No one made an effort to give Margaret a cup of coffee, so Mrs. Holbrooks, with sharp gestures, poured out a cup.
Margaret took it, sipped at it; her lips were white and trembling.
“Ain’t it hot, walkin’ over them hills?” asked Mrs. Holbrooks. Her eyes flayed the others, and they started nervously.
“Yes, it’s hot,” murmured Margaret. She wanted to strike back at them; instead she sat there, trembling before them.
“How’s your Maw?” queried Mrs. MacKensie, agitatedly following Mrs. Holbrooks’ lead.
Margaret, getting partial command over herself, turned her blazing eyes on the woman, and Mrs. MacKensie shrank.
“Say, now, this is my niece, Lydia Holbrooks,” Mrs. Holbrooks said briskly. “Visitin’ me for a couple weeks. Whyn’t you come over some day and visit a while with her, Maggie?”
“I’m busy,” said Margaret.
“You’re not getting married, are you?” Lydia asked in her clear, sweet voice. Her eyes danced with amusement; they slithered away from Margaret and drew the other women into the charmed circle of her laughter at this ugly creature.
“No,” answered Margaret calmly. “Are you?” Lydia flushed, looked startled. “Not yet,” she replied impudently. “But then, I’m only eighteen. I’ve lots of time.”
“I’m nineteen,” remarked Margaret; she could even smile a little now.
Lydia raised her fine black brows. “Are you, now?” she asked with a great assumption of innocent surprise. “I thought you to be at least twenty-six. That’s why I asked if you were going to be married.”
Then Margaret laughed. She felt herself rapidly rising above the situation.
“We let the men do the courting in this country,” she said. Lydia turned scarlet; Mrs. Holbrooks smiled sourly.
“Really, aren’t you being a little offensive?” asked Lydia.
“No. Aren’t you?” came the tranquil retort.
Lydia was unpleasantly surprised. This horrid girl spoke, not in the accents of rural ignorance, but in a modulated and cultivated voice.
“I’m sure I didn’t mean to be offensive,” said Lydia stiffly. “I hope I am a lady.”
“I hope so, too,” remarked Margaret softly. She shrugged a little. “But then, one never knows, does one?”
In the appalled silence that followed, Mrs. Holbrooks laughed raucously. She leaned over and patted Margaret’s knee.
“Oh, you’re a great one, ain’t you, Maggie? Come on, now, you girls, stop your backbitin’. You ought to be friends.”
“I’m sure I’m always ready to be friends with ladies of my own class,” said Lydia venomously.
Margaret looked at her straightly; in that regard was utter contempt.
“Yes, one should always stick to her own class, shouldn’t she?” she replied serenely. Lydia gasped; but Margaret turned to Mrs. Holbrooks and smiled sweetly.
“I hear you bought that prize bull in Whitmore over John Hobart’s bidding,” she remarked. “John was very much annoyed.”
Mrs. Holbrooks grinned; she drew Margaret into a secret fellowship. Her eyes sparkled. “Close-fisted young devil,” she chuckled. “I outwitted him that time, though. They’ll have to get up early in the mornin’ to git ahead of old Martha Holbrooks!”
Lydia had recovered; she returned to the attack.
“I hear you know a friend of mine, John Hobart,” she said flutingly. “Such a wonderful man! But, perhaps you don’t know him. Would you, now?”
“I would—now,” answered Margaret. Lydia lifted her brows with an affectation of extreme surprise, and her glance went slowly and pointedly over Margaret’s poor clothing.
“I wouldn’t have thought it!” she murmured. “But then, in the country one knows almost everyone. One can’t avoid one’s neighbors, I suppose. We draw lines, in the city.”
“I suppose that is a good thing,” said Margaret. She was completely in command of herself now. “In the country we are compelled to meet and endure all kinds of people with courtesy, if nothing else. In the city, I, for instance, would be more particular.”
This completely floored Lydia; tears rose passionately into her pretty blue eyes. But Mrs. MacKensie attacked now. She almost winked at the other women and did not look directly at Margaret.
“I bin hearin’ Johnny Hobart’s goin’ to git married,” she said. “You wouldn’t know anythin’ ’bout that, would ye, Maggie?”
“I did hear something,” replied Margaret indifferently.
Susan chuckled. She looked at her niece. “Folks used to say you might be the one he was amarryin’, though I allus said no to ’em. It’s funny, ain’t it?”
“Very funny,” agreed Margaret tranquilly. If she had not heard the conversation before she entered this house, she would have been exquisitely amused. Now, the sharp anguish twisted again in her breast, and against her will her eye turned to Lydia.
Lydia laughed trillingly and fanned herself with her lace-edged handkerchief.
“Oh, that’s too funny!” she cried, abandoning once and for all her well-bred caution. “Too funny for words! I’m sure you are all mistaken! Why, only a little while ago, when I met him at a friend’s house, he didn’t seem to have any definite intentions, though he did ask permission to call on Mamma and Papa!”
Margaret’s face had turned extremely white. Mrs. Holbrooks, seriously alarmed, seized the rudder of conversation. “Maggie, I’m sorry to hear about your Granny’s death,” she said hurriedly. “It was sudden, wasn’t it?”
For one moment she was compassionately afraid that Margaret would do something dreadful which would give these harpies, young and old, an opportunity to destroy her. But the girls’ eyes, though stricken, were steady.
“Very sudden,” she replied quietly. “I’ll never stop missing her.” She stood up. “I must go, now. It’s getting late.” She picked up her bonnet.
“Oh, Maggie, you ain’t goin’ ’thout seein’ Ralph, be you?” exclaimed Susan without looking at her niece. She glanced at her visitors; one lashless lid slipped partially over an eye. “He’ll be real cross if he missed you.”
Margaret made no reply.
“Didn’t you say your boy was agoin’ away?” asked Mrs. King in her sharp, thin voice.
Susan sniffled dolefully yet proudly. “Yes. He says there ain’t no opportunity for what he wants to do roundabouts here,” she answered mysteriously. Then her expression became somewhat uneasy. She had pinched the sum of thirty dollars for Ralph from the sale of her farm produce; this was unknown to Silas, of whom she was mortally afraid. But before anyone could speak again, Ralph himself darkened the door of the “settin’ room.”
For a moment, dazzled by the sun outside, he could not distinguish one woman from another. But he knew that there were strangers there. He turned to go.
“Come in, son,” called Susan. Her drawn face became soft and proud.
He murmured something about not meaning to intrude, then he saw Margaret. Instantly his face became illuminated.
“Margaret!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t see you!”
He came into the room. He saw no one but his cousin, who smiled at him tenderly.
“Son!” cried Susan, with an angry glance at her niece. “Don’t you see we got comp’ny? And this gal here is Miss Lydia Holbrooks, from Williamsburg, Mis’ Holbrooks’ niece.”
The sudden glory still stained Ralph’s face as he turned dutifully to Lydia, who gave him her tiny hand coquettishly. He looked at her unseeingly.
“Dear! I didn’t know you had such handsome young men in this country!” exclaimed Lydia. “Otherwise I would have come before.”
At the prodding of his mother, Ralph sat down uneasily. He still looked at Margaret, who stood in the center of the room.
“Didn’t you say you must be goin’?” asked Susan sharply.
“Yes. But I want to talk to Ralph for a minute,” replied Margaret calmly. She, too, seated herself. There was a long hard pause. Then Lydia, with a
sprightly attempt to draw the youth out, engaged him in vivacious conversation. He replied courteously in a voice that sounded as though it came from behind a wall.
During the conversation that followed, Margaret sat in silence. Her need to see him, to talk with him, to touch his hand began to fade, and in its place came a kind of contempt, as she watched his egotism emerge. His voice took on a conscious precision that made her want to slap him. She knew that Ralph was assuming the role of the poet and the superior, delicate soul; she wondered why he had never seemed so inadequate to her before.
She stood. “I ’spect Ma isn’t coming, after all,” she said. She nodded slightly. “Well, good evening, I’m going.”
She marched out of the room, stepped firmly on the porch. She began to walk toward the hills. Then she heard running steps behind her and turned. Ralph was panting in her wake.
“Wait, Margaret!” he called. She waited in silence. He came up to her, his light hair bobbing over his forehead. He sighed.
“Thought I could never get away! God, what dull, unimportant people!”
Still in silence, Margaret resumed her walk toward the hills, her cousin following. They started to climb. Neither spoke again until they reached the top of the hill. They sat down under the shade of a clump of second-growth timber. The sun was beginning to sink; the valley below was dreaming.
“I’m leaving here October first,” began Ralph abruptly. “We can be married in Whitmore, Margaret.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.
He went on, not even looking at her, “I’m sick to death of this place and these God-forsaken cattle! I want to get out, to see things, strange places, adventure. What is there here for a man who has any kind of a brain at all? Nothing! And then sometimes I think what if I do get out? What if the world is just the way it is here, just work, work, nothing but a bore to a man like me?”
“Did it ever occur to you that you’re a damn bore most of the time, yourself?” exclaimed Margaret. “You make me tired, Ralph! What have you done that gives you the right to be bored? I’ve been after you for ages to send your poems away to some publisher, and you look faintly superior and say, ‘They wouldn’t understand them.’ Perhaps not. It’s because I believe you really don’t understand anything, yourself.” She breathed deeply. “How can anyone with eyes be bored in a world like this! Look at it! Don’t you see anything?”
He was coldly enraged now. Margaret had never turned against him before.
“I see as much as you do!” he cried. “More perhaps. That’s why most people bore me. Creatures without substance, without mind. Just human breeding and working machines—”
“You neither breed nor work!” said Margaret shortly. “What’s wrong with breeding, anyway? Those people who breed, who work with their hands, have made it possible for you to be alive, to eat, to have a bed to sleep in, without you doing very much about it yourself.”
He went white with anger.
“Is that what you think? My God, do you think I want it that way? I thought you understood, Margaret. I thought you knew that I want to work as well as any other man, but not just plowing and milking cows. Poetry is my work, Margaret; it’s what was meant for me.”
“You’ve got to go away, Ralph,” she said. “The sooner, the better. You’ve got to go where you can find yourself, stand on your own feet, learn to live. You’ll never learn to live here,”
His face brightened, and he caught her hand. “We’ll go to Whitmore, as we always said, and be married when we leave. I can’t go before October, though. Maybe it’ll be hard at first, but we’ll get along. Margaret, you do love me, don’t you?”
She put her hand on his neck. He smiled at her and kissed the palm of her hand. At the touch she was suffused with gentleness. Yes, of course she loved him.
John Hobart! What had she to do with him? Standing there, her hand still on Ralph’s neck, she felt a swift distaste for John, a repudiation. Had she actually suffered at the words of that stupid Lydia Holbrooks? It was incredible. Let her have John if she wanted him; she, Margaret, wanted nothing of him.
She put her hands on his shoulders, shook him slightly and humorously. “Well, it’s October, isn’t it? Not long; we must have some patience. Kiss me, Ralph.”
Eagerly, he leaned forward to obey her, but she suddenly drew back from him.
In the clear sunset air the white road that wound between the hills was sharply visible. She had recognized, from its glitter and the shine of its red wheels, the carryall of the Holbrooks’. Mrs. Holbrooks and her niece were returning home. And from the opposite direction a horseman was approaching. It was John Hobart, on the way to visit Margaret. She saw the carryall draw to a stop; she saw the horseman stop beside it. At length the carryall started again, and with it, the horseman! He had wheeled his horse about; he was going to the Holbrooks’. Once his rollicking bellow of laughter rose distantly to Margaret’s ears. In a few moments they vanished behind the shoulder of a hill.
An icy coldness fell over Margaret. Everything became a little dark.
“Margaret!” said Ralph, who had seen nothing. “What is it?”
She touched him lightly on the shoulder. He was amazed at her expression, rigid and wild. She turned and left him, running down the hill toward her home. He called after her repeatedly; she gave no answer or sign.
Peter had not yet returned when she reached the house. But in the kitchen the children were fighting over their supper of cold biscuits and fried pork. Margaret entered; Melinda began to question her. Margaret made one fierce gesture, then went into the “settin’ room.”
She sat down on the bed. She was shivering as though the room were cold. She pushed back her hair vaguely.
Then at last she sat perfectly immobile, staring with dead eyes before her.
CHAPTER SIX
John Hobart did not come on Monday. Neither did he come on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Mrs. Holbrooks gave a party for her niece and invited nearly everyone in the county. Everyone but the Hamiltons.
On Wednesday evening, at sunset, Peter came home from his smithy, his face black and menacing. His bloodshot eyes fell on Margaret as she stood cooking the evening meal at the dirty stove. The children swarmed about her, and he swept them from his path.
“What’s this I hear about John Hobart runnin’ after that Holbrooks hussy?” he roared. “Ezra King came ’round today for the fust time in a spell, with two hosses. I knowed right away he wanted, to say somethin’ to me, cuz he takes his hosses over to Bartlet. And there he stood grinnin’ at me like a dirty possum, and he sez, ‘’Spect Johnny Hobart’s got sick o’ runnin’ after your gal Maggie. He’s makin’ eyes at Miss Lydia Holbrooks now, and folks do say it’s a match. Know anythin’ about it, Pete?’ I don’t say nothin’, rememberin’ you and John don’t want nothin’ said just yet, though God knows why! But what I want to know is this: what you done to Johnny Hobart? He ain’t been here since the old woman died. What you done, eh?”
Margaret turned the pork over carefully in the skillet and absently waved away the clustering flies. It was too dim in the kitchen for Peter to see her expression.
“Nothin’s wrong,” she said carelessly. “He’ll be ’round. Not tonight, though, on account of that party Mis’ Holbrooks’ givin’. ’Course he’s got to go; he knows Lydia Holbrooks, from Williamsburg.”
Peter seized her arm; swung her roughly around to face him. With fury, he peered into her face.
“You lie!” he bellowed. “Don’t you try any of your tricks on me, wench, or I’ll break every bone in your body! I’ll—”
His menacing voice broke off abruptly. He stared at Margaret; she could no longer hide her anguish and the set despair of her lips. There was something in her eyes so tragic that Peter’s own eyes narrowed. The clutch on her arm slackened, became a gentle hold. But his face took on grimness.
“Maggie,” he said huskily, “if that skunk’s jilted you, made the whole country laugh at you, hurt you, I’ll—I�
��ll have his guts out!”
“I tell you, it’s goin’ to be all right,” answered Margaret dully, shrugging off her father’s arm. “Leave me be. You’ll see: he’ll be here tomorrow sometime.”
And John Hobart did come “tomorrow,” at sunset.
He came, unseen by the other members of the family. Peter had not yet returned. The children were fighting on the stoop. He passed the barn, and through the wide doorway he saw Margaret milking the cows. Her head was bent, the falling braids obscuring her face; she worked stolidly, her shoulders slack. Once she drew a deep, convulsive breath.
John whistled, stepped heavily into the gloom of the barn. She started visibly, glanced up. He was surprised at the pallor of her face, and then at the crimson flood that flowed over it. He grinned.
“Howdy, Maggie!” he almost shouted. He stooped over her, kissed her lips resoundingly. She could feel the bristles about his mouth; her lips were cold under his. He stood, peering at her in the gloom with narrowed eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
She smiled; her face felt stiff and numb. She could not speak; she thought that if she tried just now she would burst into uncontrolled weeping. So she merely clutched his sleeve in wet and slipping fingers. How good to feel the rough strong fabric between her fingers! She stood up, pushing her hair back from her face. She could speak, now.
“Nothin’s wrong, John,” she said quietly. “You just frightened me a little. I didn’t hear you come.”
He stared at her, enchanted and gratified. He took her in his arms, kissed her again and again. Her knees turned to water as they always did at his touch; her lips warmed under his; her arms slowly slipped around his neck.
And thus Peter, tramping heavily past the barn, saw them. His surly face lighted a little; after a moment he entered the barn, placated but still surly.
John grinned at him as he relinquished Margaret. “Hi there, ole timer!” he cried.
“Ole, yourself,” muttered Peter. He glanced swiftly at Margaret; he shrewdly appraised the change in her face. He turned to John, frowning.
Maggie—Her Marriage Page 5
