 5 ”

“ A few nights after, as the story goes, a Cromarty yawl foundered in the bay of Udoll, and all on board perished.
Meggie was always a rigid Presbyterian, and jealous of innovations in the Church; and, as she advanced in years, she became more rigid and more jealous. She is said to have regarded with no great reverence the young divines that filled up in the parishes around her the places of her departed contemporaries; and who too often substituted, as she alleged, the [Pg 385] learning which they had acquired at college for a knowledge of the human heart and of the Bible. ”

“ If you have forgotten her, you surely remember the two girls in flats, one of whom seemed so much distressed at her grandmother's remarks. She, the distressed one, was Maggie; the other was Theo; and the old lady was Madam Conway, who, luckily for me, chances at this time to be in England, buying up goods, I presume. Maggie says that this trip to Worcester, together with a camp-meeting held in the Hillsdale woods last year, is the extent of her travels, and one would think so to see her. A perfect child of nature, full of fun, beautiful as a Hebe, and possessing the kindest heart in the world. ”

“ Maggie gave a smothered groan.
“It’s the child,” said Mrs. Howland in a whisper. “She is a bit upset; but when she knows you, James, she’ll love you as much as I do.”
“Hope so,” said Mr. Martin. “I’m a duckle, Little-sing; ain’t I, Victoria?” Here he chuckled the good lady under the chin. “Ah, and so this is Maggie?—How do, my dear? How do, Popsy-wopsy?”
“How do you do?” said Maggie.
“Come, come,” said Mr. Martin. “No flights and vapors, no fine airs, no affected, mincing ways. A little girl should love her new parent. A little girl should kiss her new parent.” ”

“ Maggie had liked, in London and in the world at large, so many more people than she had thought it right to fear, right even to so much as judge, that it positively quickened her fever to have to recognise in this case such a lapse of all the sequences. It was only that a charming clever woman wondered about her—that is wondered about her as Amerigo's wife, and wondered moreover with the intention of kindness and the spontaneity almost of surprise. ”

“ In this last Madam Conway seated herself, while Maggie reclined upon a lounge, wondering at the difference in the various articles of furniture, some of which were quite expensive, while others were of the most common kind.
"Who can they be? She looks like someone I have seen," said Maggie as Betsy Jane left the room. "I mean to ask their names;" but this her grandmother would not suffer. "It was too much like familiarity," she said, "and she did not believe in putting one's self on a level with such people." ”

“ And Maggie, listening to the voices which speak to her so oft in the autumn wind, the running brook, the opening flower, and the falling leaf, has learned a lesson different far from those taught her daily by the prim, stiff governess, who, imported from England six years ago, has drilled both Theo and Maggie in all the prescribed rules of high life as practiced in the Old World. She has taught them how to sit and how to stand, how to eat and how to drink, as becomes young ladies of Conway blood and birth. ”

“ Meg! tired of being Meg! She wasn't always that. It was another name, a pretty name she thought, with a childish smile,—Maggie. They always call her that. She used to play about among the clover-blossoms and buttercups then; the pure little children used to kiss her; nobody hooted after her in the street, or drove her out of church, or left her all alone out in the snow,—Maggie!
Perhaps, too, some vague thought came to her of the mournful, unconscious prophecy of the name, as the touch of the sacred water upon her baby-brow had sealed it,—Magdalene. ”

“ Maggie turned away, seated herself by her writing bureau and tried to lose both the past and the present in her beloved Greek.
“She will do it, too,” whispered Nancy as she left the room. “No one ever was made quite like Maggie. She can feel tortures and yet the next moment she can be in ecstasy. She is so tantalizing that at times you are almost brought to believe her own stories about herself. You are almost sure that she has got the black self as well as the white self. But through it all, yes, through it all, you love her. Dear Maggie! Whatever happens, I must always— always love her.” ”

“ Yes, Maggie, your father’s God is our God, and he will never forsake his people. I will wipe away these tears, and put faith in him for the future.” And the grandmother dried her eyes, and rising from her low seat, said cheerfully, “Maggie, dear, go to the gate, and watch for your brother Jack. When you see him coming across the field, let me know, and I will dish up the supper, so as to have it ready.” ”

“ Maggie is like me, reserved as to her deepest feelings: and it may be that you have scarcely read as yet her true nature. She is capable of giving such devoted love. Dear Constance, have you won it yet? Forgive me for asking the question. Forgive a mother's anxieties. I can scarcely judge from Maggie's letters, but I have had doubts, and your letter has awakened real fear. Your mention of her is so slight, compared with all that you say of my other dear girls. ”

“ Never in her life had Theo felt very deeply upon any subject, and now, though she seemed bewildered at what she heard, she manifested no particular emotion, until her grandmother, wringing her hands, exclaimed, "You have no sister now, my child, and I no Margaret!" Then, indeed, her tears flowed, and when her husband whispered to her, "We will love poor Maggie all the same," she cried aloud, but not quite as demonstratively as Madam Conway wished; and, in a very unamiable frame of mind, the old lady accused her of being selfish and hard-hearted. ”

“ Regularly each day, when the sun nears the western horizon, Maggie steals away to the cottage, and the lonely woman, waiting for her on the rude bench by the door, can tell her bounding footstep from all others which pass that way. She does not say much now herself; but the sound of Maggie's voice, talking to her in the gathering twilight, is the sweetest she has ever heard; and so she sits and listens, while her hands work nervously together, and her whole body trembles with a longing, intense desire to clasp the young girl to her bosom and claim her as her own. ”

“ Yet when the man had shown her in, had advanced to the tea-table to light the lamp under the kettle and had then busied himself all deliberately with the fire, she made it easy for her host to drop straight from any height of tension and to meet her provisionally on the question of Maggie. While the butler remained it was Maggie that she had come to see and Maggie that—in spite of this attendant's high blankness on the subject of all possibilities on that lady's part—she would cheerfully, by the fire, wait for. ”

“ But Meg put her hand into his.
"It's the heart, that is the thing, Jem," she whispered, "and that's above fine words and ways."
"If you can be satisfied with that, Meg, we shall be very happy!" he answered, clasping her hand tightly; "for my whole heart is yours, which has never loved another."
"And I'm not afraid," Meg went on earnestly, "since you told me all that happened two years ago. Any one who has felt like that is safe to trust." ”

“ Maggie had liked her to understand so far as this was possible, but hadn't been slow to see afterwards how the possibility was limited, when one came to think, by mysteries she was not to sound. This inability in her was indeed not remarkable, inasmuch as the Princess herself, as we have seen, was only now in a position to boast of touching bottom. Maggie inwardly lived in a consciousness that she could but partly open even to so good a friend and her own visitation of the fuller expanse of which was for that matter still going on. ”

“ This meaning was that she had decided, that she had been infinitely conscious of Maggie's presence before, that she knew she should at last find her alone, and that she wanted her, for some reason, enough to have presumably called on Bob Assingham for aid. He had taken her chair and let her go, and the arrangement was for Maggie a signal proof of her earnestness; of the energy in fact, that, though superficially commonplace in a situation in which people weren't supposed to be watching each other, was what affected our young woman on the spot as a breaking of bars. ”

“ All the old tranquil life in the midst of which she had moved, knowing all the time that she was its center, that she, the little princess, was the beloved object for whom most things were done, for whom treats were prepared and delights got ready—all this old life had vanished, and Maggie was nothing more than little Maggie Ascot, an ignorant child, a dunce who could not even reckon figures or read a word of the queen's English, or have any pennies in her purse. ”

“ All the girls were present, and each and all were in the best of good-humor. Maggie was radiant. Why not? She had performed a difficult task discreetly, and she had five lovely golden sovereigns in her drawer upstairs. She could put the required money into the bag for the school-treat, and she would have plenty over to buy chocolates and little things that she might require for herself. She did not in the least miss that one small brooch which her father had left her; but she thought with a feeling of intense satisfaction of her treasures. She need no longer be a penniless girl. ”

“ How did he move and walk, how above all did he, or how would he, look—he who with his so nobly handsome face could look such wonderful things—in case of being left alone with some of the subjects of his wonder? There were subjects for wonder among these very neighbours; only Maggie herself had her own odd way—which didn't moreover the least irritate him—of really liking them in proportion as they could strike her as strange. ”

“ Extraordinary, beyond question, was one branch of his characteristic mute wonderment—it characterised above all, with its subject before it, his modesty: the strange dim doubt, waking up for him at the end of the years, of whether Maggie’s mother had, after all, been capable of the maximum. The maximum of tenderness he meant—as the terms existed for him; the maximum of immersion in the fact of being married. Maggie herself was capable ”

“ Maggie responsively mused. “Yes,” she said the next moment, “that’s why Amerigo stays.”
“Let alone it’s why Charlotte goes.” that Mrs. Assingham, and emboldened, smiled “So he knows—?”
But Maggie hung back. “Amerigo—?” After which, however, she blushed—to her companion’s recognition.
“Your father. He knows what YOU know? I mean,” Fanny faltered—“well, how much does he know?” Maggie’s silence and Maggie’s eyes had in fact arrested the push of the question—which, for a decent consistency, she couldn’t yet quite abandon. “What I should rather say is does he know how much?” ”

“ We usedn’t to think much about Maggie when Annabel was by; but now, what with Maggie and her mystery, and Maggie and her love affair, and Maggie and her handsome face, and her wealth, and her expectations, why she bids fair to be more popular even than the two were when they were together. Yes, little Rose, I don’t want her to be popular any more than you do. I think it’s a very unhealthy sign of any place to have all the girls sighing and groaning about one or two— dying to possess their autographs, and kissing their photographs, and framing them, and putting them up in their rooms. ”

“ She was ready to lie again if her companion would but give her the opening. Then she should know she had done all. Charlotte looked at her hard, as if to compare her face with her note of resentment; and Maggie, feeling this, met it with the signs of an impression that might pass for the impression of defeat. “I want really to possess him,” said Mrs. Verver. “I happen also to feel that he’s worth it.”
Maggie rose as if to receive her. “Oh—worth it!” she wonderfully threw off. ”

“ Peeps forth, with little Maggie
Has any fault to find. [234]
When winsome little Maggie,
With basket on her arm,
In which her father’s luncheon
Is wrapped so nice and warm—
When she enters the long workshop
And pauses at his side,
Quick down he lays his hammer
And turns in love and pride,
To look into her limpid eyes,
And stroke her sunny hair,
And jest and frolic with her—
Forgetting toil and care—
For the music of her laughter
And the mirth of her replies,
The while there’s not a happier man,
Or richer, ’neath the skies. ”