And as soon as he had broken with her, he had given up striving altogether. He had been nothing without Joanna. He wondered humbly if she had seen something in him which he had not recognized in himself.
How different they had been! After all, Joanna, though she had not had to contend with poverty, had had as hard a fight as he. “She’d have been on the stage long ago if she’d been white,” he murmured. “And see how she takes it!”
Well, he would show her and Isaiah, yes, and Mrs. Lea, too, that there was something to him. But chiefly Joanna. Some day he’d go to her and say, “Joanna, what I am, you made me.”
His ladylady called up to him:
“Telephone for you, Mr. Bye.”
He went downstairs, took down the receiver.
“Hello, this is Mr. Bye, yes, this is Peter. Who’s this speaking, please? …
“Oh—oh, yes, of course. Why—why, Maggie!”
He had forgotten all about her!
XXIII
It had been increasingly easy for him to forget her. When he had first broken with Joanna, when he had written her that virtuous letter, Maggie’s rooms, Maggie’s arms were a haven. She was always ready to listen, always sympathetic. She met his advances halfway; if he asked for a kiss he got it at once. There was none of Joanna’s half-real, half-coquettish withdrawal. No one could accuse Maggie of a lack of modesty. Peter would have been the first to fight such an accuser, but he found himself half-wishing that she were not quite so easy to approach.
Somehow life grew less stimulating. Presently they were settling down into the cosy, prosy existence of the long married couple. In the afternoons Peter came in—he was usually playing with Tom at night—they exchanged a word of greeting. Maggie gave him a dutiful kiss; there would be a word or two about the weather, his playing engagements, then silence. Presently Peter would say: “Mind if I look over the paper a moment, Maggie? I got up late this morning.”
And Maggie’s bright answer: “Oh, of course not, I’ve got my accounts to run over.”
Somehow all the easy, “understanding” conversation had vanished. Joanna, Maggie had soon learned, was not a welcome topic. And Peter no longer went to his classes, so there was no possible theme there. Peter to his disgust found himself drawing unwilling contrasts between these séances and similar moments spent with Joanna. Had there ever been any silences? If there were they were filled with all sorts of tingling thoughts and meanings. There was the night when Joanna leaned against him in Morningside Park. They had said nothing. But the very air about them was pulsing. How long ago all that seemed! Had it ever been true? Why had he never felt like that when Maggie, as she frequently did, rested her head on his shoulder?
He would shake himself angrily out of his reverie. “Silly ass,” his lips formed.
Maggie seeing his lips move would ask him interestedly: “What’s the matter, Peter?”
“Nothing at all,” he’d tell her contritely. What should be the matter with his dear Maggie so near? Sometimes he put an arm around her shoulder. “Look here, I’ve got an hour yet. Like to go out?”
That never failed to please her. She loved to be seen with him. She had a very charming, flattering air of deference, of dependence when she was out. It was singularly pleasing and yet puzzling to Peter. Joanna now was just as likely to cross the street as not, without waiting for a guiding hand, a protecting arm. If she had once visited a locality she knew quite as much about getting away from it as her escort. But Maggie was helpless, dependent. Strange when they were all growing up together he would have said she was quite as independent in her way as Joanna, and she was decidedly capable in her hairdressing work. Madame Harkness’ business had increased considerably in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Peter had often mused over this.
He had known for some time that he did not love Maggie. But he could not tell whether or not she loved him. Certainly she had appeared to at first, and certainly even now she clung to him. Her very submissiveness would seem to indicate some depth of feeling. He remembered Maggie as being anything but yielding in their earlier days, and she had never apparently changed one iota in her resentment toward her husband. She was making a remarkably good living from her connection with Madame Harkness, had bought the house in New York and was contributing to her mother. She could not be marrying him to be taken care of.
Of course he knew nothing of her flair, her passion for being connected with “real” people—for “class” as he would have called it. And if he had known this, it would have explained nothing to him, for he never thought of himself in this sense. His most frequent source of worry consisted in wondering if Maggie realized how lukewarm his feeling was for her. Apparently she never suspected it.
Maggie may not have let Peter realize it, but
