Maria and her father entered the house, which was not far. It was a
quite new Queen Anne cottage of the better class, situated in a small
lot of land, and with other houses very near on either side. There
was a great clump of hydrangeas on the small smooth lawn in front,
and on the piazza stood a small table, covered with a dainty white
cloth trimmed with lace, on which were laid, in ostentatious
neatness, the evening paper and a couple of magazines. There were
chairs, and palms in jardinieres stood on either side of the flight
of wooden steps.
Maria's mother was, however, in the house, seated beside the
sitting-room table, on which stood a kerosene lamp with a singularly
ugly shade. She was darning stockings. She held the stocking in her
left hand, and drew the thread through regularly. Her mouth was
tightly closed, which was indicative both of decision of character
and pain. Her countenance looked sallower than ever. She looked up at
her husband and little girl entering. "Well," she said, "so you've
got home."
"I've brought you some peaches, Abby," said Harry Edgham. He laid the
bag on the table, and looked anxiously at his wife. "How do you feel
now?" said he.
"I feel well enough," said she. Her reply sounded ill-humored, but
she did not intend it to be so. She was far from being ill-humored.
She was thinking of her husband's kindness in bringing the peaches.
But she looked at the paper bag on the table sharply. "If there is a
soft peach in that bag," said she, "and there's likely to be, it will
stain the table-cover, and I can never get it out."
Harry hastily removed the paper bag from the table, which was covered
with a white linen spread trimmed with lace and embroidered.
"Don't you feel as if you could eat one to-night? You didn't eat much
supper, and I thought maybe--"
"I don't believe I can to-night, but I shall like them to-morrow,"
replied Mrs. Edgham, in a voice soft with apology. Then she looked
fairly for the first time at Maria, who had purposely remained behind
her father, and her voice immediately hardened. "Maria, come here,"
said she.
Maria obeyed. She left the shelter of her father's broad back, and
stood before her mother, in her pink gingham dress, a miserable
little penitent, whose penitence was not of a high order. The
sweetness of looking pretty was still in her soul, although Wollaston
Lee had not gone home with her.
Maria's mother regarded her with a curious expression compounded of
pride and almost fierce disapproval. Harry went precipitately out of
the room with the paper bag of peaches. "You didn't wear that new
pink gingham dress that I had to hire made, trimmed with all that
lace and ribbon, to meeting to-night?" said Maria's mother.
Maria said nothing. It seemed to her that such an obvious fact
scarcely needed words of assent.
"Damp as it is, too," said her mother.
Mrs. Edgham extended a lean, sallow hand and felt of the dainty
fabric. "It is just as limp as a rag," said she, "about spoiled."
"I held it up," said Maria then, with feeble extenuation.
"Held it up!" repeated her mother, with scorn.
"I thought maybe you wouldn't care."
"Wouldn't care! That was the reason why you went out the other door
then. I wondered why you did. Putting on that new pink gingham dress
that I had to hire made, trimmed with all that lace and ribbon, and
wearing it out in the evening, damp as it is to-night! I don't see
what you were thinking of, Maria Edgham."
Maria looked down disconsolately at the lace-trimmed ruffles on her
skirt, but even then she thought how pretty it was, and how pretty
she must look herself standing so forlornly before her mother. She
wondered how her mother could scold her when she was her own
daughter, and looked so sweet. She still felt the damp coolness of
the night on her cheeks, and realized a bloom on them like that of a
wild rose.
But Mrs. Edgham continued. She had the high temper of the women of
her race who had brought up great families to toil and fight for the
Commonwealth, and she now brought it to bear upon petty things in
lieu of great ones. Besides, her illness made her irritable. She
found a certain relief from her constant pain in scolding this child
of her heart, whom secretly she admired as she admired no other
living thing. Even as she scolded, she regarded her in the pink dress
with triumph. "I should think you would be ashamed of yourself, Maria
Edgham," said she, in a high voice.
Harry Edgham, who had deposited the peaches in the ice-box, and had
been about to enter the room, retreated. He went out the other door
himself, and round upon the piazza, when presently the smoke of his
cigar stole into the room. Then Mrs. Edgham included him in her wrath.
"You and your father are just alike," said she, bitterly. "You both
of you will do just what you want to, whether or no. He will smoke,
though he knows it makes me worse, besides costing more than he can
afford, and you will put on your best dress, without asking leave,
and wear it out in a damp night, and spoil it."
Maria continued to stand still, and her mother to regard her with
that odd mixture of worshipful love and chiding. Suddenly Mrs. Edgham
closed her mouth more tightly.
"Stand round here," said she, violently. "Let me unbutton your dress.
I don't see how you fastened it up yourself, anyway; you wouldn't
have thought you could, if it hadn't been for deceiving your mother.
You would have come down to me to do it, the way you always do. You
have got it buttoned wrong, anyway. You must have been a sight for
the folks who sat behind you. Well, it serves you right. Stand round
here."
"I am sorry," said Maria then. She wondered whether the wrong
fastening had showed much through the slats of the settee.
Her mother unfastened, with fingers that were at once gentle and
nervous, the pearl buttons on the back of the dress. "Take your arms
out," said she to Maria. Maria cast a glance at the window. "There's
nobody out there but your father," said Mrs. Edgham, harshly, "take
your arms out."
Maria took her arms out of the fluffy mass and stood revealed in her
little, scantily trimmed underwaist, a small, childish figure, with
the utmost delicacy of articulation as to shoulder-blades and neck.
Maria was thin to the extreme, but her bones were so small that she
was charming even in her thinness. Her little, beautifully modelled
arms were as charming as a fairy's.
"Now slip off your skirt," ordered her mother, and Maria complied and
stood in her little white petticoat, with another glance of the
exaggerated modesty of little girlhood at the window.
"Now," said her mother, "you go and hang this up in the kitchen where
it is warm, on that nail on the outside door, and maybe some of the
creases will come out. I've heard they would. I hope so, for I've got
about all I want to do without ironing this dress all over."
Maria gazed at her mother with sudden compunction and anxious love.
After all, she loved her mother down to the depths of her childish
heart; it was only that long custom had so inured her to the loving
that she did not always realize the warmth of her heart because of
it. "Do you feel sick to-night mother?" she whispered.
"No sicker than usual," replied her mother. Then she drew the
delicate little figure close to her, and kissed her with a sort of
passion. "May the Lord look out for you," she said, "if you should
happen to outlive me! I don't know what would become of you, Maria,
you are so heedless, wearing your best things every day, and
everything."
Maria's face paled. "Mother, you aren't any worse?" said she, in a
terrified whisper.
"No, I am not a mite worse. Run along, child, and hang up your dress,
then go to bed; it's after nine o'clock."
It did not take much at that time to reassure Maria. She had
inherited something of the optimism of her father. She carried her
pink dress into the kitchen, with wary eyes upon the windows, and
hung it up as her mother had directed. On her return she paused a
moment at the foot of the stairs in the hall, between the dining-room
and sitting-room. Then, obeying an impulse, she ran into the
sitting-room and threw her soft little arms around her mother's neck.
"I'm real sorry I wore that dress without asking you, mother," she
said. "I won't again, honest."
"Well, I hope you will remember," replied her mother. "If you wear
the best you have common you will never have anything." Her tone was
chiding, but the look on her face was infinitely caressing. She
thought privately that never was such a darling as Maria. She looked
at the softly flushed little face, with its topknot of gold, the
delicate fairness of the neck, and slender arms, and she had a
rapture of something more than possession. The beauty of the child
irradiated her very soul, the beauty and the goodness, for Maria
never disobeyed but she was sorry afterwards, and somehow glorified
faults seem lovelier than cold virtues. "Well, run up-stairs to bed,"
said she. "Be careful of your lamp."
When Maria was in her own room she set the lamp on the dresser and
gazed upon her face reflected in the mirror. That was her nightly
custom, and might have been regarded as a sort of fetich worship of
self. Nothing, in fact, could have been lovelier than that face of
childish innocence and beauty, with the soft rays of the lamp
illuminating it. Her blue eyes seemed to fairly give forth light, the
soft pink on her cheeks deepened until it was like the heart of a
rose. She opened her exquisitely curved lips, and smiled at herself
in a sort of ecstasy. She turned her head this way and that in order
to get different effects. She pulled the little golden fleece of hair
farther over her forehead. She pushed it back, revealing the bold yet
delicate outlines of her temples. She thought how glad she should be
when her hair was grown. She had had an illness two years before, and
her mother had judged it best to have her hair cut short. It was now
just long enough to hang over her ears, curving slightly forward like
the old-fashioned earlocks. She had her hair tied back from her face
with a pink ribbon in a bow on top of her head. She loosened this
ribbon, and shook her hair quite loose. She peeped out of the golden
radiance of it at herself, then she shook it back. She was charming
either way. She was undeveloped, but as yet not a speck of the mildew
of earth had touched her. She was flawless, irreproachable, except
for the knowledge of her beauty, through heredity, in her heart,
which was older than she herself.
Suddenly Maria, after a long gaze of rapture at her face in the
glass, gave a great start. She turned and saw her mother standing in
the door looking at her.
Maria, with an involuntary impulse of concealment, seized her brush,
and began brushing her hair. "I was just brushing my hair," she
murmured. She felt as guilty as if she had committed a crime.
Her mother continued to look at her sternly. "There isn't any use in
your trying to deceive me, Maria," said she. "I am ashamed that a
child of mine should be so silly. To stand looking at yourself that
way! You needn't think you are so pretty, because you are not. You
don't begin to be as good-looking as Amy Long."
Maria felt a cold chill strike her. She had herself had doubts as to
her superior beauty when Amy Long was concerned.
"You don't begin to be as good-looking as your aunt Maria was at your
age, and you know yourself how she looks now. Nobody would dream for
a minute of calling her even ordinary-looking," her mother continued
in a pitiless voice.
Maria shuddered. She seemed to see, instead of her own fair little
face in the glass, an elderly one as sallow as her mother's, but
without the traces of beauty which her mother's undoubtedly had. She
saw the thin, futile frizzes which her aunt Maria affected; she saw
the receding chin, indicative at once of degeneracy and obstinacy;
she saw the blunt nose between the lumpy cheeks.
"Your aunt Maria looked very much as you do when she was your age,"
her mother went on, with the calm cruelty of an inquisitor.
Maria looked at her, her mouth was quivering. "Did I look like Mrs.
Jasper Cone's baby that died last week when I was a baby?" said she.
"Who said you did?" inquired her mother, unguardedly.
"She did. She came up behind me with Mrs. Elliot when I was waiting
for father to get the peaches, and she said her baby that died looked
just like me; she had always thought so."
"That Cone baby look like you!" repeated Maria's mother. "Well, one's
own always looks different to them, I suppose."
"Then you don't think it did?" said Maria. Tears actually stood in
her beautiful blue eyes.
"No, I don't," replied her mother, abruptly. "Nobody in their sober
senses could think so. I am sorry poor Mrs. Cone lost her baby. I
know how I felt when my first baby died, but as for saying it looked
like you--"
"Then you don't think it did, mother?"
"It was one of the homliest babies I ever laid my eyes on, poor
little thing, if it did die," said Maria's mother, emphatically. She
was completely disarmed by this time. 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."