“Well, I don't blame you, but I don't see what is going to be done.”
“I don't,” said Maria, helplessly. She reflected how she had disposed already of her small stipend, and would not have any more for some time, and how her own clothing no more than sufficed for her.
“I can't give her a thing,” said Aunt Maria. “I'm wearin' flannels myself that are so patched there isn't much left of the first of 'em, and it's just so with the rest of my clothes. I'm wearin' a petticoat made out of a comfortable my mother made before Henry was married. It was quilted fine, and had a small pattern, if it is copperplate, but I don't darse hold my dress up only just so. I wouldn't have anybody know it for the world. And I know Eunice ain't much better off. They had that big doctor's bill, and I know she's patched and darned so she'd be ashamed of her life if she fell down on the ice and broke a bone. I tell you what it is, those other Ramseys ought to do something. I don't care if they are such distant relations, they ought to do something.”
After supper Maria and her aunt went into the other side of the house, and Aunt Maria, who had been waxing fairly explosive, told the tale of poor little Jessy Ramsey going to school with no undergarments.
“It's a shame!” said Eunice, who was herself nervous and easily aroused to indignation. She sat up straight and the hollows on her thin cheeks blazed, and her thin New England mouth tightened.
“George Ramsey ought to do something if he is earning as much as they say he is,” said Aunt Maria.
“That is so,” said Eunice. “It doesn't make any difference if they are so distantly related. It is the same name and the same blood.”
Henry Stillman laughed his sardonic laugh. “You can't expect the flowers to look out for the weeds,” he said. “George Ramsey and his mother are in full blossom; they have fixed up their house and are holding up their heads. You can't expect them to look out for poor relations who have gone to the bad, and done worse—got too poor to buy clothes enough to keep warm.”
Maria suddenly sprang to her feet. “I know what I am going to do,” she announced, with decision, and made for the door.
“What on earth are you going to do?” asked her aunt Maria.
“I am going straight in there, and I am going to tell them how that poor little thing came to school to-day, and tell them they ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
Before the others fairly realized what she was doing, Maria was out of the house, running across the little stretch which intervened. Her aunt Maria called after her, but she paid no attention. She was at that moment ringing the Ramsey bell, with her pretty, uncovered hair tossing in the December wind.
“She will catch her own death of cold,” said Aunt Maria, “running out without anything on her head.”
“She will just get patronized for her pains,” said Eunice, who had a secret grudge against the Ramseys for their prosperity and their renovated house, a grudge which she had not ever owned to her inmost self, but which nevertheless existed.
“She doesn't stop to think one minute; she's just like her father about that,” said Aunt Maria.
Henry Stillman said nothing. He took up his paper, which he had been reading when Maria and his sister entered.
Meantime, Maria was being ushered into the Ramsey house by a maid who wore a white cap. The first thing which she noticed as she entered the house was a strong fragrance of flowers. That redoubled her indignation.
“These Ramseys can buy flowers in midwinter,” she thought, “while their own flesh and blood go almost naked.”
She entered the room in which the flowers were, a great bunch of pink carnations in a tall, green vase. The room was charming. It was not only luxurious, but gave evidences of superior qualities in its owners. It was empty when Maria entered, but soon Mrs. Ramsey and her son came in. Maria recognized with a start her old acquaintance, or rather she did not recognize him. She would not have known him at all had she not seen him in his home. She had not seen him before, for he had been away ever since she had come to Amity. He had been West on business for his bank. Now he at once stepped forward and spoke to her.
“You are my old friend, Miss Edgham, I think,” he said. “Allow me to present my mother.”
Maria bowed perforce before the very gentle little lady in a soft lavender cashmere, with her neck swathed in laces, but she did not accept the offered seat, and she utterly disregarded the glance of astonishment which both mother and son gave at her uncovered shoulders and head. Maria's impetuosity had come to her from two sides. When it was in flood, so to speak, nothing could stop it.
“No, thank you, I can't sit down,” she said. “I came on an errand. You are related, I believe, to the other Ramseys. The children go to my school. There are Mamie and Franky and Jessy.”
“We are very distantly related, and, on the whole, proud of the distance rather than the relationship,” said George Ramsey, with a laugh.
Then Maria turned fiercely upon him. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said she.
The young man stared at her.
Maria persisted. “Yes, you ought,” she said. “I don't care how distant the relationship is, the same blood is in your veins, and you bear the same name.”
“Why, what is the matter?” asked George Ramsey, still in a puzzled, amused voice.
Maria spoke out. “That poor little Jessy Ramsey,” said she, “and she is the prettiest and brightest scholar I have, too, came to school to-day without a single stitch of clothing under her dress. It is a wonder she didn't die. I don't know but she will die, and if she does it will be your fault.”
George Ramsey's face suddenly sobered; his mother's flushed. She looked at him, then at Maria, almost with fright. She felt really afraid of this forcible girl, who was so very angry and so very pretty in her anger. Maria had never looked prettier than she did then, with her cheeks burning and her blue eyes flashing with indignation and defiance.
“That is terrible, such a day as this,” said George Ramsey.
“Yes; I had no idea they were quite so badly off,” murmured his mother.
“You ought to have had some idea,” flashed out Maria.
“We had not, Miss Edgham,” said George, gently. “You must remember how very distant the relationship is. I believe it begins with the fourth generation from myself. And there are other reasons—”
“There ought not to be other reasons,” Maria said.
Mrs. Ramsey looked with wonder and something like terror and aversion at this pretty, violent girl, who was espousing so vehemently, not to say rudely, the cause of the distant relatives of her husband's family. The son, however, continued to smile amusedly at Maria.
“Won't you sit down, Miss Edgham?” he said.
“Yes, won't you sit down?” his mother repeated, feebly.
“No, thank you,” said Maria. “I only came about this. I—I would do something for the poor little thing myself, but I haven't any money now, and Aunt Maria would, and Uncle Henry, and Aunt Eunice, but they—”
All at once Maria, who was hardly more than a child herself, and who had been in reality frightfully wrought up over the piteous plight of the other child, lost control of herself. She began to cry. She put her handkerchief to her face and sobbed helplessly.
“The poor little thing! oh, the poor little thing!” she panted, “with nobody in the world to do anything for her, and her own people so terribly wicked. I—can't bear it!”
The first thing she knew, Maria was having a large, soft cloak folded around her, and somebody was leading her gently to the door. She heard a murmured good-night, to which she did not respond except by a sob, and was led, with her arm rather closely held, along the sidewalk to her own door. At the door George Ramsey took her hand, and she felt something pressed softly into it.
“If you will please buy what the poor little thing needs to make her comfortable,” he whispered.
“Thank you,” Maria replied, faintly. She began to be ashamed of her emotion.
“You must not think that my mother and I were knowing to this,” George Ramsey said. “We are really such very distant relations that the name alone is the only bond between us; still, on general principles, if the name had been different, I would do what I could. Such suffering is terrible. You must not think us hard-hearted, Miss Edgham.”
Maria looked up at the young fellow's face, upon which an electric light shone fully, and it was a good face to see. She could not at all reconcile it with her memory of the rather silly little boy with the patched trousers, with whom she had discoursed over the garden fence. This face was entirely masterly, dark and clean-cut, with fine eyes, and a distinctly sweet expression about the mouth which he had inherited from his mother.
“I suppose I was very foolish,” Maria said, in a low voice. “I am afraid I was rude to your mother. I did not mean to be, but the poor little thing, and this bitter day, and I went home with her, and there was a dreadful man there who offered me money to buy things for her—”
“I hope you did not take it,” George Ramsey said, quickly.
“No.”
“I am glad of that. They are a bad lot. I don't know about this little girl. She may be a survival of the fittest, but take them all together they are a bad lot, if they are my relatives. Good-night, Miss Edgham, and I beg you not to distress yourself about it all.”
“I am very sorry if I was rude,” Maria said, and she spoke like a little girl.
“You were not rude at all,” George responded, quickly. “You were only all worked up over such suffering, and it did you credit. You were not rude at all.” He shook hands again with Maria. Then he asked if he might call and see her sometime. Maria said yes, and fled into the house.
She went into her aunt Maria's side of the house, and ran straight up-stairs to her own room. Presently she heard doors opening and shutting and knew that her aunt was curiously following her from the other side. She came to Maria's door, which was locked. Aunt Maria was not surprised at that, as Maria always locked her door at night—she herself did the same.
“Have you gone to bed?” called Aunt Maria.
“Yes,” replied Maria, who had, indeed, hurriedly hustled herself into bed.
“Gone to bed early as this?” said Aunt Maria.
“I am dreadfully tired,” replied Maria.
“Did they give you anything? Why didn't you come into the other side and tell us about it?”
“Mr. George Ramsey gave me ten dollars.”
“Gracious!” said Aunt Maria.
Presently she spoke again. “What did they say?” she asked.
“Not much of anything.”
“Gave you ten dollars?” said Aunt Maria. “Well, you can get enough to make her real comfortable with that. Didn't you get chilled through going over there without anything on?”
“No,” replied Maria, and as she spoke she realized, in the moonlit room, a mass of fur-lined cloak over a chair. She had forgotten to return it to George Ramsey. “I had Mrs. Ramsey's cloak coming home,” she called.
“Well, I'm glad you did. It's awful early to go to bed. Don't you want something?”
“No, thank you.”
“Don't you want me to heat a soapstone and fetch it up to you?”
“No, thank you.”
“Well, good-night,” said Aunt Maria, in a puzzled voice.
“Good-night,” said Maria. Then she heard her aunt go away.
It was a long time before Maria went to sleep. She awoke about two o'clock in the morning and was conscious of having been awakened by a strange odor, a combined odor of camphor and lavender, which came from Mrs. Ramsey's cloak. It disturbed her, although she could not tell why. Then all at once she saw, as plainly as if he were really in the room, George Ramsey's face. At first a shiver of delight came over her; then she shuddered. A horror, as of one under conviction of sin, came over her. It was as if she repelled an evil angel from her door, for she remembered all at once what had happened to her, and that it was a sin for her even to dream of George Ramsey; and she had allowed him to come into her waking dreams. She got out of bed, took up the soft cloak, thrust it into her closet, and shut the door. Then she climbed shivering back into bed, and lay there in the moonlight, entangled in the mystery of life.
Chapter XIX
The very next day, which was Saturday, and consequently a holiday, Maria went on the trolley to Westbridge, which was a provincial city about six miles from Amity. She proposed buying some clothing for Jessy Ramsey with the ten dollars which George Ramsey had given her. Her aunt Eunice accompanied her.
“George Ramsey goes over to Westbridge on the trolley,” said Eunice, as they jolted along—the cars were very well equipped, but the road was rough—“and I shouldn't wonder if he was on our car coming back.”
Maria colored quickly and looked out of the window. The cars were constructed like those on steam railroads, with seats facing towards the front, and Maria's aunt had insisted upon her sitting next to the window because the view was in a measure new to her. She had not been over the road many times since she had come to Amity. She stared out at the trimly kept country road, lined with cheap Queen Anne houses and the older type of New England cottages and square frame houses, and it all looked strange to her after the red soil and the lapse towards Southern ease and shiftlessness of New Jersey. But nothing that she looked upon was as strange as the change in her own heart. Maria, from being of an emotional nature, had many times considered herself as being in love, young as she was, but this was different. When her aunt Eunice spoke of George Ramsey she felt a rigid shiver from head to foot. It seemed to her that she could not see him nor speak to him, that she could not return to Amity on the same car. She made no reply at first to her aunt's remark, but finally she said, in a faint voice, that she supposed Mr. Ramsey came home after bank hours at three o'clock.
“He comes home a good deal later than that, as a general thing,” said Eunice. “Oftener than not I see him get off the car at six o'clock. I guess he stays and works after bank hours. George Ramsey is a worker, if there ever was one. He's a real likely young man.”
Maria felt Eunice's eyes upon her, and realized that she was thinking, as her aunt Maria had done, that George Ramsey would be a good match for her. A sort of desperation seized upon her.
“I don't know what you mean by likely,” Maria said, impertinently, in her shame and defiance.
“Don't know what I mean by likely?”
“No, I don't. People in New Jersey don't say likely.”
“Why, I mean he is a good young man, and likely to turn out well,” responded Eunice, rather helplessly. She was a very gentle woman, and had all her life been more or less intimidated by her husband's and sister-in-laws' more strenuous natures; and, if the truth were told, she stood in a little awe of this blooming young niece, with her self-possession and clothes of the New York fashion.
“I don't see why he is more likely, as you call it, than any other young man,” Maria returned, pitilessly. “I should call him a very ordinary young man.”
“He isn't called so generally,” Eunice said, feebly.
They were about half an hour reaching Westbridge. Eunice by that time had plucked up a little spirit. She reflected that Maria knew almost nothing about the shopping district, and she herself had shopped there all her life since she had been of shopping age. Eunice had a great respect for the Westbridge stores, and considered them distinctly superior to those of Boston. She was horrified when Maria observed, shortly before they got off the car, that she supposed they could have done much better in Boston.
“I guess you will find that Adams & Wood's is as good a store as any you could go to in New York,” said Eunice. “Then there is the Boston Store, too, and Collins & Green's. All of them are very good, and they have a good assortment. Hardly anybody in Amity goes anywhere else shopping, they think the Westbridge stores so much better.”
“Of course it is cheaper to come here,” said Maria, as they got off the car in front of Adams & Wood's.
“That isn't the reason,” said Eunice, eagerly. “Why, Mrs. Judge Saunders buys 'most everything here; says she can do enough sight better than she can anywhere else.”
“If the dress Mrs. Saunders had on at the church supper was a sample, she dresses like a perfect guy,” said Maria, as they entered the store, with its two pretentious show-windows filled with waxen ladies dressed in the height of the fashion, standing in the midst of symmetrically arranged handkerchiefs and rugs.
Maria knew that she was even cruelly pert to her aunt, but she felt like stinging—like crowding some of the stings out of her own heart. She asked herself was ever any girl so horribly placed as she was, married, and not married; and now she had seen some one else whom she must shun and try to hate, although she wished to love him. Maria felt instinctively, remembering the old scenes over the garden fence, and remembering how she herself had looked that very day as she started out, with her puffy blue velvet turban rising above the soft roll of her fair hair and her face blooming through a film of brown lace, and also remembering George Ramsey's tone as he asked if he might call, that if she were free that things might happen with her as with other girls; that she and George Ramsey might love each other, and become engaged; that she might save her school money for a trousseau, and by-and-by be married to a man of whom she should be very proud. The patches on George Ramsey's trousers became very dim to her. She admired him from the depths of her heart.
“I guess we had better look at flannels first,” Eunice said. “It won't do to get all wool, aside from the expense, for with that Ramsey woman's washing it wouldn't last any time.”
She and her aunt made most of their purchases in Adams & Wood's. They succeeded in obtaining quite a comfortable little outfit for Jessy Ramsey, and at last boarded a car laden with packages. Eunice had a fish-net bag filled to overflowing, but Maria, who, coming from the vicinity of New York, looked down on bags, carried her parcels in her arms.
Directly they were seated in the car Eunice gave Maria a violent nudge with her sharp elbow. “He's on this car,” she whispered in her ear, with a long hiss which seemed to penetrate the girl's brain.
Maria made an impatient movement.
“Don't you think you ought to just step over and thank him?” whispered Eunice. “I'll hold your bundles. He's on the other side, a seat farther back. He raised his hat to me.”
“Hush! I can't here.”
“Well, all right, but I thought it would look sort of polite,” said Eunice. Then she subsided. Once in a while she glanced back at George Ramsey, then uneasily at her niece, but she said nothing more.
The car was crowded. Workmen smelling of leather clung to the straps. One, in the aisle next Maria, who sat on the outside this time, leaned fairly against her. He was a good-looking young fellow, but he had a heavy jaw. He held an unlighted pipe in his mouth, and carried a two-story tin dinner-pail. Maria kept shrinking closer to her aunt, but the young man pressed against her all the more heavily. His eyes were fixed with seeming unconsciousness ahead, but a furtive smile lurked around his mouth.
George Ramsey was watching. All at once he arose and quietly and unobtrusively came forward, insinuated himself with a gentle force between Maria and the workman, and spoke to her. The workman muttered something under his breath, but moved aside. He gave an ugly glance at George, who did not seem to see him at all. Presently he sat down in George's vacated seat beside another man, who said something to him with a coarse chuckle. The man growled in response, and continued to scowl furtively at George, who stood talking to Maria. He said something about the fineness of the day, and Maria responded rather gratefully. She was conscious of an inward tumult which alarmed her, and made her defiant both at the young man and herself, but she could not help responding to the sense of protection which she got from his presence. She had not been accustomed to anything like the rudeness of the young workman. In New Jersey caste was more clearly defined. Here it was not defined at all. An employé in a shoe-factory had not the slightest conception that he was not the social equal of a school-teacher, and indeed in many cases he was. There were by no means all like this one, whose mere masculine estate filled him with entire self-confidence where women were concerned. In a sense his ignorance was pathetic. He had honestly thought that the pretty, strange girl must like his close contact, and he felt aggrieved that this other young man, who did not smell of leather and carried no dinner-pail, had ousted him. He viewed Maria's delicate profile with a sort of angry tenderness.
“Say, she's a beaut, ain't she?” whispered the man beside him, with a malicious grin, and again got a surly growl in response.
Maria finally, much to her aunt's delight, said to George that they had been shopping, and thanked him for the articles which his money had enabled them to buy.
“The poor little thing can go to school now,” said Maria. There was gratitude in her voice, and yet, oddly enough, still a tinge of reproach.
“If mother and I had dreamed of the true state of affairs we would have done something before,” George Ramsey said, with an accent of apology; and yet he could not see for the life of him why he should be apologetic for the poverty of these degenerate relatives of his. He could not see why he was called upon to be his brother's keeper in this case, but there was something about Maria's serious, accusing gaze of blue eyes, and her earnest voice, that made him realize that he could prostrate himself before her for uncommitted sins. Somehow, Maria made him feel responsible for all that he might have done wrong as well as his actual wrong-doing, although he laughed at himself for his mental attitude. Suddenly a thought struck him. “When are you going to take all these things (how you ever managed to get so much for ten dollars I don't understand) to the child?” he asked, eagerly.
Maria replied, unguardedly, that she intended to take them after supper that night. “Then she will have them all ready for Monday,” she said.
“Then let me go with you and carry the parcels,” George Ramsey said, eagerly.
Maria stiffened. “Thank you,” she said, “but Uncle Henry is going with me, and there is no need.”
Maria felt her aunt Eunice give a sudden start and make an inarticulate murmur of remonstrance, then she checked herself. Maria knew that her uncle walked a mile from his factory to save car-fare; she knew also that she was telling what was practically an untruth, since she had made no agreement with her uncle to accompany her.
“I should be happy to go with you,” said George Ramsey, in a boyish, abashed voice.
Maria said nothing more. She looked past her aunt out of the window. The full moon was rising, and all at once all the girl's sweet light of youthful romance appeared again above her mental horizon. She felt that it would be almost heaven to walk with George Ramsey in that delicious moonlight, in the clear, frosty air, and take little Jessy Ramsey her gifts. Maria was of an almost abnormal emotional nature, although there was little that was material about the emotion. She dreamed of that walk as she might have dreamed of a walk with a fairy prince through fairy-land, and her dream was as innocent, but it unnerved her. She said again, in a tremulous voice, that she was very much obliged, and murmured something again about her uncle Henry; and George Ramsey replied, with a certain sober dignity, that he should have been very happy.
Soon after that the car stopped to let off some passengers, and George moved to a vacant seat in front. He did not turn around again. Maria looked at his square shoulders and again gazed past her aunt at the full orb of the moon rising with crystalline splendor in the pale amber of the east. There was a clear gold sunset which sent its reflection over the whole sky.
Presently, Eunice spoke in her little, deprecating voice, which had a slight squeak.
“Did you speak to your uncle Henry about going with you this evening?” she asked.
“No, I didn't,” admitted Maria, reddening, “but I knew he would be willing.”
“I suppose he will be,” said Eunice. “But he does get home awful tuckered out Saturday nights, and he always takes his bath Saturday nights, too.”
Eunice looked out of the window with a slight frown. She adored her husband, and the thought of that long walk for him on his weary Saturday evening, and the possible foregoing of his bath, troubled her.
“I don't believe George Ramsey liked it,” she whispered, after a little.
“I can't help it if he didn't,” replied Maria. “I can't go with him, Aunt Eunice.”
As they jolted along, Maria made up her mind that she would not ask her uncle to go with her at all; that she would slip out unknown to Aunt Maria and ask the girl who lived in the house on the other side, Lily Merrill, to go with her. She thought that two girls need not be afraid, and she could start early.
As she parted from her aunt Eunice at the door of the house, after they had left the car (Eunice's door was on the side where the Ramseys lived, and Maria's on the Merrill side), she told her of her resolution.
“Don't say anything to Uncle Henry about going with me,” said she.
“Why, what are you going to do?”
“I'll get Lily Merrill. I know she won't mind.”
Maria and Lily Merrill had been together frequently since Maria had come to Amity, and Eunice accounted them as intimate. She looked hesitatingly a second at her niece, then she said, with an evident air of relief:
“Well, I don't know but you can. It's bright moonlight, and it's late in the season for tramps. I don't see why you two girls can't go together, if you start early.”
“We'll start right after supper,” said Maria.
“I would,” said Eunice, still with an air of relief.
Maria took her aunt's fish-net bag, as well as her own parcels, and carried them around to her aunt Maria's side of the house, and deposited them on the door-step. There was a light in the kitchen, and she could see her aunt Maria's shadow moving behind the curtain, preparing supper. Then she ran across the yard, over the frozen furrows of a last year's garden, and knocked at the side-door of the Merrill house.
Lily herself opened the door, and gave a little, loving cry of surprise. “Why, is it you, dear?” she said.
“Yes. I want to know if you can go over the river with me to-night on an errand?”
“Over the river? Where?”
“Oh, only to Jessy Ramsey's. Aunt Eunice and I have been to Westbridge and bought these things for her, and I want to carry them to her to-night. I thought maybe you would go with me.”
Lily hesitated. “It's a pretty lonesome walk,” said she, “and there are an awful set of people on the other side of the river.”
“Oh, nonsense!” cried Maria. “You aren't afraid—we two together—and it's bright moonlight, as bright as day.”
“Yes, I know it is,” replied Lily, gazing out at the silver light which flooded everything, but she still hesitated. A light in the house behind gave her a background of light. She was a beautiful girl, prettier than Maria, taller, and with a timid, pliant grace. Her brown hair tossed softly over her big, brown eyes, which were surmounted by strongly curved eyebrows, her nose was small, and her mouth, and she had a fascinating little way of holding her lips slightly parted, as if ready for a loving word or a kiss. Everybody said that Lily Merrill had a beautiful disposition, albeit some claimed that she lacked force. Maria dominated her, although she did not herself know it. Lily continued to hesitate with her beautiful, startled brown eyes on Maria's face.
“Aren't you afraid?” she said.
“Afraid? No. What should I be afraid of? Why, it's bright moonlight! I would just as soon go at night as in the daytime when the moon is bright.”
“That is an awful man who lives at the Ramseys'!”
“Nonsense! I guess if he tried to bother us, Mrs. Ramsey would take care of him,” said Maria. “Come along, Lily. I would ask Uncle Henry, but it is the night when he takes his bath, and he comes home tired.”
“Well, I'll go if mother will let me,” said Lily.
Then Lily called to her mother, who came to the sitting-room door in response.
“Mother,” said Lily, “Maria wants me to go over to the Ramseys', those on the other side of the river, after supper, and carry these things to Jessy.”
“Aren't you afraid?” asked Lily's mother, as Lily herself had done. She was a faded but still pretty woman who had looked like her daughter in her youth. She was a widow with some property, enough for her Lily and herself to live on in comfort.
“Why, it's bright moonlight, Mrs. Merrill,” said Maria, “and the Ramseys live just the other side of the river.”
“Well, if Lily isn't afraid, I don't care,” said Mrs. Merrill. She had an ulterior motive for her consent, of which neither of the two girls suspected her. She was smartly dressed, and her hair was carefully crimped, and she had, as always in the evening, hopes that a certain widower, the resident physician of Amity, Dr. Ellridge, might call. He had noticed her several times at church suppers, and once had walked home with her from an evening meeting. Lily never dreamed that her mother had aspirations towards a second husband. Her father had been dead ten years; the possibility of any one in his place had never occurred to her; then, too, she looked upon her mother as entirely too old for thoughts of that kind. But Mrs. Merrill had her own views, which she kept concealed behind her pretty, placid exterior. She always welcomed the opportunity of being left alone of an evening, because she realized the very serious drawback that the persistent presence of a pretty, well-grown daughter might be if a wooer would wish to woo. She knew perfectly well that if Dr. Ellridge called, Lily would wonder why he called, and would sit all the evening in the same room with her fancy-work, entirely unsuspicious. Lily might even think he came to see her. Mrs. Merrill had a measure of slyness and secrecy which her daughter did not inherit. Lily was not brilliant, but she was as entirely sweet and open as the flower for which she was named. She was emotional, too, with an innocent emotionlessness, and very affectionate. Mrs. Merrill made almost no objection to Lily's going with Maria, but merely told her to wrap up warmly when she went out. Lily looked charming, with a great fur boa around her long, slender throat, and red velvet roses nestling under the brim of her black hat against the soft puff of her brown hair. She bent over her mother and kissed her.
“I hope you won't be very lonesome, mother dear,” she said.
Mrs. Merrill blushed a little. To-night she had confident hopes of the doctor's calling; she had even resolved upon a coup. “Oh no, I shall not be lonesome,” she replied. “Norah isn't going out, you know.”
“We shall not be gone long, anyway,” Lily said, as she went out. She had not even noticed her mother's blush. She was not very acute. She ran across the yard, the dry grass of which shone like a carpet of crisp silver in the moonlight, and knocked on Maria's door. Maria answered her knock. She was all ready, and she had her aunt Eunice's fish-net bag and her armful of parcels.
“Here, let me take some of them, dear,” said Lily, in her cooing voice, and she gathered up some of the parcels under her long, supple arm.
Maria's aunt Maria followed her to the door. “Now, mind you don't go into that house,” said she. “Just leave the things and run right home; and if you see anybody who looks suspicious, go right up to a house and knock. I don't feel any too safe about you two girls going, anyway.”
Aunt Maria spoke in a harsh, croaking voice; she had a cold. Maria seized her by the shoulders and pushed her back, laughingly.
“You go straight in the house,” said she. “And don't you worry. Lily and I both have hat-pins, and we can both run, and there's nothing to be afraid of, anyway.”
“Well, I don't half like the idea,” croaked Aunt Maria, retreating.
Lily and Maria went on their way. Lily looked affectionately at her companion, whose pretty face gained a singular purity of beauty from the moonlight.
“How good you are, dear,” she said.
“Nonsense!” replied Maria. Somehow all at once the consciousness of her secret, which was always with her, like some hidden wound, stung her anew. She thought suddenly how Lily would not think her good at all if she knew what an enormous secret she was hiding from her, of what duplicity she was guilty.
“Yes, you are good,” said Lily, “to take all this trouble to get that poor little thing clothes.”
“Oh, as for that,” said Maria, “Mr. George Ramsey is the one to be thanked. It was his money that bought the things, you know.”
“He is good, too,” said Lily, and her voice was like a song with cadences of tenderness.
Maria started and glanced at her, then looked away again. A qualm of jealousy, of which she was ashamed, seized her. She gave her head a toss, and repeated, with a sort of defiance, “Yes, he is good enough, I suppose.”
“I think you are real sweet,” said Lily, “and I do think George Ramsey is splendid.”
“I don't see anything very remarkable about him,” said Maria.
“Don't you think he is handsome?”
“I don't know. I don't suppose I ever think much about a man being handsome. I don't like handsome men, anyway. I don't like men, anyway, when it comes to that.”
“George Ramsey is very nice,” said Lily, and there was an accent in her speech which made the other girl glance at her. Lily's face was turned aside, although she was clinging close to Maria's arm, for she was in reality afraid of being out in the night with another girl.
They walked along in silence after that. When they came to the covered bridge which crossed the river, Lily forced Maria into a run until they reached the other side.
“It is awful in here,” she said, in a fearful whisper.
Maria laughed. She herself did not feel the least fear, although she was more imaginative than the other girl. At that time a kind of rage against life itself possessed her which made her insensible to ordinary fear. She felt that she had been hardly used, and she was, in a measure, at bay. She knew that she could fight anything until she died, and beyond that there was nothing certainly to fear. She had become abnormal because of her strained situation as regarded society. However, she ran because Lily wished her to do so, and they soon emerged from the dusty tunnel of the bridge, with its strong odor of horses, and glimpses between the sides of the silver current of the river, into the moon-flooded road.
After the bridge came the school-house, then, a half-mile beyond that, the Ramsey house. The front windows were blazing with light, and the sound of a loud, drunken voice came from within.
Lily shrank and clung closely to Maria.
“Oh, Maria, I am awfully afraid to go to the door,” she whispered. “Just hear that. Eugene Ramsey must be home drunk, and—and perhaps the other man, too. I am afraid. Don't let's go there.”
Maria looked about her. “You see that board fence, then?” she said to Lily, and as she spoke she pointed to a high board fence on the other side of the street, which was completely in shadow.
“Yes.”
“Well, if you are afraid, just go and stand straight against the fence. You will be in shadow, and if you don't move nobody can possibly see you. Then I will go to the door and leave the things.”
“Oh, Maria, aren't you afraid?”
“No, I am not a bit afraid.”
“You won't go in, honest?”
“No, I won't go in. Run right over there.”
Lily released her hold of Maria's arm and made a fluttering break for the fence, against which she shrank and became actually invisible as a shadow. Maria marched up to the Ramsey door and knocked loudly. Mrs. Ramsey came to the door, and Maria thrust the parcels into her hands and began pulling them rapidly out of the fish-net bag. Mrs. Ramsey cast a glance behind her at the lighted room, through which was visible the same man whom Maria had seen before, and also another, and swung the door rapidly together, so that she stood in the dark entry, only partly lighted by the moonlight.
“I have brought some things for Jessy to wear to school, Mrs. Ramsey,” said Maria.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Ramsey mumbled, doubtfully, with still another glance at the closed door, through which shone lines and chinks of light.
“There are enough for her to be warmly clothed, and you will see to it that she has them on, won't you?” said Maria. Her voice was quite sweet and ingratiating, and not at all patronizing.
Suddenly the woman made a clutch at her arm. “You are a good young one, doin' so much for my young one,” she whispered. “Now you'd better git up and git. They've been drinkin'. Git!”
“You will see that Jessy has the things to wear Monday, won't you?” said Maria.
“Sure.” Suddenly the woman wiped her eyes and gave a maudlin sob. “You're a good young one,” she whimpered. “Now, git.”
Maria ran across the road as the door closed after her. She did not know that Mrs. Ramsey had given the parcels which she had brought a toss into another room, and when she entered the room in which the men were carousing and was asked who had come to the door, had replied, “The butcher for his bill,” to be greeted with roars of laughter. She did, indeed, hear the roars of laughter. Lily slunk along swiftly beside the fence by her side. Maria caught her by the arm. Curiously enough, while she was not afraid for herself, she did feel a little fear now for her companion. The two girls hurried until they reached the bridge, and ran the whole length. On the other side, coming into the lighted main street of Amity, they felt quite safe.
“Did you see any of those dreadful men?” gasped Lily.
“I just caught a glimpse of them, then Mrs. Ramsey shut the door,” said Maria.
“They were drunk, weren't they?”
“I shouldn't wonder.”
“I do think it was an awful place to go to,” said Lily, with a little sigh of relief that she was out of it.
The girls went along the street until they reached the Ramsey house, next the one where Maria lived. Suddenly a man's figure appeared from the gate. It was almost as if he had been watching.
“Good-evening,” he said, and the girls saw that he was George Ramsey.
“Good-evening, Mr. Ramsey,” responded Maria. She felt Lily's arm tremble in hers. George walked along with them. “I have been to carry the presents which I bought with your money,” said Maria.
“Good heavens! You don't mean that you two girls have been all alone up there?” said George.
“Why, yes,” said Maria. “Why not?”
“Weren't you afraid?”
“Maria isn't afraid of anything,” Lily's sweet, little, tremulous voice piped on the other side.
George was walking next Maria. There was a slight and very gentle accusation in the voice.
“It wasn't safe,” said George, soberly, “and I should have been glad to go with you.”
Maria laughed. “Well, here we are, safe and sound,” she said. “I didn't see anything to be much afraid of.”
“All the same, they are an awful set there,” said George. They had reached Maria's door, and he added, “Suppose you walk along with me, Miss Edgham, and I will see Lily home.” George had been to school with Lily, and had always called her by her first name.
Maria again felt that little tremor of Lily's arm in hers, and did not understand it. “All right,” she said.
The three walked to Lily's door, and had said good-night, when Lily, who was, after all, the daughter of her mother, although her little artifices were few and innocent, had an inspiration. She discovered that she had lost her handkerchief.
“I think I took it out when we reached your gate, Mr. Ramsey,” she said, timidly, for she felt guilty.
It was quite true that the handkerchief was not in her muff, in which she had carried it, but there was a pocket in her coat which she did not investigate.
They turned back, looking along the frozen ground.
“Never mind,” Lily said, cheerfully, when they had reached the Ramsey gate and returned to the Edgham's, and the handkerchief was not forthcoming, “it was an old one, anyway. Good-night.”
She knew quite well that George Edgham would do what he did—walk home with her the few steps between her house and Maria's, and that Maria would not hesitate to say good-night and enter her own door.
“I guess I had better go right in,” said Maria. “Aunt Maria has a cold, and she may worry and be staying up.”
Lily was entirely happy at walking those few steps with George Ramsey. He had pulled her little hand through his arm in a school-boy sort of fashion. He left her at the door with a friendly good-night, but she had got what she wanted. He had not gone those few steps alone with Maria. Lily loved Maria, but she did not want George Ramsey to love her.
When Lily entered the house, to her great astonishment she found Dr. Ellridge there. He was seated beside her mother, who was lying on the sofa.
“Why, mother, what is it—are you sick?” Lily cried, anxiously, while the doctor looked with admiration at her face, glowing with the cold.
“I had one of my attacks after supper, and sent Norah for Dr. Ellridge. I thought I had better,” Mrs. Merrill explained, feebly. She sighed and looked at the doctor, who understood perfectly, but did not betray himself. He was, in fact, rather flattered.
“Yes, your mother has been feeling quite badly, but she will be all right now,” he said to Lily.
“I am sorry you did not feel well, mother,” Lily said, sweetly. Then she got her fancy-work from her little silk bag on the table and seated herself, after removing her wraps.
Her mother sighed. The doctor's mouth assumed a little, humorous pucker.
Lily looked at her mother with affectionate interest. She was quite accustomed to slight attacks of indigestion which her mother often had, and was not much alarmed, still she felt a little anxious. “You are sure you are better, mother?” she said.
“Oh yes, she is much better,” the doctor answered for her. “There is nothing for you to be alarmed about.”
“I am so glad,” said Lily.
She took another stitch in her fancy-work, and her beautiful face took on an almost seraphic expression; she was thinking of George Ramsey. She hardly noticed when the doctor took his leave, and she did not in the least understand her mother's sigh when the door closed. For her the gates of love were wide open, but she had no conception that for her mother they were not shut until she should go to heaven to join her father.
Chapter XX
The next evening Maria, as usual, went to church with her two aunts. Henry Stillman remained at home reading the Sunday paper. He took a certain delight in so doing, although he knew, in the depths of his soul, that his delight was absurd. He knew perfectly well that it did not make a feather's weight of difference in the universal scheme of things that he, Henry Stillman, should remain at home and read the columns of scandal and politics in that paper, instead of going to church, and yet he liked to think that his small individuality and its revolt because of its injuries at the hands of fate had its weight, and was at least a small sting of revenge.
He watched his wife adjust her bonnet before the looking-glass in the sitting-room, and arrange carefully the bow beneath her withered chin, and a great pity for her, because she was no longer as she had been, but was so heavily marked by time, and a great jealousy that she should not lose the greatest of all things, which he himself had lost, came over him. As she—a little, prim, mild woman, in her old-fashioned winter cape and her bonnet, with its stiff tuft of velvet pansies—passed him, he caught her thin, black-gloved hand and drew her close to him.
“I'm glad you are going to church, Eunice,” he said.
Eunice colored, and regarded him with a kind of abashed wonder.
“Why don't you come, too, Henry?” she said, timidly.
“No, I've quit,” replied Henry. “I've quit begging where I don't get any alms; but as for you, if you get anything that satisfies your soul, for God's sake hold on to it, Eunice, and don't let it go.” Then he pulled her bonneted head down and kissed her thin lips, with a kind of tenderness which was surprising. “You've been a good wife, Eunice,” he said.
Eunice laid her hand on his shoulder and looked at him a second. She was almost frightened. Outward evidences of affection had not been frequent between them of late years, or indeed ever. They were New-Englanders to the marrow of their bones. Anything like an outburst of feeling or sentiment, unless in case of death or disaster, seemed abnormal. Henry realized his wife's feeling, and he smiled up at her.
“We are getting to be old folks,” he said, “and we've had more bitter than sweet in life, and we have neither of us ever said much as to how we felt to each other, but—I never loved you as much as I love you now, Eunice, and I've taken it into my head to say it.”
Eunice's lips quivered a little and her eyes reddened. “There ain't a woman in Amity who has had so good a husband as I have all these years, if you don't go to meeting,” she replied. Then she added, after a second's pause: “I didn't know as you did feel just as you used to, Henry. I didn't know as any man did. I know I've lost my looks, and—”
“I can seem to see your looks, brighter than ever they were, in your heart,” said Henry. He colored himself a little at his own sentiment. Then he pulled her face down to his again and gave her a second kiss. “Now run along to your meeting,” he said. “Have you got enough on? The wind sounds cold.”
“Yes,” replied Eunice. “This cape's real thick. I put a new lining in it this winter, you know, and, besides, I've got my crocheted jacket under it. I'm as warm as toast.”
Eunice, after she had gone out in the keen night air with her sister-in-law and her niece, reflected with more uneasiness than pleasure upon her husband's unwonted behavior.
“Does it seem to you that Henry looks well lately?” she asked the elder Maria, as they hurried along.
“Yes; why not?” returned Maria.
“I don't know. It seems to me he's been losing flesh.”
“Nonsense!” said Maria. “I never saw him looking better than he does now. I was thinking only this morning that he was making a better, healthier old man than he was as a young man. But I do wish he would go to meeting. I don't think his mind is right about some things. Suppose folks do have troubles. They ought to be led to the Lord by them, instead of pulling back. Henry hasn't had anything more to worry him, nor half as much, as most men. He don't take things right. He ought to go to meeting.”
“I guess he's just as good as a good many who do go to meeting,” returned Eunice, with unwonted spirit.
“I don't feel competent to judge as to that,” replied Maria, with a tone of aggravating superiority. Then she added, “‘By their works ye shall know them.’”
“I would give full as much for Henry's chances as for some who go to meeting every Sunday of their lives,” said Eunice, with still more spirit. “And as for trials, they weigh heavier on some than on others.”
Then young Maria, who had been listening uneasily, broke in. She felt herself a strong partisan of her Aunt Eunice, for she adored her uncle, but she merely said that she thought Uncle Henry did look a little thin, and she supposed he was tired Sunday, and it was the only day he had to rest; then she abruptly changed the whole subject by wondering if the Ramseys across the river would let Jessy go to church if she trimmed a hat for her with some red velvet and a feather which she had in her possession.
“No, they wouldn't!” replied her aunt Maria, sharply, at once diverted. “I can tell you just exactly what they would do, if you were to trim up a hat with that red velvet and that feather and give it to that young one. Her good-for-nothing mother would have it on her own head in no time, and go flaunting out in it with that man that boards there.”
Nothing could excel the acrimonious accent with which Aunt Maria weighed down the “man who boards there,” and the acrimony was heightened by the hoarseness of her voice. Her cold was still far from well, but Aunt Maria stayed at home from church for nothing short of pneumonia.
The church was about half a mile distant. The meeting was held in a little chapel built out like an architectural excrescence at the side of the great, oblong, wooden structure, with its piercing steeple. The chapel windows blazed with light. People were flocking in. As they entered, a young lady began to play on an out-of-tune piano, which Judge Josiah Saunders had presented to the church. She played a Moody-and-Sankey hymn as a sort of prologue, although nobody sang it. It was a curious custom which prevailed in the Amity church. A Moody-and-Sankey hymn was always played in evening meetings instead of the morning voluntary on the great organ.
Maria and her two aunts moved forward and seated themselves. Maria looked absently at the smooth expanse of hair which showed below the hat of the girl who was playing. The air was played very slowly, otherwise the little audience might have danced a jig to it. Maria thought of the meetings which she used to attend in Edgham, and how she used to listen to the plaint of the whippoorwill on the river-bank while the little organ gave out its rich, husky drone. This, somehow, did not seem so religious to her. She remembered how she had used to be conscious of Wollaston Lee's presence, and how she had hoped he would walk home with her, and she reflected with what shame and vague terror she now held him constantly in mind. Then she thought of George Ramsey, and directly, without seeing him, she became aware that he was seated on her right and was furtively glancing at her. A wild despair seized her at the thought that he might offer to accompany her home, and how she must not allow it, and how she wanted him to do so. She kept her head steadfastly averted. The meeting dragged on. Men rose and spoke and prayed, at intervals the out-of-tune piano was invoked. A woman behind Maria sang contralto with a curious effect, as if her head were in a tin-pail. There were odd, dull, metallic echoes about it which filled the whole chapel. The woman's daughter had some cheap perfume on her handkerchief, and she was incessantly removing it from her muff. A man at the left coughed a good deal. Maria saw in front of her Lily Merrill's graceful brown head, in a charming hat with red roses under the brim, and a long, soft, brown feather. Lily's mother was not with her. Dr. Ellridge did not attend evening meetings, and Mrs. Merrill always remained at home in the hope that he might call.
After church was over, Maria stuck closely to her aunts. She even pushed herself between them, but they did not abet her. Both Eunice and Aunt Maria had seen George Ramsey, and they had their own views. Maria could not tell how it happened, but at the door of the chapel she found herself separated from both her aunts, and George Ramsey was asking if he might accompany her home. Maria obeyed her instincts, although the next moment she could have killed herself for it. She smiled, and bowed, and tucked her little hand into the crook of the young man's offered arm. She did not see her aunts exchanging glances of satisfaction.
“It will be a real good chance for her,” said Eunice.
“Hush, or somebody will hear you,” said Maria, in a sharp, pleased tone, as she and her sister-in-law walked together down the moonlit street.
Maria did not see Lily Merrill's start and look of piteous despair as she took George's arm. Lily was just behind her. Maria, in fact, saw nothing. She might have been walking in a vacuum of emotion.
“It is a beautiful evening,” said George Ramsey, and his voice trembled a little.
“Yes, beautiful,” replied Maria.
Afterwards, thinking over their conversation, she could not remember that they had talked about anything else except the beauty of the evening, but had dwelt incessantly upon it, like the theme of a song.
The aunts lagged behind purposely, and Maria went in Eunice's door. She thought that her niece would ask George to come in and she would not be in the way. Henry looked inquiringly at the two women, who had an air of mystery, and Maria responded at once to his unspoken question.
“George Ramsey is seeing her home,” she said, “and the front-door key is under the mat, and I thought Maria could ask him in, and I would go home through the cellar, and not be in the way. Three is a company.” Maria said the last platitude with a silly simper.
“I never saw anything like you women,” said Henry, with a look of incredulous amusement. “I suppose you both of you have been making her wedding-dress, and setting her up house-keeping, instead of listening to the meeting.”
“I heard every word,” returned Maria, with dignity, “and it was a very edifying meeting. It would have done some other folks good if they had gone, and as for Maria, she can't teach school all her days, and here is her father with a second wife.”
“Well, you women do beat the Dutch,” said her brother, with a tenderly indulgent air, as if he were addressing children.
Aunt Maria lingered in her brother's side of the house, talking about various topics. She hesitated even about her stealthy going through the cellar, lest she should disturb Maria and her possible lover. Now and then she listened. She stood close to the wall. Finally she said, with a puzzled look to Eunice, who was smoothing out her bonnet-strings, “It's queer, but I can't hear them talking.”
“Maybe he didn't come in,” said Eunice.
“If they are in the parlor, you couldn't hear them,” said Henry, still with his half-quizzical, half-pitying air.
“She would have taken him in the parlor—I should think she would have known enough to,” said Eunice; “and you can't always hear talking in the parlor in this room.”
Maria made a move towards her brother's parlor, on the other side of the tiny hall.
“I guess you are right,” said she, “and I know she would have taken him in there. I started a fire in there on purpose before I went to meeting. It was borne in upon me that somebody might come home with her.”
Maria tiptoed into the parlor, with Eunice, still smoothing her bonnet-strings, at her heels. Both women stood close to the wall, papered with white-and-gold paper, and listened.
“I can't hear a single thing,” said Maria.
“I can't either,” said Eunice. “I don't believe he did come in.”
“It's dreadful queer, if he didn't,” said Maria, “after the way he eyed her in meeting.”
“Suppose you go home through the cellar, and see,” said Eunice.
“I guess I will,” said Maria. “I'll knock low on the wall when I get home, if he isn't there.”
The cellar stairs connected with the kitchen on either side of the Stillman house. Both women flew out into the kitchen, and Maria disappeared down the cellar stairs, with a little lamp which Eunice lit for her. Then Eunice waited. Presently there came a muffled knock on the wall.
“No, he didn't come in,” Eunice said to her husband, as she re-entered the sitting-room.
Suddenly Eunice pressed her ear close to the sitting-room wall. Two treble voices were audible on the other side, but not a word of their conversation. “Maria and she are talking,” said Eunice.
What Aunt Maria was saying was this, in a tone of sharp wonder:
“Where is he?”
“Who?” responded Maria.
“Why, you know as well as I do—George Ramsey.” Aunt Maria looked sharply at her niece. “I hope you asked him in, Maria Edgham?” said she.
“No, I didn't,” said Maria.
“Why didn't you?”
“I was tired, and I wanted to go to bed.”
“Wanted to go to bed? Why, it's only a little after nine o'clock!”
“Well, I can't help it, I'm tired.” Maria spoke with a weariness which was unmistakable. She looked away from her aunt with a sort of blank despair.
Aunt Maria continued to regard her. “You do act the queerest of any girl I ever saw,” said she. “There was a nice fire in the parlor, and I thought you could offer him some refreshments. There is some of that nice cake, and some oranges, and I would have made some cocoa.”
“I didn't feel as if I could sit up,” Maria said again, in her weary, hopeless voice. She went out into the kitchen, got a little lamp, and returned. “Good-night,” she said to her aunt.
“Good-night,” replied Aunt Maria. “You are a queer girl. I don't see what you think.”
Maria went up-stairs, undressed, and went to bed. After she was in bed she could see the reflection of her aunt's sitting-room lamp on the ground outside, in a slanting shaft of light. Then it went out, and Maria knew that her aunt was also in bed in her little room out of the sitting-room. Maria could not go to sleep. She heard the clock strike ten, then eleven. Shortly after eleven she heard a queer sound, as of small stones or gravel thrown on her window. Maria was a brave girl. Her first sensation was one of anger.
“What is any one doing such a thing as that for?” she asked herself. She rose, threw a shawl over her shoulders, and went straight to the window next the Merrill house, whence the sound had come. She opened it cautiously and peered out. Down on the ground below stood a long, triangle-shaped figure, like a night-moth.
“Who is it?” Maria called, in a soft voice. She was afraid, for some reason which she could not define, of awakening her aunt. She was more afraid of that than anything else.
A little moan answered her; the figure moved as if in distress.
“Who is it? What do you want?” Maria asked again.
A weak voice answered her then, “It's I.”
“Who's I? Lily?”
“Yes. Oh, do let me in, Maria.” Lily's voice ended in a little, hysterical sob.
“Hush,” said Maria, “or Aunt Maria will hear you. Wait a minute.” Maria unlocked her door with the greatest caution, opened it, and crept down-stairs. Then she unlocked and opened the front door. Luckily Aunt Maria's room was some feet in the rear. “Come quick,” Maria whispered, and Lily came running up to her. Then Maria closed and locked the front door, while Lily stood trembling and waiting. Then she led her up-stairs in the dark. Lily's slender fingers closed upon her with a grasp of ice. When they were once in Maria's room, with the door closed and locked, Maria took hold of Lily violently by the shoulders. She felt at once rage and pity for her.
“What on earth is the matter, Lily Merrill, that you come over here this time of night?” she asked. Then she added, in a tone of horror, “Lily Merrill, you haven't a thing on but a skirt and your night-gown under your shawl. Have you got anything on your feet?”
“Slippers,” answered Lily, meekly. Then she clung to Maria and began to sob hysterically.
“Come, Lily Merrill, you just stop this and get into bed,” said Maria. She unwound Lily's shawl, pulled off her skirt, and fairly forced her into bed. Then she got in beside her. “What on earth is the matter?” she asked again.
Lily's arm came stealing around her and Lily's cold, wet cheek touched her face. “Oh, Maria!” she sobbed, under her breath.
“Well, what is it all about?”
“Oh, Maria, are—are you—”
“Am I what?”
“Are you going with him?”
“With whom?”
“With George—with George Ramsey?” A long, trembling sob shook Lily.
“I am going with nobody,” answered Maria, in a hard voice.
“But he came home with you. I saw him; I did, Maria.” Lily sobbed again.
“Well, what of it?” asked Maria, impatiently. “I didn't care anything about his going home with me.”
“Didn't he come in?”
“No, he didn't.”
“Didn't you—ask him?”
“No, I didn't.”
“Maria.”
“Well, what?”
“Maria, aren't you going to marry him if he asks you?”
“No,” said Maria, “I am never going to marry him, if that is what you want to know. I am never going to marry George Ramsey.”
Lily sobbed.
“I should think you would be ashamed of yourself. I should think any girl would, acting so,” said Maria. Her voice was a mere whisper, but it was cruel. She felt that she hated Lily. Then she realized how icy cold the girl was and how she trembled from head to feet in a nervous chill. “You'll catch your death,” she said.
“Oh, I don't care if I do!” Lily said, in her hysterical voice, which had now a certain tone of comfort.
Maria considered again how much she despised and hated her, and again Lily shook with a long tremor. Maria got up and tiptoed over to her closet, where she kept a little bottle of wine which the doctor had ordered when she first came to Amity. It was not half emptied. A wineglass stood on the mantel-shelf, and Maria filled it with the wine by the light of the moon. Then she returned to Lily.
“Here,” she said, still in the same cruel voice. “Sit up and drink this.”
“What is it?” moaned Lily.
“Never mind what it is. Sit up and drink it.”
Lily sat up and obediently drank the wine, every drop.
“Now lie down and keep still, and go to sleep, and behave yourself,” said Maria.
Lily tried to say something, but Maria would not listen to her.
“Don't you speak another word,” said she. “Keep still, or Aunt Maria will be up. Lie still and go to sleep.”
It was not long before, warmed by the wine and comforted by Maria's assertion that she was never going to marry George Ramsey, that Lily fell asleep. Maria lay awake hearing her long, even breaths, and she felt how she hated her, how she hated herself, how she hated life. There was no sleep for her. Just before dawn she woke Lily, bundled her up in some extra clothing, and went with her across the yard, home.
“Now go up to your own room just as still as you can,” said she, and her voice sounded terrible even in her own ears. She waited until she heard the key softly turn in the door of the Merrill house. Then she sped home and up to her own room. Then she lay down in bed again and waited for broad daylight.
Chapter XXI
When Maria dressed herself the next morning, she had an odd, shamed expression as she looked at herself in her glass while braiding her hair. It actually seemed to her as if she herself, and not Lily Merrill, had so betrayed herself and given way to an unsought love. She felt as if she saw Lily instead of herself, and she was at once humiliated and angered. She had to pass Lily's house on her way to school, and she did not once look up, although she had a conviction that Lily was watching her from one of the sitting-room windows. It was a wild winter day, with frequent gusts of wind swaying the trees to the breaking of the softer branches, and flurries of snow. It was hard work to keep the school-house warm. Maria, in the midst of her perturbation, had a comforted feeling at seeing Jessy Ramsey in her warm clothing. She passed her arm around the little girl at recess; it was so cold that only a few of the boys went outside.
“Have you got them on, dear?” she whispered.
“Yes'm,” said Jessy. Then, to Maria's consternation, she caught her hand and kissed it, and began sobbing. “They're awful warm,” sobbed Jessy Ramsey, looking at Maria with her little, convulsed face.
“Hush, child,” said Maria. “There's nothing to cry about. Mind you keep them nice. Have you got a bureau-drawer you can put them in?—those you haven't on? Don't cry. That's silly.”
“I 'ain't got no bureau,” sobbed Jessy. “But—”
“Haven't any,” corrected Maria.
“Haven't any bureau-drawer,” said the child. “But I got a box what somethin'—”
“That something,” said Maria.
“That something came from the store in, an' I've got 'em—”
“Them.”
“Them all packed away. They're awful warm.”
“Don't cry, dear,” said Maria.
The other children did not seem to be noticing them. Suddenly Maria, who still had her arm around the thin shoulders of the little girl, stooped and kissed her rather grimy but soft little cheek. As she did so, she experienced the same feeling which she used to have when caressing her little sister Evelyn. It was a sort of rapture of tenderness and protection. It was the maternal instinct glorified and rendered spiritual by maidenhood, and its timid desires. Jessy Ramsey's eyes looked up into Maria's like blue violets, and Maria noticed with a sudden throb that they were like George Ramsey's. Jessy, coming as she did from a degenerate, unbeautiful branch of the family-tree, had yet some of the true Ramsey features, and, among others, she had the true Ramsey eyes. They were large and very dark blue, and they were set in deep, pathetic hollows. As she looked up at Maria, it was exactly as if George were looking at her with pleading and timid love. Maria took her arm sudden away from the child.
“Be you mad?” asked Jessy, humbly.
“No, I am not,” replied Maria. “But you should not say ‘be you mad’; you should say are you angry.”
“Yes'm,” said Jessy Ramsey.
Jessy withdrew, still with timid eyes of devotion fixed upon her teacher, and Maria seated herself behind her desk, took out some paper, and began to write an exercise for the children to copy upon the black-board. She was trembling from head to foot. She felt exactly as if George Ramsey had been looking at her with eyes of love, and she remembered that she was married, and it seemed to her that she was horribly guilty.
Maria never once looked again at Jessy Ramsey, at least not fully in the eyes, during the day. The child's mouth began to assume a piteous expression. After school that afternoon she lingered, as usual, to walk the little way before their roads separated, so to speak, in her beloved teacher's train. But Maria spoke quite sharply to her.