By the Light of the Soul Part 4

She, with Maria, was clearing away the dinner-table then. "What time do you think your aunt Maria will get here?" she asked.

"About half-past two, father said," replied Maria.

"Well, I'm real glad you've got some one like her you can call on,"

said Mrs. White. "Somebody that 'ain't ever had no family, and 'ain't tied. Now I'd be willin' to stay right along myself, but I couldn't leave Lillian any length of time. She 'ain't never had anything hard put on her, and she 'ain't any too tough. But your aunt can stay right along till your mother gits well, can't she?"

"I guess so," replied Maria.

There was something about Maria's manner which made Mrs. White uneasy. She forced conversation in order to make her speak, and do away with that stunned look on her face. All the time now Maria was saying to herself that her mother was going to die, that G.o.d could make her well, but He would not. She was conscious of blasphemy, and she took a certain pleasure in it.

Her aunt Maria arrived on the train expected, and she entered the house, preceded by the cabman bearing her little trunk, which she had had ever since she was a little girl. It was the only trunk she had ever owned. Both physicians and the nurse were with Mrs. Edgham when her sister arrived. Harry Edgham had been walking restlessly up and down the parlor, which was a long room. He had not thought of going to the station to meet Aunt Maria, but when the cab stopped before the house he hurried out at once. Aunt Maria was dressed wholly in black--a black mohair, a little black silk cape, and a black bonnet, from which nodded a jetted tuft. "How is she?" Maria heard her say, in a hushed voice, to her father. Maria stood in the door. Maria heard her father say something in a hushed tone about an operation.

Aunt Maria came up the steps with her travelling-bag. Harry forgot to take it. She greeted Mrs. White, whom she had met on former visits, and kissed Maria. Maria had been named for her, and been given a silver cup with her name inscribed thereon, which stood on the sideboard, but she had never been conscious of any distinct affection for her. There was a queer, musty odor, almost a fragrance, about Aunt Maria's black clothes.

"Take the trunk up the stairs, to the room at the left," said Harry Edgham, "and go as still as you can." The man obeyed, shouldering the little trunk with an awed look.

Aunt Maria drew Mrs. White and Maria's father aside, and Maria was conscious that they did not want her to hear; but she did overhear--"...one chance in ten, a fighting chance," and "Keep it from Maria, her mother had said so." Maria knew perfectly well that that horrible and mysterious thing, an operation, which means a duel with death himself, was even at that moment going on in her mother's room. She slipped away, and went up-stairs to her own chamber, and softly closed the door. Then she forgot her lack of faith and her rebellion, and she realized that her only hope of life was from that which is outside life. She knelt down beside her bed, and began to pray over and over, "O G.o.d, don't let my mother die, and I will always be a good girl! O G.o.d, don't let my mother die, and I will always be a good girl!"

Then, without any warning, the door opened and her father stood there, and behind him was her aunt Maria, weeping bitterly, and Mrs.

White, also weeping.

"Maria," gasped out Harry Edgham. Then, as Maria rose and went to him, he seized upon her as if she were his one straw of salvation, and began to sob himself, and Maria knew that her mother had died.

Chapter IV

Without any doubt, Maria's self-consciousness, which was at its height at this time, helped her to endure the loss of her mother, and all the sad appurtenances of mourning. She had a covert pleasure at the sight of her fair little face, in her black hat, above her black frock. She realized a certain importance because of her grief.

However, there were times when the grief itself came uppermost; there were nights when she lay awake crying for her mother, when she was nothing but a bereft child in a vacuum of love. Her father's tenderness could not make up to her for the loss of her mother's.

Very soon after her mother's death, his mercurial temperament jarred upon her. She could not understand how he could laugh and talk as if nothing had happened. She herself was more like her mother in temperament--that is, like the New-Englander who goes through life with the grief of a loss grown to his heart. Nothing could exceed Harry Edgham's tenderness to his motherless little girl. He was always contriving something for her pleasure and comfort; but Maria, when her father laughed, regarded him with covert wonder and reproach.

Her aunt Maria continued to live with them, and kept the house. Aunt Maria was very capable. It is doubtful if there are many people on earth who are not crowned, either to their own consciousness or that of others, with at least some small semblance of glories. Aunt Maria had the notable distinction of living on one hundred dollars a year.

She had her rent free, but upon that she did not enlarge. Her married brother owned a small house, of the story-and-a-half type prevalent in New England villages, and Maria had the north side. She lived, aside from that, upon one hundred dollars a year. She was openly proud of it; her poverty became, in a sense, her riches. "Well, all I have is just one hundred a year," she was fond of saying, "and I don't complain. I don't envy anybody. I have all I want." Her little plans for thrift were fairly Machiavellian; they showed subtly. She told everybody what she had for her meals. She boasted that she lived better than her brother, who was earning good wages in a shoe-factory. She dressed very well, really much better than her sister-in-law. "Poor Eunice never had much management," Maria was wont to say, smoothing down, as she spoke, the folds of her own gown.

She never wore out anything; she moved carefully and sat carefully; she did a good deal of fancy-work, but she was always very particular, even when engaged in the daintiest toil, to cover her gown with an ap.r.o.n, and she always held her thin-veined hands high.

She charged this upon her niece Maria when she had her new black clothes. "Now, Maria," said she, "there is one thing I want you to remember, here is nothin'--" (Aunt Maria elided her final "g" like most New-Englanders, although she was not deficient in education, and even prided herself upon her reading.) "Black is the worst thing in the world to grow shiny. Folks can talk all they want to about black bein' durable. It isn't. It grows shiny. And if you will always remember one thing when you are at home, to wear an ap.r.o.n when you are doin' anything, and when you are away, to hold your hands high, you will gain by it. There is no need of anybody gettin' the front breadths of their dresses all shiny by rubbin' their hands on them.

When you are at school you must remember and hold your school-books so they won't touch your dress. Then there is another thing you must remember, not to move your arms any more than you can help, that makes the waist wear out under the arms. There isn't any need of your movin' your arms much if any when you are in school, that I can see, and when you come home you can change your dress. You might just as well wear out your colored dresses when you are home. n.o.body is goin'

to see you. If anybody comes in that I think is goin' to mind, you can just slip up-stairs, and put on your black dress. It isn't as if you had a little sister to take your things--they ought to be worn out."

It therefore happened that Maria was dressed the greater part of the time, in her own home, where she missed her mother most, in bright-colored array, and in funeral attire outside. She told her father about it, but he had not a large income, and it had been severely taxed by his wife's almost tragic illness and death.

Besides, if the truth were known, he disliked to see Maria in mourning, and the humor of the thing also appealed to him.

"You had better wear what your aunt says, dear. You feel just the same in your heart, don't you?" asked Harry Edgham, with that light laugh of his, which always so shocked his serious little daughter.

"Yes, sir," she replied, with a sob.

"Well, then, do just as your aunt says, and be a good little girl,"

said Harry, and he went hastily out on the porch with his cigar.

Nothing irritated him so much as to see Maria weep for her mother. He was one of those who wrestle and fight against grief, and to see it thrust in his face by the impetus of another heart exasperated him, although he could say nothing. It may be that, with his temperament, it was even dangerous for him to cherish grief, and, for that very reason, he tried to put his dead wife out of his mind, as she had been taken out of his life.

"Well, men are different from women," Aunt Maria said to her niece Maria one night, when Harry had gone out on the piazza, after he had talked and laughed a good deal at the supper-table.

Harry Edgham heard the remark, and his face took on a set expression which it could a.s.sume at times. He did not like his sister-in-law, although he disguised the fact. She was very useful. His meals were always on time, the house was as neatly kept as before, and Maria was being trained as she had never been in household duties.

Maria was obedient, under silent protest, to her aunt. Often, after she had been bidden to perform some household task, and obeyed, she had gone to her own room and wept, and told herself that her mother would never have put such things on her. She had no one in whom to confide. She was not a girl to have unlimited intimates among other girls at school. She was too self-centred, and, if the truth were told, too emulative.

"Maria Edgham thinks she's awful smart," one girl would say to another. They all admitted, even the most carping, that Maria was pretty. "Maria Edgham is pretty enough, and she knows it," said they.

She was in the high school, even at her age, and she stood high in her cla.s.ses. There was always a sort of moral strike going on against Maria, as there is against all superiority, especially when the superiority is known to be recognized by the possessor thereof.

In spite of her prettiness, she was not a favorite even among the boys. They were, as a rule, innocent as well as young, but they would rather have s.n.a.t.c.hed a kiss from such a pretty, dainty little creature than have had her go above them in the algebra cla.s.s. It did not seem fitting. Without knowing it, they were envious. They would not even acknowledge her cleverness, not even Wollaston Lee, for whom Maria entertained a rudimentary affection. He was even rude to her.

"Maria Edgham is awful stuck up," he told his mother. He was of that age when a boy tells his mother a good deal, and he was an only child.

"She's a real pretty little girl, and her aunt says she is a good girl," replied his mother, who regarded the whole as the antics of infancy.

The Lees lived near the Edghams, on the same street, and Mrs. Lee and Aunt Maria had exchanged several calls. They were, in fact, almost intimate. The Lees were at the supper-table when Wollaston made his deprecatory remark concerning Maria, and he had been led to do so by the law of sequence. Mrs. Lee had made a remark about Aunt Maria to her husband. "I believe she thinks Harry Edgham will marry her," she said.

"That's just like you women, always trumping up something of that kind," replied her husband. His words were rather brusque, but he regarded, while speaking them, his wife with adoration. She was a very pretty woman, and looked much younger than her age.

"You needn't tell me," said Mrs. Lee. "She's just left off bonnets and got a new hat trimmed with black daisies; rather light mourning, I call it, when her sister has not been dead a year."

"You spiteful little thing!" said her husband, still with his adoring eyes on his wife.

"Well, it's so, anyway."

"Well, she would make Harry a good wife, I guess," said her husband, easily; "and she would think more of the girl."

It was then that Wollaston got in his remark about poor Maria, who had herself noticed with wonder that her aunt had bought a new hat that spring instead of a bonnet.

"Why, Aunt Maria, I thought you always wore a bonnet!" said she, innocently, when the hat came home from the milliner's.

"n.o.body except old women are wearing bonnets now," replied her aunt, shortly. "I saw Mrs. Rufus Jones, who is a good deal older than I, at church Sunday with a hat trimmed with roses. The milliner told me n.o.body of my age wore a bonnet."

"Did she know how old you really are, Aunt Maria?" inquired Maria with the utmost innocence.

Harry Edgham gave a little chuckle, then came to his sister-in-law's rescue. He had a thankful heart for even small benefits, and Aunt Maria had done a good deal for him and his, and it had never occurred to him that the doing might not be entirely disinterested. Besides, Aunt Maria had always seemed to him, as well as to his daughter, very old indeed. It might have been that the bonnets had had something to do with it. Aunt Maria had never affected fashions beyond a certain epoch, partly from economy, partly from a certain sense of injury.

She had said to herself that she was old, she had been pa.s.sed by; she would dress as one who had. Now her sentiments underwent a curious change. The possibility occurred to her that Harry might ask her to take her departed sister's place. She was older than that sister, much older than he, but she looked in her gla.s.s and suddenly her pa.s.sed youth seemed to look forth upon her. The revival of hopes sometimes serves as a tonic. Aunt Maria actually did look younger than she had done, even with her scanty frizzes. She regarded other women, not older than herself, with pompadours, and aspiration seized her.

One day she went to New York shopping. She secretly regarded that as an expedition. She was terrified at the crossings. Stout, elderly woman as she was, when she found herself in the whirl of the great city, she became as a small, scared kitten. She gathered up her skirts, and fled incontinently across the streets, with policemen looking after her with haughty disapprobation. But when she was told to step lively on the trolley-cars, her true self a.s.serted its endurance. "I am not going to step in front of a team for you or any other person," she told one conductor, and she spoke with such emphasis that even he was intimidated, and held the car meekly until the team had pa.s.sed. When Aunt Maria came home from New York that particular afternoon, she had an expression at once of defiance and embarra.s.sment, which both Maria and her father noticed.

"Well, what did you see in New York, Maria?" asked Harry, pleasantly.

"I saw the greatest lot of folks without manners, that I ever saw in my whole life," replied Aunt Maria, sharply.

Harry Edgham laughed. "You'll get used to it," he said, easily.

"Everybody who comes from New England has to take time to like New York. It is an acquired taste."

"When I do acquire it, I'll be equal to any of them," replied Aunt Maria. "When I lose my temper, they had better look out."