There Is Confusion/Chapter 25

While Joanna was sitting at her desk, Maggie Ellersley some fifty blocks away brooded over plans of her own. She had hoped, vainly as it turned out, that her absence from Philadelphia would quicken Peter's need of her. His very real regard for her hospitality and kindness had long since been evident. She knew that he considered the little apartment on South Fifteenth Street his nearest approach to a home in Philadelphia, and she had hoped that the loneliness caused by her departure would induce him to urge her to come back. But Peter's letters had not been in the least melancholy. Once a week he had written to her regularly during the four weeks of her stay in New York, but though he had been kind and pleasant, not once had he expressed a desire to see her, or even a passing curiosity as to the date of her return.

When she had first come back to New York, she had had a feeling of shame and despondency as she thought of her effort in Philadelphia to induce Peter to take a definite stand about their wedding. But her stay here with her mother had dissipated all that feeling. The prosy, uninteresting life which Mrs. Ellersley and Mis' Sparrow led, the troop of commonplace, albeit kindly and dependable roomers made her turn again to Peter for a way out. More than ever she was in the same trap in which she had found herself years ago when as a little girl she walked home with her mother from the dinners which she had eaten in some employer's house. Now, it was true, her surroundings were no longer dirty and she was no ​longer poor—she and her mother had all the money they needed and almost all that they wanted. Of lowly stock, Maggie had never cared in the least for the possession of riches. But the old loneliness, the old sense of unworthiness, of being nobody was strong upon her.

In earlier days she had frequented the Marshalls' house; plenty of other girls had frequented it, too. It was to be presumed that the Marshalls from time to time had returned such visits. But somehow she had never contrived to be on really intimate terms with those others. They were all polite, more than polite, even cordial to Maggie, and yet she knew that while moving with that group, she was not of it.

The difficulty had been, had always been, that she had no background.

Other girls' fathers and mothers were "somebodies." Alice and Vera Manning's father was a remarkably successful business man, old Joel Marshall was as famous in his way, she guessed, as Delmonico. Even Peter Bye—as poor almost, she correctly imagined, as she herself in the old days—boasted a long, a bona fide ancestry. And, besides, he was a man.

From as far back as she could remember she had had one passion, one desire unique in its singleness. And that had been to "be" somebody. And long ago she had realized that the only way out for her was marriage with a man of distinction. The distinction might consist in a career, in family, in business,—it made no difference to her. At first she thought she could achieve her desire through Philip—and she had loved him, too.

She dwelt on this a moment. How wonderful such a marriage would have been! Loving him as she did she would have let her desire for mere respectability sink into second place, discounting the fact that she would have gained it anyhow by such a union. But Joanna had interfered, and then she had married Henderson Neal, a gambler, a gambler who had ​plunged her further back than ever into the obscurity from which she was beginning to emerge.

"What a fool I was to consider Joanna's letter. Philip might, just possibly, have come to like me better—to love me." She reminded herself then, a little spasm of pain twitching across her face, that he had never since her marriage, not even since her divorce, made any attempt to get in touch with her. "And he could have a thousand times," she whispered to herself.

Now here was Peter. She rose from the couch on which she had been lying and walked restlessly, aimlessly around the room. The light from a cluster of electric bulbs on the wall struck at and brought out little flashes of radiance from the silver butterflies which chased each other up and down across the heavy folds of her black silk kimono. Her hair, parted in the middle and brushed to a smooth luster, hung in two thick short braids one over each shoulder. She caught her lip in her teeth, whitening that mysterious redness which was the only note of color in the golden oval of her face.

A mirror caught her attention and she stopped before it.

"Oh, Peter, Peter," she whispered unseeingly to the image in the glass, "dear Peter, don't you see you're my only chance? You've got to help me. It isn't as though Joanna really wanted you, or as though you'd ever go back to her."

Just as Joanna had resolved a few hours ago to cast herself on Maggie's mercy, so Maggie determined to open up her heart to Peter and beg him to remove her forever from the distastefulness of this life.

Her mother tapped on the door and came in, followed by Mis' Sparrow. The two of them, great "jiners," had just returned from one of their innumerable lodge meetings.

"It was a great sight, Maggie. You'd ought to have been there. Can't see why you mope so about the house, anyway. Don't believe you've been anywhere since you've been here this trip—'cept to Madam Harkness'."

​Maggie murmured that she didn't care to go out, she had come home to rest.

"Well, stay in the house all you want, chile. Long's I got Cousin Jinny Sparrow to go around with me I ain't carin'. Reckon we've done our share of stayin' in the house in our time, ain't we, Jinny?"

Mis' Sparrow thus addressed admitted she had: "An' I don't propose to do it no more. Come on, Sallie, I c'n see Maggie's got somethin' on her mind."

Maggie protested, but only faintly. She loved and was deeply attached to the two thin wrinkled ladies, but they and she had nothing in common. They lived a separate life from hers entirely, a life which included much attention to churches, strawberry festivals, lodge meetings, bits of gossip, funerals, visits to ladies similarly faded and wizened, and a sort of shrewd indiscriminate charity. Maggie used to envy them their utter and complete absorption in these matters.

"I'm not the one who wants to be to herself, it's you who want to get off and talk over your secrets." She shook a playful finger. Long after they had gone, curled up on her couch, she sat watching, as she used to watch in Philadelphia, the gas-heater cast its ruddy glow on the high white ceiling.

The morning brought her a momentary shock of pleasure. It was the day for Peter's letter. He had written: "I am coming to see you next week." Her spirits leaped at that. But afterwards he explained; one of his classmates had warned him to get his instruments as quickly as possible, there was going to be a great demand for steel, so he was coming to New York to see about the things he had ordered. "I'm in deadly earnest this time, Maggie, and though I don't like my professors any better than I did before, I'm making the most of my return. There's only one thing that would keep me from finishing and that would be war. It seems foolish for a colored man to fight for America, but I believe I'd like to do it. ​Only I want to pick up a commission somewhere. Not a chance for a colored fellow at Plattsburg, but some of the boys are whispering of a training camp for Negro officers at Des Moines. This is still sub rosa, so don't mention it."

Her hopes rose, fell, rose again as she scanned the letter.

"He must make some definite plans about me, if he's thinking of war."

The next Thursday saw him striding along Fifty-third Street in the direction of Maggie's house. His nervous glance at his watch justified his fear of being late. That was because he had stopped at his Aunt Susan's little apartment to talk over his plans. She was just the same as ever—stout, sane, energetic, ready to be fond of Peter. Before the afternoon was over she was worshiping him inwardly. For her nephew, suddenly conscious of his debt to her and realizing as he climbed the stairs to her rooms that here was his only real home, had taken her at the door into his arms with a burst of genuinely filial affection. She had, as she put it, "scared up" something for him to eat, and the two sitting at the little dinner table had entered into a silent appreciation of kinship such as lonely Miss Susan had wanted ever since her sister's death. Peter had told her of his break with Joanna. "I can't talk much about that, Aunt Susan—maybe some other time———"

Her kind hand on his steadied him.

"For a while I kept on playing ducks and drakes with my life—that was really why Joanna chucked me, you know—but all of a sudden I came to my senses, and now I've gone back to studying and I'll be all right yet, Aunt Sue. You and I'll have a nice little house somewhere. You'll see." He checked himself: "Unless this war intervenes. Of course I'd have to go into that. America makes me sick, you know, like I used to make you I guess, but darn it all, she is my country. My folks helped make her what she is even if they were slaves."

Aunt Susan beamed on him. "Your great-grandfather ​fought in the Revolution, Peter, and two of your uncles, my brothers, were in the Civil War. If you enlist you'll only be following their example."

He looked at his watch. "I must go, dear. Do you know, it's as though I had just discovered you to-day." Her hands were in his and he caught them up and kissed them, bending his shapely curly head a little. "If I have to go away suddenly, I'll send you a few of my things, the Bye Bible and all that, you know. But you'll see me again."

He caught up his hat and ran out.

"That Joanna is a fool and a minx," said the old lady ungratefully. "I hope he didn't suffer much. It's a wonder some other girl hasn't got him now."

Peter had not told her about Maggie. "Not worth while," he muttered to himself, taking the subway steps in four leaps. "Maggie's got to let me off. I'll ask her, I'll explain. God, what a cad I feel!" He tugged at his collar. "But she'll be better off. I know she will. Now I wonder why she married that Neal fellow instead of waiting to give Philip a chance?"

He mused over this sitting in the subway train with his watch in his hand. "I shouldn't have spent so much time with Aunt Susan." He had arranged with Morgan and some other students for a comprehensive review at his house that same night. It would never do for him not to show up on time, they were all busy fellows.

Everything depended on Maggie.

He rushed out of the subway and came swinging along the street looking for her number. As he turned abruptly toward the house he caromed into a tall, heavily set man standing idly and yet purposefully at the bottom of the steps. Peter rang the bell, conscious as he did so that the man had received his apologies only with an odd glare. One last glance over his shoulder just before he went in showed the stranger staring fixedly at the front door as though to see who opened it.

​Mis' Sparrow let him in. Maggie was in the "settin' room" at the head of the stairs, she told him as she herself went out. He ran up to arrive at a landing so dark that he knocked over a chair. The door was only slightly open, so he knocked.

"Come in," Maggie called listlessly. "Oh, is that you, Peter? I'd been expecting you all day and then finally gave you up. Was that you stumbling on the landing? I'm always at mother to keep the light going there. I don't know why she won't. Here, I'll turn it on now."

But Peter, unwilling to lose more time, begged her not to bother. "Come over here and sit down, Maggie. We've lots to talk about."

He hadn't kissed her, she noticed, observing his nervousness.

"What's the matter, Peter? You seem so excited."

"Do I? Well, I've had a full day—early breakfast, the trip, and walking around downtown—and then visiting Aunt Susan and breaking my neck to get here. That's moving pretty swift, isn't it?"

To control her own lack of composure she asked him to let her see his instruments. "My, aren't they shiny and pretty and sharp? And each one with your name on it? That's splendid. No chance of having them stolen."

"No," he replied absently, taking the little leather case from her hand and placing it still open on the table. "No, not a chance. Listen, Maggie, I've—I've got to go pretty soon, must be back in Philadelphia by nine o'clock, I—I want to talk to you frankly for a moment or two, about ourselves."

She sat expectantly. "Maggie, I don't want you to think me a cad—I'm not that really—but even if you do think me one I've come to ask you to release me. We—our affair has been a mistake, I had no business dragging you into it. I am sure you don't love me—why should you love anyone who's trifled with his life as I have? And I—I don't—you understand, Maggie, I have and always shall have the highest regard ​for you. There's nothing in the world I wouldn't do for you, for a girl of your fine qualities———"

"Except marry her," she thought.

"But I find—it was unspeakable of me to make the mistake—I find I don't love you, Maggie, as a man should love his—his wife. And that's a bad way to start a marriage, don't you think?" He thought he read scorn in her watching eyes, and hastened to fortify his excuse. "You know, I've been in love once, I know what it ought to be."

She said in a level, absolutely emotionless voice, "You want to go back to Joanna."

That name steadied him. "No, not that, Maggie dear. She wouldn't take me back; I'm not worthy of Joanna; she was quite right. I shall probably never see her again until we are both quite old. Not a chance for me there," he ended sadly.

Curiously enough, if he had himself dared to think of returning to Joanna, if he had told Maggie so, she would have released him instantly. It was not part of her plan to interfere with love. But if Peter, who would never love any one but Joanna, were to be left drifting for some other woman to pick up ten, five years from now, perhaps even immediately after the war! He would never be able to do the service for any woman in this world that he could do for her.

He misunderstood her silence. "It isn't as though you cared such a lot about me, Maggie. My leaving wouldn't really mean anything to you."

"It would mean my death," she told him. And indeed it did seem to her that if he left her alone with nothing in her life but Madame Harkness and those two poor old ladies—her mother and Mis' Sparrow—she would die of it. She would die of sheer disappointment at being balked this second time of her constant desire.

Peter stared at her in sick astonishment. "You mean it?" ​he whispered. It had never crossed his mind that she cared for him like this. Subconsciously he thought, "Suppose this had been Joanna."

Before Maggie could speak again, someone knocked on the door; one of Mrs. Ellersley's roomers stuck in a tousled head.

"'Scuse me, Miss Maggie, I heard you-all talkin' in here, en they ain't no one else in the house. Jest wanted to tell you I'm runnin' down to the corner a minute en as I mislaid my key I'm goin' t' leave the latch up, if you-all don't mind."

Maggie stared blankly. "Oh, certainly Mr. Simpson, certainly."

They heard Mr. Simpson shuffling down the stairs and knew by the sound of the slamming door that he had gone out.

What they did not know was that a moment later a tall, heavily built man, who had been lounging sidewise against the wall of a neighboring house, came forward swiftly and ran up the steps. He tried the door gently and finding to his surprise that it yielded, walked in and closed it softly behind him. For two weeks, unnoticed, fingering a door-key in his pocket, he had kept watch on that house and its inmates, until he had become acquainted with the hours of the coming and going of each. He knew Maggie was at home in the afternoons; his purpose was to wait for a time when all of them should be out but her. One by one he had watched them emerge, Mrs. Ellersley and Mis' Sparrow finally within fifteen minutes of each other.

"Those old birds," he murmured to himself, "they're just as likely as not to join up somewheres and go to one of their protracted meetin's."

Gradually the house had emptied itself with the exception of Maggie and this tousel-headed Mr. Simpson who usually left later than this. He had not seen Bye come out, but thought it likely the visitor had left in the quarter of an hour ​he had spent in the saloon around the corner where he had swallowed an unaccustomed dram to fortify his intention.

In the hall he stood blinking a moment in the darkness, then as the sound of voices penetrated to him from above he withdrew into the obscurity of the narrow oblong parlor. Evidently the fellow had not gone yet. There was plenty of time, he could wait.

Upstairs Maggie was pouring out to Peter her great obsession.

"I know I am amazing you, Peter, but I can't endure this life, this utter separation from people who mean something. Take me away from it. I'll be eternally grateful to you."

"But, good God, Maggie, what can I do? I'm only a penniless student with my way to make. We'd be poor for years. And, anyway, where do you get the idea that my name carries with it any social asset?"

She murmured something about his long line of ancestors; years ago in her presence his Aunt Susan had spoken to Mrs. Marshall about it.

"You know how your name gave you the entrance into the best families in Philadelphia."

He stared at her. Of all the crazy complexes, this was the craziest. It was indecent, this situation, agony for both of them. He tried to be firm, faltered, was lost.

"You know I think all this is idiotic, Maggie. If you think marriage with me would help you because I know the names of my great-grandparents—why, it's absurd, ridiculous. I had a lot of foreparents—we all did—but they were nobodies most of them, only slaves."

"That's what they all were."

"All who?"

"All the early settlers, weren't they, the white ones, too, indentured servants, outcasts, outlaws, men driven for one ​reason or other from their own countries? But certain ones of them have always stood out, attained prominence."

Overcome by this interpretation of history, he could make no suitable answer. He moved over to the little table, picked up his hat.

"Obviously all this will have to be gone over again. If you like I'll send my Aunt Susan to see you, she knows all sorts of people both here and in Philadelphia. If you ask her no doubt she'll manage to make it very pleasant for you. I really must go, Maggie. And of course—that is, if you insist on it—remember that I shall always be at your service."

He held her hand a moment, passed out and ran sideways, after the manner of men, down the wide staircase.

The front door closed after him.

Maggie walked back through the room. This was her great interview. Peter had been here; to prove it there was his box of instruments on the table—she ran out in the hall again, perhaps she could catch him, for he could hardly have turned the corner.

An iron hand shot out of the darkness of the landing, caught her wrist in an agonizing vise. Then some one dragged her back into the room and she looked up into the raging somber eyes of Henderson Neal. She had not been frightened at first, but the sight of that face with its snarling lips and its bloodshot eyes unnerved her. In an instinctive gesture of fear she threw up her free hand which held the little case. It slipped from her grasp and some of the knives fell on the floor.

Still holding her he stooped and picked one up.

Her self-control ebbed back to her. Somehow she had never been seriously afraid of Neal. Her scorn had been too great for that. One does not fear what one scorns.

She said to him evenly, "Henderson, let me go."

But he pulled her closer to him. "I'll never let you go again. Either you'll come with me, or I'll———"

​"You'll what?"

"I'll kill you." But the thought obviously had just come to him.

"Pooh!" she made a face at him. A trace of her old-time slanginess returned: "What's all the excitement?"

His heavy countenance lowered, darkened. "He actually Books black," she thought to herself.

"You know you can't fool me, Maggie girl. You had me believing you divorced me because I gambled, when what you wanted was to get back to that high-brow feller of yours!"

"What high-brow fellow?" She knew he was confusing Peter with Philip, but she must engage him in talk until Simpson could return.

"As though you didn't know. The one who just left here. Are you gonna give him up, Maggie?"

"I am not." Her cool decision drove him beside himself.

"You think I'm foolin', don't you? I'll show you. I know you're alone in the house. I'll give you just three seconds to tell me you'll come back to me."

"I'll let you kill me first."

She saw him look at the knife, Peter's knife, which he was still holding in his hand. A look of determination settled in his eyes.

Even then she was not frightened. People—the people one knows never do that sort of thing.

With a flash-like movement he leaned closer and brought the keen, glittering piece of steel down toward her. When she saw he was in earnest she threw her arm forward close over her breast. But the knife bit down, down into the soft flesh. Bewildered she saw the red blood spurting, gushing over her arm, her dress, a soft green dress which she had donned for Peter. Now it was turning in spots to a vivid red.

He let go of the arm, looking at her with fascinated gaze. ​Slowly she sank, turned her eyes toward him, saw him drop the knife and rush headlong out of the room.

So she was going to die, killed in a brawl with her divorced husband. The fires of her life were to go out, extinguished under the waters of commonness and degradation. After all, what did it matter? Her thoughts took an odd turn as she felt herself slipping, slipping into the blackness of what must be death.

"He must have loved me even more than I loved Philip. What a pity that I have to die without letting Philip know how dearly I loved him."