“I heard that woman Henry Corder sent you was a wonder.”
“Yes she was fine.”
“Did you like her?”
“I liked her all right.”
“What didn’t you like about her?”
“Oh I liked her … sure, I liked her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Lloyd. Maggie Lloyd.”
“Married or single?”
“Married.”
“Where’d she come from?”
“I don’t know. She never said.”
“‘Never said!’ Got a husband?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Didn’t she tell you?”
“No …” abruptly.
“You’d think after a whole summer …”
“I know,” with a half smile, “but she didn’t.”
“Does Haldar like her?”
“Oh sure. Haldar and Alan are crazy about her.”
“That so.”
In the evening Alma Bower said to her mother Mrs. Pratt, “I don’t think Vera Gunnarsen’s so crazy about that Mrs. Lloyd.”
“Lloyd? … Lloyd? … oh, Lloyd. What’s wrong with her?”
“Kind of a myst’ry woman.”
“Who said?”
“Well, Vera didn’t say, but she was sorta cagey. You know Vera … Haldar and Alan are crazy about her …”
And Mrs. Pratt said to her friend Sally Bate, “Did you hear about that woman’s been working for Gunnarsens? Kind of a myst’ry woman Vera says. Vera says …”
And Mrs. Bate said to her husband, “You know that woman that’s been working for Gunnarsens…. You saw her that time you went up to Three Loon and fished. Well they say there’s some kind of myst’ry.”
“Well she’s a humdinger. She looks good to me. She’s a nice woman.”
“Vera says Haldar and the little boy are crazy about her. Vera’s not so crazy herself. I guess she’s one of these man’s women.”
“Well I’ll say they should be crazy about her, Vera too … that spaghetti of hers …”
“The way to a man’s heart.”
“No,” said Mr. Bate. “I wouldn’t say that at all. I just said it was good spaghetti.”
And Mr. Bate said to Henry Corder when he stepped into the shop for a bit of a chat “Say what’s this about that Mrs. Lloyd up at Gunnarsen’s place? My wife says there’s some kind of myst’ry. Seemed a nice kind of woman. Vera don’t seem to like her.”
Henry Corder was angry and said things about wimmin.
“Well can you beat it the way wimmin talk. Make up a thing out of whole cloth. She swang that place like nobody’s business. She’s not one of these mod’n wimmin. I got no use for mod’n wimmin,” said Henry Corder who had not left the district for forty-five years but liked the movies and knew all about modern women. “She’s just not one of these gabby talkers. Myst’ry my foot! You’d think Haldar had the second ur-r-rge on um. Gabby old cats!”
Mr. Bate agreed and said that Jim Taylor’s new barn was a very lovely structure.
Maggie dropped in to see Henry Corder, as she often did on her way home from the store where she worked, to show him something.
“How d’you like this?” she said, and let fall a small object into his palm.
He pulled down the spectacles that he wore habitually on his forehead and said “A new one on me. Like a little Coachman but not a Coachman. What is it?”
“I invented it,” said Maggie. “I thought it might be a good fly up at the lake and we’ll try it out next season. I’ll call it the Little Vera. D’you think she’ll be pleased?”
“Sure she’ll be pleased … oh say, something I want to say to you. Someone was asking me where you come from and didn’t the Gunnarsens even know … you know the kinda thing … and I think if you told them a bit … you don’t hafta tell me,” he said hurriedly, and then with a cackle of laughter “I knoo a Juke up here and he was a myst’ry all right all right and the Juke only wore one soot … sittn up there in the rowboat fishn in a good brown town soot and he cast a mean fly and I knoo a countess and she had a mustash up the North Thompson but she wasn’t no fisherman and I knoo a bank robber and that kinda put me on the spot. This big country’s a good place to get away from sassiety and if you go further north I bet you there’s lots of interesting tales. Not that …”
“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.