Harry Edgham's disease proved to be one of those concerning which no
physician can accurately calculate its duration or termination. It
had, as diseases often have, its periods of such utter quiescence
that it seemed as if it had entirely disappeared. It was not a year
after Harry had received his indeterminate death sentence before he
looked better than he had done for a long while. The color came back
to his cheeks, his expression regained its youthful joyfulness.
Everybody said that Harry Edgham was quite well again. He had
observed a certain diet and taken remedies; then, in the summer, he
took, for the first time for years, an entire vacation of three
weeks, and that had its effect for the better.
Maria began to be quite easy with regard to her father's health. It
seemed to her that, since he looked so well, he must be well. Her
last winter at the Lowe Academy was entirely free from that
worriment. Then, too, Wollaston Lee had graduated and begun his
college course, and she no longer had him constantly before her eyes,
bringing to memory that bewildering, almost maddening experience of
theirs that night in New York. She was almost happy, in an odd,
middle-aged sort of fashion, during her last term at the academy
before her graduation. She took great pride in her progress in her
studies. She was to graduate first of her class. She did not even
have to work very hard to accomplish it. Maria had a mind of
marvellous quickness of grasp. Possibly her retentive powers were not
entirely in proportion, but, at all events, she accomplished much
with comparatively little labor.
Harry was very proud of her. The evening before her graduation Ida
had gone to New York to the theatre and Evelyn was in bed, and Maria
dressed herself in her graduation gown, which was charming--Ida had
never neglected her, in respect to dress, at least--and came down to
show herself to her father. He would not be able to be present at the
graduation on account of an unusual press of business. Maria came so
lightly that she almost seemed to float into the room, with her fine
white draperies trailing behind her and her knots of white ribbon
fluttering, and stood before her father.
"Father," said she, "I want you to see the way I'll look to-morrow.
Isn't this dress pretty?"
"Lovely," said Harry. "It is very becoming, too," he added.
Indeed, Maria really looked pretty again in this charming costume.
During the last few months her cheeks had filled out and she had
gotten some lovely curves of girlhood. Her eyes shone with a peculiar
brilliancy, her red lips trembled into a smile, her hair, in a fluff
above her high forehead, caught the light.
Maria laughed gayly. "Take care, father, or you will make me vain,"
she said.
"You have some reason to be," Harry said, honestly. "You are going to
graduate first in your class, and--well, you are pretty, dear--at
least you are to father, and, I guess, to other folks."
Maria blushed. "Only to father, because he is partial," she said.
Then she went up to him and rubbed her blooming cheek against his.
"Do you know what makes me happier than anything else?" she
said--"happier than graduating first, happier than my pretty dress,
happier than anything?"
"No. What, dear?"
"Feeling that you are well again."
There was an almost imperceptible pause before Harry replied. Then he
said, in his pleasant voice, which had never grown old, "Yes, dear; I
am better, dear, I think."
"Think," Maria said, gayly. "Why, you are well, father. Don't you
know you are well?"
"Yes, I think I am better, dear."
"Better? You are well. Nobody can look as young and handsome as you
do and be ill, possibly. You are well, father. I know you can't quite
get what that horrid old croaking doctor told you out of your mind,
but doctors don't know everything. You are well, and that makes me
happier than anything else in the world."
Harry laughed a little faintly. "Well, I dare say you are right,
dear," he said.
"Right?--of course I am right," said Maria. Then she danced off to
change her gown.
After she had gone, Harry rose from the chair; he had been sitting
beside the centre-table with the evening paper. He walked over to the
window and looked out at the night. It was bright moonlight. The
trees were in full leaf, and the shadows were of such loveliness that
they fairly seemed celestial. Harry gazed out at the night scene, at
the moon riding through the unbelievable and unfathomable blue of the
sky, like a crystal ball, with a slight following of golden clouds;
he gazed at the fairy shadows which transformed the familiar village
street into something beyond earth, and he sighed. The conviction of
his approaching dissolution had never been so strong as at that
moment. He seemed fairly to see his own mortality--that gate of death
which lay wide open for him. Yet, all at once, a sense of peace and
trust almost ineffable came over him. 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. She got a new book from the case, and
proposed reading aloud to him.
"Hadn't you better go to bed, dear?" said Harry. "You will have a
hard day to-morrow."
"No; I am going to sit up with you till She comes home," said Maria,
"and we might as well amuse ourselves." She began to read, and Harry
listened happily. But Maria, whenever she glanced over her book at
her father's happy face, felt the same undefinable chill.
However, when Ida came home and they had a little supper of sardines
and crackers, she did not think any more of it. She went to bed with
her head full of the morrow and her new gown and the glories awaiting
her. She tried not to be vain, but was uncomfortably conscious that
she was glad that she was first in her class, instead of some other
girl or instead of a boy. Maria felt especially proud of ranking
ahead of the boys.
The next day was, as she had anticipated, one of happy triumph for
her. She stood on the stage in her lovely dress and read her
valedictory, which, although trite enough, was in reality rather
better in style than most valedictories. She received a number of
presents, a tiny gold watch from her father among them, and a ring
with a turquoise stone from Ida, and quantities of flowers. The day
after the graduation Maria had her photograph taken, with all her
floral offerings around her, with a basket of roses on her arm and
great bouquets in her lap and on a little photographic table beside
her. The basket of roses was an anonymous offering. It came with no
card. If Maria had dreamed that Wollaston Lee had sent it, she would
never have sat for her photograph with it on her arm. But she did not
think of Wollaston at all that day. He was completely out of her mind
for the time, swallowed up in her sense of personal joy and triumph.
Wollaston had not graduated first in his class in the academy the
year before. A girl had headed that class also. Maria had felt a
malicious joy at the fact, at the time, and it was entirely beyond
her imagination now that Wollaston, who had seemed to dislike her,
although she was forced to admit that he had been exceedingly
honorable, had sent roses to her. She suspected that one of the
teachers, a young man who had paid, in a covert and shamefaced way, a
little attention to her, had sent the basket. She thought the roses
lovely, and recognized the inadvisability of thanking this teacher,
since he had not enclosed his card. She did not like him very
well--indeed, she felt a certain repugnance to him--but roses were
roses, and she was a young girl.
"Who gave you the basket of roses, dear?" her father asked when she
was displaying her trophies the day after her graduation.
Maria blushed. "I don't know," said she; "there wasn't any card with
them." As she spoke she seemed to see the face of the young history
teacher, Mr. Latimer, with his sparse, sandy beard, and she felt how
very distasteful he was to her, even if gilded, so to speak, by roses.
"I think some enamoured boy in her class who was too shy to send his
card with his floral offering was the one," Ida said to Harry when
Maria had gone out. She laughed a softly sarcastic laugh.
Harry looked at her uneasily.
"Maria is too young to get such ideas into her head," he said.
"My dear," said Ida, "you forget that such ideas do not get into
girls' heads; they are born in them."
"I presume one of the other girls sent them," said Harry, almost
angrily.
"Perhaps," replied Ida, and again she laughed her soft, sarcastic
laugh, which grated terribly on Harry. It irritated him beyond
measure that any boy should send roses to this little, delicate, fair
girl of his. For all he had spoken of her marriage, the very idea of
confiding her to any other man than himself made him furious.
Especially the idea of some rough school-boy, who knew little else
than to tumble about in a football game and was not his girl's mental
equal, irritated him. He went over in his mind all the boys in her
class. The next morning, going to New York, Edwin Shaw, who had lost
much of his uncouthness and had divorced himself entirely from his
family in the matter of English, was on the train, and he scowled at
him with such inscrutable fierceness that the boy fairly trembled. He
always bowed punctiliously to Maria's father, and this morning Maria
was with her father. She was to have a day off: sit in her father's
office and read a book until noon, then go to lunch with him at a
French restaurant, then go to the matinee. She wore a festive silk
waist, and looked altogether lovely, the boy thought.
"Who is that great gawk of a fellow?" asked Harry of Maria.
"Edwin Shaw. He was in my class," replied Maria, and she blushed, for
no earthly reason except that her father expected her to do so. Young
girls are sometimes very ready, even to deceit, to meet the emotional
expectations of their elders. Harry then and there made up his mind
that Edwin Shaw was the sender of the basket of roses.
"He comes of a family below par, and he shows it," he said,
viciously, to Maria. He scowled again at Edwin's neck, which was
awkwardly long above his collar, but the boy did not see it. He sat
on the opposite side of the car a seat in advance.
Harry said again to Maria, when they had left the train, and Edwin,
conscious of his back, which he was straightening, was striding in
front of them, what a great gawk of a fellow he was, and how he came
of a family below par. Maria assented indifferently. She did not
dream of her father's state of mind, and, as for Edwin Shaw, he was
no more to her than a set of car-steps, not so much, because the
car-steps were of obvious use.
That very night, when Maria and her father reached home after a
riotous day in the city, there was a letter in the post-office from
Aunt Maria, to the effect that there was no doubt that Maria could
have the school in Amity in the fall. The teacher who had held the
position was to be married in a few weeks. The salary was not
much--Amity was a poor little country village--but Maria felt as if
she had expectations of untold wealth. She was sorry at the prospect
of leaving her father and Evelyn, but the idea of self-support and
independence, and taking a little of the burden from her father,
intoxicated her. Maria had the true spirit of the women of her race.
She liked the feel of her own muscles and nerves of individuality and
self-reliance. She felt a head taller after she had read her aunt's
letter.
"She says she will board me for four dollars a week," she said. "I
shall have quite a lot of money clear."
"Well, four dollars a week will recompense her, and help her, too,"
said Harry, a little gloomily. To tell the truth, he did not in the
least like the idea of Maria's going to Amity to teach. Nothing
except the inner knowledge of his own failing health could have led
him to consent to it. Ida was delighted at the news, but she
concealed her delight as well as her annoyance under her smiling
mask, and immediately began to make plans for Maria's wardrobe.
"Whatever I have new I am going to pay you back, father, now I am
going to earn money," Maria said, proudly.
After she went up-stairs to bed that night, Evelyn, who was now a
slim, beautiful little girl, rather tall for her age, and going to a
private school in the village, came into her room, and Maria told
Evelyn how much she was going to do with the money which she was to
earn. Maria, at this time, was wholly mercenary. She had not the
least ambition to benefit the young. She was, in fact, young herself,
but her head was fairly turned with the most selfish of
considerations. It was true that she planned to spend the money which
she would earn largely upon others, but that was, in itself, a
subtle, more rarefied form of selfishness.
"I remember Aunt Maria's parlor carpet was worn almost threadbare,
and I mean to buy her a new one with the very first money I earn,"
Maria said to little Evelyn; and she thought, as she met Evelyn's
beautiful, admiring eyes, how very kind and thoughtful she, Maria,
would be with her wealth.
"I suppose Aunt Maria is very poor," Evelyn remarked, in her charming
little voice.
"Oh, very. She lives on a hundred dollars a year."
"Will you get enough to eat?" asked Evelyn, anxiously.
"Oh yes. I shall pay her four dollars a week, and if she got along
with only a hundred a year, only think what she can do with that. I
know Aunt Eunice, Uncle Henry's wife, hasn't a good dress, either. I
think I shall buy a brown satin for her."
"How awful good you are, sister!" said little Evelyn, and Maria quite
agreed with her. The conviction of her own goodness, and her
forthcoming power to exercise it, filled her soul with a gentle,
stimulating warmth after she was in bed. The moonlight shone brightly
into her room. She gazed at the bright shaft of silver it made across
all her familiar possessions, and, notwithstanding her young girl
dreams were gone, she realized that, although she had lost all the
usual celestial dreams and rafters of romance which go to make a
young girl's air-castle, she had still left some material, even if of
less importance.
She spent, on the whole, a very happy summer. Her father looked
entirely well; she was busy in preparations for her life in Amity;
and, what relieved her the most, Wollaston Lee was not at home for
more than five days during the entire vacation. He went camping-out
with a party of college-boys. Maria was, therefore, not subjected to
the nervous strain of seeing him. During the few days he was at home
he had his chum with him, and Maria only saw him twice--once on the
street, when she returned his bow distantly and heard with no
pleasure the other boy ask who that pretty girl was, and once in
church. She gave only the merest side-glance at him in church, and
she was not sure that he looked at her at all, but she went home pale
and nervous. A secret of any kind is a hard thing for a girl to bear
about with her, and Maria's, which was both tragic and absurd, was
severer than most. At times it seemed to her, when she looked in her
glass, that all she saw was the secret; it seemed to her, when other
people looked at her, that it was all they saw. It was one reason for
her readiness to go to Amity. She would there be out of reach of
people who could in any way have penetrated her secret. She would not
run the risk of meeting Wollaston; of meeting his father and mother,
and wondering if he had, after all, told; of meeting Gladys Mann, and
wondering if she had told, and knowing that she knew.
Maria, in these last months, saw very little of Gladys, who had
sunken entirely into the lower stratum of society in which she
belonged. Gladys had left school, where she had not learned much, and
she went out cleaning and doing house-work, at seventy-five cents a
day. Sometimes Maria met her going to and fro from a place of
employment, and at such times there was fear in Maria's face and a
pathetic admiration and reassurance in the other girl's. Gladys had
grown hard and large as to her bones and muscles, but she did not
look altogether well. She had a half-nourished, spiritually and
bodily, expression, which did not belie the true state of affairs
with her. She had neither enough meat nor enough ideality. She was
suffering, and the more because she did not know. Gladys was of the
opinion that she was, on the whole, enjoying life and having a pretty
good time. She earned enough to buy herself some showy clothes, and
she had a lover, a "steady," as she called him. It is true that she
was at times a little harassed by jealousy concerning another girl
who had a more fully blown beauty than she, and upon whom she
sometimes suspected her lover was casting admiring eyes.
It was at this time that Gladys, whose whole literature consisted of
the more pictorial of the daily papers, wrote some badly spelled and
very pathetic little letters, asking advice as to whether a girl of
her age, who had been keeping steady company with a young man of her
lover's age, whom she dearly loved, should make advances if he seemed
to exhibit a preference for another girl, and she inquired pitifully
of the editor, as of some deity, as to whether she thought her lover
did really prefer the other girl to her. These letters, and the
answers, were a source of immense comfort to Gladys. Sometimes, when
she met Maria, they made her feel almost on terms of equality with
her. She doubted if Maria, smart as she was, had ever really appeared
in the papers. She wrote her letters under different names, and even
sent them from neighboring towns, and walked long distances, when she
felt that she wanted to save car-fare, to post them. Once Maria met
her as she was walking along with an evening paper in her hand,
reading the reply to one of her letters, and Maria wondered at the
expression on Gladys's face. She at once pitied, feared, and detested
Gladys. She doubted if she were a good girl; she herself, like a nun
without even dreams, seemed living in another sphere, she felt so far
removed. She was in reality removed, although Gladys, if the truth
were told, was not so bad, and she got some good advice from the
answers in response to her letters, which restrained her. Still, her
view of everything was different. She was different. Black was not as
black to her as to Maria; a spade was not so truly a spade. She
recognized immorality as a fact, but it did not seem to her of so
much importance. In one sense she was more innocent even than Maria,
for she had never felt the true living clutch of vice on her soul,
even in imagination; she could not. The devil to her was not of
enough consequence to enable her to sin in the truest sense of the
word. All her family were immoral, and a constant living in an
atmosphere of immorality may, in one sense, make one incapable of
spiritual sin. One needs to fully sense a sin in order to actually
commit it. Gladys could hardly sense sin as Maria could. Still she
had a sense of proud virtue after reading the paragraphs of good
advice in reply to her letters to the paper, and she felt that it
placed her nearer Maria's level. On the occasion when Maria met her
reading the paper, she even spoke.
"Hullo, M'ria!" said she.
"Good-evening," Maria replied, politely and haughtily.
But Gladys did not seem to notice the haughtiness. She pressed close
to Maria.
"Say!" said she.
"What?" asked Maria.
"Ain't you ever goin' to--?"
"No, I am not," replied Maria, deadly pale, and trembling from head
to foot.
"Why don't you write to this paper and ask what you had better do?"
said Gladys. "It's an awful good plan. You do git awful good advice."
"I don't wish to," replied Maria, trying to pass, but Gladys stood in
her way.
"But say, M'ria, you be in an awful box," said she. "You can't never
marry nobody else without you get locked up, you know."
"I don't want to," Maria said, shortly.
"Mebbe you will."
"I never shall."
"Well, if you do, you had better write to this paper, then you can
find out just what to do. It won't tell you to do nothin' wrong, and
it's awful sensible. Say, M'ria."
"Well, what?"
"I 'ain't never told a living soul, and I never shall, but I don't
see what you are goin' to do if either you or him wants to git
married to anybody else."
"I am not worrying about getting married," said Maria. This time she
pushed past Gladys. Her knees fairly knocked together.
Gladys looked at her with sympathy and the old little-girl love and
adoration. "Well, don't you worry about me tellin'," said she.