XVI

Edward was coming. Maggie had never been so brisk and cross. How she ordered them about! And she was everywhere⁠—whipping cream for the charlotte russe, shouting to Albert to bring in more firewood, carrying pots of pinks and ivy from the conservatory into the parlour.

“Lily! Don’t put that wet pot on the table⁠—mercy! Now look at that!”

And she would fly for a cloth, with Bundle jumping around her, tumbling over his paws, wanting to play.

“Oh, Bundle, look-kout! Victor, for pity’s-sake put your dog somewhere where he won’t be under foot every second!”

“Oh, Maggie, please don’t be so cross and bossy!”

And then, giving the tumblers an extra polishing, she struck one so that it chimed and rang, faint, faint, a thread of exquisite sound, humming, like a bell deep under the sea.

And she was lost, listening to it, not hearing it, gazing with bright soft eyes through Mamma’s oil painting of ladyfingers and strawberries and a teapot, through the terra-cotta wall behind it, through the falling snow, through the sky. And there seemed to be a bloom on her, a radiance.

There were ferns of frost on the kitchen windows; the pump, to keep it from freezing, was wearing Mamma’s old red cloth opera cape with the cock feather collar, its handle sticking out like a sword. Nothing was quite its ordinary self, magic had touched The Maples.

It was almost time to start for the station when she came in tears to May.

“I can’t go to meet Edward.”

“Why not?”

“I look so hideous!”

“I have seen you look better,” said May candidly. “What have you been doing to your hair?”

“I tried to crimp it.”

“Well, never mind, I guess it’ll come out as you drive up. Take my frill⁠—that collar’s so stiff and horrid, and you can have my muff too, only please don’t get it all wet in the snow, and remember to hold the good side out and the rubbed side against you. Maggie⁠—black makes you look so washed-out⁠—I don’t suppose you’d take a red ribbon⁠—I just happen to have some if you would⁠—and wet it with cologne and rub it on your cheeks?”

“May!”

“Well, I’ve heard of girls doing it,” said May, blushing deeply.

“Only bad women paint their faces,” Maggie told her severely.

What if she had imagined everything? What if he didn’t come? What if there wasn’t any Edward? She was so afraid of that sometimes that it was agony, when he wasn’t there and no one was speaking of him. How to be sure, to be sure it was all real? And when she felt that way she couldn’t say “Edward,” because only suppose their faces had said, “Edward? Who’s that? We don’t know anyone named Edward.”

She would watch for Uncle Willie’s horse and carriage, bringing the mail, bringing a letter from him. From her window she could see the carriage far up the road, looking so different, somehow, from the way it looked when it was only going to church or market; and she would pretend to herself she hadn’t seen it, going on trying to do whatever she was doing, weak in the knees⁠—dizzy⁠—until someone called from downstairs:

“Mag-gie! Let-ter!”

She never got used to his letters. She would cry over them, kiss them⁠—practical Maggie!⁠—carry them crackling under her chemise, wake up in the night to feel them beneath her pillow, or light her candle to make sure that he had really written what she hardly dared believe she remembered. And no matter how often she reread them, the words were a shock of bliss, a flame of ecstasy.

“What’s the news from the Far West?” Mamma would ask. She and Lily nearly burst with curiosity over each letter.

“Why⁠—I don’t think there is any, Mamma.”

No news in that fat letter! Well, really!

“Mamma doesn’t want you to tell her anything you’d rather keep to yourself, Maggie,” she said, hurt, and was more hurt when Maggie didn’t. But she never gave up.

“How is Edward⁠—or ain’t I allowed to ask that?”

“What? Oh⁠—oh, yes, thank you, Mamma,” Maggie answered vaguely, gently, looking at Mamma with dazzled eyes that did not see her.

But now it wasn’t a letter that was coming, it was Edward. And how could she make herself feel it? She was numb, she couldn’t even remember what he looked like. And probably he had forgotten what she looked like, too. How would they ever recognize each other? They should have arranged something⁠—“I will carry a sealskin muff and you wear a red carnation.”

“Edward will be here any minute now!” She tried to wrench herself out of this numbness and feel the passion, the bliss that his coming should bring her, but she only felt as if she were going to be sick.

He couldn’t kiss her really, with everyone at the station taking such an interest. And in the carriage her hat got in the way, and besides they were both thinking of Albert’s back and Albert’s ears.

She forced warmth and brightness into her voice, winking to keep the tears back.

“What kind of a trip did you have?”

And he answered with the same false brightness:

“Oh, all right. You’re looking wonderful. How are the others?”

“All right. Victor has long trousers now, just for best. He can’t wait to show you! The girls took their sewing to Fannie Leaf’s, but they’ll be back for tea.”

“I thought May didn’t waste much love on pretty Fannie?”

“Oh, she goes over there a lot now⁠—she and Robert are having an affair.”

“That’s different! How about Ralph Wither?”

“He’s engaged to a Dover girl. Look, it’s snowing harder than ever! I was afraid it might make your train dreadfully late.”

“We were about ten minutes late, weren’t we?”

“About that, I think.”

(Oh, where are you, where are you?)

“Well, here we are!” The pine branches swept down, dark and sad through the falling snow, the fields were white, and in the fountain in front of the house each iron calla lily was heaped with snow. The two strangers got out of the carriage and went into the house.

“This room is always cold in a storm⁠—I am cold.”

“Maggie, can’t we go up to the schoolroom?”

And they were alone, really alone, in the room they had always loved best. She lighted the logs in the black marble fireplace and the room was fragrant with burning pinewood and the geraniums, too spindly for downstairs, that looked out at the falling snow. There were the shabby books, the wobbly table with “A Lily Among Thorns,” propping up one leg, Mamma’s sewing-machine, the dressmaking dummy with her wire legs and tiny black pear-shaped head and high proud bust, wearing a white flannel dressing sacque with violet bows that May was making. The goldfish that lived in the garden pool in summer, swam in a washtub, in and out of their castle of stones, in and out of the waving water plants, gleaming sides of red and gold and silver, filmy floating tails. Miss Proctor’s poems, decorated with tear blisters and gingerbread crumbs, lay open on the window-seat, left by Lily.

They kissed each other with love and tenderness, clinging close, but the longed-for moment had gone⁠—had never been. Her hat, the men at the station, all the cloud that surrounds us, had kept them apart. And they had wanted it so that now they were too tired.

“Remember, Maggie?” And as he began to play chopsticks on the old piano, the shell of thin ice around her heart melted so that she was warm and alive and happy again, and able to make a terrific face at him.

“Maggie⁠—I have the most tremendous news!” He beat her palms lightly together as he talked, stopping now and then to kiss them. Happiness bubbled in every word, and she had never seen his eyes shine so.

“We can be married! We can be married right away! The company’s sending me to South America in a month⁠—it’s a wonderful chance⁠—it means everything, absolutely everything! It’s too good to be true! It won’t be easy⁠—not many girls could do it; but you can, Maggie, darling, darling! You won’t be afraid!”

She flamed to his words, answering him silently, burningly.

“I talked to a man who’d been out there⁠—I especially asked him if there were flowers, I thought you’d like to know; and he says there are. He says there are orchids growing right on the trees in sort of bunches, pale purple and greeny white, and they hold so much rain that the snakes climb along the branches and drink out of them⁠—maybe he was fooling me, but anyway that’s what he said. He said there were trees all covered with great big cream-colored flowers that smell fine⁠—I don’t remember the name, but I’ve got it written down somewhere for you. And you can get parrots for nothing, almost⁠—of course, they talk Spanish, but we could teach them. And he said the babies were awfully cunning, it’s so hot they don’t wear a stitch, and they’re all copper-colored. And, perhaps, he was exaggerating, but he said the ferns along the river were as big as trees⁠—”

The firelit walls faded, the falling snow, the ice-filled river. On another river they floated, locked in each other’s arms, floating on water like black satin under the great green lace umbrellas of the ferns, lit from beneath by a million fireflies, lit from above by all the stars. A pad, pad of feet in the shadows, and green eyes looked out at them⁠—the satin water parted and flowed back from a swimming snake. Terror and beauty and passion.

The wind sighed, bringing back the snow, clicking it gently against the window.

“That other fellow hates to leave.”

“Why does he?”

“Well, he wants to be with his family. He has a twelve-year-old boy, and it’s bad for children there, fevers, and no schools.”

The shell of ice closed about her heart again.

“But then⁠—Victor? What about Victor?”

“Well, what about Victor?”

“I can’t come if Victor can’t come with us⁠—I can’t leave Victor, Edward.”

“Don’t be absurd!”

“But I thought that we⁠—that he⁠—I thought⁠—”

“I’m sorry, but, of course, he can’t come with us.”

“Then you must go without me.”

“Leave you for five years? Maggie, you’re crazy! You can leave him here.”

“Oh, Edward, you know May and Lily⁠—I couldn’t leave him with them. May doesn’t think about a thing in the world but clothes and men, and Lily’s such a goose. Why, they can’t even take care of themselves, let alone Victor.”

“Well, leave him with someone else, some of your relations.”

“How could I leave him with Aunt Priscilla? He’s never been strong, and you know the way they live, meals any time or no meals, just a piece of moldy cake, and dirt⁠—! Edward, how can you ask me to leave him with her, when it was her carelessness killed Mamma?”

“I know, darling, I do understand that. But they aren’t the only ones. Let him stay with the Blows.”

“I couldn’t. Cousin Lizzie doesn’t like him. She doesn’t like any of us. She was in love with Papa, and I think it made her hate Mamma and all of us, really. And she’s so queer⁠—I almost think she’s crazy. And Cousin Sam drinks dreadfully, and they hate each other. It’s terrible there, it frightens me. And Victor’s so sensitive, he’s always had such love and gentleness, it would kill him.”

“You’ve all of you always spoiled him, that’s the real trouble.”

“We have not! And if we have, is that his fault?”

“Anyway, taking him with us is out of the question.”

“I can’t leave him! I promised Mamma!”

“She had no right to let you.”

“She had! And anyway I couldn’t leave him.”

(“Where are you? I can’t find you! Oh, where are you?” And the other was crying, “Come back to me! I am lost! Come back!” But so far apart, they could no longer hear each other. They could hear nothing but anger, feel nothing but anger that filled the room so that the crimson curtains, the red geraniums, the fire-colored fish, the fire itself, seemed part of its blazing.)

“He’s always come between us⁠—always. Even the last night before I went west he was down after us, calling you away. I’d give up my work⁠—it isn’t that⁠—but you’re the only person in the world that matters to me, and I must be first to you or I won’t be anything. I won’t take just what you can spare me from Victor. If you love me, you’ll come.”

“He needs me.”

“I need you.”

“Not as much as he does⁠—no one needs me as much as he does.”

“It’s Victor or me, Maggie.”

The baby lay in the big wash-basket under the wistaria vine wailing until she came to comfort him, the child ran to her from imagined terrors, the boy lifted his wet face and swollen eyes to her as she came out of the room where Mamma was dying. They held out their hands to her as the Child had held out his hands on the day of scillas and snow.

“It’s Victor, Edward.”

Carefully, as if she were made of thinnest glass, she moved about the room. Nothing of Edward must be left, now that Edward himself was gone. The dent he had made in the sofa cushion, the hearthrug corner that his foot turned up. Carefully, so as not to break her fragile glass fingers, she tidied them. Then she sat in the window-seat, her eyes on the falling snow, her hands lying lightly in her lap.

She was empty, empty as the shell of a locust that still clings to a tree trunk; legs, eyes, body all there, but the bright soaring wings that were in it, the life that was in it, torn out and away.

And suddenly she ran after him, tore after him, tumbling down the stairs, leaving the hall door wide for the wind and the snow to enter, stepping on her skirt, stumbling, running through the snow in her thin slippers. He had gone to the Allens’⁠—she would go to him, they would be together again, forever and ever. “Edward, Edward, I’m coming⁠—oh, Edward, I want you!”

Edward her lover and friend to whom she had given the bread of tears.

“Victor,” sighed the wind among the pine branches. “Victor,” sighed the sifting snow.

Victor frightened. Victor homesick. Victor needing her.

Across the fields she saw Victor trudging home through the dusk, his shoulders up, his head down against the snowy wind. Passionate, enfolding tenderness flooded her, and pain beyond any pain she had ever known. It was as if her heart had been broken open so that her brother could enter in completely. But Edward was there, too, would be there forever. No matter if she never saw him again, no matter what happened. Could anything make her stop loving him? Can storms put out the stars?

She went back to the house, and in to the new life that still looked so much like the old. The horsehair sofa, the parlor fire smoking a little, Dicky and Downy piping in their cages, the smell of carnations and of frying chicken, the clock on the stairs, that sounded like water falling drop by drop⁠—

She must go and take off Edward’s place from the tea-table⁠—she must go⁠—as soon as she stopped shaking⁠—

The door burst open, and Victor came stamping in, all red cheeks and snow.

“Hello, Maggie! Where’s Edward?”

“He’s gone.”

“He’s coming back to tea, isn’t he?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him we were going to have charlotte russe?”

And suddenly she cried in a high quivering voice:

“Victor Campion, I’ve told you one million times to scrape off your feet and not come tracking snow into the house!”

Victor looked up with mild reproach from where he sat struggling with his rubber boots.

“Well, don’t take my head off, Maggie, it isn’t my fault Edward couldn’t stay.”