After a few turns backward and forward in the room, she abruptly opened her writing-case and began a letter to her sister. The letter grew and grew under her hands; she filled sheet after sheet of note-paper. Her heart was full of her subject: it was her own story addressed to Norah. She shed no tears; she was composed to a quiet sadness. Her pen ran smoothly on. After writing for more than two hours, she left off while the letter was still unfinished. There was no signature attached to it--there was a blank space reserved, to be filled up at some other time. After putting away the case, with the sheets of writing secured inside it, she walked to the window for air, and stood there looking out.
The moon was waning over the sea. The breeze of the earlier hours had died out. On earth and ocean, the spirit of the Night brooded in a deep and awful calm.
Her head drooped low on her bosom, and all the view waned before her eyes with the waning moon. She saw no sea, no sky. Death, the Tempter, was busy at her heart. Death, the Tempter, pointed homeward, to the grave of her dead parents in Combe-Raven churchyard.
"Nineteen last birthday," she thought. "Only nineteen!" She moved away from the window, hesitated, and then looked out again at the view. "The beautiful night!" she said, gratefully. "Oh, the beautiful night!"She left the window and lay down on her bed. Sleep, that had come treacherously before, came mercifully now; came deep and dreamless, the image of her last waking thought--the image of Death.
Early the next morning Mrs. Wragge went into Magdalen's room, and found that she had risen betimes. She was sitting before the glass, drawing the comb slowly through and through her hair--thoughtful and quiet.
"How do you feel this morning, my dear?" asked Mrs. Wragge. "Quite well again?""Yes."
After replying in the affirmative, she stopped, considered for a moment, and suddenly contradicted herself.
"No," she said, "not quite well. I am suffering a little from toothache."As she altered her first answer in those words she gave a twist to her hair with the comb, so that it fell forward and hid her face.
At breakfast she was very silent, and she took nothing but a cup of tea.
"Let me go to the chemist's and get something," said Mrs. Wragge.
"No, thank you."
"Do let me!"
"No!"
She refused for the second time, sharply and angrily. As usual, Mrs. Wragge submitted, and let her have her own way. When breakfast was over, she rose, without a word of explanation, and went out. Mrs. Wragge watched her from the window and saw that she took the direction of the chemist's shop.
On reaching the chemist's door she stopped--paused before entering the shop, and looked in at the window--hesitated, and walked away a little--hesitated again, and took the first turning which led back to the beach.
Without looking about her, without caring what place she chose, she seated herself on the shingle. The only persons who were near to her, in the position she now occupied, were a nursemaid and two little boys. The youngest of the two had a tiny toy-ship in his hand. After looking at Magdalen for a little while with the quaintest gravity and attention, the boy suddenly approached her, and opened the way to an acquaintance by putting his toy composedly on her lap.
"Look at my ship," said the child, crossing his hands on Magdalen's knee.
She was not usually patient with children. In happier days she would not have met the boy's advance toward her as she met it now. The hard despair in her eyes left them suddenly; her fast-closed lips parted and trembled. She put the ship back into the child's hands and lifted him on her lap.
"Will you give me a kiss?" she said, faintly. The boy looked at his ship as if he would rather have kissed the ship.
She repeated the question--repeated it almost humbly. The child put his hand up to her neck and kissed her.
"If I was your sister, would you love me?" All the misery of her friendless position, all the wasted tenderness of her heart, poured from her in those words.
"Would you love me?" she repeated, hiding her face on the bosom of the child's frock.
"Yes," said the boy. "Look at my ship."
She looked at the ship through her gathering tears.
"What do you call it?" she asked, trying hard to find her way even to the interest of a child.
"I call it Uncle Kirke's ship," said the boy. "Uncle Kirke has gone away."The name recalled nothing to her memory. No remembrances but old remembrances lived in her now. "Gone?" she repeated absently, thinking what she should say to her little friend next.
"Yes," said the boy. "Gone to China."
Even from the lips of a child that word struck her to the heart. She put Kirke's little nephew off her lap, and instantly left the beach.
As she turned back to the house, the struggle of the past night renewed itself in her mind. But the sense of relief which the child had brought to her, the reviving tenderness which she had felt while he sat on her knee, influenced her still. She was conscious of a dawning hope, opening freshly on her thoughts, as the boy's innocent eyes had opened on her face when he came to her on the beach. Was it too late to turn back? Once more she asked herself that question, and now, for the first time, she asked it in doubt.
She ran up to her own room with a lurking distrust in her changed self which warned her to act, and not to think. Without waiting to remove her shawl or to take off her hat, she opened her writing-case and addressed these lines to Captain Wragge as fast as her pen could trace them: