“Stop and look at your flowers, little child, and I will wait for you. Eat your peach, there is no hurry. No need to hurry now, we are nearly there.”
The house was still, for the children had gone on a picnic. She could hear her canaries hopping and swinging in their cages. How cool and fresh the darkened house was after Priscilla’s sunny dusty rooms. That was a good cook, though. She had enjoyed her lunch.
Should she go and tell Martha she was home? Better not, perhaps, in case she wasn’t expected so soon. It had been embarrassing all around, last week, after Martha had said there wasn’t any cold duck left, to come upon her feeding it to a strange young darkie. She was forty if she was a day, too, the silly! But Mamma certainly didn’t want to catch her at anything she would have to disapprove of.
She went up to her room and took off her dress. Just a little lie-down before supper.
The great wings drooped above her, closer, closer. “Go to sleep, little child. I will be here when you wake.”
Every night Maggie almost prayed that Edward would come to her in her dreams. Praying was done on your knees, in churches and by bedsides, beginning properly, “Our Father” or “O Blessed Lord,” and dealing in stately language with reformation or protection. Almost praying was the quick warm gush of gratitude or pleading: “Oh, thank you!”, when Edward’s letter was extra long, or “Please please let me dream of him,” every night as she fell asleep.
But she dreamed of Mamma and the girls, of old Benny Brown with his beard in a braid, of Lossie’s black baby, of Victor’s new puppy—anybody, anything but Edward.
The long-nosed market-woman who always had the nice cheese and the tight bunches of marigolds and red bee-balm was sitting up in a pine tree on the drive. Knock! Knock! Knock! Maggie could see the long sharp nose sticking out from her sunbonnet as she struck it against the tree trunk like a giant woodpecker. Knock! Knock!
But she’d ruin the pine tree! Shoo!
Spreading her shawl, the market-woman flapped through the air, and settled in another tree, far off. Knock! Knock! Knock! It was fainter now.
Maggie rose from the sea of sleep and drifted, nearly awake, on the surface. The knocking came again.
She sat up in bed, listening. How queer! It came low down on her door, so low that she saw, still half-dreaming, a dwarf in the dark hall, knocking.
“Maggie—”
It was Mamma, huddled on the floor, leaning against the door.
“Oh, Maggie, I’m so sick—”
“Oh, poor Mamma! Come, let me get you back to bed.”
“My stomach aches so—and my legs—” She lay in her bed, her knees drawn up, whimpering a little, her blue beseeching eyes darkening with pain as pools darken in a storm.
Maggie waited in the kitchen for the water to heat. The loud hurrying tick of the clock, the slow drip of the water-tap, the dark high ceiling, high as the night, that the faint light of her lamp could not reach, made her feel weak with loneliness. She was frightened—something was waiting in the dark behind her. “Edward—!” she called across the miles.
Then a chill of terror crinkled over her as she heard Mamma scream.
Three days, three nights. That screaming, thin as a knife, that shaking, that hurling back and forth in the deep white bed. Nothing could counteract the poison of that dish Aunt Priscilla had offered her so lovingly. Dr. Chase couldn’t help her, no one could help her, though everyone came to ask, driving up with baskets of grapes and autumn flowers, and saying, “If there’s anything we can do—!” Martha worked all day and most of the night, good as gold, feeling sad and excited and bursting with importance. On Sunday morning the congregation prayed for Margaret, stealing glances full of that strange excitement at the Campions’ empty pew.
“O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, our only help in time of need; look down from heaven, we humbly beseech thee, behold, visit, and relieve thy sick servant—”
The peaceful grey walls with their moss-rosebuds and lace, the fresh, white curtains, the piled white clouds in the soft sky, looked at Mamma tranquilly. The stoppers of her perfume bottles threw splashes of rainbows over her white bed. And all this still rose and silver brightness, this sweet, accustomed peace, held in its heart the black whirlpool in which she was sinking.
Comfort came to her twice through her pain, not in the thought of Papa, not in prayer. Once May brought in a vase of fragrant, pink tea-roses blurred with a silvery bloom of dew, with delicate sprays of dusk red leaves, and Mamma’s tortured and bewildered eyes saw them and loved them. And once she whispered, “Maggie, if I—if anything should happen, promise you’ll always take care of Victor.”
“Oh, I will, I will!”
She smiled. For a moment she floated at peace, before the dark tumult sucked her in again.
She longed for Victor passionately, but she wouldn’t let him come to her, for fear of frightening him.
“Can’t I see Mamma, Maggie?”
“Not just yet, honey. Wait until she’s better.”
“Would she like Bundle?”
“Not just yet.”
So he would go and hide in the wagon-shed, behind the sea-blue farm cart, out of hearing of that thin tortured screaming. And Bundle, all big paws and soft, clumsy heaviness and sad, anxious eyes, was companion and comforter and handkerchief.
Maggie passed through and beyond ordinary exhaustion. She saw everything, the tiniest things, the blue and silver star of beads on Papa’s red cloth watch-pocket, Aunt Priscilla’s small pear shaped tears that never stopped, the tufts of cotton in Martha’s ears, the tiny green-white spider on the black grapes Cousin Sam brought, with a queer bright clearness. Everything had become brilliant, intense, and strange, like the reflections and colors in a soap bubble just before it breaks.
She sat by the window at the end of the third night, watching
