500
PARTISAN REVIEW
made quiet haste to put her arm around Margaret's shoulders as they
went into the living-room.
They were sitting in the living-room, a rather silent family for
the moment, when the other Margaret stood in the doorway. "You
may as well know," she said, "that I'm through here." And she added,
"I've had enough."
There was a little cry, as of horror, from Margaret. She looked
at her parents with a bitter and tragic triumph. Lucy said shortly,
"Very well, Margaret. Just finish up and I'll pay you." The quick
acceptance took the maid aback. Angrier than before, she turned
abruptly back into the dining room.
For the third time that evening, Margaret Elwin sat in wretched
isolation. Her father did not watch her, but he knew what she felt.
She had been told
she
might go, never to return. She saw the
gre~t
and frightening world before her. It was after all possible so to of–
fend her parents that this expulsion would follow. Elwin rose to get
a cigarette from the table near the sofa on which Margaret sat and
he passed his hand over her bright hair. The picture of the king with
the flower in his hand was in the other comer of the sofa.
It was as Elwin's hand was on his daughter's head that they
heard the crash, and Elwin felt under
his
hand how Margaret's body
experienced a kind of convulsion. He turned and saw Lucy already at
the door of the dining room, while there on the floor, in mariy
pieces, as if it had fallen with force, lay the smashed green lamb,
more white clay showing than green glaze. Lucy stooped down to the
fragments ,examining them, delicately turning them over one by one,
as if already estimating the possibility of mending.
The maid Margaret stood there, a napkin in her hand clutched
to her breast. All the genteel contempt had left her face. She looked
only frightened, as if something was now, at last, going to be done
to her. For her, almost more than for his own Margaret, Elwin felt
sad. He said, "It's all right, Margaret. Don't worry, it's all right."
It was a foolish and weak thing to say. It was not all right, and
Lucy was still crouching, heartbroken, over the pieces. But he had
had to say it, weak and foolish as it was.
"Ah, darling, don't feel too bad," Lucy said to her daughter as
she came back into the living-room, tenderly holding the smashed
thing in her hand.
But Margaret did not answer or even hear. She was staring into
the dining-room with wide, fixed eyes. "She meant to do it," she
said. "She
meant
to do it."
