Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson

Edward in his helplessness and his meanness and his stupidity and she thought again that life is unfair. “It’s not fair … not fair,” she murmured, and then she went into the kitchen and made a tall pot of cocoa. She took the cocoa on a small tray to her bedroom. She put the tray on a table beside her bed and climbed heavily onto the bed. There she settled down, a little tired, and there her daughter found her when she came in.
    “Well, Edward Vardoe was putty in the hand,” said Mrs.Severance. “He’s an unpleasant object but worth salvation I suppose. I quite see it was the only thing that Maggie could do. It’s usually compassion of some kind that starts it in a case like that … I’ve known it before … if it weren’t for Maggie I wouldn’t have touched him … but I swear to you, Hilda, he was headed for murder if ever he found her. I made a good guess and he gave himself away. It’s self-pity, not love, that hurts him. But I opened vistas … vistas …” waving her little pointed hands vaguely. “This cocoa’s cold … hot it up or make some fresh.” She lighted a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old one. “You can bring me a cup while you’re about it. I’m exhausted I tell you. Saving souls. Very tiring.” And she settled on her pillows.
    Hilda, so slim, so dark, looked at her mother and then she went and made a pot of tea regardless. She loved her mother dearly and hated her a little. People should not be so powerful. People should not always succeed, and so she made tea.
    Hilda walked through the parlor and there she saw the handle of the Swamp Angel which lay in its accustomed place. The mood induced in Hilda when she saw her mother toying with the Angel was an emanation from the Angel and from many years. Memory often and often recalled had created for her round the Swamp Angel a mood which resembled memory inasmuch as it drew the past into the present. She could, if she wished, at any moment, see herself clearly at school again where she seemed to have lived throughout so much of her childhood while her parents went to strange places. She was aware of the outline of herself in a uniform from which head and arms and legs protruded, and within which was the person – herself – who looked at the girls whom she saw more clearly in the playground. This child who was herself said a little boastfully, “That’s nothing, my mother can do trick jugglingwith real revolvers on a real stage!”
    There was a movement among the girls. “And does your father juggle too?”
    “No, my father’s not a juggler, he’s a gentleman – and my mother doesn’t juggle any more – not at the circus. But she juggles.”
    Hilda saw the look pass from one to another and saw that the boast had tipped over and fallen on the wrong side. She could not tell why. She could see the girls, now, looking at her and talking together. The looks from one to another became smiles, and then “Her mother’s a juggler and her father’s a gentleman” … “Did you hear what Hilda Severance said – her mother’s on the stage, she juggles revolvers and her father’s a gentleman” … “What did she say? What did she say?” … “Her mother’s a juggler!” … “Her mother’s a
juggler?” …
“Isn’t it a scream, her mother’s a juggler!” And the words became her anguish, “Her mother’s a juggler!” Everyone seemed to think it was very funny, a joke, a scream, that Hilda Severance’s mother should be a juggler and that she had said “My father’s a gentleman!” “And she hasn’t got a real home!” said the girls. “Hush, dear,” said a teacher.
    But in the holidays, then she and her father and mother were often together … oh in the holidays, what a rushing back, arriving a day or two late, joining the schoolgirl, bringing presents, enameled boxes, a little fan, and – later – pearls; leaving a day or two early, bringing, too, with the mother, an uneasy divided allegiance (there is