XXV

“You mark my words, Lily⁠—Wadsworth Robinson is going to make May an offer, and what’s more, I believe she’s going to take him. Look⁠—he’s really not bad looking⁠—not handsome, but kind of nice⁠—”

Lily joined Maggie in gazing out from behind a pinch back of bedroom window curtain. Mr. Robinson propped his bicycle against a tree, took off the clips that held his white tennis trousers tight around his ankles, straightened a small white hat above his serious red-brown face, and took a box from the net hammock on his handlebars. “Chocolates,” said Lily.

May had been watching, too, with a feeling of fingers closing around her heart, squeezing it lightly. Her knees trembled and she felt suddenly weak, and had to sit down on her bed a moment⁠—had to fling herself down with her face in the pillow.

She knew that he loved her, that he was going to ask her to marry him. And she was going to marry him. She shook with fascinated terror, dark excitement. This way, alone, with her face pressed into the pillow, she loved him.

She got up, patted a dust of powder over her flaming cheeks, and ran downstairs, and her sisters heard her company voice cry:

“Why, I didn’t know you were here! Isn’t it a heavenly day for tennis? Victor’s gone over for Daisy, they’ll be here soon, I guess.”

If only he had gone on from the place he had reached in her dream! Already she had taken him past the need of words. But he was himself, so much less real to her than her idea of him.

“It certainly is a beautiful day! I’m looking forward to our game of tennis very much.”

“Very much”! Oh, oh, how tepid! And yet there was nothing tepid in the way he was looking at her. Wings fluttered in her breast, and her voice changed from company voice to a light shaken chime of bells, the secret of life escaped through it, though the words it was crying were only:

“Oh, for me? Oh, you shouldn’t have⁠—chocolates!”

“And bonbons,” he pointed out.

Victor and Daisy played against May and Mr. Robinson. May felt like a soap bubble, bounding, gleaming, bright color swirling into bright color. Mr. Robinson couldn’t take his eyes off her, he never even looked at Daisy, except abstractedly, as if she were a cow or a tree. His faithful dog eyes followed May, you could almost see a loving tail wagging.

“Stay to supper,” Maggie invited him and Daisy. She didn’t want Daisy, but she couldn’t ask one and not the other.

“Oh, my dear! Rapture and bliss if there was any way of letting my old Sambo know⁠—he’s feeling kind of mean, and most likely he’s in bed and asleep; still, I guess I ought to send word. Our telephone would certainly be a lot more useful if any other of the folks out here had one.”

“I’ll go over on my bicycle,” suggested Mr. Robinson in his deep serious voice, “And tell Mother on the way that I won’t be home either.”

“Oh, would you? Angel of light and mercy! I’ll love you for life!”

“There’s a moon tonight,” said Mr. Robinson in a voice vibrating with meaning. He only meant May to hear, but Daisy heard too, and burst into screams of laughter as he pedalled out of the drive, ringing his bicycle bell to the empty road.

“ ‘There’s a moon tonight,’ ” she mimicked, deep in her throat. “Ow! I shall die! May, he’s going to propose! Wouldn’t you know he’s the kind of fellow wouldn’t think a proposal was legal unless it was by moonlight?”

“Oh, don’t⁠—!” cried Maggie.

“Ow! Ow! My side! Where did he get that hat?”

“ ‘Where did you get that hat?’ ” sang Victor, and he picked up a little white paper bonbon case from Mr. Robinson’s box, put it on his head, seized Lily’s palm leaf fan, and gave an imitation of him playing tennis that made them laugh until they cried.

“Oh! Oh!” May was nearly sobbing. “Did you ever see anything so much too small as it was, and so white, and so new! If it hadn’t been so new! But it might just as well have had ‘Bought for the occasion’ printed all over it in large black letters⁠—oh! I shall never be able to keep a straight face when I look at him again⁠—”

And she laughed and laughed, with the tears rolling down her cheeks, until she was almost screaming⁠—faint, sobbing screams, like something dying.

The moon turned the river to silver silk and showed frills of white flowers edging the garden paths. The air was drenched with moonlight and fragrance. And all evening May kept close to Victor and Daisy in the garden, though they certainly didn’t want her. But she wasn’t going to be left alone with that silly, solemn thing⁠—

Maggie could stop worrying about Daisy, for she had gone away⁠—gone away forever. Cousin Sam doubled up groaning one day on his old leather sofa, said to her, trying to smile, “Don’t you worry, honey,” and died. And Daisy cried as if her heart were broken, and, covered with crêpe, yards and yards and yards of crêpe, went back to New York as fast as she could go, hardly stopping long enough to say goodbye, even to Victor. Meadowbrook was sold to strangers now.

A year later they saw her picture in “Types of Fair Women” in Munsey’s Magazine, and learned that she had married again. His sisters were afraid Victor would mind, and tried to break it to him gently, but he had heard it already and didn’t seem to mind at all.

“Well, that’s a relief!” thought Maggie, and yet⁠—how could he be so cheerful, when he had seemed really to love Daisy? “Victor’s unselfish,” she told herself. “When he’s unhappy he keeps it to himself.”

For a few hours they were excited⁠—but God performed again his miracle of changing the water into wine, as the summer rains were bottled in the purple and pale-green globes of the grapes; the frost killed Maggie’s dahlias; Lily scalded her hand; the organ-grinder came, playing his hollow plaintive tune and jerking his monkey on its chain⁠—there were other things to think of happening all the time. They seemed so important⁠—and then they were over, and no one remembered them at all.

For the second time the thunder of war came to the Campions⁠—more distant now, in Cuba. War with Spain was declared at the end of April⁠—too beautiful a time for people to be fighting, Maggie thought, pulling down an apple-tree branch and snuffing at the red buds and rose and silver blossoms. Still, one must remember the “Maine.” Victor was always singing about it.

“ ‘Spain, Spain, Spain,
Why aren’t you ashamed?
Why, why, why,
For blowing up the Maine?
One, two, three,
And Cuba will go free,
There’ll be a hot time
In the old town
Tonight!’ ”

How terrible it must be there for our poor soldiers. The sisters, looking through the dim windows of the newspapers, saw palm trees against quivering blue, and small lizards with flickering tongues darting across earth cracked open with the heat, across men who lay too still to frighten them. And men were dying of thirst and fever⁠—that was worse than having a bullet sing home to your heart. It seemed cruel to sit on the shady porch, drinking cold water, throwing what was left over the rail onto the lily-of-the-valley bed. And yet it was so hard to realize. It was as if the newspapers had made up a series of exciting stories.

“Isn’t it dreadful?” the Campions would say solemnly, reading, and then, kindling, “Well for pit-ty’s sake⁠—Raymond Line’s going to marry that Dawson girl with the funny nose!” Or Mrs. Kelsey was advertising for a cook, or, most exciting of all, Victor’s name appeared. “Look, May! Look, Maggie! Here’s Victor in again! ‘Mr. and Mrs. Edgar H. Snare entertained a merry party of young people in honor of their daughter Miss Lola at a picnic supper on the banks of the beautiful Brandywine, those enjoying their hospitality including’⁠—mm⁠—mm⁠—here⁠—‘Mr. V. Champion’⁠—Champion! How idiotic! Wouldn’t you think they’d know by this time? They’ve had him in often enough. Where are the scissors? I want to cut it out for him.”

Yes, it was hard really to feel that a war was going on, although old ladies named their canaries “Dewey,” men cheerfully whistled “Goodbye, Dolly, I must leave you,” and “Just as the sun went down,” and little boys turned their hats up in front and were Rough Riders, shouting “Giddap!” to their bicycles, and hissing beds of red and yellow cannas because they were Spain’s colors.

“Did you ever know May had a friend named Allen Jermayne?” Lily asked Maggie.

“No, I never heard of him.”

“She says he’s fighting, he’s a captain, a West Point man. She says she hasn’t any photograph of him, that he never would have one taken, but she has a drawing of a Gibson man she says is the image of him. She acts awfully funny about it. I haven’t seen any letters from Cuba, have you? But she showed me a whole pile tied up with blue ribbon, and I could just see ‘My loveliest’ something or other before she pulled them away. And she showed me some flowers he sent her from San Juan Hill⁠—she said they were tropical flowers.”

“What like?”

“Sort of like pressed poppies.”

“Well, she’s been tearing up for the mail every day⁠—we wouldn’t have seen them. Oh, Lily, I do wish⁠—Allen Jermayne! A. J.! I do believe that’s the man she danced with all evening that time she had such fun in Wilmington, ages and ages ago. I think it was A. J.”

“I’m going to be married as soon as the war is over,” May told them one day. “I’m going to marry Captain Allen Jermayne.” And Maggie, feeling as if a fist had crashed between her eyes, knew that May was lying even before she turned scarlet and burst into tears.

Even Lily didn’t believe it. And May only pretended half-heartedly. She told them one day that Captain Jermayne had been killed, and she wore a black dress and let the others go for the mail once more. After that none of them ever spoke of it again.