Maria raised her head and wiped her eyes. “I did not think it was best,” she said yet again. Then she looked at Evelyn and tried to smile. “Don't worry, precious,” she said. “Everything will come out all right.”
Evelyn gazed wonderingly at her sister's tear-stained face. “I don't see what you cried for, and I don't see why you wouldn't go,” she said. “The scholars will see you have been crying, and he will see, too. I don't see why you feel badly. I should think I was the one to feel badly.”
“Everything will come out all right,” repeated Maria. “Don't worry, sister's own darling.”
“Everybody will see that you have been crying,” said Evelyn, who was in the greatest bewilderment. “What did make you cry, Maria?”
“Nothing, dear. Don't think any more about it,” said Maria rising. She took a tumbler from the lunch-basket. “Go and fill this with water for me, that is a dear,” she said. “Then I will bathe my eyes. Nobody would know that you have been crying.”
“That is because I am not so fair-skinned,” said Evelyn; “but I don't see.”
She went out with the tumbler, shaking her head in a puzzled way. When she returned, Maria had the luncheon all spread out on the table, and looked quite cheerful in spite of her swollen eyes. The sisters ate together, and Evelyn was very sweet in spite of her disappointment. She was in reality very sweet and docile before all her negatives of life, and always would be. Her heart was always in leading-strings of love. She looked affectionately at Maria as they ate the luncheon.
“I am so sorry I was cross,” she said. “I suppose you thought that it would look particular if we went out to lunch with Mr. Lee.”
“Yes, I think it might have,” replied Maria.
“Well, I suppose it would,” said Evelyn with a sigh, “and I know all the other girls are simply dying for him, but he asked us, after all.” Evelyn said the last with an indescribable air of sweet triumph. It was quite evident that she regarded the invitation as meant for herself alone, and that she took ineffable delight in it in spite of the fact that it had been refused. She kept glancing out of the window as she ate. Presently she looked at her sister and laughed. “There he is coming now,” she said, “and he is all alone. He didn't take anybody else to luncheon.”
Chapter XXXIV
Wollaston Lee, approaching the academy on his return from his solitary lunch, was quite conscious of being commanded by the windows of Maria's class-room. He was so conscious that his stately walk became almost a strut. He felt resentment at Maria. He could not help it. He had not been, in fact, so much in love with her, as in that attitude of receptivity which invites love. He felt that she ought to be in love, and he wooed not only the girl but love itself. Therefore resentment came more readily than if he had actually loved. He had been saying to himself, while he was eating his luncheon which mortified pride had rendered tasteless, that if it had not been for the fact of his absurd alliance with Maria she was the last girl in the world to whom he would have voluntarily turned, now that he was fully grown, and capable of estimating his own character and hers. He said to himself that she was pretty, attractive, and of undeniable strength of character, and yet that very strength of character would have repelled him. He was not a man who needed a wife of great strength of character, of consistent will. He himself had sufficient. His chances of happiness would have been greater with a wife in whom the affections and emotions were predominant; there would have been less danger of friction. Then, too, his wife would necessarily have to live with his mother, and his mother was very like himself. He said to himself that there would certainly be friction, and yet he also said that he could not abandon his attitude of readiness to reciprocate should Maria wish for his allegiance.
Now, for the first time, Wollaston had Evelyn in his mind. Of course he had noticed her beauty, and admired her. The contrary would not have been possible, but now he was conscious of a distinct sensation of soothed pride, when he remembered how she had smiled and dimpled at his invitation, and jumped up to get her hat.
“That pretty little thing wanted to come, anyhow. It is a shame,” he thought. Then insensibly he fell to wondering how he should feel if it were Evelyn to whom he were bound instead of her sister. It did not seem possible to him that the younger sister, with her ready gratitude and her evident ardor of temperament, could smile upon him at night and frown the next morning as Maria had done. He considered, also, how Evelyn would get on better with his mother. Then he resolutely put the thought out of his mind.
“It is not Evelyn, but Maria,” he said to himself, and shut his mouth hard. He resumed his attitude of obedience to duty, but one who is driven by duty alone almost involuntarily balks in spirit.
Wollaston was conscious of balking, although he would not retreat. When he saw Maria again after the exercises of the day were closed, and he encountered her as she was leaving the academy, she looked distinctly homely to him, and yet such was the honor of the man that he did not in the least realize that the homeliness was an exterior thing. It seemed to him that he saw her encompassed with the stiffness of her New England antecedents, as with an armor, and that he got a new and unlovely view of her character. On the contrary, Evelyn's charming, half-smiling, half-piteous face turned towards him seemed to afford glimpses of sweetest affections and womanly gentleness and devotion. Evelyn wished to say that she was sorry that they were obliged to refuse his invitation, but she did not dare. Instead, she gave him that little, half-smiling, half-piteous glance, to which he responded with a lighting up of his whole face and lift of his hat. Then Evelyn smiled entirely, and her backward glance at him was wonderfully alluring, yet maidenly, almost childish. Wollaston, on his way home, thought again how different it would be if Evelyn, instead of Maria, were his wife. Then he put it out of his head resolutely.
The next morning Maria arranged her hair as usual. She had comprehended that something more than mere externals were needful to change the mind of a man like Wollaston, and she gave up the attempt, it must be acknowledged, with a little pleasure. Feminine vanity was inherent in Maria. Nobody knew what the making herself hideous the day before had cost her.
“Oh, I am so glad you have done up your hair the old way,” Evelyn cried, when she saw her, and Aunt Maria remarked that she was glad to see that she had not quite lost her common-sense.
Maria began herself to think that she had not evinced much sense in her procedure of the day before. She had underestimated the character of the man whom she had married, and had made herself ridiculous for nothing. The boy who was infatuated with her, when he saw her on the trolley that morning, made a movement to go forward and speak to her, then he sat still with frequent puzzled glances at her. He was repelled if Wollaston was not. This changing of the face of a woman in a day's time filled him with suspicion. He looked hard at Maria's soft puff of hair, and reflected that it might be a wig; that anyway he was not so much in love as he had thought, with a girl who could look as Maria had done the day before.
When Maria reached the academy, the teachers greeted her with enthusiasm. One who was given to exuberance fairly embraced her.
“Now you are my own beautiful Miss Edgham again,” said she.
Wollaston, during the opening exercises, only glanced once at her, then he saw no difference. But he did look at Evelyn, and when she turned her lovely face away before his gaze and a soft blush rose over her round cheeks he felt his pulses quicken. But he did not speak a word to Maria or Evelyn all day.
When Evelyn went home that night she was very sober. She would not eat her supper, and Maria was sure that she heard her sobbing in the night. The next morning the child looked pale and wan, and Aunt Maria asked harshly if she were sick. Evelyn replied no quickly. When she and Maria were outside waiting for the trolley, Evelyn said, half catching her breath with a sob even then:
“Mr. Lee didn't speak a word to me all day yesterday. I know he did not like it because we didn't go to lunch with him.”
“Nonsense, dear,” said Maria. Then she added, with an odd, secretive meaning in her voice: “Don't worry, precious.”
“I can't help it,” said Evelyn.
When the term was about half finished it became evident to Maria that she and Evelyn must call upon Mrs. Lee, Wollaston's mother. She had put it off as long as she could, although all the other teachers had called, and Aunt Maria had kept urging her to do so.
“She is going to think it is awful funny if you don't call,” she said, “when you used to live in the same place, too.”
In reality, Aunt Maria, now that George Ramsey had married, was thinking that Wollaston might be a good match for Maria, and she wished to prevent her marriage with Professor Lane should he return from Colorado cured.
At last Maria felt that she was fairly obliged to go, and one Saturday afternoon she and Evelyn went to Westbridge for the purpose. Wollaston and his mother lived in an exceedingly pretty house. Mrs. Lee had artistic taste, and the rooms were unusual though simple. Maria looking about, felt a sort of homesick longing. She realized how perfectly a home like this would have suited her. As for Evelyn, she looked about with quick, bright glances, and she treated Mrs. Lee as if she were in love with her. She was all the time wondering if Wollaston would possibly come in, and in lieu of him, she played off her innocent graces with no reserve upon his mother. Wollaston did not come in. He had gone to the city, but when he came home his mother told him of the call.
“Those Edgham girls who used to live in Edgham, the one who teaches in your school, and her sister, called this afternoon,” said she.
“Did they?” responded Wollaston. He turned a page of the evening paper. It was after dinner, and the mother and son were sitting in a tiny room off the parlor, from which it was separated by some eastern portières. There was a fire on the hearth. The two windows, which were close together, were filled up with red and white geraniums. There was a red rug, and the walls were lined with books. Outside it had begun to snow, and the flakes drifted past the windows filled with red and white blossoms like a silvery veil of the storm.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Lee. Then she added, with a keen although covert glance at her son: “I like the younger sister.”
“She is considered quite a beauty, I believe,” said Wollaston.
“Quite a beauty; she is a perfect beauty,” said his mother with emphasis. “It seemed to me I never had seen such a perfectly beautiful, sweet girl. I declare, I actually wanted to take her in my arms. Anybody could live with that girl. As for her sister, I don't like her at all.”
Mrs. Lee was very like her son. She had the same square jaw and handsome face, which had little of the truly feminine in it. Her clear blue eyes surveyed every new person with whom she came in contact in her new dwelling place, with impartial and pitiless scrutiny. When she liked people she said so. When she did not she also said so, and, as far as she could, let them alone. When she spoke now, she looked as if Maria's face was actually before her. She did not frown, but her expression was one of complete hostility and unsparing judgment.
“Why don't you like her?” asked her son, with his eyes upon his paper.
“Why don't I like her? She is New England to the backbone, and one who is New England to the backbone is insufferable. She is stiff and set in her ways. She would go to the stake for a fad, or send her nearest and dearest there.”
“She is a very good teacher, and the pupils like her,” said Wollaston. He kept his voice quite steady.
“She may be a very good teacher,” said his mother. “I dare say she is. I can't imagine anybody not learning a task which she set them, but I don't like her.”
“She is pretty—at least, she is called so,” said Wollaston. Then he added, with an impulse of loyalty: “I think myself that she is very pretty.”
“I don't call her at all pretty,” said his mother. “She has a nose which looks as if it could pierce fate, and she sets her mouth as though she was deciding the laws of the universe. It is all very well in a man, that kind of a face, but I can't call it pretty in a woman.”
Wollaston glanced at his mother, and an expression of covert amusement was on his face as he reflected that his mother herself answered her own description of poor Maria, and did not dream of it. In fact, the two, although one was partly of New England heritage, and the other of a wholly different, more southern State, they were typically alike. They could meet only to love or quarrel; there could never be neutrality between them. Wollaston said no more, but continued reading his paper. He did not in reality sense one word which he read. He acknowledged to himself that he was very unhappy. He was caught in a labyrinth from which he saw no way of escape into the open. He realized that love for Maria had become almost impossible—that is, spontaneous love—even if she should change her attitude towards him. He realized a lurking sense of guilt as to his sentiments towards Evelyn, and he realized also that his mother and Maria could never live together in peace. Once Mrs. Lee took a dislike, her very soul fastened upon it as with a grip of iron jaws. Doubtless if she knew that her son was in honor bound to Maria she would try to make the best of it, but the best of it would be bad enough. He wondered while he sat with the paper before his face what Maria's real attitude towards him was. He could not understand such apparent inconsistencies in a woman of his mother's type, and he had been almost sure that one night that Maria loved him.
Chapter XXXV
Maria, after that call, faced her future course more fully than ever. She had disliked Mrs. Lee as much as Mrs. Lee had disliked her. Only the fact that she was Wollaston's mother made her endurable to her.
“Isn't Mrs. Lee perfectly lovely?” said Evelyn, when she and Maria were on their way home.
“Yes,” Maria answered, but she did not think so. Mrs. Lee shone for her only with reflected glory.
“I wonder where Mr. Lee was?” Evelyn murmured, timidly.
“I don't know,” Maria said with an absent air. “We did not go to call on him.”
“Of course we didn't,” said Evelyn. “Don't be cross, sister.”
“I am not in the least cross,” Maria answered with perfect truth.
“I didn't know but you were, you spoke so,” said Evelyn. She leaned wearily against her sister, and looked ahead with a hollow, wistful expression.
Evelyn had grown thin and lost much of her color. Aunt Maria and Eunice talked about it when they were alone.
“I wonder if there is any consumption in her mother's family?” Aunt Maria said.
“I wonder,” said Eunice. “I don't like the way she looks.”
“Well, don't say anything about it to Maria, for she will worry herself sick,” said Aunt Maria. “She sets her eyes by Evelyn.”
“Don't you think she notices?”
“No, she hasn't said a word about it.”
But Aunt Maria was wrong. Maria had noticed. That afternoon, returning from Westbridge, she looked anxiously down at her sister.
“Don't you feel well, dear?” she asked.
“Perfectly well,” Evelyn replied languidly, “only I am a little tired.”
“Perhaps it is the spring weather,” said Maria.
Evelyn nodded. It was the beginning of the spring term, and spring came like a flood that year. The trees fairly seemed to burst forth in green-and-rosy flames, and the shrubs in the door-yards bloomed so boldly that they shocked rather than pleased.
“I like the spring to come slowly, so one does not feel choked with it,” Evelyn said after a little, as she gazed out of the window. “There are actually daisies in that field. They have come too soon.” Evelyn spoke with an absurd petulance which was unusual with her.
Maria laughed. “Well, dear, we can't help it,” she said.
“If this world is for people, and not the people for this world, it seems to me we ought to be able to help a little,” said Evelyn with perfectly unconscious heresy. “There it rained too much last week, and this week it is too hot, and the apple blossoms have come too soon after the cherry blossoms. It is like eating all your candy in one big pill.”
Maria laughed again, but Evelyn sighed wearily. The car was very hot and close.
“I shall be thankful when we get home,” Evelyn said.
“Yes, you will feel better when you get home and have some supper,” said Maria.
“I don't want any supper,” said Evelyn.
“If you don't eat any supper you cannot study this evening.”
“I must study,” said Evelyn with a feverish light in her eyes.
“You can't unless you eat.”
“Well, I will drink some milk,” said Evelyn. She was studying very hard. She was very ambitious, both naturally and because of her feeling for Wollaston Lee. It seemed to her that she should die if she did not stand well in her class. Evelyn had received so little notice from Wollaston that she had made up her mind that he did not care for her, and the conviction was breaking her heart, but she said to herself that she would graduate with honors that she might have that much, that she must.
The graduating with honors would have been easy to the girl, for she had naturally a quick grasp of knowledge, but her failing health and her almost unconquerable languor made it hard for her to work as usual. However, she persisted. It became evident that she would stand first among the girls of her class, and only second to one boy, who had a large brain and little emotion, and was so rendered almost impregnable. Ida sent Evelyn a graduating costume from Paris, and the girl brightened a little after she had tried it on. She could not quite give up all hope of being loved when she saw herself in that fluffy white robe, and looked over her slender shoulder at her graceful train, and reflected how she would not only look pretty but acquit herself with credit. She said to herself that if she were a man she should love herself. There was about Evelyn an almost comical naïveté and truthfulness.
Ida also sent Maria a gown for the graduating exercises. Hers was a pale blue, very pretty, but not as pretty as Evelyn's. The night after the gowns came Maria was startled by a sudden rush into her room when she was almost asleep, and Evelyn nestling into her arms and sobbing out that she was sorry, she was sorry, but she could not help it.
“Can't help what, darling?” said Maria.
“Can't help being glad that my dress is so much prettier than yours,” wept Evelyn. “I am sorry, sister, but I can't help it, and I am so ashamed I had to come in and tell you.”
Maria laughed and kissed her. “Sister is very glad yours is the prettiest,” she said.
“Oh, I am so sorry I am so selfish,” sobbed Evelyn. Then she added, in a tiny whisper, “I know now he won't ever think of me, but I can't help being glad I shall look nice for him to see, anyway.”
Evelyn was asleep long before her sister. Maria lay awake, with the little, frail body in her arms, realizing with horror how very frail and thin it was. Evelyn was of the sort whom emotion can kill. She was being consumed like a lamp which needed oil. Love was for the girl not only a need but a condition of life. Maria was realizing it. At the same time she said to herself that possibly after school was over and Evelyn could rest she might regain her strength. There seemed to be no organic trouble. The local physician had been consulted, and said that nothing whatever was the matter, yet had gone away with a grave face after prescribing a simple tonic. The fact was that life was flickering low, as it sometimes does, with no ostensible reason which science could grasp. Evelyn was beyond science. She was assailed in that citadel of spirit which overlooks science from the heights of eternity. No physician but fate itself could help her.
All this time, while Maria was suffering as keenly as her sister, her suffering left no evidence. She had inherited from her mother a tremendous strength of will, which sustained her. She said to herself that she had her work to do, that her health must not fail. She said that probably Wollaston did not care for her, although she could not help thinking that she had the power to make him care, and that she would be lacking in all that meant her true and best self should she give way to her unhappiness and let it master her. She therefore mastered it. In those days to Maria, who had a ready imagination, her unhappiness seemed sometimes to assume a material shape like the fabulous dragon. She seemed to be fighting something with tooth and claw, a monstrous verity; but she fought, and she kept the upper hand. Maria did not lose flesh. She ate as usual, she retained her interest in her work, and all the time whenever a moment of solitude came she renewed the conflict. She thought as little as possible of Wollaston; she avoided even looking at him. He thought that he really was an object of aversion to her. He began to question the advisability of his retaining his position another year. He told himself that it was hardly fair to Maria to subject her to such annoyance, that it was much easier for him to obtain another position than it was for her. He wanted to ask her with regard to it, but in the days before commencement she so manifestly shrank from even looking at him that he hardly liked to approach her even with a question which concerned her own happiness.
Wollaston in those days used sometimes to glance at Evelyn, and notice how very thin and delicate she looked, and an anxiety which was almost paternal was over him. He used almost to wish that she was not so proficient in her studies. One day, meeting her in the vestibule when no one was in sight, he could not resist the impulse which led him to pat her little, dark, curly head and say, in a voice broken with tenderness:
“Don't study too hard, little one.”
Evelyn gave an upward glance at him and ran away. Wollaston stood still a moment, dazed. He was not naturally a conceited man. Then, too, he had always regarded himself as so outside the pale that he doubted the evidence of his own senses. If he had not been tied to Evelyn's sister he would have said to himself, in a rapture, that that look of the young girl's meant, could mean, only one thing: that all her innocent heart was centred upon himself. It would have savored no more of conceit that the seeing his face in a mirror. He would simply have thought it the truth. But now, since he was always forgetting that other women did not know the one woman's secret, and looked upon him as an unmarried man, and therefore a fit target for their innocent wiles, the preening of their dainty dove plumage, he said to himself that he must have been mistaken. That Evelyn had looked at him as she had done only because she was nervous and overwrought, and the least thing was sufficient to disturb her equilibrium.
However, he was very careful not to address Evelyn particularly again, but that one little episode had been sufficient for the girl to build another air castle upon. That night when she went home she was radiant with happiness. Her color had returned, smiles lit her whole face. Ineffable depths of delight sparkled in her eyes. It seemed almost a sacrilege to look at the young girl, whose heart was so plainly evident in her face. Maria looked at her, and felt a chill in her own heart.
“Something must have happened,” she said to herself. She thought that Evelyn would tell her, but she did not; she ate her supper with more appetite than she had shown for many a week. Her gayety in the evening, when some neighbors came in, was so unrestrained and childlike that it was fairly infectious. They sat out on the front door-step. It had been a warm day, and the evening cool was welcome and laughter floated out into the street. It was laughter over nothing, but irresistible, induced because of the girl's exuberant mood. She felt that night as if there was no meaning in the world except happiness and fun. George Ramsey, going home about nine o'clock, heard the laughter, and shrugged his shoulders rather bitterly. Lily had made him such a good wife, according to the tenets of wifehood, that he had apparently no reason to complain. She was always perfectly amiable and affectionate, not violently affectionate, but with the sort of affection which does not ruffle laces nor disarrange hair, and that he had always considered the most desirable sort of affection in the long-run. She and his mother got on very well also—that is, apparently. Lily, it was true, always had her way, but she had it so gently and unobtrusively that one really doubted if she were not herself the conceder. She always looked the same, she dressed daintily, and arranged her fair hair beautifully. George did not own to himself that sameness irritated him when it was such charming sameness. However, he did sometimes realize, and sternly put it away from him, a little sting when he happened to meet Maria. He had a feeling as if he had gone from a waxwork show and met a real woman.
To-night when he heard the peals of laughter from the front door of the Stillman house he felt the sting again, and an unwarrantable childish indignation as if he had been left out of something and slighted. He was conscious of wishing when he reached home that his wife would greet him with a frown and reproaches; in fact, with something new, instead of her sweet, gentle smile of admiration, looking up from her everlasting embroidering, from where she sat beside the sitting-room lamp. George felt furious with her for admiring him. He sat down moodily and took up the evening paper. His mother was not there. She had gone to her room early with a headache.
Finally, Lily remarked that it was a beautiful night, and it was as exactly what might have been expected from her flower-like lips as the squeaking call for mamma of a talking doll. George almost grunted a response, and rattled his paper loudly. Lily looked at him with a little surprise, but with unfailing love and admiration. George had sometimes a feeling that if he were to beat her she would continue to admire him and think it lovely of him. Lily had, in fact, the soul of an Oriental woman in the midst of New England. She would have figured admirably in a harem. George, being Occidental to his heart's core, felt an exasperation the worse because it was needfully dumb, on account of this adoration. He thought less of himself because his wife thought he could do no wrong. The power of doing wrong is, after all, a power, and George had a feeling of having lost that power and of being in a negative way wronged. Finally he spoke crossly to Lily over his newspaper.
“Why do you stick so to that everlasting fancy-work?” said he. “Why on earth don't you sometimes run out of an evening? You never go into the next house nowadays.”
Lily arose directly.
“We will go over there now if you wish,” said she. She laid down her work and smoothed her hair with her doll-like gesture, which never varied.
George looked at her surlily and irresolutely.
“No, I guess we had better not to-night,” he said.
“I had just as lief, dear.”
George rose, letting his paper slide to the floor.
“Well,” he said, “they are all out on the front door-step, and I think some of the neighbors are there, too. We might run over a moment. It is too hot to stay in the house, anyway.”
But when George and Lily came alongside the Stillman house the laughter was hushed, and there was a light in Aunt Maria's bedroom, and lights also in the chambers behind the drawn curtains.
“We are too late,” said George. “They have gone to bed.”
“I think they have,” replied Lily, looking up at the lighted bedroom windows. Then she added, “I will go over there any evening you wish, dear,” and looked at him with that unfailing devotion which unreasonably angered him.
He answered her quite roughly, and was ashamed of himself afterwards.
“It is a frightfully monotonous life we lead anyhow,” said he, as if she, Lily, were responsible for it.
“Suppose we go away a week somewhere next month,” said Lily.
“Well, I'll think of it,” said he, striding along by her side. Even that suggestion, which was entirely reasonable, angered him, and he felt furious and ashamed of himself for being so angered.
Lily was constantly making him ashamed of himself for not being a god and for feeling unreasonable anger when she did nothing to provoke it. Once in a while a man likes to have a reasonable cause for resentment in order to prove himself in the right.
“Well, I am ready to go whenever you wish to do so, dear,” said Lily. “My wardrobe is in order.”
“Well, we'll see,” George grunted again, as he and Lily retraced their steps.
They sat down again in the sitting-room, and Lily took up her embroidery, and he read a murder case in his paper.
Meanwhile, Maria, after putting out her lamp, was lying awake in bed thinking that Evelyn would come in and make some confidence to her, but she did not come. Maria felt horribly uneasy. She could not understand her sister's sudden change of mood, and yet she did not for a moment doubt Wollaston. She said to herself that as far as she was concerned she would brave the publicity if Wollaston loved Evelyn, but she recalled as exactly as if she had committed them to heart what Evelyn had said with regard to divorce and the horror which she had expressed of a divorced man or woman remarrying. Then she further considered how much worse it would be if the divorced man married her own sister. That course seemed to her impossible. She imagined the horrible details, the surmises, the newspaper articles, and she said to herself that even if she herself were willing to face the ordeal it would be still more of an ordeal for Wollaston and Evelyn. She said to herself that it was impossible; then she also said to herself, with no bitterness, but with an acquiescence in the logic of it, that it would be much better for them all if she, Maria, should die.
Chapter XXXVI
Evelyn's return of appetite and spirits endured only a few days. Then she seemed worse than she had been before. In fact, Wollaston, thinking that he had done wrong in yielding for only a second to his impulse of tender protection and admiration for the young girl, went too far in the opposite direction. In order to make amends to Maria, himself, and Evelyn, he was actually rude, almost brutal. He scarcely spoke to Evelyn. On one occasion he even reprimanded her severely in a class for a slight mistake. Evelyn turned pale, and gave him a glance like that of some pretty, little, harmless animal which has nothing except love and devotion in its heart, and whose very mistakes are those of love and over-anxiety to please. Wollaston was struck to the heart by the look, but he did not relax one muscle of his stern face.
“I think Mr. Lee treated you mean, so there,” Addie Hemingway said to Evelyn when they had left the room.
Evelyn said nothing. Her face continued pale and shocked. It was inconceivable to her that anybody, least of all Mr. Lee, could have spoken so to her.
“He's treating you like a child,” Addie Hemingway continued. “Mr. Lee has no right to speak so to seniors.” Addie's words were in themselves sympathetic, but there was an undertone of delight at the other girl's discomfiture in her voice which she could not eliminate. In reality she was saying to herself that Evelyn Edgham, in spite of her being so pretty, had had to meet a rebuff, and she exulted in it.
Evelyn still said nothing. She left Addie abruptly and joined Maria in her class-room. It was the noon-hour. Maria glanced anxiously at her sister as she entered.
“Why, darling, what is the matter?” she cried.
“Nothing,” replied Evelyn. An impulse of loyalty seized her. She would not repeat, not even to Maria, the unkind words which Mr. Lee had used towards her.
“But you look so pale, dear,” said Maria.
“It was warm in there,” said Evelyn, with a quiet, dejected air unusual to her.
Maria could not get any admission that anything was wrong from her. Evelyn tried to eat her luncheon, making more of an effort than usual, but she could not. At last she laid her head down on her sister's table and wept with the utter abandon of a child, but she still would not tell what caused her tears.
After that Evelyn lost flesh so rapidly that it became alarming. Maria and her aunt wondered if they ought to allow her to go through the strain of the graduation exercises, but neither dared say anything about it to her. Evelyn's whole mind seemed fastened upon her graduation and the acquitting of herself with credit. She studied assiduously. She often used to go into the spare chamber and gaze at her graduating dress, which was spread out on the bed there covered with a sheet.
“She's so set on that graduation and wearing that dress,” Aunt Maria said to Eunice Stillman, her sister-in-law, one day when she was alone with her in her parlor and heard Evelyn's light step overhead. “She goes in there almost every day and looks at it.”
Eunice sighed. “Well, I wish she looked better,” said she.
“So do I. It seems to me that she loses every day.”
“Did you ever think—” began Eunice. Then she stopped and hesitated.
“Think what?”
“If—anything happened to her, that that dress—”
“Oh, for the land sake, stop, Eunice!” cried Aunt Maria, impatiently. “Ain't I had it on my mind the whole time. And that dress looks just as if it was laid out there.”
“Do you think Maria notices?”
“Yes, she's just as worried as I am. But what can we do? Maybe if Evelyn gets through the graduation she will be better. I shall be thankful when it's over, for my part.”
“How that child's mother could have gone off and left her all this time I don't see,” Eunice said. “If I were in her place and anything happened to her, I should never forgive myself.”
“Trust Ida Slome to forgive herself for most anything,” Aunt Maria returned, bitterly. “But as far as that goes, I guess the child has had full as good care here as she would have had with her ma.”
“I guess so, too,” said Eunice; “better—only I should never forgive myself.”
That was only a week before the graduation day, which was on a Wednesday. It was a clear June day, with a sky of blue, veiled here and there with wing-shaped clouds. It was quite warm. Evelyn dressed herself very early. She was ready long before it was time to take the car. Evelyn, in her white graduating dress, was fairly angelic. Although she had lost so much flesh, it had not affected her beauty, only made it more touching. Her articulations and bones were so fairy-like and delicate that even with her transparent sleeved and necked dress there were no unseemly protuberances. Her slenderness, moreover, was not so apparent in her fluffy gown. Above her necklace of pink corals her lovely face showed. It was full of a gentle and uncomplaining melancholy, yet that day there was a tinge of hope in it. The faintest and most appealing smile curved her lips. She looked at everybody with a sort of wistful challenge. It was as if she said: “After all, am I not pretty, and worthy of being loved? Am I not worthy of being loved, even if I am not, and I have all my books in my head, too?”
Maria had given her a bouquet of red roses. When Evelyn in her turn came forward to read her essay, holding her red roses, with red roses of excitement burning on her delicate cheeks, there was a low murmur of admiration. Then it was that Maria, in her blue gown, seated among the other teachers, caught the look on Wollaston Lee's face. It was unmistakable. It was a look of the utmost love and longing and admiration, the soul of the man, for the minute, was plainly to be read. In a second, the look was gone, but Maria had seen. “He is in love with her,” she told herself, “only he is so honorable that he chokes the love back.” Maria turned very pale, but she listened with smiling lips to Evelyn's essay. It was very good, but not much beyond the usual rate of such productions. Evelyn had nothing creative about her, although she was even a brilliant scholar. But the charm of that little flutelike voice, coming from that slight, white-clad beauty, made even platitudes seem like something higher than wisdom.
When Evelyn had finished there was a great round of applause and a shower of flowers. She returned again and again, and bowed, smiling delightedly. She was flushed with her triumph. She thought that even Mr. Lee must be pleased with her, if he did not love her, and be proud to have such a pupil.
That evening there was to be a reception for the teachers, and the graduating-class, at Mr. Lee's house. Evelyn and Maria had planned to go to one of the other teacher's, who lived in Westbridge, have supper, and go from there to the reception. But when the exercises were over, and they had reached the teacher's home, Evelyn's strength gave way. She had a slight fainting fit. The teacher, an elderly woman who lived alone, gave her home-made wine and made her take off her dress, put on one of her own wrappers, and lie down and rest until the last minute, in the hope that she would be able to go to the reception. But it became evident that the girl was too exhausted. When Maria and the teacher were fastening her dress again, she fainted the second time. The teacher, who was a decisive woman, spoke.
“There is no sense whatever in this child's leaving this house to-night,” said she. “Maria, you go to the reception, and I will stay and take care of her.”
“No,” said Maria. “If Evelyn is not able to go, I think we had better take the trolley at once for home.” Maria was as decided as the other teacher. When the white-clad graduates and the teachers were gathering at Wollaston Lee's, she and Evelyn boarded the trolley for Amity. Evelyn still held fast to her bouquet of red roses, and Maria was laden with baskets and bouquets which had been strewn at her shrine. Evelyn leaned back in her seat, with her head resting against the window, and did not speak. All her animation of the morning had vanished. She looked ghastly. Maria kept glancing furtively at her. She herself looked nearly as pale as Evelyn. She realized that she was face to face with a great wall of problem. She was as unhappy as Evelyn, but she was stronger to bear unhappiness. She had philosophy, and logic, and her young sister was a creature of pure emotion, and at the same time she was so innocent and ignorant that she was completely helpless before it. Evelyn closed her eyes as she leaned against the window-frame, and a chill crept over her sister as she thought that she could not look much different if she were dead. Then came to Maria the conviction that this sister's life meant more than anything else in the world to her. That she could bear the loss of everything rather than that, and when she too would not be able to avoid the sense of responsibility for it. If she had not been so headlong and absurdly impetuous years ago, Evelyn might easily have been happy and lived.
When they reached home, Aunt Maria, who had come on an earlier car, was already in her bedroom and the front-door was fastened and the sitting-room windows were dark. Maria knocked on the door, and presently she heard footsteps, then Aunt Maria's voice, asking, with an assumption of masculine harshness, who were there.
“It is only I and Evelyn,” replied Maria.
Then the door was opened, and Aunt Maria, in her ruffled night-gown and cap, holding a streaming lamp, stood back hastily lest somebody see her. “Come in and shut the door quick, for goodness sake!” said she. “I am all undressed.”
Maria and Evelyn went in, and Maria closed and locked the door.
“What have you come home for?” asked Aunt Maria. “Why didn't you go to the reception, and stay at Miss Thomas's, the way you said you were going to, I'd like to know?”
“Evelyn didn't feel very well, and I thought we'd better come home,” replied Maria, with a little note of evasion in her voice.
Aunt Maria turned and looked sharply at Evelyn, who was leaning against the wall. She was faint again, and she looked, in her white dress with her slender curves, like a bas-relief. “What on earth is the matter with her?” asked Aunt Maria in her angry voice, which was still full of the most loving concern. She caught hold of Evelyn's slight arm. “You are all tired out, just as I expected,” she said. “I call the whole thing pure tomfoolery. If girls want to get educated, let them, but when it comes to making such a parade when they are all worn out with education there is no sense in it. Maria, you get her up-stairs to bed.”
Evelyn was too exhausted to make any resistance. She allowed Maria to assist her up-stairs and undress her. When her sister bent over her to kiss her good-night, she said, soothingly, “There now, darling; go to sleep. You will feel better now school is done and you will have a chance to rest.”
But Evelyn responded with the weakest and most hopeless little sob.
“Don't cry, precious,” said Maria.
“Won't you tell if I tell you something?” said Evelyn, raising herself on one slender arm.
“No, dear.”
“Well—he does—care a good deal about me. I know now. I—I met him out in the grove after the exercises were over, and—there was nobody there, and he—he caught hold of my arms, and, Maria, he looked at me, but—” Evelyn burst into a weak little wail.
“What is it, dear?”
“Oh, I don't know what it is, but for some reason he thinks he can't tell me. He did not say so, but he made me know, and—and oh, Maria, he is going away! He is not coming back to Westbridge at all. He is going to get another place!”
“Nonsense!”
“Yes, it is so. He said so. Oh, Maria! you will think I am dreadful, and I do love you and Aunt Maria and Uncle Henry and Aunt Eunice, but I can't help minding his going away where I can never see him, more than anything else in the world. I can't help loving him most. I do feel so very badly, sister, that I think I shall die.”
“Nonsense, darling.”
“Yes, I shall. And I am not ashamed now. I was ashamed because I thought so much about a man who did not care anything about me, but now I am not ashamed. I am just killed. A person is not to blame for being killed. I am not ashamed. I am killed. He is going away, and I shall never see him again. The sight of him was something; I shall not even have that. You don't know, sister. I don't love him for my own self, but for himself. Just the knowing he is near is something, and I shall not even have that.” Evelyn was too weak to cry tumultuously, but she made little, futile moans, and clung to Maria's hand. Maria tried to soothe her, and finally the child, worn out, seemed to be either asleep or in the coma of exhaustion.
Then Maria went into her own room. She undressed, and sat down beside the window with a wrapper over her night-gown. Now she had to solve her problem. She began as she might have done with a problem in higher algebra, this problem of the human heart and its emotions. She said to herself that there were three people. Evelyn, Wollaston and herself, three known quantities, and an unknown quantity of happiness, and perhaps life itself, which must be evolved from them. She eliminated herself and her own happiness not with any particular realization of self-sacrifice. She came of a race of women to whom self-sacrifice was more natural than self-gratification. She was unhappy, but there was no struggle for happiness to render the unhappiness keener. She thought first of Evelyn. She loved Wollaston. Maria reasoned, of course, that she was very young. This first love might not be her only one, but the girl's health might break under the strain, and she took into consideration, as she had often done, the fairly abnormal strength of Evelyn's emotional nature in a slight and frail young body. Evelyn was easily one who might die because of a thwarted love. Then Maria thought of Wollaston, and, loving him as she did, she acknowledged to herself coolly that he was the first to be considered, his happiness and well being. Even if Evelyn did break her heart, the man must have the first consideration. She tried to judge fairly as to whether she or Evelyn would on the whole be the best for him. She estimated herself, and she estimated Evelyn, and she estimated the man. Wollaston Lee was a man of a strong nature, she told herself. He was capable of self-restraint, of holding his head up from his own weaknesses forever. Maria reasoned that if he had been a weaker man she would have loved him just the same, and in that case Evelyn would have been the one to be sacrificed. She thought that a girl like Evelyn would not have been such a good wife for a weak man as she herself, who was stronger. But Wollaston did not need any extraneous strength. On the contrary, some one who was weaker than he might easily strengthen his strength. It seemed to her that Evelyn was distinctly better for the man than she. Then she remembered the look which she had seen on his face when Evelyn began her essay that day.
“If he does not love her now it is because he is bound to me,” she thought. “He would most certainly love her if it were not for me.”
Again it seemed to Maria distinctly better that she should die, better—that is, for Evelyn and the man. But she had the thought, with no morbid desire for suicide or any bitterness. It simply seemed to her as if her elimination would produce that desirable unknown quantity of happiness.
Elimination and not suicide seemed to her the only course for her to pursue. She sat far into the night thinking it over. She had great imagination and great daring. Things were possible to her which would not have been possible to many—that is, she considered things as possibilities which would have seemed to many simply vagaries. She thought of them seriously, with a belief in their fulfilment. It was almost morning, the birds had just begun to sing in scattering flute-like notes, when she crept into bed.
She hardly slept at all. She heard the gathering chorus of the birds, in a half doze, until seven o'clock. Then she got up and dressed herself. She peeped cautiously into Evelyn's room. The girl was sleeping, her long, dark lashes curled upon her wan cheeks. She looked ghastly, yet still lovely. Maria looked at her, and her mouth compressed. Then she turned away. She crept noiselessly down the stairs and into the kitchen where Aunt Maria was preparing breakfast. The stove smoked a little and the air was blue.
“How is she?” asked Aunt Maria, in a hushed voice.
“She is fast asleep.”
“Better let her sleep just as long as she will,” said Aunt Maria. “These exhibitions are pure tomfoolery. She is just tuckered out.”
“Yes, I think she is,” said Maria.
Aunt Maria looked keenly at her, and her face paled and lengthened.
“Maria Edgham, what on earth is the matter with you?” she said. “You look as bad as she does. Between both of you I am at my wit's end.”
“Nothing ails me,” said Maria.
“Nothing ails you? Look at yourself in the glass there.”
Maria stole a look at herself in a glass which hung over the kitchen-table, and she hardly knew her own face, it had gathered such a strange fixedness of secret purpose. That had altered it more than her pallor. Maria tried to smile and say again that nothing ailed her, but she could not. Suddenly a tremendous pity for her aunt came over her. She had not thought so much about that. But now she looked at things from her aunt's point of view, and she saw the pain to which the poor old woman must be put. She saw no way of avoiding the giving her the pain, but she suffered it herself. She went up to Aunt Maria and kissed her.
Aunt Maria started back, and rubbed her face violently. “What did you do that for?” said she, in a frightened voice. Then she noticed Maria's dress, which was one which she seldom wore unless she was going out. “What have you got on your brown suit for this morning?” said she.
“I thought I would go down to the store after breakfast and get some embroidery silk for that centre-piece,” replied Maria.
As she spoke she seemed to realize what a little thing a lie was, and how odd it was that she should realize it, who had been brought up to speak the truth.
“Your gingham would have been enough sight better to have worn this hot morning,” said Aunt Maria, still with that air of terror and suspicion.
“Oh, this dress is light,” replied Maria, going out.
“Where are you going now?”
“Into the parlor.”
Aunt Maria stood still, listening, until she heard the parlor door open. She was still filled with vague suspicion. She did not hear quite as acutely as formerly, and Maria had no difficulty about leaving the parlor unheard the second after she entered it, and getting her hat and coat and a small satchel which she had brought down-stairs with her from the hat-tree in the entry. Then she opened the front door noiselessly and stole out. She went rapidly down the street in the direction of the bridge, which she had been accustomed to cross when she taught school in Amity. She met Jessy Ramsey, now grown to be as tall as herself, and pretty with a half-starved, pathetic prettiness. Jessy was on her way to work. She went out by the day, doing washings. She stopped when she met Maria, and gave a little, shy look—her old little-girl look—at her. Maria also stopped. “Good-morning, Jessy,” said she. Then she asked how she was, if her cough was better, and where she was going to work. Then, suddenly, to Jessy's utter amazement and rapture, she kissed her. “I never forget what a good little girl you were,” said she, and was gone. Jessy stood for a moment staring after her. Then she wiped her eyes and proceed to her scene of labor.
Maria went to the railroad station. She was just in time for a train. She got on the rear car and sat in the last seat. She looked about and did not see anybody whom she knew. She recalled how she had run away before, and how Wollaston had brought her back. She knew that it would not happen so again. She was on a through train which did not stop at the station where he had found her. When the train slowed up a little in passing that station, she saw the bench on the platform where she had sat, and a curious sensation came over her. She was like one who has made the leap and realizes that there is nothing more to dread, and who gets even a certain abnormal pleasure from the sensation. When the conductor came through the car she purchased her ticket for New York, and asked when the train was due in the city. When she learned that it was due at an hour so late that it would be impossible for her to go, as she had planned, to Edgham that night, she did not, even then, for the time being, feel in the least dismayed. She had plenty of money. Her last quarter's salary was in her little satchel. The train was made up of Pullmans only, and it was by a good chance that she had secured a seat. She gazed out of the large window at the flying landscape, and again that sense of pleasure in the midst of pain was over her. The motion itself was exhilarating. She seemed to be speeding past herself and her own anxieties, which suddenly appeared as petty and evanescent as the flying telegraph-poles along the track. “It has to be over some time,” she reflected. “Nothing matters.” She felt comforted by a realization of immensity and the continuance of motion. She comprehended her own atomic nature in the great scheme of things. She had never done so before. Her own interests had always loomed up before her like a beam in the eye of God. Now she saw that they were infinitesimal, and the knowledge soothed her. She leaned her head back and dozed a little. She was awakened by the porter thrusting a menu into her hands. She ordered something. It was not served promptly, and she had no appetite. There was some tea which tasted of soap.
Chapter XXXVII
There were very few people in this car, for the reason that there had recently been a terrible rear-end collision on the road, and people had flocked into the forward cars. There were three young girls who filled the car with chatter, and irritated Maria unreasonably. They were very pretty and well dressed, and with no reserve. They were as inconsequently confidential about their own affairs as so many sparrows, but more intelligible. One by one the men left and went into the smoker, before this onslaught of harsh trebles shrieking above the roar of the train, obtruding their little, bird-like affairs, their miniature hoppings upon the stage of life, upon all in the car.
Finally, there were none left in the car except Maria, these young girls, an old lady, who accosted the conductors whenever they entered and asked when the train was due in New York (a tremulous, vibratory old lady in antiquated frills and an agitatedly sidewise bonnet, and loose black silk gloves), and across the aisle a tiny, deformed woman, a dwarf, in fact, with her maid. This little woman was richly dressed, and she had a fine face. She was old enough to be Maria's mother. Her eyes were dark and keen, her forehead domelike, and her square, resigned chin was sunken in the laces at her throat. Her maid was older than she, and waited upon her with a faithful solicitude. The little woman had some tea, which the maid produced from a small silver caddy in a travelling-bag, and the porter, with an obsequious air, brought boiling water in two squat, plated tea-pots. It was the tea which served to introduce Maria. She had just pushed aside, with an air half of indifference, half of disgust, her own luke-warm concoction flavored with soap, when the maid, at her mistress's order, touched the bell. When the porter appeared, Maria heard the dwarf ask for another pot of boiling water, and presently the maid stood beside her with a cup of fragrant tea.
“Miss Blair wishes me to ask if you will not drink this instead of the other, which she fears is not quite satisfactory,” the maid said, in an odd, acquired tone and manner of ladyism, as if she were repeating a lesson, yet there seemed nothing artificial about it. She regarded Maria with a respectful air. Maria looked across at the dwarf woman, who was looking at her with kindly eyes which yet seemed aloof, and a half-sardonic, half-pleasant smile.
Maria thanked her and took the tea, which was excellent, and refreshed her. The maid returned to her seat, facing her mistress. They had finished their luncheon. She leaned back in her chair with a blank expression of face. The dwarf looked out of the window, and that same half-pleasant, half-sardonic smile remained upon her face. It was as if she regarded all nature with amused acquiescence and sarcasm, at its inability to harm her, although it had made the endeavor.
Maria glanced at her very rich black attire, and a great pearl cross which gleamed at her throat, and she wondered a little about her. Then she turned again to the flying landscape, and again that sense of unnatural peace came over her. She did not think of Evelyn and Wollaston, or her aunts and uncle, whom she was leaving, except with the merest glance of thought. It was as if she were already in another world.
The train sped on, and the girls continued their chatter, and their high-shrieking trebles arose triumphant above all the clatter. It was American girlhood rampant on the shield of their native land. Still there was something about the foolish young faces and the inane chatter and laughter which was sweet and even appealing. They became attractive from their audaciousness and their ignorance that they were troublesome. Their confidence in the admiration of all who saw and heard almost compelled it. Their postures, their crossing their feet with lavish displays of lingerie and dainty feet and hose, was possibly the very boldness of innocence, although Maria now and then glanced at them and thought of Evelyn, and was thankful that she was not like them.
The little dwarf also glanced now and then at them with her pleasant and sardonic smile and with an unruffled patience. She seemed either to look up from the depths of, or down from the heights of, her deformity upon them, and to hardly sense them at all. None of the men returned until a large city was reached, where some of them were to get off. Then they lounged into the car, were brushed, took their satchels, and when the train reached the station swung out, with the unfailing trebles still in their ears.
Before the train reached New York, all the many appurtenances had vanished from the car. The chattering girls also had alighted at a station, with a renewed din like a flock of birds, and there were then left in the rear car only Maria, the dwarf woman, and her maid.
It was not until the train was lighted, and she could no longer see anything from the window except signal-lights and lighted windows of towns through which they whirled, that Maria's unnatural mood disappeared. Suddenly she glanced around the lighted car, and terror seized her. She was no longer a very young girl; she had much strength of character, but she was unused to the world. For the first time she seemed to feel the cold waters of it touch her very heart. She thought of the great and terrible city into which she was to launch herself late at night. She considered that she knew absolutely nothing about the hotels. She even remembered, vaguely, having heard that no unattended woman was admitted to one, and then she had no baggage except her little satchel. She glanced at herself in the little glass beside her seat, and her pretty face all at once occurred to her as being a great danger rather than an advantage. Now she wished for her aunt Maria's face instead of her own. She imagined that Aunt Maria might have no difficulty even under the same adverse circumstances. She looked years younger than she was. She thought for a moment of going into the lavatory and rearranging her hair, with a view to making herself look plain and old, as she had done before, but she recalled the enormous change it had made in her appearance, and she was afraid to do that lest it should seem a suspicious circumstance to the conductors and her fellow-passengers. She glanced across the aisle at the dwarf woman, and their eyes met, and suddenly a curious sort of feeling of kinship came over the girl. Here was another woman outside the pale of ordinary life by physical conditions, as she herself was by spiritual ones. The dwarf's eyes looked fairly angelic and heavenly to her. She saw her speak in a whisper to her maid, and the woman immediately arose and came to her.
“Miss Blair wishes me to ask if you will be so kind as to go and speak to her; she has something which she wishes to say to you,” she said, in the same parrot-like fashion.
Maria arose at once, and crossed the aisle and seated herself in the chair which the maid vacated. The maid took Maria's at a nod from her mistress.
The little woman looked at Maria for a moment with her keen, kind eyes and her peculiar smile deepened. Then she spoke. “What is the matter?” she asked.
Maria hesitated.
The dwarf looked across at her maid. “She will not understand anything you say,” she remarked. “She is well trained. She can hear without hearing—that is her great accomplishment.”
Still Maria said nothing.
“You got on at Amity,” said the dwarf. “Is that where you live?”
“Yes.”
“What is your name?”
Maria closed her mouth firmly.
The dwarf laughed. “Oh, very well,” said she. “If you do not choose to tell it, I can. Your name is Ackley—Elizabeth Ackley. I am glad to meet you, Miss Ackley.”
Maria paled a little, but she said nothing to disapprove this extraordinary statement.
“My name is Blair—Miss Rosa Blair,” said the dwarf. “I am a rose, but I happened to bloom outside the pale.” She laughed gayly, but Maria's eyes upon her were pitiful. “You are also outside the pale in some way,” said Miss Blair. “I always know such people when I meet them. There is an affinity between them and myself. The moment I saw you I said to myself: she also is outside the pale, she also has escaped from the garden of life. Well, never mind, child; it is not so very bad outside when one becomes accustomed to it. I am. Perhaps you have not had time; but you will have. What is the matter?”
“I am running away,” replied Maria then.
“Running away! From what?”
“It is better for me to be away,” said Maria, evading the question. “It would be better if I were dead.”
“But you are not,” said the dwarf, with a quick movement almost of alarm.
“No,” said Maria; “and I see no reason why I shall not live to be an old woman.”
“I don't either,” said Miss Blair. “You look healthy. You say, better if you were dead—better for whom, yourself or others?”
“Others.”
“Oh!” said Miss Blair. She remained quietly regardful of Maria for a little while, then she spoke again. “Where are you going when you reach New York?” she asked.
“I was going out to Edgham, but I shall miss the last train, and I shall have to go to a hotel,” replied Maria, and she looked at the dwarf with an expression of almost childish terror.
“Don't you know that it may be difficult for a young girl alone? Have you any baggage?”
Maria looked at her little satchel, which she had left beside her former chair.
“Is that all?” asked Miss Blair.
“Yes.”
“You must certainly not think of trying to go to a hotel at this time of night,” said the dwarf. “You must go home with me. I am entirely safe. Even your mother would trust you with me, if you have one.”
“I have not, nor father, either,” replied Maria. “But I am not afraid to trust you for myself.”
A pleased expression transfigured Miss Blair's face. “You do not distrust me and you do not shrink from me?” she said.
“No,” replied Maria, looking at her with indescribable gratitude.
“Then it is settled,” said the dwarf. “You will come home with me. I expect my carriage when we arrive at the station. You will be entirely safe. You need not look as frightened as you did a few moments ago again. Come home with me to-night; then we will see what can be done.”
Miss Blair turned her face towards the window. Her big chair almost swallowed her tiny figure, the sardonic expression had entirely left her face, which appeared at once noble and loving. Maria gazed at her as she sat so, with an odd, inverted admiration. It seemed extraordinary to her she should actually admire any one like this deformed little creature, but admire her she did. It was as if she suddenly had become possessed of a sixth sense for an enormity of beauty beyond the usual standards.
Miss Blair glanced at her and saw the look in her eyes, and a look of triumph came into her own. She bent forward towards Maria.
“You are sheltering me as well as I am sheltering you,” she said, in a low voice.
Maria did not know what to say. Miss Blair leaned back again and closed her eyes, and a look of perfect peace and content was on her face.
It was not long before the train rolled into the New York tunnel. Miss Blair's maid rose and took down her mistress's travelling cloak of black silk, which she brushed with a little, ivory brush taken from her travelling-bag.
“This young lady is going home with us, Adelaide,” said Miss Blair.
“Yes, ma'am,” replied the maid, without the slightest surprise.
She took Maria's coat from the hook where it swung, and brushed it also, and assisted her to put it on before the porter entered the car.
Maria felt again in a daze, but a great sense of security was over her. She had not the slightest doubt of this strange little creature who was befriending her. She felt like one who finds a ledge of safety on a precipice where he had feared a sheer descent. She was content to rest awhile on the safe footing, even if it were only transient.
When they alighted from the train at the station a man in livery met them and assisted Miss Blair down the steps with obsequiousness.
“How do you do, James?” said Miss Blair, then went on to ask the man what horses were in the carriage.
“The bays, Miss Blair,” replied the man, respectfully.
“I am glad of that,” said his mistress, as she went along the platform. “I was afraid Alexander might make a mistake and put in those new grays. I don't like to drive with them at night very well.” Then she said to Maria: “I am very nervous about horses, Miss Ackley. You may wonder at it. You may think I have reached the worst and ought to fear nothing, but there are worsts beyond worsts.”
“Yes,” Maria replied, vaguely. She kept close to Miss Blair. She realized what an agony of fear she should have felt in that murky station with the lights burning dimly through the smoke and the strange sights and outcries all around her.
Miss Blair's carriage was waiting, and Maria saw, half-comprehendingly, that it was very luxurious indeed. She entered with Miss Blair and her maid, then after a little wait for baggage they drove away.
When the carriage stopped, the footman assisted Maria out after Miss Blair, and she followed her conductress's tiny figure toiling rather painfully on the arm of her maid up the steps. She entered the house, and stood for a second fairly bewildered.
Maria had seen many interiors of moderate luxury, but never anything like this. For a second her attention was distracted from everything except the wonderful bizarre splendor in which she found herself. It was not Western magnificence, but Oriental; hangings of the richest Eastern stuffs, rugs, and dark gleams of bronzes and dull lights of brass, and the sheen of silken embroideries.
When Maria at last recovered herself and turned to Miss Blair, to her astonishment she no longer seemed as deformed as she had been on the train. She fitted into this dark, rich, Eastern splendor as a misformed bronze idol might have done. Miss Blair gave a little, shrewd laugh at Maria's gaze, then she spoke to another maid who had appeared when the door opened.
“This is my friend Miss Ackley, Louise,” she said. “Take her to the west room, and call down and have a supper tray sent to her.” Then she said to Maria that she must be tired, and would prefer going at once to her room. “I am tired myself,” said Miss Blair. “Such persons as I do not move about the face of the earth with impunity. There is a wear and tear of the soul and the body when the body is so small that it scarcely holds the soul. You will have your supper sent up, and your breakfast in the morning. At ten o'clock I will send Adelaide to bring you to my room.” She bade Maria good-night, and the girl followed the maid, stepping into an elevator on one side of the vestibule. She had a vision of Miss Blair's tiny figure with Adelaide moving slowly upward on the other side.
Maria reflected that she was glad that she had her toilet articles and her night-dress at least in her satchel. She felt the maid looking at her, although her manner was very much like Adelaide's. She wondered what she would have thought if she had not at least had her simple necessaries for the night when she followed her into a room which seemed to her fairly wonderful. It was a white room. The walls were hung with paper covered with sheafs of white lilies; white fur rugs—wolf-skins and skins of polar bears—were strewn over the polished white floor. All the toilet articles were ivory and the furniture white, with decorations of white lilies and silver. In one corner stood a bed of silver with white draperies. Beyond, Maria had a glimpse of a bath in white and silver, and a tiny dressing-room which looked like frost-work. When the maid left her for a moment Maria stood and gazed breathless. She realized a sort of delight in externals which she had never had before. The externals seemed to be farther-reaching. There was something about this white, virgin room which made it seem to her after her terror on the train like heaven. A sense of absolute safety possessed her. It was something to have that, although she was doing something so tremendous to her self-consciousness that she felt like a criminal, and the ache in her heart for those whom she had left never ceased. The maid brought in a tray covered with dainty dishes of white and silver and a little flask of white wine. Then, after Maria had refused further assistance, she left her. Maria ate her supper. She was in reality half famished. Then she went to bed. Nestling in her white bed, looking out of a lace-curtained window opposite through which came the glimpse of a long line of city lights, Maria felt more than ever as if she were in another world. She felt as if she were gazing at her past, at even her loves of life, through the wrong end of a telescope.
The night was very warm but the room was deliciously cool. A breath of sweet coolness came from one of the walls. Maria, contrary to her wont, fell asleep almost immediately. She was exhausted, and an unusual peace seemed to soothe her very soul. She felt as if she had really died and gotten safe to Heaven. She said her prayers, then she was asleep. She awoke rather late the next morning, and took her bath, and then her breakfast was brought. When that was finished and she was dressed, it was ten o'clock, and the maid Adelaide came to take her to her hostess. Maria went down one elevator and up another, the one in which she had seen Miss Blair ascend the night before. Then she entered a strange room, in the midst of which sat Miss Blair. To Maria's utter amazement, she no longer seemed in the least deformed, she no longer seemed a dwarf. She was in perfect harmony with the room, which was low-ceiled, full of strange curves and low furniture with curved backs. It was all Eastern, as was the first floor of the house. Maria understood with a sort of intuition that this was necessary. The walls were covered with Eastern hangings, tables of lacquer stood about filled with squat bronzes and gemlike ivory carvings. The hangings were all embroidered in short curve effects. Maria realized that her hostess, in this room, made more of a harmony than she herself. She felt herself large, coarse, and common where she should have been tiny, bizarre, and, according to the usual standard, misformed. Miss Blair had planned for herself a room wherein everything was misformed, and in which she herself was in keeping. It had been partly the case on the first floor of the house. Here it was wholly. Maria sat down in one of the squat, curved-back chairs, and Miss Blair, who was opposite, looked at her, then laughed with the open delight of a child.