Swamp Angel (17 page)

“No no,” laughed Maggie, “No, I’m not a duke or a countess with a mustache or a bank robber, but I cooked in my father’s fishing lodge in New Brunswick and then …” Her face grew serious and then it grew sad, and Henry Corder, seeing this, said hastily “Now you don’t hafta you don’t hafta …” But Maggie did. She told him about Tom, and Polly, and her father, and the lodge lost and gone, and her working in the store, but she did not tell him about Edward Vardoe because there was no need to do that. That was as if it had not been. She told him that she was happy now, but before that, and for years, she had been so unhappy that she did not wish to think of it, and that was why, she supposed, she had said nothing to Vera or to Haldar about those years. “It was silly of me,” said Maggie, surprised, “and very blind. Of course they would want to know…. I never even thought … I’ll take the Little Vera in to them very soon some evening … and I’ll tell them. Let Vera know, will you Henry?”

Henry Corder was deeply moved by the story of Maggie. He admired and loved her because she told the story plainly and without too much emotion. The jewel of Maggie’s integrity shone in her speaking, and when, one evening, in Henry’s shabby living room, she told the Gunnarsens, with apology for her stupidity in not telling them before, Haldar was deeply moved, and Vera, too, and the story bound Vera to Maggie with Vera’s uncertain and wayward love.

For some time to come Vera did not disparage Maggie but praised her and told people how wonderful she was, and uncertainly loved her because it was plain that Maggie had no
heart for any other man and only a woman’s heart for a child. As yet, anyway whispered Vera’s malignant ghost.

H
ilda moved for a short time within a luminous cloud, such a cloud as makes hard-headed people soft-headed. She had never before given herself up to love; because she was self-protecting, mistrustful of herself and of others, she had not dared to commit herself to love. It was this fear of committing herself to a boring or a fatal relationship that had nearly delivered her into a solitude which she would have borne well enough, well enough. This she would have preferred to a committing of herself and to a breaking away, a shattering of something, a retreat from the impossible to bear; perhaps she was too cautious for she was not by nature cold. She did not know that her young mother had, without considering, thrown herself into her father’s arms at the moment that he opened them to her. But she would know, if she stopped to think, that the love which had bound her mother and her vagabond father was not the common kind. And what is the common kind? Answer that. I am too old, Hilda thought, to be so happy; but how happy I am! Dear dear Albert, how I love his face. I see that he is everything that I could ever love, not perfect, altogether charming for me,
unpredictable, yet to be trusted, perfect.

One day Hilda noticed with a curious shock that her mother’s right hand strayed involuntarily to the table, felt for something that did not appear to be there and was drawn back again. Her mother went on reading.

“Mother,” said Hilda.

“What,” said Mrs. Severance, looking up.

“Where is it? I never missed it!”

“Where’s what?”

“The Angel!”

“Oh, the Angel …” said her mother, considering. “I sent the Angel away, I sent it to Maggie.”

“Why?” asked Hilda, looking at her mother and seeing that something had happened of which she was not aware.

“Why?” echoed Mrs. Severance.

“Yes. Why did you do it?”

“You didn’t like the Angel, did you,” said Mrs. Severance after a pause.

It was as if mother and daughter had inadvertently opened the lids of boxes, one after another. Mrs. Severance would not mind doing this but Hilda did not wish to look into the boxes. “No,” she said honestly. “I never liked the Swamp Angel,” and round her and about her – instead of Albert – were the girls in the schoolyard, all those uniforms (“her mother’s a juggler isn’t it a scream her mother’s a juggler”) and always the Swamp Angel; the absences, the felt pity, the second place, her father whom she would have liked to love (amused, impatient, listening to her with one leg of his mind and body out of the door), her mother (“next holidays we’ll have a
lovely
time darling you’ll see”), and always the Swamp Angel. There was a silence and Hilda smiled a faint one-sided smile. She looked sideways and downward. Should she say it? No, she would not
say it after all these years.

“Was it some kind of a symbol?” asked Mrs. Severance speaking blindly but the truth.

Hilda looked up. “I suppose so,” she said.

“Of what, darling?” asked the mother gently, thinking There were things I should have known, things I should have seen.

“Oh,” said Hilda looking downward again, her hands going out this way that way, “I’m not clever like you, Mother, I couldn’t say.”

She is not going to tell me, said Mrs. Severance to herself, and I shall not try to make her tell me.

“Well,” she said briskly, “it was a symbol to me too and when I had that fall – you weren’t here, you didn’t see – I nearly lost the Angel to some kind of fellows who would have sold it or used it for crime – passing it on from hand to hand forever at street corners, in bedrooms – and it was so much dearer than I ever knew and when a symbol becomes too dear … oh I suspect … it can blot out the truth. Think, Hilda … no, don’t think. What I really mean is I suddenly knew I was old and it wouldn’t even need rough boys to take the Swamp Angel away from me so I hid it in bed with me, safe, and then I packed it and sent it to Maggie.”

“Why to Maggie? Why not to me?” asked Hilda, chagrined.

“You’re too near … and there was Something. And perhaps you’d have kept it and all your little boys and their friends would have played bang-bang with it in an empty lot … and left it there one evening.”

“My little boys …” began Hilda.

“And first I wrote to Maggie to throw the Angel away, and then I tore that up and asked her to keep it. But if anything
ever happens to me … if anything ever happens to me!” she repeated with scorn. “How scared we are, aren’t we, of the word ‘die,’ how mealy-mouthed. I mean when I die …” Mrs. Severance spoke with indifference, as: When I die. When I go out in the rain or the sun.

Hilda jumped up. Let us not open the boxes. Shut the lids and put the boxes away.

“I’ll make some tea,” she said.

“Hilda,” called her mother after her, “I don’t really miss it at all now. Did you hear what I say? I don’t really miss it.”

While Hilda and Mrs. Severance opened the box lids and closed them again and Mrs. Severance talked pontifically about symbol, Albert Cousins scowled at a glossy handbook dealing with the fishing industry in British Columbia. He promised himself that he’d give Bates hell for a job like that. Look at that, he said to himself, you’ve got to watch every minute or see what you get. While he was scowling at the handbook a customer waiting on the other side of the counter tapped with fingers on the counter tap-tap tap-tap, tap and with his foot tap-tap, can’t wait here all day, who does this guy think he is. The printing press roared and racketed and Albert Cousins did not hear it but noticed the tapping. Instead of adjusting his features nicely to the customer he looked up and continued scowling. He said unpleasantly “What can I do for
you.”
That is no way to treat a customer whatever he looks like.

The customer stopped tapping and said “Show me a kind of a setup for handbills … it’s the Faith Healn meetns next month out Kingsway. Reverend Mystic Pye. Somepn like this, see. Better quote me on fifty thousand … got any samples?” and he shoved across a scrawled sheet to Albert Cousins.

Five minutes later Albert had lost an order for fifty thousand cheap handbills and the customer went out with the
paper in his hand muttering as he went. Silly bugger that ain’t no way to get business.

Albert knew that he had violated a principle by showing bad temper to a customer who moreover was innocent if offensive. He was still angry about the handbook which was a high-class job, not like these handbills. Rather than let that handbook go out over their name he’d scrap it and do the whole thing again and swallow the loss. He was usually good-natured but look at this. The thought came – and chilled him – that he was as near as makes no difference to being a married man with a wife and family to support and he could not act like that, showing temper and losing business. He regarded the handbook again. There was Bates. Hi Bates!

Albert did not go about in a luminous cloud although he loved Hilda sincerely. He reserved love for after hours. He liked Hilda’s looks. She had a dark look and line that pleased him greatly as an amateur of these things each time he saw her or each time he took her out of his mind and looked at her. Hilda’s coolness had melted to a tenderness that surprised him and endeared her. Hilda’s mother was not tender. She was matter of fact and that suited him too. He felt increasing affection for her.

“Coming home?” said his father putting on his coat and hat with stained hands.

“Coming home to change,” said Albert. Now the day’s work was done; the discussion with Bates was over; he had controlled his bad temper; adjustments could be made. As he reached for his hat he released from the back of his mind (where she lived) the image of Hilda whom he would shortly see. Albert was constantly surprised to find himself a successfully engaged man. The feeling was good, irrevocable, and frightening.

“Darling,” murmured Hilda before dinner, with her face alight.

“Hello kid,” said Albert unsuitably and embraced her. As he embraced her amiably there came to him on a sudden the disturbing pang of love, a sort of celestial corkscrew. Marriage coming on.

As the wedding drew near Mrs. Severance became edgy. She thought the conformities and preparations superfluous and boring. She found herself conversing with Albert’s mother – a pretty woman – in a false way, with excessive politeness. She did not enjoy this and was glad that at least she could talk to Hilda without inhibition.

“But you don’t expect me to wear a
hat!
” she exclaimed with horror. Her cold gray eyes, habitually half closed, stared widely, and where there had been amused scrutiny was the look of one taking flight.

“But of course,” said Hilda crossly. “Now don’t pretend, Mother. You’re just being difficult. Everyone wears hats at weddings. Except men, of course.”

“Brides don’t wear hats,” objected her mother, “and I never wore a hat in my life. It’s terrible.”

“You’re not a bride, and they do wear hats. I’m going to wear a hat. Mother! Try to conform. Once in a way. I’ll take you to Miss Eager’s and she’ll have something … or she could come here in the evening and fit one. Perhaps.”

“A hat,” said Mrs. Severance. She was not even smoking. She sat dejected with her little hands on her spread knees, the monumental old woman. She looked up.

“Hilda,” she said, “I shall feel a fool. Believe me. Darling … Perhaps a bit of lace like for the Pope … I’ve never …” she brightened. “Could I stay at home?”

The stormy look that had not visited Hilda’s face lately,
but which lay in reserve, rose at once. It is extraordinary, Mrs. Severance thought, looking at her, what emotion can do to Hilda’s face. Look at this storm, all about a hat. Poor Albert.

“No, no,” said the mother hurriedly, “of course not. I didn’t mean that. I was pretending.” (“You weren’t,” said Hilda.) “And Miss Eager shall come here and it may kill me. Tonight. Don’t delay, Hilda.”

How like a monument her mother sat in front of the mirror. Imagine making a hat for a monument.

“Not a hair,” said Mrs. Severance gloomily with her hands on her knees.

“Just a
little,”
said Miss Eager, bending, with arms extended. “You’ll have your hair waved, of course. It should show a
little
.”

“Never!” said Mrs. Severance. “Never! I will never have my hair waved. I declare it. Cover it up.”

“Mother,” said Hilda, “with no hair showing at all you’ll look like a … a …”

“Like a Flemish primitive,” said her mother. “There are worse things … that will do … take it away. I’d like some brandy … the big goblet, Hilda.”

“Not just a bit of feather?” asked Miss Eager tentatively, half in flight.

“A
feather! My
God woman, I’m civilized!” Mrs. Severance was certainly in a very bad temper.

As she sipped her brandy she said to herself I hate women…. I never needed the Swamp Angel so much in my life…. I was a melodramatic fool to send it away. Nevertheless, and she looked at her gray face, there are compensations. Death will be, on the whole, a treat…. Hilda is getting married and she seems to be happy…. Albert is a lamb that
I must keep my hands off. My funny Alberto remains for a while. A hat forsooth! I miss Maggie….

She sniffed at the goblet, then she sipped again, and the brandy spread its hot little blessings all through her.

Personal Column

After the insertion of the above advertisement Edward Vardoe began to revive. He entered his dream world.

A
car, containing Edward Vardoe and a blonde, drew up at the door of the apartment building. The two people seemed to be nervous or perhaps they did not know each other very well.

“Well here we are. Won’t you come in … oh pardon
me,”
said Edward Vardoe, opening the door of the car and hopping about to facilitate the lady’s descent. How ingratiating he was.

“Sure,” said the blonde, easing herself out of the car.

“Y
ou’re a lovely little lady. A real womanly woman,” said Edward Vardoe thinking also of Ireen.

“T
his coffee’s punk,” said Edward Vardoe.

“Make it yourself then,” said the blonde, turning sulky.

“B
ut you
got
a hat already! You got
two
hats!” objected Edward Vardoe looking at her sharply.