When Maria's father returned that night, he came, as usual, straight
to the room wherein she and Mrs. Addix were sitting. Maria regarded
her father with a sort of contemptuous wonder, tinctured with
unwilling admiration. 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. He had been faithful to
his wife while she lived, even the imagination of love for another
woman had not entered his heart. His wife's faded face had not for a
second disturbed his loyalty; but now the beauty of this other woman
aroused within him long dormant characteristics, like some wonderful
stimulant, not only for the body, but for the soul. When he looked in
Ida Slome's beautiful face he seemed to drink in an elixir of life.
And yet, down at the roots of the man's heart slept the memory of his
wife; for Abby Edgham, with her sallow, faded face, had possessed
something which Ida Slome lacked, and which the man needed, to hold
him. And always in his mind, at this time, was the intention to be
more than kind to his motherless little daughter, not to let her
realize any difference in his feeling for her.
When he came to-night, he looked at the sleeping Mrs. Addix, and at
Maria, taking painful stitches in her dresser cover, at first with a
radiant smile, then with the deepest pity.
"Poor little soul," he said. "You have had a long evening to
yourself, haven't you?"
"I don't mind," replied Maria. She was thinking of the torn
wall-paper, and she did not look her father fully in the eyes.
"Has she been asleep ever since I went?" inquired Harry, in a whisper.
"Yes, sir."
"Poor little girl. Well, it will be livelier by-and-by for you. We'll
have company, and more going on." Harry then went close to Mrs.
Addix, sitting with her head resting on her shoulder, still snoring
with those puffs of heavy breath. "Mrs. Addix," he said.
Mrs. Addix did not stir; she continued to snore.
"Mrs. Addix!" repeated Harry, in a louder tone, but still the
sleeping woman did not stir.
"Good Lord, what a sleeper!" said Harry, still aloud. Then he shook
her violently by the shoulder. "Come, Mrs. Addix," said he, in a
shout; "I've got home, and I guess you'll want to be going yourself."
Mrs. Addix moved languidly, and glanced up with a narrow slit of eye,
as dull as if she had been drugged. Harry shook her again, and
repeated his announcement that he was home and that she must want to
go. At last he roused her, and she stood up with a dazed expression.
Maria got her bonnet and shawl, and she gazed at them vaguely, as if
she were so far removed from the flesh that the garments thereof
perplexed her. Maria put on her bonnet, standing on tiptoe, and Harry
threw the shawl over her shoulders. Then she staggered out of the
room with a mumbled good-night.
"Take care of the stairs, and do not fall," Harry said.
He himself held the light for her, until she was safely down, and the
outer door had closed after her.
"The fresh air will wake her up," he said, laughing. "Not very lively
company, is she, dear?"
"No, sir," replied Maria, simply.
Harry looked lovingly at her, then his eyes fell on the door of the
room which had been papered that day. It occurred to him to go in and
see how the new paper looked.
"Come in with father, and let's see the improvements," he said, in a
gay voice, to Maria.
Maria followed him into the room. It would have been difficult to say
whether triumphant malice and daring, or fear, prevailed in her heart.
Harry, carrying the lamp, entered the room, with Maria slinking at
his heels. The first thing he saw was the torn paper.
"Hullo!" said he. He approached the bay-window with his lamp.
"Confound those paperers!" he said.
For a minute Maria did not say a word. She was not exactly struggling
with temptation; she had inherited too much from her mother's Puritan
ancestry to make the question of a struggle possible when the duty of
truth stared her, as now, in the face. She simply did not speak at
once because the thing appeared to her stupendous, and nobody, least
of all a child, but has a threshold of preparation before stupendous
things.
"They haven't half put the paper on," said her father. "Didn't half
paste it, I suppose. You can't trust anybody unless you are right at
their heels. Confound 'em! There, I've got to go round and blow 'em
up to-morrow, before I go to the city."
Then Maria spoke. "I tore that paper off, father," said she.
Harry turned and stared at her. His face went white. For a second he
thought the child was out of her senses.
"What?" he said.
"I tore that paper off," repeated Maria.
"You? Why?"
The double question seemed to hit the child like a pistol-shot, but
she did not flinch.
"Mother never had paper as pretty as this," she said, "nor new
furniture." Her eyes met her father's with indescribable reproach.
Harry looked at her with almost horror. For the moment the child's
eyes looked like her dead mother's, her voice sounded like her's. He
continued gazing at her.
"I couldn't bear it," said Maria. "She" [she meant Mrs. Addix] "was
asleep. I was all alone. I got to thinking. I came in here and tore
it off."
Harry heaved a deep sigh. He did not look nor was he in the least
angry.
"I know your poor mother didn't have much," said he. He sighed again.
Then he put his arm around Maria and kissed her. "You can have your
room newly papered now, if you want it," said he, in a choking voice.
"Father will send you over to Ellisville to-morrow with Mrs. White,
and you can pick out some paper your own self, and father will have
it put right on."
"I don't care about any," said Maria, and she began to sob.
"Father's baby," said Harry.
She felt his chest heave, and realized that her father was weeping as
well as she.
"Oh, father, I don't want new paper," she sobbed out, convulsively.
"Mother picked out that on my room, and--and--I am sorry I tore this
off."
"Never mind, darling," said Harry. He almost carried the child back
to her own room. "Now get to bed as soon as you can, dear," he said.
After Maria, trembling and tearful, had undressed and was in bed, her
father came back into the room. He held a small lamp in one hand, and
a tumbler with some wine in the other.
"Here is some of the wine your mother had," said Harry. "Now I want
you to sit right up and drink this."
"I--don't want it, father," gasped Maria.
"Sit right up and drink it."
Maria sat up. The tumbler was a third full, and the wine was an old
port. Maria drank it. Immediately her head began to swim; she felt in
a sort of daze when her father kissed her, and bade her lie still and
go right to sleep, and went out of the room. She heard him, with
sharpened hearing, enter her mother's room. She remembered about the
paper, and the new furniture, and how she was to have a new mother,
and how she had torn the paper, and how her own mother had never had
such things, but she remembered through a delicious haze. She felt a
charming warmth pervade all her veins. She was no longer unhappy.
Nothing seemed to matter. She soon fell asleep.
As for Harry Edgham, he entered the empty room which he had occupied
with his dead wife. He set the lamp on the floor and approached the
paper, which poor little Maria, in her fit of futile rebellion, had
torn. He carefully tore off still more, making a clean strip of the
paper where Maria had made a ragged one. When he had finished, it
looked as if the paper had in reality dropped off because of
carelessness in putting on. He gathered up the pieces of paper and
stood looking about the room.
There is something about an empty room, empty except of memories, but
containing nothing besides, no materialities, no certainties as to
the future, which is intimidating to one who stops and thinks. Harry
Edgham was not, generally speaking, of the sort who stop to think;
but now he did. The look of youth faded from his face. Instead of the
joy and triumph which had filled his heart and made it young again,
came remembrance of the other woman, and something else, which
resembled terror and dread. For the first time he deliberated whether
he was about to do a wise thing: for the first time, the image of Ida
Slome's smiling beauty, which was ever evident to his fancy, produced
in him something like doubt and consternation. He looked about the
room, and remembered the old pieces of furniture which had that day
been carried away. He looked at the places where they had stood. Then
he remembered his dead wife, as he had never remembered her before,
with an anguish of loss. He said to himself that if he only had her
back, even with her faded face and her ready tongue, that old,
settled estate would be better for him than this joy, which at once
dazzled and racked him. Suddenly the man, as he stood there, put his
hands before his face; he was weeping like a child. That which Maria
had done, instead of awakening wrath, had aroused a pity for himself
and for her, which seemed too great to be borne. 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.
Suddenly he remembered how Abby had looked when she was a young girl
and he had married her; he had not compared himself so favorably with
her. The image of his dead wife, as a young girl, was much fairer in
his mind than that of Ida Slome.
"There's no use talking, Abby was handsomer than Ida when she was
young," he said to himself, as he began to undress. He went to sleep
thinking of Abby as a young girl, but when once asleep he dreamed of
Ida Slome.