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
