XXXI
“Where you going, Maggie?”
Lily squatted back on her heels. A small limp pancake of homemade raffia hat, trimmed with rosettes of red raffia topped her mild apple face, every hair pin seemed about to spring from her hair, she bristled with them like a hedgehog. She was digging the holes for the new tulip bulbs—the bulbs of the red and yellow parrot tulips, all feathered and fringed, that Mrs. Detweiler had sent from her garden.
“Heigho for meddlers!”
That was all Maggie would say. Where could she be going, in her best voile, and with her card-case? “I think it’s real mean in you not to tell me!” Lily called after her placidly.
It was quite a relief to have her go out, she had been so cross and brisk for the last week or two, cleaning the house, putting up preserves—what had gotten into her? “I think I’ll go and have a little lie-down while she’s gone,” Lily said to herself, scrambling to her feet. She found the new Ladies’ Home Journal, tucked a lump of sugar into her cheek, and lowered herself onto the sofa. Oh, how nice to be able to rest and enjoy herself without feeling guilty, as she did when Maggie was dragging the furniture around or struggling to cut up quinces.
Mrs. Spear was in the midst of a rubber of bridge when the maid brought in Maggie’s calling card, ivory with age. “Oh, bother!” she said. “Still, I suppose I’ll have to see the poor old thing.” And she called to her daughter, who was sprawling on the sofa reading “Town Topics” and wishing they’d have more about Wilmington people in it, “Take my hand, Dot.”
Maggie had come to say goodbye to The Maples while she could. She knew the time was growing short. The maid had prudently hooked the screen door, leaving the shabby stranger outside in case she was just trying to sell something, but it hadn’t been like being locked out of her own home. Everything was so changed. The fountain gone, the peony beds gone, the grey house painted white, with awnings of orange Italian sailcloth. “Pity’s sake!” thought Maggie as she waited. “I don’t think much of their wonderful improvements!” Homesick for The Maples, on hot days remembering it veiled in snow, on cold days aching for it gilded with sunshine, netted down with shadows, she had felt that she would know a leaf from home, out of all the other leaves in the world. And now here was home itself, and it was strange to her.
This Mamma’s parlor? This room full of sleek rich-looking women, white terriers with green leather collars, magazines, open candy boxes, cigarette smoke, noise—
“I know Miss Campion wants to see her garden. Miss Campion’s the most marvellous gardener, I’m petrified to have her see all the mistakes I know we’ve made. Of course, I needn’t tell you that at this time of the year—oh, Simpson! Turn on the fountain for Miss Campion, will you? And I wonder if you could cut us a few flowers?” She added aside, “I’m terrified of my gardener! I wouldn’t dare pick a flower without his permission.”
“No, no! Stop him! No, don’t pick me any—I have to go. Thank you just the same. Don’t come with me—I’ll cut across—”
She was desperate to get away. “What’s the matter with the crazy old thing?” Violet Spear wondered. Keeping away for twelve years, and then acting like this. And not a single word about all the improvements. Not much like her brother, who was almost painfully polite when he came to dine or to play bridge. But she did look sick—such a color, and so thin that her clothes hung on her as if they were hanging from the wooden shoulders of a coat-hanger. She almost asked her to stay to tea—then she thought irritably, “No, if she’s so crazy to go, let her!” She was a kind woman, but her new rubber reducing corset wasn’t by any means the dream of comfort she had expected, her satin slippers were soaking from the wet grass, and she felt that little muffled beat in her temple that meant one of her bad headaches was coming.
Maggie hurried up the lawn, straining towards escape. The beech tree was the same, anyway. And as she looked at it the mist of strangeness lifted, blew away, she saw her home again. Nothing was changed, really. Nothing was lost. Childhood’s sky arched up from childhood’s river, exquisitely reassuring. Small, chunky sunset clouds filled the west, cobblestones from the golden streets. Red leaves fell about her in a sudden shower—the red of the wine and the blood of sacrifice. They were falling back to the earth from which they had sprung, making ready for winter’s death—and yet nothing died, nothing! In the spring the buds would swell again.
“Lily!”
But Lily’s light whistling snores went on peacefully, so Maggie dragged herself out of bed, and downstairs to the pantry, for some cracked ice.
They had Lossie’s daughter Rose to do the cooking now that Maggie had to stay in bed. And her beau was there again—there was a light in the kitchen shining through a haze of tobacco smoke. Rose’s alarm clock, waiting on a pantry chair to be taken up to bed, held up its black hands in horror at the lateness of the hour. “He ought to have gone home ever so long ago!” it said.
It was a panicky moment for the young ones. No mice
