The trained nurse was coming in the morning. Maggie had had to give up fighting against having her. Long before Lily was awake, she was up tidying her room, making the bed with fresh sheets, putting on her best nightgown, getting ready to be nursed. Lily had tried hard, but things were in an awful muddle. From time to time Maggie stopped, crouched in a knot of pain, her wet forehead pressed against the marble slab of the bureau. Then she straightened herself, gathered up sticky medicine spoons with her nose wrinkling in disgust, fished the wrapped circles of combings from the wastebasket, went to the linen closet for a fresh towel to cover her bedside table, before she climbed back into bed and gave herself up to the flame of anguish that was consuming her.
It was better after Miss McMurtrie came. Sometimes Maggie was given something to stop the pain, and she could smile at Lily’s and Victor’s scared, solemn faces that stretched into wide answering smiles when they saw she was looking at them.
“Kind of nice to lie here in a nice warm bed and not have to do anything, ain’t it?” she asked them. Nice not to have the alarm clock slash across her sleep, not to have to stagger up into the cold dark mornings, not to have to keep going when her legs felt like butter in the sun, nice to lie watching the gently falling snow. Oh, if she could only make herself believe that it was!
She wasn’t afraid of dying any more, for herself, but how could she leave the children?
The love that had lighted her life shone for her as she looked back through the years—Edward—Papa—Victor. Memories came like the great silver bubbles that waver slowly up from the dark depths of a spring. Going for chestnuts with Edward when the air smelt of frost and the dead grasses were gold and silver—there was a film of ice over the fallen leaves in the shadowy places, the small green hedgehogs of burs spilled out their brown satin nuts. Everywhere was the feeling of hidden life—warm furry little bodies, bright eyes, and pattering feet. And suddenly he and she were dropping their baskets, rushing into each other’s arms, not able to stay apart another instant—
Papa lifting her up to ride in front of him on his horse—
“I won’t let you fall, Muggins.”
“Pooh! I’m not a bit scared! I could ride Gipsy bareback, Papa! I could ride standing up, if you’d let me!”
She and the children in the spring woods, where the dogwood trees in blossom floated like wreaths of cloud. She was trying to get unsteady little Victor across the stream on the wobbly stepping stones—splash! In they both went, while May and Lily screamed with excitement, and Trusty barked fit to kill himself—
And then she was holding the baby close to her heart. Mamma had given him to her wrapped in shawls. “Be careful of Baby, Maggie—”
“Miss Lily! Miss Lily!”
“She’s just gone over to the store, Miss McMurtrie.”
“I think you’d better come right away, Mr. Campion—”
He ran upstairs, his heart knocking against his side, and tiptoed into Maggie’s room. And something tore him, made him fling himself down by her bed, crying, “Maggie, don’t die! Don’t die!” But for the first time in his life she did not answer him.
XXXII
Lily loved the Sunday papers. Lying on the sofa covered like an elderly Babe in the Wood with papers instead of leaves, she read every word about Queen Mary’s toques and Princess Mary Viscountess Lascelle’s baby, how to arrange salad in green pepper canoes, whether skirts were going to be long or short, and what “Doug and Mary” were doing at the moment. She read selected poems, and often cut them out raggedly with a hair pin and lost them down the crack of the sofa. She looked at the funny pictures and made baffled tries at the puzzles, like a moth bumping softly against a window pane. She read anything about Harvard, in the sports section, on account of Papa and Victor, and looked at pictures of football heroes, thinking how their mothers must worry. She read special articles about chorus girls winning the mystic love of Hindu Swamis. And she always read straight through the society columns. In fact she read everything in the newspapers except the news.
So it was she who discovered that Lucy Hawthorn was back in America. It was quite a shock to come upon the name of someone who was a real person to her, among all the well known but unseen Vanderbilts and Whitneys and Astors. “Countess de la Villeblanche, who will be remembered as Lucy Hawthorn—”
Her first impulse was not to tell Victor. Lucy home again and a widow—she’d be certain to grab him if he gave her half a chance! And she saw herself alone and old. Her better nature triumphed in a minute—besides, she would burst if she kept such an exciting bit of news untold. But it would be just as well to have things especially pleasant when she told him. Somehow, though she tried so hard, home wasn’t the same without Maggie.
He was having Sunday supper somewhere in Wilmington. She would sit up for him, and make some candy to have for a surprise when he came in.
Out in the kitchen she and a little mouse gave each other a good scare—she jumped so that she knocked over the vanilla bottle. Oh dear! Tears came to her eyes. But she got up quite a lot of vanilla with a spoon.
It was so still that she could hear the tinkle of falling icicles, pure and exquisite sound. Alone in the house at night. It was sort of scary
