_ Chapter XXIX
It is frequently a chain of sequences whose beginnings are lost in obscurity which lead to events. The principal of the Normal School in Westbridge, which Evelyn attended and in which Maria taught, had been a certain Professor Lane. If he had not gone to Boston one morning when the weather was unusually sultry for the season, and if an east wind had not come up, causing him, being thinly clad, to take cold, which cold meant the beginning of a rapid consumption which hurried him off to Colorado, and a year later to death; if these east winds had not made it impossible for Wollaston Lee's mother, now widowed, to live with him in the college town where he had been stationed, a great deal which happened might not have come to pass at all. It was "the wind which bloweth where it listeth, and no man knoweth whence it cometh and whither it goeth," which precipitated the small tragedy of a human life.
The Saturday before the fall term commenced, Evelyn came home from Westbridge, where she had been for some shopping, and she had a piece of news. She did not wait to remove her hat, but stood before Maria and her aunt, who were sewing in the sitting-room, with the roses nestling against the soft flying tendrils of her black hair. It was still so warm that she wore her summer hat.
"What do you think!" said she. "I have such a piece of news!"
"What is it, dear?" asked Maria. Aunt Maria looked up curiously.
"Why, Professor Lane has had to give up. He starts for Colorado Monday. He kept hoping he could stay here, but he went to a specialist, who told him he could not live six months in this climate, so he is starting right off. And we are to have a new principal."
"Who is he?" asked Maria. She felt herself trembling, for no reason that she could define.
"Addie Hemingway says he is a handsome young man. He has been a professor in some college, but his mother lives with him, and the climate didn't agree with her, and so he had resigned and was out of a position, and they have sent right away for him, and he is coming. In fact, Addie says she thinks he has come, and that he and his mother are at Mrs. Land's boarding-house; but they are going to keep house. Addie says she has heard he is a young man and very handsome."
"What is his name?" asked Maria, faintly.
Evelyn looked at her and laughed. "The funniest thing about it all is," said she, "that he comes originally from Edgham, and you must have known him, Maria. I don't remember him at all, but I guess you must. His name is Lee, and his first name--I can't remember his first name. Did you know a young man about your age in Edgham named Lee?"
"Wollaston?" asked Maria. She hardly knew her own voice.
"Yes; that is it--Wollaston. It is an odd name. How queer it will seem to have a handsome young man for principal instead of poor old Professor Lane. I am sorry, for my part; I liked Professor Lane. I went to the book-store in Westbridge and bought a book for him to read on the journey, and left it at the door. I sent in my remembrances, and told the girl how sorry I was that Professor Lane was not well."
"That was a good girl," said Maria. "I am glad you did." She was as white as death, but she continued sewing steadily.
Evelyn went to the looking-glass and removed her hat, and readjusted her flying hair around her glowing face. She did not notice her sister's pallor and expression of shock, almost of horror, but Aunt Maria did. Finally she spoke.
"What on earth ails you, Maria Edgham?" she said, harshly. When Aunt Maria was anxious, she was always harsh, and seemed to regard the object of her solicitude as a culprit.
Evelyn turned abruptly and saw her sister's face, then she ran to her and threw her arms around her neck and pulled her head against her shoulder. "What is it? What is it?" she cried, in her sobbing, emotional voice, which any stress aroused.
Maria raised her head and pushed Evelyn gently away. "Nothing whatever is the matter, dear," she said, firmly, and took up her work again.
"Folks don't turn as white as sheets if nothing is the matter," said Aunt Maria, still in her harsh, accusing voice. "I want to know what is the matter. Did your dinner hurt you? You ate that lemon-pie."
"I feel perfectly well, Aunt Maria," replied Maria, making one of her tremendous efforts of will, which actually sent the color back to her face. She smiled as she spoke.
"You do look better," said Aunt Maria doubtfully.
"Yes, you do," said Evelyn.
"Maybe it was the light," said Aunt Maria in a reassured tone.
"There isn't much light to see to sew by, I know that," Maria said in an off-hand tone. "I believe I will take a little run down to the post-office for the night mail. Evelyn, you can help Aunt Maria get supper, can't you, dear?"
"Of course I can," said Evelyn. "But are you sure you are well enough to go alone?"
"Nonsense!" said Maria, rising and folding her work.
"Do you think anything is the matter with sister?" Evelyn asked Aunt Maria after Maria had gone.
"Don't ask me," replied Aunt Maria curtly.
"Aunt Maria!"
"Well?"
"Professor Lane isn't married. You don't suppose sister--"
"What a little goose you are, Evelyn Edgham!" cried Aunt Maria, almost fiercely turning upon her. "Do you suppose if Maria Edgham had wanted any man she couldn't have got him?"
"I suppose she could," said Evelyn meekly. "And I know Professor Lane is so much older, but he always seemed to like sister, and I didn't know but she felt badly because he was so ill."
"Stuff!" said Aunt Maria. "Come, you had better set the table. I have got to make some biscuits for supper. They won't be any more than done by the time Maria gets back."
"Did you think she looked so very pale?" asked Evelyn, following her aunt out of the room.
"No, I didn't think she looked pale at all when I came to look at her," said Aunt Maria, sharply. "She looked just as she always does. It was the light."
Aunt Maria unhesitatingly lied. She knew that her niece had been pale, and she believed that it was on account of Professor Lane. She thought to herself what fools girls were. There Maria had thrown away such a chance as George Ramsey, and was very likely breaking her heart in secret over this consumptive, old enough to be her father.
Evelyn also believed, in her heart of hearts, that her sister was in love with Professor Lane, but she took a more sentimental view of the matter. She was of the firm opinion that love has no age, and then Professor Lane had never seemed exactly old to her, and he was a very handsome man. She thought of poor Maria with the tenderest pity and sympathy. It almost seemed to her that she herself was in love with Professor Lane, and that his going so far away to recover his health was a cruel blow to her. She thought of poor Maria walking to the post-office and brooding over her trouble, and her tender heart ached so hard that it might have been Maria's own.
But Maria, walking to the post-office, realized not so much an ache in her heart as utter horror and terror. She asked herself how could she possibly continue teaching in that school if Wollaston Lee were principal; how could she endure the daily contact with him which would be inevitable. She wondered if he could possibly have known that she was teaching in that school when he accepted the position. Such a deadly fear was over her that her class-room and the great pile of school buildings seemed to her fancy as horrible as a cage of wild beasts. She felt such a loathing of the man who was legally, although not really, her husband, that the loathing itself filled her with shame and disgust at herself. She told herself that it was horrible, horrible, that she could not endure it, that it was impossible. She was in a fairly desperate mood. She had a sudden impulse to run away and leave everybody and everything, even Evelyn and her aunt, whom she loved so well. She felt pitiless towards everybody except herself. She took out her pocket-book and counted the money which it contained. There were fifteen dollars and some loose change. The railroad station was on a road parallel to the one on which she was walking. An express train flashed by as she stood there. Suddenly Maria became possessed of one of those impulses which come to everybody, but to which comparatively few yield in lifetimes. The girl gathered up her skirts and broke into a run for the railroad station. She knew that there was an accommodation train due soon after the express. She reached the dusty platform, in fact, just as the train came in. There were no other passengers from Amity except a woman whom she did not know, dragging a stout child by the arm. The child was enveloped in clothing to such an extent that it could scarcely walk. It stumbled over its voluminous white coat. Nobody could have told its sex. It cast a look of stupid discomfort at Maria, then its rasped little face opened for a wail. "Shet up!" said the mother, and she dragged more forcibly at the podgy little arm, and the child broke into a lop-sided run towards the cars.
Maria had no time to get a ticket. She only had time for that one glance at the helpless, miserable child, before she climbed up the steep car-steps. She found an empty seat, and shrugged close to the window. She did not think very much of what she was doing. She thought more of the absurdly uncomfortable child, over-swathed in clothing, and over-disciplined with mother-love, she could not have told why. She wondered what it would be like to have an ugly, uninteresting, viciously expostulating little one dragging at her hand. The mother, although stout and mature-looking, was not much older than she. It seemed to her that the being fond of such a child, and being happy under such circumstances, would involve as much of a vital change in herself as death itself. And yet she wondered if such a change were possible with all women, herself included. She gazed absently at the pale landscape past which the train was flying. The conductor had to touch her arm before he could arouse her attention, when he asked for her ticket. Then she looked at him vacantly, and he had to repeat his "Ticket, please."
Maria opened her pocket-book and said, mechanically, the name of the first station which came into her head, "Ridgewood." Ridgewood was a small city about fifteen miles distant. She had sometimes been there shopping. She gave the conductor a five-dollar bill, and he went away, murmuring something about the change. When he returned with the rebate-slip and the change, he had to touch her shoulder again to arrest her attention.
"Change, miss," said the conductor, and "you can get ten cents back on this at the station."
Maria took the change and the slip and put them in her pocket-book, and the conductor passed on with a quick, almost imperceptible backward glance at her. Maria sat very still. The child who had got on at Amity began to wail again, and its outcries filled the whole car. To Maria it seemed like the natural outburst of an atmosphere overcharged with woe, and the impotent rage and regret of the whole race, as a cloud is charged with electricity. She felt that she herself would like to burst into a wild wail, and struggle and wrestle against fate with futile members, as the child fought against its mother with its fat legs in shoes too large, and its bemittened hands. However, she began to get a certain comfort from the rapid motion. She continued to stare out of the window at the landscape, which fast disappeared under the gathering shadows. The car lamps were lit. Maria still looked, however, out of the window; the lights in the house windows, and red and green signal-lights, gave her a childish interest. She forgot entirely about herself. She turned her back upon herself and her complex situation of life with infinite relief. She did not wonder what she would do when she reached Ridgewood. She did not think any more of herself. It was as if she had come into a room of life without any looking-glasses, and she was no longer visible to her own consciousness. She did not look at the other passengers. All that was evident to her of the existence of any in the car besides herself was the unceasing wail of the child, and its mother's half-soothing, half-scolding voice. She did not see the passengers who boarded the train at the next station beyond Amity, and that Wollaston Lee was one of them. Indeed, she might not at once have recognized him, although the man retained in a marked degree the features of the boy. Wollaston had grown both tall and broad-shouldered, and had a mustache. He was a handsome fellow, well dressed, and with an easy carriage, and he had an expression of intelligent good-humor which made more than one woman in the car look at him. Although Maria did not see him, he saw her at once, and recognized her, and his handsome face paled. The ridiculous complexity of his position towards her had not tended to make him very happy. He had kept the secret as well as Maria; for him, as for her, a secret was a heavy burden, almost amounting to guilt. He continued to glance furtively at her from time to time. He thought that she was very pretty, and also that there was something amiss with her. He, as well as the girl, had entirely gotten over his boyish romance, but the impulse to honorable dealing and duty towards her had not in the least weakened.
When the train stopped at Ridgewood he rose. Maria did not stir. Wollaston stopped, and saw the conductor touch Maria, and heard him say, "This is your station, lady."
Maria rose mechanically and followed the conductor through the car. When she had descended the steps Wollaston, who had gotten off just in advance, stood aside and waited. He felt uneasy without just knowing why. It seemed to him that there was something strange about the girl's bearing. He thought so the more when she stood motionless on the platform and remained there a moment or more after the train had moved out; then she went towards a bench outside the station and sat down. Wollaston made up his mind that there was something strange, and that he must speak to her.
He approached her, and he could hear his heart beat. He stood in front of her, and raised his hat. Maria did not look up. Her eyes seemed fixed on a fringe of wood across the track in which some katydids were calling, late as it was. That wood, with its persistent voices of unseen things, served to turn her thought from herself, just as the cry of the child had done.
"Miss Edgham," said Wollaston, in a strained voice. It suddenly occurred to him that that was not the girl's name at all, that she was in reality Mrs. Lee, not Miss Edgham.
Maria did not seem to see him until he had repeated her name again. Then she gave a sudden start and looked up. An electric light on the platform made his face quite plain. She knew him at once. She did not make a sound, but rose with a sudden stealthy motion like that of a wild, hunted thing who leaves its covert for farther flight. But Wollaston laid his hand on her shoulder and forced her gently back to her seat. There was no one besides themselves on the platform. They were quite alone.
"Don't be afraid," he said. But Maria, looking up at him, fairly chattered with terror. Her lips were open, she made inarticulate noises like a frightened little monkey. Her eyes dilated. This seemed to her incredibly monstrous, that in fleeing she should have come to that from which she fled. All at once the species of mental coma in which she had been cleared away, and she saw herself and the horrible situation in which her flight had placed her. The man looked down at her with the utmost kindness, concern, and pity.
"Don't be afraid," he said again; but Maria continued to look at him with that cowering, hunted look.
"Where are you going?" asked Wollaston, and suddenly his voice became masterful. He realized that there was something strange, undoubtedly, about all this.
"I don't know," Maria said, dully.
"You don't know?"
"No, I don't."
Maria raised her head and looked down the track. "I am going on the train," said she, with another wild impulse.
"What train?"
"The next train."
"The next train to where?"
"The next train to Springfield," said Maria, mentioning the first city which came into her mind.
"What are you going to Springfield for so late? Have you friends there?"
"No," said Maria, in a hopeless voice.
Wollaston sat down beside her. He took one of her little, cold hands, and held it in spite of a feeble struggle on her part to draw it away. "Now, see here, Maria," he said, "I know there is something wrong. What is it?"
His tone was compelling. Maria looked straight ahead at the gloomy fringe of woods, and answered, in a lifeless voice, "I heard you were coming."
"And that is the reason you were going away?"
"Yes."
"See here, Maria," said Wollaston, eagerly, "upon my honor I did not know myself until this very afternoon that you were one of the teachers in the Westbridge Academy. If I had known I would have refused the position, although my mother was very anxious for me to accept it. I would refuse it now if it were not too late, but I promise you to resign very soon if you wish it."
"I don't care," said Maria, still in the same lifeless tone. "I am going away."
"Going where?"
"To Springfield. I don't know. Anywhere."
Wollaston leaned over her and spoke in a whisper. "Maria, do you want me to take steps to have it annulled?" he asked. "It could be very easily done. There was, after all, no marriage. It is simply a question of legality. No moral question is involved."
A burning blush spread over Maria's face. She snatched her hand away from his. "Do you think I could bear it?" she whispered back, fiercely.
"Bear what?" asked the young man, in a puzzled tone.
"The publicity, the--newspapers. Nobody has known, not one of my relatives. Do you think I could bear it?"
"I will keep the secret as long as you desire," said Wollaston. "I only wish to act honorably and for your happiness."
"There is only one reason which could induce me to give my consent to the terrible publicity," said Maria.
"What is that?"
"If--you wished to marry anybody else."
"I do not," said Wollaston, with a half-bitter laugh. "You can have your mind easy on that score. I have not thought of such a thing as possible for me."
Maria cast a look of quick interest at him. Suddenly she saw his possible view of the matter, that it might be hard for him to forego the happiness which other young men had.
"I would not shrink at all," she said, gently, "if at any time you saw anybody whom you wished to marry. You need not hesitate. I am not so selfish as that. I do not wish your life spoiled."
Wollaston laughed pleasantly. "My life is not to be spoiled because of any such reason as that," he said, "and I have not seen anybody whom I wished to marry. You know I have mother to look out for, and she makes a pleasant home for me. You need not worry about me, but sometimes I have worried a little about you, poor child."
"You need not, so far as that is concerned," cried Maria, almost angrily. A sense of shame and humiliation was over her. She did not love Wollaston Lee. She felt the same old terror and disgust at him, but it mortified her to have him think that she might wish to marry anybody else.
"Well, I am glad of that," said Wollaston. "I suppose you like your work."
"Yes."
"After all, work is the main thing," said Wollaston.
"Yes," assented Maria, eagerly.
Wollaston returned suddenly to the original topic. "Were you actually running away because you heard I was coming?" he said.
"Yes, I suppose I was," Maria replied, in a hopeless, defiant sort of fashion.
"Do you actually know anybody in Springfield?"
"No."
"Have you much money with you?"
"I had fifteen dollars and a few cents before I paid my fare here."
"Good God!" cried Wollaston. Then he added, after a pause of dismay, almost of terror, during which he looked at the pale little figure beside him, "Do you realize what might have happened to you?"
"I don't think I realized much of anything except to get away," replied Maria.
Wollaston took her hand again and held it firmly. "Now listen to me, Maria," he said. "On Monday I shall have to begin teaching in the Westbridge Academy. I don't see how I can do anything else. But now listen. I give you my word of honor, I will not show by word or deed that you are anything to me except a young lady who used to live in the same village with me. I shall have to admit that."
"I am not anything else to you," Maria flashed out.
"Of course not," Wollaston responded, quietly. "But I give you my word of honor that I will make no claim upon you, that I will resign my position when you say the word, that I will keep the wretched, absurd secret until you yourself tell me that you wish for--an annulment of the fictitious tie between us."
Maria sat still.
"You will not think of running away now, will you?" Wollaston said, and there was a caressing tone in his voice, as if he were addressing a child.
Maria did not reply at once.
"Tell me, Maria," said Wollaston. "You will not think of doing such a desperate thing, which might ruin your whole life, when I have promised you that there is no reason?"
"No, I will not," Maria said.
Wollaston rose and went nearer the electric light and looked at his watch. Then he came back. "Now, Maria, listen to me again," he said. "I have some business in Ridgewood. I would not attend to it to-night but I have made an appointment with a man and I don't see my way out of breaking it. It is about a house which I want to rent. Mother doesn't like the boarding-house at Westbridge, and in fact our furniture is on the road and I have no place to store it, and I am afraid there are other parties who want to rent this house, that I shall lose it if I do not keep the appointment. But I have only a little way to go, and it will not keep me long. I can be back easily inside of half an hour. The next train to Amity stops here in about thirty-seven minutes. Now I want you to go into the waiting-room, and sit there until I come back. Can I trust you?"
"Yes," said Maria, with a curious docility. She rose.
"You had better buy your ticket back to Amity, and when I come into the station, I think it is better that I should only bow to you, especially if others should happen to be there. Can I trust you to stay there and not get on board any train but the one which goes to Amity?"
"Yes, you can," said Maria, with the same docility which was born of utter weariness and the subjection to a stronger will.
She went into the waiting-room and bought her ticket, then sat down on a settee in the dusty, desolate place and waited. There were two women there besides herself, and they conversed very audibly about their family affairs. Maria listened absently to astonishing disclosures. The man in the ticket-office was busy at the telegraph, whose important tick made an accompaniment to the chatter of the women, both middle-aged, and both stout, and both with grievances which they aired with a certain delight. One had bought a damaged dress-pattern in Ridgewood, and had gone that afternoon to obtain satisfaction. "I set there in Yates & Upham's four mortal hours," said she, in a triumphant tone, "and they kep' comin' and askin' me things, and sayin' would I do this and that, but I jest stuck to what I said I would do in the first place, and finally they give in."
"What did you want?" asked the other woman.
"Well, I wanted my money back that I had paid for the dress, and I wanted the dressmaker paid for cuttin' it--it was all cut an' fitted--and I wanted my fares back and forth paid, too."
"You don't mean to say they did all that?" said the other woman, in a tone of admiration.
"Yes, sir, they did. Finally Mr. Upham himself came and talked with me, and he said he would allow me what I asked. I tell you I marched out of that store, when I'd got my money back, feelin' pretty well set up."
"I should think you would have," said the other woman, in an admiring tone. "You do beat the Dutch!"
Then the women fell to talking about the niece of one of them who had been jilted by her lover. "He treated her as mean as pusley," one woman said. "There he'd been keepin' company with poor Aggie three mortal years, comin' regular every Wednesday and Sunday night, and settin' up with her, and keepin' off other fellers."
"I think he treated her awful mean," assented the other woman. "I don't know what I would have said if it had been my Mamie."
Maria detected a covert tone of delight in this woman's voice. She realized instinctively that the woman had been jealous that her companion's niece had been preferred to her daughter, and was secretly glad that she was jilted. "How does she take it?" she asked.
"She just cries her eyes out, poor child," her friend answered. "She sets and cries all day, and I guess she don't sleep much. Her mother is thinkin' of sendin' her to visit her married sister Lizzie down in Hartford, and see if that won't divert her mind a little."
"I should think that would be a very good idea," said the other woman. Maria, listening listlessly, whirled about herself in the current of her own affairs, thought what a cat that woman was, and how she did not in the least care if she was a cat.
Wollaston Lee was not gone very long. He bowed and said good-evening to Maria, then seated himself at a little distance. The two women looked at him with sharp curiosity. "It would be the best thing for poor Aggie if she could get her mind set on another young man," said the woman whose niece had been jilted.
"That is so," assented the other woman.
"There's as good fish in the sea as has ever been caught, as I told her," said the first woman, with speculative eyes upon Wollaston Lee.
It was not long before the train for Amity arrived. Wollaston, with an almost imperceptible gesture, looked at Maria, who immediately arose. Wollaston sat behind her on the train. Just before they reached Amity he came forward and spoke to her in a low voice. "I have to go on to Westbridge," he said. "Will there be a carriage at the station?"
"There always is," Maria replied.
"Don't think of walking up at this hour. It is too late. What--" Wollaston hesitated a second, then he continued, in a whisper, "What are you going to tell your aunt?" he said.
"Nothing," replied Maria.
"Can you?"
"I must. I don't see any other way, unless I tell lies."
Wollaston lifted his hat, with an audible remark about the beauty of the evening, and passed through into the next car, which was a smoker. The two women of the station were seated a little in the rear across the aisle from Maria. She heard one of them say to the other, "I wonder who that girl was he spoke to?" and the other's muttered answer that she didn't know.
Contrary to her expectations, Maria did not find a carriage at the Amity station, and she walked home. It was late, and the village houses were dark. The electric lights still burned at wide intervals, lighting up golden boughs of maples until they looked like veritable branches of precious metal. Maria hurried along. She had a half-mile to walk. She did not feel afraid; a sense of confusion and relief was over her, with another dawning sense which she did not acknowledge to herself. An enormous load had been lifted from her mind; there was no doubt about that. A feeling of gratitude and confidence in the young man who had just left her warmed her through and through. When she reached her aunt's house she saw a light in the sitting-room windows, and immediately she turned into the path the door opened and her aunt stood there.
"Maria Edgham, where have you been?" asked Aunt Maria.
"I have been to walk," replied Maria.
"Been to walk! Do you know what time it is? It is 'most midnight. I've been 'most crazy. I was just goin' in to get Henry up and have him hunt for you."
"I am glad you didn't," said Maria, entering and removing her hat. She smiled at her aunt, who continued to gaze at her with the sharpest curiosity.
"Where have you been to walk this time of night?" she demanded.
Maria looked at her aunt, and said, quite gravely, "Aunt Maria, you trust me, don't you?"
"Of course I do; but I want to know. I have a right to know."
"Yes, you have," said Maria, "but I shall never tell you as long as I live where I have been to-night."
"What?"
"I shall never tell you were I have been, only you can rest assured that there is no harm--that there has been no harm."
"You don't mean to ever tell?"
"No." Maria took a lamp from the sitting-room table, lighted it, and went up-stairs.
"You are just like your mother--just as set," Aunt Maria called after her, in subdued tones. "Here I've been watchin' till I was 'most crazy."
"I am real sorry," Maria called back. "Good-night, Aunt Maria. Such a thing will never happen again."
Directly Maria was in her own room she pulled down her window-shades. She did not see a man, who had followed at a long distance all the way from the station, moving rapidly up the street. It was Wollaston Lee. He had seen, from the window of the smoker, that there was no carriage waiting, had jumped off the train, entered the station, then stolen out and followed Maria until he saw her safely in her home. Then the last trolley had gone, and he walked the rest of the way to Westbridge. _