_ Chapter XXX
The next morning, which was Sunday, Maria could not go to church. An utter weariness and lassitude, to which she was a stranger, was over her. Evelyn remained at home with her. Evelyn still had the idea firmly fixed in her mind that Maria was grieving over Professor Lane. It was also firmly fixed in Aunt Maria's mind. Aunt Maria, who had both suspicion and imagination, had conceived a reason for Maria's mysterious absence the night before. She knew that Professor Lane was to take a night train from Westbridge. She jumped at the conclusion that Maria had gone to Westbridge to see him off, and had missed the trolley connection. There were two trolley-lines between Amity and Westbridge, and that accounted for her walking to the house. Aunt Maria was mortified and angry. She would have been mortified to have her niece so disturbed over any man who had not proposed marriage to her, but when she reflected upon Professor Lane, his sunken chest, his skinny throat, and his sparse gray hair, although he was yet a handsome man for his years, she experienced a positive nausea. She was glad when Evelyn came down in the morning and said that Maria had called to her, and said she did not want any breakfast and did not feel able to go to church.
"Do you think sister is going to be sick, Aunt Maria?" Evelyn said, anxiously. Then her sweet eyes met her aunt's, and both the young and the old maid blushed at the thought which they simultaneously had.
"Sick? No," replied Aunt Maria, crossly.
"I guess I will stay home with her, anyway," Evelyn said, timidly.
"Well, you can do jest as you are a mind to," said Aunt Maria. "I'm goin' to meetin'. If folks want to act like fools, I ain't goin' to stay at home and coddle them."
"Oh, Aunt Maria, I don't think sister acts like a fool," Evelyn said, in her sweet, distressed voice. "She looks real pale and acts all tired out."
"I guess she'll survive it," said Aunt Maria, pouring the coffee.
"Don't you think I had better make some toast and a cup of tea for her, if she does say she doesn't want any breakfast?"
"Maria Edgham is old enough to know her own mind, and if she says she don't want any breakfast I'd let her go without till she was hungry," said Aunt Maria. She adored Maria above any living thing, and just in proportion to the adoration she felt angry with her. It was a great relief to her not to see her.
"Aren't you going up-stairs and see if you think sister is sick?" Evelyn asked, as Aunt Maria was tying her bonnet-strings.
"No, I ain't," replied Aunt Maria. "It's all I can do to walk to church. I ain't goin' to climb the stairs for nothin'. I ain't worried a mite about her."
After Aunt Maria was gone Evelyn made a slice of toast, placed it on a pretty plate, and made also some tea, which she poured into a very dainty cup. Then she carried the toast and tea on a little tray up to Maria's room.
"Please sit up and drink this tea and eat this toast, sister," she said, pleadingly.
"Thank you, dear," said Maria, "but I don't feel as if I could eat anything."
"It's real nice," said Evelyn, looking with a childish wistfulness from her sister to the toast. Maria could not withstand the look. She raised herself in bed and let Evelyn place the tray on her knees. Then she forced herself to drink the tea and eat the toast. Evelyn all the time watched her with that sweet wistfulness of expression which was one of her chief charms. Evelyn, when she looked that way, was irresistible. There was so much anxious love in her tender face that it made it fairly angelic. Evelyn's dark hair was tumbling about her face like a child's, in a way which she often wore it when at home when there was no company. It was tied with a white ribbon bow. She wore a black skirt and a little red breakfast-jacket faced with white. As her sister gradually despatched the tea and toast, the look of wistfulness on her face changed to one of radiant delight. She clapped her hands.
"There," she said, "I knew you would eat your breakfast if I brought it to you. Wasn't that toast nice?"
"Delicious."
"I made it my own self. Aunt Maria was cross. Don't you think it is odd that any one who loves anybody should ever be cross?"
"It often happens," said Maria, laying back on her pillows.
"Of course, Aunt Maria loves us both, but she loves you especially; but she is often cross with you. I don't understand it."
"She doesn't love me any better than she does you, dear," said Maria.
"Oh yes, she does; but I am not jealous. I am very glad I am not, for I could be terribly jealous."
"Nonsense, precious!"
"Yes, I could. Sometimes I imagine how jealous I could be, and it frightens me."
"You must not imagine such things, dear."
"I have always imagined things," said Evelyn. Her face took on a very serious, almost weird and tragic expression. Maria had as she had often had before, a glimpse of dangerous depths of emotion in her sister's character.
"That is no reason why you should always imagine," she said, with a little, weary sigh.
Directly the look of loving solicitude appeared on Evelyn's face. She went close to her sister, and laid her soft, glowing cheek against hers.
"I am so sorry, dearest," she said. "Sorry for whatever troubles you."
"What makes you think anything troubles me?"
"You seem to me as if something troubled you."
"Nothing does," said Maria. She pushed Evelyn gently away and sat up. "I was only tired out," she said, firmly. "The breakfast has made me feel better. I will get up now and write some letters."
"Wouldn't you rather lie still and let me read to you?"
"No, dear, thank you. I will get up now."
Evelyn remained in the room while her sister brushed her hair and dressed. "I wonder what kind of a man the new principal will be?" she said, looking dreamily out of the window. She had, in fact, already had her dreams about him. As yet she had admitted men to her dreams only, but she had her dreams. She did not notice her sister's change of color. She continued to gaze absently out of the window at the autumn landscape. A golden maple branch swung past the window in a crisp breeze, now and then a leaf flew away like a yellow bird and became a part of the golden carpet on the ground. "Addie Hemingway says he is very handsome," she said, meditatively. "Do you remember him, sister--that is, do you remember how he looked when he was a boy?"
"As I remember him he was a very good-looking boy," Maria said.
"I wonder if he is engaged?" Evelyn said.
Suddenly her soft cheeks flamed.
"I don't see what that matters to you," Maria retorted, in a tone which she almost never used towards Evelyn--"to you or any of the other girls. Mr. Lee is coming to teach you, not to become engaged to his pupils."
"Of course I know he is," Evelyn said, humbly. "I didn't mean to be silly, sister. I was only wondering."
"The less a young girl wonders about a man the better," Maria said.
"Well, I won't wonder, only it does seem rather natural to wonder. Didn't you use to wonder when you were a young girl, sister?"
"It does not make it right if I did."
"I don't think you could do anything wrong, sister," Evelyn returned, with one of her glances of love and admiration. Suddenly Maria wondered herself what a man would do if he were to receive one of those glances.
Evelyn continued her little chatter. "Of course none of us girls ever wondered about Professor Lane, because he was so old," she said. Then she caught herself with an anxious glance at her sister. "But he was very handsome, too," she added, "and I don't know why we shouldn't have thought about him, and he wasn't so very old. I think Colorado will cure him."
"I hope so," Maria said, absently. She had no more conception of what was in Evelyn's mind with regard to herself and Professor Lane than she had of the thought of an inhabitant of Mars. Ineffable distances of surmise and imagination separated the two in the same room.
Evelyn continued: "Mr. Lee isn't married, anyway," she said. "Addie said so. His mother keeps house for him. Wasn't that a dreadful thing in the paper last night, sister?"
"What?" asked Maria.
"About that girl's getting another woman's husband to fall in love with her, and get a divorce, and then marrying him. I don't see how she could. I would rather die than marry a man who had been divorced. I would think of the other wife all the time. Don't you think it was dreadful, sister?"
"Why do you read such things?" asked Maria, and there was a hard ring in her voice. It seemed to her that she was stretched on a very rack of innocence and ignorance.
"It was all there was in the paper to read," replied Evelyn, "except advertisements. There were pictures of the girl, and the wife, and the man, and the two little children. Of course it was worse because there were children, but it was dreadful anyway. I would never speak to that girl again, not if she had been my dearest friend."
"You had better read a library book, if there is nothing better than that to read in a paper," said Maria.
"There wasn't, except a prize-fight, and I don't care anything about prize-fights, and I believe there were races, too, but I don't know anything about races."
"I don't see that you know very much about marriage and divorce," Maria said, adjusting her collar.
"Are you angry with me, sister? Don't you want me to fasten your collar?"
"No, I can fasten it myself, thank you, dear. No, I am not angry with you, only I do wish you wouldn't read such stuff. Put the paper away, and get a book instead."
"I will if you want me to, sister," replied Evelyn. _