Directly the look of loving solicitude appeared on Evelyn's face. She went close to her sister, and laid her soft, glowing cheek against hers.
“I am so sorry, dearest,” she said. “Sorry for whatever troubles you.”
“What makes you think anything troubles me?”
“You seem to me as if something troubled you.”
“Nothing does,” said Maria. She pushed Evelyn gently away and sat up. “I was only tired out,” she said, firmly. “The breakfast has made me feel better. I will get up now and write some letters.”
“Wouldn't you rather lie still and let me read to you?”
“No, dear, thank you. I will get up now.”
Evelyn remained in the room while her sister brushed her hair and dressed. “I wonder what kind of a man the new principal will be?” she said, looking dreamily out of the window. She had, in fact, already had her dreams about him. As yet she had admitted men to her dreams only, but she had her dreams. She did not notice her sister's change of color. She continued to gaze absently out of the window at the autumn landscape. A golden maple branch swung past the window in a crisp breeze, now and then a leaf flew away like a yellow bird and became a part of the golden carpet on the ground. “Addie Hemingway says he is very handsome,” she said, meditatively. “Do you remember him, sister—that is, do you remember how he looked when he was a boy?”
“As I remember him he was a very good-looking boy,” Maria said.
“I wonder if he is engaged?” Evelyn said.
Suddenly her soft cheeks flamed.
“I don't see what that matters to you,” Maria retorted, in a tone which she almost never used towards Evelyn—“to you or any of the other girls. Mr. Lee is coming to teach you, not to become engaged to his pupils.”
“Of course I know he is,” Evelyn said, humbly. “I didn't mean to be silly, sister. I was only wondering.”
“The less a young girl wonders about a man the better,” Maria said.
“Well, I won't wonder, only it does seem rather natural to wonder. Didn't you use to wonder when you were a young girl, sister?”
“It does not make it right if I did.”
“I don't think you could do anything wrong, sister,” Evelyn returned, with one of her glances of love and admiration. Suddenly Maria wondered herself what a man would do if he were to receive one of those glances.
Evelyn continued her little chatter. “Of course none of us girls ever wondered about Professor Lane, because he was so old,” she said. Then she caught herself with an anxious glance at her sister. “But he was very handsome, too,” she added, “and I don't know why we shouldn't have thought about him, and he wasn't so very old. I think Colorado will cure him.”
“I hope so,” Maria said, absently. She had no more conception of what was in Evelyn's mind with regard to herself and Professor Lane than she had of the thought of an inhabitant of Mars. Ineffable distances of surmise and imagination separated the two in the same room.
Evelyn continued: “Mr. Lee isn't married, anyway,” she said. “Addie said so. His mother keeps house for him. Wasn't that a dreadful thing in the paper last night, sister?”
“What?” asked Maria.
“About that girl's getting another woman's husband to fall in love with her, and get a divorce, and then marrying him. I don't see how she could. I would rather die than marry a man who had been divorced. I would think of the other wife all the time. Don't you think it was dreadful, sister?”
“Why do you read such things?” asked Maria, and there was a hard ring in her voice. It seemed to her that she was stretched on a very rack of innocence and ignorance.
“It was all there was in the paper to read,” replied Evelyn, “except advertisements. There were pictures of the girl, and the wife, and the man, and the two little children. Of course it was worse because there were children, but it was dreadful anyway. I would never speak to that girl again, not if she had been my dearest friend.”
“You had better read a library book, if there is nothing better than that to read in a paper,” said Maria.
“There wasn't, except a prize-fight, and I don't care anything about prize-fights, and I believe there were races, too, but I don't know anything about races.”
“I don't see that you know very much about marriage and divorce,” Maria said, adjusting her collar.
“Are you angry with me, sister? Don't you want me to fasten your collar?”
“No, I can fasten it myself, thank you, dear. No, I am not angry with you, only I do wish you wouldn't read such stuff. Put the paper away, and get a book instead.”
“I will if you want me to, sister,” replied Evelyn.
Chapter XXXI
The Monday when the fall term of the academy at Westbridge opened was a very beautiful day. The air was as soft as summer, but with a strange, pungent quality which the summer had lacked. There was a slightly smoky scent which exhilarated. It was a scent of death coming from bonfires of dead leaves and drying vegetation, and yet it seemed to presage life. When Maria and Evelyn went out to take the trolley for Westbridge, Maria wore a cluster of white chrysanthemums pinned to her blouse. The blouse itself was a very pretty one, worn with a black plaited skirt. It was a soft silk of an old-rose shade, and it was trimmed with creamy lace. Maria had left off her mourning. Evelyn looked with a little surprise at Maria's blouse.
“Why, you've got on your pink blouse, sister,” she said.
Maria colored softly, for no ostensible reason. “Yes,” she said.
“You don't generally wear it to school.”
“I thought as long as it was the first day,” Maria said, in a slightly faltering tone. She bent her head until her rose-wreathed hat almost concealed her face. The sisters stood in front of the house waiting for their car. Evelyn made a sudden little run back into the yard.
“You hold the car!” she cried.
“I don't know that they will wait; you must not stop,” Maria called out. But the car had just stopped when Evelyn returned, and she had a little cluster of snowberries pinned in the front of her red gown. She looked bewitchingly over them at Maria when they were seated side by side in the car.
“I guess I was going to wear flowers as well as some other folks,” she whispered with a soft, dark glance at her sister from under her long lashes. Maria smiled.
“You don't need to wear flowers,” she said.
“Why not as well as you?”
“Oh, you are a flower yourself,” Maria said, looking fondly at her.
Indeed, the young girl looked like nothing so much as a rose, with her tenderly curved pink cheeks, the sweet arch of her lips, and her glowing radiance of smiles. Maria looked at her critically, then bade her turn that she might fasten a hook on her collar which had become unfastened.
“Now you are all right,” she said.
Evelyn smiled. “Don't you think these snowberries are pretty with this red dress?” she asked.
“Lovely.”
“I wonder what the new principal will be like,” Evelyn said, musingly, after riding awhile in silence.
“I presume he will be very much like other young men. The main thing to consider is, if he is a good teacher,” Maria said.
“What makes you cross, sister?” Evelyn whispered plaintively.
“I am not cross, only I don't want you to be silly.”
“I am not silly. All the girls are wondering, too. I am only like other girls. You can't expect me to be just like you, Maria. Of course you are older, and you don't wonder, and then, too, you knew him when he was a boy. Is he light or dark?”
“Light,” Maria replied, looking out of the window.
“Sometimes light children grow dark as they grow older,” said Evelyn. “I hope he hasn't. I like light men better than dark, don't you, Maria?”
“I don't like one more than another,” said Maria shortly.
“Of course I know you don't in one way. Don't be so cross,” Evelyn said in a hurt way. “But almost everybody has an opinion about light and dark men.”
Maria looked out of the window, and Evelyn said no more, but she felt a sorrowful surprise at her sister. Evelyn was so used to being petted and admired that the slightest rebuff, especially a rebuff from Maria, made her incredulous. It really seemed to her that Maria must be ill to speak so shortly to her. Then she remembered poor Professor Lane, and how in all probability Maria was thinking about him this morning, and that made her irritable, and how she, Evelyn, ought to be very patient. Evelyn was in reality very patient and very slow to take offence. So she snuggled gently up to her sister, until her slender, red-clad shoulder touched Maria's, and looked pleasantly around through the car, and again wondered privately about the new principal.
They had a short walk after leaving the car to the academy. As they turned into the academy grounds, which were quite beautiful with trees and shrubs, a young man was mounting the broad flight of granite steps which led to the main entrance. Evelyn touched Maria agitatedly on the arm. “Oh, Maria,” said she.
“What?”
“Is that—he?”
“I think so. I saw only his back, but I should think so. I don't see what other young man could be going into the building. It was certainly not the janitor, nor Mr. Hughes” (Mr. Hughes was the music-teacher) replied Maria calmly, although she was pale.
“Oh, if that was he, I think he is splendid,” whispered Evelyn.
Maria said nothing as the two proceeded along the fine gravel walk between hydrangeas, and inverted beech-trees, and symmetrically trimmed firs.
“He is light,” Evelyn said, meditatively. “I am glad of that.” As she spoke she put her hand to her head and adjusted her hair, then her hat. She threw back her shoulders. She preened herself, innocently and unconsciously, like a little bird. Maria did not notice it. She had her own thoughts, and she was using all her power of self-control to conceal her agitation. It seemed to her as she entered the building as if her secret was written upon her face, as if everybody must read as they ran. But she removed her coat and hat, and took her place with the other assistants upon the platform in the chapel of the academy where the morning exercises were held. She spoke to the other teachers, and took her usual seat. Wollaston was not yet there. The pupils were flocking into the room, which was picturesque with a dome-shaped ceiling, and really fine frescoed panels on the walls. Directly opposite the platform was a large oriel-window of stained glass, the gift of the founder. Rays of gold and green and blue and crimson light filtered through, over the assembling school. Maria saw Evelyn with her face turned towards the platform eagerly watching. She was not looking at Maria, but was evidently expecting the advent of the new principal. It did not at that time occur to Maria to attribute any serious meaning to the girl's attitude. She merely felt a sort of impatience with her, concerning her attitude, when she herself knew what she knew.
Suddenly a sort of suppressed stir was evident among those of the pupils who were seated. Maria felt a breeze from an open door, and knew that Wollaston had entered. He spoke first to her, calling her by name, and bidding her good-morning, then to the other teachers. The others were either residents of Westbridge, or boarded there, and he had evidently been introduced to them before. Then he took his seat, and waited quietly for the pupils to become seated. It lacked only a few minutes of the time for opening the school. It was not long before the seats were filled, and Maria heard Wollaston's voice reading a selection from the Bible. Then she bent her head, and heard him offering prayer. She felt a sort of incredulity now. It seemed to her inconceivable that the boy whom she had known could be actually conducting the opening exercises of a school with such imperturbability and self-possession. All at once a great pride of possession seized her. She glanced covertly at him between her fingers. The secret which had been her shame suddenly filled her with the possibility of pride. Wollaston Lee, standing there, seemed to her the very grandest man whom she had ever seen. He was undoubtedly handsome, and he had, moreover, power. When he had finished his prayer, and had begun his short address to the scholars, she glanced at him again, and saw what splendid shoulders he had, how proudly he held his head, and yet what a boyish ingenuousness went with it all. Maria did not look at Evelyn at all. Had she done so, she would have been startled. Evelyn was gazing at the new principal with the utmost unreserve, the unreserve of awakened passion which does not know itself because of innocence and ignorance. Evelyn, gazing at the young man, had never been so unconscious of herself, and at the same time she had never been so conscious. She felt a life to which she had been hitherto a stranger tingling through every vein and nerve of her young body, through every emotion of her young soul. She gazed with wide-open eyes like a child, the rose flush deepened on her cheeks, her parted lips became moist and deep crimson, pulses throbbed in her throat. She smiled involuntarily, a smile of purest delight and admiration. Love twofold had awakened within her emotional nature. Love of herself, as she might be seen in another's eyes, and love of another. And yet she did not know it was love, and she felt no shame, and no fright, nothing but rapture. She was in the broad light of the present, under the direct rays of a firmament of life and love. Another girl, Addie Hemingway, who was no older than Evelyn, but shrewd beyond her years, with a taint of coarseness, noticed her, and nudged the girl at her right. “Just look at Evelyn Edgham,” she whispered.
The other girl looked.
“I suppose she thinks she'll catch him, she's so awful pretty,” whispered Addie maliciously.
“I don't think she is so very pretty,” whispered back the other girl, who was pretty herself and disposed to assert her own claims to attention.
“She thinks she is,” whispered back Addie. “Just see how bold she looks at him. I should think she would be ashamed of herself.”
“So should I,” nodded the other girl.
But Evelyn had no more conception of the propriety of shame than nature itself. She was pure nature. Presently Wollaston himself, who had been making his address to his pupils with a vague sense of an upturned expanse of fresh young faces of boys and girls, without any especial face arresting his attention, saw Evelyn with a start which nobody, man or woman, could have helped. She was so beautiful that she could no more be passed unnoticed than a star. Wollaston made an almost imperceptible pause in his discourse, then he continued, fixing his eyes upon the oriel-window opposite. He realized himself as surprised and stirred, but he was not a young man whom a girl's beauty can rouse at once to love. He had, moreover, a strong sense of honor and duty. He realized Maria was his legal wife. He was, although he had gotten over his boyish romance, which had been shocked out of him at the time of his absurd marriage, in an attitude of soul which was ready for love, and love for his wife. He had often said to himself that no other honorable course was possible for either Maria or himself: that it was decidedly best that they should fall in love with each other and make their marriage a reality. At the same time, something more than delicacy and shyness restrained him from making advances. He was convinced that Maria not only disliked but feared him. A great pity for her was in his heart, and also pride, which shrank from exposing itself to rebuffs. Yet he did not underestimate himself. He considered that he had as good a chance as any man of winning her affection and overcoming her present attitude towards him. He saw no reason why he should not. While he was not conceited, he knew perfectly well his advantages as to personal appearance. He also was conscious of the integrity of his purpose as far as she was concerned. He knew that, whenever she should be willing to accept him, he should make her a good husband, and he recognized his readiness and ability to love her should she seem ready to welcome his love. He, however, was very proud even while conscious of his advantages, and consequently easily wounded. He could not forget Maria's look of horror when she had recognized him the Saturday before. A certain resentment towards her because of it was over him in spite of himself. He said to himself that he had not deserved that look, that he had done all that mortal man could do to shield her from a childish tragedy, for which he had not been to blame in any greater degree than she. He said to himself that she might at least have had confidence in his honor and his generosity. However, pity for her and that readiness to do his duty—to love her—were uppermost. The quick glance which he had given Maria that morning had filled him with pleasure. Maria, in her dull-rose blouse, with her cluster of chrysanthemums, with her fair, emotional face held by sheer force of will in a mould of serenity, with her soft yellow coils of hair and her still childish figure, was charming. After that one glance at Evelyn, with her astonishing beauty, he thought no more about her. When his address was finished the usual routine of the school began.
He did not see Maria again all day. She had her own class-room, and at noon she and Evelyn ate their luncheon together there. Evelyn did not say a word about the new principal. She was very quiet. She did not eat as usual.
“Don't you feel well, dear?” asked Maria.
“Yes, sister,” replied Evelyn. Then suddenly her lips quivered and a tear rolled down the lovely curve of her cheek.
“Why, Evelyn, precious, what is the matter?” asked Maria.
“Nothing,” muttered Evelyn. Then suddenly, to her sister's utter astonishment, the young girl sprang up and ran out of the room.
Maria was sure that she heard a muffled sob. She thought for a second of following her, then she had some work to do before the afternoon session, and she also had a respect for others' desires for secrecy, possibly because of her long carrying about of her own secret. She sat at her table with her forehead frowning uneasily, and wrote, and did not move to follow Evelyn.
Evelyn, when she rushed out of the class-room, took instinctively her way towards a little but dense grove in the rear of the academy. It was a charming little grove of firs and maples, and there were a number of benches under the trees for the convenience of the pupils. It was rather singular that there was nobody there. Usually during the noon-hour many ate their luncheons under the shadow of the trees. However, the wind had changed, and it was cool. Then, too, the reunions among the old pupils were probably going on to better advantage in the academy, and many had their luncheons at a near-by restaurant. However it happened, Evelyn, running with the tears in her eyes, her heart torn with strange, new emotion which as yet she could not determine the nature of, whether it was pain or joy, found the grove quite deserted. The cold sunlight came through the golden maple boughs and lay in patches on the undergrowth of drying golden-rod and asters. Under the firs and pines it was gloomy, and a premonition of winter was in the air. Evelyn sat down on a bench under a pine-tree, and began to weep quite unrestrainedly. She did not know why. She heard the song of the pine over her head, and it seemed to increase her apparently inconsequent grief. In reality she wept the tears of the world, the same which a new-born child sheds. Her sorrow was the mysterious sorrow of existence itself. She wept because of the world, and her life in it, and her going out of it, because of its sorrow, which is sweetened with joy, and its joy embittered with sorrow. But she did not know why she wept. Evelyn was cast on very primitive moulds, and she had been very unrestrained, first by the indifference of her mother, then by the love of her father and sister and aunt. It was enough for Evelyn that she wished to weep that she wept. No other reason seemed in the least necessary to her. In front of where she sat was a large patch of sunlight overspreading a low growth of fuzzy weeds, which shone like silver, and a bent thicket of dry asters which were still blue although withered.
All at once Evelyn became aware that this patch of sunlight was darkened, and she looked up in a sweet confusion. Her big, dark eyes were not in the least reddened by her tears; they only glittered with them. Her lips, slightly swollen, only made her lovelier.
Directly before her stood the new principal, and he was gazing down at her with a sort of consternation, pity, and embarrassment. Wollaston was in reality wishing himself anywhere else. A woman's tears aroused in him pity and irritation. He wished to pass on, but it seemed too impossible to do so and leave this lovely young creature in such distress without a word of inquiry. He therefore paused, and his slightly cold, blue eyes met Evelyn's brilliant, tearful ones with interrogation.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked. “Shall I call any one? Are you ill?”
Evelyn felt hurt and disturbed by his look and tone. New tears welled up in her eyes. She shook her head with a slight pout. Wollaston passed on. Evelyn raised her head and gazed after him with an indescribable motion, the motion of a timid, wild thing of the woods, which pursues, but whose true instinct is to be pursued. Suddenly she rose, and ran after him, and was by his side.
“I am ashamed you should have seen—” she said, brokenly. “I was crying for nothing.”
Wollaston looked down at her and smiled. She also was smiling through her tears. “Young ladies should not cry for nothing,” he said, with a whimsical, school-master manner.
“It seems to me that nothing is the most terrible thing in the whole world to cry for,” replied Evelyn, with unconscious wisdom, but she still smiled. Again her eyes met the young man's, and her innocently admiring gaze was full upon his, and that happened which was inevitable, one of the chain of sequences of life itself. His own eyes responded ardently, and the girl's eyes fell before the man's. At the same time there was no ulterior significance in the man's look, which was merely in evidence of a passing emotion to which he was involuntarily subject. He had not the slightest thought of any love, which his look seemed to express for this little beauty of a girl, whose name he did not even know. But he slackened his pace, and Evelyn walked timidly beside him over the golden net-work of sunlight in the path. Evelyn spoke first.
“You came from Edgham, Mr. Lee,” she said.
Wollaston looked at her. “Yes. Do you know anybody there?”
Evelyn laughed. “I came from there myself,” she said, “and so did my sister, Maria. Maria is one of the teachers, you know.”
Evelyn wondered why Mr. Lee's face changed, not so much color but expression.
“Oh, you are Miss Edgham's sister?” he exclaimed.
“Yes. I am her sister—her half-sister.”
“Let me see; you are in the senior class.”
“Yes,” replied Evelyn. Then she added, “Did you remember my sister?”
“Oh yes,” replied Wollaston. “We used to go to school together.”
“She cannot have altered,” said Evelyn. “She always looks just the same to me, anyway.”
“She does to me,” said Lee, and there was in inflection in his voice which caused Evelyn to give a startled glance at him. But he continued, quite naturally, “Your sister looks just as I remember her, only, of course, a little taller and more dignified.”
“Maria is dignified,” said Evelyn, “but of course she has taught school a long time, and a school-teacher has to be dignified.”
“Are you intending to teach school?” asked Lee, and even as he asked the question he felt amused. The idea of this flower-like thing teaching school, or teaching anything, was absurd. She was one of the pupils of life, not one of the expounders.
“No, I think not,” said Evelyn. Then she said, “I have never thought about it.” Then an incomprehensible little blush flamed upon her cheeks. Evelyn was thinking that she should be married instead of doing anything else, but that the man did not consider. He was singularly unversed in feminine nature.
A bell rang from the academy, and Evelyn turned about with reluctance. “There is the bell,” said she. She was secretly proud although somewhat abashed at being seen walking back to the academy with the new principal. Addie Hemingway was looking out of a window, and she said to the other girl, the same whom she had addressed in the chapel:
“See, Evelyn Edgham has got him in tow already.”
That night, when Maria and Evelyn arrived home, Aunt Maria asked Evelyn how she liked the new principal. “Oh, he's perfectly splendid,” replied Evelyn. Then she blushed vividly. Aunt Maria noticed it and gave a swift glance at Maria, but Maria did not notice it at all. She was so wrapped in her own dreams that she was abstracted. After she went to bed that night she lay awake a long time dreaming, just as she had done when she had been a little girl. Her youth seemed to rush back upon her like a back-flood. She caught herself dreaming of love-scenes in that same little wood where Wollaston and Evelyn had walked that day. She never thought of Evelyn and the possibility of her thinking of Wollaston. But Evelyn, in her little, white, maiden bed, was awake and dreaming too. Outside the wind was blowing and the leaves dropping and the eternal stars shining overhead. It seemed as if so much maiden-dreaming in the house should make it sound with song, but it was silent and dark to the night. Only the reflection of the street-lamp made it evident at all to occasional passers. It is well that the consciousness of human beings is deaf to such emotions, or all individual dreams would cease because of the multiple din.
Chapter XXXII
Evelyn, as the weeks went on, did not talk as much as she had been accustomed to do. She did not pour her confidences into her sister's ears. She never spoke of the new principal. She studied assiduously, and stood exceedingly well in all her classes. She had never taken so much pains with her pretty costumes. When her mother sent her a Christmas present of a Paris gown, she danced with delight. There was to be a Christmas-tree in the academy chapel, and she planned to wear it. Although it was a Paris gown it was simple enough, a pretty, girlish frock of soft white cloth, with touches of red. “I can wear holly in my hair, and it will be perfectly lovely,” Evelyn said. But she came down with such a severe cold and sore throat at the very beginning of the holidays that going to Westbridge was out of the question. Evelyn lamented over the necessity of her staying at home like a child. She even cried.
“I wouldn't be such a baby,” said Aunt Maria. At times Aunt Maria could not quite forgive Evelyn for being Ida Slome's child, especially when she showed any weakness. She looked severely now at poor Evelyn, in her red house-wrapper, weeping in her damp little handkerchief. “I should think you were about ten,” she said.
Evelyn wiped her eyes and sniffed. Her throat was very sore, and her cold was also in her head. Her pretty lips were disfigured with fever-sores. Her eyes were inflamed.
“You wouldn't want to go looking the way you do, anyhow,” said Aunt Maria, pitilessly.
After Aunt Maria went out of the room, Maria, who was putting some finishing-touches to the gown which she herself was to wear to the Christmas-tree, went over to her sister and knelt down beside her. “Poor darling,” she said. “Don't you want me to stay at home with you?”
Evelyn pushed her away gently, with a fresh outburst of tears. “No,” she said. “Don't come so close, Maria, or you will catch it. Everybody says it is contagious. No, I wouldn't have you stay at home for anything. I am not a pig, if I am disappointed. But Aunt Maria need not be so cross.”
“Aunt Maria does not mean to be cross, sweetheart,” said Maria, stroking her sister's fluffy, dark head. “Are you sure that you do not want me to stay home with you, dear?”
“Perfectly sure,” replied Evelyn. “I want you to go so you can tell me about it.”
Evelyn had not the slightest idea of jealousy of Maria. While she admired her, it really never occurred to her, so naïve she was in her admiration of herself, that anybody could think her more attractive than she was and fall in love with her, to her neglect. She had not the least conception of what this Christmas-tree meant to her older sister: the opportunity of seeing Wollaston Lee, of talking with him, of perhaps some attention on his part. Maria was to return to Amity on the last trolley from Westbridge. It was quite a walk from the academy. She dreamed of Wollaston's escorting her to the trolley-line. She dressed herself with unusual care when the day came. She had a long, trailing gown of a pale-blue cloth and a blue knot for her yellow hair. She also had quite a pretentious blue evening cloak. Christmas afternoon a long box full of pale-yellow roses arrived. There was a card enclosed which Maria caught up quickly and concealed without any one seeing her. Wollaston had sent her the roses. Her heart beat so hard and fast that it seemed the others must hear it. She bent over the roses. “How perfectly lovely!” she said.
Aunt Maria took up the box and lifted the flowers out carefully. “There isn't any card,” she said. “I wonder who sent them?” All at once a surmise seized her that Professor Lane, who was said to be regaining his health in Colorado, had sent an order to the Westbridge florist for these flowers. Simultaneously the thought came to Evelyn, but Eunice, who was in the room, looked bewildered. When Maria carried the roses out to put them in water, she turned to her sister-in-law. “Who on earth do you suppose sent them?” she whispered.
Aunt Maria looked at her, and formed Professor Lane's name noiselessly with her lips, giving her at the same time a knowing nod. Eunice looked at Evelyn, who also nodded, although with a somewhat disturbed expression. She still did not feel quite reconciled to the idea of her sister's loving Professor Lane.
“I didn't know,” said Eunice.
“Nobody knows; but we sort of surmise,” said Aunt Maria.
“Why, he's old enough to be her father,” Eunice said.
“What of that, if he only gets cured of his consumption?” said Aunt Maria. She herself felt disgusted, but she had a pleasure in concealing her disgust from her sister-in-law. “Lots of girls would jump at him,” said she.
“I wouldn't have when I was a girl,” Eunice remarked, in a mildly reminiscent manner.
“You don't know what you would have done if you hadn't got my brother,” said Aunt Maria.
“I would never have married anybody,” Eunice replied, with a fervent, faithful look. As she spoke, she seemed to see Henry Stillman as he had been, when a young man and courting her, and she felt as if a king had passed her field of memory to the exclusion of all others.
“Maybe you wouldn't have,” said her sister-in-law, “but nowadays girls have to take what they can get. Men ain't so anxious to marry. When a man had to have all his shirts and dickeys made he was helpless, to say nothing of his pants, but nowadays he can get everything ready-made, and it doesn't make so much difference to him whether he gets married or not. He can have a good deal more for himself, if he's an old bachelor.”
“Maybe you are right,” said Eunice, “but I know when I was a girl Maria's age I wouldn't have let an old man like Professor Lane, with the consumption, too, tie my shoes. Do you suppose he really sent her the roses?”
“Who else could have sent them?”
“They must have cost an awful sight of money,” said Eunice, in an awed tone. Then she stopped, for Maria re-entered the room with the roses in a tall vase. She wore some of them pinned to the shoulder of her blue gown that evening. She knew who had sent them, and it seemed to her that she did not overestimate the significance of the sending. When she started for Westbridge that evening she was radiant. She had the roses carefully pinned in tissue-paper to protect them from the cold; her long, blue cloak swept about her in graceful folds, she wore a blue hat with a long, blue feather.
“Why didn't you wear a head tie?” asked Aunt Maria. “Ain't you afraid you will spoil that hat if you take it off? The feather will get all mussy.”
“I shall put it in a safe place,” replied Maria, smiling. She blushed as she spoke. She knew perfectly well herself why she wore that hat, because she thought Wollaston might escort her to the trolley, and she wished to appear at her best in his eyes. Maria no longer disguised from herself the fact that she loved this man who was her husband and not her husband. She knew that she was entirely ready to respond to his advances, should he make any, that she would be happier than she had ever been in her whole life if the secret which had been the horror of her life should be revealed. She wondered if it would not be better to have another wedding. That night she had not much doubt of Wollaston's love for her. When she entered the car, and saw besides herself several young girls prinked in their best, who were also going to the Christmas-tree, she felt a sort of amused pride, that all their prinking and preening was in vain. She assumed that all of them had dressed to attract Wollaston. She could not think of any other man whom any girl could wish to attract. She sat radiant with her long, blue feather sweeping the soft, yellow puff of her hair. She gave an affect of smiling at everybody, at all creation. She really felt for the first time that she could remember a sense of perfect acquiescence with the universal scheme of things, therefore she felt perfect content and happiness. She thought how wonderful it was that poor Gladys Mann, lying in her unmarked grave this Christmas-time, should have been the means, all unwittingly, of bringing such bliss to herself. She thought how wonderful that Evelyn's loss should have been the first link in such a sequence. She thought of Evelyn with a sort of gratitude, as if she had done something incalculable for her. She also thought of her as always with the utmost love and pride and tenderness. She reflected with pleasure on the gift which she herself had hung on the tree for Evelyn, and how pleased the child would be. It was a tiny gold brooch with a pearl in the centre. Evelyn was very fond of ornaments. Maria did not once imagine of the possibility that Evelyn could have any dreams herself with regard to Wollaston. She did not in reality think of Evelyn as old enough to have any dreams at all which need be considered seriously, and least of all about Wollaston Lee. She nodded to a young man, younger than herself, who was in Evelyn's class at the academy, who sat across the aisle, and he returned the nod eagerly. He was well grown, and handsome, and looked as old as Maria herself. Presently as the car began to fill up, he crossed the aisle, and asked if he might sit beside her. Maria made room at once. She smiled at the young fellow with her smile which belonged in reality to another man, and he took it for himself. Perhaps nothing on earth is so misappropriated as smiles and tears. The seat was quite narrow. It was necessary to sit rather close, in any event, but presently Maria felt the boy's broad shoulder press unmistakably against hers. She shrank away with an imperceptible motion. She did not feel so much angry as amused at the thought that this great boy should be making love to her, when all her heart was with some one else, when she could not even give him a pleasant look which belonged wholly to him. Maria leaned against the window, and gazed out at the flying shadows. “I am glad it is so pleasant,” she said in a perfectly unconcerned voice.
“Yes, so am I,” the boy replied, but his voice shook with emotion. Maria thought again how ridiculous it was. Then suddenly she reflected that this might not be on her account but Evelyn's. She thought that the boy might be trying to ingratiate himself with her on her sister's account. She felt at once indignation and a sense of pity. She was sure that Evelyn had never thought of him. She glanced at the boy's handsome, manly face, which, although manly, wore still an expression of ingenuousness like a child's. She reflected that if Evelyn were to marry when she were older, that perhaps this was a good husband for her. The boy came of one of the best families in Amity. She turned towards him smiling.
“Evelyn was very much disappointed that she could not come to-night,” she said.
The boy brightened visibly at her tone.
“She has a very severe cold,” Maria added.
“I am sorry,” said the boy. Then he said in a low tone whose boldness and ardor were unmistakable, that it did not make any difference to him who was there as long as she was. Maria could scarcely believe her ears. She gave the boy a keen, incredulous glance, but he was not daunted. “I mean it,” he said.
“Nonsense,” said Maria. She looked out of the window again. She told herself that it was annoying but too idiotic to concern herself with. She made up her mind that when they changed trolleys she would try to find a seat with some one else. But when they changed she found the boy again beside her. She was quite angry then, and made no effort to disguise it. She sat quite still, gazing out of the window, shrugged against it as closely as she was able to sit, and said nothing. However, her face resumed its happy smile when she thought again of Wollaston, and the boy thought the smile meant for him. He leaned over her tenderly.
“I wish I could have a picture of you as you look to-night,” he said.
“Well, I am afraid that you will have to do without it,” Maria said shortly. Still the boy remained insensible to rebuff.
“What are you carrying, Miss Edgham?” he asked, looking at her roses enveloped in tissue paper.
“Some roses which a friend sent me,” Maria replied.
Then the boy colored and paled a little. He jumped at once to the conclusion that the friend was a man. “I suppose you are going to wear them,” he said pitifully.
“Yes, I am,” replied Maria.
The boy in his turn sat as far away as possible in his corner of the seat, and gazed ahead with a gloomy air.
When they reached the academy grounds he quite deserted Maria, who walked to the chapel with one of the other teachers, who entered at the same time. She was a young lady who lived in Westbridge. Maria caught the pale glimmer of an evening gown under her long, red cloak trimmed with white fur, and reflected that possibly she also had adorned herself especially for Wollaston's benefit, and again she felt that unworthy sense of pride and amusement. The girl herself echoed her thoughts, for she said soon after Maria had greeted her:
“I saw Mr. Lee and his mother starting.”
“Did you?” returned Maria.
“Don't you think he is very handsome?” asked the girl in a sentimental tone which irritated.
“No,” said Maria sharply, although she lied. “I don't think he is handsome at all. He looks intelligent and sensible, but as for handsome—”
“Oh, don't you think so?” cried the other. Then she caught herself short, for Wollaston Lee, with his mother on his arm, came up. They said good-evening, and all four passed in.
The platform of the chapel was occupied by a great Christmas-tree. The chapel itself was trimmed with evergreens and holly. The moment Maria entered, after she had removed her hat in a room which was utilized as a dressing-room, and pinned her roses on her shoulder, she became sensible of a peculiar intoxication as of some new happiness and festivity, of a cup of joy which she had hitherto not tasted. The spicy odor of the evergreens, even the odor of oyster-stew from a room beyond where supper was to be served, that, and cake, and the sweetness of her own roses, raised her to a sense of elation which she had never before had. She sat with the other teachers well towards the front. Wollaston was with his mother on the right. Maria saw with a feeling of relief the people with whom the Lees had formerly boarded presently enter and sit with them. She thought that Wollaston would be free to walk to the trolley with her if he so wished. She felt surer and surer that he did so wish. Once she caught him looking at her, and when she answered his smile she felt her own lips stiff, and realized how her heart pounded against her side. She experienced something like a great pain which was still a great joy. Suddenly everything seemed unreal to her. When the presents were distributed, it was still so unreal that she did not feel as pleased as she would have done with the number for poor little Evelyn at home. She hardly knew what she received herself. They were the usual useless and undesirable tokens from her class, and others more desirable from the other lady teachers. Wollaston Lee's name was often called. Again Maria experienced that unworthy sensation of malicious glee that all this was lavished upon him when he was in reality hers and beyond the reach of any of these smiling girls with eyes of covert wistfulness upon the handsome young principal.
After the festivities were over, Maria adjusted her hat in the dressing-room and fastened her long, blue cloak. She wrapped her roses again in the tissue-paper. They were very precious to her. The teacher whom she had met on entering the academy was fastening her cloak, and she gazed at Maria with a sort of envious admiration.
“You look like a princess, all in blue, Miss Edgham,” said she. Her words were sweet, but her voice rang false.
“Thank you,” said Maria, and went out swiftly. She feared lest the other teacher attach herself to her, and the other teacher lived on the road towards the trolley. When Maria went out of the academy, that which she had almost feared to hope for happened. Wollaston stepped beside her, and she heard him ask if he might walk with her to the trolley.
Maria took his arm.
“Mother is with the Gleasons,” said Wollaston. His voice trembled.
Just then the boy who had sat with Maria on the car coming over walked with a defiant stride to her other side.
“Good-evening, Mr. Lee,” he said, lifting his hat. “Good-evening, Miss Edgham,” as if that was the first time that evening he had seen her. Then he walked on with her and Wollaston, and nothing was to be done but accept the situation. The young fellow was fairly belligerent with jealous rage. He had lost his young head over his teacher, and was doing something for which he would scorn himself later on.
Wollaston pressed Maria's hand closely under his arm, and she felt her very soul thrill, but they all talked of the tree and the festivities of the evening, with an apparent disregard of the terrible undercurrent of human emotions which had them all in its grasp. Wollaston carried Maria's presents and Evelyn's. When they reached the trolley-line, and he gave them to her, she managed to whisper a thank you for his beautiful roses, and he pressed her hand and said good-night. The boy asked with a mixture of humility and defiance if he could not carry her parcels (he himself had nothing but three neckties and a great silk muffler, which he did not value highly, as he was well stocked already, and he had thrust them into his pockets). “No, thank you,” said Maria, “I prefer to carry them myself.” She was curt, but she was so lit up with rapture that she could not help smiling at him as she spoke, and he again sat in the same car-seat. She hardly spoke a word all the way to Amity, but he walked to her door with her, alighting from the car at the same time she did, although he lived half a mile farther on.
“You will have to walk a half mile,” Maria observed, when he handed her off and let the car go on.
“I like to walk,” the boy said, fervently.
Maria had her latch-key. She opened the door hurriedly and ran in. She was half afraid that this irrepressible young man might offer to kiss her. “Good-night,” she said, and almost slammed the door in his face.
Aunt Maria had left a light burning low on the hall table. Maria took it and went up-stairs. She gathered up the skirt of her gown into a bag to hold the presents, hers and Evelyn's.
When she entered her own room and set the lamp on the dresser, she was aware of a little, nestling movement in the bed, and Evelyn's dark head and lovely face raised itself from the pillow.
“I came in here,” said Evelyn, “because I wanted to see you after you came home. Do you mind?”
“No, darling, of course I don't mind,” replied Maria.
She displayed Evelyn's presents, and the girl examined them eagerly. Maria thought she seemed disappointed even with her own gift of the brooch which she had expected would so delight her.
“Is that all?” Evelyn said.
“All?” laughed Maria. “Why, you little, greedy thing, what do you expect?”
To her astonishment Evelyn began suddenly to cry. She sobbed as if her heart would break, and would not tell her sister why she was so grieved. Finally, Maria having undressed and got into bed, her sister clung closely to her, still sobbing.
“Evelyn, darling, what is it?” whispered Maria.
“You'll laugh at me.”
“No, I won't, honest, precious.”
“Honest?”
“Yes, honest, dear.”
“Were those all the presents I had?”
“Yes, of course, I brought you all you had, dear.”
Evelyn murmured something inarticulate against Maria's breast.
“What is it, dear, sister didn't hear?”
“I hung a book on the tree for him,” choked Evelyn, “and I thought maybe—I thought—”
“Thought what?”
“I thought maybe he would—”
“Who would?”
“I thought maybe Mr. Lee would give me something,” sobbed Evelyn.
Maria lay still.
Evelyn nestled closer. “Oh,” she whispered, “I love him so! I can't help it. I can't. I love him so, sister!”
Chapter XXXIII
There was a second's hush after Evelyn had said that. It seemed to Maria that her heart stood still. A sort of incredulity, as of the monstrous and the super-human seized her. She felt as one who had survived a railroad accident might feel looking down upon his own dismembered body in which life still quivered. She could not seem to actually sense what Evelyn had said, although the words still rang in her ears. Presently, Evelyn spoke again in her smothered, weeping voice. “Do you think I am so very dreadful, so—immodest, to care so much about a man who has never said he cared about me?”
“He has never said anything?” asked Maria, and her voice sounded strange in her own ears.
“No, never one word that I could make anything of, but he has looked at me, he has, honest, sister.” Evelyn burst into fresh sobs.
Then Maria roused herself. She patted the little, soft, dark head.
“Why, Evelyn, precious,” she said, “you are imagining all this. You can't care so much about a man whom you have seen so little. You have let your mind dwell on it, and you imagine it. You don't care. You can't, really. You wait, and by-and-by you will find out that you care a good deal more for somebody else.”
But then Evelyn raised herself and looked down at her sister in the dark, and there was a ring in her voice which Maria had never before heard. “Not care,” she said—“not care! I will stand everything but that. Maria, don't you dare tell me I don't care!”
“But you don't know him at all, dear.”
“I know him better than anybody else in the whole world,” said Evelyn, still in the same strained voice. “The very minute I saw him I loved him, and then it seemed as if a great bright light made him plain to me. I do love him, Maria. Don't you ever dare say I don't. That is the only thing that makes me feel that I am not ashamed to live, the knowing that I do love him. I should be dreadful if I didn't love him—really love him, I mean, with the love that lasts. Do you suppose that if I only felt about him as some of the other girls do, that I would have told you? I do love him!”
“What makes you so sure?”
“What makes me so sure? Why, everything. I know there is not another man in the whole world for me that can possibly equal him, and then—I feel as if my whole life were full of him. I can't seem to remember much before he came. When I look back, it is like looking into the dark, and I can't imagine the world being at all without him.”
“Would you be willing to be very poor, to go without pretty things if you—married him, to live in a house like the Ramsey's on the other side of the river, not to have enough to eat and drink and wear?”
“I would have enough to eat and drink and wear. I would have as much as a queen if I had him,” cried Evelyn. “What do you think I care about pretty things, or even food and life itself, when it comes to anything like this? Live in a house like the Ramsey's! I would live in a cave. I would live on the street, and I should never know it was not a palace. Maria, you do know that I love him, don't you?”
“Yes, I know that you think you do.”
“No, say I do.”
“Yes, I know you do,” Maria said.
Then Evelyn lay down again, and wept quietly.
“Yes, I love him,” she moaned, “but he does not love me. You don't think he does, do you? I know you don't.”
Maria said nothing. She was sure that he did not.
“No, he does not. I see you know it,” Evelyn sobbed, “and all I cared about going to the Christmas-tree and wearing my new gown was on account of him, and I sent a beautiful book. I thought I could do that. All the girls in the senior class gave him something, and I have been saving up every cent, and he never gave me anything, not even a box of candy or flowers. Do you think he gave any of the other girls anything, Maria?”
“I don't think so.”
“I can't help hoping he did not. And I don't believe it is so very wicked, because I know that none of the other girls can possibly love him as much as I do. But, Maria—”
“Well?”
“I do love him enough not to complain if he really loved some other girl, and she was good, and would make him happy. I would go down on my knees to her to love him. I would, Maria, honest.” Evelyn was almost hysterical. Maria soothed her, and evaded as well as she was able her repeated little, piteous questions as to whether she thought Mr. Lee could ever care for her. “I know I am pretty,” Evelyn said naïvely. “I really think I must be prettier than any other girl in school. I have heard so, and I really think so myself, but being pretty means so little when it comes to anything like this with a man like him. He might love Addie Hemingway instead of me, so far as looks were concerned, but I don't think Addie would make him very happy—do you, Maria?”
“No, dear. I am quite sure he will never think of her. Now try and be quiet and go to sleep.”
“I cannot go to sleep,” moaned Evelyn, but it was not very long before she was drawing long, even breaths. Her youth had asserted itself. Then, too, she had got certain comfort from this baring of her soul before the soothing love of her sister.
As soon as Maria became sure that Evelyn was soundly asleep she gently unwound the slender, clinging arms and got out of bed, and stole noiselessly into Evelyn's own room, which adjoined hers. She did not get into bed, but took a silk comfortable off, and wrapped it around her, then sat down in a low chair beside the window. It seemed to her that if she could not have a little while to think by herself that she should go mad. The utterly inconceivable to her had happened, and the utterly inconceivable fairly dazzles the brain when it comes to pass. Maria felt as if she were outside all hitherto known tracks of life, almost as if she were in the fourth dimension. The possibility that her own sister might fall in love with the man whom she had married had never entered her mind before. She had checked Evelyn's wonder concerning him, but she had thought no more of it than of the usual foolish exuberance of a young girl. Now she believed that her sister really loved Wollaston. She recalled the fears which she had had with regard to her strenuous nature. She did not believe it to be a passing fancy of an ordinary young girl. She recalled word for word what Evelyn had said, and she believed. Maria sat awhile gazing out of the window at the starlit sky in a sort of blank of realization, of adjustment. She could not at first formulate any plan of action. She could only, as it were, state the problem. She gazed up at the northern constellations, at the mysterious polar star, and it seemed to steady her mind and give it power to deal with her petty problem of life by its far-away and everlasting guiding light. The window was partly open, and the same pungent odor of death and life in one which had endured all day came in her nostrils. She seemed to sense heaven and earth and herself as an atom, but an atom racked with infinite pain between the two.
“There is the great polar star,” she said to herself, “there are all the suns and stars, here is the earth, and here am I, Maria Edgham, who am on the earth, but must some day give up my mortal life and become a part of it, and part of the material universe and perhaps also of the spiritual. I am as nothing, and yet this pain in my heart, this love in my heart, makes me shine with my own fire as much as the star. I could not be unless the earth existed, but it is of such as myself that the earth is made up, and without such as myself it could not shine in its place in the heavens.”
Maria began to attach a certain importance to her individual existence even while she realized the pettiness of it, comparatively speaking. She was an infinitesimal part, but the whole could not be without that part. Suddenly the religious instruction which she had drank in with her mother's milk took possession of her, but she had a breadth of outlook which would have terrified her mother. Maria said to herself that she believed in God, but that His need of her was as much as her need of Him. She said to herself that without her tiny faith in Him, her tiny speck of love for Him, He would lack something of Himself. Then all at once, in a perfect flood of rapture, something which she had never before known came into her heart: the consciousness of the love of God for herself, of the need of God for herself, poor little Maria Edgham, whose ways of life had been so untoward and so absurd that she almost seemed to herself something to be laughed at rather than pitied, much less loved. But all at once the knowledge of the love of God was over her. She gazed up again at the great polar star overlooking with its eternal light the mysteries of the north, and for the first time in her whole life the primitive instinct of worship asserted itself within her. Maria rose, and fell on her knees, and continued to gaze up at the star which seemed to her like an eye of God Himself, and love seemed to pervade her whole being. She thought now almost lightly of Wollaston Lee. What was any earthly love to love like this, which took hold of the beginning and end of things, of the eternal? A resolution which this sense of love seemed to inspire came over her. It was a resolution almost grotesque, but it was sacred because her heart of hearts was in it, and she made it because of this love of God for her and her new sense of worship for something beyond the earth and all earthly affections which had taken possession of her. She rose, undressed herself, and went to bed. She did not say any prayer as usual. She seemed an incarnate prayer which made formulas unnecessary. Why was it essential to say anything when she was? At last she fell asleep, and did not wake until the dawn light was in the room. She did not wake as usual to a reunion with herself, but to a reunion with another self. She did not feel altogether happy. The resolution of the night before remained, but the ecstasy had vanished. She was not yet an angel, only a poor, human girl with the longings of her kind, which would not be entirely stifled as long as her human heart beat. But she did what she had planned. Maria had an unusually high forehead. It might have given evidence of intellect, of goodness, but it was not beautiful. She had always fluffed her blond hair over it, concealing it with pretty waves. This morning she brushed all her hair as tightly back as possible, and made a hard twist at an ugly angle at the back of her head. By doing this she did not actually destroy her beauty, for her regular features and delicate tints remained, but nobody looking at her would have called her even pretty. Her delicate features became pronounced and hardened, her nose seemed sharpened and elongated, her lips thinner. This display of her forehead hardened and made bold all her face and made her look years older than she was. Maria looked at herself in the glass with a sort of horror. She had always been fond of herself in the glass. She had loved that double of herself which had come and gone at her bidding, but now it was different. She was actually afraid of the stern, thin visage which confronted her, which was herself, yet not herself. When she was fully dressed it was worse still. She put on a gray gown which had never been becoming. It was not properly fitted. It was short-waisted, and gave her figure a short, chunky appearance. This chunky aspect, with her sharp face and strained back hair, made her seem fairly hideous to herself. But she remained firm. Her firmness, in reality, was one cause of the tightening and thinning of her lips. She hesitated when about to go down-stairs. She had not heard Evelyn go down. She wondered whether she had better wait until she went, or go into her room. She finally decided upon the latter course. Evelyn was standing in front of her dresser brushing her hair. When Maria entered she threw with a quick motion the whole curly, fluffy mass over her face, which glowed through it with an intensity of shame. Evelyn, when she awoke that morning, felt as if she had revealed some nakedness of her very soul. The girl was fairly ill. She could not believe that she had said what she remembered herself to have said.
“Good-morning, dear,” said Maria.
Evelyn did not notice her changed appearance at all. She continued to brush away at the mist of hair over her face. “Oh, sister!” she murmured.
“Never mind, precious, we won't say anything more about it,” said Maria, and her voice had maternal inflections.
“I ought not,” stammered Evelyn, but Maria interrupted her.
“I have forgotten all about it, dear,” she said. “Now you had better hurry or you will be late.”
“When I woke up this morning and remembered, I felt as if I should die,” Evelyn said, in a choked voice.
“Nonsense,” said Maria. “You won't die, and it will all come out right. Don't worry anything about it or think anything more about it. Why don't you wear your red dress to school to-day? It is pleasant.”
“Well, perhaps I had better,” Evelyn said. She threw back her hair then, but still she did not look at Maria.
She arranged her hair and removed her little dressing-sack before she looked at Maria, who had seated herself in a rocking-chair beside the window. Aunt Maria always insisted upon getting breakfast without any assistance. The odor of coffee and baking muffins stole into the room. Evelyn got her red dress from the closet and put it on, still avoiding Maria's eyes. But at last she turned towards her.
“I am all ready to go down,” she said, in a weak little voice; then she gave a great start, and stared at Maria.
Maria bore the stare calmly, and rose.
“All right, dear,” she replied.
But Evelyn continued standing before her, staring incredulously. It was almost as if she doubted Maria's identity.
“Why, Maria Edgham!” she said, finally. “What is the matter?”
“What do you mean, dear?”
“What have you done to yourself to make you look so queer? Oh, I see what it is! It's your hair. Maria, dear, what have you strained it off your forehead in that way for? It makes you look—why—”
Then Maria lied. “My hair has been growing farther and farther off my forehead lately,” said she, “and I thought possibly the reason was because I covered it. I thought if I brushed my hair back it would be better for it. Then, too, my head has ached some, and it seemed to me the pain in my forehead would be better if I kept it cooler.”
“But, Maria,” said Evelyn, “you don't look so pretty. You don't, dear, honest. I hate to say so, but you don't.”
“Well I am afraid the pretty part of it will have to go,” said Maria, going towards the door.
“Oh, Maria, please pull your hair over your forehead just a little.”
“No, dear, I have it all fixed for the day, and it must stay as it is.”
Evelyn followed Maria down-stairs. She had a puzzled expression. Maria's hair was diverting her from her own troubles. She could not understand why any girl should deliberately make herself homely. She felt worried. It even occurred to wonder if anything could be the matter with Maria's mind.
When the two girls went into the little dining-room, where breakfast was ready for them, Aunt Maria began to say something about the weather, then she cut herself short when she saw Maria.
“Maria Edgham,” said she, “what on earth—”
Maria took her place at the table. “Those gems look delicious,” she observed. But Aunt Maria was not to be diverted.
“I don't want to hear anything about gems,” said she. “They are good enough, I guess. I always could make gems, but what I want to know is if you have gone clean daft.”
“I don't think so,” replied Maria, laughing.
But Aunt Maria continued to stare at her with an expression of almost horror.
“What under the sun have you got your hair done up that way for?” said she.
Maria repeated what she had told Evelyn.
“Stuff!” said Aunt Maria. “It will make the hair grow farther back straining it off your forehead that way, I can tell you that. You don't use common-sense, and as for your headache, I guess the hair didn't make it ache. It's the first I've heard of it. You look like a fright, I can tell you that.”
“Well, I can't help it,” said Maria. “I shall have to behave well to make up.”
“Maria Edgham, you don't mean to say you are going to school looking as you do now!”
Maria laughed, and buttered a gem.
“You look old enough to be your own grandmother. You have spoiled your looks.”
“Looks don't amount to much,” said Maria.
“Maria Edgham, are you crazy?”
“I hope not.”
“I told sister she didn't look so pretty,” said Evelyn.
“Look so pretty? She looks like a homely old maid. Your nose looks a yard long and your chin looks peaked and your mouth looks as if you were as ugly as sin. Your forehead is too high; it always was, and you ought to thank the Lord that he gave you pretty hair, and enough of it to cover up your forehead, and now you've gone and strained it back just as tight as you can and made a knot like a tough doughnut at the back of your head. You look like a crazy thing, I can tell you that.”
Maria said nothing. She ate her breakfast, while Aunt Maria and Evelyn could not eat much and were all the time furtively watching her.
Aunt Maria took Evelyn aside before the sisters left for school, and asked her in a whisper if she thought anything was wrong with Maria, if she had noticed anything, but Evelyn said she had not. But she and Aunt Maria looked at each other with eyes of frightened surmise.
When Maria had her hat on she looked, if anything, worse.
“Good land!” said Aunt Maria, when she saw her. “Well, if you are set on making a spectacle of yourself, I suppose you are.”
After the girls had gone she went into the other side of the house and told Eunice. “There she has gone and made herself look like a perfect scarecrow,” she said. “I wonder if there is any insanity in her father's family?”
“Did she look so bad?” asked Eunice, with a stare of terror at her sister-in-law.
“Look so bad! She looked as old and homely as you and I every bit.”
Maria made as much of a sensation on the trolley as she had done at home. The boy who had persecuted her the night before with his attentions bowed to Evelyn, and glanced at her evidently with no recognition. After a while he came to Evelyn and asked where her sister was that morning. Maria laughed, and he looked at her, then he fairly turned pale, and lifted his hat. He mumbled something and returned to his seat. Maria was conscious of his astonished and puzzled gaze at her all the way. When she reached the academy the other teachers—that is, the women—assailed her openly. One even attempted to loosen by force Maria's tightly strained locks.
“Why, Miss Edgham, you fairly frighten me,” she said, when Maria resisted.
Maria realized the amazement of the pupils when they entered her class-room, the amazement of incredulity and almost disgust. Everybody seemed amazed and almost disgusted except Wollaston Lee. He did, indeed, give one slightly surprised glance at her, then he seemed to notice nothing different in her appearance. The man's sense of duty and honor was so strong that in reality his sense of externals was blunted. He had a sort of sublime short-sightedness to everything that was not of the spirit. He had been convinced the night previous that Maria was beginning to regard him with favor, and being convinced of that made him insensible to any mere outward change in her. She looked to him, on the whole, prettier than usual because he seemed to see in her love for himself.
When the noon intermission came he walked into her class-room, and invited Maria and Evelyn to go with him to a near-by restaurant and lunch.
“I would ask you to go home with me,” he said, apologetically, to Maria, “but mother has a cold.”
Maria turned pale. She wondered if he had possibly told his mother. Then she remembered how he had promised her not to tell without her permission, and was reassured. Evelyn blushed and smiled and dimpled, and cast one of her sweet, dark glances at him, which he did not notice at all. His attention was fixed upon Maria, who hesitated, regarding him with her pale, pinched face. Evelyn took it for granted that Mr. Lee's invitation was only on her account, and that Maria was asked simply as a chaperon, and because, indeed, he could not very well avoid it. She jumped up and got her hat.
“It will be perfectly lovely,” she said, and faced them both, her charming face one glow of delight.
But Maria did not rise. She looked at the basket of luncheon which she had begun to unpack, and replied, coldly, “Thank you, Mr. Lee, but we have our luncheon with us.”
Wollaston looked at her in a puzzled way.
“But you could have something hot at the restaurant,” he said. The words were not much, but in reality he meant, and Maria so understood him, “Why, what do you mean, after last night? You know how I feel about you. Why do you refuse?”
Maria took another sandwich from her basket. “Thank you for asking us, Mr. Lee,” she said, “but we have our luncheon.”
Her tone was fairly hostile. The hostility was not directed towards him, but towards the weakness in herself. But that he could not understand.
“Very well,” he said, in a hurt manner. “Of course I will not urge you, Miss Edgham.” Then he walked out of the room, hollowing his back and holding his head very straight in a way he had had from a boy when he was offended.
Evelyn pulled off her hat with a jerk. She looked at Maria with her eyes brilliant with tears. “I think you were mean, sister,” she whispered, “awful mean; so there!”
“I thought it was better not to go,” Maria replied. Her tone was at once stern and pitiful. Evelyn noticed only her sternness. She began to weep softly.
“There, he wanted me, too,” she said, “and of course he had to ask you, and you knew—I think you might have, sister.”
“I thought it was better not,” repeated Maria. “Now, dear, you had better eat your luncheon.”
“I don't want any luncheon.”
Maria began to eat a sandwich herself. There was an odd meekness and dejectedness in her manner. Presently she laid the half-eaten sandwich on the table and took out her handkerchief, and shook all over with helpless and silent sobs.
Then Evelyn looked at her, her pouting expression relaxed gradually. She looked bewildered.
“Why, what are you crying for?” she asked, in a low voice.
Maria did not answer.
Presently Evelyn rose and went over to her sister, and laid her cheek alongside hers and kissed her.
“Don't, sister,” she whispered. “I am sorry. I didn't mean to be cross. I suppose you were right not to go, only I did want to.” Evelyn snivelled a little. “I know he was hurt, too,” she said.