"But it's pouring with rain! You're soaking! You must change at once! Did you go out to find something?"Maggie made no answer.She stood there, her face sulky and closed, the water dripping from her.Afterwards, as she changed her clothes, she reflected that there had been many occasions during these three days when her aunt would have felt irritation with her had she known her longer.She had always realised that she was careless, that when she should be thinking of one thing she thought of another, that her housekeeping and management of shops and servants had been irregular and undisciplined, but until now she had not sharply surveyed her weaknesses.Since the coming of her aunt she had been involved in a perfect network of little blunders; she had gone out of the room without shutting the door, had started into the village on an errand, and then, when she was there, had forgotten what it was;there had been holes in her stockings and rents in her blouses.
After Ellen's departure she had endeavoured to help in the kitchen, but had made so many mistakes that Aunt Anne and the kitchen-maid had been compelled to banish her.She now wondered how during so many years she had run the house at all, but then her father had cared about nothing so that money was not wasted.She knew that Aunt Anne excused her mistakes just now because of the shock of her father's death and the events that followed it, but Maggie knew also that these faults were deep in her character.She could explain it quite simply to herself by saying that behind the things that she saw there was always something that she did not see, something of the greatest importance and just beyond her vision; in her efforts to catch this farther thing she forgot what was immediately in front of her.It had always been so.Since a tiny child she had always supposed that the shapes and forms with which she was presented were only masks to hide the real thing.Such a view might lend interest to life, but it certainly made one careless; and although Uncle Mathew might understand it and put it down to the Cardinal imagination, she instinctively knew that Aunt Anne, unless Maggie definitely attributed it to religion, would be dismayed and even, if it persisted, angered.Maggie had not, after all, the excuse and defence of being a dreamy child.With her square body and plain face, her clear, unspeculative eyes, her stolid movements, she could have no claim to dreams.With a sudden desolate pang Maggie suspected that Uncle Mathew was the only person who would ever understand her.Well, then, she must train herself.
She would close doors, turn out lights, put things back where she found them, mend her clothes, keep accounts.Indeed a new life was beginning for her.She felt, with a sudden return to the days before her walk on the moor, that if only her aunts would love her she would improve much more rapidly.And then with her new independence she assured herself that if they did not love her she most certainly would not love them...
That night she sat opposite her aunt beside the fire.The house lay dead and empty behind them.Aunt Anne was so neat in her thin black silk, her black shining hair, her pale pointed face, a little round white locket rising and falling ever so slowly with the lift of her breast.There were white frills to her sleeves, and she read a slim book bound in purple leather.Her body never moved; only once and again her thin, delicate hand ever so gently lifted, turned a page, then settled down on to her lap once more.She never raised her eyes.
The fire was heavy and sullen; the wind howled; that old familiar beating of the twigs upon the pane seemed to reiterate to Maggie that this was her last evening.She pretended to read.She had found a heavy gilt volume of Paradise Lost with Dore's pictures.She read these words:
Beyond this flood a frozen Continent Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail; which on firm land Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice, A gulf profound as that Serbonian bay Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk;the parching Air Burns froze, and cold performs the effect of Fire.
Further again, words caught her eye.
Thus roving on In confused march forlorn, th' adventurous Bands With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found No rest; through many a dark and drearie Vaile They passed, and many a Region dolorous.O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alpe, Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens and shades of death, A Universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breaks Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than Fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire.
She did not care for reading, most especially she did not care for poetry, but to-night she saw the picture.Up to the very bounds of the house this waste country, filled with beasts of prey, animals with fiery eyes and incredible names, the long stretch of snow and ice, the black water with no stars reflected in it, the wind.
A coal crashed in the fire; she gave a little cry.
"My dear, what is it?" said Aunt Anne.Then, with a little shake of her shoulders, she added: "There's a horrid draught.Perhaps you forgot to close the kitchen-door when you came away, Maggie dear."Maggie flushed.Of course she had forgotten.She left the room, crossed the hall.Yes, there was the door, wide open.She locked it, the place was utterly cold and desolate.She closed the door, stood for a moment in the little hall.
"I don't care what's going to happen!" she cried aloud.So ended her life in that house.
