The Monday when the fall term of the academy at Westbridge opened was
a very beautiful day. The air was as soft as summer, but with a
strange, pungent quality which the summer had lacked. There was a
slightly smoky scent which exhilarated. It was a scent of death
coming from bonfires of dead leaves and drying vegetation, and yet it
seemed to presage life. When Maria and Evelyn went out to take the
trolley for Westbridge, Maria wore a cluster of white chrysanthemums
pinned to her blouse. The blouse itself was a very pretty one, worn
with a black plaited skirt. It was a soft silk of an old-rose shade,
and it was trimmed with creamy lace. Maria had left off her mourning.
Evelyn looked with a little surprise at Maria's blouse.
"Why, you've got on your pink blouse, sister," she said.
Maria colored softly, for no ostensible reason. "Yes," she said.
"You don't generally wear it to school."
"I thought as long as it was the first day," Maria said, in a
slightly faltering tone. She bent her head until her rose-wreathed
hat almost concealed her face. The sisters stood in front of the
house waiting for their car. Evelyn made a sudden little run back
into the yard.
"You hold the car!" she cried.
"I don't know that they will wait; you must not stop," Maria called
out. But the car had just stopped when Evelyn returned, and she had a
little cluster of snowberries pinned in the front of her red gown.
She looked bewitchingly over them at Maria when they were seated side
by side in the car.
"I guess I was going to wear flowers as well as some other folks,"
she whispered with a soft, dark glance at her sister from under her
long lashes. Maria smiled.
"You don't need to wear flowers," she said.
"Why not as well as you?"
"Oh, you are a flower yourself," Maria said, looking fondly at her.
Indeed, the young girl looked like nothing so much as a rose, with
her tenderly curved pink cheeks, the sweet arch of her lips, and her
glowing radiance of smiles. Maria looked at her critically, then bade
her turn that she might fasten a hook on her collar which had become
unfastened.
"Now you are all right," she said.
Evelyn smiled. "Don't you think these snowberries are pretty with
this red dress?" she asked.
"Lovely."
"I wonder what the new principal will be like," Evelyn said,
musingly, after riding awhile in silence.
"I presume he will be very much like other young men. The main thing
to consider is, if he is a good teacher," Maria said.
"What makes you cross, sister?" Evelyn whispered plaintively.
"I am not cross, only I don't want you to be silly."
"I am not silly. All the girls are wondering, too. I am only like
other girls. You can't expect me to be just like you, Maria. Of
course you are older, and you don't wonder, and then, too, you knew
him when he was a boy. Is he light or dark?"
"Light," Maria replied, looking out of the window.
"Sometimes light children grow dark as they grow older," said Evelyn.
"I hope he hasn't. I like light men better than dark, don't you,
Maria?"
"I don't like one more than another," said Maria shortly.
"Of course I know you don't in one way. Don't be so cross," Evelyn
said in a hurt way. "But almost everybody has an opinion about light
and dark men."
Maria looked out of the window, and Evelyn said no more, but she felt
a sorrowful surprise at her sister. Evelyn was so used to being
petted and admired that the slightest rebuff, especially a rebuff
from Maria, made her incredulous. It really seemed to her that Maria
must be ill to speak so shortly to her. Then she remembered poor
Professor Lane, and how in all probability Maria was thinking about
him this morning, and that made her irritable, and how she, Evelyn,
ought to be very patient. Evelyn was in reality very patient and very
slow to take offence. So she snuggled gently up to her sister, until
her slender, red-clad shoulder touched Maria's, and looked pleasantly
around through the car, and again wondered privately about the new
principal.
They had a short walk after leaving the car to the academy. As they
turned into the academy grounds, which were quite beautiful with
trees and shrubs, a young man was mounting the broad flight of
granite steps which led to the main entrance. Evelyn touched Maria
agitatedly on the arm. "Oh, Maria," said she.
"What?"
"Is that--he?"
"I think so. I saw only his back, but I should think so. I don't see
what other young man could be going into the building. It was
certainly not the janitor, nor Mr. Hughes" (Mr. Hughes was the
music-teacher) replied Maria calmly, although she was pale.
"Oh, if that was he, I think he is splendid," whispered Evelyn.
Maria said nothing as the two proceeded along the fine gravel walk
between hydrangeas, and inverted beech-trees, and symmetrically
trimmed firs.
"He is light," Evelyn said, meditatively. "I am glad of that." As she
spoke she put her hand to her head and adjusted her hair, then her
hat. She threw back her shoulders. She preened herself, innocently
and unconsciously, like a little bird. Maria did not notice it. She
had her own thoughts, and she was using all her power of self-control
to conceal her agitation. It seemed to her as she entered the
building as if her secret was written upon her face, as if everybody
must read as they ran. But she removed her coat and hat, and took her
place with the other assistants upon the platform in the chapel of
the academy where the morning exercises were held. She spoke to the
other teachers, and took her usual seat. Wollaston was not yet there.
The pupils were flocking into the room, which was picturesque with a
dome-shaped ceiling, and really fine frescoed panels on the walls.
Directly opposite the platform was a large oriel-window of stained
glass, the gift of the founder. Rays of gold and green and blue and
crimson light filtered through, over the assembling school. Maria saw
Evelyn with her face turned towards the platform eagerly watching.
She was not looking at Maria, but was evidently expecting the advent
of the new principal. It did not at that time occur to Maria to
attribute any serious meaning to the girl's attitude. She merely felt
a sort of impatience with her, concerning her attitude, when she
herself knew what she knew.
Suddenly a sort of suppressed stir was evident among those of the
pupils who were seated. Maria felt a breeze from an open door, and
knew that Wollaston had entered. He spoke first to her, calling her
by name, and bidding her good-morning, then to the other teachers.
The others were either residents of Westbridge, or boarded there, and
he had evidently been introduced to them before. Then he took his
seat, and waited quietly for the pupils to become seated. It lacked
only a few minutes of the time for opening the school. It was not
long before the seats were filled, and Maria heard Wollaston's voice
reading a selection from the Bible. Then she bent her head, and heard
him offering prayer. She felt a sort of incredulity now. It seemed
to her inconceivable that the boy whom she had known could be
actually conducting the opening exercises of a school with such
imperturbability and self-possession. All at once a great pride of
possession seized her. She glanced covertly at him between her
fingers. The secret which had been her shame suddenly filled her with
the possibility of pride. Wollaston Lee, standing there, seemed to
her the very grandest man whom she had ever seen. 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. 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. Love of herself, as she might be seen in another's
eyes, and love of another. And yet she did not know it was love, and
she felt no shame, and no fright, nothing but rapture. She was in the
broad light of the present, under the direct rays of a firmament of
life and love. Another girl, Addie Hemingway, who was no older than
Evelyn, but shrewd beyond her years, with a taint of coarseness,
noticed her, and nudged the girl at her right. "Just look at Evelyn
Edgham," she whispered.
The other girl looked.
"I suppose she thinks she'll catch him, she's so awful pretty,"
whispered Addie maliciously.
"I don't think she is so very pretty," whispered back the other girl,
who was pretty herself and disposed to assert her own claims to
attention.
"She thinks she is," whispered back Addie. "Just see how bold she
looks at him. I should think she would be ashamed of herself."
"So should I," nodded the other girl.
But Evelyn had no more conception of the propriety of shame than
nature itself. She was pure nature. Presently Wollaston himself, who
had been making his address to his pupils with a vague sense of an
upturned expanse of fresh young faces of boys and girls, without any
especial face arresting his attention, saw Evelyn with a start which
nobody, man or woman, could have helped. She was so beautiful that
she could no more be passed unnoticed than a star. Wollaston made an
almost imperceptible pause in his discourse, then he continued,
fixing his eyes upon the oriel-window opposite. He realized himself
as surprised and stirred, but he was not a young man whom a girl's
beauty can rouse at once to love. He had, moreover, a strong sense of
honor and duty. He realized Maria was his legal wife. He was,
although he had gotten over his boyish romance, which had been
shocked out of him at the time of his absurd marriage, in an attitude
of soul which was ready for love, and love for his wife. He had often
said to himself that no other honorable course was possible for
either Maria or himself: that it was decidedly best that they should
fall in love with each other and make their marriage a reality. At
the same time, something more than delicacy and shyness restrained
him from making advances. He was convinced that Maria not only
disliked but feared him. A great pity for her was in his heart, and
also pride, which shrank from exposing itself to rebuffs. Yet he did
not underestimate himself. He considered that he had as good a chance
as any man of winning her affection and overcoming her present
attitude towards him. He saw no reason why he should not. While he
was not conceited, he knew perfectly well his advantages as to
personal appearance. He also was conscious of the integrity of his
purpose as far as she was concerned. He knew that, whenever she
should be willing to accept him, he should make her a good husband,
and he recognized his readiness and ability to love her should she
seem ready to welcome his love. He, however, was very proud even
while conscious of his advantages, and consequently easily wounded.
He could not forget Maria's look of horror when she had recognized
him the Saturday before. A certain resentment towards her because of
it was over him in spite of himself. He said to himself that he had
not deserved that look, that he had done all that mortal man could do
to shield her from a childish tragedy, for which he had not been to
blame in any greater degree than she. He said to himself that she
might at least have had confidence in his honor and his generosity.
However, pity for her and that readiness to do his duty--to love
her--were uppermost. The quick glance which he had given Maria that
morning had filled him with pleasure. Maria, in her dull-rose blouse,
with her cluster of chrysanthemums, with her fair, emotional face
held by sheer force of will in a mould of serenity, with her soft
yellow coils of hair and her still childish figure, was charming.
After that one glance at Evelyn, with her astonishing beauty, he
thought no more about her. When his address was finished the usual
routine of the school began.
He did not see Maria again all day. She had her own class-room, and
at noon she and Evelyn ate their luncheon together there. Evelyn did
not say a word about the new principal. She was very quiet. She did
not eat as usual.
"Don't you feel well, dear?" asked Maria.
"Yes, sister," replied Evelyn. Then suddenly her lips quivered and a
tear rolled down the lovely curve of her cheek.
"Why, Evelyn, precious, what is the matter?" asked Maria.
"Nothing," muttered Evelyn. Then suddenly, to her sister's utter
astonishment, the young girl sprang up and ran out of the room.
Maria was sure that she heard a muffled sob. She thought for a second
of following her, then she had some work to do before the afternoon
session, and she also had a respect for others' desires for secrecy,
possibly because of her long carrying about of her own secret. She
sat at her table with her forehead frowning uneasily, and wrote, and
did not move to follow Evelyn.
Evelyn, when she rushed out of the class-room, took instinctively her
way towards a little but dense grove in the rear of the academy. It
was a charming little grove of firs and maples, and there were a
number of benches under the trees for the convenience of the pupils.
It was rather singular that there was nobody there. Usually during
the noon-hour many ate their luncheons under the shadow of the trees.
However, the wind had changed, and it was cool. Then, too, the
reunions among the old pupils were probably going on to better
advantage in the academy, and many had their luncheons at a near-by
restaurant. However it happened, Evelyn, running with the tears in
her eyes, her heart torn with strange, new emotion which as yet she
could not determine the nature of, whether it was pain or joy, found
the grove quite deserted. The cold sunlight came through the golden
maple boughs and lay in patches on the undergrowth of drying
golden-rod and asters. Under the firs and pines it was gloomy, and a
premonition of winter was in the air. Evelyn sat down on a bench
under a pine-tree, and began to weep quite unrestrainedly. She did
not know why. She heard the song of the pine over her head, and it
seemed to increase her apparently inconsequent grief. In reality she
wept the tears of the world, the same which a new-born child sheds.
Her sorrow was the mysterious sorrow of existence itself. She wept
because of the world, and her life in it, and her going out of it,
because of its sorrow, which is sweetened with joy, and its joy
embittered with sorrow. But she did not know why she wept. Evelyn was
cast on very primitive moulds, and she had been very unrestrained,
first by the indifference of her mother, then by the love of her
father and sister and aunt. It was enough for Evelyn that she wished
to weep that she wept. No other reason seemed in the least necessary
to her. In front of where she sat was a large patch of sunlight
overspreading a low growth of fuzzy weeds, which shone like silver,
and a bent thicket of dry asters which were still blue although
withered.
All at once Evelyn became aware that this patch of sunlight was
darkened, and she looked up in a sweet confusion. Her big, dark eyes
were not in the least reddened by her tears; they only glittered with
them. Her lips, slightly swollen, only made her lovelier.
Directly before her stood the new principal, and he was gazing down
at her with a sort of consternation, pity, and embarrassment.
Wollaston was in reality wishing himself anywhere else. A woman's
tears aroused in him pity and irritation. He wished to pass on, but
it seemed too impossible to do so and leave this lovely young
creature in such distress without a word of inquiry. He therefore
paused, and his slightly cold, blue eyes met Evelyn's brilliant,
tearful ones with interrogation.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" he asked. "Shall I call any
one? Are you ill?"
Evelyn felt hurt and disturbed by his look and tone. New tears welled
up in her eyes. She shook her head with a slight pout. Wollaston
passed on. Evelyn raised her head and gazed after him with an
indescribable motion, the motion of a timid, wild thing of the woods,
which pursues, but whose true instinct is to be pursued. Suddenly she
rose, and ran after him, and was by his side.
"I am ashamed you should have seen--" she said, brokenly. "I was
crying for nothing."
Wollaston looked down at her and smiled. She also was smiling through
her tears. "Young ladies should not cry for nothing," he said, with a
whimsical, school-master manner.
"It seems to me that nothing is the most terrible thing in the whole
world to cry for," replied Evelyn, with unconscious wisdom, but she
still smiled. Again her eyes met the young man's, and her innocently
admiring gaze was full upon his, and that happened which was
inevitable, one of the chain of sequences of life itself. His own
eyes responded ardently, and the girl's eyes fell before the man's.
At the same time there was no ulterior significance in the man's
look, which was merely in evidence of a passing emotion to which he
was involuntarily subject. He had not the slightest thought of any
love, which his look seemed to express for this little beauty of a
girl, whose name he did not even know. But he slackened his pace, and
Evelyn walked timidly beside him over the golden net-work of sunlight
in the path. Evelyn spoke first.
"You came from Edgham, Mr. Lee," she said.
Wollaston looked at her. "Yes. Do you know anybody there?"
Evelyn laughed. "I came from there myself," she said, "and so did my
sister, Maria. Maria is one of the teachers, you know."
Evelyn wondered why Mr. Lee's face changed, not so much color but
expression.
"Oh, you are Miss Edgham's sister?" he exclaimed.
"Yes. I am her sister--her half-sister."
"Let me see; you are in the senior class."
"Yes," replied Evelyn. Then she added, "Did you remember my sister?"
"Oh yes," replied Wollaston. "We used to go to school together."
"She cannot have altered," said Evelyn. "She always looks just the
same to me, anyway."
"She does to me," said Lee, and there was in inflection in his voice
which caused Evelyn to give a startled glance at him. But he
continued, quite naturally, "Your sister looks just as I remember
her, only, of course, a little taller and more dignified."
"Maria is dignified," said Evelyn, "but of course she has taught
school a long time, and a school-teacher has to be dignified."
"Are you intending to teach school?" asked Lee, and even as he asked
the question he felt amused. The idea of this flower-like thing
teaching school, or teaching anything, was absurd. She was one of the
pupils of life, not one of the expounders.
"No, I think not," said Evelyn. Then she said, "I have never thought
about it." Then an incomprehensible little blush flamed upon her
cheeks. Evelyn was thinking that she should be married instead of
doing anything else, but that the man did not consider. He was
singularly unversed in feminine nature.
A bell rang from the academy, and Evelyn turned about with
reluctance. "There is the bell," said she. She was secretly proud
although somewhat abashed at being seen walking back to the academy
with the new principal. Addie Hemingway was looking out of a window,
and she said to the other girl, the same whom she had addressed in
the chapel:
"See, Evelyn Edgham has got him in tow already."
That night, when Maria and Evelyn arrived home, Aunt Maria asked
Evelyn how she liked the new principal. "Oh, he's perfectly
splendid," replied Evelyn. Then she blushed vividly. Aunt Maria
noticed it and gave a swift glance at Maria, but Maria did not notice
it at all. She was so wrapped in her own dreams that she was
abstracted. After she went to bed that night she lay awake a long
time dreaming, just as she had done when she had been a little girl.
Her youth seemed to rush back upon her like a back-flood. She caught
herself dreaming of love-scenes in that same little wood where
Wollaston and Evelyn had walked that day. She never thought of Evelyn
and the possibility of her thinking of Wollaston. But Evelyn, in her
little, white, maiden bed, was awake and dreaming too. Outside the
wind was blowing and the leaves dropping and the eternal stars
shining overhead. It seemed as if so much maiden-dreaming in the
house should make it sound with song, but it was silent and dark to
the night. Only the reflection of the street-lamp made it evident at
all to occasional passers. It is well that the consciousness of human
beings is deaf to such emotions, or all individual dreams would cease
because of the multiple din.