Maria, after that call, faced her future course more fully than ever.
She had disliked Mrs. Lee as much as Mrs. Lee had disliked her. Only
the fact that she was Wollaston's mother made her endurable to her.
"Isn't Mrs. Lee perfectly lovely?" said Evelyn, when she and Maria
were on their way home.
"Yes," Maria answered, but she did not think so. Mrs. Lee shone for
her only with reflected glory.
"I wonder where Mr. Lee was?" Evelyn murmured, timidly.
"I don't know," Maria said with an absent air. "We did not go to call
on him."
"Of course we didn't," said Evelyn. "Don't be cross, sister."
"I am not in the least cross," Maria answered with perfect truth.
"I didn't know but you were, you spoke so," said Evelyn. She leaned
wearily against her sister, and looked ahead with a hollow, wistful
expression.
Evelyn had grown thin and lost much of her color. Aunt Maria and
Eunice talked about it when they were alone.
"I wonder if there is any consumption in her mother's family?" Aunt
Maria said.
"I wonder," said Eunice. "I don't like the way she looks."
"Well, don't say anything about it to Maria, for she will worry
herself sick," said Aunt Maria. "She sets her eyes by Evelyn."
"Don't you think she notices?"
"No, she hasn't said a word about it."
But Aunt Maria was wrong. Maria had noticed. That afternoon,
returning from Westbridge, she looked anxiously down at her sister.
"Don't you feel well, dear?" she asked.
"Perfectly well," Evelyn replied languidly, "only I am a little
tired."
"Perhaps it is the spring weather," said Maria.
Evelyn nodded. It was the beginning of the spring term, and spring
came like a flood that year. The trees fairly seemed to burst forth
in green-and-rosy flames, and the shrubs in the door-yards bloomed so
boldly that they shocked rather than pleased.
"I like the spring to come slowly, so one does not feel choked with
it," Evelyn said after a little, as she gazed out of the window.
"There are actually daisies in that field. They have come too soon."
Evelyn spoke with an absurd petulance which was unusual with her.
Maria laughed. "Well, dear, we can't help it," she said.
"If this world is for people, and not the people for this world, it
seems to me we ought to be able to help a little," said Evelyn with
perfectly unconscious heresy. "There it rained too much last week,
and this week it is too hot, and the apple blossoms have come too
soon after the cherry blossoms. It is like eating all your candy in
one big pill."
Maria laughed again, but Evelyn sighed wearily. The car was very hot
and close.
"I shall be thankful when we get home," Evelyn said.
"Yes, you will feel better when you get home and have some supper,"
said Maria.
"I don't want any supper," said Evelyn.
"If you don't eat any supper you cannot study this evening."
"I must study," said Evelyn with a feverish light in her eyes.
"You can't unless you eat."
"Well, I will drink some milk," said Evelyn. She was studying very
hard. She was very ambitious, both naturally and because of her
feeling for Wollaston Lee. It seemed to her that she should die if
she did not stand well in her class. Evelyn had received so little
notice from Wollaston that she had made up her mind that he did not
care for her, and the conviction was breaking her heart, but she said
to herself that she would graduate with honors that she might have
that much, that she must.
The graduating with honors would have been easy to the girl, for she
had naturally a quick grasp of knowledge, but her failing health and
her almost unconquerable languor made it hard for her to work as
usual. However, she persisted. It became evident that she would stand
first among the girls of her class, and only second to one boy, who
had a large brain and little emotion, and was so rendered almost
impregnable. Ida sent Evelyn a graduating costume from Paris, and the
girl brightened a little after she had tried it on. She could not
quite give up all hope of being loved when she saw herself in that
fluffy white robe, and looked over her slender shoulder at her
graceful train, and reflected how she would not only look pretty but
acquit herself with credit. She said to herself that if she were a
man she should love herself. There was about Evelyn an almost comical
naivete and truthfulness.
Ida also sent Maria a gown for the graduating exercises. Hers was a
pale blue, very pretty, but not as pretty as Evelyn's. The night
after the gowns came Maria was startled by a sudden rush into her
room when she was almost asleep, and Evelyn nestling into her arms
and sobbing out that she was sorry, she was sorry, but she could not
help it.
"Can't help what, darling?" said Maria.
"Can't help being glad that my dress is so much prettier than yours,"
wept Evelyn. "I am sorry, sister, but I can't help it, and I am so
ashamed I had to come in and tell you."
Maria laughed and kissed her. "Sister is very glad yours is the
prettiest," she said.
"Oh, I am so sorry I am so selfish," sobbed Evelyn. Then she added,
in a tiny whisper, "I know now he won't ever think of me, but I can't
help being glad I shall look nice for him to see, anyway."
Evelyn was asleep long before her sister. Maria lay awake, with the
little, frail body in her arms, realizing with horror how very frail
and thin it was. Evelyn was of the sort whom emotion can kill. She
was being consumed like a lamp which needed oil. Love was for the
girl not only a need but a condition of life. Maria was realizing it.
At the same time she said to herself that possibly after school was
over and Evelyn could rest she might regain her strength. There
seemed to be no organic trouble. The local physician had been
consulted, and said that nothing whatever was the matter, yet had
gone away with a grave face after prescribing a simple tonic. The
fact was that life was flickering low, as it sometimes does, with no
ostensible reason which science could grasp. Evelyn was beyond
science. She was assailed in that citadel of spirit which overlooks
science from the heights of eternity. No physician but fate itself
could help her.
All this time, while Maria was suffering as keenly as her sister, her
suffering left no evidence. She had inherited from her mother a
tremendous strength of will, which sustained her. She said to herself
that she had her work to do, that her health must not fail. She said
that probably Wollaston did not care for her, although she could not
help thinking that she had the power to make him care, and that she
would be lacking in all that meant her true and best self should she
give way to her unhappiness and let it master her. She therefore
mastered it. In those days to Maria, who had a ready imagination, her
unhappiness seemed sometimes to assume a material shape like the
fabulous dragon. She seemed to be fighting something with tooth and
claw, a monstrous verity; but she fought, and she kept the upper
hand. Maria did not lose flesh. She ate as usual, she retained her
interest in her work, and all the time whenever a moment of solitude
came she renewed the conflict. She thought as little as possible of
Wollaston; she avoided even looking at him. He thought that he really
was an object of aversion to her. He began to question the
advisability of his retaining his position another year. He told
himself that it was hardly fair to Maria to subject her to such
annoyance, that it was much easier for him to obtain another position
than it was for her. He wanted to ask her with regard to it, but in
the days before commencement she so manifestly shrank from even
looking at him that he hardly liked to approach her even with a
question which concerned her own happiness.
Wollaston in those days used sometimes to glance at Evelyn, and
notice how very thin and delicate she looked, and an anxiety which
was almost paternal was over him. He used almost to wish that she was
not so proficient in her studies. One day, meeting her in the
vestibule when no one was in sight, he could not resist the impulse
which led him to pat her little, dark, curly head and say, in a voice
broken with tenderness:
"Don't study too hard, little one."
Evelyn gave an upward glance at him and ran away. Wollaston stood
still a moment, dazed. He was not naturally a conceited man. Then,
too, he had always regarded himself as so outside the pale that he
doubted the evidence of his own senses. If he had not been tied to
Evelyn's sister he would have said to himself, in a rapture, that
that look of the young girl's meant, could mean, only one thing: that
all her innocent heart was centred upon himself. It would have
savored no more of conceit that the seeing his face in a mirror. He
would simply have thought it the truth. But now, since he was always
forgetting that other women did not know the one woman's secret, and
looked upon him as an unmarried man, and therefore a fit target for
their innocent wiles, the preening of their dainty dove plumage, he
said to himself that he must have been mistaken. That Evelyn had
looked at him as she had done only because she was nervous and
overwrought, and the least thing was sufficient to disturb her
equilibrium.
However, he was very careful not to address Evelyn particularly
again, but that one little episode had been sufficient for the girl
to build another air castle upon. That night when she went home she
was radiant with happiness. Her color had returned, smiles lit her
whole face. Ineffable depths of delight sparkled in her eyes. It
seemed almost a sacrilege to look at the young girl, whose heart was
so plainly evident in her face. Maria looked at her, and felt a chill
in her own heart.
"Something must have happened," she said to herself. She thought that
Evelyn would tell her, but she did not; she ate her supper with more
appetite than she had shown for many a week. Her gayety in the
evening, when some neighbors came in, was so unrestrained and
childlike that it was fairly infectious. They sat out on the front
door-step. It had been a warm day, and the evening cool was welcome
and laughter floated out into the street. It was laughter over
nothing, but irresistible, induced because of the girl's exuberant
mood. She felt that night as if there was no meaning in the world
except happiness and fun. George Ramsey, going home about nine
o'clock, heard the laughter, and shrugged his shoulders rather
bitterly. Lily had made him such a good wife, according to the tenets
of wifehood, that he had apparently no reason to complain. She was
always perfectly amiable and affectionate, not violently
affectionate, but with the sort of affection which does not ruffle
laces nor disarrange hair, and that he had always considered the most
desirable sort of affection in the long-run. She and his mother got
on very well also--that is, apparently. Lily, it was true, always had
her way, but she had it so gently and unobtrusively that one really
doubted if she were not herself the conceder. She always looked the
same, she dressed daintily, and arranged her fair hair beautifully.
George did not own to himself that sameness irritated him when it was
such charming sameness. However, he did sometimes realize, and
sternly put it away from him, a little sting when he happened to meet
Maria. He had a feeling as if he had gone from a waxwork show and met
a real woman.
To-night when he heard the peals of laughter from the front door of
the Stillman house he felt the sting again, and an unwarrantable
childish indignation as if he had been left out of something and
slighted. He was conscious of wishing when he reached home that his
wife would greet him with a frown and reproaches; in fact, with
something new, instead of her sweet, gentle smile of admiration,
looking up from her everlasting embroidering, from where she sat
beside the sitting-room lamp. George felt furious with her for
admiring him. He sat down moodily and took up the evening paper. His
mother was not there. She had gone to her room early with a headache.
Finally, Lily remarked that it was a beautiful night, and it was as
exactly what might have been expected from her flower-like lips as
the squeaking call for mamma of a talking doll. George almost grunted
a response, and rattled his paper loudly. Lily looked at him with a
little surprise, but with unfailing love and admiration. George had
sometimes a feeling that if he were to beat her she would continue to
admire him and think it lovely of him. Lily had, in fact, the soul of
an Oriental woman in the midst of New England. She would have figured
admirably in a harem. George, being Occidental to his heart's core,
felt an exasperation the worse because it was needfully dumb, on
account of this adoration. He thought less of himself because his
wife thought he could do no wrong. The power of doing wrong is, after
all, a power, and George had a feeling of having lost that power and
of being in a negative way wronged. Finally he spoke crossly to Lily
over his newspaper.
"Why do you stick so to that everlasting fancy-work?" said he. "Why
on earth don't you sometimes run out of an evening? You never go into
the next house nowadays."
Lily arose directly.
"We will go over there now if you wish," said she. She laid down her
work and smoothed her hair with her doll-like gesture, which never
varied.
George looked at her surlily and irresolutely.
"No, I guess we had better not to-night," he said.
"I had just as lief, dear."
George rose, letting his paper slide to the floor.
"Well," he said, "they are all out on the front door-step, and I
think some of the neighbors are there, too. We might run over a
moment. It is too hot to stay in the house, anyway."
But when George and Lily came alongside the Stillman house the
laughter was hushed, and there was a light in Aunt Maria's bedroom,
and lights also in the chambers behind the drawn curtains.
"We are too late," said George. "They have gone to bed."
"I think they have," replied Lily, looking up at the lighted bedroom
windows. Then she added, "I will go over there any evening you wish,
dear," and looked at him with that unfailing devotion which
unreasonably angered him.
He answered her quite roughly, and was ashamed of himself afterwards.
"It is a frightfully monotonous life we lead anyhow," said he, as if
she, Lily, were responsible for it.
"Suppose we go away a week somewhere next month," said Lily.
"Well, I'll think of it," said he, striding along by her side. Even
that suggestion, which was entirely reasonable, angered him, and he
felt furious and ashamed of himself for being so angered.
Lily was constantly making him ashamed of himself for not being a god
and for feeling unreasonable anger when she did nothing to provoke
it. Once in a while a man likes to have a reasonable cause for
resentment in order to prove himself in the right.
"Well, I am ready to go whenever you wish to do so, dear," said Lily.
"My wardrobe is in order."
"Well, we'll see," George grunted again, as he and Lily retraced
their steps.
They sat down again in the sitting-room, and Lily took up her
embroidery, and he read a murder case in his paper.
Meanwhile, Maria, after putting out her lamp, was lying awake in bed
thinking that Evelyn would come in and make some confidence to her,
but she did not come. Maria felt horribly uneasy. She could not
understand her sister's sudden change of mood, and yet she did not
for a moment doubt Wollaston. She said to herself that as far as she
was concerned she would brave the publicity if Wollaston loved
Evelyn, but she recalled as exactly as if she had committed them to
heart what Evelyn had said with regard to divorce and the horror
which she had expressed of a divorced man or woman remarrying. Then
she further considered how much worse it would be if the divorced man
married her own sister. That course seemed to her impossible. She
imagined the horrible details, the surmises, the newspaper articles,
and she said to herself that even if she herself were willing to face
the ordeal it would be still more of an ordeal for Wollaston and
Evelyn. She said to herself that it was impossible; then she also
said to herself, with no bitterness, but with an acquiescence in the
logic of it, that it would be much better for them all if she, Maria,
should die.