Chapter 25

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_ Chapter XXV

The next morning, before Maria had started for school, Lily Merrill came running across the yard, and knocked at the side door. She always knocked unless she was quite sure that Maria was alone. She was afraid of her aunt. Aunt Maria opened the door, and Lily shrank a little before her, in spite of the wonderful glowing radiance which lit her lovely face that morning.

"Good-morning, Miss Stillman," said Lily, timidly.

"Well?" said Aunt Maria. The word was equivalent to "What do you want?"

"Has Maria gone?" asked Lily.

"No, she is getting dressed."

"Can I run up to her room and see her a minute? I have something particular I want to tell her."

"I don't know whether she'd want anybody to come up while she's dressing or not," said Aunt Maria.

"I don't believe she'd mind me," said Lily, pleadingly. "Would you mind calling up and asking her, please, Miss Stillman?"

"Well," said Aunt Maria.

She actually closed the door and left Lily standing in the bitter wind while she spoke to Maria. Lily heard her faintly calling.

"Say, Maria, that Merrill girl is at the door, and wants to know if she can come a minute. She's got something she wants to tell you."

Then Aunt Maria opened the door. "I suppose you can go up," she said, ungraciously. The radiance in Lily's face filled her with hostility, she did not know why.

"Oh, thank you!" cried Lily; and ran into the house and up the stairs to Maria's room.

Maria was standing before the glass brushing her hair, which was very long, and bright, and thick. Lily went straight to her and threw her arms around her and began to weep. Maria pushed her aside gently.

"Why, what is the matter, Lily?" she asked. "Excuse me, but I must finish my hair; I have no more than time. What is the matter?"

"Nothing is the matter," sobbed Lily, "only--Oh Maria I am so happy! I have not slept a wink all night I was so happy. Oh, you don't know how happy I am!"

Maria's face turned deadly white. She swept the glowing lengths of her hair over it with a deft movement. "Why, what makes you so happy?" she asked, coolly.

"Oh, Maria, he was in earnest, he was. I am engaged to George."

Maria brushed her hair. "I am very glad," she said, in an unfaltering voice. She bent her head, bringing her hair entirely over her face, preparatory to making a great knot on the top of her head. "I hope you will be very happy."

"Happy!" said Lily. "Oh, Maria, you don't know how happy I am!"

"I am very glad," Maria repeated, brushing her hair smoothly from her neck. "He seems like a very fine young man. I think you have made a wise choice, Lily."

Lily flung herself into a chair and looked at Maria. "Oh, Maria dear," she said, "I wish you were as happy as I. I hope you will be some time."

Maria laughed, and there was not a trace of bitterness in her laugh. "Well, I shall not cry if I never am," she said. "What a little goose you are, Lily, to cry!" She swept the hair back from her face, and her color had returned. She looked squarely at Lily's reflection in the glass, and there was an odd, triumphant expression on her face.

"I can't help it," sobbed Lily. "I always have cried when I was very happy, and I never was so happy as this; and last night, before he--before George asked me--I was so miserable I wanted to die. Only think, Maria, mother is going to marry Dr. Ellridge, and he and his three horrid girls are coming to live at our house. I don't know how I could have stood it if George hadn't asked me. Now I shall live with him in his house, of course, with his mother. I have always liked George's mother. I think she is sweet."

"Yes, she is a very sweet woman, and I should think you could live very happily with her," said Maria, twisting her hair carefully. Maria had a beautiful neck showing above the lace of her underwaist. Lily looked at it. Her tears had ceased, and left not a trace on her smooth cheeks. The lace which Maria's upward-turned hair displayed had set her flexible mind into a new channel.

"Say, Maria," she said, "it is to be a very short engagement. It will have to be, on account of mother. A double wedding would be too ridiculous, and I want to get away before all those Ellridges come into our house. Dr. Ellridge can't let his house before spring, and so I think in a month, if I can get ready." Lily blushed until her face was like the heart of a rose.

"Well, you have a number of very pretty dresses now," said Maria. "I should think you could get ready."

"I shall have to get a wedding-dress made, and a tea-gown, and one besides for receiving calls," said Lily. "Then I must have some underwear. Will you go shopping with me in Westbridge some Saturday, Maria?"

"I should be very glad to do so, dear," replied Maria.

"That is a very pretty lace on your waist," Lily said, meditatively. "I think I shall get ready-made things. It takes so much time to make them one's self, and besides I think they are just as pretty. Don't you?"

"I think one can buy very pretty ready-made things," Maria said. She slipped on her blouse and fastened her collar.

"I shall be so much obliged to you if you will go," said Lily. "I won't ask mother. To tell you the truth, Maria, I think it is dreadful that she is going to marry again--a widower with three grown-up daughters, too."

"I don't see why," Maria said, dropping her black skirt over her head.

"You don't see why?"

"No, not if it makes her happy. People have a right to all the happiness they can get, at all ages. I used to think myself that older people were silly to want things like young people, but now I have changed my mind. Dr. Ellridge is a good man, and I dare say your mother will be happier, especially if you are going away."

"Oh, if she had not been going to get married herself, I should rather have lived at home, after I was married," said Lily. She looked reflectively at Maria as she fastened her belt. "It's queer," she said, "but I do believe my feeling so terribly about mother's marrying made George ask me sooner. Of course, he must have meant to ask me some time, or he would not have asked me at all."

"Of course," said Maria, getting her hat from the closet-shelf.

"But he walked home with me from the concert last night, and I couldn't help crying, I felt so dreadfully. Then he asked me what the matter was, and I told him, and then he asked me right away. I think maybe he had thought of waiting a little, but that hastened him. Oh, Maria, I am so happy!"

Maria fastened on her hat carefully. "I am very glad, dear," she said. She turned from the glass, and Lily's face, smiling at her, seemed to give out light like a star. It might not have been the highest affection which the girl, who was one of clear and limpid shadows rather than depths, felt; it might have had its roots in selfish ends; but it fairly glorified her. Maria with a sudden impulse bent over her and kissed her. "I am very glad, dear," she said, "and now I must run, or I shall be late. My coat is down-stairs."

"Don't say anything before your aunt Maria, will you?" said Lily, rising and following her.

"No, of course, if you don't want me to."

"Of course it will be all over town before night," said Lily, "but someway I would rather your aunt Maria did not hear it from me. She doesn't like me a bit." Lily said the last in a whisper.

Both girls went down-stairs, and Maria took her coat from the rack in the hall.

Aunt Maria opened the sitting-room door. She had a little satchel with Maria's lunch. "Here is your luncheon," said she, in a hard tone, "and you'd better hurry and not stop to talk, or you'll be late."

"I am going right away, Aunt Maria," said Maria. She took the satchel, and kissed her aunt on her thin, sallow cheek.

"Good-morning, Miss Stillman," said Lily, sweetly, as she followed Maria.

Aunt Maria said nothing at all; she gave Lily a grim nod, while her lips were tightly compressed. She turned the key in the door with an audible snap.

"Well, good-bye, dear," said Lily to Maria. "I hope you will be as happy as I am some day, and I know you will."

Lily's face was entirely sweet and womanly as she turned it towards Maria for a kiss, which Maria gave her.

"Good-bye, dear," she said, gently, and was off.

Nobody knew how glad she was to be off. She had a stunned, shocked feeling; she realized that her knees trembled, but she held up her head straight and went on. She realized that worse than anything else would be the suspicion on the part of any one that Lily's engagement to George Ramsey troubled her. All the time, as she hurried along the familiar road, she realized that strange, shocked feeling, as of some tremendous detonation of spirit. She bowed mechanically to people whom she met. She did not fairly know who they were. She kept on her way only through inertia. She felt that if she stopped to think, she would scarcely know the road to the school-house. She wondered when she met a girl somewhat older than herself, just as she reached the bridge, if that girl, who was plain and poorly dressed, one of those who seem to make no aspirations to the sweets of life, if she had ever felt as she herself did. Such a curiosity possessed her concerning it that she wished she could ask the girl, although she did not know her. She dreaded lest Jessy Ramsey should run to meet her, and her dread was realized. However, Maria was not as distressed by it as she thought. She stooped and kissed Jessy quite easily.

"Good-morning, dear," she said.

A shock of any kind has the quality of mercy in that it benumbs as to pain. Maria's only realization was that something monstrous had happened, something like mutilation, but there was no sting of agony. She entered the school-house and went about her duties as usual. The children realized no difference in her, but all the time she realized the difference in herself. Something had gone from her, some essential part which she could never recover, not in itself, no matter what her future life might be. She was shorn of her first love, and that which has been never can be again.

When Maria reached the bridge on her way home, there was Lily waiting for her, as she had half expected she would be.

"Maria, dear," said Lily, with a pretty gesture of pleading, "I had to come and meet you, because I am so happy, and nobody else knows, except mother, and, somehow, her being pleased doesn't please me. I suppose I am wicked, but it makes me angry. I know it is awful to say such a thing of my own mother, but I can't help feeling that she thinks now she can have my room for Mabel Ellridge, and won't have to give up the spare chamber. I have nobody to talk to but you, Maria. George won't come over before evening, and I am scared to go in and see his mother. I am so afraid she won't like me. Do you think she will like me, Maria dear?"

"I don't see why she should not," replied Maria. Lily had hold of her arm and was nestling close to her.

"Don't you, honest?"

"No, dear. I said so."

"You don't mind my coming to meet you and talk it over, do you, Maria?"

"Of course I don't! Why should I?" asked Maria, almost angrily.

"I thought you wouldn't. Maria, do you think a blue tea-gown or a pink one would be prettier?"

"I think pink is your color," said Maria.

"Well, I rather like the idea of pink myself. Mother says I shall have enough money to get some nice things. I suppose it is very silly, but I always thought that one of the pleasantest things about getting married, must be having some pretty, new clothes. Do you think I am very silly, Maria?"

"I dare say most girls feel so," said Maria, patiently.

As she spoke she looked away from the other girl at the wintry landscape. There was to the eastward of Amity a low range of hills, hardly mountains. These were snow-covered, and beneath the light of the setting sun gave out wonderful hues and lights of rose and blue and pearl. It was to Maria as if she herself, being immeasurably taller than Lily and the other girls whom she typified, could see farther and higher, even to her own agony of mind. It is a great deal for a small nature to be pleased with the small things of life. A large nature may miss a good deal in not being pleased with them. Maria realized that she herself, in Lily's place, could have no grasp of mind petty enough for pink and blue tea-gowns, that she had outgrown that stage of her existence. She still liked pretty things, but they had now become dwarfed by her emotions, whereas, in the case of the other girl, the danger was that the emotions themselves should become dwarfed. Lily was typical, and there is after all a certain security as to peace and comfort in being one of a kind, and not isolated.

Lily talked about her bridal wardrobe all the way until they reached the Ramsey house; then she glanced up at the windows and bowed, dimpling and blushing. "That's his mother," she said to Maria. "I wonder if George has told her."

"I should think he must have," said Maria.

"I am so glad you think she will like me. I wonder what room we shall have, and whether there will be new furniture. I don't know how the up-stairs rooms are furnished, do you?"

"No, how should I? I was never up-stairs in the house in my life," said Maria. Again she gazed away from Lily at the snow-covered hills. Her face wore an expression of forced patience. It really seemed to her as if she were stung by a swarm of platitudes like bees.

Lily kissed her at her door. "I should ask if I couldn't come over this evening, and sit up in your room and talk it over," said she, "but I suppose he will be likely to come. He didn't say so, but I suppose he will."

"I should judge so," said Maria.

When she entered the sitting-room, her aunt, who was knitting with a sort of fierce energy, looked up. "Oh, it's you!" said she. Her face had an expression of hostility and tenderness at once.

"Yes, Aunt Maria."

Aunt Maria surveyed her scrutinizingly. "You don't mean to say you didn't wear your knit jacket under your coat, such a bitter day as this?" said she.

"I have been warm enough."

Aunt Maria sniffed. "I wonder when you will ever be old enough to take care of yourself?" said she. "You need to be watched every minute like a baby."

"I was warm enough, Aunt Maria," Maria repeated, patiently.

"Well, sit down here by the stove and get heated through while I see to supper," said Aunt Maria, crossly. "I've got a hot beef-stew with dumplings for supper, and I guess I'll make some chocolate instead of tea. That always seems to me to warm up anybody better."

"Don't you want me to help?" said Maria.

"No; everything is all done except to make the chocolate. I've had the stew on hours. A stew isn't good for a thing unless you have it on long enough to get the goodness out of the bone."

Aunt Maria opened the door leading to the dining-room. In winter it served the two as both kitchen and dining-room, having a compromising sort of stove on which one could cook, and which still did not look entirely plebeian and fitted only for the kitchen. Maria saw through the open door the neatly laid table, with its red cloth and Aunt Maria's thin silver spoons and china. Aunt Maria had a weakness in one respect. She liked to use china, and did not keep that which had descended to her from her mother stored away, to be taken out only for company, as her sister-in-law thought she properly should do. The china was a fine Lowestoft pattern, and it was Aunt Maria's pride that not a piece was missing.

"As long as I take care of my china myself, and am not dependent on some great, clumsy girl, I guess I can afford to use it," she said.

As Maria eyed the delicate little cups a savory odor of stew floated through the room. She realized that she was not hungry, that the odor of food nauseated her with a sort of physical sympathy with the nausea of her soul, with life itself. Then she straightened herself, and shut her mouth hard. The look of her New England ancestresses who had borne life and death without flinching was on her face.

"I will be hungry," Maria said to herself. "Why should I lose my appetite because a man who does not care for me is going to marry another girl, and when I am married, too, and have no right even to think of him for one minute even if he had been in earnest, if he had thought of me? Why should I lose my appetite? Why should I go without my supper? I will eat. More than that, I will enjoy eating, and neither George Ramsey nor Lily Merrill shall prevent it, neither they nor my own self."

Maria sniffed the stew, and she compelled herself, by sheer force of will, to find the combined odor of boiling meat and vegetables inviting. She became hungry.

"That stew smells so good," she called out to her aunt, and her voice rang with triumph.

"I guess it _is_ a good stew," her aunt called back in reply. "I've had it on four hours, and I've made dumplings."

"Lovely!" cried Maria. She said to herself defiantly and proudly, that there were little zests of life which she might have if she could not have the greatest joys, and those little zests she would not be cheated out of by any adverse fate. She said practically to herself, that if she could not have love she could have a stew, and it might be worse. She smiled to herself over her whimsical conceit, and her face lost its bitter, strained look which it had worn all day. She reflected that even if she could not marry George Ramsey, and had turned the cold shoulder to him, he had been undeniably fickle; that his fancy had been lightly turned aside by a pretty face which was not accompanied by great mental power. She had felt a contempt for George, and scorn for Lily, but now her face cleared, and her attitude of mind. She had gained a petty triumph over herself, and along with that came a clearer view of the situation. When Aunt Maria called her to supper, she jumped up, and ran into the dining-room, and seated herself at the table.

"I am as hungry as a bear," said she.

Aunt Maria behind her delicate china teacups gave a sniff of satisfaction, and her set face softened. "Well, I'm glad you are," said she. "I guess the stew is good."

"Of course it is," said Maria. She lifted the cover of the dish and began ladling out the stew with a small, thin, silver ladle which had come to Aunt Maria along with the china from her mother. She passed a plate over to her aunt, and filled her own, and began eating. "It is delicious," said she. The stew really pleased her palate, and she had the feeling of a conqueror who has gained one of the outposts in a battle. Aunt Maria passed her a thin china cup filled with frothing chocolate, and Maria praise that too. "Your chocolate is so much nicer than our cook used to make," said she, and Aunt Maria beamed.

"I've got some lemon-cake, too," said she.

"I call this a supper fit for a queen," said Maria.

"I thought I would make the cake this afternoon. I thought maybe you would like it," said Aunt Maria, smiling. Her own pride was appeased. The feeling that Maria, her niece whom she adored, had been slighted, had rankled within her all day. Now she told herself that Maria did not care; that she might have been foolish in not caring and taking advantage of such a matrimonial chance, but that she did not care, and that she consequently was not slighted.

"Well, I s'pose Lily told you the news this morning?" she said, presently. "I s'pose that was why she wanted to see you. I s'pose she was so tickled she couldn't wait to tell of it."

"You mean her engagement to Mr. Ramsey?" said Maria, helping herself to more stew.

"Yes. Eunice came in and told before you'd been gone half an hour. She'd been down to the store, and I guess Lily's mother had told it to somebody there. I s'pose Adeline Merrill is tickled to death to get Lily out of the way, now she's going to get married herself. She would have had to give up her spare chamber if she hadn't."

"It seems to me a very nice arrangement," said Maria, taking a spoonful of stew. "It would have been hard for poor Lily, and now she will live with Mr. Ramsey and his mother, and Mrs. Ramsey seems to be a lovely woman."

"Yes, she is," assented Aunt Maria. "She was built on a different plan from Adeline Merrill. She came of better stock. But I don't see what George Ramsey is thinking of, for my part."

"Lily is very pretty and has a very good disposition," said Maria. "I think she will make him a good wife."

Aunt Maria sniffed. "Now, Maria Edgham," said she, "what's the use. You know it's sour grapes he's getting. You know he wanted somebody else."

"Whom?" asked Maria, innocently, sipping her chocolate.

"You know he wanted you, Maria Edgham."

"He got over it pretty quickly then," said Maria.

"Maybe he hasn't got over it. Lily Merrill is just one of the kind of girls who lead a man on when they don't know they're being led. He is proud, too; he comes of a family that have always held their heads high. He wanted you."

"Nonsense!"

"You can't tell me. I know."

"Aunt Maria," said Maria, with sudden earnestness, "if you ever tell such a thing as that out, I don't know what I shall do."

"I ain't going to have folks think you're slighted," said Aunt Maria. She had made up her mind, in fact, to tell Eunice after supper.

"Slighted!" said Maria, angrily. "There is no question of slight. Do you think I was in love with George Ramsey?"

"No, I don't, for if you had been you would have had him instead of letting a little dolly-pinky, rosy-like Lily Merrill get him. I think he was a good match, and I don't know what possessed you, but I don't think you wanted him."

"If you talk about it you will make people think so," said Maria, passionately; "and if they do I will go away from Amity and never come back as long as I live."

Aunt Maria looked with sharp, gleaming eyes at her niece. "Maria Edgham, you've got something on your mind," said she.

"I have not."

"Yes, you have, and I want to know what it is."

"My mind is my own," said Maria, indignantly, even cruelly. Then she rose from the table and ran up-stairs to her own room.

"You have gone off without touching the lemon-cake," her aunt called after her, but Maria made no response.

Lemon-cake was an outpost which she could not then take. She had reached her limit, for the time being. She sat down beside her window in the dark room, lighted only by the gleam from the Merrill house across the yard and an electric light on the street corner. There were curious lights and shadows over the walls; strange flickerings and wavings as of intangible creatures, unspoken thoughts. Maria rested her elbows on the window-sill, and rested her chin in her hands, and gazed out. Presently, with a quiver of despair, she saw the door of the Merrill house open and Lily come flitting across the yard. She thought, with a shudder, that she was coming to make a few more confidences before George Ramsey arrived. She heard a timid little knock on the side door, then her aunt's harsh and uncompromising, "No, Maria ain't at home," said she, lying with the utter unrestraint of one who believes in fire and brimstone, and yet lies. She even repeated it, and emphasized and particularized her lie, seemingly with a grim enjoyment of sin, now that she had taken hold of it.

"Maria went out right after supper," said she. Then, evidently in response to Lily's low inquiry of where she had gone and when she would be home, she said: "She went to the post-office. She was expecting a letter from a gentleman in Edgham, I guess, and I shouldn't wonder if she stopped in at the Monroes' and played cards. They've been teasing her to. I shouldn't be surprised if she wasn't home till ten o'clock."

Maria heard her aunt with wonder which savored of horror, but she heard the door close and saw Lily flit back across the yard with a feeling of immeasurable relief. Then she heard her aunt's voice at her door, opened a narrow crack.

"Are you warm enough in here?" asked Aunt Maria.

"Yes, plenty warm enough."

"You'd better not light a lamp," said Aunt Maria, coolly; "I just told that Merrill girl that you had gone out."

"But I hadn't," said Maria.

"I knew it; but there are times when a lie ain't a lie, it's only the truth upside-down. I knew that you didn't want that doll-faced thing over here again. She had better stay at home and wait for her new beau. She was all prinked up fit to kill. I told her you had gone out, and I meant to, but you'd better not light your lamp for a little while. It won't matter after a little while. I suppose the beau will come, and she won't pay any attention to it. But if you light it right away she'll think you've got back and come tearing over here again."

"All right," said Maria. "I'll sit here a little while, and then I'll light my lamp. I've got some work to do."

"I'm going into the other side, after I've finished the dishes," said Aunt Maria.

"You won't--"

"No, I won't. Let George Ramsey chew his sour grapes if he wants to. I sha'n't say anything about it. Anybody with any sense can't help knowing a man of sense would have rather had you than Lily Merrill. I ain't afraid of anybody thinking you're slighted." There was indignant and acrid loyalty in Aunt Maria's tone. She closed the door, as was her wont, with a little slam and went down-stairs. Aunt Maria walked very heavily. Her steps jarred the house.

Maria continued sitting at her window. Presently a new light, a rosy light of a lamp under a pink shade, flashed in her eyes. The parlor in the Merrill house was lighted. Maria saw Lily draw down the curtain, upon which directly appeared the shadows of growing plants behind it in a delicate grace of tracery. Presently Maria saw a horse and sleigh drive into the Merrill yard. She saw Mrs. Merrill open the side-door, and Dr. Ellridge enter. Then she watched longer, and presently a dark shadow of a man passed down the street, of which she could see a short stretch from her window, and she saw him go to the front door of the Merrill house. Maria knew that was George Ramsey. She laughed a little, hysterical laugh as she sat there in the dark. It was ridiculous, the two pairs of lovers in the two rooms! The second-hand, warmed-over, renovated love and the new. After Maria laughed she sobbed. Then she checked her sobs and sat quite still and fought, and presently a strange thing happened, which is not possible to all, but is possible to some. With an effort of the will which shocked her house of life, and her very soul, and left marks which she would bear to all eternity, she put this unlawful love for the lover of another out of her heart. She closed all her doors and windows of thought and sense upon him, and the love was gone, and in its place was an awful emptiness which yet filled her with triumph.

"I do not love him at all now," she said, quite aloud; and it was true that she did not. She rose, pulled down her curtains, lighted her lamp, and went to work. _

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