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

M >> Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> By the Light of the Soul

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Then the woman crimsoned with wrath and she found speech, the patois
of New England, instead of New Jersey, to which Maria was accustomed,
and which she understood. This woman, instead of half speaking, ran
all her words together in a coarse, nasal monotone.

"Hadn't nothin' to put on her," she said. "She'd outgrowed all she
had, hadn't nothin', mind your own business, go 'long home, where you
b'long."

Maria understood the last words, and she replied, fiercely, "I am not
going home one step until you promise me you'll get decent underwear
for this child to wear to school," said she, "and that you won't
allow her to go out-of-doors in this condition again. If you do, I'll
have you arrested."

The woman's face grew redder. She made a threatening movement towards
Maria, but the man beside the stove unexpectedly arose and slouched
between them, grinning and feeling in his pocket, whence he withdrew
two one-dollar notes.

"Here," he said, in a growling voice, which was nevertheless intended
to be ingratiating. "Go 'n' buy the young one somethin' to go to
school in. Don't yer mind."

Maria half extended her hand, then she drew it back. She looked at
the man, who exhaled whiskey as a fungus an evil perfume. She glanced
at Mrs. Ramsey.

"Is this man your father?" she asked of Jessy.

Immediately the boy burst into a peal of meaning laughter. The man
himself chuckled, then looked grave, with an effort, as he stood
extending the money.

"Better take 'em an' buy the young one some clothes," he said.

"Who is this man?" demanded Maria, severely, of the laughing boy.

"It's Mr. John Dorsey," replied Franky.

Then a light of the underneath evil fire of the world broke upon
Maria's senses. She repelled the man haughtily.

"I don't want your money," said she. "But"--she turned to the
woman--"if you send that child to school again, clothed as she is
to-day, I will have you arrested. I mean it." With that she was gone,
with a proud motion. Laughter rang out after her, also a scolding
voice and an oath. She did not turn her head. She marched straight on
out of the yard, to the street, and home.

She could not eat her supper. She had a sick, shocked feeling.

"What is the matter?" her aunt Maria asked. "It's so cold you can't
have been bothered with the smells to-day."

"It's worse than smells," replied Maria. Then she told her story.

Her aunt stared at her. "Good gracious! You didn't go to that awful
house, a young girl like you?" she said, and her prim cheeks burned.
"Why, that man's livin' right there with Mrs. Ramsey, and her husband
winking at it! They are awful people!"

"I would have gone anywhere to get that poor child clothed decently,"
said Maria.

"But you wouldn't take his money!"

"I rather guess I wouldn't!"

"Well, I don't blame you, but I don't see what is going to be done."

"I don't," said Maria, helplessly. She reflected how she had disposed
already of her small stipend, and would not have any more for some
time, and how her own clothing no more than sufficed for her.

"I can't give her a thing," said Aunt Maria. "I'm wearin' flannels
myself that are so patched there isn't much left of the first of 'em,
and it's just so with the rest of my clothes. I'm wearin' a petticoat
made out of a comfortable my mother made before Henry was married. It
was quilted fine, and had a small pattern, if it is copperplate, but
I don't darse hold my dress up only just so. I wouldn't have anybody
know it for the world. And I know Eunice ain't much better off. They
had that big doctor's bill, and I know she's patched and darned so
she'd be ashamed of her life if she fell down on the ice and broke a
bone. I tell you what it is, those other Ramseys ought to do
something. I don't care if they are such distant relations, they
ought to do something."

After supper Maria and her aunt went into the other side of the
house, and Aunt Maria, who had been waxing fairly explosive, told the
tale of poor little Jessy Ramsey going to school with no
undergarments.

"It's a shame!" said Eunice, who was herself nervous and easily
aroused to indignation. She sat up straight and the hollows on her
thin cheeks blazed, and her thin New England mouth tightened.

"George Ramsey ought to do something if he is earning as much as they
say he is," said Aunt Maria.

"That is so," said Eunice. "It doesn't make any difference if they
are so distantly related. It is the same name and the same blood."

Henry Stillman laughed his sardonic laugh. "You can't expect the
flowers to look out for the weeds," he said. "George Ramsey and his
mother are in full blossom; they have fixed up their house and are
holding up their heads. You can't expect them to look out for poor
relations who have gone to the bad, and done worse--got too poor to
buy clothes enough to keep warm."

Maria suddenly sprang to her feet. "I know what I am going to do,"
she announced, with decision, and made for the door.

"What on earth are you going to do?" asked her aunt Maria.

"I am going straight in there, and I am going to tell them how that
poor little thing came to school to-day, and tell them they ought to
be ashamed of themselves."

Before the others fairly realized what she was doing, Maria was out
of the house, running across the little stretch which intervened. Her
aunt Maria called after her, but she paid no attention. She was at
that moment ringing the Ramsey bell, with her pretty, uncovered hair
tossing in the December wind.

"She will catch her own death of cold," said Aunt Maria, "running out
without anything on her head."

"She will just get patronized for her pains," said Eunice, who had a
secret grudge against the Ramseys for their prosperity and their
renovated house, a grudge which she had not ever owned to her inmost
self, but which nevertheless existed.

"She doesn't stop to think one minute; she's just like her father
about that," said Aunt Maria.

Henry Stillman said nothing. He took up his paper, which he had been
reading when Maria and his sister entered.

Meantime, Maria was being ushered into the Ramsey house by a maid who
wore a white cap. The first thing which she noticed as she entered
the house was a strong fragrance of flowers. That redoubled her
indignation.

"These Ramseys can buy flowers in midwinter," she thought, "while
their own flesh and blood go almost naked."

She entered the room in which the flowers were, a great bunch of pink
carnations in a tall, green vase. The room was charming. It was not
only luxurious, but gave evidences of superior qualities in its
owners. It was empty when Maria entered, but soon Mrs. Ramsey and her
son came in. Maria recognized with a start her old acquaintance, or
rather she did not recognize him. She would not have known him at all
had she not seen him in his home. She had not seen him before, for he
had been away ever since she had come to Amity. He had been West on
business for his bank. Now he at once stepped forward and spoke to
her.

"You are my old friend, Miss Edgham, I think," he said. "Allow me to
present my mother."

Maria bowed perforce before the very gentle little lady in a soft
lavender cashmere, with her neck swathed in laces, but she did not
accept the offered seat, and she utterly disregarded the glance of
astonishment which both mother and son gave at her uncovered
shoulders and head. Maria's impetuosity had come to her from two
sides. When it was in flood, so to speak, nothing could stop it.

"No, thank you, I can't sit down," she said. "I came on an errand.
You are related, I believe, to the other Ramseys. The children go to
my school. There are Mamie and Franky and Jessy."

"We are very distantly related, and, on the whole, proud of the
distance rather than the relationship," said George Ramsey, with a
laugh.

Then Maria turned fiercely upon him. "You ought to be ashamed of
yourself," said she.

The young man stared at her.

Maria persisted. "Yes, you ought," she said. "I don't care how
distant the relationship is, the same blood is in your veins, and you
bear the same name."

"Why, what is the matter?" asked George Ramsey, still in a puzzled,
amused voice.

Maria spoke out. "That poor little Jessy Ramsey," said she, "and she
is the prettiest and brightest scholar I have, too, came to school
to-day without a single stitch of clothing under her dress. It is a
wonder she didn't die. I don't know but she will die, and if she does
it will be your fault."

George Ramsey's face suddenly sobered; his mother's flushed. She
looked at him, then at Maria, almost with fright. She felt really
afraid of this forcible girl, who was so very angry and so very
pretty in her anger. Maria had never looked prettier than she did
then, with her cheeks burning and her blue eyes flashing with
indignation and defiance.

"That is terrible, such a day as this," said George Ramsey.

"Yes; I had no idea they were quite so badly off," murmured his
mother.

"You ought to have had some idea," flashed out Maria.

"We had not, Miss Edgham," said George, gently. "You must remember
how very distant the relationship is. I believe it begins with the
fourth generation from myself. And there are other reasons--"

"There ought not to be other reasons," Maria said.

Mrs. Ramsey looked with wonder and something like terror and aversion
at this pretty, violent girl, who was espousing so vehemently, not to
say rudely, the cause of the distant relatives of her husband's
family. The son, however, continued to smile amusedly at Maria.

"Won't you sit down, Miss Edgham?" he said.

"Yes, won't you sit down?" his mother repeated, feebly.

"No, thank you," said Maria. "I only came about this. I--I would do
something for the poor little thing myself, but I haven't any money
now, and Aunt Maria would, and Uncle Henry, and Aunt Eunice, but
they--"

All at once Maria, who was hardly more than a child herself, and who
had been in reality frightfully wrought up over the piteous plight of
the other child, lost control of herself. She began to cry. She put
her handkerchief to her face and sobbed helplessly.

"The poor little thing! oh, the poor little thing!" she panted, "with
nobody in the world to do anything for her, and her own people so
terribly wicked. I--can't bear it!"

The first thing she knew, Maria was having a large, soft cloak folded
around her, and somebody was leading her gently to the door. She
heard a murmured good-night, to which she did not respond except by a
sob, and was led, with her arm rather closely held, along the
sidewalk to her own door. At the door George Ramsey took her hand,
and she felt something pressed softly into it.

"If you will please buy what the poor little thing needs to make her
comfortable," he whispered.

"Thank you," Maria replied, faintly. She began to be ashamed of her
emotion.

"You must not think that my mother and I were knowing to this,"
George Ramsey said. "We are really such very distant relations that
the name alone is the only bond between us; still, on general
principles, if the name had been different, I would do what I could.
Such suffering is terrible. You must not think us hard-hearted, Miss
Edgham."

Maria looked up at the young fellow's face, upon which an electric
light shone fully, and it was a good face to see. She could not at
all reconcile it with her memory of the rather silly little boy with
the patched trousers, with whom she had discoursed over the garden
fence. This face was entirely masterly, dark and clean-cut, with fine
eyes, and a distinctly sweet expression about the mouth which he had
inherited from his mother.

"I suppose I was very foolish," Maria said, in a low voice. "I am
afraid I was rude to your mother. I did not mean to be, but the poor
little thing, and this bitter day, and I went home with her, and
there was a dreadful man there who offered me money to buy things for
her--"

"I hope you did not take it," George Ramsey said, quickly.

"No."

"I am glad of that. They are a bad lot. I don't know about this
little girl. She may be a survival of the fittest, but take them all
together they are a bad lot, if they are my relatives. Good-night,
Miss Edgham, and I beg you not to distress yourself about it all."

"I am very sorry if I was rude," Maria said, and she spoke like a
little girl.

"You were not rude at all," George responded, quickly. "You were only
all worked up over such suffering, and it did you credit. You were
not rude at all." He shook hands again with Maria. Then he asked if
he might call and see her sometime. Maria said yes, and fled into the
house.

She went into her aunt Maria's side of the house, and ran straight
up-stairs to her own room. Presently she heard doors opening and
shutting and knew that her aunt was curiously following her from the
other side. She came to Maria's door, which was locked. Aunt Maria
was not surprised at that, as Maria always locked her door at
night--she herself did the same.

"Have you gone to bed?" called Aunt Maria.

"Yes," replied Maria, who had, indeed, hurriedly hustled herself into
bed.

"Gone to bed early as this?" said Aunt Maria.

"I am dreadfully tired," replied Maria.

"Did they give you anything? Why didn't you come into the other side
and tell us about it?"

"Mr. George Ramsey gave me ten dollars."

"Gracious!" said Aunt Maria.

Presently she spoke again. "What did they say?" she asked.

"Not much of anything."

"Gave you ten dollars?" said Aunt Maria. "Well, you can get enough to
make her real comfortable with that. Didn't you get chilled through
going over there without anything on?"

"No," replied Maria, and as she spoke she realized, in the moonlit
room, a mass of fur-lined cloak over a chair. She had forgotten to
return it to George Ramsey. "I had Mrs. Ramsey's cloak coming home,"
she called.

"Well, I'm glad you did. It's awful early to go to bed. Don't you
want something?"

"No, thank you."

"Don't you want me to heat a soapstone and fetch it up to you?"

"No, thank you."

"Well, good-night," said Aunt Maria, in a puzzled voice.

"Good-night," said Maria. Then she heard her aunt go away.

It was a long time before Maria went to sleep. She awoke about two
o'clock in the morning and was conscious of having been awakened by a
strange odor, a combined odor of camphor and lavender, which came
from Mrs. Ramsey's cloak. It disturbed her, although she could not
tell why. Then all at once she saw, as plainly as if he were really
in the room, George Ramsey's face. At first a shiver of delight came
over her; then she shuddered. A horror, as of one under conviction of
sin, came over her. It was as if she repelled an evil angel from her
door, for she remembered all at once what had happened to her, and
that it was a sin for her even to dream of George Ramsey; and she had
allowed him to come into her waking dreams. She got out of bed, took
up the soft cloak, thrust it into her closet, and shut the door. Then
she climbed shivering back into bed, and lay there in the moonlight,
entangled in the mystery of life.

Chapter XIX

The very next day, which was Saturday, and consequently a holiday,
Maria went on the trolley to Westbridge, which was a provincial city
about six miles from Amity. She proposed buying some clothing for
Jessy Ramsey with the ten dollars which George Ramsey had given her.
Her aunt Eunice accompanied her.

"George Ramsey goes over to Westbridge on the trolley," said Eunice,
as they jolted along--the cars were very well equipped, but the road
was rough--"and I shouldn't wonder if he was on our car coming back."

Maria colored quickly and looked out of the window. The cars were
constructed like those on steam railroads, with seats facing towards
the front, and Maria's aunt had insisted upon her sitting next to the
window because the view was in a measure new to her. She had not been
over the road many times since she had come to Amity. She stared out
at the trimly kept country road, lined with cheap Queen Anne houses
and the older type of New England cottages and square frame houses,
and it all looked strange to her after the red soil and the lapse
towards Southern ease and shiftlessness of New Jersey. But nothing
that she looked upon was as strange as the change in her own heart.
Maria, from being of an emotional nature, had many times considered
herself as being in love, young as she was, but this was different.
When her aunt Eunice spoke of George Ramsey she felt a rigid shiver
from head to foot. It seemed to her that she could not see him nor
speak to him, that she could not return to Amity on the same car. She
made no reply at first to her aunt's remark, but finally she said, in
a faint voice, that she supposed Mr. Ramsey came home after bank
hours at three o'clock.

"He comes home a good deal later than that, as a general thing," said
Eunice. "Oftener than not I see him get off the car at six o'clock. I
guess he stays and works after bank hours. George Ramsey is a worker,
if there ever was one. He's a real likely young man."

Maria felt Eunice's eyes upon her, and realized that she was
thinking, as her aunt Maria had done, that George Ramsey would be a
good match for her. A sort of desperation seized upon her.

"I don't know what you mean by likely," Maria said, impertinently, in
her shame and defiance.

"Don't know what I mean by likely?"

"No, I don't. People in New Jersey don't say likely."

"Why, I mean he is a good young man, and likely to turn out well,"
responded Eunice, rather helplessly. She was a very gentle woman, and
had all her life been more or less intimidated by her husband's and
sister-in-laws' more strenuous natures; and, if the truth were told,
she stood in a little awe of this blooming young niece, with her
self-possession and clothes of the New York fashion.

"I don't see why he is more _likely_, as you call it, than any other
young man," Maria returned, pitilessly. "I should call him a very
ordinary young man."

"He isn't called so generally," Eunice said, feebly.

They were about half an hour reaching Westbridge. Eunice by that time
had plucked up a little spirit. She reflected that Maria knew almost
nothing about the shopping district, and she herself had shopped
there all her life since she had been of shopping age. Eunice had a
great respect for the Westbridge stores, and considered them
distinctly superior to those of Boston. She was horrified when Maria
observed, shortly before they got off the car, that she supposed they
could have done much better in Boston.

"I guess you will find that Adams & Wood's is as good a store as any
you could go to in New York," said Eunice. "Then there is the Boston
Store, too, and Collins & Green's. All of them are very good, and
they have a good assortment. Hardly anybody in Amity goes anywhere
else shopping, they think the Westbridge stores so much better."

"Of course it is cheaper to come here," said Maria, as they got off
the car in front of Adams & Wood's.

"That isn't the reason," said Eunice, eagerly. "Why, Mrs. Judge
Saunders buys 'most everything here; says she can do enough sight
better than she can anywhere else."

"If the dress Mrs. Saunders had on at the church supper was a sample,
she dresses like a perfect guy," said Maria, as they entered the
store, with its two pretentious show-windows filled with waxen ladies
dressed in the height of the fashion, standing in the midst of
symmetrically arranged handkerchiefs and rugs.

Maria knew that she was even cruelly pert to her aunt, but she felt
like stinging--like crowding some of the stings out of her own heart.
She asked herself was ever any girl so horribly placed as she was,
married, and not married; and now she had seen some one else whom she
must shun and try to hate, although she wished to love him. Maria
felt instinctively, remembering the old scenes over the garden fence,
and remembering how she herself had looked that very day as she
started out, with her puffy blue velvet turban rising above the soft
roll of her fair hair and her face blooming through a film of brown
lace, and also remembering George Ramsey's tone as he asked if he
might call, that if she were free that things might happen with her
as with other girls; that she and George Ramsey might love each
other, and become engaged; that she might save her school money for a
trousseau, and by-and-by be married to a man of whom she should be
very proud. The patches on George Ramsey's trousers became very dim
to her. She admired him from the depths of her heart.

"I guess we had better look at flannels first," Eunice said. "It
won't do to get all wool, aside from the expense, for with that
Ramsey woman's washing it wouldn't last any time."

She and her aunt made most of their purchases in Adams & Wood's. They
succeeded in obtaining quite a comfortable little outfit for Jessy
Ramsey, and at last boarded a car laden with packages. Eunice had a
fish-net bag filled to overflowing, but Maria, who, coming from the
vicinity of New York, looked down on bags, carried her parcels in her
arms.

Directly they were seated in the car Eunice gave Maria a violent
nudge with her sharp elbow. "He's on this car," she whispered in her
ear, with a long hiss which seemed to penetrate the girl's brain.

Maria made an impatient movement.

"Don't you think you ought to just step over and thank him?"
whispered Eunice. "I'll hold your bundles. He's on the other side, a
seat farther back. He raised his hat to me."

"Hush! I can't here."

"Well, all right, but I thought it would look sort of polite," said
Eunice. Then she subsided. Once in a while she glanced back at George
Ramsey, then uneasily at her niece, but she said nothing more.

The car was crowded. Workmen smelling of leather clung to the straps.
One, in the aisle next Maria, who sat on the outside this time,
leaned fairly against her. He was a good-looking young fellow, but he
had a heavy jaw. He held an unlighted pipe in his mouth, and carried
a two-story tin dinner-pail. Maria kept shrinking closer to her aunt,
but the young man pressed against her all the more heavily. His eyes
were fixed with seeming unconsciousness ahead, but a furtive smile
lurked around his mouth.

George Ramsey was watching. All at once he arose and quietly and
unobtrusively came forward, insinuated himself with a gentle force
between Maria and the workman, and spoke to her. The workman muttered
something under his breath, but moved aside. He gave an ugly glance
at George, who did not seem to see him at all. Presently he sat down
in George's vacated seat beside another man, who said something to
him with a coarse chuckle. The man growled in response, and continued
to scowl furtively at George, who stood talking to Maria. He said
something about the fineness of the day, and Maria responded rather
gratefully. She was conscious of an inward tumult which alarmed her,
and made her defiant both at the young man and herself, but she could
not help responding to the sense of protection which she got from his
presence. She had not been accustomed to anything like the rudeness
of the young workman. In New Jersey caste was more clearly defined.
Here it was not defined at all. An employe in a shoe-factory had not
the slightest conception that he was not the social equal of a
school-teacher, and indeed in many cases he was. There were by no
means all like this one, whose mere masculine estate filled him with
entire self-confidence where women were concerned. In a sense his
ignorance was pathetic. He had honestly thought that the pretty,
strange girl must like his close contact, and he felt aggrieved that
this other young man, who did not smell of leather and carried no
dinner-pail, had ousted him. He viewed Maria's delicate profile with
a sort of angry tenderness.

"Say, she's a beaut, ain't she?" whispered the man beside him, with a
malicious grin, and again got a surly growl in response.

Maria finally, much to her aunt's delight, said to George that they
had been shopping, and thanked him for the articles which his money
had enabled them to buy.

"The poor little thing can go to school now," said Maria. There was
gratitude in her voice, and yet, oddly enough, still a tinge of
reproach.

"If mother and I had dreamed of the true state of affairs we would
have done something before," George Ramsey said, with an accent of
apology; and yet he could not see for the life of him why he should
be apologetic for the poverty of these degenerate relatives of his.
He could not see why he was called upon to be his brother's keeper in
this case, but there was something about Maria's serious, accusing
gaze of blue eyes, and her earnest voice, that made him realize that
he could prostrate himself before her for uncommitted sins. Somehow,
Maria made him feel responsible for all that he might have done wrong
as well as his actual wrong-doing, although he laughed at himself for
his mental attitude. Suddenly a thought struck him. "When are you
going to take all these things (how you ever managed to get so much
for ten dollars I don't understand) to the child?" he asked, eagerly.

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