INTO the midst of her new-found content came Philip. At first she could
hardly believe it. She supposed vaguely that he had enlisted but she was
and had been out of touch so long with the Marshall family that she knew
nothing definite of his movements. It had been years and years since she
had seen him, had in any sense been connected with him. What a long
stretch of time and events since she had received Joanna’s letter that
fateful Sunday!
He was very much changed, not only older and graver, but weak,
physically. He had been wounded twice and had been gassed slightly.
“I’ve been discharged from the hospital as cured, Maggie, but I’m afraid
I’ll never be any good again.” He smiled with infinite gentleness.
“There was so much I wanted to do.” Fortunately his “Leave” had followed
on his stay in the rest-area at Nice.
He had been in Chambéry for half of his _permission_ then, and the first
embarrassment attendant on their meeting had worn off. Still, both
avoided discussion of the old days, glancing away from possible points
of contact. He seemed to Maggie to be wasting by inches and even Mrs.
Terry, who had seen many cases of gassed men, thought he had come out of
the hospital too soon. Maggie, her old love mingled with a new
tenderness awakening in her, spent as much time with him as she dared.
She did not want him to be ill, but she adored his weakness, it gave her
her first chance to wait on him, to mother him, to pay back, instead of
always taking, something of what the Marshall family had brought into
her life.
He said to her one day seated in the little parkway, “Why did you leave
us so abruptly, Maggie? Why did you marry Henderson Neal?”
Peter had asked her the same question years ago and now as then she
could not answer: “Because of Joanna’s letter.” So she sat silent a
moment.
“Well, Maggie?”
“Because I was a fool, Philip. I was a silly, silly young girl. Without
the sense to know what I wanted. Without the patience to wait for it if
I had known. All young girls are silly, don’t you think? All, that is,
except Joanna. She always knew what she wanted and see, she’s got it.
Wonderful Joanna! Do you know, Philip, I think I’ll have a career, too,
a business one! A chain of Beauty Shops.”
How wonderful to be able to talk like this without false shame to a
Marshall! How wonderful life was! How beautiful to be experienced!
Philip said rather indifferently:
“I’m not surprised at that. My father always said you had one of the
clearest heads for business he’d ever seen. I used to be overwhelmed
myself at your ability to handle people and things. You were always so
sure of yourself. I remember once telling Sylvia and Joanna that you
could afford to go about with people that I didn’t care to have them
meet. Your early experiences rendered you safe. I believe I told them
that when they were speaking to me of your husband, Mr. Neal. I didn’t
know he was going to be your husband then, Maggie.”
So that was what Joanna had meant so long ago. Strange how time
dissolves mysteries. Strange how, after deciding to take life as one
finds it, life comes fawning to one’s hand.
Several days elapsed before another talk could be managed. Then they met
in front of the _Statue des Eléphants_. Philip, examining that marvel
with meticulous care, asked her indirectly about Peter.
“How will you combine the sort of business you contemplate and your
marriage? Seems to me you’ll have to be away from home a lot. Somehow, I
don’t picture you as a ‘new woman,’ Maggie.”
So he was interested! And she had done nothing, not one little thing to
lead up to it. “Oh, God, let me be happy now,” she breathed. “You know I
meant to play the game straight and I really do love Philip.” Aloud she
said joyously, “I’m not going to be married, Philip, at least not to
Peter Bye, if that’s what you’re talking about. That was all a mistake.
We both realized that.”
She glanced at him, hoping to meet an answering joy in his face, but
found instead a deepening mournfulness.
“Philip,” she said very gently. “What is it?”
He lifted a haggard face. “Listen, Maggie, I can speak now. I loved you
long, long ago, when we used to go off on those catering jobs for
father. Do you remember? But I didn’t know it, I didn’t think about it,
until you married. Somehow I had always thought there would be time
enough and that, anyway, matters would adjust themselves. And when I
heard you’d married that fellow, I was so amazed, thrown off my feet. I
said to myself, ‘You poor weak fool, of course, she’d prefer a man, a
real man who, no matter what his character, would have gumption to go
after the woman he loved.’
“I’d have come to you, but I thought you must love him; I had heard the
girls mention seeing the two of you together and I concluded it was an
affair of long standing. To ease myself, to put you completely out of my
mind, I plunged into this public work; I wouldn’t even mention your
name. And the first thing I knew you had left Neal and were engaged to
Bye. I couldn’t understand that, Maggie, since you had grown up with
Joanna and Peter, but that’s all over now. I cursed Bye out at Des
Moines, I remember.”
Maggie, reviewing all that had preceded Peter’s departure for Des
Moines, shivered a little. “Perhaps some day I can tell you all about
it, Philip. It was mostly my fault.”
“It doesn’t make any difference whose fault it was, Maggie; everything
is too late now. You don’t suppose I’m going to ask you, a beautiful
woman, just on the threshold of a successful future, to marry me. My
dear, I’m a wreck. I may live a year and I may live a half century. But
I’d always be good for nothing, sitting around, ailing, getting on your
nerves. I wouldn’t be able even to run your cash register for you,
Maggie. These gas cases are absolutely unpredictable.”
“I don’t care,” she told him stubbornly. “You haven’t asked me but I’ll
tell you. I love you, Philip, I always have. And nothing would please me
more than to nurse you. Why, I love you, my dear. Manage my cash
register! We’ll get you home and Harry Portor will fix you up and then
you’ll take up your magazine again. I’ll be your secretary, your
assistant, your whole force.”
But Philip was adamant. “You don’t know what you’re saying. No, Maggie,
after I leave here I’ll never see you again. I had my chance to win you
once and I let you go, threw you into the arms of Neal. That was bad
enough. But I won’t chain you to an invalid’s chair for life.”
For the first time since she had known him she recognized in him a faint
bitterness.
“You know, Maggie, I’ve never made any kick about being colored. Rather,
I looked at it as a life work ready and cut out for a man, for me, and I
rushed rather joyously into it to do battle. Now as I look back, I think
I realize for the first time what this awful business of color in
America does to a man, what it has done for me. If we weren’t so
persistently persecuted and harassed that we can think, breathe, do
nothing but consider our great obsession, you and I might have been
happy long ago. I’d have done as most men of other races do, settled my
own life and then launched on some high endeavor. But do you know as a
boy, as a young man, I never consciously let any thought of self come to
me? I was always so sure that I was going to strike a blow at this
great, towering monster. And all I’ve done has been to sacrifice myself
and to sacrifice you. And the ironic joke of it is that in the defense
of the country which insists on robbing me of my natural joys, I’ve lost
the strength to keep up even the fight for which I let everything else
of importance in the world go. I’ve been simply a fool.”
She tried to comfort him. “You’ve been everything that is fine and brave
and noble, Philip. And don’t think your suffering, as you call it, is
due only to being colored. Life takes it out of all of us. I have never
spent five minutes in trying to help our cause. Your unselfishness and
Joanna’s persistent ambition have always amazed me. I have been a
selfish, selfish woman, always—looking out for my own personal
advantage, grasping at everything, everybody—who I thought might make
life easier for me. You don’t really know me, Philip. I’ve pursued a
course exactly opposite to yours. And yet I never knew a moment of
happiness from the time we were all children together until I came here
to Chambéry to help these boys.” She thought deeply. “Sometimes I think
no matter how one is born, no matter how one acts, there is something
out of gear with one somewhere, and that must be changed. Life at its
best is a grand corrective.
“But now we’ve found ourselves, Philip. You have learned ordinary
personal consideration and I have learned unselfishness—to a degree. It
is not too late for us to be happy—together, Philip.”
“How we complement each other,” he mused. His eye fell on his wasted
hand. “Ah, but, Maggie, it is too late. Everything is too late.”
On the last day of his stay she came to him. “You love me, Philip?” He
gave a quick assent. “And you know I love you and you still won’t marry
me?”
“Don’t torture me, Maggie. You’ve no idea what it means to be tied for
life to a peevish invalid. I—I never expect to see you again, my dear.”
“Then,” she said, and the last tatters of her old obsession, that oldest
desire of all for sheer decency—fell from her, “then I’ll be your
mistress, Philip. For no matter where you go I’ll find you and stay with
you, you’ll never be able to send me away from you. You’ll make me the
by-word of all New York but I won’t care, Philip, for I love you. Oh,
Philip, Philip——”
They were in the chapel of the old Dukes of Savoy and the ancient
caretaker, having stayed away the length of time which Philip’s
_pourboire_ warranted, came in, but went out again, quietly, smiling.
For Philip had risen and drawn Maggie to him. “You really mean it,
Maggie, my Maggie! Oh, my little yellow flower, I’ll never let you go.”
She looked at him starry-eyed. “You don’t seem so weak, Philip.”
Outside, the cross on Nivrolet, a luminous symbol of faith, pointed
steadfastly to heaven.
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