Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/42

 THE STORY OF MAGGIE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "SUSY L'S DIARY."

CONCLUDED FROM VOLUME LV, PAGE 439.

CHAPTER XI.

THE artist had finished his work, and gone to Boston to get that and other things ready for the exhibition. Webster had breathed his last, and been "buried with the mourning of a mighty nation."

The melancholy days of autumn were fully come. The ground was already strewn with the brilliantly-dyed leaves the winds had torn, the worms had eaten ; and which, on this account, were the first to fall. There were long, comfortless storms, (comfortless, that is, to the heavy-laden,) when, all the nights long, the wind was out, sighing, moaning; and Maggie, awake on her pillow, her eyes wide open upon the darkness, lay still as death, and heard every sound. She wept a great deal, tear after tear, sometimes a great rain of tears, going drop, drop, drop, on her pillow; but she made her weeping soft as possible, that she might not waken Anna. And, in all those hours, through all those weeks, she did not once wake her, or know her to be awake, so sound was her innocent, safe slumber.

By day she governed herself as well as she was able; tried to be cheerful; tried to laugh, and not look so large-eyed and haggard. She really believed, she said to herself before her mirror, that she did look haggard. Oh, dear! oh, dear! And then again her heart took up the lamentation of OEnone: "Oh! mother Ida, many-fountained Ida, Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. Oh! happy Heaven, how canst thou see my face? Oh! happy earth, how canst thou bear my weight? Oh, death, death, death ! thou ever-fleeting cloud, There are enough unhappy on this earth; Pass by the happy souls that love to live; I pray thee pass before my light of life, And shadow all my soul, that I may die."

It happened, I hardly know how, that Major Waters drank much worse that fall than he had ever done before; and I think that, in his mind, Maggie's increasing sadness, and altered looks, were attributed to her uneasiness and disapprobation on this account. He, therefore, became every day more rigid and sarcastic toward her. Whatever dissatisfaction Mrs. Waters or Anna might show, met only sullen indifference, or, at most, the bang of a chair, or door; while, if he only saw Maggie paler, graver than usual, his irrascibility knew no bounds of decency, but broke out with, "Don't you think you're a handsome, pleasant-looking girl, Miss Meg? That is what they all call you, I believe; Webster, and all; that popinjay of a painter, and all; handsome-our handsome daughter.”

And then it was certainly horrible for Maggie to bear, when, caught by recollections of poor Alice and her mother in " Dombey and Son," he went on, chuckling to see with what misery it filled her, " Handsome, she's my handsome gal; she's our handsome gal, mother-our han'some gal," taking up his hat to go out.

Did she not wish the floor, the earth- oh! if the earth, kind mother earth, would open her ever-friendly bosom to hide her away from men.

At other times, she went away to attic or garden, somewhere where her mother and Anna were not likely to come, and there gave herself up to unrestrained sobbing. When the fit passed a little, she felt that, perhaps, she would die if she suffered a little more; it seemed to her that she would. At any rate, the strength of her youth was gone; the summer of her life, the joy and gladness, were ended. Moaning, she said that if only her father would be kind to her, it would give her a little strength, courage. Whatever else he might be, even if he were ten, a hundred times further gone in his habits of intemperance, she would be glad to be taken to his arms and comforted, supported-for she had never, never loved him as she did then. The love she, as a child, felt for him was as a drop to the full flood. And then to have him so hard, so unkind toward her; and again the tears and sobs came. But she had no strength, and they soon passed; and she sat like one stunned, looking out into the trees shining with wet, swinging and tossing in the wind.

By-and-by, she began to say to her mother and Anna that she could not stay at home, her father was so harsh toward her. She would die, she told them. But she thought that if she went to Manchester, where great-aunt Hester was in her house alone, now John was gone, she would feel better ; and, perhaps, he would miss her, when she was gone, and understand how cruel he had been to her. She forbade their saying anything to him about these reasons, as, in the state he was then, it would only irritate him