Chapter 24

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_ Chapter XXIV

Maria did not go home for the Christmas holidays. She was very anxious to do so, but she received a letter from Ida Edgham which made her resolve to remain where she was.

"We should be so very glad to have you come home for the holidays, dear," wrote Ida, "but of course we know how long the journey is, and how little you are earning, and we are all well. Your father seems quite well, and so we shall send you some little remembrance, and try to console ourselves as best we can for your absence."

Maria read the letter to her aunt Maria.

"You won't go one step?" said Aunt Maria, interrogatively.

"No," said Maria. She was quite white. Nobody knew how she had longed to see her father and little Evelyn, and she had planned to go, and take Aunt Maria with her, defraying the expenses out of her scanty earnings.

"I wouldn't go if you were to offer me a thousand dollars," said Aunt Maria.

"I would not, either," responded Maria. She opened the stove door and thrust the letter in, and watched it burn.

"How your father ever came to marry that woman--" said Aunt Maria.

"There's no use talking about that now," said Maria, arousing to defence of her father. "She was very pretty!"

"Pretty enough," said Aunt Maria, "and I miss my guess if she didn't do most of the courting. Well, as you say, there is no use talking it over now. What's done is done."

Aunt Maria watched Maria's pitiful young face with covert glances. Maria was finishing a blouse which she had expected to wear on her journey. She continued her work with resolution, but every line on her face took a downward curve.

"You don't need to hurry so on that waist now," said Aunt Maria.

"I want the waist, anyway," replied her niece. "I may as well get it done."

"You will have to send the Christmas presents," said Aunt Maria. "I don't very well see how you can pack some of them."

"I guess I can manage," said Maria.

The next day her week of vacation began. She packed the gifts which she had bought for her father and Evelyn and Ida, and took them to the express office. The day after that she received the remembrances of which Ida spoke. They were very pretty. Aunt Maria thought them extravagant. Ida had sent her a tiny chatelaine watch, and her father a ring set with a little diamond. Maria knew perfectly well how her father's heart ached when he sent the ring. She never for one moment doubted him. She wrote him a most loving letter, and even a deceptive letter, because of her affection. She repeated what Ida had written, that it was a long journey, and expensive, and she did not think it best for her to go home, although she had longed to do so.

Ida sent Aunt Maria a set of Shakespeare. When it was unpacked, Aunt Maria looked shrewdly at her niece.

"How many sets of Shakespeare has she got?" she inquired. "Do you know, Maria?"

Maria admitted that she thought she had two.

"I miss my guess but she has another exactly just like this," said Aunt Maria. "Well, I don't mean to be ungrateful, and I know Shakespeare is called a great writer, and they who like him can read him. I would no more sit down and read all those books through, myself, than I would read Webster's Dictionary."

Maria laughed.

"You can take this set of books up in your room, if you want them," said Aunt Maria. "For my part I consider it an insult for her to send Shakespeare to me. She must have known I had never had anything to do with Shakespeare. She might just as well have sent me a crown. Now, your father he has more sense. He sent me this five-dollar gold-piece so I could buy what I wanted with it. He knew that he didn't know what I wanted. Your father's a good man, Maria, but he was weak when he married her; I've got to say it."

"I don't think father was weak at all!" Maria retorted, with spirit.

"Of course, I expect you to stand up for your father, that is right. I wouldn't have you do anything else," Aunt Maria said approvingly. "But he was weak."

"She could have married almost anybody," said Maria, gathering up the despised set of books. She was very glad of them to fill up the small bamboo bookcase in her own room, and, beside, she did not share her aunt's animosity to Shakespeare. She purchased some handkerchiefs for her aunt, with the covert view of recompensing her for the loss of Ida's present, and Aunt Maria was delighted with them.

"If she had had the sense to send me half a dozen handkerchiefs like these," said she, "I should have thanked her. Anybody in their senses would rather have half a dozen nice handkerchiefs than a set of Shakespeare. That is, if they said just what they meant. I know some folks would be ashamed of not thinking much of Shakespeare. As for me, I say what I mean." Aunt Maria tossed her head as she spoke.

She grew daily more like her brother Henry. The family traits in each became more accentuated. Each posed paradoxically as not being a poser. Aunt Maria spoke her mind so freely and arrogantly that she was not much of a favorite in Amity, although she commanded a certain measure of respect from her strenuous exertions at her own trumpet, which more than half-convinced people of the accuracy of her own opinion of herself. Sometimes Maria herself was irritated by her aunt, but she loved her dearly. She was always aware, too, of Aunt Maria's unspoken, but perfect approbation and admiration for herself, Maria, and of a certain sympathy for her, which the elder woman had the delicacy never to speak of. She had become aware that Maria, while she repulsed George Ramsey, was doing so for reasons which she could not divine, and that she suffered because of it.

One afternoon, not long after Christmas, when Maria returned from school, almost the first words which her aunt said to her were, "I do hate to see a young man made a fool of."

Maria turned pale, and looked at her aunt.

"George Ramsey went past here sleigh-riding with Lily Merrill a little while ago," said Aunt Maria. "That girl's making a fool of him!"

"Lily is a nice girl, Aunt Maria," Maria said, faintly.

"Nice enough, but she can't come up to him. She never can. And when one can't come up, the other has to go down. I've seen it too many times not to know. There's sleigh-bells now. I guess it's them coming back. Yes, it is."

Maria did not glance out of the window, and the sleigh, with its singing bells, flew past. She went wearily up to her own room, and removed her wraps before supper. Maria had a tiny coal-stove in her room now, and that was a great comfort to her. She could get away by herself, when she chose, and sometimes the necessity for so doing was strong upon her. She wished to think, without Aunt Maria's sharp eyes upon her, searching her thoughts. Emotion in Maria was reaching its high-water mark; the need for concealing, lest it be profaned by other eyes, was over her. Maria felt, although she was conscious of her aunt's covert sympathy for something that troubled her which she did not know about, and grateful for it, that she should die of shame if Aunt Maria did know. After supper that night she returned to her own room. She said she had some essays to correct.

"Well, I guess I'll step into the other side a minute," said Aunt Maria. "Eunice went to the sewing-meeting this afternoon, and I want to know what they put in that barrel for that minister out West. I don't believe they had enough to half fill it. Of all the things they sent the last time, there wasn't anything fit to be seen."

Maria seated herself in her own room, beside her tiny stove. She had a pink shade on her lamp, which stood on her little centre-table. The exercises were on the table, but she had not touched them when she heard doors opening and shutting below, then a step on the stairs. She knew at once it was Lily. Her room door opened, after a soft knock, and Lily glided gracefully in.

"I knew you were up here, dear," she said. "I saw your light, and I saw your aunt's sitting-room lamp go out."

"Aunt Maria has only gone in Uncle Henry's side. Sit down, Lily," said Maria, rising and returning Lily's kiss, and placing a chair for her.

"Does she always put her lamp out when she goes in there?" asked Lily with innocent wonder.

"Yes," replied Maria, rather curtly. That was one of poor Aunt Maria's petty economies, and she was sensitive with regard to it. A certain starvation of character, which had resulted from the lack of material wealth, was evident in Aunt Maria, and her niece recognized the fact with exceeding pity, and a sense of wrong at the hands of Providence.

"How very funny," said Lily.

Maria said nothing. Lily had seated herself in the chair placed for her, and as usual had at once relapsed into a pose which would have done credit to an artist's model, a pose of which she was innocently conscious. She cast approving glances at the graceful folds of crimson cashmere which swept over her knees; she extended one little foot in its pointed shoe; she raised her arms with a gesture peculiar to her and placed them behind her head in such a fashion that she seemed to embrace herself. Lily in crimson cashmere, which lent its warm glow to her tender cheeks, and even seemed to impart a rosy reflection to the gloss of her hair, was ravishing. To-night, too, her face wore a new expression, one of triumphant tenderness, which caused her to look fairly luminous.

"It has been a lovely day, hasn't it?" she said.

"Very pleasant," said Maria.

"Did you know I went sleigh-riding this afternoon?"

"Did you?"

"Yes; George took me out."

"That was nice," said Maria.

"We went to Wayland. The sleighing is lovely."

"I thought it looked so," said Maria.

"It is. Say, Maria!"

"Well?"

"He said things to me this afternoon that sounded as if he did mean them. He did, really."

"Did he?"

"Do you want me to tell you?" asked Lily, eying Maria happily and yet a little timidly.

Maria straightened herself. "If you want to know what I really think, Lily," she said, "I think no girl should repeat anything a man says to her, if she does think he really means it. I think it is between the two. I think it should be held sacred. I think the girl cheapens it by repeating it, and I don't think it is fair to the man. I don't care to hear what Mr. Ramsey said, if you want the truth, Lily."

Lily looked abashed. "I dare say you are right, Maria," she said, meekly. "I won't repeat anything he said if you don't think I ought, and don't want to hear it."

"Is your new dress done?" asked Maria, abruptly.

"It is going to be finished this week," said Lily. "Do you think I am horrid, proposing to tell you what he said, Maria?"

"No, only I don't care to hear any more about it."

"Well, I hope you don't think I am horrid."

"I don't, dear," said Maria, with an odd sensation of tenderness for the other, weaker girl, whom she had handled in a measure roughly with her own stronger character. She looked admiringly at her as she spoke. "Nobody can ever really think you horrid," she said.

"If they did, I should think I was horrid my own self," said Lily, with the ready acquiescence in the opinion of another which signified the deepest admiration, even to her own detriment, and was the redeeming note in her character.

Maria laughed. "I declare, Lily," said she, "I hope you will never be accused of a crime, for I do believe even if you were innocent, you would side with the lawyer for the prosecution."

"I don't know but I should," said Lily.

Then she ventured to say something more about George Ramsey, encouraged by Maria's friendliness, but she met with such scanty sympathy that she refrained. She arose soon, and said she thought she must go home.

"I am tired to-night, and I think I had better go to bed early," she said.

"Don't hurry," Maria said, conventionally; but Lily kissed Maria and went.

Maria knew that her manner had driven Lily away, but she did not feel as if she could endure hearing her confidences, and Lily's confidences had all the impetus of a mountain stream. Had she remained, they could not have been finally checked. Maria moved her window curtains slightly and watched Lily flitting across the yard. She saw her enter the door, and also saw, quite distinctly the shadow of a man upon the white curtain as he rose to greet her when she entered. She wondered whether the man was Dr. Ellridge, or George Ramsey. The shadow looked like that of the older man, she thought, and she was not mistaken.

Lily, on entering the sitting-room, found Dr. Ellridge with her mother, and her mother's face was flushed, and she had a conscious simper. Lily said good-evening, and sat down as usual with her fancy-work, after she had removed her wraps, but soon her mother said to her that there was a good fire in her own room, and she thought that she had better go to bed early, as she must be tired, and Dr. Ellridge echoed her with rather a foolish expression.

"I don't think you ought to sit up late working on embroidery, Lily," he said. "You are looking tired to-night. You must let me prescribe for you a glass of hot milk and bed."

Lily looked at both of them with wondering gentleness, then she rose.

"There is a good fire in the kitchen," said her mother, "and Hannah will heat the milk for you. You had better do as Dr. Ellridge said. You are going out to-morrow night, too, you know."

Lily said good-night, and went out with a smouldering disquiet in her heart. When she asked Hannah out in the kitchen to heat the milk for her, because Dr. Ellridge said she must drink it and then go to bed, the girl, who had been long with the family and considered that she in reality was the main-spring of the house, eyed her curiously.

"Said you had better go to bed?" said she. "Why, it isn't nine o'clock!"

"He said I looked tired, Hannah," said Lily faintly.

Hannah, who was a large, high-shouldered Nova Scotia girl, with a large, flat face obscured with freckles, sniffed. Lily heard her say quite distinctly as she went into the pantry for the milk, that she called it a shame when there were so many grown-up daughters to think of, for her part.

Lily knew what she meant. She sat quite pale and still while the milk was heating, and then drank it meekly, said good-night to Hannah and went up-stairs.

She could not go to sleep, although she went at once to bed, and extinguished her lamp. She lay there and heard a clock down in the hall strike the hours. The clock had struck twelve, and she had not heard Dr. Ellridge go. The whole situation filled her with a sort of wonder of disgust. She could not imagine her mother and Dr. Ellridge sitting up until midnight as she might sit up with George Ramsey. She felt as if she were witnessing a ghastly inversion of things, as if Love, instead of being in his proper panoply of wings and roses, was invested with a medicine-case, an obsolete frock-coat, and elderly obesity. Dr. Ellridge was quite stout. She wondered how her mother could, and then she wondered how Dr. Ellridge could. Lily loved her mother, but she had relegated her to what she considered her proper place in the scheme of things, and now she was overstepping it. Lily called to mind vividly the lines on her mother's face, her matronly figure. It seemed to her that her mother had had her time of love with her father, and this was as abnormal as two springs in one year. Shortly after twelve, Lily heard a soft murmur of voices in the hall, then the front door close. Then her mother came up-stairs and entered her room.

"Are you asleep, Lily?" she whispered, softly, and Lily recognized with shame the artificiality of the whisper.

"No, mother, I am not asleep," she replied, quite loudly.

Her mother came and sat down on the bed beside her. She patted Lily's cheeks, and felt for her hand. Lily's impulse was to snatch it away, but she was too gentle. She let it remain passively in her mother's nervous clasp.

"Lily, my dear child, I have something to tell you," whispered Mrs. Merrill.

Lily said nothing.

"Lily, my precious child," said her mother, in her strained whisper. "I don't know whether you have suspected anything or not, but I am meditating a great change in my life. I have been very lonely since your dear father died, and I never had a nature to live alone and be happy. You might as well expect the vine to live without its tree. I have made up my mind that I shall be much happier, and Dr. Ellridge will. He needs the sympathy and love of a wife. His daughters do as well as they can, but a daughter is not like a wife."

"Oh, mother!" said Lily. Then she gave a little sob. Her mother bent over and kissed her, and Lily smelled Dr. Ellridge's cigar, and she thought also medicine. She shrank away from her mother, and sobbed convulsively.

"My dear child," said Mrs. Merrill, "you need not feel so badly. There will be no change in your life until you yourself marry. We shall live right along here. This house is larger and more convenient than the doctor's. He will rent his house, and we shall live here."

"And all those Ellridge girls," sobbed Lily.

"They are very nice girls, dear. Florence and Amelia will room together; they can have the southeast room. Mabel, I suppose, will have to go in the best chamber. Perhaps, by-and-by, Dr. Ellridge will finish off another room for her. I don't quite like the idea of having no spare room. But you will keep your own room, and you will be all the happier for having three nice sisters."

"I never liked them," sobbed Lily. It really seemed to her that she was called upon to marry the Ellridge girls, and that was the main issue.

"They are very nice girls," repeated Mrs. Merrill, and there was obstinacy in her artificially sweet tone. "Everybody says they are very nice girls. You certainly would not wish your mother to give up her chance of a happy life, because you have an unwarrantable prejudice against the poor doctor's daughters."

"You have been married once," said Lily, feebly. It was as if she made a faint remonstrance because of her mother, who had already had her reasonable share of cake, taking a second slice. She had too sweet a disposition to say bitter things, but the bitterness of the things she might have said was in her heart.

"I suppose you think because I am older it is foolish," said her mother, in an aggressive voice. "Wait till you yourself are older and you may know how I feel. You may find out that you cannot give up all the joys of life because you have been a few years longer in the world. You may not feel so very different from what you do now." Mrs. Merrill's voice rang true in this last. There was even a pathetic appeal to her daughter for sympathy. But Lily continued to sob weakly, and did not say any more.

"Well, good-night, my dear child," Mrs. Merrill said finally. "You will feel very differently about all this later on. You will come to see, as I do, that it is for the best. You will be much happier." Mrs. Merrill kissed Lily again, and went out. She closed the door with a slight slam.

Lily knew that her mother was angry with her. As for herself, she considered that she had never been so unhappy in her whole life. She thought of living with the Ellridge girls, who were really of a common cast, and always with Dr. Ellridge at the head of the table, dictating to her as he had done to-night, in his smooth, slightly satirical way, and her whole soul rose in revolt. She felt sure that Dr. Ellridge was not at all in love with her mother, as George Ramsey might be in love with herself. All the romance had been sucked out of them both years before. She called to mind again her mother's lined face, her too aggressive curves, her tightly frizzed hair, and she knew that she was right. She remembered hearing that Dr. Ellridge's daughters were none of them domestic, that he had hard work to keep a house-keeper, that his practice was declining. She remembered how shabby and mean his little house had looked when she had passed it in the sleigh with George Ramsey, that very day. She said to herself that Dr. Ellridge was only marrying her mother for the sake of the loaves and fishes, for a pretty, well-kept home for himself and his daughters. Lily had something of a business turn in spite of her feminity. She calculated how much rent Dr. Ellridge could get for his own house. That will dress the girls, she thought. She knew that her mother's income was considerable. Dr. Ellridge would be immeasurably better off as far as this world's goods went. There was no doubt of that. Lily felt such a measure of revolt and disgust that it was fairly like a spiritual nausea. Her own maiden innocence seemed assaulted, and besides that there was a sense of pitiful grief and wonder that her mother, besides whom she had nobody in the world, could so betray her. She was like the proverbial child with its poor little nose out of joint. She lay and wept like one. The next morning, when she went down to breakfast, her pretty face was pale and woe-begone. Her mother gave one defiant glance at her, then spooned out the cereal with vehemence. Hannah gave a quick, shrewd glance at her when she set the saucer containing the smoking mess before her.

"Her mother has told her," she thought. She also thought that she herself would give notice were it not for poor Miss Lily.

Lily's extreme gentleness, even when she was distressed, was calculated to inspire faithfulness in every one. Hannah gave more than one pitying, indignant glance at the girl's pretty, sad face. Lily did not dream of sulking to the extent of not eating her breakfast. She ate just as usual. She even made a remark about the weather to her mother, although in a little, weeping voice, as if the weather itself, although it was a brilliant morning, were a source of misery. Mrs. Merrill replied curtly. Lily took another spoonful of her cereal.

She remained in her own room the greater part of the day. In the afternoon her mother, without saying anything to her, took the trolley for Westbridge. Lily thought with a shiver that she might be going over there to purchase some article for her trousseau. The thought of her mother with a trousseau caused her to laugh a little, hysterical laugh, as she sat alone in her chamber. That evening she and her mother went to a concert in the town hall. Lily knew that Dr. Ellridge would accompany her mother home. She wondered what she should do, what she should be expected to do--take the doctor's other arm, or walk behind. She had seen the doctor with two of his daughters seated, when she and her mother passed up the aisle. She knew that the two daughters would go home together, and the doctor would go with her mother. She thought of George Ramsey. Now and then as the concert proceeded she twisted her neck slightly and peered around, but she saw nothing of him. She concluded that he was not there. But when the concert was over, and she and her mother were passing out the door, and Dr. Ellridge was pressing close to her mother, under a fire of hostile glances from his daughters, Lily felt a touch on her own arm. She turned, and saw George Ramsey's handsome face with a quiver of unutterable bliss. She took his arm, and followed her mother and Dr. Ellridge. When they were out in the frosty air, under a low sky sparkling with multitudinous stars traversed by its mysterious nebulous highway of the gods, this poor little morsel of a mortal, engrossed with her poor little troubles, answered a remark of George's concerning the weather in a trembling voice. Then she began to weep unreservedly. George with a quick glance around, drew her around a corner which they had just reached into a street which afforded a circuitous route home, and which was quite deserted.

"Why Lily, what in the world is the matter?" he said. There was absolutely nothing in his voice or his heart at the time except friendliness and honest concern for his old playmate's distress.

"Mother is going to be married to Dr. Ellridge," whispered Lily, "and he and his three horrid daughters are all coming to live at our house."

George whistled.

Lily sobbed quite aloud.

"Hush, poor little girl," said George. He glanced around; there was not a soul to be seen. Lily's head seemed to droop as naturally towards his shoulder as a flower towards the sun. A sudden impulse of tenderness, the tenderness of the strong for the weak, of man for woman, came over the young fellow. Before he well knew what he was doing, his arm had passed around Lily's waist, and the pretty head quite touched his shoulder. George gave one last bitter thought towards Maria, then he spoke.

"Well," he said, "don't cry, Lily dear. If your mother is going to marry Dr. Ellridge, suppose you get married too. Suppose you marry me, and come and live at my house." _

Read next: Chapter 25

Read previous: Chapter 23

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