Now commenced an odd period of her existence for Maria Edgham. She
escaped a transition stage which comes to nearly every girl by her
experience in New York, the night when Evelyn was lost. There is
usually for a girl, if not for a boy, a stage of existence when she
flutters, as it were, over the rose of life, neither lighting upon it
nor leaving it, when she is not yet herself, when she does not
comprehend herself at all, except by glimpses of emotions, as one may
see one facet of a diamond but never the complete stone. Maria had,
in a few hours, become settled, crystallized, and she gave evidence
of it indisputably in one way--she had lost her dreams. When a girl
no longer dreams of her future she has found herself. Maria had
always been accustomed to go to sleep lulled by her dreams of
innocent romance. Now she no longer had them, it was as if a child
missed a lullaby. She was a long time in getting to sleep at all, and
she did not sleep well. She no longer stared over the page of a
lesson-book into her own future, as into a crystal well wherein she
saw herself glorified by new and strange happiness. She studied, and
took higher places in her classes, but she did not look as young or
as well. She grew taller and thinner, and she looked older. People
said Maria Edgham was losing her beauty, that she would not be as
pretty a woman as she had promised to make, after all. Maria no
longer dwelt so long and pleasurably upon her reflection in the
glass. She simply arranged her hair and neck-gear tidily and went her
way. She did not care so much for her pretty clothes. A girl without
her dreams is a girl without her glory of youth. She did not quite
realize what was the matter, but she knew that she was no longer so
fair to see, and that the combination of herself and a new gown was
not what it had been. She felt as if she had reached the last page of
her book of life, and the _ennui_ of middle age came over her. She
had not reached the last page; she was, of course, mistaken; but she
had reached a paragraph so tremendous that it seemed to her the
climax, as if there could be nothing beyond it. She was married--that
is, she had been pronounced a wife! There was, there could be,
nothing further. She was both afraid of, and disliked, the boy who
had married her. There was nothing ahead that she could see but a
commonplace existence without romance and without love. She as yet
did not dwell upon the possible complications which might arise from
her marriage. It simply seemed to her that she should always live a
spinster, although the marriage ceremony had been pronounced over
her. She began to realize that in order to live in this way she must
take definite steps. She knew that her father was not rich. The
necessity for work and earning her own living in the future began to
present itself. She made up her mind to fit herself for a teacher.
"Papa, I am going to teach," she told her father one afternoon.
Ida had gone out. It was two years after her marriage, and Maria
looked quite a woman. She and her father were alone. Evelyn had gone
to bed. Maria had tucked her in and kissed her good-night. Josephine
was no longer a member of the family. In a number of ways expenses
had been retrenched. Harry would not admit it, and Ida did not seem
aware of it, but his health was slowly but surely failing. That very
day he had consulted a specialist in New York, taking his turn in the
long line of waiting applicants in the office. When he came out he
had a curious expression on his face, which made more than one of the
other patients, however engrossed in their own complaints, turn
around and look after him. He looked paler than when he had entered
the office, but not exactly cast down. He had rather a settled
expression, as of one who had come in sight, not of a goal of
triumph, but of the end of a long and wearisome journey. 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. The spirit, overcome with weariness of matter,
droops earthward with no rebellion. Harry, who had gotten his
death-sentence, went out of the doctor's office and hailed his
ferry-bound car, and realized very little difference in his attitude
from what he had done before. He had still time before him, possibly
quite a long time. He thought of leaving Ida and the little one and
Maria, but he had a feeling as if he were beginning the traversing of
a circle which would in the end bring him back, rather than of
departure. It was as if he were about to circumnavigate life itself.
Suddenly, however, his forehead contracted. Material matters began to
irritate him. He thought of Maria, and how slight a provision he had
made for her. His life was already insured for the benefit of Ida.
Ida would have that and her widow's share. Little Evelyn would also
have her share of his tiny estate, which consisted of nothing more
than his house and lot in Edgham and a few hundreds in the bank, and
poor Maria would have nothing except the paltry third remaining. When
Maria, sitting alone with him in the parlor, announced her intention
of fitting herself for a teacher, he viewed her with quick interest.
It was the evening of the very day on which he had consulted the
specialist.
"Let me see, dear," he returned; "how many years more have you at the
academy?"
"I can graduate next year," Maria replied, with pride. This last year
she had been taking enormous strides, which had placed her ahead of
her class. "At least, I can if I work hard," she added.
"I don't want you to work too hard," Harry said, anxiously.
"I am perfectly well," said Maria. And she did in reality look
entirely well, in spite of her thinness and expression of premature
maturity. There was a wiriness about her every movement which argued,
if not actual robustness, the elasticity of bending and not breaking
before the stresses of life.
"Let me see, you will be pretty young to teach, then," said Harry.
"I think I can get a school," Maria said.
"Where?"
"Aunt Maria said she thought I could get that little school near her
in Amity. The teacher is engaged, and she said she thought she would
get married before so very long. She said she thought she must have
almost enough money for her wedding outfit. That is what she has been
working for."
Harry smiled a little.
"Aunt Maria said she was to marry a man with means, and she was
working quite a while in order to buy a nice trousseau," said Maria.
"Aunt Maria said she was a very high-spirited young lady. But she
said she thought she had been engaged so long that she would probably
not wait more than a year longer, and she could get the school for
me. Uncle Henry is one of the committee, you know."
"You are pretty young to begin teaching," Harry said, thoughtfully.
"Aunt Maria said she thought I did not look as young as I really was,
and there wouldn't be any difficulty about it," said Maria. "She said
she thought I would have good government, and Uncle Henry thought so,
too, and Aunt Eunice."
Aunt Eunice was Maria's Uncle Henry's wife. Maria had paid a visit to
Amity the summer before, renewing her acquaintance with her relatives.
"Well, we will see," said Harry, after a pause. Then he added,
somewhat pitifully: "Father wishes there was no need for his little
girl to work. He wishes he had been able to put more by, but if--"
Maria looked at her father with quick concern.
"Father, what is the matter with you?" she asked. "I don't care about
the working part. I want to work. I shall like to go to Amity, and
board with Aunt Maria, and teach, except for leaving you and Evelyn,
but--what is the matter with you, father?"
"Nothing is the matter. Why?" asked Harry; and he tried to smile.
"What made you speak so, father?"
Maria had sprung to her feet, and was standing in front of her
father, with pale face and dilated eyes. Her father looked at her and
hesitated.
"Tell me, father; I ought to know," said Maria.
"There is nothing immediate, as far as I know," said Harry, "but--"
"But what?"
"Well, dear, nobody can live always, and of course you can't realize
it, young as you are, and with no responsibilities; but father is
older, and sometimes he can't help thinking. He wishes he had been
able to save a little more, in case anything happened to him, and he
can't help planning what you would do if--anything happened to him.
You know, dear," Harry hesitated a little, then he continued--"you
know, dear, that father had his life insured for--Ida, and I doubt
if--I am older, you know, now, and those companies don't like to
take chances. I doubt if I could, or I would have an additional
insurance put on my life for you. Then Ida would have by law her
share of this property, and Evelyn her share, and all you would have
would be a very little, and--Well, father can't help thinking that
perhaps it would be wise for you to make some plans so you can help
yourself a little, but--it almost breaks father's heart to think
that--his--little girl--" Poor Harry fairly broke down and sobbed.
Maria's arm was around his neck in a moment, and his poor gray head,
which had always been, in a way, the head of an innocent boy, was on
her young girl breast. She did not ask him any more questions. She
knew. "Poor father!" she said. Her own voice broke, then she steadied
it again with a resolute effort of her will. There was a good deal of
her mother in Maria. The sight of another's weakness always aroused
her own strength. "Father," she said, "now you just listen to me. I
won't hear any more talk of anything happening to you. You have not
eaten enough lately. I have noticed it. That is all that ails you.
You have not had enough nourishment. I want you to go to-morrow to
Dr. Wells and get some of that tonic that helped you so much before,
and, father, I want you to stop worrying about me. I honestly want to
teach. I want to be independent. I should, if you were worth a
million. It does not worry me at all to think I am not going to have
enough money to live on without working, not at all. I want you to
remember that, and not fret any more about it."
For answer, Harry sobbed against the girl's shoulder. "It seems as if
I might have saved more," he said, pitifully, "but--I have had heavy
expenses, and somehow I didn't seem to have the knack that some men
have. I made one or two investments that didn't turn out well. I
didn't say anything about them to--Ida."
"I sha'n't say a word, father," Maria responded, quickly.
"Well, I thought maybe--if they turned out all right, I might have
something to leave you, but--they didn't. There's never any counting
on those things, and I wasn't on the inside of the market. I thought
they were all right. I meant it for the best."
Maria stroked the gray head, as her mother might have done. "Of
course you did, father," said she. "Now, don't you worry one bit more
about it. You get that tonic. You don't look just right, and you need
something to give you an appetite; and don't you ever have another
thought as far as I am concerned. I have always wanted to teach, or
do something to make myself independent."
"You may marry somebody who will look out for you after father has
gone," half whimpered Harry. His disease and his distress were making
him fairly childish, now he realized a supporting love beside him.
Maria quivered a little. "I shall never marry, father," she said.
Harry laughed a little, even in the midst of his distress. "Well,
dear, we won't worry about that now," he said; "only, if you ever do
marry, I hope you will marry a good, honest man who can take care of
you."
"I never shall marry," Maria said again. There was an odd inflection
in her voice which her father did not understand. Her cheeks burned
hot against his, but it was not due to the modesty of young girlhood,
which flees even that which it secretly desires. Maria was reflecting
upon her horrible deception, how every day and every minute of her
life she was deceiving her father, but she dared not tell him. She
dared less now than ever, in the light of her sudden conviction
concerning his ill-health. Maria had been accustomed so long to
seeing her father look tired and old that the true significance of it
had not struck her. She had not reflected that her father was not in
reality an old man--but scarcely past middle age--and that there must
be some disease to account for his appearance. Now she knew; but
along with the knowledge came the conviction that he must not know
that she had it, that it would only add to his distress. She kissed
him, and took up the evening paper which had fallen from his knees to
the floor.
"Suppose I read to you, father?" she said.
Harry looked gratefully at her. "But you have to learn your lesson."
"Oh, I can finish that in school to-morrow. I don't feel like working
any more to-night, and I do feel like reading the paper."
"Won't it tire you, dear?"
"Tire me? Now, father, what do you take me for?" Maria settled
herself in a chair. Harry leaned back his head contentedly; he had
always like to be read to, and lately reading to himself had hurt his
eyes. "Now, what shall I read, father?" she said.
Poor Harry, remembering his own futile investments, asked for the
stock-list, and Maria read it very intelligently for a young girl who
knew nothing about stocks.
"Once I owned some of that stock," said Harry, proudly.
"Did you, father?" Maria responded, admiringly.
"Yes, and only look where it is now! If I could only have held on to
it, I might have been quite a rich man."
Harry spoke, oddly enough, with no regret. Such was the childishness
of the man that a possession once his never seemed wholly lost to
him. It seemed to him that he had reason to be proud of having made
such a wise investment, even if he had never actually reaped any
benefit from it.
"I don't see how you knew what to invest in," Maria said, fostering
his pride.
"Oh, I had to study the stock-lists and ask brokers," Harry replied.
He looked brighter. This little reinstatement in his self-esteem
acted like a tonic. In some fashion Ida always kept him alive to his
own deficiencies, and that was not good for a man who was naturally
humble-minded. Harry sat up straighter. He looked at Maria with
brighter eyes as she continued reading. "Now _that_ is a good
investment," said he--"that bond. If I had the money to spare I would
buy one of those bonds to-morrow morning."
"Are bonds better than stocks, father?" asked Maria.
"Yes," replied Harry, importantly. "Always remember that, if you have
any money to invest. A man can afford to buy stocks, because he has
better opportunities of judging of the trend of the market, but bonds
are always safer for a woman."
Maria regarded her father again with that innocent admiration for his
wisdom, which seemed to act like a nerve stimulant. A subtle
physician might possibly have reached the conclusion, had he been
fully aware of all the circumstances, that Ida, with her radiant
superiority, her voiceless but none the less positive self-assertion
over her husband, was actually a means of spiritual depression which
had reacted upon his physical nature. Nobody knows exactly to what
extent any of us are responsible for the lives of others, and how far
our mere existences may be derogatory to our fellow-beings. Harry was
visibly brighter.
"You don't look half as tired as you did, father," Maria said.
"I don't feel so tired," replied Harry. "It has rested me to hear you
read. Remember what I have told you, dear, about bonds--always bonds,
and never stocks, for a woman."
"Yes, father," said Maria. Then she added, "I am going to save all I
can when I begin to earn."
"Your aunt Maria will only ask you enough board to make it possible
for her to pay the bills? You know she has only a hundred a year to
live on. Of course your uncle Henry lets her have her rent free, or
she couldn't do it, but she is a fine manager. She manages very much
as your mother did." As he spoke, Harry looked around the luxurious
apartment and reflected that, had his first wife lived, he himself
could have saved, and there might have been no need for this little,
delicate girl to earn her own living. He sighed, and the weary look
settled over his face again.
Maria rose. "Father," said she, "Annie has gone out, and so has
Hannah, and I am going out in the kitchen and make a cup of that
thick chocolate that you like, for you."
"It is too much trouble, dear."
"Nonsense!" said Maria. "I would like to do it, and it won't take a
minute. There is a good fire in the range."
While Maria was gone, Harry sat gazing out of the window. He had
always now, when he looked out of a window, the sensation of a man
who was passing in rapid motion all the old familiar objects, all the
landmarks of his life, or rather--for one never rids one's self of
that particular optical delusion--it was as if they were passing. The
conviction of one's own transit is difficult to achieve. Harry gazed
out of the window, and it was to him as if the familiar trees which
bordered the sidewalk, the shrubs in the yard, the houses which were
within view, were flitting past him in a mad whirl. He was glad when
Maria entered with the chocolate, in his own particular cup, and a
dainty plate of cheese sandwiches.
"I thought perhaps you could eat a sandwich, father," she said. "I
don't believe you had anything decent for lunch in New York."
"I didn't have much," said Harry. He did not add, what was the truth,
that lately he had been stinting himself on his luncheons in the
effort to save a little more of his earnings. He ate nearly all the
sandwiches, and drank two cups of chocolate, and really looked much
better.
"You need more nourishment, father," said Maria, with a wise,
maternal air, which was also half accusatory, and which made Harry
think so strongly of his first wife that he regarded Maria as he
might have regarded her mother.
"You grow more and more like your own mother, dear," he said.
"Well, I am glad of that," replied Maria. "Mother was a good woman.
If I can only be half as good as mother was."
"Your mother _was_ a good woman," said Harry, reflectively; and as he
spoke he seemed to feel the arms of strong, almost stern, feminity
and faithfulness which had encompassed his childlike soul for so many
years. He owned to himself that Maria's mother had been a much more
suitable wife for him than this other woman. Then he had a little
qualm of remorse, for Ida came in sight, richly dressed and elegant,
as usual, with Evelyn dancing along beside her. Mrs. Adams was with
her. Mrs. Adams was talking and Ida was smiling. It was more becoming
to Ida to smile than to talk. She had discovered long since that she
had not so very much to say, and that her smiles were better coin of
her little realm; she therefore generally employed them in preference.
Maria got up hastily and took the tray and the chocolate-cups. "I
guess Mrs. Adams is coming in," said she.
"You didn't make enough chocolate to give them?" Harry said,
hesitatingly.
"No," replied Maria, and her tone was a little curt even to her
father. "And I used up the last bit of chocolate in the house, too."
Then she scudded out of the room with her tray and passed the front
door as the sound of Ida's latch-key was heard in the lock. Maria set
her tray on the kitchen-table and hurried up the back stairs to her
own room. She entered it and locked both doors, the one communicating
with the hall and the one which connected it with Evelyn's room. She
had no sooner done so than she heard the quick patter of little feet,
and the door leading into Evelyn's room was tried, then violently
shaken. "Let me in, sister; let me in," cried the sweet little flute
of a voice on the other side. Evelyn could now talk plainly, but she
still kept to her baby appellation for her sister.
"No, darling, sister can't let you in now," replied Maria.
"Why not? Let me in, sister."
"Sister is going to study," said Maria, in a firm voice. "She can't
have Evelyn. Run down-stairs, darling; run down to mamma."
"Evelyn don't want mamma. Evelyn wants sister."
"Papa is down there, too. Put on your clothes, like a nice girl, and
show papa how smart you can be; then run down."
"Evelyn can't button up her dress."
"Put everything on but that, then run down, and mamma can do it for
you."
"Let me in, sister."
"No, dear," Maria said again. "Evelyn can't come in now."
There came a little whimper of grief and anger which cut Maria's
heart, but she was firm. She could not have even Evelyn then. She had
to be alone with the knowledge she had just gained of her father's
state of health. She sat down in her little chair by the window; it
was her own baby chair, which she had kept all these years, and in
which she could still sit comfortably, she was so slender. Then she
put her face in her hands and began to weep. She had never wept as
she did then, not even when her mother died. She was so much younger
when her mother died that her sensibilities had not acquired their
full acumen; then, too, she had not had at that time the awful
foretaste of a desolate future which tinctured with bitter her very
soul. Somehow, although Maria had noticed for a long time that her
father did not look as he had done, it had never occurred to her that
that which had happened to her mother could happen to her father. She
had been like one in a house which has been struck by lightning, and
had been rendered thereby incredulous of a second stroke. It had not
occurred to her that whereas she had lost her mother, she could also
lose her father. It seemed like too heavy a hammer-stroke of
Providence to believe in and keep her reason. She had thought that
her father was losing his youth, that his hair turning gray had much
to do with his altered looks. She had never thought of death. It
seemed to her monstrous. A rage against Providence, like nothing
which she had known before, was over her. Why should she lose
everything? What had she done? She reviewed her past life, and she
defended herself like Job, with her summary of self-righteousness.
She had always done right, so far as she knew. Her sins had been so
petty as hardly to deserve the name of sins. She remembered how she
had once enjoyed seeing her face in her looking-glass, how she had
liked pretty, new dresses, and she could not make that seem very
culpable. She remembered how, although she had never loved her
step-mother, she had observed, except on that one occasion when
Evelyn was lost, the utmost respect and deference for her--how she
had been, after the first, even willing to love her had she met with
the slightest encouragement. She could not honestly blame herself for
her carefully concealed attitude of disapproval towards Ida, for she
said to herself, with a subtlety which was strange for a girl so
young, that she had merited it, that she was a cold, hard,
self-centred woman, not deserving love, and that she had in reality
been injurious for her father. She was convinced that, had her own
mother lived, with her half-censorious yet wholly loving care for
him, he might still have preserved his youth and his handsome
boyishness and health. She thought of the half-absurd, half-tragic
secret which underlay her life, and she could not honestly think
herself very much to blame for that. She always thought of that with
bewilderment, as one might think of some dimly remembered vagary of
delirium. Sometimes it seemed to her now that it could not be true.
Maria realized that she was full of self-righteousness, but she was
also honest. She saw no need for her to blame herself for faults
which she had not committed. She thought of the doctrine which she
had heard, that children were wholly evil from their birth, and it
did not seem to her true. She could _say_ that she had been wholly
evil from her birth, but she felt that she should, if she did say so,
tell a lie to God and herself. She honestly could not see why, for
any fault of hers, her father should die. Then suddenly her mind gave
a leap from her own standing-point to that of her father. She
suddenly reflected that it was not wholly her own grief for his loss
which was to be considered, but her father's grief at quitting the
world wherein he had dwelt so long, and his old loves of life. She
reflected upon his possible fear of the Unknown into which he was to
go. There was in Maria's love for her father, as there had been in
her mother's, a strong element of the maternal. She thought of her
father with infinite pity, as one might think of a little child about
to go on a long, strange journey to an unknown place, all alone by
himself. It seemed to her an awful thing for God to ask one like her
father to die a lingering death, to realize it all fully, what he had
to do, then to go off by himself, alone. She remembered what she had
heard from the pulpit on Sundays, but somehow that Unknown seemed so
frightfully wide and vast for a soul like her father's, which had
always been so like the soul of a child, to find her mother in. Then
she got some comfort from the memory of her mother, of her great
strength. It seemed to her that her mother, wherever she was, would
not let her father wander alone very long. That she would meet him
with that love and chiding which is sometimes the very concert-pitch
of love itself, its key-note, and lead him into those green pastures
and beside those still waters of the Psalmist. Maria, at that moment,
got more comfort from her memory of the masterliness of her mother,
whom she had known, than from her conception of God, towards whom her
soul reached out, it is true, but whom it no more comprehended than a
flower comprehends the sun. The very love of God needs a human
trellis whereby His creatures can reach Him, and Maria now climbed
towards a trust in Him, by the reflection of her mother's love, and
strength in spite of love.
Then racking pity for herself and her own loss, and rage because of
it, and a pity for her father which almost roused her to a fury of
rebellion, again swept away every other consideration.
"Poor father! poor father!" she sobbed, under her breath. "There he
is going to die, and he hasn't got mother to take care of him! _She_
won't do anything. She will try not to smile, that is all. And I
can't do anything, the way mother could. Father don't want me to even
act as if I knew it; but if mother were alive he would tell her, and
she would help him." Then Maria thought of herself, poor, solitary,
female thing travelling the world alone, for she never thought, at
that time, of her marriage being anything which would ever be a
marriage in reality, but as of something which cast her outside the
pale of possibilities and made her more solitary still, and she wept
silently, or as silently as she could; once in awhile a murmur of
agony or a sob escaped her. She could not help it. She got up out of
her little chair and flung herself on the floor, and fairly writhed
with the pain of her awful grief and sense of loss. She became deaf
to any sound; all her senses seemed to have failed her. She was alive
only to that sense of grief which is the primeval sense of the
world--the grief of existence itself and the necessity of death and
loss.
All at once she felt a little, soft touch, and another little,
weeping, human thing, born like herself to all the awful chances of
love and grief, flung itself down beside her.
Maria had locked her doors, but she had forgotten her window, which
opened on an upper balcony, and was easily accessible to any one
climbing out of the hall window. Evelyn had been listening at her
door and had heard her sobs. Knowing from experience that her sister
meant what she said, she had climbed out of the hall window, scudded
along the little balcony, and into Maria's window. She flung herself
down on the floor, and wept so violently that Maria was alarmed.
"Why, baby, darling, what is it? Tell sister," she said, hushing her
own sobs.
The child continued to sob. Her whole little frame was shaken
convulsively.
"Tell sister," whispered Maria.
"I'm cryin' 'cause--'cause--" panted the child.
"Because what, darling?"
"Because you are crying, and--and--"
"And what?"
"'Cause I 'ain't got anything to cry for."
"Why, you precious darling!" said Maria. She hugged the child close,
and all at once a sense of peace and comfort came over her, even in
the face of approaching disaster. She sensed the love and pity which
holds the world, through this little human key-note of it which had
struck in her ears.