XVI
Edward was coming. Maggie had never been so brisk and cross. How she ordered them about! And she was everywhere—whipping cream for the charlotte russe, shouting to Albert to bring in more firewood, carrying pots of pinks and ivy from the conservatory into the parlour.
“Lily! Don’t put that wet pot on the table—mercy! Now look at that!”
And she would fly for a cloth, with Bundle jumping around her, tumbling over his paws, wanting to play.
“Oh, Bundle, look-kout! Victor, for pity’s-sake put your dog somewhere where he won’t be under foot every second!”
“Oh, Maggie, please don’t be so cross and bossy!”
And then, giving the tumblers an extra polishing, she struck one so that it chimed and rang, faint, faint, a thread of exquisite sound, humming, like a bell deep under the sea.
And she was lost, listening to it, not hearing it, gazing with bright soft eyes through Mamma’s oil painting of ladyfingers and strawberries and a teapot, through the terra-cotta wall behind it, through the falling snow, through the sky. And there seemed to be a bloom on her, a radiance.
There were ferns of frost on the kitchen windows; the pump, to keep it from freezing, was wearing Mamma’s old red cloth opera cape with the cock feather collar, its handle sticking out like a sword. Nothing was quite its ordinary self, magic had touched The Maples.
It was almost time to start for the station when she came in tears to May.
“I can’t go to meet Edward.”
“Why not?”
“I look so hideous!”
“I have seen you look better,” said May candidly. “What have you been doing to your hair?”
“I tried to crimp it.”
“Well, never mind, I guess it’ll come out as you drive up. Take my frill—that collar’s so stiff and horrid, and you can have my muff too, only please don’t get it all wet in the snow, and remember to hold the good side out and the rubbed side against you. Maggie—black makes you look so washed-out—I don’t suppose you’d take a red ribbon—I just happen to have some if you would—and wet it with cologne and rub it on your cheeks?”
“May!”
“Well, I’ve heard of girls doing it,” said May, blushing deeply.
“Only bad women paint their faces,” Maggie told her severely.
What if she had imagined everything? What if he didn’t come? What if there wasn’t any Edward? She was so afraid of that sometimes that it was agony, when he wasn’t there and no one was speaking of him. How to be sure, to be sure it was all real? And when she felt that way she couldn’t say “Edward,” because only suppose their faces had said, “Edward? Who’s that? We don’t know anyone named Edward.”
She would watch for Uncle Willie’s horse and carriage, bringing the mail, bringing a letter from him. From her window she could see the carriage far up the road, looking so different, somehow, from the way it looked when it was only going to church or market; and she would pretend to herself she hadn’t seen it, going on trying to do whatever she was doing, weak in the knees—dizzy—until someone called from downstairs:
“Mag-gie! Let-ter!”
She never got used to his letters. She would cry over them, kiss them—practical Maggie!—carry them crackling under her chemise, wake up in the night to feel them beneath her pillow, or light her candle to make sure that he had really written what she hardly dared believe she remembered. And no matter how often she reread them, the words were a shock of bliss, a flame of ecstasy.
“What’s the news from the Far West?” Mamma would ask. She and Lily nearly burst with curiosity over each letter.
“Why—I don’t think there is any, Mamma.”
No news in that fat letter! Well, really!
“Mamma doesn’t want you to tell her anything you’d rather keep to yourself, Maggie,” she said, hurt, and was more hurt when Maggie didn’t. But she never gave up.
“How is Edward—or ain’t I allowed to ask that?”
“What? Oh—oh, yes, thank you, Mamma,” Maggie answered vaguely, gently, looking at Mamma with dazzled eyes that did not see her.
But now it wasn’t a letter that was coming, it was Edward. And how could she make herself feel it? She was numb, she couldn’t even remember what he looked like. And probably he had forgotten what she looked like, too. How would they ever recognize each other? They should have arranged something—“I will carry a sealskin muff and you wear a red carnation.”
“Edward will be here any minute now!” She tried to wrench herself out of this numbness and feel the passion, the bliss that his coming should bring her, but she only felt as if she were going to be sick.
He couldn’t kiss her really, with everyone at the station taking such an interest. And in the carriage her hat got in the way, and besides they were both thinking of Albert’s back and Albert’s ears.
She forced warmth and brightness into her voice, winking to keep the tears back.
“What kind of a trip did you have?”
And he answered with the same false brightness:
“Oh, all right. You’re looking wonderful. How are the others?”
“All right. Victor has long trousers now, just for best. He can’t wait to show you! The girls took their sewing to Fannie Leaf’s, but they’ll be back for tea.”
“I thought May didn’t waste much love on pretty Fannie?”
“Oh, she goes over there a lot now—she and Robert are having an affair.”
“That’s different! How about Ralph Wither?”
“He’s engaged to a Dover girl. Look, it’s snowing harder than ever! I was afraid it might make your train dreadfully late.”
“We were about ten minutes late, weren’t
