By the Light of the Soul Part 38

"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 ma.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 a.s.sortment. 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.