Read your note? What note, dear?"
"The note I gave you a month ago--one evening when you were here.""A note! A month ago.My dear! As though I could ever remember what I did a MONTH ago! Why, it's always all I can manage to remember what I did yesterday.Did you give me a note, dear?"Maggie began to be angry."Of course I did.You remember perfectly well.I gave it to you for Martin Warlock.You let him have it, but meanwhile you read it, and not only that but told everybody else about it."Caroline's expression changed.She was suddenly sulky.Her face was like that of a spoilt child.
"Well, Maggie Cardinal, if you call that being a friend! To say that I would ever do such a thing!""You know you did!" said Maggie quietly.
"Read your letters? As though I'd want to! Why should I? As though Ihadn't something more interesting to do! No thank you! Of course you have been getting yourself into a mess.Every one knows that.That's why I came here to-day--to show you that I was a REAL friend and didn't mind WHAT people said about you! When they were all talking about you last night, and saying the most DREADFUL things, Idefended you and said it wasn't really your fault, you couldn't have told what a rotten sort of a man Martin Warlock was--""That's enough," said Maggie."I don't want your defence, thank you.
You're mean and deceitful and untrue.You never have been a friend of mine, and I don't want ever to see you again!"Caroline Smith was horrified."Well, upon my word.Isn't that gratitude? Here am I, the only person in this whole place would take any trouble with you! When the others all said that you were plain and stupid and hadn't anything to say for yourself I stuck to you.Idid all I could, wasting all my time going to the dressmaker with you and trying to make you look like something human, and this is the way you repay me! Well, there's a lesson for me! Many's the time mother's said to me, 'Carry, you'll just ruin yourself with that kind heart of yours, laying yourself out for others when you ought to be seeing after yourself.You've got too big a heart for this world.' Doesn't it just show one? And to end it all with accusing me of reading your letters! If you choose to sit in the park after dark with a man who everybody knows--""Either you're going to leave this room or I am," said Maggie.
"Thank you!" said Caroline, tossing her head."I haven't the slightest desire to stay, I assure you! Only you'll be sorry for this, Maggie Cardinal, you will indeed!"With a swish of the skirts and a violent banging of the door she was gone.
"The only friend I had," thought Maggie.
The next development was an announcement from Aunt Anne that she would like Maggie to accompany her to a meeting at Miss Avies'.Aunt Anne did not explain what kind of a meeting it would be, and Maggie asked no questions.She simply replied that she would go.She had indeed by this time a very considerable curiosity of her own as to what every one thought was going to happen in ten days' time.
Perhaps this meeting would enlighten her.It did.
On arriving at Miss Avies' gaunt and menacing apartment she found herself in the very stronghold of the Inside Saints.It was a strange affair, and Maggie was never to see anything quite like it again.In the first place, Miss Avies' room was not exactly the place in which you would have expected to discover a meeting of this kind.
She lived over a house-agent's in John Street, Adelphi.Her sitting-room was low-ceilinged with little diamond-paned windows.The place was let furnished, and the green and red vases on the mantelpiece, the brass clock and the bright yellow wallpaper were properties of the landlord.To the atmosphere of the place Miss Avies, although she lived there for a number of years, had contributed nothing.
It had all the desolate forlornness of a habitation in which no human being has dwelt for a very long time; there was dust on the mantelpiece, a melancholy sputtering of coal choked with cinders and gasping for breath in the fireplace, stuffy hot clamminess beating about the unopened windows.Along the breadth of the faded brown carpet some fifty cane-bottomed chairs were pressed tightly in rows together, and in front of the window, facing the chairs, was a little wooden table with a chair beside it, on the table a glass of water and a Bible.
When Maggie and her aunts entered the chairs were almost all occupied and they were forced to sit at the end of the last row but one.The meeting had apparently not yet begun, and many heads were turned towards them as they took their places.Maggie fancied that the glances directed at herself were angry and severe, but that was very possibly her imagination.She soon recognised people known to her--Miss Pyncheon, calm and placid; Mrs.Smith, Caroline's mother, very stout, hot, and self-important; Amy Warlock, proud and severe;and Miss Avies herself standing, like a general surveying his forces, behind the table.
The room was draughty and close and had a confused smell of oil-cloth and geraniums, and Maggie knew that soon she would have a headache.She fancied that already the atmosphere was influencing the meeting.From where she sat she could see a succession of side faces, and it was strange what a hungry, appealing look these pale cheeks and staring eyes had.Hungry! Yes, that's what they all were.
She thought, fantastically, for a moment, of poor Mr.Magnus's Treasure Hunters, and she seemed to see the whole of this company in a raft drifting in mid-ocean, not a sail in sight and the last ship's biscuit gone.