“About that, I think.”
(Oh, where are you, where are you?)
“Well, here we are!” The pine branches swept down, dark and sad through the falling snow, the fields were white, and in the fountain in front of the house each iron calla lily was heaped with snow. The two strangers got out of the carriage and went into the house.
“This room is always cold in a storm—I am cold.”
“Maggie, can’t we go up to the schoolroom?”
And they were alone, really alone, in the room they had always loved best. She lighted the logs in the black marble fireplace and the room was fragrant with burning pinewood and the geraniums, too spindly for downstairs, that looked out at the falling snow. There were the shabby books, the wobbly table with “A Lily Among Thorns,” propping up one leg, Mamma’s sewing-machine, the dressmaking dummy with her wire legs and tiny black pear-shaped head and high proud bust, wearing a white flannel dressing sacque with violet bows that May was making. The goldfish that lived in the garden pool in summer, swam in a washtub, in and out of their castle of stones, in and out of the waving water plants, gleaming sides of red and gold and silver, filmy floating tails. Miss Proctor’s poems, decorated with tear blisters and gingerbread crumbs, lay open on the window-seat, left by Lily.
They kissed each other with love and tenderness, clinging close, but the longed-for moment had gone—had never been. Her hat, the men at the station, all the cloud that surrounds us, had kept them apart. And they had wanted it so that now they were too tired.
“Remember, Maggie?” And as he began to play chopsticks on the old piano, the shell of thin ice around her heart melted so that she was warm and alive and happy again, and able to make a terrific face at him.
“Maggie—I have the most tremendous news!” He beat her palms lightly together as he talked, stopping now and then to kiss them. Happiness bubbled in every word, and she had never seen his eyes shine so.
“We can be married! We can be married right away! The company’s sending me to South America in a month—it’s a wonderful chance—it means everything, absolutely everything! It’s too good to be true! It won’t be easy—not many girls could do it; but you can, Maggie, darling, darling! You won’t be afraid!”
She flamed to his words, answering him silently, burningly.
“I talked to a man who’d been out there—I especially asked him if there were flowers, I thought you’d like to know; and he says there are. He says there are orchids growing right on the trees in sort of bunches, pale purple and greeny white, and they hold so much rain that the snakes climb along the branches and drink out of them—maybe he was fooling me, but anyway that’s what he said. He said there were trees all covered with great big cream-colored flowers that smell fine—I don’t remember the name, but I’ve got it written down somewhere for you. And you can get parrots for nothing, almost—of course, they talk Spanish, but we could teach them. And he said the babies were awfully cunning, it’s so hot they don’t wear a stitch, and they’re all copper-colored. And, perhaps, he was exaggerating, but he said the ferns along the river were as big as trees—”
The firelit walls faded, the falling snow, the ice-filled river. On another river they floated, locked in each other’s arms, floating on water like black satin under the great green lace umbrellas of the ferns, lit from beneath by a million fireflies, lit from above by all the stars. A pad, pad of feet in the shadows, and green eyes looked out at them—the satin water parted and flowed back from a swimming snake. Terror and beauty and passion.
The wind sighed, bringing back the snow, clicking it gently against the window.
“That other fellow hates to leave.”
“Why does he?”
“Well, he wants to be with his family. He has a twelve-year-old boy, and it’s bad for children there, fevers, and no schools.”
The shell of ice closed about her heart again.
“But then—Victor? What about Victor?”
“Well, what about Victor?”
“I can’t come if Victor can’t come with us—I can’t leave Victor, Edward.”
“Don’t be absurd!”
“But I thought that we—that he—I thought—”
“I’m sorry, but, of course, he can’t come with us.”
“Then you must go without me.”
“Leave you for five years? Maggie, you’re crazy! You can leave him here.”
“Oh, Edward, you know May and Lily—I couldn’t leave him with them. May doesn’t think about a thing in the world but clothes and men, and Lily’s such a goose. Why, they can’t even take care of themselves, let alone Victor.”
“Well, leave him with someone else, some of your relations.”
“How could I leave him with Aunt Priscilla? He’s never been strong, and you know the way they live, meals any time or no meals, just a piece of moldy cake, and dirt—! Edward, how can you ask me to leave him with her, when it was her carelessness killed Mamma?”
“I know, darling, I do understand that. But they aren’t the only ones. Let him stay with the Blows.”
“I couldn’t. Cousin Lizzie doesn’t like him. She doesn’t like any of us. She was in love with Papa, and I think it made her hate Mamma and all of us, really. And she’s so queer—I almost think she’s crazy. And Cousin Sam drinks dreadfully, and they hate each other. It’s terrible there, it frightens me. And Victor’s so sensitive, he’s always had such love and gentleness, it would kill him.”
“You’ve all of you always spoiled him, that’s the real trouble.”
“We have not! And if we have, is that his fault?”
“Anyway, taking him with us is out of the question.”
“I can’t leave him! I promised Mamma!”
“She had no right to let you.”
“She had! And anyway I couldn’t leave him.”
(“Where are you? I can’t find you! Oh, where are you?” And the other was crying, “Come back to me! I am lost! Come
