There was a second's hush after Evelyn had said that. It seemed to
Maria that her heart stood still. A sort of incredulity, as of the
monstrous and the super-human seized her. She felt as one who had
survived a railroad accident might feel looking down upon his own
dismembered body in which life still quivered. She could not seem to
actually sense what Evelyn had said, although the words still rang in
her ears. Presently, Evelyn spoke again in her smothered, weeping
voice. "Do you think I am so very dreadful, so--immodest, to care so
much about a man who has never said he cared about me?"
"He has never said anything?" asked Maria, and her voice sounded
strange in her own ears.
"No, never one word that I could make anything of, but he has looked
at me, he has, honest, sister." Evelyn burst into fresh sobs.
Then Maria roused herself. She patted the little, soft, dark head.
"Why, Evelyn, precious," she said, "you are imagining all this. You
can't care so much about a man whom you have seen so little. You have
let your mind dwell on it, and you imagine it. You don't care. You
can't, really. You wait, and by-and-by you will find out that you
care a good deal more for somebody else."
But then Evelyn raised herself and looked down at her sister in the
dark, and there was a ring in her voice which Maria had never before
heard. "Not care," she said--"not care! I will stand everything but
that. Maria, don't you dare tell me I don't care!"
"But you don't know him at all, dear."
"I know him better than anybody else in the whole world," said
Evelyn, still in the same strained voice. "The very minute I saw him
I loved him, and then it seemed as if a great bright light made him
plain to me. I do love him, Maria. Don't you ever dare say I don't.
That is the only thing that makes me feel that I am not ashamed to
live, the knowing that I do love him. I should be dreadful if I
didn't love him--really love him, I mean, with the love that lasts.
Do you suppose that if I only felt about him as some of the other
girls do, that I would have told you? I _do_ love him!"
"What makes you so sure?"
"What makes me so sure? Why, everything. I know there is not another
man in the whole world for me that can possibly equal him, and
then--I feel as if my whole life were full of him. I can't seem to
remember much before he came. When I look back, it is like looking
into the dark, and I can't imagine the world being at all without
him."
"Would you be willing to be very poor, to go without pretty things if
you--married him, to live in a house like the Ramsey's on the other
side of the river, not to have enough to eat and drink and wear?"
"I would have enough to eat and drink and wear. I would have as much
as a queen if I had him," cried Evelyn. "What do you think I care
about pretty things, or even food and life itself, when it comes to
anything like this? Live in a house like the Ramsey's! I would live
in a cave. I would live on the street, and I should never know it was
not a palace. Maria, you do know that I love him, don't you?"
"Yes, I know that you think you do."
"No, say I do."
"Yes, I know you do," Maria said.
Then Evelyn lay down again, and wept quietly.
"Yes, I love him," she moaned, "but he does not love me. You don't
think he does, do you? I know you don't."
Maria said nothing. She was sure that he did not.
"No, he does not. I see you know it," Evelyn sobbed, "and all I cared
about going to the Christmas-tree and wearing my new gown was on
account of him, and I sent a beautiful book. I thought I could do
that. All the girls in the senior class gave him something, and I
have been saving up every cent, and he never gave me anything, not
even a box of candy or flowers. Do you think he gave any of the other
girls anything, Maria?"
"I don't think so."
"I can't help hoping he did not. And I don't believe it is so very
wicked, because I know that none of the other girls can possibly love
him as much as I do. But, Maria--"
"Well?"
"I do love him enough not to complain if he really loved some other
girl, and she was good, and would make him happy. I would go down on
my knees to her to love him. I would, Maria, honest." Evelyn was
almost hysterical. Maria soothed her, and evaded as well as she was
able her repeated little, piteous questions as to whether she thought
Mr. Lee could ever care for her. "I know I am pretty," Evelyn said
naively. "I really think I must be prettier than any other girl in
school. I have heard so, and I really think so myself, but being
pretty means so little when it comes to anything like this with a man
like him. He might love Addie Hemingway instead of me, so far as
looks were concerned, but I don't think Addie would make him very
happy--do you, Maria?"
"No, dear. I am quite sure he will never think of her. Now try and be
quiet and go to sleep."
"I cannot go to sleep," moaned Evelyn, but it was not very long
before she was drawing long, even breaths. Her youth had asserted
itself. Then, too, she had got certain comfort from this baring of
her soul before the soothing love of her sister.
As soon as Maria became sure that Evelyn was soundly asleep she
gently unwound the slender, clinging arms and got out of bed, and
stole noiselessly into Evelyn's own room, which adjoined hers. She
did not get into bed, but took a silk comfortable off, and wrapped it
around her, then sat down in a low chair beside the window. It seemed
to her that if she could not have a little while to think by herself
that she should go mad. The utterly inconceivable to her had
happened, and the utterly inconceivable fairly dazzles the brain when
it comes to pass. Maria felt as if she were outside all hitherto
known tracks of life, almost as if she were in the fourth dimension.
The possibility that her own sister might fall in love with the man
whom she had married had never entered her mind before. She had
checked Evelyn's wonder concerning him, but she had thought no more
of it than of the usual foolish exuberance of a young girl. Now she
believed that her sister really loved Wollaston. She recalled the
fears which she had had with regard to her strenuous nature. She did
not believe it to be a passing fancy of an ordinary young girl. She
recalled word for word what Evelyn had said, and she believed. Maria
sat awhile gazing out of the window at the starlit sky in a sort of
blank of realization, of adjustment. She could not at first formulate
any plan of action. She could only, as it were, state the problem.
She gazed up at the northern constellations, at the mysterious polar
star, and it seemed to steady her mind and give it power to deal with
her petty problem of life by its far-away and everlasting guiding
light. The window was partly open, and the same pungent odor of death
and life in one which had endured all day came in her nostrils. She
seemed to sense heaven and earth and herself as an atom, but an atom
racked with infinite pain between the two.
"There is the great polar star," she said to herself, "there are all
the suns and stars, here is the earth, and here am I, Maria Edgham,
who am on the earth, but must some day give up my mortal life and
become a part of it, and part of the material universe and perhaps
also of the spiritual. I am as nothing, and yet this pain in my
heart, this love in my heart, makes me shine with my own fire as much
as the star. I could not be unless the earth existed, but it is of
such as myself that the earth is made up, and without such as myself
it could not shine in its place in the heavens."
Maria began to attach a certain importance to her individual
existence even while she realized the pettiness of it, comparatively
speaking. She was an infinitesimal part, but the whole could not be
without that part. Suddenly the religious instruction which she had
drank in with her mother's milk took possession of her, but she had a
breadth of outlook which would have terrified her mother. Maria said
to herself that she believed in God, but that His need of her was as
much as her need of Him. She said to herself that without her tiny
faith in Him, her tiny speck of love for Him, He would lack something
of Himself. Then all at once, in a perfect flood of rapture,
something which she had never before known came into her heart: the
consciousness of the love of God for herself, of the need of God for
herself, poor little Maria Edgham, whose ways of life had been so
untoward and so absurd that she almost seemed to herself something to
be laughed at rather than pitied, much less loved. But all at once
the knowledge of the love of God was over her. She gazed up again at
the great polar star overlooking with its eternal light the mysteries
of the north, and for the first time in her whole life the primitive
instinct of worship asserted itself within her. Maria rose, and fell
on her knees, and continued to gaze up at the star which seemed to
her like an eye of God Himself, and love seemed to pervade her whole
being. She thought now almost lightly of Wollaston Lee. What was any
earthly love to love like this, which took hold of the beginning and
end of things, of the eternal? A resolution which this sense of love
seemed to inspire came over her. It was a resolution almost
grotesque, but it was sacred because her heart of hearts was in it,
and she made it because of this love of God for her and her new sense
of worship for something beyond the earth and all earthly affections
which had taken possession of her. She rose, undressed herself, and
went to bed. She did not say any prayer as usual. She seemed an
incarnate prayer which made formulas unnecessary. Why was it
essential to say anything when she was? At last she fell asleep, and
did not wake until the dawn light was in the room. She did not wake
as usual to a reunion with herself, but to a reunion with another
self. She did not feel altogether happy. The resolution of the night
before remained, but the ecstasy had vanished. She was not yet an
angel, only a poor, human girl with the longings of her kind, which
would not be entirely stifled as long as her human heart beat. But
she did what she had planned. Maria had an unusually high forehead.
It might have given evidence of intellect, of goodness, but it was
not beautiful. She had always fluffed her blond hair over it,
concealing it with pretty waves. This morning she brushed all her
hair as tightly back as possible, and made a hard twist at an ugly
angle at the back of her head. By doing this she did not actually
destroy her beauty, for her regular features and delicate tints
remained, but nobody looking at her would have called her even
pretty. Her delicate features became pronounced and hardened, her
nose seemed sharpened and elongated, her lips thinner. This display
of her forehead hardened and made bold all her face and made her look
years older than she was. Maria looked at herself in the glass with a
sort of horror. She had always been fond of herself in the glass. She
had loved that double of herself which had come and gone at her
bidding, but now it was different. She was actually afraid of the
stern, thin visage which confronted her, which was herself, yet not
herself. When she was fully dressed it was worse still. She put on a
gray gown which had never been becoming. It was not properly fitted.
It was short-waisted, and gave her figure a short, chunky appearance.
This chunky aspect, with her sharp face and strained back hair, made
her seem fairly hideous to herself. But she remained firm. Her
firmness, in reality, was one cause of the tightening and thinning of
her lips. She hesitated when about to go down-stairs. She had not
heard Evelyn go down. She wondered whether she had better wait until
she went, or go into her room. She finally decided upon the latter
course. Evelyn was standing in front of her dresser brushing her
hair. When Maria entered she threw with a quick motion the whole
curly, fluffy mass over her face, which glowed through it with an
intensity of shame. Evelyn, when she awoke that morning, felt as if
she had revealed some nakedness of her very soul. The girl was fairly
ill. She could not believe that she had said what she remembered
herself to have said.
"Good-morning, dear," said Maria.
Evelyn did not notice her changed appearance at all. She continued to
brush away at the mist of hair over her face. "Oh, sister!" she
murmured.
"Never mind, precious, we won't say anything more about it," said
Maria, and her voice had maternal inflections.
"I ought not," stammered Evelyn, but Maria interrupted her.
"I have forgotten all about it, dear," she said. "Now you had better
hurry or you will be late."
"When I woke up this morning and remembered, I felt as if I should
die," Evelyn said, in a choked voice.
"Nonsense," said Maria. "You won't die, and it will all come out
right. Don't worry anything about it or think anything more about it.
Why don't you wear your red dress to school to-day? It is pleasant."
"Well, perhaps I had better," Evelyn said. She threw back her hair
then, but still she did not look at Maria.
She arranged her hair and removed her little dressing-sack before she
looked at Maria, who had seated herself in a rocking-chair beside the
window. Aunt Maria always insisted upon getting breakfast without any
assistance. The odor of coffee and baking muffins stole into the
room. Evelyn got her red dress from the closet and put it on, still
avoiding Maria's eyes. But at last she turned towards her.
"I am all ready to go down," she said, in a weak little voice; then
she gave a great start, and stared at Maria.
Maria bore the stare calmly, and rose.
"All right, dear," she replied.
But Evelyn continued standing before her, staring incredulously. It
was almost as if she doubted Maria's identity.
"Why, Maria Edgham!" she said, finally. "What is the matter?"
"What do you mean, dear?"
"What have you done to yourself to make you look so queer? Oh, I see
what it is! It's your hair. Maria, dear, what have you strained it
off your forehead in that way for? It makes you look--why--"
Then Maria lied. "My hair has been growing farther and farther off my
forehead lately," said she, "and I thought possibly the reason was
because I covered it. I thought if I brushed my hair back it would be
better for it. Then, too, my head has ached some, and it seemed to me
the pain in my forehead would be better if I kept it cooler."
"But, Maria," said Evelyn, "you don't look so pretty. You don't,
dear, honest. I hate to say so, but you don't."
"Well I am afraid the pretty part of it will have to go," said Maria,
going towards the door.
"Oh, Maria, please pull your hair over your forehead just a little."
"No, dear, I have it all fixed for the day, and it must stay as it
is."
Evelyn followed Maria down-stairs. She had a puzzled expression.
Maria's hair was diverting her from her own troubles. She could not
understand why any girl should deliberately make herself homely. She
felt worried. It even occurred to wonder if anything could be the
matter with Maria's mind.
When the two girls went into the little dining-room, where breakfast
was ready for them, Aunt Maria began to say something about the
weather, then she cut herself short when she saw Maria.
"Maria Edgham," said she, "what on earth--"
Maria took her place at the table. "Those gems look delicious," she
observed. But Aunt Maria was not to be diverted.
"I don't want to hear anything about gems," said she. "They are good
enough, I guess. I always could make gems, but what I want to know is
if you have gone clean daft."
"I don't think so," replied Maria, laughing.
But Aunt Maria continued to stare at her with an expression of almost
horror.
"What under the sun have you got your hair done up that way for?"
said she.
Maria repeated what she had told Evelyn.
"Stuff!" said Aunt Maria. "It will make the hair grow farther back
straining it off your forehead that way, I can tell you that. You
don't use common-sense, and as for your headache, I guess the hair
didn't make it ache. It's the first I've heard of it. You look like a
fright, I can tell you that."
"Well, I can't help it," said Maria. "I shall have to behave well to
make up."
"Maria Edgham, you don't mean to say you are going to school looking
as you do now!"
Maria laughed, and buttered a gem.
"You look old enough to be your own grandmother. You have spoiled
your looks."
"Looks don't amount to much," said Maria.
"Maria Edgham, are you crazy?"
"I hope not."
"I told sister she didn't look so pretty," said Evelyn.
"Look so pretty? She looks like a homely old maid. Your nose looks a
yard long and your chin looks peaked and your mouth looks as if you
were as ugly as sin. Your forehead is too high; it always was, and
you ought to thank the Lord that he gave you pretty hair, and enough
of it to cover up your forehead, and now you've gone and strained it
back just as tight as you can and made a knot like a tough doughnut
at the back of your head. You look like a crazy thing, I can tell you
that."
Maria said nothing. She ate her breakfast, while Aunt Maria and
Evelyn could not eat much and were all the time furtively watching
her.
Aunt Maria took Evelyn aside before the sisters left for school, and
asked her in a whisper if she thought anything was wrong with Maria,
if she had noticed anything, but Evelyn said she had not. But she and
Aunt Maria looked at each other with eyes of frightened surmise.
When Maria had her hat on she looked, if anything, worse.
"Good land!" said Aunt Maria, when she saw her. "Well, if you are set
on making a spectacle of yourself, I suppose you are."
After the girls had gone she went into the other side of the house
and told Eunice. "There she has gone and made herself look like a
perfect scarecrow," she said. "I wonder if there is any insanity in
her father's family?"
"Did she look so bad?" asked Eunice, with a stare of terror at her
sister-in-law.
"Look so bad! She looked as old and homely as you and I every bit."
Maria made as much of a sensation on the trolley as she had done at
home. The boy who had persecuted her the night before with his
attentions bowed to Evelyn, and glanced at her evidently with no
recognition. After a while he came to Evelyn and asked where her
sister was that morning. Maria laughed, and he looked at her, then he
fairly turned pale, and lifted his hat. He mumbled something and
returned to his seat. Maria was conscious of his astonished and
puzzled gaze at her all the way. When she reached the academy the
other teachers--that is, the women--assailed her openly. One even
attempted to loosen by force Maria's tightly strained locks.
"Why, Miss Edgham, you fairly frighten me," she said, when Maria
resisted.
Maria realized the amazement of the pupils when they entered her
class-room, the amazement of incredulity and almost disgust.
Everybody seemed amazed and almost disgusted except Wollaston Lee. He
did, indeed, give one slightly surprised glance at her, then he
seemed to notice nothing different in her appearance. The man's sense
of duty and honor was so strong that in reality his sense of
externals was blunted. He had a sort of sublime short-sightedness to
everything that was not of the spirit. He had been convinced the
night previous that Maria was beginning to regard him with favor, and
being convinced of that made him insensible to any mere outward
change in her. She looked to him, on the whole, prettier than usual
because he seemed to see in her love for himself.
When the noon intermission came he walked into her class-room, and
invited Maria and Evelyn to go with him to a near-by restaurant and
lunch.
"I would ask you to go home with me," he said, apologetically, to
Maria, "but mother has a cold."
Maria turned pale. She wondered if he had possibly told his mother.
Then she remembered how he had promised her not to tell without her
permission, and was reassured. Evelyn blushed and smiled and dimpled,
and cast one of her sweet, dark glances at him, which he did not
notice at all. His attention was fixed upon Maria, who hesitated,
regarding him with her pale, pinched face. Evelyn took it for granted
that Mr. Lee's invitation was only on her account, and that Maria was
asked simply as a chaperon, and because, indeed, he could not very
well avoid it. She jumped up and got her hat.
"It will be perfectly lovely," she said, and faced them both, her
charming face one glow of delight.
But Maria did not rise. She looked at the basket of luncheon which
she had begun to unpack, and replied, coldly, "Thank you, Mr. Lee,
but we have our luncheon with us."
Wollaston looked at her in a puzzled way.
"But you could have something hot at the restaurant," he said. The
words were not much, but in reality he meant, and Maria so understood
him, "Why, what do you mean, after last night? You know how I feel
about you. Why do you refuse?"
Maria took another sandwich from her basket. "Thank you for asking
us, Mr. Lee," she said, "but we have our luncheon."
Her tone was fairly hostile. The hostility was not directed towards
him, but towards the weakness in herself. But that he could not
understand.
"Very well," he said, in a hurt manner. "Of course I will not urge
you, Miss Edgham." Then he walked out of the room, hollowing his back
and holding his head very straight in a way he had had from a boy
when he was offended.
Evelyn pulled off her hat with a jerk. She looked at Maria with her
eyes brilliant with tears. "I think you were mean, sister," she
whispered, "awful mean; so there!"
"I thought it was better not to go," Maria replied. Her tone was at
once stern and pitiful. Evelyn noticed only her sternness. She began
to weep softly.
"There, he wanted me, too," she said, "and of course he had to ask
you, and you knew--I think you might have, sister."
"I thought it was better not," repeated Maria. "Now, dear, you had
better eat your luncheon."
"I don't want any luncheon."
Maria began to eat a sandwich herself. There was an odd meekness and
dejectedness in her manner. Presently she laid the half-eaten
sandwich on the table and took out her handkerchief, and shook all
over with helpless and silent sobs.
Then Evelyn looked at her, her pouting expression relaxed gradually.
She looked bewildered.
"Why, what are you crying for?" she asked, in a low voice.
Maria did not answer.
Presently Evelyn rose and went over to her sister, and laid her cheek
alongside hers and kissed her.
"Don't, sister," she whispered. "I am sorry. I didn't mean to be
cross. I suppose you were right not to go, only I did want to."
Evelyn snivelled a little. "I know he was hurt, too," she said.
Maria raised her head and wiped her eyes. "I did not think it was
best," she said yet again. Then she looked at Evelyn and tried to
smile. "Don't worry, precious," she said. "Everything will come out
all right."
Evelyn gazed wonderingly at her sister's tear-stained face. "I don't
see what you cried for, and I don't see why you wouldn't go," she
said. "The scholars will see you have been crying, and he will see,
too. I don't see why you feel badly. I should think I was the one to
feel badly."
"Everything will come out all right," repeated Maria. "Don't worry,
sister's own darling."
"Everybody will see that you have been crying," said Evelyn, who was
in the greatest bewilderment. "What did make you cry, Maria?"
"Nothing, dear. Don't think any more about it," said Maria rising.
She took a tumbler from the lunch-basket. "Go and fill this with
water for me, that is a dear," she said. "Then I will bathe my eyes.
Nobody would know that you have been crying."
"That is because I am not so fair-skinned," said Evelyn; "but I don't
see."
She went out with the tumbler, shaking her head in a puzzled way.
When she returned, Maria had the luncheon all spread out on the
table, and looked quite cheerful in spite of her swollen eyes. The
sisters ate together, and Evelyn was very sweet in spite of her
disappointment. She was in reality very sweet and docile before all
her negatives of life, and always would be. Her heart was always in
leading-strings of love. She looked affectionately at Maria as they
ate the luncheon.
"I am so sorry I was cross," she said. "I suppose you thought that it
would look particular if we went out to lunch with Mr. Lee."
"Yes, I think it might have," replied Maria.
"Well, I suppose it would," said Evelyn with a sigh, "and I know all
the other girls are simply dying for him, but he asked us, after
all." Evelyn said the last with an indescribable air of sweet
triumph. It was quite evident that she regarded the invitation as
meant for herself alone, and that she took ineffable delight in it in
spite of the fact that it had been refused. She kept glancing out of
the window as she ate. Presently she looked at her sister and
laughed. "There he is coming now," she said, "and he is all alone. He
didn't take anybody else to luncheon."