She cried herself into a headache on her way back.
It was bitter in Philadelphia, too. Peter got off the train at West Philadelphia. He would call on some of the boys on Sansom Street.
“They’re all out I think,” the landlady, Mrs. Larrabee, told him. She gave him a friendly smile. “You can run up, though, and see.” She was right, they were out, but the rooms were warm and comfortable.
“I think I’ll stay up here and thaw out,” he called down.
He sat in a comfortable chair, smoked a cigarette or two, read a few pages in a novel. Then he remembered Joanna’s box, and opened it. There was the letter on top.
“Dear Peter,” he read, “isn’t it awful to have to separate this way? I have a secret I was saving for you. I’m to sing in Philadelphia very shortly. Aren’t you glad? I love you, Peter.
His spirits went up, up.
“Good night,” he called to Mrs. Larrabee. “Happy New Year.”
It wasn’t so cold after all, he thought. Anyway, it wouldn’t do him any harm to stretch his legs a bit. He’d swing across town through the University grounds and take a car on Spruce Street.
The car jolted down over the bridge, turned one corner into a dingy side street, then another, slid ponderously into Lombard Street. It stopped to let the Twentieth Street car go by. Idly, Peter glanced out of the window. On the corner stood a woman, neatly, even carefully dressed. Something about her dejected pose made Peter look at her closely. She turned just then, and the street light fell full on an old-gold, oval face, haggard and disillusioned. Peter saw it was Maggie Ellersley.
XIV
Poor Maggie! How relentlessly and completely had her illusions flown!
She had enjoyed the ride to Atlantic City. Her husband had surrounded her with magazines, fruit, candy, even books. She had had a wonderful dinner and when they got to Atlantic City, he took her to a very respectable, clean boardinghouse. It was nice to be protected, she realized that. And, when, the day after they were married, he gave her seventy-five dollars, and told her to send part of it to her mother, her spirits, which had not yet recovered from the shock of the past two days, rose considerably.
She thought Mr. Neal remarkably kind and gentle. And he was always clean. On the whole, while she was not the least bit in love with him, she considered he did pretty well, though she did wish he knew a little more about English grammar. His deliberate incorrectness made her ashamed of him and because he was so kind to her, this feeling on her part made her a little ashamed of herself.
He was the soul of generosity. Besides giving her money, he had taken her to two of the best stores, and bought her whatever she wanted. He would have liked to buy her a complete outfit, but the prices made her demur.
“Wait till we get to New York again. We can do better there.” But she did let him buy her a few things: There were a blue silk dress, a white satin skirt, two or three smart, delicately tinted blouses, a wonderful wrap, light but warm; tan and white shoes and stockings.
Atlantic City was a revelation to her. She had literally never been out of New York City, except once to a funeral in Brooklyn in company with the lugubrious Mis’ Sparrow. This fairyland by the sea with its colored lights, its human kaleidoscope, its boardwalk, its shops! She did not know the world held such as these.
But she was more interested in the Atlantic City that lay on the north side of Atlantic Avenue. There were many cottages here, a score of restaurants, a good drug store, all of them patronized by colored people. They were the kind of people Maggie wanted to know, she could see that at a glance. In the restaurant which she and her husband most frequented, she sat and watched the happy, laughing faces. They were like one big family although they came from Washington, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. She realized then how completely she had depended on the Marshalls and their immediate entourage. Cut off from them, she had no way of meeting these people, she possessed no background.
Some of the visitors seemed to know others hailing from the most remote places. One woman said, “Oh, there’s Annie Mackinaw, she’s been in San Francisco for five years you know, I must speak to her.” Surely, Maggie thought, her husband must have met some of these people somewhere. But although an occasional man nodded to him, even came up and spoke, not one brought over his wife or daughters. The women looked at Maggie, a little curiously; once she thought as she passed a large party at a table that they stopped talking with that queer suddenness which made her sure they were discussing her. They looked at her clothes, appraising them, but she could never catch their direct, gaze.
She sought to find solace in the theaters, of which she was very fond. This was an opportunity, plenty of leisure and a willing companion ready and able to take her whenever and wherever she wished. But Atlantic City theaters make no secret of their unwillingness to serve colored patrons. After being told at the ticket office that there were no more balcony seats, only to see them calmly handed out to the next white person in line; after enduring an evening in the poorly ventilated gallery with a feeling of resentment rankling in her breast; above all after seeing how these mischances awoke her husband’s passionate but
