Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

“ 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. ”

“ Virtue was a hereditary trait of the Edghams.
Harry Edgham looked at Ida Slome with as innocent admiration as another woman might have done. Then he looked again at his daughter's little flower-like head, and a feeling of love made his heart warm. Maria could sing herself, but she was afraid. Once in a while she droned out a sweet, husky note, then her delicate cheeks flushed crimson as if all the people had heard her, when they had not heard at all, and she turned her head, and gazed out of the open window at the plumed darkness. ”

“ Ida turned at last. “I hate you,” she said slowly. “I have always hated you. You have hated me ever since I came into this house,” she said, “though I have done more than your own mother ever did for you.”
“You have not!” cried Maria. “You have got nice clothes for me, but my own mother loved me. What are nice clothes to love? You have not even loved Evelyn. You have only got her nice clothes. You have never loved her. Poor papa and I were the only ones that loved her. You never even loved poor papa. ”

“ Maria sat very still. The child who had got on at Amity began to wail again, and its outcries filled the whole car. To Maria it seemed like the natural outburst of an atmosphere overcharged with woe, and the impotent rage and regret of the whole race, as a cloud is charged with electricity. She felt that she herself would like to burst into a wild wail, and struggle and wrestle against fate with futile members, as the child fought against its mother with its fat legs in shoes too large, and its bemittened hands. ”

“ Death seemed merely the going-out into the true open, the essence of the moonlight and the beauty. It seemed the tasting and absorbing the food for his own spiritual hunger, which had been upon him from birth, that which had always been just out of his reach. When Maria returned in her pink gingham school-gown, she found her father seated beside the table as he had been when she left. He looked up at her with a bright smile which somehow chilled her, although she tried to drive the conviction of the chill from her mind. ”

“ Lily was not brilliant, but she was as entirely sweet and open as the flower for which she was named. She was emotional, too, with an innocent emotionlessness, and very affectionate. Mrs. Merrill made almost no objection to Lily's going with Maria, but merely told her to wrap up warmly when she went out. Lily looked charming, with a great fur boa around her long, slender throat, and red velvet roses nestling under the brim of her black hat against the soft puff of her brown hair. She bent over her mother and kissed her. ”

“ Some of them had little brothers or sisters, but none of them such a little sister as hers.
The baby had, in reality, grown to be a beauty among babies. All the inflamed red and aged puckers and creases had disappeared; instead of that was the sweetest flush, like that of just-opened rosebuds. Evelyn was a compact little baby, fat, but not overlapping and grossly fat. It was such a matter of pride to Maria that the baby's cheeks did not hang the least bit in the world, but had only lovely little curves and dimples. She had become quite a connoisseur in babies. ”

“ Miss Ida Slome was called a beauty. She, as well as Maria, wore a pink dress, at which Maria privately wondered. The teacher seemed to her too old to wear pink. She thought she ought wear black like her mother. Miss Slome's pink dress had knots of black velvet about it which accentuated it, even as Miss Slome's face was accentuated by the clear darkness of her eyes and the black puff of her hair above her finely arched brows. Her cheeks were of the sweetest red—not pink but red—which seemed a further tone of the pink of her attire, and she wore a hat encircled with a wreath of red roses. ”

“ Annie was kindly. She would slip up-stairs to her, and make some excuse for doing so—ask her if she did not smell smoke, or something. It seemed to her that if she did not hear another human voice, come in contact with something human, she should lose all control of herself.
Maria, little, slender, trembling girl, with all the hysterical fancies of her sex crowding upon her, all the sufferings of her sex waiting for her in the future, and with no mother to soften them, slipped out of bed, stole across her room, and opened the door with infinite caution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He raised his hat, and she bowed, and he could see her blush even at that distance. He thought again, comfortably, that Lily, remembering their childish caresses, could attach no importance to what had happened the night before, and yet a thrill of tenderness and pleasure shot through him, and he seemed to feel again the flower-like touch of her lips. It was a solace for any man, after receiving such an unmistakable rebuff as he had just received from Maria Edgham. He had no conception of the girl plodding through the snow to her daily task. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After all, youth is hard to down, and hope finds a rich soil in it. Then, too, a temporization to one who is young means eternity. If Wollaston did not tell, and Gladys did not tell, and she did not tell, it might all come right somehow in the end.
She looked at the crescent of the moon, and the great depth of light of the star, and her own affairs seemed to quiet her with their very littleness. What was little Maria Edgham and her ridiculous and tragic matrimonial tangle compared with the eternal light of those strange celestial things yonder? ”

“ The look of her New England ancestresses who had borne life and death without flinching was on her face.
“I will be hungry,” Maria said to herself. “Why should I lose my appetite because a man who does not care for me is going to marry another girl, and when I am married, too, and have no right even to think of him for one minute even if he had been in earnest, if he had thought of me? Why should I lose my appetite? Why should I go without my supper? I will eat. More than that, I will enjoy eating, and neither George Ramsey nor Lily Merrill shall prevent it, neither they nor my own self.” ”

“ For the instant, the dead triumphed over the living.
Then Harry took up the lamp and went to his own room. He set the lamp on the dresser, and looked at his face, with the rays thrown upward upon it, very much as Maria had done the night of her mother's death. When he viewed himself in the looking-glass, he smiled involuntarily; the appearance of youth returned. He curled his mustache and moved his head this way and that. He thought about some new clothes which he was to have. He owned to himself, with perfect ingenuousness, that he was, in his way, as a man, as good-looking as Ida herself. ”

“ Her father, on his return from his evenings spent with Miss Ida Slome, looked always years younger than Maria had ever seen him. There was the humidity of youth in his eyes, the flush of youth on his cheeks, the triumph of youth in his expression. Harry Edgham, in spite of lines on his face, in spite, even, of a shimmer of gray and thinness of hair on the temples, looked as young as youth itself, in this rejuvenation of his affection, for he was very much in love with the woman whom he was to marry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A look of insolent admiration became evident in the bloodshot eyes of the man beside the stove. Maria had no false modesty when she was righteously incensed. She would have said just the same before a room full of men.
“That child,” she said, and she again pointed at Jessy, shivering in her little, scanty frock—“that child came to school to-day without any clothing under her dress; one of the coldest days of the year, too. I don't see what you are thinking of, you, her own mother, to let a child go out in such a condition! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” ”

“ 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?” ”

“ Maria, in the car behind the smoker, sat beside Gladys, and looked out of the window very much as Wollaston was doing. She also was conscious of an exceeding horror and terror, and a vague shame. It was, to Maria, as if she had fallen through the fairy cobweb of romance and struck upon the hard ground of reality with such force that her very soul was bleeding. Wollaston, in the smoker, wished no more devoutly that there were no girls in the world, than Maria wished there were no boys. ”

“ There was something about the look of loving admiration which Mrs. Long gave her daughter that stung Maria's heart with a sense of loss. She felt that if her new mother should straighten out her white bow and regard her with admiration, it would be because of her own self, and the credit which she, Maria, reflected upon her. Still, she reflected how charming she looked. Self-love is much better than nothing for a lonely soul. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In these days Harry Edgham was so unutterably weary, he drove himself to his work with such lashes of spirit, that he was almost incapable of revolt against any sentence of fate. There comes a time to every one, to some when young, to some when old, that too great a burden of labor, or of days, renders the thought of the last bed of earth unterrifying. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Religion had never impressed her with any beauty, or sense of love. Now, for the first time, after her father had died, she seemed all at once to sense the nearness of that which is beyond, and a love and longing for it, which is the most primitive and subtlest instinct of man, filled her very soul. Her love for her father projected her consciousness of him beyond this world. In the midst of her grief a strange peace was over her, and a realization of love which she had never had before. Maria, at this period, had she been a Catholic, might have become a religious devotee. ”

“ She drooped her head, and the flush on her oval cheeks was like the flush on a wild rose. Lily wore a green house-dress, which set her off as the leaves and stem set off a flower. It was of some soft material which clung about her and displayed her tender curves. She wore at her throat an old cameo brooch which had belonged to her grandmother, and which had upon its onyx background an ivory head as graceful as her own. Maria, beside Lily, although she herself was very pretty, looked ordinary in her flannel blouse and black skirt, which was her school costume. ”

“ The next morning when Maria, in her little black frock—it was made of a thin lawn for the hot days, and the pale slenderness of her arms and neck were revealed by the thinness of the fabric—went to school, she knew, the very moment that Miss Ida Slome greeted her, that Aunt Maria had been right in her surmise. For the first time since she had been to school, Miss Slome, who was radiant in a flowered muslin, came up to her and embraced her. ”

“ But when she saw Maria glance again at the glass she laid hold of her moral weapons, the wielding of which she believed to be for the best spiritual good of her child. “Your aunt Maria was very much better looking than you at her age,” she repeated, firmly. Then, at the sight of the renewed quiver around the sensitive little mouth her heart melted. “Get out of your clothes and into your night-gown, and get to bed, child,” said she. “You look well enough. If you only behave as well as you look, that is all that is necessary.” ”

“ Harry was undoubtedly fond of Maria. That did not trouble Ida in the least, although she recognized the fact. She was not a woman who was capable of jealousy, because her own love and admiration for herself made her impregnable. She loved herself so much more than Harry could possibly love her that his feeling for Maria did not ruffle her in the least. It was due to no jealousy that she wished Maria removed, at least for a part of the time. It was only that she was always conscious of a dissent, silent and helpless, still persistent, towards her attitude as regarded herself. ”

“ She thought, with a sick terror, of the possibility of his falling in love, and wishing to marry, and trying to secure a divorce, and the horrible publicity, and what people would say and do. She knew that a divorce would be necessary, although the marriage was not in reality a marriage at all. She had made herself sufficiently acquainted with the law to be sure that a divorce would be absolutely necessary in order for either herself or Wollaston Lee to marry again. For herself, she did not wish to marry, but she did wonder uneasily with regard to him. ”

“ 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. ”