Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - By the Light of the Soul

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"She is in the hands of the Lord," said Mrs. Applegate.

"If the police of New York were worth anything, she would be in the
police station by this time," said Mrs. Adams, with a fierce toss of
her pretty blond head.

"We know not where His islands lift their fronded palms in air; we
only know we cannot drift beyond His love and care," said Mrs.
Applegate, with a solemn aside. Tears were in her own eyes, but she
resolutely checked her impulse to weep. She felt that it would show a
lack of faith. She was entirely in earnest.

"Mebbe she _is_ in the police-station," sobbed Mrs. White, continuing
to embrace Maria. But Maria gave her a forcible push away, and again
addressed herself to her step-mother.

"Where is she?" she demanded.

"Oh, you poor, dear child! Your ma don't know where she is, and she
is so awful upset, she sets there jest like marble," said Mrs. White.

"She isn't upset at all. You don't know her as well as I do," said
Maria, mercilessly. "She thinks she ought to act upset, so she sits
this way. She isn't upset."

"Oh, Maria!" gasped Mrs. White.

"The child is out of her head," said Mrs. Adams, and yet she looked
at Maria with covert approval. She was Ida's intimate friend, but in
her heart of hearts she doubted her grief. She had once lost by death
a little girl of her own. She kept thinking of her little Alice, and
how she should feel in a similar case. It did not seem to her that
she should rock, and look at a Tiffany vase. She inveighed against
the detectives and police with a reserve meaning of indignation
against Ida. It seemed to her that any woman whose child was lost
should be up and generally making a tumult, if she were doing nothing
else.

The Maria, standing before the beautiful woman swaying gently, with
her eyes fixed upon the pink and gold of the vase, spoke out for the
first time what was in her heart of hearts with regard to her.

"You are a wicked woman," said she; "that is what you are. I don't
know as you can help being wicked. I guess you were made wicked; but
you _are_ a wicked woman. Your mouth smiles, but your heart never
does. You act now as if you were sorry," said she, "but you are not
sorry, the way my mother would have been sorry if she had lost me,
the way she would have been sorry if Evelyn had been her little girl
instead of yours. You are a wicked woman. I have always known it, but
I have never told you so before. Now I am going to tell you. Your own
child is lost, you let her be lost. You didn't look out for her. Yes,
your own child is lost, and you sit there and rock!"

Ida for a moment made no reply. The other women, and Gladys and
Wollaston in the vestibule, listened with horror.

"You have had beefsteak and fried potatoes cooked, too," continued
Maria, sniffing, "and you have eaten them. You have been eating
beefsteak and fried potatoes when your own child was lost and you did
not know where she was!" It might have been ridiculous, this last
accusation in the thin, sweet, childish voice, but it was not. It was
even more terrible than anything else.

Ida turned at last. "I hate you," she said slowly. "I have always
hated you. You have hated me ever since I came into this house," she
said, "though I have done more than your own mother ever did for you."

"You have not!" cried Maria. "You have got nice clothes for me, but
my own mother loved me. What are nice clothes to love? You have not
even loved Evelyn. You have only got her nice clothes. You have never
loved her. Poor papa and I were the only ones that loved her. You
never even loved poor papa. You saw to it that he had things to eat,
but you never loved him. You are not made right. All the love in your
heart is for your own self. You are turned the wrong way. I don't
know as you can help it, but you are a dreadful woman. You are
wicked. You never loved the baby, and now you have let her be lost.
She is my own little sister, and papa's child, a great deal more than
she is anything to you. Where is she?" Maria's voice rang wild. Her
face was blazing. She had an abnormal expression in her blue eyes
fixed upon her step-mother.

Ida, after her one outburst, gazed upon her with a sort of fear as
well as repulsion. She again turned to the Tiffany vase.

Mrs. White, sobbing aloud like a child, again put her arms around
Maria.

"Come, come," she said soothingly, "you poor child, I know how you
feel, but you mustn't talk so, you mustn't, dear! You have no right
to judge. You don't know how your mother feels."

"I know how She doesn't feel!" Maria burst out, "and She isn't my
mother. My mother loves me more way off in heaven than that woman
loves Her own child on earth. She doesn't feel. She just rocks, and
thinks how She looks. I hate Her! Let me go!" With that Maria was out
of the room, and ran violently up-stairs.

When she had gone, the three visiting women looked at one another,
and the same covert expression of gratified malice, at some one
having spoken out what was in their inmost hearts, was upon all three
faces. Ida was impassive, with her smiling lips contracted. Mrs.
Applegate again murmured something about uniting in prayer.

Maria came hurrying down-stairs. She had in her hand her purse, which
contained ten dollars, which her father had given her on her
birthday, also a book of New York tickets which had been a present
from Ida, and which Ida herself had borrowed several times since
giving them to Maria. Maria herself seldom went to New York, and Ida
had a fashion of giving presents which might react to her own
benefit. Maria, as she passed the parlor door, glanced in and saw her
step-mother rocking and staring at the vase. Then she was out of the
front-door, racing down the street with Wollaston Lee and Gladys
hardly able to keep up with her. Wollaston reached her finally, and
again caught her arm. The pressure of the hard, warm boy hand was
grateful to the little, hysterical thing, who was trembling from head
to foot, with a strange rigidity of tremors. Gladys also clutched her
other sleeve.

"Say, M'ria Edgham, where be you goin'?" she demanded.

"I'm going to find my little sister," gasped out Maria. She gave a
dry sob as she spoke.

"My!" said Gladys.

"Now, Maria, hadn't you better go back home?" ventured Wollaston.

"No," said Maria, and she ran on towards the station.

"Come home with me to my mother," said Wollaston, pleadingly, but a
little timidly. A girl in such a nervous strait as this was a new
experience for him.

"She can go home with me," said Gladys. "My mother's a heap better
than Ida Slome. Say, M'ria, all them things you said was true, but
land! how did you darse?"

Maria made no reply. She kept on.

"Say, M'ria, you don't mean you're goin' to New York?" said Gladys.

"Yes, I am. I am going to find my little sister."

"My!" said Gladys.

"Now, Maria, don't you think you had better go home with me, and see
mother?" Wollaston said again.

But Maria seemed deaf. In fact, she heard nothing but the sound of
the approaching New York train. She ran like a wild thing, her
little, slim legs skimming the ground like a bird's, almost as if
assisted by wings.

When the train reached the station, Maria climbed in, Wollaston and
Gladys after her. Neither Wollaston nor Gladys had the slightest
premeditation in the matter; they were fairly swept along by the
emotion of their companion.

When the train had fairly started, Gladys, who had seated herself
beside Maria, while Wollaston was in the seat behind them, heaved a
deep sigh of bewilderment and terror. "My!" said she.

Wollaston also looked pale and bewildered. He was only a boy, and had
never been thrown much upon his own responsibility. All that had been
uppermost in his mind was the consideration that Maria could not be
stopped, and she must not go alone to New York. But he did not know
what to think of it all. He felt chaotic. The first thing which
seemed to precipitate his mentality into anything like clearness was
the entrance of the conductor. Then he thought instinctively about
money. Although still a boy, money as a prime factor was already
firmly established in his mind. He reflected with dismay that he had
only his Wardway tickets, and about three dollars beside. It was now
dark. The vaguest visions of what they were to do in New York were in
his head. The fare to New York was a little over a dollar; he had
only enough to take them all in, then what next? He took out his
pocket-book, but Gladys looked around quickly.

"She's got a whole book of tickets," she said.

However, Wollaston, who was proud, started to pay the conductor, but
he had reached Maria first, and she had said "Three," peremptorily.
Then she handed the book to Wollaston, with the grim little ghost of
a smile. "You please keep this," said she. "I haven't got any pocket."

Wollaston was so bewildered that the possession of pockets seemed
instantly to restore his self-respect. He felt decidedly more at his
ease when he had Maria's ticket-book in his innermost pocket. Then
she gave him her purse also.

"I wish you would please take this," said she. "There are ten dollars
in it, and I haven't any pocket." Wollaston took that.

"All right," he said. He buttoned his gray vest securely over Maria's
pretty little red purse. Then he leaned over the seat, and began to
speak, but he absolutely did not know what to say. He made an idiotic
remark about the darkness. "Queer how quick it grows dark, when it
begins," said he.

Maria ignored it, but Gladys said: "Yes, it is awful queer."

Gladys's eyes looked wild. The pupils were dilated. She had been to
New York but once before in her life, and now to be going in the
evening to find Maria's little sister was almost too much for her
intelligence, which had its limitations.

However, after a while, Wollaston Lee spoke again. He was in reality
a keen-witted boy, only this was an emergency into which he had been
surprised, and which he had not foreseen, and Maria's own abnormal
mood had in a measure infected him. Presently he spoke to the point.

"What on earth are you going to do when you get to New York, anyhow?"
said he to Maria.

"Find her," replied Maria, laconically.

"But New York is a mighty big city. How do you mean to go to work?
Now I--"

Maria cut him short. "I am going right up to Her cousin's, on West
Forty-ninth Street, and find out if Evelyn is there," said she.

"But what would make the child want to go there, anyhow?"

"It was the only place she had ever been in New York," said Maria.

"But I don't see what particular reason she would have for going
there, though," said Wollaston. "How would she remember the street
and number?"

"She was an awful bright kid," said Gladys, with a momentary lapse of
reason, "and kids is queer. I know, 'cause we've got so many of 'em
to our house. Sometimes they'll remember things you don't ever think
they would. My little sister Maud remembers how my mother drowned
five kittens oncet, when she was in long clothes. We knowed she did,
'cause when the cat had kittens next time we caught her trying to
drown 'em herself. Kids is awful queer. Maud can't remember how to
spell her own name, either, and she's most six now. She spells it
M-a-u-d, when it had ought to be M-a-u-g-h-d. I shouldn't be one mite
surprised if M'ria's little sister remembered the street and number."

"Anyway, she knew her whole name, because I've heard her say it,"
said Maria. "Her cousin's name is Mrs. George B. Edison. Evelyn used
to say it, and we used to laugh."

"Oh, well, if she knew the name like that she might have found the
place all right," said Wollaston. "But what puzzles me is why she
wanted to go there, anyway?"

"I don't know," said Maria.

"I don't know," said Wollaston, "but it seems to me the best thing to
do would be to go directly to a police-office and have the chief of
police notified, and set them at work; but then I suppose your father
has done that already."

Maria turned upon him with indignation. "Go to a police-station to
find my little sister!" said she. "What would I go there for?"

"Yes, what do you suppose that kid has did?" asked Gladys.

"What would I go there for?" demanded Maria, flashing the light of
her excited, strained little face upon the boy.

Maria no longer looked pretty. She no longer looked even young. Lines
of age were evident around her mouth, her forehead was wrinkled. The
boy fairly started at the sight of her. She seemed like a stranger to
him. Her innermost character, which he had heretofore only guessed at
by superficial signs, was written plainly on her face. The boy felt
himself immeasurably small and young, manly and bold of his age as he
really was. When a young girl stretches to the full height of her
instincts, she dwarfs any boy of her own age. Maria's feeling for her
little sister was fairly maternal. She was in spirit a mother
searching for her lost young, rather than a girl searching for her
little sister. Her whole soul expanded. She fairly looked larger, as
well as older. When they got off the train at Jersey City, she led
the little procession straight for the Twenty-third Street ferry. She
marched ahead like a woman of twice her years.

"You had better hold up your dress, M'ria," said Gladys, coming up
with her, and looking at her with wonder. "My, how you do race!"

Maria reached round one hand and caught a fold of her skirt. Her new
dress was in fact rather long for her. Ida had remarked that morning
that she would have Miss Keeler shorten it on Saturday. Ida had no
wish to have a grown-up step-daughter quite yet, whom people might
take for her own.

The three reached the ferry-boat just as she was about to leave her
slip. They sat down in a row midway of the upper deck. The heat
inside was intense. Gladys loosened her shabby little sacque. Maria
sat impassible.

"Ain't you most baked in here?" asked Gladys.

"No," replied Maria.

Both Gladys and Wollaston looked cowed. They kept glancing at each
other and at Maria. Maria sat next Gladys, Wollaston on Gladys's
other side. Gladys nudged Wollaston, and whispered to him.

"We've jest got to stick close to her," she whispered, in an alarmed
cadence. The boy nodded.

Then they both glanced again at Maria, who seemed quite oblivious of
their attention. When they reached the other side, Wollaston, with an
effort, asserted himself.

"We had better take a cross-town car to the Sixth Avenue Elevated,"
he said, pressing close to Maria's side and seizing her arm again.

Maria shook her head. "No," she said. "Where Mrs. Edison lives is not
so near the Elevated. It will be better to take a cross-town car and
transfer at Seventh Avenue."

"All right," said Wollaston. He led the way in the run down the
stairs, and aided his companions onto the cross-town car. He paid
their fares, and got the transfers, and stopped the other car. He was
beginning to feel himself again, at least temporarily.

"Well, I think the police-station is the best place to look, but have
your own way. It won't take long to see if she is there now," said
Wollaston. He was hanging on a strap in front of Maria. The car was
crowded with people going to up-town theatres. Some of the ladies, in
showy evening wraps, giving glimpses of delicate waists, looked
curiously at the three. There was something extraordinary about their
appearance calculated to attract attention, although it was difficult
to say just why. After they had left the car, a lady with a white
lace blouse showing between the folds of a red cloak, said to her
escort: "I wonder who they were?"

"I don't know," said the man, who had been watching them. "I thought
there was something unusual."

"I thought so, too. That well-dressed young woman, and that handsome
boy, and that shabby little girl." By the "young woman" she meant
Maria.

"Yes, a queer combination," said the man.

"It wasn't altogether that, but they looked so desperately in
earnest."

Meantime, while the lights of the car disappeared up the avenue,
Maria, Wollaston, and Gladys Mann searched for the house in which had
lived Ida Edgham's cousin.

At last they found it, mounted the steps, and rang the bell. It was
an apartment-house. After a little the door opened of itself.

"My!" said Gladys, but she followed Wollaston and Maria inside.

Wollaston began searching the names above the rows of bells on the
wall of the vestibule.

"What did you say the name was?" he asked of Maria.

"Edison. Mrs. George B. Edison."

"There is no such name here."

"There must be."

"There isn't."

"Let me see," said Maria. She searched the names. "Well, I don't
care," said she. "It was on the third floor, and I am going up and
ask, anyway."

"Now, Maria, do you think--" began Wollaston.

But Maria began climbing the stairs. There was no elevator.

"My!" said Gladys, but she followed Maria.

Wollaston pushed by them both. "See here, you don't know what you are
getting into," said he, sternly. "You let _me_ go first."

When they reached the third floor, Maria pointed to a door. "That is
the door," she whispered, breathlessly.

Wollaston knocked. Immediately the door was flung open by a very
pretty young woman in a rose-colored evening gown. Her white
shoulders gleamed through the transparent chiffon, and a comb set
with rhinestones sparkled in the fluff of her blond hair. When she
saw the three she gave a shrill scream, and immediately a very small
man, much smaller than she, but with a fierce cock of a black pointed
beard, and a tremendous wiriness of gesture, appeared.

"Oh, Tom!" gasped the young woman. "Oh!"

"What on earth is the matter, Stella?" asked the man. Then he looked
fiercely at the three. "Who are these people?" he asked.

"I don't know. I opened the door. I thought it was Adeline and
Raymond, and then I saw these strange people. I don't know how they
got in."

"We came in the door," said Gladys, with some asperity, "and we are
lookin' for M'ria's little sister. Be you her ma-in-law's cousin?"

"I don't know who these people are," the young woman said, faintly,
to the man. "I think they must be burglars."

"Burglars, nothin'!" said Gladys, who had suddenly assumed the
leadership of the party. Opposition and suspicion stimulated her. She
loved a fight. "Be you her ma-in-law's cousin, and have you got her
little sister?"

Wollaston looked inquiringly at Maria, who was very pale.

"It isn't Her cousin," she gasped. "I don't know who she is. I never
saw her."

Then Wollaston spoke, hat in hand, and speaking up like a man.
"Pardon us, sir," he said, "we did not intend to intrude, but--"

"Get out of this," said the man, with a sudden dart towards the door.

His wife screamed again, and put her hand over a little diamond
brooch at her throat. "I just know they are sneak-thieves," she
gasped. "Do send them away, Tom!"

Wollaston tried to speak again. "We merely wished to ascertain," said
he, "if a lady by the name of Mrs. George A.--"

"B." interrupted Gladys.

"B. Edison lived here. This young lady's little sister is lost, and
Mrs. Edison is a relative, and we thought--"

The man made another dart. "Don't care what you thought," he shouted.
"Keep your thoughts to yourself! Get out of here!"

"Do you know where Mrs. George B. Edison lives now?" asked Wollaston,
courteously, but his black eyes flashed at the man.

"No, I don't."

"No, we don't," said the young woman in pink. "Do make them go, Tom."

"We are perfectly willing to go," said Wollaston. "We have no desire
to remain any longer where people are not willing to answer civil
questions."

Maria all this time had said nothing. She was perfectly overcome with
the conviction that Ida's cousin was not there, and consequently not
Evelyn. Moreover, she was frightened at the little man's fierce
manner. She clung to Wollaston's arm as they retreated, but Gladys
turned around and deliberately stuck her tongue out at the man and
the young woman in rose. The man slammed the door.

The three met on the stoop of the house two people in gay attire.

"Go up and see your friends that don't know how to treat folks
decent," said Gladys. The woman looked wonderingly at her from under
the shade of a picture hat. Her escort opened the door. "Ten chances
to one they had the kid hid somewhere," said Gladys, so loudly that
both turned and looked at her.

"Hush up," said Wollaston.

"Well, what be you goin' to do now?" asked Gladys.

"I am going to a drug-store, and see if I can find out where Maria's
relatives have moved to," replied Wollaston. He walked quite alertly
now. Maria's discomfiture had reassured him.

They walked along a few blocks until they saw the lights of a
drug-store on the corner. Then Wollaston led them in and marched up
to the directory chained to the counter.

"What's that?" Gladys asked. "A Bible?"

"No, it's a directory," Maria replied, in a dull voice.

"What do they keep it chained for? Books don't run away."

"I suppose they are afraid folks will steal it."

"My!" said Gladys, eying the big volume. "I don't see what on earth
they'd do with it when they got it stole," she remarked, in a low,
reflective voice.

Maria leaned against the counter and waited.

Finally, Wollaston turned to her with an apologetic air. "I can't
find any George B. here," he said. "You are sure it was B?"

"Yes," replied Maria.

"Well, there's no use," said Wollaston. "There is no George B. Edison
in this book, anyhow."

He came forward, and stood looking at Maria. Maria gazed absently at
the crowds passing on the street. Gladys watched them both.

"Well," said Gladys, presently, "you ain't goin' to stand here all
night, be you? What be you goin' to do next? Go to the police-station?"

"I don't see that there is any use," replied Wollaston. "Maria's
father must have been there by this time. This is a wild-goose chase
anyhow." Wollaston's tone was quite vicious. He scowled
superciliously at the salesman who stepped forward and asked if he
wanted anything. "No, we don't, thank you," he said.

"What be you goin' to do?" asked Gladys, again. She looked at the
soda-fountain.

"I don't see anything to do but to go home," said Wollaston. "There
is no sense in our chasing around New York any longer, that I can
see."

"You can't go home to-night, anyhow," Gladys said, quite calmly.
"They've took off that last train, and there ain't more'n ten minutes
to git down to the station."

Wollaston turned pale, and looked at her with horror. "What makes you
think they've taken off that last train?" he demanded.

"Ain't my pa brakeman when he's sober, and he's been real sober for
quite a spell now."

Wollaston seized Maria by the arm. "Come, quick!" he said, and
leaving the drug-store he broke into a run for the Elevated, with
Gladys following.

"There ain't no use in your runnin'," said she. "You know yourself
you can't git down to Cortlandt Street, and walk to the ferry in ten
minutes. I never went but oncet, but I know it can't be did."

Wollaston slackened his pace. "That is so," he said. Then he looked
at Maria in a kind of angry despair. He felt, in spite of his
romantic predilection for her, that he wished she were a boy, so he
could say something forcible. He realized his utter helplessness with
these two girls in a city where he knew no one, and he again thought
of the three dollars in his pocket-book. He did not suppose that
Maria had more than fifty cents in hers. Then, too, he was worldly
wise enough to realize the difficulty of the situation, the possible
danger even. It was ten o'clock at night, and here he was with two
young girls to look out for.

Then Gladys, who had also worldly wisdom, although of a crude and
vulgar sort, spoke. "Folks are goin' to talk like the old Harry if we
stay in here all night," said she, "and besides, there's no knowin'
what is a safe place to go into."

"That is so," said Wollaston, gloomily, "and I--have not much money
with me."

"I've got money enough," Maria said, suddenly. "There are ten dollars
in my pocket-book I gave you to keep."

"My!" said Gladys.

Wollaston brightened for a moment, then his face clouded again.
"Well, I don't know as that makes it much better," said he. "I don't
quite see how to manage. They are so particular in hotels now, that I
don't know as I can get you into a decent one. As for myself, I don't
care. I can look out for myself, but I don't know what to do with
you, Maria."

Gladys made a little run and stepped in front of them. "There ain't
but one thing you can do, so Maria won't git talked about all the
rest of her life, and I kin tell you what it is," said she.

"What is it?" asked Wollaston, in a burst of anger. "I call it a
pretty pickle we are in, for my part. Ten chances to one, Mr. Edgham
has got the baby back home safe and sound by this time, anyway, and
here we are, here is Maria!"

"There ain't but one thing you can do," said Gladys. Her tone was
forcible. She was full of the vulgar shrewdness of a degenerate race,
for the old acumen of that race had sharpened her wits.

"What! in Heaven's name?" cried Wollaston.

The three had been slowly walking along, and had stopped near a
church, which was lighted. As they were talking the lights went out.
A thin stream of people ceased issuing from the open doors. A man in
a clerical dress approached them, walking quite rapidly. He was
evidently bound, from the trend of his steps, to a near-by house,
which was his residence.

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