Part 36 (1/2)
”Of course, I shall tell him nothing of this, but I shall probably talk of you. Have you a message for him?”
”I can send him no message to-day.”
They had now reached the college gates. Hammond took Priscilla's hand.
”Good-by,” he said; ”I believe in you and so does Miss Oliphant. If her money was stolen, the thief was certainly not the most upright, the most sincere girl in the college. My advice to you, Miss Peel, is to hold your head up bravely, to confront this charge by that sense of absolute innocence which you possess. In the meanwhile I have not the least doubt that the real thief will be found. Don't make a fuss; don't go about in wild despair-- have faith in G.o.d.” He pressed her hand and turned away.
Priscilla took her usual place that day at the luncheon table. The girls who had witnessed her wild behavior in the morning watched her in perplexity and astonishment. She ate her food with appet.i.te; her face looked serene-- all the pa.s.sion and agony had left it.
Rosalind Merton ventured on a sly allusion to the scene of the morning. Priscilla did not make the smallest comment. Her face remained pale, her eyes untroubled. There was a new dignity about her.
”What's up now?” said Rosalind to her friend, Miss Day. ”Is the little Puritan going to defy us all?”
”Oh, don't worry any more about her,” said Annie, who, for some reason, was in a particularly bad humor. ”I only wish, for my part, Miss Peel had never come to St. Benet's; I don't like anything about her, Her heroics are as unpleasant to me as her stoicisms. But I may as well say frankly, Rosalind, before I drop this detestable subject, that I am quite sure she never stole that five-pound note: she was as little likely to do it as you, so there!”
There came a knock at the door. Rosalind flew to open it. By so doing she hoped that Miss Day would not notice the sudden color which filled her cheeks.
CHAPTER XXVII
BEAUTIFUL ANNABEL LEE
CIRc.u.mSTANCES seem to combine to spoil some people. Maggie Oliphant was one of the victims of fortune, which, while appearing to favor her, gave her in reality the worst training which was possible for a nature such as hers. She was impulsive, generous, affectionate, but she was also perverse, and, so to speak, uncertain. She was a creature of moods and she was almost absolutely without self-control; and yet nature had been kind to Maggie, giving her great beauty of form and face and a character which a right training would have rendered n.o.ble.
Up to the present, however, this training had scarcely come to Miss Oliphant. She was almost without relations and she was possessed of more money than she knew what to do with. She had great abilities and loved learning for the sake of learning, but till she came to St.
Benet's, her education had been as desultory as her life. She had never been to school; her governess only taught her what she chose to learn. As a child she was very fickle in this respect, working hard from morning till night one day but idling the whole of the next. When she was fifteen her guardian took her to Rome. The next two years were spent in traveling, and Maggie, who knew nothing properly, picked up that kind of superficial miscellaneous knowledge which made her conversation brilliant and added to her many charms.
”You shall be brought out early,” her guardian had said to her. ”You are not educated in the stereotyped fas.h.i.+on, but you know enough.
After you are seventeen I will get you a suitable chaperon and you shall live in London.”
This scheme, however, was not carried out. For, shortly after her seventeenth birthday, Maggie Oliphant met a girl whose beauty and brilliance were equal to her own, whose nature was stronger and who had been carefully trained in heart and mind while Maggie had been neglected. Miss Lee was going through a course of training at St.
Benet's College for Women at Kingsdene. She was an uncommon girl in every sense of the word. The expression of her lovely face was as piquant as its features were beautiful; her eyes were dark as night; they also possessed the depth of the tenderest, sweetest summer night, subjugating all those who came in contact with her. Annabel Lee won Maggie's warmest affections at once; she determined to join her friend at St. Benet's. She spoke with ineffable scorn of her London season and resolved, with that enthusiasm which was the strongest part of her nature, to become a student in reality. Under Annabel's guidance she took up the course of study which was necessary to enable her to pa.s.s her entrance examination. She acquitted herself well, for her abilities were of the highest order, and entered the college with eclat. Miss Lee was a student in Heath Hall, and Maggie thought herself supremely happy when she was given a room next to her friend.
Those were brilliant days at the hall. Some girls resided there at this time whose names were destined to be known in the world by and by. The workers were earnest; the tone which pervaded the life at Heath Hall was distinctly high. Shallow girls there must always be where any number are to be found together, but, during Maggie Oliphant's first year, these girls had little chance of coming to the front. Maggie, who was as easily influenced as a wave is tossed by the wind, rose quickly to the heights with her companions. Her splendid intellect developed each day. She was merry with the merry, glad with the glad, studious with the studious. She was also generous, kind and unselfish in company with those girls who observed the precepts of the higher life. Next to Miss Lee, Maggie was one of the most popular girls in the college. Annabel Lee had the kindest of hearts, as well as the most fascinating of ways. She was an extraordinary girl; there was a great deal of the exotic about her; in many ways she was old for her years. No one ever thought or spoke of her as a prig, but all her influence was brought to bear in the right direction. The girl who could do or think meanly avoided the expression of Annabel's beautiful eyes. It was impossible for her to think badly of her fellow-creatures, but meanness and sin made her sorrowful. There was not a girl in Heath Hall who would willingly give Annabel Lee sorrow.
In the days that followed people knew that she was one of those rare and brilliant creatures who, like a lovely but too ethereal flower, must quickly bloom into perfection and then pa.s.s away. Annabel was destined to a short life, and after her death the high tone of Heath Hall deteriorated considerably.
This girl was a born leader. When she died no other girl in the college could take her place, and for many a long day those who had loved her were conscious of a sense which meant a loss of heads.h.i.+p. In short, they were without their leader.
If Annabel in her gaiety and brightness could influence girls who were scarcely more than acquaintances, the effect of her strong personality on Maggie was supreme. Maggie often said that she never knew what love meant until she met Annabel. The two girls were inseparable; their love for each other was compared to that of Jonathan and David of Bible story and of Orestes and Pylades of Greek legend. The society of each gave the other the warmest pleasure.
Annabel and Maggie were both so beautiful in appearance, so far above the average girl in their pose, their walk, their manner that people noticed these friends wherever they went. A young and rising artist, who saw them once at St. Hilda's, begged permission to make a picture of the pair. It was done during the summer recess before Annabel died and made a sensation in the next year's Academy. Many of the visitors who went there stopped and looked at the two faces, both in the perfection of their youthful bloom and beauty. Few guessed that one even now had gone to the Home best fitted for so ardent and high a spirit.
Annabel Lee died a year before Priscilla came to the college. Whatever Maggie inwardly felt, she had got over her first grief; her smile was again as brilliant as when Annabel Lee was by her side, her laugh was as merry; but the very few who could look a little way into Maggie's perverse and pa.s.sionate heart knew well that something had died in her which could never live again, that her laugh was often hollow and her brilliant smile had only a foundation in bitterness.
Maggie did not only grieve for her friend when she mourned for Annabel. She had loved her most deeply, and love alone would have caused her agony in such a loss; but Maggie's keenest and most terrible feelings were caused by an unavailing regret.
This regret was connected with Geoffrey Hammond.
He had known Annabel from her childhood. He was an old friend of some of her friends, and during those last, long summer holidays, which the two girls spent together under the roof of Maggie's guardian, Hammond, who was staying with relations not far away, came to see them almost daily. He was the kind of man who could win both respect and admiration; he was grave in his nature and his aspirations, aims and ambitions were high. In their conversations during this lovely summer weather these young people dreamt happy dreams together and planned a future which meant good to all mankind. Maggie, to all appearance, was heart and soul with Annabel and Geoffrey in what they thought and said.