Part 4 (1/2)
”January!” Julie was instantly alert. ”Why, but you'll need all sorts of clothes!”
”Oh, she says there's a sewing woman always in the house,” Margaret said, almost embarra.s.sed by the still-unfolding advantages of the proposition. ”I can have her do whatever's left over.” Her father lowered his paper to give her a shrewd glance.
”I suppose somebody knows something about this Mrs. Carr-Boldt, Mother?” asked he. ”She's all right, I suppose?”
”Oh, Dad, her name's always in the papers,” Julie burst out; and the mother smiled as she said, ”We'll be pretty sure of everything before we let our Mark go!” Later, when the children had been dismissed, and he himself was going, rather stiffly, toward the stairs, Mr. Paget again voiced a mild doubt.
”There was a perfectly good reason for her hurry, I suppose? Old secretary deserted--got married--? She had good reason for wanting Mark in all this hurry?”
Mrs. Paget and her daughters had settled about the fire for an hour's delicious discussion, but she interrupted it to say soothingly, ”It was her cousin, Dad, who's going to be married, and she's been trying to get hold of just the right person--she says she's fearfully behindhand--”
”Well, you know best,” said Mr. Paget, departing a little discontentedly.
Left to the dying fire, the others talked, yawned, made a pretence of breaking up: talked and yawned again. The room grew chilly. Bruce,--oldest of the children,--dark, undemonstrative, weary,--presently came in, and was given the news, and marvelled in his turn. Bruce and Margaret had talked of their ambitions a hundred times: of the day when he might enter college and when she might find the leisure and beauty in life for which her soul hungered. Now, as he sat with his arm about her, and her head on his shoulder, he said with generous satisfaction over and over:--
”It was coming to you, Mark; you've earned it!”
At midnight, loitering upstairs, cold and yawning, Margaret kissed her mother and brother quietly, with whispered brief good-nights. But Julie, lying warm and snug in bed half-an-hour later, had a last word.
”You know, Mark, I think I'm as happy as you are--no, I'm not generous at all! It's just that it makes me feel that things do come your way finally, if you wait long enough, and that we aren't the only family in town that never has anything decent happen to it!... I'll miss you awfully, Mark, darling!... Mark, do you suppose Mother'd let me take this bed out, and just have a big couch in here? It would make the room seem so much bigger. And then I could have the girls come up here, don't you know--when they came over.... Think of you--you--going abroad! I'd simply die! I can't wait to tell Betty!... I hope to goodness Mother won't put Beck in here!... We've had this room a long time together, haven't we? Ever since Grandma died. Do you remember her canary, that Teddy hit with a plate?... I'm going to miss you terribly, Mark. But we'll write....”
CHAPTER III
On the days that followed, the miracle came to be accepted by all Weston, which was much excited for a day or two over this honor done a favorite daughter, and by all the Pagets,--except Margaret. Margaret went through the hours in her old, quiet manner, a little more tender and gentle perhaps than she had been; but her heart never beat normally, and she lay awake late at night, and early in the morning, thinking, thinking, thinking. She tried to realize that it was in her honor that a farewell tea was planned at the club, it was for her that her fellow-teachers were planning a good-bye luncheon; it was really she--Margaret Paget--whose voice said at the telephone a dozen times a day, ”On the fourteenth.--Oh, do I? I don't feel calm! Can't you try to come in--I do want to see you before I go!” She dutifully repeated Bruce's careful directions; she was to give her check to an expressman, and her suitcase to a red-cap; the expressman would probably charge fifty cents, the red-cap was to have no more than fifteen. And she was to tell the latter to put her into a taxicab.
”I'll remember,” Margaret a.s.sured him gratefully, but with a sense of unreality pressing almost painfully upon her.--One of a million ordinary school teachers, in a million little towns--and this marvel had befallen her!
The night of the Pagets' Christmas play came, a night full of laughter and triumph; and marked for Margaret by the little parting gifts that were slipped into her hands, and by the warm good wishes that were murmured, not always steadily, by this old friend and that. When the time came to distribute plates and paper napkins, and great saucers of ice cream and sliced cake, Margaret was toasted in cold sweet lemonade; and drawing close together to ”harmonize” more perfectly, the circle about her touched their gla.s.ses while they sang, ”For she's a jolly good fellow.” Later, when the little supper was almost over, Ethel Elliot, leaning over to lay her hand on Margaret's, began in her rich contralto:--
”When other lips and other hearts...”
and as they all went seriously through the two verses, they stood up, one by one, and linked arms; the little circle, affectionate and admiring, that had bounded Margaret's friends.h.i.+ps until now.
Then Christmas came, with a dark, freezing walk to the pine-spiced and candle-lighted early service in the little church, and a quicker walk home, chilled and happy and hungry, to a riotous Christmas breakfast, and a littered breakfast table. The new year came, with a dance and revel, and the Pagets took one of their long tramps through the snowy afternoon, and came back hungry for a big dinner. Then there was dressmaking,--Mrs. Schmidt in command, Mrs. Paget tireless at the machine, Julie all eager interest. Margaret, patiently standing to be fitted, conscious of the icy, wet touch of Mrs. Schmidt's red fingers on her bare arms, dreamily acquiescent as to b.u.t.tons or hooks, was totally absent in spirit.
A trunk came, Mr. Paget very anxious that the keys should not be ”fooled with” by the children. Margaret's mother packed this trunk scientifically. ”No, now the shoes, Mark--now that heavy skirt,” she would say. ”Run get mother some more tissue paper, Beck. You'll have to leave the big cape, dear, and you can send for it if you need it.
Now the blue dress, Ju. I think that dyed so prettily, just the thing for mornings. And here's your prayer book in the tray, dear; if you go Sat.u.r.day you'll want it the first thing in the morning. See, I'll put a fresh handkerchief in it--”
Margaret, relaxed and idle, in a rocker, with Duncan in her lap busily working at her locket, would say over and over:--
”You're all such angels,--I'll never forget it!” and wish that, knowing how sincerely she meant it, she could feel it a little more.
Conversation languished in these days; mother and daughters feeling that time was too precious to waste speech of little things, and that their hearts were too full to touch upon the great change impending.
A night came when the Pagets went early upstairs, saying that, after all, it was not like people marrying and going to Russia; it was not like a real parting; it wasn't as if Mark couldn't come home again in four hours if anything went wrong at either end of the line.
Margaret's heart was beating high and quick now; she tried to show some of the love and sorrow she knew she should have felt, she knew that she did feel under the hurry of her blood that made speech impossible. She went to her mother's door, slender and girlish in her white nightgown, to kiss her good-night again. Mrs. Paget's big arms went about her daughter. Margaret laid her head childishly on her mother's shoulder. Nothing of significance was said. Margaret whispered, ”Mother, I love you!” Her mother said, ”You were such a little thing, Mark, when I kissed you one day, without hugging you, and you said, 'Please don't love me just with your face, Mother, love me with your heart!'” Then she added, ”Did you and Julie get that extra blanket down to-day, dear?--it's going to be very cold.”
Margaret nodded. ”Good-night, little girl--” ”Goodnight, Mother--”
That was the real farewell, for the next morning was all confusion.