The three-time-a-day ever present English earthenware was only the outward cause of Vera’s fatal and persistent folly. Her jealousy devoured her – the worm that never dies, the worm consuming her, she was daily and nightly consumed. She sought aggravation.
“Alan,” called Maggie from the kitchen, “go to the root-house and fill this basket with potatoes and then find Angus and ask him to come here and have a look at the window it’s jammed or something and then come back and clear your things from the table, I need it. No … hurry … there’s a good boy … I want those potatoes now,” and Alan loped away obediently.
“You’re getting insufferable,” said a low voice behind her. Vera had come in with her madness on her. “You’re getting insufferable, giving your orders round here. Every day I hear you ordering my husband and my son about and I’ve kept silent. Ever since you got that china it’s gone to your head. You think you own the place. You’ve got beyond yourself.”
“Well …” said Maggie, turning to confront Vera whose face was dark and flushed with passion.
Maggie waited a moment and then she said coldly. “You are ridiculous and I will not argue with you. You make life impossible for your cook and if you can’t control yourself you’ll make life impossible for your husband and your child … and you will for Angus.” She leaned with seeming nonchalance on the dresser. “I will cook this dinner and then I shall go and pack up my things” (that won’t take long, she thought, and she saw the little yellow bowl). “Tomorrow Angus shall drive me to town, right in the middle of the season and you will do the best you can,” she said cruelly. “I shall not tell Haldar till tomorrow morning…. Now” (and Maggie’s coldness broke into fury) “get out of my kitchen, I’m busy and if you don’t shut the door, I will. Get out.”
“You’d dare!” exclaimed Vera.
“Yes, I’d dare. Get out,” said Maggie, advancing upon her, and Vera went, with sudden dismay.
Maggie closed the door and sat down at the kitchen table with her face in her hands. She heard, vaguely, Alan dumping the basket on the back steps and running away. Oh, she thought despairingly, after all this, I’ve failed. And now it will go to pieces and they will fall apart again. And Angus will be disillusioned by me and by the bickering that will follow, and he will go back home with his first little career over, or he will go from job to job in the upper country. Light fell on the faces of Joey and of his father who had trusted her on one short encounter. Her thought went first to others, not to herself. Her thought dwelt on Vera and the irretrievable muddle and misery that Vera and her jealousy – for it was jealousy – created. She thought of Haldar and Alan and of all that Three Loon Lake might have been to them. And then she thought of herself. For her own future, she was not afraid although she looked forward cheerlessly. It would, of course, be truly said that Mrs. Lloyd left the Gunnarsens in mid season for a rich job in the East, and she would not defend herself. It was of the past that she thought. With all her fine thinking she had not been able to cope with one unhappy human being. Human relations. Human relations. I wish that Nell Severance were here with her acid good sense. Oh to be with old Nell where no one has to act or pretend or swim around. Human relations … how they defeat us. Yes, I am defeated. She did not know how long she sat with her head in her hands.
She heard Angus coming onto the porch and Alan’s running steps. She smoothed her face with her hands as if to obliterate something.
“Angus, this window … look,” she said.