In her junior year in the high school she had a long talk with Mr. Marshall. Of course they were still poor, the house just kept them in comfort. Maggie had become addicted to the wearing of good clothes. Her mother was getting older. They needed help from time to time. If Mr. Marshall would assist her in getting some work. She was young and strong and willing.
“No, no, Mr. Marshall!” she objected as Joel—they were sitting in his office—spoke of a loan and reached for his checkbook. “Not that! When could I ever pay you back? No, I mean work, real work. I could take orders, count the silver, look after the napery, pay off the men if you’d care to trust me.”
Perhaps a man of another race might have stopped to consider such a proposition coming from the lips of a young and dainty girl. He might have been suspicious and realized that his younger son was working in the business with him just then and the boy and girl would be bound to be thrown together. But colored men of old Joel’s type are obsessed with the idea of a progressing younger generation. “They must advance,” thinks the older man, “I must do all in my power to help them. This is my contribution to mine own.”
Joel taught her his simple system of bookkeeping and installed her. She proved herself efficient, willing, and—her mother’s teachings spoke here—absolutely honest. Her energy and interest were surprising. “You might think it was her own business,” said Joel. He had no desire to see either her or any of his children become caterers, but he did like to see a job well done. Philip was the only one who had evinced any interest in the business, and that was only during his last year before entering college. He had to make some extra money somehow—both he and Sandy had a healthy dislike of burdening their father with their college expenses—and since he had to work he preferred to spend his time and energy in his father’s interests.
His chief work consisted in directing his father’s various squads of waiters. He met them at the house where Joel was catering, started them off, checked over necessities, looked after the thousand details which lent to Joel’s service the perfection that so justly brought him fame. Maggie often accompanied Philip on these trips. Sometimes she went to one house and he to another, and he would call for her and take her home. She pondered deeply over the possibility of these meetings.
He was usually jolly, unsentimental, almost brotherly. Maggie took care to follow his lead. But to her great surprise she was beginning to be conscious of a deep affection for him. At first she had only yearned for respectability and comfort, and Philip represented such a convenient shortcut to her heart’s desire. But now things were different.
Sometimes when they came home quite late he would take her arm and the two would walk slowly and silently down the strangely quiet streets. A curious little sense of intimacy used to brood over them at times like these. Philip would laugh a little nervously.
“Awfully jolly being out late like this by ourselves, isn’t it, Maggie?”
She would nod him a smiling yes. “Some day,” she thought, “he must say more.”
Her studies, her work and these trips with Philip took up most of her time just now. She and Sylvia of course still saw a great deal of each other and once in a while went out together. She went to the theater still more rarely, or to a church festival with Henderson Neal, one of her mother’s boarders. A mysterious tall brown figure of a man, twenty years older than Maggie and a thousand years older in experience, he caught and not infrequently held her attention. He had lived with them two years, paid his bills regularly, asked no questions and vouchsafed no explanations.
Maggie wondered what he did. Whatever his occupation, it certainly paid him well. More than once she had seen him display without ostentation a huge roll of bills, which apparently was static in bulk. His speech was often ungrammatical, but so deliberate that one thought he must be speaking correctly. He had a rather grand air, and listened to both Mrs. Ellersley and her daughter with a somewhat ponderous attention. Maggie thought he was rather interesting for such an old man—he must be nearly forty! She was a little afraid of him, though, and decided it would be rather unpleasant for anyone who chanced to make him angry.
Once he met Sylvia and Maggie on the street and offered to take them to the matinée. His interest was clearly in Maggie but he politely included her friend. Sylvia later told Philip about it.
“I hope you didn’t go,” he replied quickly.
“No, I didn’t, Maggie didn’t, either. But there’s no reason why I shouldn’t have. She goes with him sometimes.”
“But that’s different. Maggie’s known different people from any you’ve ever known. She can take care of herself.”
“What’s the matter?” Joanna asked, putting her head in the door. “What’s old Phil so excited about?”
“You might just as well hear this, too, Jan. I won’t have you and Sylvia going about with a man like Henderson Neal. Maggie can go with men that my sisters can’t afford to associate with.”
X
Sunday was always an important day in the Marshall household. Its importance, it is true, took on a different character as the years sped. In the early days Mr. Marshall looked forward to it as the outward and visible sign of an inward worth. He was a steward in his church, Old Zion, and on Sundays in a long frock coat with a correct collar, a black Ascot tie surmounted by a gold horseshoe, he passed the collection box from pew
