Maggie spent the rest of the day, for the most part, alone in her room and thinking of her father.Her bedroom, an attic with a sloping roof, contained all her worldly possessions.In part because she had always been so reserved a child, in part because there had been no one in whom she might confide even had she wished it, she had always placed an intensity of feeling around and about the few things that were hers.Her library was very small, but this did not distress her because she had never cared for reading.Upon the little hanging shelf above her bed (deal wood painted white, with blue cornflowers) were The Heir of Redclyffe, a shabby blue-covered copy, Ministering Children, Madame How and Lady Why, The Imitation of Christ, Robinson Crusoe, Mrs.Beeton's Cookery Book, The Holy Bible, and The Poems of Longfellow.These had been given her upon various Christmasses and birthdays.She did not care for any of them except The Imitation of Christ and Robinson Crusoe.The Bible was spoilt for her by incessant services and Sunday School classes; The Heir of Redclyffe and Ministering Children she found absurdly sentimental and unlike any life that she had ever known; Mrs.Beeton she had never opened, and Longfellow and Kingsley's Natural History she found dull.For Robinson Crusoe she had the intense human sympathy that all lonely people feel for that masterpiece.The Imitation pleased her by what she would have called its common sense.Such a passage, for example: "Oftentimes something lurketh within, or else occurreth from without, which draweth us after it.
Many secretly seek themselves in what they do, and know it not.""They seem also to live in good peace of mind, when things are done according to their will and opinion; but if things happen otherwise than they desire, they are straightway moved and much vexed."And behind this common sense she did seem to be directly in touch with some one whom she might find had she more time and friends to advise her.She was conscious in her lonely hours, that nothing gave her such a feeling of company as did this little battered red book, and she felt that that friendliness might one day advance to some greater intimacy.About these things she was intensely reserved and she spoke of them to no human being.
Even for the books for whose contents she did not care she had a kindly feeling.So often had they looked down upon her when she sat there exasperated, angry at her own tears, rebellious, after some scene with her father.No other place but this room had seen these old agonies of hers.She would be sorry after all to leave it.
There were not many things beside the books.Two bowls of blue Glebeshire pottery, cheap things but precious, a box plastered with coloured shells, an amber bead necklace, a blue leather writing-case, a photograph of her father as a young clergyman with a beard and whiskers, a faded daguerreotype of her mother, last, but by no means least, a small black lacquer musical-box that played two tunes, "Weel may the Keel row" and "John Peel,"--these were her worldly possessions.
She sat there; as the day closed down, the trees were swept into the night, the wind rose in the dark wood, the winter's moon crept pale and cold into the sky, snow began to fall, at first thinly, then in a storm, hiding the moon, flinging the fields and roads into a white shining splendour; the wind died and the stars peeped between the flakes of whirling snow.
She sat without moving, accusing her heart of hardness, of unkindness.She seemed to herself then deserving of every punishment."If I had only gone to him," she thought again and again.She remembered how she had kept apart from him, enclosed herself in a reserve that he should never break.She remembered the times when he had scolded her, coldly, bitterly, and she had stood, her face as a rock, her heart beating but her body without movement, then had turned and gone silently from the room.All her wicked, cold heart that in some strange way cared for love but could not make those movements towards others that would show that it cared.
What was it in her? Would she always, through life, miss the things for which she longed through her coldness and obstinacy?
She took her father's photograph, stared at it, gazed into it, held it in an agony of remorse.She shivered in the cold of her room but did not know it.Her candle, caught in some draught, blew out, and instantly the white world without leapt in upon her and her room was lit with a strange unearthly glow.She saw nothing but her father.
At last she fell asleep in the chair, clutching in her hand the photograph.
Thus her aunt found her, later in the evening.She was touched by the figure, the shabby black frock, the white tired face.She had been honestly disappointed in her niece, disappointed in her plainness, in her apparent want of heart, in her silence and moroseness.Mathew had told her of the girl's outburst to him against her father, and this had seemed to her shocking upon the very day after that father's death.Now when she saw the photograph clenched in Maggie's hand tears came into her eyes.She said, "Maggie! dear Maggie!" and woke her.Maggie, stirring saw her aunt's slender figure and delicate face standing in the snowlight as though she had been truly a saint from heaven.
Maggie's first impulse was to rise up, fling her arms around her aunt's neck and hug her.Had she done that the history of her life might have been changed.Her natural shyness checked her impulse.
She got up, the photograph dropped from her hand, she smiled a little and then said awkwardly, "I've been asleep.Do you want me?
I'll come down."
Her aunt drew her towards her.