Maggie: Her Marriage Page 7

  “And now, Melindy, as you’re my born sister, d’ye think that’s right of your Maggie to be tellin’ my poor Ralph that she’s agoin’ with him, gettin’ him to leave his pore old mother, and then not goin’ with him?”

  “Here!” shouted Peter, rising like a great bear and glowering down at the woman. “First you yammer that my gal’s run off with your damn precious pup, and then you yammer because she didn’t run off with him! And see here, you old witch, I won’t have you talkin’ about my Maggie as if she’s dirt; she’s a Hamilton, hear? A Hamilton wouldn’t dirty her feet with the likes of your baby boy. And now you’ll shut your yap, or I’ll shut it for you!” He stamped out of the house, muttering fiercely.

  Susan began to weep. Sitting side by side in the little kitchen, the sisters looked exactly alike, both scrawny, shrunken, and livid, except that Susan was better and more neatly dressed.

  “It ain’t right,” Susan moaned over and over, wiping her eyes.

  “It ain’t right,” Melinda moaned, wiping her nose.

  They belabored the absent Maggie with vicious words, and when little blue-eyed Linda strolled in, Melinda caught her feverishly to her shrunken breast, began to stroke her face with hot and trembling hands. Over and over, to the bewildered child, she said that her sister was a bad girl, and Linda looked at them solemnly. She could not reconcile the marriage of Margaret to rich Johnny Hobart as being bad, but if her Ma said so, it must be so.

  The ladies went over in a body to the Holbrooks’ farm, ostensibly to console Lydia delicately, but in reality to see how “she was takin’ it, she bein’ so dead set on him.” They found Lydia quite calm, though a little pinkish about the eyes. She talked to them carelessly, her tongue amusedly barbed and disinterested when she spoke of Maggie. But she did not deceive the sharp-eyed country dames. They went away, tittering among themselves, not at all displeased to have been witness to a little scene of grief.

  But no one dared voice his opinion to John Hobart.

  People contented themselves in rallying him cautiously and respectfully about his coming marriage. If he knew their opinions, he despised them too completely to care. A man who holds the mortgage on almost every farm in the county has too great a sense of power to consider the opinions of those he holds in financial bondage. Moreover, he was too happy.

  Then, with a large gesture, he invited the whole county to his wedding.

  Three days before the wedding, Mesdames Holbrooks, Brownlow, MacKensie, and King called upon the bride. With them came Lydia, in flowered muslin over pink silk, her rose velvet hat nodding with pink roses. She held a ruffled pink parasol over her head.

  This was the first time in years that anyone had paid a formal call upon Melinda Hamilton, and when the smart buggies wound about the dusty white road and made for the shack, she was overcome with mingled dismay and gratification. Margaret was washing a huge tubful of dirty clothes behind the house, and Melinda shrilled at her:

  “Maggie! Come in and put your Sunday clo’es on! Mis’ Holbrooks and Mis’ King and Mis’ MacKensie and Mis’ Brownlow’s comin! Dear, dear, you look a sight!”

  Margaret’s best dress consisted of a simple white muslin which she had made two years before, almost transparent now from repeated scrubbings. She tied the wide sash with an angry jerk, not realizing how the pale fabric highlighted her dark loveliness. She put on her white cotton stockings and black slippers. By this time she had reached a stage of fatalistic despair. She combed her hair rapidly, the black waves of it rippling almost to her knees. She pushed it severely behind her ears, then caught it up in a huge and shining mass at the nape of her neck. Only then did she wash her face, and it emerged from the caustic suds a clear brown, stained with scarlet on the cheekbones. Then she went in to the guests.

  For a moment they stood dazzled by unusual beauty and dignity. They had all dressed in their Sunday best, but before this young woman in her plain, white gown, they became commonplace.

  Mrs. Holbrooks was the first to speak.

  “Howdy, Maggie, my dear. Thought we’d come and give you our good wishes for when you marry Johnny Hobart.”

  “Thank you,” answered Margaret quietly. She smiled at all the ladies present. Lydia gave her her hand sweetly, letting a slight smile of derision struggle on her face.

  Mrs. Holbrooks regarded Margaret with kindliness.

  “Johnny Hobart’s a fine man, Maggie. I hope you’ll be very happy. And, somehow, I think he’s gettin’ the best of the bargain, after all.”

  Margaret smiled, plaited her fingers together. She glanced at her mother, in her perpetual gray shawl, and hated her, hated her snifflings, her nervous affectations of manners. She was chattering in a high shrill voice, about “bein’ so surprised, Maggie goin’ away and all, but when gals sets their minds on gettin’ married, ’spect they didn’t ask their Ma’s permission.”

  Oh, shut up! thought Margaret with her father’s savagery.

  “Yes, it was a surprise,” said Lydia sweetly. She played prettily with the ivory handle of her closed parasol, and, catching Margaret’s eye, looked with insolent significance about the wretched room. The late autumn sunlight glowed redly on the dusty windows; flies swarmed in the illuminated dust motes. Lydia shrank in her splintered chair, lifted the hem of her dress fastidiously.

  Margaret wanted to order them out of the house. They had come to see, to go off together shaking with mirth, to shake their heads. Stupid fools, with their hands folded stiffly in their laps, as though afraid of contagion!

  When they had gone, she felt suddenly broken. There had been nothing in the house to offer the guests. The children, drawn home by an acute sense of something happening, had scuffled on the stoop, and had peered into the room at the visitors. Everything had had a nightmarish quality.

  All she desired was relief from the dull ache in her breast.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There had never been such a grand wedding in the memory of the county.

  John had “done himself proud.” The new barn, huge, and smelling of sap and sawdust, was lighted with a score of lamps and lanterns. The floor had been waxed for dancing. John had engaged a real group of waltz-musicians from Whitmore; five fiddlers, a harpist, and a drummer. A temporary platform had been built to hold the musicians and the platform itself was covered elegantly with turkey-red carpet. A table had been prepared to hold punch and glass cups in one corner of the barn. Streamers of red, white, and blue ribbon decorated every post, and even trailed downward from the roof.

  John’s housekeeper was his paternal aunt, Miss Betsy Hobart, an old woman with a forbidding face, steel eye glasses, and a rigid, humorless mouth. She kept his house meticulously and was an excellent cook. She had said no word to John about Margaret when he had been pursuing her, though her opinion of the Hamiltons was very low. He never knew her opinion of the marriage.

  Miss Betsy had a hired girl; to help with the cooking and the festivities, she engaged three more girls temporarily. For four days they had all been working. Fresh curtains stood at the windows of the old gray-timbered house. The antique walnut and mahogany had been polished until it glittered; in the dining room the table had been laid with a cloth as stiff as satin paper. There were to be twenty-five guests at the wedding dinner at five o’clock. Later, after the dancing, there would be extra swarms. Dozens of chickens were slaughtered, the best hams taken from the cellars, and wine imported from Williamsburg.

  Miss Betsy had been born in this house, and her father before her. She had said nothing about John’s plan of demolishing it, but something must have emanated from her, for at the last moment, when the wrecking commenced, he had changed his mind. He told his aunt that she would continue to live in the house. She had merely nodded. But when he had gone, she had wiped a single tear from her eye. The new house stood only half an acre away, green lawns stretching between the two residences. It was only two-thirds finished, without shade, for new saplings had just been planted about it. But the dark old house was
sunk deep in the shadow of ancient trees.

  Miss Betsy had never been very sociable. Few dared visit the Hobart house except on unusual occasions; the mistress did not encourage social intercourse. There was an old story that she had once been “promised” in her youth to an elegant young man from Williamsburg, but that her father had hated the dandy. He had been a stranger, and how Miss Betsy had met him no one knew. But they did know that he came no more to the Hobart house, and that Miss Betsy, who had been a fine, strapping girl, had never looked at another man. She had kept house for her father and her brother; she had continued to keep house when the older John had brought home some pink-and-white timid little thing from Kentucky, and then she had raised John after his mother had given up the struggle and had died when he was four years old. Whether she loved him or not, John never knew. He really never knew anything about her.

  Miss Betsy and Margaret Hamilton had met only half a dozen times in all their lives, but had never spoken. There was something about the older woman which had vaguely frightened Margaret. She had once discussed her with old Margot, but for once the latter was silent, except for one sentence. “There’s murder in Betsy.”

  Margaret had forgotten the strange remark, but on her wedding day she remembered it with an uneasy start. She was to live in the old house, confined therein with Miss Betsy until the new house was finished, which would not be until about Christmas. John had taken her there during a brief absence of Miss Betsy’s, and she had remembered the bitter silence, the hush of the carpeted corridors, the green gloom of the shrouding trees at the windows. She had hated it at once, had felt herself an intruder. She became more and more frightened; what would she and Miss Betsy have to say to each other during all the days until the new house was finished? She had no doubt that Miss Betsy hated her, and Miss Betsy’s shadow was over all her wedding day. It was only two hours before she was to leave for John’s house when Peter, catching a spare moment alone with his daughter, drew her aside.

  “Look here, Maggie, there’s this thing about old Miss Betsy. She ain’t been to visit you like the other folks hereabouts, and ain’t never invited you to visit her, neither. Now, they say all kinds of dern things about her, but you got sense, Mag. You don’t have to believe nothin’; all you got to do is mind your own business, same as she minds her’n, and you’ll git along fine with her. Besides, it ain’t long.”

  “I ’spect she hates me, Pa.”

  “That’s plumb foolishness, Mag. She don’t hate you, for the reason that she don’t know nothin’ about you. If she does hate you, it’s becuz she hates most everythin’. Just keep your head and don’t make no fusses and everythin’ will be all right.”

  Her father’s good common sense heartened Margaret, and she forgot about the forbidding old woman. The Hamilton house was in confusion all that day. The children crowded under everyone’s feet and added to the general hysteria. Peter had been able to dig up only twenty-five dollars, and so it was Melinda who had a new purple silk dress, and Linda a cheap white muslin. Margaret had made over old Margot’s ivory silk for herself. She trusted the folds of it to conceal her clumsy black slippers.

  These last few days Margaret had not thought at all. She was conscious only of haste, of feverish excitement alternating with dull lassitude.

  The day was a fair and clear one. An hour before the wedding was to take place, the little church in the hollow began to sound its bell, and the thin clamor of it rolled back from the hills. Margaret heard it as she finished dressing. Her head ached.

  John’s carryall arrived for the bride’s party, which consisted only of the bride, her parents, and her excited younger sister, Linda. Peter wore his greenish-black store clothes. His mighty wrists protruded from the sleeves of his tight coat; his black beard had been decently trimmed, and his broad-brimmed hat had been brushed until the nap was smooth. Melinda felt very elegant in her purple silk and jet bonnet with black streamers; Linda’s yellow curls streamed over the white muslin dress. Margaret had found a delicate ivory scarf in her grandmother’s box and she held it carefully folded in her hand. Her thoughts were frantic.

  God. I’m going to my wedding and it all seems like a nightmare. I wish that bell would stop ringing. I wish I’d let John buy me a real wedding dress. They’ll all laugh when I go into the church; Lydia will be there. She’ll laugh. I don’t blame them. I look a fright. I’m going to be sick, I can feel it. Ralph. Ralph. I’m going to be sick!

  Melinda suddenly became conscious that Margaret had not spoken since they had left the house. She glanced at her daughter. The girl’s head was averted; she sat straight and stiff, her head bare.

  “Time you put on your scarf, Maggie,” she said.

  After a moment, Margaret’s hands listlessly shook out the scarf.

  They could see, now, the dozens of buggies and carryalls hitched about the church. No one was visible, for all were inside. From the open door there issued the strains of a wedding march.

  From his place before the altar, John could see the blurred faces of his neighbors; he could hear the dull buzz of their whispering, could guess their muttered conjectures. He could think only that in a few minutes Margaret would be his for a lifetime.

  The pale gray rectangle of the church door darkened. Margaret and her father were coming in; her hand rested on his arm. Melinda and Linda swooped into seats near the doorway. Margaret and her father were coming down the aisle. Everything became hushed, breathless, except for the wedding march.

  Then, from scores of throats came a deep “Ah!” John widened his eyes as he looked at his approaching bride, and was astounded.

  She walked proudly, slowly, on her father’s arm. Her face was very pale in the gloom of the church. Her tight bodice with its foam of lace at the breast clung smoothly, glistening to every swell of her figure. From the bodice flowed the folds of the ivory silk, gleaming like moonlight in the dusk. On her head was the ivory gossamer of the scarf, and through its meshes could be seen the smooth blackness of her hair. About her throat was clasped the garnet necklace, and from her ears burned the garnet earrings. They threw sharp little scarlet shadows on her flesh, and trembled a little. She was incredibly beautiful.

  She moved in a dream. She did not feel the floor under her feet; she floated. She could see John’s face, could feel the swift touch of his hand. Otherwise she had lost hold on reality. She heard her voice replying to something in a hush like that of an eternal silence. The organist had tried to pedal down to a faint murmur, and the result was that the instrument had died altogether. There was only the sound of Margaret’s voice and John’s voice, and, from the distance, a long roll of unseasonable thunder.

  The moment the service ended, the rain began, accompanied by a lusty wind. The tin roof of the church rattled like gunfire; lightning glared whitely at the windows. John was kissing Margaret; he was holding her by the arms; he kissed her again and again.

  And then it happened. Miss Betsy Hobart rose from her seat in the first pew, an apparition in her black silk dress and bonnet. She came up to the bride and groom; she took Margaret by the arm and turned her about. For a long moment she stared into the girl’s face, almost fiercely. Then she leaned forward and kissed Margaret’s cheek with her cold, hard lips.

  The wedding party rattled merrily away to the Hobart house. The air had turned sharply cool; the earth was silent, the hills dull purple and sodden. But the laughter and voices and calls of the guests echoed clearly, while the sky burned brighter.

  The great warm fires in the old house were welcome. Candles and lamps flickered everywhere. Miss Betsy led Margaret up the dimness of the circular staircase to the floor above. Between two tall windows stood the huge white bed with its four posts; the spread had been folded back, the snowy sheet crisply turned, the pillows immaculate and plump. There was an air of comfort and security in the room.

  Margaret put her hand to her head in her old vague gesture and stared about her. The firelight made the old ivory stuff of her gown glow,
brought out a hidden grandeur in her figure and face. Miss Betsy watched her from the shadows; then she came forward.

  “Look here,” she said curtly, and went to the wardrobe. She flung open the door. On various hooks hung several bright feminine dresses of silk and muslin, two new cloaks, and two new bonnets. “These are yours.”

  “Did John buy those for me before—?”

  Miss Betsy closed the door sharply and looked at Margaret with a contemptuous smile.

  “No. I did,” she replied. Her voice had a hoarse hardness to it.

  There was a little silence.

  “Thank you,” said Margaret uncertainly. Miss Betsy regarded her with fierce gravity.

  “I thought, today, that you weren’t a fool,” she said. “I hope you won’t disappoint me. A scoundrel is always better than a fool.”

  Margaret smiled faintly. “I don’t think I’m a scoundrel, but I’m sure I’m not a fool.”

  “I’m not so sure of it,” Miss Betsy said shortly. “See here, that gown of yours won’t be any good for dancing. You’d better put on one of those dresses. I hope they fit you; I think they will. I remembered you well.”

  Margaret regarded her soberly for some moments.

  “Do you know, you remind me of my grandmother,” she said suddenly, and then flushed at her words.

  “I knew her a little,” Miss Betsy said. She retreated to the door, unmoved and a trifle sinister.