By the Light of the Soul Part 6

Maria, when she was in her room, had never felt so lonely in her life. A kind of rage of loneliness possessed her. She slipped out of her clothes and went to bed, and then she lay awake. She heard her father when he returned. The clock on a church which was near by struck twelve soon after. Maria tried to imagine another woman in the house in her mother's place; she thought of every eligible woman in Edgham whom her father might select to fill that place, but her little-girl ideas of eligibility were at fault. She thought only of women of her mother's age and staidness, who wore bonnets. She could think of only two, one a widow, one a spinster. She shuddered at the idea of either. She felt that she would much rather have had her father marry Aunt Maria than either of those women. She did not altogether love Aunt Maria, but at least she was used to her.

Suddenly it occurred to her that Aunt Maria was disappointed, that she felt badly. The absurdity of it struck her strongly, but she felt a pity for her; she felt a common cause with her. After her father had gone into his room, and the house had long been silent, she got up quietly, opened her door softly, and crept across the hall to the spare room, which Aunt Maria had occupied ever since she had been there. She listened, and heard a soft sob. Then she turned the k.n.o.b of the door softly.

"Who is it?" Aunt Maria called out, sharply.

Maria was afraid that her father would hear.

"It's only me, Aunt Maria," she replied. Then she also gave a little sob.

"What's the matter?"

Maria groped her way across the room to her aunt's bed. "Oh, Aunt Maria, who is it?" she sobbed, softly.

Aunt Maria did what she had never done before: she reached out her arms and gathered the bewildered little girl close, in an embrace of genuine affection and pity. She, too, felt that here was a common cause, and not only that, but she pitied the child with unselfish pity. "You poor child, you are as cold as ice. Come in here with me,"

she whispered.

Maria crept into bed beside her aunt, but she would rather have remained where she was. She was a child of spiritual rather than physical affinities, and the contact of Aunt Maria's thin body, even though it thrilled with almost maternal affection for her, repelled her.

Aunt Maria began to weep unrestrainedly, with a curious pa.s.sion and abandonment for a woman of her years.

"Has he come home?" she whispered. Aunt Maria's hearing was slightly defective, especially when she was nervously overwrought.

"Yes. Aunt Maria, who is it?"

"Hush, I don't know. He hasn't paid any open court to anybody, that I know of, but--I've seen him lookin'."

"At whom?"

"At Ida Slome."

"But she is younger than my mother was."

"What difference do you s'pose that makes to a man. He'll like her all the better for that. You can thank your stars he didn't pitch on a school-girl, instead of the teacher."

Maria lay stretched out stiff and motionless. She was trying to bring her mind to bear upon the situation. She was trying to imagine Miss Ida Slome, with her pink cheeks and her gay attire, in the house instead of her mother. Her head began to reel. She no longer wept.

She became dimly conscious, after a while, of her aunt Maria's shaking her violently and calling her by name, but she did not respond, although she heard her plainly. Then she felt a great jounce of the bed as her aunt sprang out. She continued to lie still and rigid. She somehow knew, however, that her aunt was lighting the lamp, then she felt, rather than saw, the flash of it across her face. Her aunt Maria pulled on a wrapper over her night-gown, and hurried to the door. "Harry, Harry Edgham!" she heard her call, and still Maria could not move. Then she also felt, rather than saw, her father enter the room with his bath-robe slipped over his pajamas, and approach the bed.

"What on earth is the matter?" he said. He also laid hands on Maria, and, at his touch, she became able to move.

"What on earth is the matter?" he asked again.

"She didn't seem able to speak or move, and I was scared," replied Aunt Maria, with a reproachful accent on the "I"; but Harry Edgham was too genuinely concerned at his little daughter's white face and piteous look to heed that at all.

He leaned over and began stroking her soft little cheeks, and kissing her. "Father's darling," he whispered. Then he said over his shoulder to Aunt Maria, "I wish you would go into my room and get that flask of brandy I keep in my closet."

Aunt Maria obeyed. She returned with the flask and a teaspoon, and Maria's father made her swallow a few drops, which immediately warmed her and made the strange rigidity disappear.

"I guess she had better stay in here with you the rest of the night,"

said Harry to his sister-in-law; but little Maria sat up determinately.

"No, I'm going back to my own room," she said.

"Hadn't you better stay with your aunt, darling?"

Harry Edgham looked shamefaced and guilty. He saw that his sister-in-law and Maria had been weeping, and he knew why, in the depths of his soul. He saw no good reason why he should feel so shamed and apologetic, but he did. He fairly cowered before the nervous little girl and her aunt.

"Well, let father carry you in there, then," he said; and he lifted up the slight little thing, carried her across the hall to her room, and placed her in bed.

It was a very warm night, but Maria was shivering as if with cold. He placed the coverings over her with clumsy solicitude. Then he bent down and kissed her. "Try and keep quiet, and go to sleep, darling,"

he said. Then he went out.

Aunt Maria was waiting for him in the hall. Her face, from grief and consternation, had changed to sad and dignified resignation.

"Harry," said she.

Harry Edgham stopped.

"Well, sister," he said, with pleasant interrogation, although he still looked shamefaced.

Aunt Maria held a lamp, a small one, which she was tipping dangerously.

"Look out for your lamp, Maria," he said.

She straightened the lamp, and the light shone full upon her swollen face, at once piteous and wrathful. "I only wanted to know when you wanted me to go?" she said.

"Oh, Lord, Maria, you are going too fast!" replied Harry, and he fairly ran into his own room.

The next morning when Maria, in her little black frock--it was made of a thin lawn for the hot days, and the pale slenderness of her arms and neck were revealed by the thinness of the fabric--went to school, she knew, the very moment that Miss Ida Slome greeted her, that Aunt Maria had been right in her surmise. For the first time since she had been to school, Miss Slome, who was radiant in a flowered muslin, came up to her and embraced her. Maria submitted coldly to the embrace.

"You sweet little thing," said Miss Slome.

There was a man princ.i.p.al of the school, but Miss Slome was first a.s.sistant, and Maria was in most of her cla.s.ses. She took her place, with her pretty smile as set as if she had been a picture instead of a living and breathing woman, on the platform.

"You are awful sweet all of a sudden, ain't you?" said Gladys Mann in Maria's ear.

Maria nodded, and went to her own seat.

All that day she noted, with her sharp little consciousness, the change in Miss Slome's manner towards her. It was noticeable even in cla.s.s. "It is true," she said to herself. "Father is going to marry her."

Aunt Maria was a little pacified by Harry's rejoinder the night before. She begun to wonder if she had been, by any chance, mistaken.

"Maybe I was wrong," she said, privately, to Maria. But Maria shook her head.

"She called me a sweet little thing, and kissed me," said she.

"Didn't she ever before?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well, she may have taken a notion to. Maybe I was mistaken. The way your father spoke last night sort of made me think so."