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.