By the Light of the Soul Part 51

"Well, I hope you don't think I am horrid."

"I don't, dear," said Maria, with an odd sensation of tenderness for the other, weaker girl, whom she had handled in a measure roughly with her own stronger character. She looked admiringly at her as she spoke. "n.o.body can ever really think you horrid," she said.

"If they did, I should think I was horrid my own self," said Lily, with the ready acquiescence in the opinion of another which signified the deepest admiration, even to her own detriment, and was the redeeming note in her character.

Maria laughed. "I declare, Lily," said she, "I hope you will never be accused of a crime, for I do believe even if you were innocent, you would side with the lawyer for the prosecution."

"I don't know but I should," said Lily.

Then she ventured to say something more about George Ramsey, encouraged by Maria's friendliness, but she met with such scanty sympathy that she refrained. She arose soon, and said she thought she must go home.

"I am tired to-night, and I think I had better go to bed early," she said.

"Don't hurry," Maria said, conventionally; but Lily kissed Maria and went.

Maria knew that her manner had driven Lily away, but she did not feel as if she could endure hearing her confidences, and Lily's confidences had all the impetus of a mountain stream. Had she remained, they could not have been finally checked. Maria moved her window curtains slightly and watched Lily flitting across the yard.

She saw her enter the door, and also saw, quite distinctly the shadow of a man upon the white curtain as he rose to greet her when she entered. She wondered whether the man was Dr. Ellridge, or George Ramsey. The shadow looked like that of the older man, she thought, and she was not mistaken.

Lily, on entering the sitting-room, found Dr. Ellridge with her mother, and her mother's face was flushed, and she had a conscious simper. Lily said good-evening, and sat down as usual with her fancy-work, after she had removed her wraps, but soon her mother said to her that there was a good fire in her own room, and she thought that she had better go to bed early, as she must be tired, and Dr.

Ellridge echoed her with rather a foolish expression.

"I don't think you ought to sit up late working on embroidery, Lily,"

he said. "You are looking tired to-night. You must let me prescribe for you a gla.s.s of hot milk and bed."

Lily looked at both of them with wondering gentleness, then she rose.

"There is a good fire in the kitchen," said her mother, "and Hannah will heat the milk for you. You had better do as Dr. Ellridge said.

You are going out to-morrow night, too, you know."

Lily said good-night, and went out with a smouldering disquiet in her heart. When she asked Hannah out in the kitchen to heat the milk for her, because Dr. Ellridge said she must drink it and then go to bed, the girl, who had been long with the family and considered that she in reality was the main-spring of the house, eyed her curiously.

"Said you had better go to bed?" said she. "Why, it isn't nine o'clock!"

"He said I looked tired, Hannah," said Lily faintly.

Hannah, who was a large, high-shouldered Nova Scotia girl, with a large, flat face obscured with freckles, sniffed. Lily heard her say quite distinctly as she went into the pantry for the milk, that she called it a shame when there were so many grown-up daughters to think of, for her part.

Lily knew what she meant. She sat quite pale and still while the milk was heating, and then drank it meekly, said good-night to Hannah and went up-stairs.

She could not go to sleep, although she went at once to bed, and extinguished her lamp. She lay there and heard a clock down in the hall strike the hours. The clock had struck twelve, and she had not heard Dr. Ellridge go. The whole situation filled her with a sort of wonder of disgust. She could not imagine her mother and Dr. Ellridge sitting up until midnight as she might sit up with George Ramsey. She felt as if she were witnessing a ghastly inversion of things, as if Love, instead of being in his proper panoply of wings and roses, was invested with a medicine-case, an obsolete frock-coat, and elderly obesity. Dr. Ellridge was quite stout. She wondered how her mother could, and then she wondered how Dr. Ellridge could. Lily loved her mother, but she had relegated her to what she considered her proper place in the scheme of things, and now she was overstepping it. Lily called to mind vividly the lines on her mother's face, her matronly figure. It seemed to her that her mother had had her time of love with her father, and this was as abnormal as two springs in one year.

Shortly after twelve, Lily heard a soft murmur of voices in the hall, then the front door close. Then her mother came up-stairs and entered her room.

"Are you asleep, Lily?" she whispered, softly, and Lily recognized with shame the artificiality of the whisper.

"No, mother, I am not asleep," she replied, quite loudly.

Her mother came and sat down on the bed beside her. She patted Lily's cheeks, and felt for her hand. Lily's impulse was to s.n.a.t.c.h it away, but she was too gentle. She let it remain pa.s.sively in her mother's nervous clasp.

"Lily, my dear child, I have something to tell you," whispered Mrs.

Merrill.

Lily said nothing.

"Lily, my precious child," said her mother, in her strained whisper.

"I don't know whether you have suspected anything or not, but I am meditating a great change in my life. I have been very lonely since your dear father died, and I never had a nature to live alone and be happy. You might as well expect the vine to live without its tree. I have made up my mind that I shall be much happier, and Dr. Ellridge will. He needs the sympathy and love of a wife. His daughters do as well as they can, but a daughter is not like a wife."

"Oh, mother!" said Lily. Then she gave a little sob. Her mother bent over and kissed her, and Lily smelled Dr. Ellridge's cigar, and she thought also medicine. She shrank away from her mother, and sobbed convulsively.

"My dear child," said Mrs. Merrill, "you need not feel so badly.

There will be no change in your life until you yourself marry. We shall live right along here. This house is larger and more convenient than the doctor's. He will rent his house, and we shall live here."

"And all those Ellridge girls," sobbed Lily.

"They are very nice girls, dear. Florence and Amelia will room together; they can have the southeast room. Mabel, I suppose, will have to go in the best chamber. Perhaps, by-and-by, Dr. Ellridge will finish off another room for her. I don't quite like the idea of having no spare room. But you will keep your own room, and you will be all the happier for having three nice sisters."

"I never liked them," sobbed Lily. It really seemed to her that she was called upon to marry the Ellridge girls, and that was the main issue.

"They are very nice girls," repeated Mrs. Merrill, and there was obstinacy in her artificially sweet tone. "Everybody says they are very nice girls. You certainly would not wish your mother to give up her chance of a happy life, because you have an unwarrantable prejudice against the poor doctor's daughters."

"You have been married once," said Lily, feebly. It was as if she made a faint remonstrance because of her mother, who had already had her reasonable share of cake, taking a second slice. She had too sweet a disposition to say bitter things, but the bitterness of the things she might have said was in her heart.

"I suppose you think because I am older it is foolish," said her mother, in an aggressive voice. "Wait till you yourself are older and you may know how I feel. You may find out that you cannot give up all the joys of life because you have been a few years longer in the world. You may not feel so very different from what you do now." Mrs.

Merrill's voice rang true in this last. There was even a pathetic appeal to her daughter for sympathy. But Lily continued to sob weakly, and did not say any more.

"Well, good-night, my dear child," Mrs. Merrill said finally. "You will feel very differently about all this later on. You will come to see, as I do, that it is for the best. You will be much happier."

Mrs. Merrill kissed Lily again, and went out. She closed the door with a slight slam.

Lily knew that her mother was angry with her. As for herself, she considered that she had never been so unhappy in her whole life. She thought of living with the Ellridge girls, who were really of a common cast, and always with Dr. Ellridge at the head of the table, dictating to her as he had done to-night, in his smooth, slightly satirical way, and her whole soul rose in revolt. She felt sure that Dr. Ellridge was not at all in love with her mother, as George Ramsey might be in love with herself. All the romance had been sucked out of them both years before. She called to mind again her mother's lined face, her too aggressive curves, her tightly frizzed hair, and she knew that she was right. She remembered hearing that Dr. Ellridge's daughters were none of them domestic, that he had hard work to keep a house-keeper, that his practice was declining. She remembered how shabby and mean his little house had looked when she had pa.s.sed it in the sleigh with George Ramsey, that very day. She said to herself that Dr. Ellridge was only marrying her mother for the sake of the loaves and fishes, for a pretty, well-kept home for himself and his daughters. Lily had something of a business turn in spite of her feminity. She calculated how much rent Dr. Ellridge could get for his own house. That will dress the girls, she thought. She knew that her mother's income was considerable. Dr. Ellridge would be immeasurably better off as far as this world's goods went. There was no doubt of that. Lily felt such a measure of revolt and disgust that it was fairly like a spiritual nausea. Her own maiden innocence seemed a.s.saulted, and besides that there was a sense of pitiful grief and wonder that her mother, besides whom she had n.o.body in the world, could so betray her. She was like the proverbial child with its poor little nose out of joint. She lay and wept like one. The next morning, when she went down to breakfast, her pretty face was pale and woe-begone. Her mother gave one defiant glance at her, then spooned out the cereal with vehemence. Hannah gave a quick, shrewd glance at her when she set the saucer containing the smoking mess before her.

"Her mother has told her," she thought. She also thought that she herself would give notice were it not for poor Miss Lily.

Lily's extreme gentleness, even when she was distressed, was calculated to inspire faithfulness in every one. Hannah gave more than one pitying, indignant glance at the girl's pretty, sad face.

Lily did not dream of sulking to the extent of not eating her breakfast. She ate just as usual. She even made a remark about the weather to her mother, although in a little, weeping voice, as if the weather itself, although it was a brilliant morning, were a source of misery. Mrs. Merrill replied curtly. Lily took another spoonful of her cereal.

She remained in her own room the greater part of the day. In the afternoon her mother, without saying anything to her, took the trolley for Westbridge. Lily thought with a shiver that she might be going over there to purchase some article for her trousseau. The thought of her mother with a trousseau caused her to laugh a little, hysterical laugh, as she sat alone in her chamber. That evening she and her mother went to a concert in the town hall. Lily knew that Dr.

Ellridge would accompany her mother home. She wondered what she should do, what she should be expected to do--take the doctor's other arm, or walk behind. She had seen the doctor with two of his daughters seated, when she and her mother pa.s.sed up the aisle. She knew that the two daughters would go home together, and the doctor would go with her mother. She thought of George Ramsey. Now and then as the concert proceeded she twisted her neck slightly and peered around, but she saw nothing of him. She concluded that he was not there. But when the concert was over, and she and her mother were pa.s.sing out the door, and Dr. Ellridge was pressing close to her mother, under a fire of hostile glances from his daughters, Lily felt a touch on her own arm. She turned, and saw George Ramsey's handsome face with a quiver of unutterable bliss. She took his arm, and followed her mother and Dr. Ellridge. When they were out in the frosty air, under a low sky sparkling with mult.i.tudinous stars traversed by its mysterious nebulous highway of the G.o.ds, this poor little morsel of a mortal, engrossed with her poor little troubles, answered a remark of George's concerning the weather in a trembling voice. Then she began to weep unreservedly. George with a quick glance around, drew her around a corner which they had just reached into a street which afforded a circuitous route home, and which was quite deserted.

"Why Lily, what in the world is the matter?" he said. There was absolutely nothing in his voice or his heart at the time except friendliness and honest concern for his old playmate's distress.

"Mother is going to be married to Dr. Ellridge," whispered Lily, "and he and his three horrid daughters are all coming to live at our house."

George whistled.

Lily sobbed quite aloud.

"Hush, poor little girl," said George. He glanced around; there was not a soul to be seen. Lily's head seemed to droop as naturally towards his shoulder as a flower towards the sun. A sudden impulse of tenderness, the tenderness of the strong for the weak, of man for woman, came over the young fellow. Before he well knew what he was doing, his arm had pa.s.sed around Lily's waist, and the pretty head quite touched his shoulder. George gave one last bitter thought towards Maria, then he spoke.

"Well," he said, "don't cry, Lily dear. If your mother is going to marry Dr. Ellridge, suppose you get married too. Suppose you marry me, and come and live at my house."