That name steadied him. “No, not that, Maggie dear. She wouldn’t take me back; I’m not worthy of Joanna; she was quite right. I shall probably never see her again until we are both quite old. Not a chance for me there,” he ended sadly.
Curiously enough, if he had himself dared to think of returning to Joanna, if he had told Maggie so, she would have released him instantly. It was not part of her plan to interfere with love. But if Peter, who would never love anyone but Joanna, were to be left drifting for some other woman to pick up ten, five years from now, perhaps even immediately after the war! He would never be able to do the service for any woman in this world that he could do for her.
He misunderstood her silence. “It isn’t as though you cared such a lot about me, Maggie. My leaving wouldn’t really mean anything to you.”
“It would mean my death,” she told him. And indeed it did seem to her that if he left her alone with nothing in her life but Madame Harkness and those two poor old ladies—her mother and Mis’ Sparrow—she would die of it. She would die of sheer disappointment at being balked this second time of her constant desire.
Peter stared at her in sick astonishment. “You mean it?” he whispered. It had never crossed his mind that she cared for him like this. Subconsciously he thought, “Suppose this had been Joanna.”
Before Maggie could speak again, someone knocked on the door; one of Mrs. Ellersley’s roomers stuck in a tousled head.
“ ’Scuse me, Miss Maggie, I heard you-all talkin’ in here, en they ain’t no one else in the house. Jest wanted to tell you I’m runnin’ down to the corner a minute en as I mislaid my key I’m goin’ t’ leave the latch up, if you-all don’t mind.”
Maggie stared blankly. “Oh, certainly Mr. Simpson, certainly.”
They heard Mr. Simpson shuffling down the stairs and knew by the sound of the slamming door that he had gone out.
What they did not know was that a moment later a tall, heavily built man, who had been lounging sidewise against the wall of a neighboring house, came forward swiftly and ran up the steps. He tried the door gently and finding to his surprise that it yielded, walked in and closed it softly behind him. For two weeks, unnoticed, fingering a door-key in his pocket, he had kept watch on that house and its inmates, until he had become acquainted with the hours of the coming and going of each. He knew Maggie was at home in the afternoons; his purpose was to wait for a time when all of them should be out but her. One by one he had watched them emerge, Mrs. Ellersley and Mis’ Sparrow finally within fifteen minutes of each other.
“Those old birds,” he murmured to himself, “they’re just as likely as not to join up somewheres and go to one of their protracted meetin’s.”
Gradually the house had emptied itself with the exception of Maggie and this tousel-headed Mr. Simpson who usually left later than this. He had not seen Bye come out, but thought it likely the visitor had left in the quarter of an hour he had spent in the saloon around the corner where he had swallowed an unaccustomed dram to fortify his intention.
In the hall he stood blinking a moment in the darkness, then as the sound of voices penetrated to him from above he withdrew into the obscurity of the narrow oblong parlor. Evidently the fellow had not gone yet. There was plenty of time, he could wait.
Upstairs Maggie was pouring out to Peter her great obsession.
“I know I am amazing you, Peter, but I can’t endure this life, this utter separation from people who mean something. Take me away from it. I’ll be eternally grateful to you.”
“But, good God, Maggie, what can I do? I’m only a penniless student with my way to make. We’d be poor for years. And, anyway, where do you get the idea that my name carries with it any social asset?”
She murmured something about his long line of ancestors; years ago in her presence his Aunt Susan had spoken to Mrs. Marshall about it.
“You know how your name gave you the entrance into the best families in Philadelphia.”
He stared at her. Of all the crazy complexes, this was the craziest. It was indecent, this situation, agony for both of them. He tried to be firm, faltered, was lost.
“You know I think all this is idiotic, Maggie. If you think marriage with me would help you because I know the names of my great-grandparents—why, it’s absurd, ridiculous. I had a lot of foreparents—we all did—but they were nobodies most of them, only slaves.”
“That’s what they all were.”
“All who?”
“All the early settlers, weren’t they, the white ones, too, indentured servants, outcasts, outlaws, men driven for one reason or other from their own countries? But certain ones of them have always stood out, attained prominence.”
Overcome by this interpretation of history, he could make no suitable answer. He moved over to the little table, picked up his hat.
“Obviously all this will have to be gone over again. If you like I’ll send my Aunt Susan to see you, she knows all sorts of people both here and in Philadelphia. If you ask her no doubt she’ll manage to make it very pleasant for you. I really must go, Maggie. And of course—that is, if you insist on it—remember that I shall always be at your service.”
He held her hand a moment, passed out and ran sideways, after the manner of men, down the wide staircase.
The front door closed after him.
Maggie walked back through the room. This was her great interview. Peter had been here; to prove it there was his box of instruments on the table—she ran out in the hall again, perhaps she could catch him, for he could
