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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"Maybe you are right," said Eunice, "but I know when I was a girl
Maria's age I wouldn't have let an old man like Professor Lane, with
the consumption, too, tie my shoes. Do you suppose he really sent her
the roses?"

"Who else could have sent them?"

"They must have cost an awful sight of money," said Eunice, in an
awed tone. Then she stopped, for Maria re-entered the room with the
roses in a tall vase. She wore some of them pinned to the shoulder of
her blue gown that evening. She knew who had sent them, and it seemed
to her that she did not overestimate the significance of the sending.
When she started for Westbridge that evening she was radiant. She had
the roses carefully pinned in tissue-paper to protect them from the
cold; her long, blue cloak swept about her in graceful folds, she
wore a blue hat with a long, blue feather.

"Why didn't you wear a head tie?" asked Aunt Maria. "Ain't you afraid
you will spoil that hat if you take it off? The feather will get all
mussy."

"I shall put it in a safe place," replied Maria, smiling. She blushed
as she spoke. She knew perfectly well herself why she wore that hat,
because she thought Wollaston might escort her to the trolley, and
she wished to appear at her best in his eyes. Maria no longer
disguised from herself the fact that she loved this man who was her
husband and not her husband. She knew that she was entirely ready to
respond to his advances, should he make any, that she would be
happier than she had ever been in her whole life if the secret which
had been the horror of her life should be revealed. She wondered if
it would not be better to have another wedding. That night she had
not much doubt of Wollaston's love for her. When she entered the car,
and saw besides herself several young girls prinked in their best,
who were also going to the Christmas-tree, she felt a sort of amused
pride, that all their prinking and preening was in vain. She assumed
that all of them had dressed to attract Wollaston. She could not
think of any other man whom any girl could wish to attract. She sat
radiant with her long, blue feather sweeping the soft, yellow puff of
her hair. She gave an affect of smiling at everybody, at all
creation. She really felt for the first time that she could remember
a sense of perfect acquiescence with the universal scheme of things,
therefore she felt perfect content and happiness. She thought how
wonderful it was that poor Gladys Mann, lying in her unmarked grave
this Christmas-time, should have been the means, all unwittingly, of
bringing such bliss to herself. She thought how wonderful that
Evelyn's loss should have been the first link in such a sequence. She
thought of Evelyn with a sort of gratitude, as if she had done
something incalculable for her. She also thought of her as always
with the utmost love and pride and tenderness. She reflected with
pleasure on the gift which she herself had hung on the tree for
Evelyn, and how pleased the child would be. It was a tiny gold brooch
with a pearl in the centre. Evelyn was very fond of ornaments. Maria
did not once imagine of the possibility that Evelyn could have any
dreams herself with regard to Wollaston. She did not in reality think
of Evelyn as old enough to have any dreams at all which need be
considered seriously, and least of all about Wollaston Lee. She
nodded to a young man, younger than herself, who was in Evelyn's
class at the academy, who sat across the aisle, and he returned the
nod eagerly. He was well grown, and handsome, and looked as old as
Maria herself. Presently as the car began to fill up, he crossed the
aisle, and asked if he might sit beside her. Maria made room at once.
She smiled at the young fellow with her smile which belonged in
reality to another man, and he took it for himself. Perhaps nothing
on earth is so misappropriated as smiles and tears. The seat was
quite narrow. It was necessary to sit rather close, in any event, but
presently Maria felt the boy's broad shoulder press unmistakably
against hers. She shrank away with an imperceptible motion. She did
not feel so much angry as amused at the thought that this great boy
should be making love to her, when all her heart was with some one
else, when she could not even give him a pleasant look which belonged
wholly to him. Maria leaned against the window, and gazed out at the
flying shadows. "I am glad it is so pleasant," she said in a
perfectly unconcerned voice.

"Yes, so am I," the boy replied, but his voice shook with emotion.
Maria thought again how ridiculous it was. Then suddenly she
reflected that this might not be on her account but Evelyn's. She
thought that the boy might be trying to ingratiate himself with her
on her sister's account. She felt at once indignation and a sense of
pity. She was sure that Evelyn had never thought of him. She glanced
at the boy's handsome, manly face, which, although manly, wore still
an expression of ingenuousness like a child's. She reflected that if
Evelyn were to marry when she were older, that perhaps this was a
good husband for her. The boy came of one of the best families in
Amity. She turned towards him smiling.

"Evelyn was very much disappointed that she could not come to-night,"
she said.

The boy brightened visibly at her tone.

"She has a very severe cold," Maria added.

"I am sorry," said the boy. Then he said in a low tone whose boldness
and ardor were unmistakable, that it did not make any difference to
him who was there as long as she was. Maria could scarcely believe
her ears. She gave the boy a keen, incredulous glance, but he was not
daunted. "I mean it," he said.

"Nonsense," said Maria. She looked out of the window again. She told
herself that it was annoying but too idiotic to concern herself with.
She made up her mind that when they changed trolleys she would try to
find a seat with some one else. But when they changed she found the
boy again beside her. She was quite angry then, and made no effort to
disguise it. She sat quite still, gazing out of the window, shrugged
against it as closely as she was able to sit, and said nothing.
However, her face resumed its happy smile when she thought again of
Wollaston, and the boy thought the smile meant for him. He leaned
over her tenderly.

"I wish I could have a picture of you as you look to-night," he said.

"Well, I am afraid that you will have to do without it," Maria said
shortly. Still the boy remained insensible to rebuff.

"What are you carrying, Miss Edgham?" he asked, looking at her roses
enveloped in tissue paper.

"Some roses which a friend sent me," Maria replied.

Then the boy colored and paled a little. He jumped at once to the
conclusion that the friend was a man. "I suppose you are going to
wear them," he said pitifully.

"Yes, I am," replied Maria.

The boy in his turn sat as far away as possible in his corner of the
seat, and gazed ahead with a gloomy air.

When they reached the academy grounds he quite deserted Maria, who
walked to the chapel with one of the other teachers, who entered at
the same time. She was a young lady who lived in Westbridge. Maria
caught the pale glimmer of an evening gown under her long, red cloak
trimmed with white fur, and reflected that possibly she also had
adorned herself especially for Wollaston's benefit, and again she
felt that unworthy sense of pride and amusement. The girl herself
echoed her thoughts, for she said soon after Maria had greeted her:

"I saw Mr. Lee and his mother starting."

"Did you?" returned Maria.

"Don't you think he is very handsome?" asked the girl in a
sentimental tone which irritated.

"No," said Maria sharply, although she lied. "I don't think he is
handsome at all. He looks intelligent and sensible, but as for
handsome--"

"Oh, don't you think so?" cried the other. Then she caught herself
short, for Wollaston Lee, with his mother on his arm, came up. They
said good-evening, and all four passed in.

The platform of the chapel was occupied by a great Christmas-tree.
The chapel itself was trimmed with evergreens and holly. The moment
Maria entered, after she had removed her hat in a room which was
utilized as a dressing-room, and pinned her roses on her shoulder,
she became sensible of a peculiar intoxication as of some new
happiness and festivity, of a cup of joy which she had hitherto not
tasted. The spicy odor of the evergreens, even the odor of
oyster-stew from a room beyond where supper was to be served, that,
and cake, and the sweetness of her own roses, raised her to a sense
of elation which she had never before had. She sat with the other
teachers well towards the front. Wollaston was with his mother on the
right. Maria saw with a feeling of relief the people with whom the
Lees had formerly boarded presently enter and sit with them. She
thought that Wollaston would be free to walk to the trolley with her
if he so wished. She felt surer and surer that he did so wish. Once
she caught him looking at her, and when she answered his smile she
felt her own lips stiff, and realized how her heart pounded against
her side. She experienced something like a great pain which was still
a great joy. Suddenly everything seemed unreal to her. When the
presents were distributed, it was still so unreal that she did not
feel as pleased as she would have done with the number for poor
little Evelyn at home. She hardly knew what she received herself.
They were the usual useless and undesirable tokens from her class,
and others more desirable from the other lady teachers. Wollaston
Lee's name was often called. Again Maria experienced that unworthy
sensation of malicious glee that all this was lavished upon him when
he was in reality hers and beyond the reach of any of these smiling
girls with eyes of covert wistfulness upon the handsome young
principal.

After the festivities were over, Maria adjusted her hat in the
dressing-room and fastened her long, blue cloak. She wrapped her
roses again in the tissue-paper. They were very precious to her. The
teacher whom she had met on entering the academy was fastening her
cloak, and she gazed at Maria with a sort of envious admiration.

"You look like a princess, all in blue, Miss Edgham," said she. Her
words were sweet, but her voice rang false.

"Thank you," said Maria, and went out swiftly. She feared lest the
other teacher attach herself to her, and the other teacher lived on
the road towards the trolley. When Maria went out of the academy,
that which she had almost feared to hope for happened. Wollaston
stepped beside her, and she heard him ask if he might walk with her
to the trolley.

Maria took his arm.

"Mother is with the Gleasons," said Wollaston. His voice trembled.

Just then the boy who had sat with Maria on the car coming over
walked with a defiant stride to her other side.

"Good-evening, Mr. Lee," he said, lifting his hat. "Good-evening,
Miss Edgham," as if that was the first time that evening he had seen
her. Then he walked on with her and Wollaston, and nothing was to be
done but accept the situation. The young fellow was fairly
belligerent with jealous rage. He had lost his young head over his
teacher, and was doing something for which he would scorn himself
later on.

Wollaston pressed Maria's hand closely under his arm, and she felt
her very soul thrill, but they all talked of the tree and the
festivities of the evening, with an apparent disregard of the
terrible undercurrent of human emotions which had them all in its
grasp. Wollaston carried Maria's presents and Evelyn's. When they
reached the trolley-line, and he gave them to her, she managed to
whisper a thank you for his beautiful roses, and he pressed her hand
and said good-night. The boy asked with a mixture of humility and
defiance if he could not carry her parcels (he himself had nothing
but three neckties and a great silk muffler, which he did not value
highly, as he was well stocked already, and he had thrust them into
his pockets). "No, thank you," said Maria, "I prefer to carry them
myself." She was curt, but she was so lit up with rapture that she
could not help smiling at him as she spoke, and he again sat in the
same car-seat. She hardly spoke a word all the way to Amity, but he
walked to her door with her, alighting from the car at the same time
she did, although he lived half a mile farther on.

"You will have to walk a half mile," Maria observed, when he handed
her off and let the car go on.

"I like to walk," the boy said, fervently.

Maria had her latch-key. She opened the door hurriedly and ran in.
She was half afraid that this irrepressible young man might offer to
kiss her. "Good-night," she said, and almost slammed the door in his
face.

Aunt Maria had left a light burning low on the hall table. Maria took
it and went up-stairs. She gathered up the skirt of her gown into a
bag to hold the presents, hers and Evelyn's.

When she entered her own room and set the lamp on the dresser, she
was aware of a little, nestling movement in the bed, and Evelyn's
dark head and lovely face raised itself from the pillow.

"I came in here," said Evelyn, "because I wanted to see you after you
came home. Do you mind?"

"No, darling, of course I don't mind," replied Maria.

She displayed Evelyn's presents, and the girl examined them eagerly.
Maria thought she seemed disappointed even with her own gift of the
brooch which she had expected would so delight her.

"Is that all?" Evelyn said.

"All?" laughed Maria. "Why, you little, greedy thing, what do you
expect?"

To her astonishment Evelyn began suddenly to cry. She sobbed as if
her heart would break, and would not tell her sister why she was so
grieved. Finally, Maria having undressed and got into bed, her sister
clung closely to her, still sobbing.

"Evelyn, darling, what is it?" whispered Maria.

"You'll laugh at me."

"No, I won't, honest, precious."

"Honest?"

"Yes, honest, dear."

"Were those all the presents I had?"

"Yes, of course, I brought you all you had, dear."

Evelyn murmured something inarticulate against Maria's breast.

"What is it, dear, sister didn't hear?"

"I hung a book on the tree for him," choked Evelyn, "and I thought
maybe--I thought--"

"Thought what?"

"I thought maybe he would--"

"Who would?"

"I thought maybe Mr. Lee would give me something," sobbed Evelyn.

Maria lay still.

Evelyn nestled closer. "Oh," she whispered, "I love him so! I can't
help it. I can't. I love him so, sister!"

Chapter XXXIII

There was a second's hush after Evelyn had said that. It seemed to
Maria that her heart stood still. A sort of incredulity, as of the
monstrous and the super-human seized her. She felt as one who had
survived a railroad accident might feel looking down upon his own
dismembered body in which life still quivered. She could not seem to
actually sense what Evelyn had said, although the words still rang in
her ears. Presently, Evelyn spoke again in her smothered, weeping
voice. "Do you think I am so very dreadful, so--immodest, to care so
much about a man who has never said he cared about me?"

"He has never said anything?" asked Maria, and her voice sounded
strange in her own ears.

"No, never one word that I could make anything of, but he has looked
at me, he has, honest, sister." Evelyn burst into fresh sobs.

Then Maria roused herself. She patted the little, soft, dark head.

"Why, Evelyn, precious," she said, "you are imagining all this. You
can't care so much about a man whom you have seen so little. You have
let your mind dwell on it, and you imagine it. You don't care. You
can't, really. You wait, and by-and-by you will find out that you
care a good deal more for somebody else."

But then Evelyn raised herself and looked down at her sister in the
dark, and there was a ring in her voice which Maria had never before
heard. "Not care," she said--"not care! I will stand everything but
that. Maria, don't you dare tell me I don't care!"

"But you don't know him at all, dear."

"I know him better than anybody else in the whole world," said
Evelyn, still in the same strained voice. "The very minute I saw him
I loved him, and then it seemed as if a great bright light made him
plain to me. I do love him, Maria. Don't you ever dare say I don't.
That is the only thing that makes me feel that I am not ashamed to
live, the knowing that I do love him. I should be dreadful if I
didn't love him--really love him, I mean, with the love that lasts.
Do you suppose that if I only felt about him as some of the other
girls do, that I would have told you? I _do_ love him!"

"What makes you so sure?"

"What makes me so sure? Why, everything. I know there is not another
man in the whole world for me that can possibly equal him, and
then--I feel as if my whole life were full of him. I can't seem to
remember much before he came. When I look back, it is like looking
into the dark, and I can't imagine the world being at all without
him."

"Would you be willing to be very poor, to go without pretty things if
you--married him, to live in a house like the Ramsey's on the other
side of the river, not to have enough to eat and drink and wear?"

"I would have enough to eat and drink and wear. I would have as much
as a queen if I had him," cried Evelyn. "What do you think I care
about pretty things, or even food and life itself, when it comes to
anything like this? Live in a house like the Ramsey's! I would live
in a cave. I would live on the street, and I should never know it was
not a palace. Maria, you do know that I love him, don't you?"

"Yes, I know that you think you do."

"No, say I do."

"Yes, I know you do," Maria said.

Then Evelyn lay down again, and wept quietly.

"Yes, I love him," she moaned, "but he does not love me. You don't
think he does, do you? I know you don't."

Maria said nothing. She was sure that he did not.

"No, he does not. I see you know it," Evelyn sobbed, "and all I cared
about going to the Christmas-tree and wearing my new gown was on
account of him, and I sent a beautiful book. I thought I could do
that. All the girls in the senior class gave him something, and I
have been saving up every cent, and he never gave me anything, not
even a box of candy or flowers. Do you think he gave any of the other
girls anything, Maria?"

"I don't think so."

"I can't help hoping he did not. And I don't believe it is so very
wicked, because I know that none of the other girls can possibly love
him as much as I do. But, Maria--"

"Well?"

"I do love him enough not to complain if he really loved some other
girl, and she was good, and would make him happy. I would go down on
my knees to her to love him. I would, Maria, honest." Evelyn was
almost hysterical. Maria soothed her, and evaded as well as she was
able her repeated little, piteous questions as to whether she thought
Mr. Lee could ever care for her. "I know I am pretty," Evelyn said
naively. "I really think I must be prettier than any other girl in
school. I have heard so, and I really think so myself, but being
pretty means so little when it comes to anything like this with a man
like him. He might love Addie Hemingway instead of me, so far as
looks were concerned, but I don't think Addie would make him very
happy--do you, Maria?"

"No, dear. I am quite sure he will never think of her. Now try and be
quiet and go to sleep."

"I cannot go to sleep," moaned Evelyn, but it was not very long
before she was drawing long, even breaths. Her youth had asserted
itself. Then, too, she had got certain comfort from this baring of
her soul before the soothing love of her sister.

As soon as Maria became sure that Evelyn was soundly asleep she
gently unwound the slender, clinging arms and got out of bed, and
stole noiselessly into Evelyn's own room, which adjoined hers. She
did not get into bed, but took a silk comfortable off, and wrapped it
around her, then sat down in a low chair beside the window. It seemed
to her that if she could not have a little while to think by herself
that she should go mad. The utterly inconceivable to her had
happened, and the utterly inconceivable fairly dazzles the brain when
it comes to pass. Maria felt as if she were outside all hitherto
known tracks of life, almost as if she were in the fourth dimension.
The possibility that her own sister might fall in love with the man
whom she had married had never entered her mind before. She had
checked Evelyn's wonder concerning him, but she had thought no more
of it than of the usual foolish exuberance of a young girl. Now she
believed that her sister really loved Wollaston. She recalled the
fears which she had had with regard to her strenuous nature. She did
not believe it to be a passing fancy of an ordinary young girl. She
recalled word for word what Evelyn had said, and she believed. Maria
sat awhile gazing out of the window at the starlit sky in a sort of
blank of realization, of adjustment. She could not at first formulate
any plan of action. She could only, as it were, state the problem.
She gazed up at the northern constellations, at the mysterious polar
star, and it seemed to steady her mind and give it power to deal with
her petty problem of life by its far-away and everlasting guiding
light. The window was partly open, and the same pungent odor of death
and life in one which had endured all day came in her nostrils. She
seemed to sense heaven and earth and herself as an atom, but an atom
racked with infinite pain between the two.

"There is the great polar star," she said to herself, "there are all
the suns and stars, here is the earth, and here am I, Maria Edgham,
who am on the earth, but must some day give up my mortal life and
become a part of it, and part of the material universe and perhaps
also of the spiritual. I am as nothing, and yet this pain in my
heart, this love in my heart, makes me shine with my own fire as much
as the star. I could not be unless the earth existed, but it is of
such as myself that the earth is made up, and without such as myself
it could not shine in its place in the heavens."

Maria began to attach a certain importance to her individual
existence even while she realized the pettiness of it, comparatively
speaking. She was an infinitesimal part, but the whole could not be
without that part. Suddenly the religious instruction which she had
drank in with her mother's milk took possession of her, but she had a
breadth of outlook which would have terrified her mother. Maria said
to herself that she believed in God, but that His need of her was as
much as her need of Him. She said to herself that without her tiny
faith in Him, her tiny speck of love for Him, He would lack something
of Himself. Then all at once, in a perfect flood of rapture,
something which she had never before known came into her heart: the
consciousness of the love of God for herself, of the need of God for
herself, poor little Maria Edgham, whose ways of life had been so
untoward and so absurd that she almost seemed to herself something to
be laughed at rather than pitied, much less loved. But all at once
the knowledge of the love of God was over her. She gazed up again at
the great polar star overlooking with its eternal light the mysteries
of the north, and for the first time in her whole life the primitive
instinct of worship asserted itself within her. Maria rose, and fell
on her knees, and continued to gaze up at the star which seemed to
her like an eye of God Himself, and love seemed to pervade her whole
being. She thought now almost lightly of Wollaston Lee. What was any
earthly love to love like this, which took hold of the beginning and
end of things, of the eternal? A resolution which this sense of love
seemed to inspire came over her. It was a resolution almost
grotesque, but it was sacred because her heart of hearts was in it,
and she made it because of this love of God for her and her new sense
of worship for something beyond the earth and all earthly affections
which had taken possession of her. She rose, undressed herself, and
went to bed. She did not say any prayer as usual. She seemed an
incarnate prayer which made formulas unnecessary. Why was it
essential to say anything when she was? At last she fell asleep, and
did not wake until the dawn light was in the room. She did not wake
as usual to a reunion with herself, but to a reunion with another
self. She did not feel altogether happy. The resolution of the night
before remained, but the ecstasy had vanished. She was not yet an
angel, only a poor, human girl with the longings of her kind, which
would not be entirely stifled as long as her human heart beat. But
she did what she had planned. Maria had an unusually high forehead.
It might have given evidence of intellect, of goodness, but it was
not beautiful. She had always fluffed her blond hair over it,
concealing it with pretty waves. This morning she brushed all her
hair as tightly back as possible, and made a hard twist at an ugly
angle at the back of her head. By doing this she did not actually
destroy her beauty, for her regular features and delicate tints
remained, but nobody looking at her would have called her even
pretty. Her delicate features became pronounced and hardened, her
nose seemed sharpened and elongated, her lips thinner. This display
of her forehead hardened and made bold all her face and made her look
years older than she was. Maria looked at herself in the glass with a
sort of horror. She had always been fond of herself in the glass. She
had loved that double of herself which had come and gone at her
bidding, but now it was different. She was actually afraid of the
stern, thin visage which confronted her, which was herself, yet not
herself. When she was fully dressed it was worse still. She put on a
gray gown which had never been becoming. It was not properly fitted.
It was short-waisted, and gave her figure a short, chunky appearance.
This chunky aspect, with her sharp face and strained back hair, made
her seem fairly hideous to herself. But she remained firm. Her
firmness, in reality, was one cause of the tightening and thinning of
her lips. She hesitated when about to go down-stairs. She had not
heard Evelyn go down. She wondered whether she had better wait until
she went, or go into her room. She finally decided upon the latter
course. Evelyn was standing in front of her dresser brushing her
hair. When Maria entered she threw with a quick motion the whole
curly, fluffy mass over her face, which glowed through it with an
intensity of shame. Evelyn, when she awoke that morning, felt as if
she had revealed some nakedness of her very soul. The girl was fairly
ill. She could not believe that she had said what she remembered
herself to have said.

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