Chapter 16

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_ Chapter XVI

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. _

Read next: Chapter 17

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