THE OTHER MARGARET
491
She said it as if she had waited quite long enough, using the
lumpish, martyred, unsuccessful irony of thirteen, her eyebrows very
weary, the expression of her mouth very dry. Lucy opened her eyes
and sat up straight in her chair. She took the cfrink from Margaret
and
~miled.
"Thank you, dear," she said. For the moment it was as
if Margaret were the mother, full of rectitude and manners, and
Lucy the careless daughter.
That Lucy was being careless even her husband felt. No one
could say of their Negro maid, the other Margaret, that she was a
pleasant person. Even Elwin would have to admit to a sense of strain
in her presence. But surely Lucy took too passionate a notice of her.
Elwin felt that this was not in keeping with his wife's nature. But no,
that was really not so. It was often disquieting to Elwin, the willing–
ness that Lucy had to get angry even with simple people when she
thought they were not behaving well. And lately she had been full
of stories about the nasty and insulted temper that was being shown
by the people one daily dealt with. Only yesterday, for example, there
had been her story of the soda-fountain man who made a point of
mopping and puttering and changing the position of pieces of pie and
only after he had shown his indifference and independence would
take your order. Elwin had to balance against the notice his wife
took
of
such things the deep, literal, almost childish way she spoke of
them, the innocence of her passion. But this particular story of the
soda-fountain clerk had really distressed him, actually embarassftlg
him for Lucy, and he had pointed out to her how frequent such
stories had become. She had simply stared at
him,
the fact was so
very clear. "Why, it's the war," she said. "People are just much
meaner since the war." And when his rebuke had moved on to the
matter of the maid Margaret, Lucy had said in the most matter-of–
fact way, "Why, she just hates us." And she had shocked Elwin by
giving, just like any middle-class housewife, a list of all the precious
things Margaret had broken. "And observe," Lucy had said, "that
never once has she broken anything cheap or ordinary, only the
things I've pointed out to her that needed care."
Elwin had to admit that the list made a case. Still, even if the
number of the green Wedgwood coffee cups had been much
diminished, cups for which Elwin himself had a special fondness, and
even
if
the Persian bowl had been dropped and the glass urn they had
brought from Sweden had been cracked in the sink, they must surely
not talk of such things. The very costliness of the objects which
proved Margaret's animosity, the very affection which the Elwins
felt for them, made the whole situation impossible to consider.
