“You had better run right home, Jessy,” she said. “It is snowing, and you will get cold. I have a few things to see to before I go. Run right home.”
Poor little Jessy Ramsey, who was as honestly in love with her teacher as she would ever be with any one in her life, turned obediently and went away. Maria's heart smote her.
“Jessy,” she called after her, and the child turned back half frightened, half radiant. Maria put her arm around her and kissed her. “Wash your face before you come to school to-morrow, dear,” she said. “Now, good-bye.”
“Yes'm,” said Jessy, and she skipped away quite happy. She thought teacher had rebuffed her because her face was not washed, and that did not trouble her in the least. Lack of cleanliness or lack of morals, when brought home to them, could hardly sting any scion of that branch of the Ramseys. Lack of affection could, however, and Jessy was quite happy in thinking that teacher loved her, and was only vexed because her face was dirty. Jessy had not gone a dozen paces from the school-house before she stopped, scooped up some snow in a little, grimy hand, and rubbed her cheeks violently. Then she wiped them on her new petticoat. Her cheeks tingled frightfully, but she felt that she was obeying a mandate of love.
Maria did not see her. She in reality lingered a little over some exercises in the school-house before she started on her way home. It was snowing quite steadily, and the wind still blew. The snow made the wind seem as evident as the wings of a bird. Maria hurried along. When she reached the bridge across the Ramsey River she saw a girl standing as if waiting for her. The girl was all powdered with snow and she had on a thick veil, but Maria immediately knew that she was Lily Merrill. Lily came up to her as she reached her with almost an abject motion. She had her veiled face lowered before the storm, and she carried herself as if her spirit also was lowered before some wind of fate. She pressed timidly close to Maria when she reached her.
“I've been waiting for you, Maria,” she said.
“Have you?” returned Maria, coldly.
“Yes, I wanted to see you, and I didn't know as I could, unless I met you. I didn't know whether you would have a fire in your room to-night, and I thought your aunt would be in the sitting-room, and I thought you wouldn't be apt to come over to my house, it storms so.”
“No, I shouldn't,” Maria said, shortly.
Then Lily burst out in a piteous low wail, a human wail piercing the wail of the storm. The two girls were quite alone on the bridge.
“Oh, Maria,” said Lily, “I did want you to know how dreadfully ashamed I was of what I did last night.”
“I should think you would be,” Maria said, pitilessly. She walked on ahead, with her mouth in a straight line, and did not look at the other girl.
Lily came closer to her and passed one of her arms through Maria's and pressed against her softly. “I wanted to tell you, too,” she said, “that I made an excuse about—that handkerchief the other night. I thought it was in my coat-pocket all the time. I did it just so he would go home with me last.”
Maria looked at her. “I never saw such a girl as you are, Lily Merrill,” she said, contemptuously, but in spite of herself there was a soft accent in her voice. It was not in Maria's nature to be hard upon a repentant sinner.
Lily leaned her face against Maria's snow-powdered shoulder. “I was dreadfully ashamed of it,” said she, “and I thought I must tell you, Maria. You don't think so very badly of me, do you? I know I was awful.” The longing for affection and approbation in Lily's voice gave it almost a singing quality. She was so fond of love and approval that the withdrawal of it smote her like a frost of the spirit.
“I think it was terribly bold of you, if you want to know just what I think,” Maria said; “and I think you were very deceitful. Before I would do such a thing to get a young man to go home with me, I would—” Maria paused. Suddenly she remembered that she had her secret, and she felt humbled before this other girl whom she was judging. She became conscious to such an extent of the beam in her own eye that she was too blinded to see the mote in that of poor Lily, who, indeed, was not to blame, being simply helpless before her own temperament and her own emotions.
“I know I did do a dreadful thing,” moaned Lily.
Then Maria pressed the clinging arm under her own.
“Well,” said she, as she might have spoken to a child, “if I were you I would not think any more about it, Lily, I would put it out of my mind. Only, I would not, if I were you, and really wanted a young man to care for me, let him think I was running after him.”
As she said the last, Maria paled. She glanced at Lily's beautiful face under the veil, and realized that it might be very easy for any young man to care for such a girl, who had, in reality, a sweet nature, besides beauty, if she only adopted the proper course to win him, and that it was obviously her (Maria's) duty to teach her to win him.
“I know it. I won't again,” Lily said, humbly.
The two girls walked on; they had crossed the bridge. Suddenly Lily plucked up a little spirit.
“Say, Maria,” said she.
“What is it, dear?”
“I just happened to think. Mother was asked to tea to Mrs. Ralph Wright's to-night, but she isn't going. Is your aunt going?”
“Yes, I believe she is,” said Maria.
“She won't be home before eight o'clock, will she?”
“No, I don't suppose she will. They are to have tea at six, I believe.”
“Then I am coming over after mother and I have tea. I have something I want to tell you.”
“All right, dear,” replied Maria, hesitatingly.
When Maria got home she found her aunt Maria all dressed, except for her collar-fastening. She was waiting for Maria to attend to that. Her thin gray-blond hair was beautifully crimped, and she wore her best black silk dress. She was standing by the sitting-room window when Maria entered.
“I am glad you have come, Maria,” said she. “I have been standing quite awhile. You are late.”
“Yes, I am rather late,” replied Maria. “But why on earth didn't you sit down?”
“Do you suppose I am going to sit down more than I can help in this dress?” said her aunt. “There is nothing hurts a silk dress more than sitting down in it. Now if you will hook my collar, Maria. I can do it, but I don't like to strain the seams by reaching round, and I didn't want to trail this dress down the cellar stairs to get Eunice to fasten it up.” Aunt Maria bewailed the weather in a deprecating fashion while Maria was fastening the collar at the back of her skinny neck. “I never want to find fault with the weather,” said she, “because, of course, the weather is regulated by Something higher than we are, and it must be for our best good, but I do hate to wear this dress out in such a storm, and I don't dare wear my cashmere. Mrs. Ralph Wright is so particular she would be sure to think I didn't pay her proper respect.”
“You can wear my water-proof,” said Maria. “I didn't wear it to-day, you know. I didn't think the snow would do this dress any harm. The water-proof will cover you all up.”
“Well, I suppose I can, and can pin my skirt up,” said Aunt Maria, in a resigned tone. “I don't want to find fault with the weather, but I do hate to pin up a black silk skirt.”
“You can turn it right up around your waist, and fasten the braid to your belt, and then it won't hurt it,” said Maria, consolingly.
“Well, I suppose I can. Your supper is all ready, Maria. There's bread and butter, and chocolate cake, and some oysters. I thought you wouldn't mind making yourself a little stew. I couldn't make it before you came, because it wouldn't be fit to eat. You know how. Be sure the milk is hot before you put the oysters in. There is a good fire.”
“Oh yes, I know how. Don't you worry about me,” said Maria, turning up her aunt's creaseless black silk skirt gingerly. It was rather incomprehensible to her that anybody should care so much whether a black silk skirt was creased or not, when the terrible undertone of emotions which underline the world, and are its creative motive, were in existence, but Maria was learning gradually to be patient with the small worries of others which seemed large to them, and upon which she herself could not place much stress. She stood at the window, when her aunt at last emerged from the house, and picked her way through the light snow, and her mouth twitched a little at the absurd, shapeless figure. Her Aunt Eunice had joined her, and she was not so shapeless. She held up her dress quite fashionably on one side, with a rather generous display of slender legs. Aunt Maria did not consider that her sister-in-law was quite careful enough of her clothes. “Henry won't always be earning,” she often said to Maria. To-day she had eyed with disapproval Eunice's best black silk trailing from under her cape, when she entered the sitting-room. She had come through the cellar.
“Are you going that way, in such a storm, in your best black silk?” she inquired.
“I haven't any water-proof,” replied Eunice, “and I don't see what else I can do.”
“You might wear my old shawl spread out.”
“I wouldn't go through the street cutting such a figure,” said Eunice, with one of her occasional bursts of spirit. She was delighted to go. Nobody knew how this meek, elderly woman loved a little excitement. There were red spots on her thin cheeks, and she looked almost as if she had used rouge. Her eyes snapped.
“I should think you would turn your skirt up, anyway,” said Aunt Maria. “You've got your black petticoat on, haven't you?”
“Yes,” replied Eunice. “But if you think I am going right through the Main Street in my petticoat, you are mistaken. Snow won't hurt the silk any. It's a dry snow, and it will shake right off.”
So Eunice, at the side of Aunt Maria, went with her dress kilted high, and looked as preternaturally slim as her sister-in-law looked stout. Maria, watching them, thought how funny they were. She herself was elemental, and they, in their desires and interests, were like motes floating on the face of the waters. Maria, while she had always like pretty clothes, had come to a pass wherein she relegated them to their proper place. She recognized many things as externals which she had heretofore considered as essentials. She had developed wonderfully in a few months. As she turned away from the window she caught a glimpse of Lily Merrill's lovely face in a window of the opposite house, above a mass of potted geraniums. Lily nodded, and smiled, and Maria nodded back again. Her heart sank at the idea of Lily's coming that evening, a sickening jealous dread of the confidence which she was to make to her was over her, and yet she said to herself that she had no right to have this dread. She prepared her supper and ate it, and had hardly cleared away the table and washed the dishes before Lily came flying across the yard before the storm-wind. Maria hurried to the door to let her in.
“Your aunt went, didn't she?” said Lily, entering, and shaking the flakes of snow from her skirts.
“Yes.”
“I don't see why mother wouldn't go. Mother never goes out anywhere, and she isn't nearly as old as your aunts.”
Lily and Maria seated themselves in the sitting-room before the stove. Lily looked at Maria, and a faint red overspread her cheeks. She began to speak, then she hesitated, and evidently said something which she had not intended.
“How pretty that is!” she said, pointing to a great oleander-tree in flower, which was Aunt Maria's pride.
“Yes, I think it is pretty.”
“Lovely. The very prettiest one I ever saw.” Lily hesitated again, but at last she began to speak, with the red on her cheeks brighter and her eyes turned away from Maria. “I wanted to tell you something, Maria,” said she.
“Well?” said Maria. Her own face was quite pale and motionless. She was doing some fancy-work, embroidering a centre-piece, and she continued to take careful stitches.
“I know you thought I was awful, doing the way I did last night,” said Lily, in her sweet murmur. She drooped her head, and the flush on her oval cheeks was like the flush on a wild rose. Lily wore a green house-dress, which set her off as the leaves and stem set off a flower. It was of some soft material which clung about her and displayed her tender curves. She wore at her throat an old cameo brooch which had belonged to her grandmother, and which had upon its onyx background an ivory head as graceful as her own. Maria, beside Lily, although she herself was very pretty, looked ordinary in her flannel blouse and black skirt, which was her school costume.
Maria continued taking careful stitches in the petals of a daisy which she was embroidering. “I think we have talked enough about it,” she said.
“But I want to tell you something.”
“Why don't you tell it, then?”
“I know you thought I did something awful, running across the yard and coming here in the night the way I did, and showing you that I—I, well, that I minded George Ramsey's coming home with you; but—look here, Maria, I—had a little reason.”
Maria paled perceptibly, but she kept on steadily with her work.
Lily flushed more deeply. “George Ramsey has been home with me from evening meeting quite a number of times,” she said.
“Has he?” said Maria.
“Yes. Of course we were walking the same way. He may not really have meant to see me home.” There was a sort of innate honesty in Lily which always led her to retrieve the lapses from the strict truth when in her favor. “Maybe he didn't really mean to see me home, and sometimes he didn't offer me his arm,” she added, with a childlike wistfulness, as if she desired Maria to reassure her.
“I dare say he meant to see you home,” said Maria, rather shortly.
“I am not quite sure,” said Lily. “But he did walk home with me quite a number of times, first and last, and you know we used to go to the same school, and a number of times then, when we were a good deal younger, he really did see me home, and—he kissed me good-night then. Of course he hasn't done that lately, because we were older.”
“I should think not, unless you were engaged,” said Maria.
“Of course not, but he has said several things to me. Maybe he didn't mean anything, but they sounded—I thought I would like to tell you, Maria. I have never told anybody, not even mother. Once he said my name just suited me, and once he asked me if I thought married people were happier, and once he said he thought it was a doubtful experiment for a man to marry and try to live either with his wife's mother or his own. You know, if he married me, it would have to be one way or the other. Do you think he meant anything, Maria?”
“I don't know,” said Maria. “I didn't hear him.”
“Well, I thought he spoke as if he meant it, but, of course, a girl can never be sure. I suppose men do say so many things they don't mean. Don't you?”
“Yes, I suppose they do.”
“Do you think he did, Maria?” asked Lily, piteously.
“My dear child, I told you I didn't hear him, and I don't see how I can tell,” repeated Maria, with a little impatience. It did seem hard to her that she should be so forced into a confidence of this kind, but an odd feeling of protective tenderness for Lily was stealing over her. She reached a certain height of nobility which she had never reached before, through this feeling.
“I know men so often say things when they mean nothing at all,” Lily said again. “Perhaps he didn't mean anything. I know he has gone home with Agnes Sears several times, and he has talked to her a good deal when we have been at parties. Do you think she is pretty, Maria?”
“Yes, I think she is quite pretty,” replied Maria.
“Do you think—she is better-looking than—I am?” asked Lily, feebly.
“No, of course I don't,” said Maria. “You are a perfect beauty.”
“Oh, Maria, do you think so?”
“Of course I do! You know it yourself as well as I do.”
“No, honest, I am never quite sure, Maria. Sometimes it does seem to me when I am dressed up that I am really better-looking than some girls, but I am never quite sure that it isn't because it is I who am looking at myself. A girl wants to think she is pretty, you know, Maria, especially if she wants anybody to like her, and I can't ever tell.”
“Well, you can rest easy about that,” said Maria. “You are a perfect beauty. There isn't a girl in Amity to compare with you. You needn't have any doubt at all.”
An expression of quite innocent and naïve vanity overspread Lily's charming face. She cast a glance at herself in a glass which hung on the opposite wall, and smiled as a child might have done at her own reflection. “Do you think this green dress is becoming to me?” said she.
“Very.”
“But, Maria, do you suppose George Ramsey thinks I am so pretty?”
“I should think he must, if he has eyes in his head,” replied Maria.
“But you are pretty yourself, Maria,” said Lily, with the most open jealousy and anxiety, “and you are smarter than I am, and he is so smart. I do think he cares a great deal more for you than for me. I think he must, Maria.”
“Nonsense!” said Maria. “Just because a young man walks home with me once you think he is in love with me.” Maria tried to speak lightly and scornfully, but in spite of herself there was an accent of gratification in her tone. In spite of herself she forgot for the moment.
“I think he does, all the same,” said Lily, dejectedly.
“Nonsense! He doesn't; and if he did, he would have to take it out in caring.”
“Then you were in earnest about what you said last night?” said Lily, eagerly. “You really mean you wouldn't have George Ramsey if he asked you?”
“Not if he asked every day in the year for a hundred years.”
“I guess you must have seen somebody else whom you liked,” said Lily, and Maria colored furiously. Then Lily laughed. “Oh, you have!” she cried, with sudden glee. “You are blushing like anything. Do tell me, Maria.”
“I have nothing to tell.”
“Maria Edgham, you don't dare tell me you are not in love with anybody?”
“I should not answer a question of that kind to any other girl, anyway,” Maria replied, angrily.
“You are. I know it,” said Lily. “Don't be angry, dear. I am real glad.”
“I didn't say I was in love, and there is nothing for you to be glad about,” returned Maria, fairly scarlet with shame and rage. She tangled the silk with which she was working, and broke it short off. Maria was as yet not wholly controlled by herself.
“Why, you'll spoil that daisy,” Lily said, wonderingly. She herself was incapable of any such retaliation upon inanimate objects. She would have carefully untangled her silk, no matter how deeply she suffered.
“I don't care if I do!” cried Maria.
“Why, Maria!”
“Well, I don't care. I am fairly sick of so much talk and thinking about love and getting married, as if there were nothing else.”
“Maybe you are different, Maria,” admitted Lily, in a humiliated fashion.
“I don't want to hear any more about it,” Maria said, taking a fresh thread from her skein of white silk.
“But do you mean what you said?”
“Yes, I do, once for all. That settles it.”
Lily looked at her wistfully. She did not find Maria as sympathetic as she wished. Then she glanced at her beautiful visage in the glass, and remembered what the other girl had said about her beauty, and again she smiled her childlike smile of gratified vanity and pleasure. Then suddenly the door-bell rang.
Lily gave a great start, and turned white as she looked at Maria. “It's George Ramsey,” she whispered.
“Nonsense! How do you know?” asked Maria, laying her work on the table beside the lamp, and rising.
“I don't know. I do know.”
“Nonsense!” Still Maria stood looking irresolutely at Lily.
“I know,” said Lily, and she trembled perceptibly.
“I don't see how you can tell,” said Maria. She made a step towards the door.
Lily sprang up. “I am going home,” said she.
“Going home? Why?”
“He has come to see you, and I won't stay. I won't. I know you despised me for what I did the other night, and I won't do such a thing as to stay when he has come to see another girl. I am not quite as bad as that.” Lily started towards her cloak, which lay over a chair.
Maria seized her by the shoulders with a nervous grip of her little hands. “Lily Merrill,” said she, “if you stir, if you dare to stir to go home, I will not go to the door at all!”
Lily gasped and looked at her.
“I won't!” said Maria.
The bell rang a second time.
“You have got to go to the door,” said Maria, with a sudden impulse.
Lily quivered under her hands.
“Why? Oh, Maria!”
“Yes, you have. You go to the door, and I will run up-stairs the back way to my room. I don't feel well to-night, anyway. I have an awful headache. You go to the door, and if it is—George Ramsey, you tell him I have gone to bed with a headache, and you have come over to stay with me because Aunt Maria has gone away. Then you can ask him in.”
A flush of incredulous joy came over Lily's face.
“You don't mean it, Maria?” she whispered, faintly.
“Yes, I do. Hurry, or he'll go away.”
“Have you got a headache, honest?”
“Yes, I have. Hurry, quick! If it is anybody else do as you like about asking him in. Hurry!”
With that Maria was gone, scudding up the back stairs which led out of the adjoining room. She gained her chamber as noiselessly as a shadow. The room was very dark except for a faint gleam on one wall from a neighbor's lamp. Maria stood still, listening, in the middle of the floor. She heard the front door opened, then she heard voices. She heard steps. The steps entered the sitting-room. Then she heard the voices in a steady flow. One of them was undoubtedly a man's. The bass resonances were unmistakable. A peal of girlish laughter rang out. Maria noiselessly groped her way to her bed, threw herself upon it, face down, and lay there shaking with silent sobs.
Chapter XXII
Maria did not hear Lily laugh again, although the conversation continued. In reality, Lily was in a state of extreme shyness, and was, moreover, filled with a sense of wrong-doing. There had been something about Maria's denial which had not convinced her. In her heart of hearts, the heart of hearts of a foolish but loving girl, who never meant anybody any harm, and, on the contrary, wished everybody well, although naturally herself first, she was quite sure that Maria also loved George Ramsey. She drooped before him with this consciousness when she opened the door, and the young man naturally started with a little surprise at the sight of her.
“Maria has gone to bed with a headache,” she faltered, before George had time to inquire for her. Then she added, in response to the young man's look of astonishment, the little speech which Maria had prepared for her. “Her aunt has gone out, and so I came over to stay with her.” Lily was a born actress. It was not her fault that a little accent of tender pity for Maria in her lonely estate, with her aunt away, and a headache, crept into her voice. She at the moment almost believed what she said. It became quite real to her.
“I am sorry Miss Edgham has a headache,” said George, after a barely perceptible second of hesitation, “but, as long as she has, I may as well come in and make you a little call, Lily.”
Lily quivered perceptibly. She tried to show becoming pride, but failed. “I should be very happy to have you,” she said, “but—”
“Well, it is asking you to play second fiddle, and no mistake,” laughed George Ramsey, “for I did think I would make Miss Edgham a little call. But, after all, the second fiddle is an indispensable thing, and you and I are old friends, Lily.”
He could not help the admiration in his eyes as he looked at Lily. She carried a little lamp, and the soft light was thrown upon her lovely face, and her brown hair gleamed gold in it. No man could have helped admiring her. Lily had never been a very brilliant scholar, but she could read admiration for herself. She regained her self-possession.
“I don't mind playing second fiddle,” said she. “I should be glad if I could play any fiddle. Come in, Mr. Ramsey.”
“How very formal we have grown!” laughed George, as he took off his coat and hat in the icy little hall. “Why, don't you remember we went to school together? What is the use?”
“George, then,” said Lily. Her voice seemed to caress the name.
The young man colored. He was of a stanch sort, but he was a man, and the adulation of such a beautiful girl as this touched him. He took the lamp out of her hand.
“Come in, then,” he said; “but it is rather funny for me to be calling on you here, isn't it?”
“Funnier than it would be for you to call on me at my own house,” said Lily, demurely, with a faint accent of reproach.
“Well, I must admit I am not very neighborly,” George replied, with an apologetic air. “But, you see, I am really busy a good many evenings with accounts, and I don't go out very much.”
Lily reflected that he had come to call on Maria, in spite of being busy, but she said nothing. She placed Maria's vacant chair for him beside the sitting-room stove.
“It is a hard storm,” she said.
“Very. It is a queer night for Miss Edgham's aunt to go out, it seems to me.”
“Mrs. Ralph Wright has a tea-party,” said Lily. “Maria's aunt Eunice has gone, too. My mother was invited, but mother never goes out in the evening.”
After these commonplace remarks, Lily seated herself opposite George Ramsey, and there was a little silence. Again the expression of admiration came into the young man's face, and the girl read it with delight. Sitting gracefully, her slender body outlined by the soft green of her dress, her radiant face showing above the ivory cameo brooch at her throat, she was charming. George Ramsey owned to himself that Lily was certainly a great beauty, but all the same he thought regretfully of the other girl, who was not such a beauty, but who had somehow appealed to him as no other girl had ever done. Then, too, Maria was in a measure new. He had known Lily all his life; the element of wonder and surprise was lacking in his consciousness of her beauty, and she also lacked something else which Maria had. Lily meant no more to him—that is, her beauty meant no more to him—than a symmetrical cherry-tree in the south yard, which was a marvel of scented beauty, humming with bees every spring. He had seen that tree ever since he could remember. He always looked upon it with pleasure when it was in blossom, yet it was not to him what a new tree, standing forth unexpectedly with its complement of flowers and bees, would have been. It was very unfortunate for Lily that George had known her all his life. In order really to attract him it would be necessary for him to discover something entirely new in her.
“It was very good of you to come in and stay with Miss Edgham while her aunt was gone,” said George.
He felt terribly at a loss for conversation. He had, without knowing it, a sense of something underneath the externals which put a constraint upon him.
Lily had one of the truth-telling impulses which redeemed her from the artifices of her mother.
“Oh,” said she, “I wanted to come. I proposed coming myself. It is dull evenings at home, and I did not know that Maria would go to bed or that you would come in.”
“Well, mother has gone to that tea-party, too,” said George, “and I looked over here and saw the light, and I thought I would just run in a minute.”
For some unexplained reason tears were standing in Lily's eyes and her mouth quivered a little. George could not see, for the life of him, why she should be on the verge of tears. He felt a little impatient, but at the same time she became more interesting to him. He had never seen Lily weeping since the time when she was a child at school, and used to conceal her weeping little face in a ring of her right arm, as was the fashion among the little girls.
“This light must shine right in your sitting-room windows,” said Lily, in a faint voice. She was considering how pitiful it was that George had not had the impulse to call upon her, Lily, when she was so lovely and loving in her green gown; and how even this little happiness was not really her own, but another girl's. She had not the least realization of how Maria was suffering, lying in her room directly overhead.
Maria suffered as she had never suffered before. George Ramsey was her first love; the others had been merely childish playthings. She was strangling love, and that is a desperate deed, and the strangler suffers more than love. Maria, with the memory of that marriage which was, indeed, no marriage, but the absurd travesty of one, upon her, was in almost a suicidal frame of mind. She knew perfectly well that if it had not been for that marriage secret which she held always in mind, that George Ramsey would continue to call, that they would become engaged, that her life might be like other women's. And now he was down there with Lily—Lily, in her green gown. She knew just how Lily would look at him, with her beautiful, soft eyes. She hated her, and yet she hated herself more than she hated her. She told herself that she had no good reason for hating another girl for doing what she herself had done—for falling in love with George Ramsey. She knew that she should never have made a confidant of another girl, as Lily had made of her. She realized a righteous contempt because of her weakness, and yet she felt that Lily was the normal girl, that nine out of ten would do exactly what she had done. And she also had a sort of pity for her. She could not quite believe that a young man like George Ramsey could like Lily, who, however beautiful she was, was undeniably silly. But then she reflected how young men were popularly supposed not to mind a girl's being silly if she was beautiful. Then she ceased to pity Lily, and hated her again. She became quite convinced that George Ramsey would marry her.
She had locked her door, and lay on her bed fully dressed. She made up her mind that when Aunt Maria came she would pretend to be asleep. She felt that she could not face Aunt Maria's wondering questions. Then she reflected that Aunt Maria would be home soon, and a malicious joy seized her that Lily would not have George Ramsey long to herself. Indeed, it was scarcely half-past eight before Maria heard the side-door open. Then she heard, quite distinctly, Aunt Maria's voice, although she could not distinguish the words. Maria laughed a little, smothered, hysterical laugh at the absurdity of the situation.
It was, in fact, ludicrous. Aunt Maria entered the sitting-room, a grotesque figure in her black skirt bundled up under Maria's waterproof, which was powdered with snow. She wore her old black bonnet, and the wind had tipped that rakishly to one side. She stared at Lily and George Ramsey, who both rose with crimson faces.
“Good-evening,” Lily ventured, feebly.
“Good-evening, Miss Stillman,” George said, following the girl's lead. Then, as he was more assured, he added that it was a very stormy night.
George had been sitting on one side of the stove, Lily on the other, in the chairs which Maria and Lily had occupied before the young man's arrival. They had both sprung up with a guilty motion when Aunt Maria entered. Aunt Maria stood surveying them. She did not return their good-evenings, nor George's advance with regard to the weather. Her whole face expressed severe astonishment. Her thin lips gaped slightly, her pale eyes narrowed. She continued to look at them, and they stood before her like culprits.
“Where's Maria gone?” said Aunt Maria, finally, in a voice which seemed to have an edge to it.
Then Lily spoke with soft and timid volubility. “Maria said her head ached so she thought she had better go to bed, Miss Stillman,” she said.
“I didn't hear anything about any headache before I went away. Must have come on mighty sudden,” said Aunt Maria.
“She said it ached very hard,” repeated Lily. “And when the door-bell rang, when Mr. Ramsey came—”
“It's mighty queer she should have had a headache when George Ramsey rang the door-bell,” said Aunt Maria.
“I guess it must have ached before,” said Lily, faintly.
“I should suppose it must have,” Aunt Maria said, sarcastically. “I don't see any reason why Maria's head should begin to ache when the door-bell rang.”
“Of course,” said Lily. “I suppose she just felt she couldn't talk, that was all.”
“It's mighty queer,” said Aunt Maria. She stood quite immovable. She was so stern that even her rakishly tipped bonnet did not seem at all funny. She looked at Lily and George Ramsey, and did not make a movement to remove her wraps.
Lily took a little, faltering step towards her. “You are all covered with snow, Miss Stillman,” she said, in her sweet voice.
“I don't mind a little snow,” said Aunt Maria.
“Won't you take this chair?” asked George Ramsey, pointing to the one which he had just vacated.
“No, thank you,” replied Aunt Maria. “I ain't going to sit down. I've got on my best black silk, and I don't ever sit down in it when I can help it. I'm going to take it off and go to bed.”
Then George Ramsey immediately made a movement towards his coat and hat, which lay on the lounge beside Lily's wraps. “Well,” he said, with an attempt to laugh and be easy, “I must be going. I have to take an early car to-morrow.”
“I must go, too,” said Lily.
They both hustled on their outer garments. They said good-evening when they went out, but Aunt Maria did not reply. She immediately took off Maria's water-proof and her bonnet, and slipped off her best black silk gown. Then she took the little lamp which was lighted in the kitchen and went up-stairs to Maria's room. She had an old shawl over her shoulders, otherwise she was in her black quilted petticoat. She stepped softly, and entered the spare room opposite Maria's. It was icy cold in there. She set the lamp on the bureau and went out, closing the door softly. It was then quite dark in the little passageway between the spare room and Maria's. Aunt Maria stood looking sharply at Maria's door, especially at the threshold, which was separated from the floor quite a space by the shrinkage of the years. The panels, too, had their crevices, through which light might be seen. It was entirely dark. Aunt Maria opened the door of the spare room very softly and got the little lamp off the bureau, and tiptoed down-stairs. Then she sat down before the sitting-room stove and pulled up her quilted petticoat till her thin legs were exposed, to warm herself and not injure the petticoat. She looked unutterably stern and weary. Suddenly, as she sat there, tears began to roll over her ascetic cheeks.
“Oh, Lord!” she sighed to herself; “to think that child has got to go through the world just the way I have, when she don't need to!”
Aunt Maria rose and got a handkerchief out of her bureau-drawer in her little bedroom. She did not take the one in the pocket of her gown because that was her best one, and very fine. Then she sat down again, pulled up her petticoat again, put the handkerchief before her poor face, and wept for herself and her niece, because of a conviction which was over her that for both the joy of life was to come only from the windows of others.
Chapter XXIII
Lily Merrill, going home across the yard through the storm, leaning on George Ramsey's arm, gave a little, involuntary sob. It was a sob half of the realization of slighted affection, half of shame. It gave the little element of strangeness which was lacking to fascinate the young man. He had a pitiful heart towards women, and at the sound of the little, stifled sob he pressed Lily's arm more closely under his own.
“Don't, Lily,” he said, softly.
Lily sobbed again; she almost leaned her head towards George's shoulder. She made a little, irresistible, nestling motion, like a child.
“I can't help it,” she said, brokenly. “She did look at me so.”
“Don't mind her one bit, Lily,” said George. He half laughed at the memory of Aunt Maria's face, even while the tender tone sounded in his voice. “Don't mind that poor old maid. Neither of us were to blame. I suppose it did look as if we had taken possession of her premises, and she was astonished, that was all. How funny she looked, poor thing, with her bonnet awry!”
“I know she must think I have done something dreadful,” sobbed Lily.
“Nonsense!” George said again, and his pressure of her arm tightened. “I was just going when she came in, anyway. There is nothing at all to be ashamed of, only—” He hesitated.
“What?” asked Lily.
“Well, to tell you the truth, Lily,” he said then, “it does look to me as if Miss Edgham's headache was only another way of telling me she did not wish to see me.”
“Oh, I guess not,” said Lily.
“For some reason or other she does not seem to like me,” George said, with rather a troubled voice; but he directly laughed.
“I don't see any reason why she shouldn't like you,” Lily said.
They had reached Lily's door, and the light from the sitting-room windows shone on her lovely face, past which the snow drifted like a white veil.
“Well, I think she doesn't,” George said, carelessly, “but you are mighty good to say you see no reason why she shouldn't. You and I have always been good friends, haven't we, Lily, ever since we went to school together?”
“Yes,” replied Lily, eagerly, although she did not like the word friends, which seemed to smite on the heart. She lifted her face to the young man's, and her lips pouted almost imperceptibly. It could not have been said that she was inviting a kiss, but no man could have avoided kissing her. George Ramsey kissed her as naturally as he breathed. There seemed to be nothing else to do. It was one of the inevitables of life. Then Lily opened the door and slid into the house with a tremulous good-night.
George himself felt tremulous, and also astonished and vexed with himself. He had certainly not meant to kiss Lily Merrill. But it flashed across his mind that she would not think anything of it, that he had kissed her often when they were children, and it was the same thing now. As he went away he glanced back at the lighted windows, and a man's shadow was quite evident. He wondered who was calling on Lily's mother, and then wondered, with a slight shadow of jealousy, if it could be some one who had come to see Lily herself. He reflected, as he went homeward through the storm, that a girl as pretty as Lily ought to have some one worthy of her. He went over in his mind, as he puffed his cigar, all the young men in Amity, and it did not seem to him that any one of them was quite the man for her.
When he reached home he found his mother already there, warming herself by the sitting-room register. She had gone to the tea-party in a carriage (George would not have her walk), but she was chilled. She was a delicate, pretty woman. She looked up, shivering, as George entered.
“Where have you been, dear?” she asked.
George laughed, and colored a little. “Well, mother, I went to see one young lady and saw another,” he replied.
Just then the maid came in with some hot chocolate, which Mrs. Ramsey always drank before she went to bed, and she asked no more questions until the girl had gone; then she resumed the conversation.
“What do you mean, dear?” she inquired, looking over the rim of the china cup at her son, with a slight, anxious contraction of her forehead.
“Well, I felt a little lonely after you went, mother, and I had nothing especial to do, and it occurred to me that I would go over and call on our neighbor.”
“On young Maria Edgham?”
“Yes, mother.”
“Well, I suppose it was a polite thing for you to do,” said his mother, mildly, “but I don't quite care for her has I do for some girls. She is so very vehement. I do like a young girl to be gentle.”
“Well, I didn't see her, mother, in either a gentle or vehement mood,” said George. “As nearly as I can find out, she had a premonition who it was when I rang the door-bell, and said she had a headache, and ran up-stairs to bed.”
“Why, how do you know?” asked his mother, staring at him. “Her aunt was at the tea. Who told you?”
“Lily Merrill was there,” replied George, and again he was conscious of coloring. “She had come to stay with Maria because her aunt was going out. She answered my ring, and so I made a little call on her until Miss Stillman returned, and was so surprised to see her premises invaded and her niece missing that I think she inferred a conspiracy or a burglar. At all events, Lily and I were summarily dismissed. I have just seen Lily home.”
“Lily Merrill is pretty, and I think she is a nice, lady-like girl,” said Mrs. Ramsey, and she regarded her son more uneasily than before, “but I don't like her mother, George.”
“Why, what is the matter with Lily's mother?”
“She isn't genuine. Adeline Merrill was never genuine. She has always had her selfish ends, and she has reached them by crooks and turns.”
“I think Lily is genuine enough,” said George, carelessly, putting another lump of sugar in his cup of chocolate. “I have seen more brilliant girls, but she is a beauty, and I think she is genuine.”
“Well, perhaps she is,” Mrs. Ramsey admitted. “I don't know her very well, but I do know her mother. I know something now.”
“What?”
“I know you don't like gossip, but if ever a woman was—I know it is a vulgar expression—but if ever a woman was setting her cap for a man, she is setting hers for Dr. Ellridge. She never goes anywhere evenings, in the hope that he may call, and she sends for him when there is nothing whatever the matter with her, if he doesn't. I know, because Dr. Ellridge's wife's sister, Miss Emmons, who has kept house for him since his wife died, told me so. He goes home and tells her, and laughs, but I know she isn't quite sure that the doctor won't marry her.”
“Miss Emmons is jealous, perhaps,” said George. “Perhaps Mrs. Merrill is really ill.”
“No, the doctor says she is not, and Miss Emmons is not jealous. She told me that as far as she was concerned, although she would lose her home, she should be glad to see the doctor married, if he chose a suitable woman; but I don't think she likes Mrs. Merrill. I don't see how anybody can like a woman who so openly proclaims her willingness to marry a man before he has done her the honor to ask her. It seems shameless to me.”
“Perhaps she doesn't,” George said again. Then he added, “It would be rather hard for Lily if her mother did marry the doctor. He is a good man enough, but with his own three girls, the oldest older than Lily, she would have a hard time.”
George looked quite sober, reflecting upon the possible sad lot of poor Lily if her mother married the second time.
“Adeline Merrill wouldn't stop for such a thing as the feelings of her own daughter, if she had her mind set on anything,” said his mother, in her soft voice, which seemed to belie the bitterness of her words. She was not in reality bitter at all, not even towards Mrs. Merrill, but she had clearly defined rules of conduct for gentlewomen, and she mentioned it when these rules were transgressed.
“Well, mother dear, I can't see that it is likely to make much difference to either you or me, anyway,” said George, and his mother felt consoled. She told herself that it was not possible that George thought seriously of Lily, or he would not speak so.
“Miss Stillman is very eccentric,” she remarked, departing from the subject. “I offered to bring her home with me in the carriage. I knew you would not mind the extra money. She has such a cold that I really wondered that she came at all in such a storm; but, no, she seemed fairly indignant at the idea. I never saw any one so proud. I asked Mrs. Henry Stillman, but she did not like to have her sister-in-law to go alone, so she would not accept, either; but Miss Stillman walked herself, and made her sister walk, too, and I am positive it was because she was proud. Do you really mean you think young Maria did not want to see you, George?”
“It looked like it,” George replied, laughing.
“Why?” asked his mother.
“How do I know, mother dear? I don't think Miss Edgham altogether approves of me for some reason.”
“I should like to know what reason she has for not approving of you,” cried his mother, jealously. She looked admiringly at her son, who was handsome, with a sort of rugged beauty, and whose face displayed strength, and honesty not to be questioned. “I would like to know who Maria Edgham thinks she is. She is rather pretty, but she cannot compare with Lily Merrill as far as that goes, and she is teaching a little district school, and from what I have seen of her, her manners are subject to criticism. She is not half as lady-like as other girls in Amity. When I think of the way she flew in here and attacked us for not clothing those disreputable people across the river, just because they have the same name, I can't help being indignant. I never heard of a young girl's doing such a thing. And I think that if she ran off when the bell rang, because she thought it was you, it was certainly very rude. I think she virtually ascribed more meaning to your call than there was.”
“Lily said she had a headache,” said George, but his own face assumed an annoyed expression. That version of Maria's flight had not occurred to him, and he was a very proud fellow. When he went up-stairs to his own room he continued wondering whether it was possible that Maria, remembering their childish love-affair, could have really dreamed that he had called that evening with serious intentions, and he grew more and more indignant at the idea. Then the memory of that soft, hardly returned kiss which he had given Lily came to him, and now he did not feel vexed with himself because of it. He was quite certain that Lily was too gentle and timid to think for a minute that he meant anything more than their old childish friendship. The memory of the kiss became very pleasant to him, and he seemed to feel Lily's lips upon his own like a living flower which thrilled the heart. The next morning, when he took the trolley-car in front of his house, Maria was just passing on her way to school. She was wading rather wearily, yet still sturdily, through the snow. It had cleared during the night, and there were several inches of drifted snow in places, although some portions of the road were as bare as if swept by a broom of the winds.
Maria, tramping through the snow, which was deep just there, merely glanced at George Ramsey, and said good-morning. She had plenty of time, if she had chosen to do so, to express her regrets at not seeing him the evening before, for the car had not yet reached him. But she said nothing except good-morning, and George responded rather curtly, raising his hat, and stepping forward towards the car. He felt it to be unmistakable that Maria wished him to understand that she did not care for his particular acquaintance, and the sting which his mother had suggested the evening before, that she must consider that his attentions were significant, or she would not take so much trouble to repulse them, came over him again. He boarded the car, which was late, and moving sluggishly through the snow. It came to a full stop in front of the Merrill house, and George saw Lily's head behind a stand of ferns in one of the front windows. He raised his hat, and she bowed, and he could see her blush even at that distance. He thought again, comfortably, that Lily, remembering their childish caresses, could attach no importance to what had happened the night before, and yet a thrill of tenderness and pleasure shot through him, and he seemed to feel again the flower-like touch of her lips. It was a solace for any man, after receiving such an unmistakable rebuff as he had just received from Maria Edgham. He had no conception of the girl plodding through the snow to her daily task. He did not dream that she saw, instead of the snowy road before, a long stretch of dreary future, brought about by that very rebuff. But she was quite merciless with herself. She would not yield for a moment to regrets. She accepted that stretch of dreary future with a defiant acquiescence. She bowed pleasantly to the acquaintances whom she met. They were not many that morning, for the road was hardly passable in places, being overcurved here and there with blue, diamond-crested, snowlike cascades, and now presenting ridges like graves. Half-way to the school-house, Maria saw the village snow-plough, drawn by a struggling horse and guided by a red-faced man. She stood aside to let it pass. The man did not look at her. He frowned ahead at his task. He was quite an old man, and bent, but with the red of youth brought forth in his cheeks by the frosty air.
“Everybody has to work in some way,” Maria thought, “and very few get happiness for their labor.”
She reflected how soon that man would be lying stiff and stark under the wintry snows and the summer heats, and how nothing which might trouble him now would matter. She reflected that, although she herself was younger and had presumably longer to live, that the time would inevitably come when even such unhappiness as weighed her down this morning would not matter. She continued in the ineffectual track which the snow-plough had made, with a certain pleasure in the exertion. All Maria's heights of life, her mountain-summits which she would agonize to reach, were spiritual. Labor in itself could never daunt her. Always her spirit, the finer essence of her, would soar butterfly-like above her toiling members.
It was a beautiful morning; the trees were heavily bent with snow, which gave out lustres like jewels. The air had a very purity of life in it. Maria inhaled the frosty, clear air, and regarded the trees as one might have done who was taking a stimulant. She kept her mind upon them, and would not think of George Ramsey. As she neared the school-house, the first child who ran to meet her, stumbling through the snow, was little Jessy Ramsey. Maria forced herself to meet smilingly the upward, loving look of those blue Ramsey eyes. She bent down and kissed Jessy, and the little thing danced at her side in a rapture.
“They be awful warm, my close, teacher,” said she.
“My clothes are very warm, teacher,” corrected Maria, gravely.
“My clothes are very warm, teacher,” said Jessy, obediently.
Maria caught the child up in her arms (she was a tiny, half-fed little thing), and kissed her again. Somehow she got a measure of comfort from it. After all, love was love, in whatever guise it came, and this was an innocent love which she could admit with no question.
“That's a good little girl, dear,” she said, and set Jessy down.
Chapter XXIV
Maria did not go home for the Christmas holidays. She was very anxious to do so, but she received a letter from Ida Edgham which made her resolve to remain where she was.
“We should be so very glad to have you come home for the holidays, dear,” wrote Ida, “but of course we know how long the journey is, and how little you are earning, and we are all well. Your father seems quite well, and so we shall send you some little remembrance, and try to console ourselves as best we can for your absence.”
Maria read the letter to her aunt Maria.
“You won't go one step?” said Aunt Maria, interrogatively.
“No,” said Maria. She was quite white. Nobody knew how she had longed to see her father and little Evelyn, and she had planned to go, and take Aunt Maria with her, defraying the expenses out of her scanty earnings.
“I wouldn't go if you were to offer me a thousand dollars,” said Aunt Maria.
“I would not, either,” responded Maria. She opened the stove door and thrust the letter in, and watched it burn.
“How your father ever came to marry that woman—” said Aunt Maria.
“There's no use talking about that now,” said Maria, arousing to defence of her father. “She was very pretty!”
“Pretty enough,” said Aunt Maria, “and I miss my guess if she didn't do most of the courting. Well, as you say, there is no use talking it over now. What's done is done.”
Aunt Maria watched Maria's pitiful young face with covert glances. Maria was finishing a blouse which she had expected to wear on her journey. She continued her work with resolution, but every line on her face took a downward curve.
“You don't need to hurry so on that waist now,” said Aunt Maria.
“I want the waist, anyway,” replied her niece. “I may as well get it done.”
“You will have to send the Christmas presents,” said Aunt Maria. “I don't very well see how you can pack some of them.”
“I guess I can manage,” said Maria.
The next day her week of vacation began. She packed the gifts which she had bought for her father and Evelyn and Ida, and took them to the express office. The day after that she received the remembrances of which Ida spoke. They were very pretty. Aunt Maria thought them extravagant. Ida had sent her a tiny chatelaine watch, and her father a ring set with a little diamond. Maria knew perfectly well how her father's heart ached when he sent the ring. She never for one moment doubted him. She wrote him a most loving letter, and even a deceptive letter, because of her affection. She repeated what Ida had written, that it was a long journey, and expensive, and she did not think it best for her to go home, although she had longed to do so.
Ida sent Aunt Maria a set of Shakespeare. When it was unpacked, Aunt Maria looked shrewdly at her niece.
“How many sets of Shakespeare has she got?” she inquired. “Do you know, Maria?”
Maria admitted that she thought she had two.
“I miss my guess but she has another exactly just like this,” said Aunt Maria. “Well, I don't mean to be ungrateful, and I know Shakespeare is called a great writer, and they who like him can read him. I would no more sit down and read all those books through, myself, than I would read Webster's Dictionary.”
Maria laughed.
“You can take this set of books up in your room, if you want them,” said Aunt Maria. “For my part I consider it an insult for her to send Shakespeare to me. She must have known I had never had anything to do with Shakespeare. She might just as well have sent me a crown. Now, your father he has more sense. He sent me this five-dollar gold-piece so I could buy what I wanted with it. He knew that he didn't know what I wanted. Your father's a good man, Maria, but he was weak when he married her; I've got to say it.”
“I don't think father was weak at all!” Maria retorted, with spirit.
“Of course, I expect you to stand up for your father, that is right. I wouldn't have you do anything else,” Aunt Maria said approvingly. “But he was weak.”
“She could have married almost anybody,” said Maria, gathering up the despised set of books. She was very glad of them to fill up the small bamboo bookcase in her own room, and, beside, she did not share her aunt's animosity to Shakespeare. She purchased some handkerchiefs for her aunt, with the covert view of recompensing her for the loss of Ida's present, and Aunt Maria was delighted with them.
“If she had had the sense to send me half a dozen handkerchiefs like these,” said she, “I should have thanked her. Anybody in their senses would rather have half a dozen nice handkerchiefs than a set of Shakespeare. That is, if they said just what they meant. I know some folks would be ashamed of not thinking much of Shakespeare. As for me, I say what I mean.” Aunt Maria tossed her head as she spoke.
She grew daily more like her brother Henry. The family traits in each became more accentuated. Each posed paradoxically as not being a poser. Aunt Maria spoke her mind so freely and arrogantly that she was not much of a favorite in Amity, although she commanded a certain measure of respect from her strenuous exertions at her own trumpet, which more than half-convinced people of the accuracy of her own opinion of herself. Sometimes Maria herself was irritated by her aunt, but she loved her dearly. She was always aware, too, of Aunt Maria's unspoken, but perfect approbation and admiration for herself, Maria, and of a certain sympathy for her, which the elder woman had the delicacy never to speak of. She had become aware that Maria, while she repulsed George Ramsey, was doing so for reasons which she could not divine, and that she suffered because of it.
One afternoon, not long after Christmas, when Maria returned from school, almost the first words which her aunt said to her were, “I do hate to see a young man made a fool of.”
Maria turned pale, and looked at her aunt.
“George Ramsey went past here sleigh-riding with Lily Merrill a little while ago,” said Aunt Maria. “That girl's making a fool of him!”
“Lily is a nice girl, Aunt Maria,” Maria said, faintly.
“Nice enough, but she can't come up to him. She never can. And when one can't come up, the other has to go down. I've seen it too many times not to know. There's sleigh-bells now. I guess it's them coming back. Yes, it is.”
Maria did not glance out of the window, and the sleigh, with its singing bells, flew past. She went wearily up to her own room, and removed her wraps before supper. Maria had a tiny coal-stove in her room now, and that was a great comfort to her. She could get away by herself, when she chose, and sometimes the necessity for so doing was strong upon her. She wished to think, without Aunt Maria's sharp eyes upon her, searching her thoughts. Emotion in Maria was reaching its high-water mark; the need for concealing, lest it be profaned by other eyes, was over her. Maria felt, although she was conscious of her aunt's covert sympathy for something that troubled her which she did not know about, and grateful for it, that she should die of shame if Aunt Maria did know. After supper that night she returned to her own room. She said she had some essays to correct.
“Well, I guess I'll step into the other side a minute,” said Aunt Maria. “Eunice went to the sewing-meeting this afternoon, and I want to know what they put in that barrel for that minister out West. I don't believe they had enough to half fill it. Of all the things they sent the last time, there wasn't anything fit to be seen.”
Maria seated herself in her own room, beside her tiny stove. She had a pink shade on her lamp, which stood on her little centre-table. The exercises were on the table, but she had not touched them when she heard doors opening and shutting below, then a step on the stairs. She knew at once it was Lily. Her room door opened, after a soft knock, and Lily glided gracefully in.
“I knew you were up here, dear,” she said. “I saw your light, and I saw your aunt's sitting-room lamp go out.”
“Aunt Maria has only gone in Uncle Henry's side. Sit down, Lily,” said Maria, rising and returning Lily's kiss, and placing a chair for her.
“Does she always put her lamp out when she goes in there?” asked Lily with innocent wonder.
“Yes,” replied Maria, rather curtly. That was one of poor Aunt Maria's petty economies, and she was sensitive with regard to it. A certain starvation of character, which had resulted from the lack of material wealth, was evident in Aunt Maria, and her niece recognized the fact with exceeding pity, and a sense of wrong at the hands of Providence.
“How very funny,” said Lily.
Maria said nothing. Lily had seated herself in the chair placed for her, and as usual had at once relapsed into a pose which would have done credit to an artist's model, a pose of which she was innocently conscious. She cast approving glances at the graceful folds of crimson cashmere which swept over her knees; she extended one little foot in its pointed shoe; she raised her arms with a gesture peculiar to her and placed them behind her head in such a fashion that she seemed to embrace herself. Lily in crimson cashmere, which lent its warm glow to her tender cheeks, and even seemed to impart a rosy reflection to the gloss of her hair, was ravishing. To-night, too, her face wore a new expression, one of triumphant tenderness, which caused her to look fairly luminous.
“It has been a lovely day, hasn't it?” she said.
“Very pleasant,” said Maria.
“Did you know I went sleigh-riding this afternoon?”
“Did you?”
“Yes; George took me out.”
“That was nice,” said Maria.
“We went to Wayland. The sleighing is lovely.”
“I thought it looked so,” said Maria.
“It is. Say, Maria!”
“Well?”
“He said things to me this afternoon that sounded as if he did mean them. He did, really.”
“Did he?”
“Do you want me to tell you?” asked Lily, eying Maria happily and yet a little timidly.
Maria straightened herself. “If you want to know what I really think, Lily,” she said, “I think no girl should repeat anything a man says to her, if she does think he really means it. I think it is between the two. I think it should be held sacred. I think the girl cheapens it by repeating it, and I don't think it is fair to the man. I don't care to hear what Mr. Ramsey said, if you want the truth, Lily.”
Lily looked abashed. “I dare say you are right, Maria,” she said, meekly. “I won't repeat anything he said if you don't think I ought, and don't want to hear it.”
“Is your new dress done?” asked Maria, abruptly.
“It is going to be finished this week,” said Lily. “Do you think I am horrid, proposing to tell you what he said, Maria?”
“No, only I don't care to hear any more about it.”
“Well, I hope you don't think I am horrid.”
“I don't, dear,” said Maria, with an odd sensation of tenderness for the other, weaker girl, whom she had handled in a measure roughly with her own stronger character. She looked admiringly at her as she spoke. “Nobody can ever really think you horrid,” she said.
“If they did, I should think I was horrid my own self,” said Lily, with the ready acquiescence in the opinion of another which signified the deepest admiration, even to her own detriment, and was the redeeming note in her character.
Maria laughed. “I declare, Lily,” said she, “I hope you will never be accused of a crime, for I do believe even if you were innocent, you would side with the lawyer for the prosecution.”
“I don't know but I should,” said Lily.
Then she ventured to say something more about George Ramsey, encouraged by Maria's friendliness, but she met with such scanty sympathy that she refrained. She arose soon, and said she thought she must go home.
“I am tired to-night, and I think I had better go to bed early,” she said.
“Don't hurry,” Maria said, conventionally; but Lily kissed Maria and went.
Maria knew that her manner had driven Lily away, but she did not feel as if she could endure hearing her confidences, and Lily's confidences had all the impetus of a mountain stream. Had she remained, they could not have been finally checked. Maria moved her window curtains slightly and watched Lily flitting across the yard. She saw her enter the door, and also saw, quite distinctly the shadow of a man upon the white curtain as he rose to greet her when she entered. She wondered whether the man was Dr. Ellridge, or George Ramsey. The shadow looked like that of the older man, she thought, and she was not mistaken.
Lily, on entering the sitting-room, found Dr. Ellridge with her mother, and her mother's face was flushed, and she had a conscious simper. Lily said good-evening, and sat down as usual with her fancy-work, after she had removed her wraps, but soon her mother said to her that there was a good fire in her own room, and she thought that she had better go to bed early, as she must be tired, and Dr. Ellridge echoed her with rather a foolish expression.
“I don't think you ought to sit up late working on embroidery, Lily,” he said. “You are looking tired to-night. You must let me prescribe for you a glass of hot milk and bed.”
Lily looked at both of them with wondering gentleness, then she rose.
“There is a good fire in the kitchen,” said her mother, “and Hannah will heat the milk for you. You had better do as Dr. Ellridge said. You are going out to-morrow night, too, you know.”
Lily said good-night, and went out with a smouldering disquiet in her heart. When she asked Hannah out in the kitchen to heat the milk for her, because Dr. Ellridge said she must drink it and then go to bed, the girl, who had been long with the family and considered that she in reality was the main-spring of the house, eyed her curiously.
“Said you had better go to bed?” said she. “Why, it isn't nine o'clock!”
“He said I looked tired, Hannah,” said Lily faintly.
Hannah, who was a large, high-shouldered Nova Scotia girl, with a large, flat face obscured with freckles, sniffed. Lily heard her say quite distinctly as she went into the pantry for the milk, that she called it a shame when there were so many grown-up daughters to think of, for her part.
Lily knew what she meant. She sat quite pale and still while the milk was heating, and then drank it meekly, said good-night to Hannah and went up-stairs.
She could not go to sleep, although she went at once to bed, and extinguished her lamp. She lay there and heard a clock down in the hall strike the hours. The clock had struck twelve, and she had not heard Dr. Ellridge go. The whole situation filled her with a sort of wonder of disgust. She could not imagine her mother and Dr. Ellridge sitting up until midnight as she might sit up with George Ramsey. She felt as if she were witnessing a ghastly inversion of things, as if Love, instead of being in his proper panoply of wings and roses, was invested with a medicine-case, an obsolete frock-coat, and elderly obesity. Dr. Ellridge was quite stout. She wondered how her mother could, and then she wondered how Dr. Ellridge could. Lily loved her mother, but she had relegated her to what she considered her proper place in the scheme of things, and now she was overstepping it. Lily called to mind vividly the lines on her mother's face, her matronly figure. It seemed to her that her mother had had her time of love with her father, and this was as abnormal as two springs in one year. Shortly after twelve, Lily heard a soft murmur of voices in the hall, then the front door close. Then her mother came up-stairs and entered her room.
“Are you asleep, Lily?” she whispered, softly, and Lily recognized with shame the artificiality of the whisper.
“No, mother, I am not asleep,” she replied, quite loudly.
Her mother came and sat down on the bed beside her. She patted Lily's cheeks, and felt for her hand. Lily's impulse was to snatch it away, but she was too gentle. She let it remain passively in her mother's nervous clasp.
“Lily, my dear child, I have something to tell you,” whispered Mrs. Merrill.