XI

Peter had accompanied Maggie as far as the subway station. “You won’t mind if I don’t go all the way home with you, Maggie? Fact is, I don’t feel so well today, so if you’ll excuse me⁠—” His voice trailed indeterminately.

Maggie smiled at him nicely. She was oddly happy at this moment. Linking her name with Philip’s, as she had, gave her an odd sense of freedom, of sureness. “And Brian didn’t seem at all surprised,” she kept thinking to herself over and over.

She answered out loud, “That’s all right, Peter. Go home and rest. I’m going to be in the house only a minute, anyway.” She looked at him meaningly. “I guess both of us have a lot to think of. Goodbye.” She flashed down the steps, looked back; a second later a slender golden hand waved to him from the gloom of the subway.

“Now I don’t know what she meant,” thought Peter, pushing his hat back from his hot forehead, and immediately turning to another idea. “I’d like to punch that fresh Brian’s head. Oh, Janna, how could you go off with him?”

Down in the subway train Maggie sat smiling a little inanely. Of late, her feeling for Philip had taken a definite form; she wanted, as always, desperately to marry, and to marry well in order to secure for herself the decent respectability for which those first arid fourteen years of her life had created an almost morbid obsession. But she knew now that the one man through whom she wanted to secure that respectability was Philip Marshall. She loved him.

“If the way I wanted him at first, dear God, was a sin, you must forgive me. Oh, Philip, Philip, have a good time in Philadelphia today. I bet you’re at a meeting of some kind this minute.” The picture of his favorite attitude came before her, and she smiled more broadly.

A white man sitting opposite mistook the smile and leaned forward, leering a little. She turned her head quickly, noting as she did so that something about his build made her think of Henderson Neal, her mother’s roomer.

She was to go motoring with him this afternoon. He had asked her very often of late. Usually she spent Sundays with Philip and Sylvia and Brian, sometimes with Joanna and Peter. But since the first two were away, she might just as well spend the time with Mr. Henderson. He would have a nice car, she knew; twice before he had taken herself and her mother out. It had really been very nice. She rather fancied he must work in a garage, he came riding up to the house so often. She wished a little nervously that she hadn’t promised to go, it would be nice to sit quietly in her room or in the long, sparsely furnished parlor and think.

Still it was hot, and if there were any air to be got they’d catch it in an automobile.

She ran up the subway steps and hurried toward Fifty-third Street. Somehow she didn’t care to keep Mr. Neal waiting.

There was still a quarter of an hour before he might be expected. She bathed her face, shook out her short, thick hair, twisted it back from her forehead. Next she crowned her oval, deep-cream face with a wide black hat, whose somberness was repeated in a broad velvet ribbon around the waist of her white dress.

But she looked anything but somber as she ran to the door at the whirr of the motor.

“Going, Ma,” she called back. Mr. Neal climbed out of the car and helped her in.

He didn’t look so old⁠—elderly⁠—today, she thought to herself, noting the straightness of his flat back and the smooth bronze of his closely shaven cheek. Evidently his beard was very strong and this had lent hitherto a somewhat heavy cast to his face. But today he was shaven to the blood. Maggie was used to studying men. It was a legacy from the old days, when failure to analyze a prospective roomer’s appearance might jeopardize a week’s rent. She noticed Neal’s hands at the wheel, powerful and sinewy with broad square fingertips. He was still baffling, but not so bad, she thought.

“Of course, not like Philip, but nice enough to go around with, and this is a dandy car.” She looked at him again sideways. He caught her glance.

“Thinkin’ I ain’t so bad maybe, Miss Maggie?”

She blushed, confused, not so much at his catching her eye as at the completeness with which he had read her thought.

“You certainly look nice in that suit, Mr. Neal. It’s different from what most men wear, isn’t it?”

“Likely as not. I picked it up in London last time I crossed the big pond.”

“You’ve been to Europe?” asked Maggie all ears.

“Yes to England, France, Spain, Germany and Italy. They was a time,” he said in his deliberately incorrect way, “when I thought I’d stay in them parts forever, but I come back. Used to valet for a rich white fellow. Took me everywhere with him. Wanted to carry me to Africa lion-hunting. But I quit him cold. If you want to hunt lions, go to it. Me, I’m a-goin’ t’stay right here.”

He spoke with a heavy emphasis on the last word which lent a curious whimsicality to his speech.

“This is the first time you’ve ever talked about yourself, Mr. Neal. Tell me some more, it’s mighty interesting.”

He had been everything from a farmer to a chauffeur, he told her, confirming her idea that his present occupation was concerned with the manipulation of cars.

“And I’ve been a lot of places and I’ve seen a lot of people. But you don’t want to hear about me, Miss Maggie. They ain’t nothing in me to interest a little lady like you. Now, on the other hand, seems to me, you might make real interestin’ talkin’.”

He had a nice smile, Maggie thought.

“There isn’t much to tell,” she smiled back at him. “There’s just my mother and me. I’m twenty-one and I’ve been out of school three years. I work in the office of Mr. Marshall, the caterer; you know him?”

“Know of him, Miss Maggie, know of him. Son’s a real-estate agent, ain’t he?”

“Yes. Well, I’m a sort of overseer-bookkeeper. In my spare time I’m taking up a course in hairdressing. You know there’s a Madame Harkness who’s invented a method of softening hair, and of taking the harshness out of your folks’ locks.” She laughed at him. “You know I think there’s a big future in it. It ought to mean a lot to us. Everybody wants to be beautiful, and every woman looks better if her hair is soft and manageable.”

“Reckon you don’t need to use no such preparation, Miss Maggie.”

“No, I don’t, fortunately, but I’ll be glad to help those that do. I love to see people look nice; like to look nice myself.”

“You sure do, you’re like a little yellow flower, growin’ in that house.” He gave her a keen level glance whose boldness was softened by his serious manner.

“Let’s stop talking about me,” said Maggie with sudden confusion. “Don’t you want to hear about my mother?”

“Well, not as much as about some others.”

“Anyway, she’s been a wonderful mother. My father died when I was about eight, and left us nothing. Mother has been hard put to it at times. That’s why I want to learn the hair-trade. I want to set up a business for myself some day. If I succeed, both mother and I can live on easy street.”

“You’d ought to be living there now. A delicate little girl like you’s got no business having to worry her pretty head about taking care of herself.” He bent on her a long considering look. “There’s many a man would be willing to take that job off your hands. I bet I know of one.” An odd bashfulness seemed to descend upon him.

“Perhaps he’s going to propose,” thought Maggie innocently enraptured, “wouldn’t that be great?” She pictured Sylvia’s surprise when she should tell her. His clumsy circumlocution, his heavy deference, delighted her. Philip of course was wonderful, but he was inclined, like all the Marshalls, to be a little superior. Well, why shouldn’t they be?

She sighed.

Her silence seemed to put an end to his sentimental maunderings, for he began to talk about the car, explaining its mechanism. Once, too, he turned and swore fluently at a motorist who passed him too closely. At the sudden passion which convulsed his face Maggie drew back, a little frightened. He noticed it, and immediately ironed out the lines of anger.

“You must forgive me, Miss Maggie. It made me so angry to think that that fool might have caused an accident which would have injured you.”

She thought with the ignorant pride of a young girl that it would be very easy for her to manage him. Shortly after that they turned around and came home. Maggie was glad when they reached the house, for she had many things to think about. Shutting off the motor, he followed her into the hall and they stood there a minute, his powerful dark figure looming over her.

She thanked him prettily. “It was very nice of you, Mr. Neal. You’ve been most kind to mother and me.” As she sped lightly up the stairs she forgot him completely.

Her windows were open and a full moon flooded her room with light. “Oh, Philip if I only knew how you felt,” she murmured, getting up and leaning out the window, gazing into the still, hot air. The people next door were in their backyard; one of their boys was playing an accordion. A little thin tinkle of voices floated up to her. How content other people seemed!

Her mind was feverish⁠—she had concentrated so on her other desires, a decent home, a reasonable education, the means of making a little extra money. It seemed to her she couldn’t find the strength to focus the flame of her ambition on Philip’s kind but immobile attitude. He was so uncomprehending. She turned back to the room again and stretched her arms to the shadowy wall.

“If you’d only say one word, Philip. I’d wait forever.” It was the uncertainty that sickened her spirit. “Yet,” she thought, growing suddenly cold, “suppose I should be made certain⁠—the wrong way. Perhaps you’ve met a girl in Philadelphia.”

She determined the suspense was best. “You’ve been my hope so long, if you should fail me what would I do? Besides, I love you, Philip.”

She lay half the night, very still and very wakeful in her white iron bed. The morning brought back her old sanguineness, she was to have a very full day; until early forenoon there was work in Mr. Marshall’s office, and in the late afternoon Madame Harkness’ Method of Hair Culture claimed her.

She came home, hot and deliciously tired.

“There’s a letter for you,” her mother told her. “Wash your face and eat your supper first. I want to get through’s quick as I can. Mis’ Sparrow and me, we’re going to a meeting.”

Maggie spied the letter in the gloom of the hall. It was from Sylvia probably; her heart hoped it was from Philip. But she put the thought away from her as too audacious. “Now just for that,” she told herself whimsically, “I won’t let you touch that letter till after supper.” Smiling, she washed her face and changed into something cool and old that she could lounge in later up in her room, while she read Sylvia’s letter.

Supper over, the dishes washed and her mother started in the direction of Mis’ Sparrow’s residence, Maggie went for her letter. Even in the half gloom she descried with a sudden pang that the superscription was unfamiliar. “Not from Philip, not even from Sylvia. Well, why should they write me?” she chided herself bravely.

In the waning but clear light in her room she could see plainly that the letter must be from a stranger. Yet there was something vaguely familiar about the writing after all.

She slit the envelope.

“Dear Maggie: [the letter ran]

“You’ll be surprised to get this letter, yet something tells me I should write it. It’s about you and Philip. [‘What’s this?’ said Maggie, startled.] I have learned, Maggie, that you are taking Philip’s kindnesses to you too seriously, that perhaps you are thinking of marrying him.

“I think you ought to know that such an arrangement would not be at all pleasing to our family, nor would it be good for Philip. I’ve often heard my mother say that only people of like position should marry each other, and I hardly think that would be true in the case of you and Philip. Then you must consider the future. My father is very ambitious for us and lately Philip has shown that he means to embark on a real career. You can see that a girl of your lowly aims would only be a hindrance to him. Philip Marshall cannot marry a hairdresser!”

The childish cruel words ran on:

“Then, too, I am sure he does not care for you in the way you care for him. Don’t you go around sometimes with a Mr. Henderson, or somebody like that? Sylvia met him somehow and Phil didn’t like it and raised a big fuss. Sylvia told him that you knew him and went out with him and Philip said ‘That’s different. Maggie Ellersley can do things that my sisters mustn’t do.’ That doesn’t sound as though he had any serious feeling for you, does it?

“I guess this will be sort of hard for you to read, but I believe” [Joanna wrote virtuously] “that some day you will thank me for these words.

“Wouldn’t it be just as well if you didn’t see him for some time after his return?

Maggie folded the letter carefully and put it on her mantelpiece. Then, fully dressed as she still was, she lay down on her bed.

“You poor idiot,” she thought to herself, “you simpleton, you fool, why should the Marshalls want you? They’re rich, respected! Mr. Joel Marshall⁠—you see the name at the head of every committee of colored citizens, and you are nobody, the daughter of a worthless father, and a poor ex-laundress!”

Her mind dwelt briefly on her mother. “Poor Mamma, she expected so much of me! Yet if Philip really cared about me, he wouldn’t care a rap if they did object.” She remembered then his slighting words.

“I hate him,” she said fiercely, “and Joanna and her everlasting ambitions and the pride of all of them. Why, you’re just a beggar to them.” She resumed her merciless self-attack.

Presently she began to cry great, scalding tears that burned her cheeks and hurt her throat. At eleven o’clock she heard her mother’s step and forced herself to an aching quiet. About midnight she realized that her head ached, that her throat was so dry and parched that it almost rasped.

“To think I should care like this,” she told herself. “Oh, Maggie, Maggie, they’re proud, can’t you copy their pride?”

There were some lemons on the table in the dining room, she remembered. At least she could ease her tortured throat. Hot though it was she put on her felt bedroom slippers, so that her step on the creaking stairs might not disturb her mother.

The quiet lower rooms struck her with their awful solemnity, added to her woe. She sat there at the dining room table, one hand clutching the forgotten lemon, the other flung on the red-checked table cloth, above her dark bowed head.

Two conflicts were raging within her. A twofold stream of disappointment overwhelmed. Not only had Philip not made love to her but he had despised her, not considered her the peer of his sisters. And how was she to mend her precarious fortunes? She was not strong, her mother was aging; suppose, before she got on her feet, she should fall back into the old hateful abyss. As it was she would never enter Mr. Marshall’s office again.

Her shame and despair heavy upon her, she buried her face deeper on her arm. Someone seemed to say, “Miss Maggie!”

She imagined it, she knew, but even if it were real she did not want to lift that heavy, heavy head.

A powerful but kind hand strove to lift it for her. She looked up then, a blinking figure of misery in the flickering gas flame.

“But Miss Maggie, t’aint ever you. Was you asleep or⁠—was you crying?” Henderson Neal had come in, and spying the light in the dining room had come to investigate.

She blinked at him stupidly.

“Little Miss Maggie, what’s happened to you? You ain’t in trouble?”

“In awful trouble.” Her lips shaped the words stiffly.

His mind, accustomed to the ways of men, jumped to one dread conclusion. “You mean some good for nothin’ feller’s took advantage of you?”

She didn’t understand him at first. “What? Oh, that! No, of course not!” A spasm of horrible amusement crossed her tightly drawn features. “He⁠—he wouldn’t touch me.”

She broke into passionate yet stifled weeping. Her mother must not hear her.

Neal’s face twitched. He picked her up in his steely arms, sat down in an old cavernous morris chair and held her back against him like a baby.

“Tell me about it, Miss Maggie; some of them tony fellers bothering you to marry them?”

The supposition was balm to her spirit, but she had schooled herself to honesty. “No, not that⁠—one of them, oh, he never knew⁠—I hoped, oh, Mr. Neal, you see I wanted him to like me⁠—”

“And he doesn’t, and he’s been leading you on? The damned skunk. I’d like to kill him.”

“Don’t say that. He was just being kind. He’d probably be all right if he ever thought about me. You see, it’s his sisters, his sister,” she corrected herself, “she doesn’t consider me good enough.”

“Well, what’s she got to do with it? Can’t the feller speak for himself?”

“That’s just it, I used to go to see them, they don’t come to see me. If the sisters don’t want me, there’s no way I can reach him, particularly since he isn’t interested. I had just hoped that if he kept on seeing me, some day he would grow to like me.”

Neal was nonplussed. This was a puzzle.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Oh, I don’t know. And I’m losing my job now. I got it through them.”

“I see.” He sat silent, studying her a moment. “Look here, Maggie, whyn’t you marry me? I’m old and I’m rough and you see I ain’t no book-learnin’. But I can take care of you⁠—you and your mother, too, and I can dress you pretty, like you’d ought to be, and with money and fine clothes you can do a little lordin’ on your own.”

She hated to offend him. He was so kind. “Mother would never hear of it,” she quavered for lack of a better answer.

“You don’t have to let her know about it,” he said, encouraged by her failure to refuse him flatly. “I’ll get a license in the morning and we’ll slip out after she goes to work. You won’t be sorry. I’ll be kind to you Maggie⁠—girl. I’ve always wanted you to give me a chance.” He added a cunning afterthought.

“Show these stuck-up friends of yourn, and show ’em quick that you don’t have to go beggin’ for favors. There’s others, yes, not a man that comes into this house that wouldn’t be proud to marry you.”

She began to toy with the idea. Marriage with Neal was not what she wanted, but it represented to her security, a home for herself and her mother, freedom from all the little nagging worries that beset the woman who fights her own way through the world. Perhaps she had aimed too high. This was the sort of person with whom she had grown up; he would not, because he could not, look down on her lowliness. On the contrary, he would place her on a pedestal.

“I’ll think about it,” she promised him finally.

But he knew if she did not take him now, she would never take him. She knew it, too.

He set her gently in the chair, and knelt in front of her, barring her escape with his powerful body.

“Listen, Maggie, marry me now, tomorrow. We’ll go to Atlantic City for a few weeks, and come back and go to housekeeping. I don’t have to live here. I just stayed on, first because it was clean and your mother was honest and then because I liked you. I ain’t no lawyer, nor doctor, nor in none of the fine positions your friends hold, but I handle a good bit of money and I’ll get you everything you want.”

He did have money, she knew that. She supposed she ought to find out exactly how he made it. But of course he was honest. And anyway she was too tired, too weak to bother. She could feel his strong will impinging on her own, beating hers down.

“I’ll do it, Mr. Neal.”

“My name’s Henderson, Maggie. You will, you mean it?”

“Yes, tomorrow. But I ought to let my mother know.”

“Oh, no, she might object⁠—mothers hate to see their daughters leave them. But after she sees how well fixed and happy you are, she won’t mind.”

“I guess you’re right. I⁠—I don’t see how I can ever pack. I’m so tired.” Her figure slacked weakly against the chair.

“You don’t need to. Just wear something dark and quiet. We’ll get everything you want in Atlantic City, or maybe Philadelphia.”

“No, no⁠—not in Philadelphia, we won’t stop there now,” she told him feverishly.

“All right. Now run up to bed. Kiss me, Maggie.”

She gave him her cold, stiff lips.

“Good girl! Tomorrow at ten. You ain’t foolin’ me?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Neal!”

“Henderson’s my name. Good night, little girl.”

Shaking, she got up to her room to lie vacant-eyed across the bed, watching the darkness deepen, shade into gray, vanish. The sun came bringing a new day, to her a new life.

She wrote her mother a note, then dressed herself carefully in a little tan poplin suit, a small brown hat and a white veil. “Brides wear veils,” she thought to herself numbly. “Oh, I didn’t think I’d be a bride like this!”

Well, it was too late now. At quarter of nine she went downstairs. Her mother had left long since. Presently she heard a taxi drive up and Neal, heavy but immaculate, got out. He was coming for her. She walked stiffly to meet him; they entered the cab together and were whirled away.

“This was marriage,” she thought, murmuring some words later to a Justice of the Peace. They entered the waiting taxi again and drove to the Pennsylvania station. A surprising number of the redcaps seemed to know Mr. Neal⁠—her husband. Well, of course, of course why shouldn’t they? They walked down the steps past car after car. Neal ushered her finally into a drawing-room. She had never dreamed of traveling like this. As the train pulled out Neal hailed a passing waiter. “Bring us something to eat as soon as possible.”

He sat down beside her, immaculate in a gray suit, gray tie, carefully brushed low shoes. His tan overcoat rested in the corner of the seat. He put his arms around her.

“Poor, sleepy, frightened Maggie,” he said tenderly.

She burst into sharp, strangling sobs, burying her head against his shoulder.

So she left New York, weeping, to return to it one day dry-eyed but with a bitterness that was worse than tears.