_ Chapter VI
Maria felt that she no longer cared about Wollaston Lee, that she fairly scorned him. Then, suddenly, something occurred to her. She turned, and ran back as fast as she could, her short fleece of golden hair flying. She wrapped her short skirts about her, and wormed through the barbed-wire fence which skirted the field--the boy had leaped it, but she was not equal to that--and she hastened, leaving a furrow through the white-and-gold herbage, to the boy lying on his face weeping. She stood over him.
"Say?" said she.
The boy gave a convulsive wriggle of his back and shoulders, and uttered an inarticulate "Let me alone"; but the girl persisted.
"Say?" said she again.
Then the boy turned, and disclosed a flushed, scowling face among the flowers.
"Well, what do you want, anyway?" said he.
"If you want to marry Miss Slome, why don't you, instead of my father?" inquired Maria, bluntly, going straight to the point.
"I haven't got any money," replied Wollaston, crossly; "all a woman thinks of is money. How'd I buy her dresses?"
"I don't believe but your father would be willing for you to live at home with her, and buy her dresses, till you got so you could earn yourself."
"She wouldn't have me," said the boy, and he fairly dug his flushed face into the mass of wild-flowers.
"You are a good deal younger than father," said Maria.
"Your father he can give her a diamond ring, and I haven't got more'n forty cents, and I don't believe that would buy much of anything," said Wollaston, in muffled tones of grief and rage.
Maria felt a shock at the idea of a diamond ring. Her mother had never owned one.
"Oh, I don't believe father will ever give her a diamond ring in the world," said she.
"She's wearing one, anyhow--I saw it," said Wollaston. "Where did she get it if he didn't give it to her, I'd like to know?"
Maria felt cold.
"I don't believe it," she said again. "Teacher is all alone in the school-house, correcting exercises. Why don't you get right up, and go back and ask her? I'll go with you, if you want me to."
Wollaston raised himself indeterminately upon one elbow.
"Come along," urged Maria.
Wollaston got up slowly. His face was a burning red.
"You are a good deal younger and better looking than father," urged Maria, traitorously.
The boy was only a year older than Maria. He was much larger and taller, but although she looked a child, at that moment he looked younger. Both of his brown hands hung at his sides, clinched like a baby's. He had a sulky expression.
"Come along," urged the girl.
He stood kicking the ground hesitatingly for a moment, then he followed the girl across the field. They went down the road until they came to the school-house. Miss Slome was still there; her graceful profile could be seen at a window.
Both children marched in upon Miss Slome, who was in a recitation-room, bending over a desk. She looked up, and her face lightened at sight of Maria.
"Oh, it's you, dear?" said she.
Maria then saw, for the first time, the white sparkle of a diamond on the third finger of her left hand. She felt that she hated her.
"He wants to speak to you," she said, indicating Wollaston with a turn of her hand.
Miss Slome looked inquiringly at Wollaston, who stood before her like a culprit, blushing and shuffling, and yet with a sort of doggedness.
"Well, what is it, Wollaston?" she asked, patronizingly.
"I came back to ask you if--you would have me?" said Wollaston, and his voice was hardly audible.
Miss Ida Slome looked at him in amazement; she was utterly dazed.
"Have you?" she repeated. "I think I do not quite understand you. What do you mean by 'have you,' Wollaston?"
"Marry me," burst forth the boy.
There was a silence. Maria looked at Miss Slome, and, to her utter indignation, the teacher's lips were twitching, and it took a good deal to make Miss Slome laugh, too; she had not much sense of humor.
In a second Wollaston stole a furtive glance at Miss Slome, which was an absurd parody on a glance of a man under similar circumstances, and Miss Slome, who had had experience in such matters, laughed outright.
The boy turned white. The woman did not realize it, but it was really a cruel thing which she was doing. She laughed heartily.
"Why, my dear boy," she said. "You are too young and I am too old. You had better wait and marry Maria, when you are both grown up."
Wollaston turned his back upon her, and marched out of the room. Maria lingered, in the vain hope that she might bring the teacher to a reconsideration of the matter.
"He's a good deal younger than father, and he's better looking," said she.
Miss Slome blushed then.
"Oh, you sweet little thing, then you know--" she began.
Maria interrupted her. She became still more traitorous to her father.
"Father has a real bad temper, when things go wrong," said she. "Mother always said so."
Miss Slome only laughed harder.
"You funny little darling," she said.
"And Wollaston has a real good disposition, his mother told my aunt Maria so," she persisted.
The room fairly rang with Miss Slome's laughter, although she tried to subdue it. Maria persisted.
"And father isn't a mite handy about the house," said she. "And Mrs. Lee told Aunt Maria that Wollaston could wipe dishes and sweep as well as a girl."
Miss Slome laughed.
"And I've got a bad temper, too, when I'm crossed; mother always said so," said Maria. Her lip quivered.
Miss Slome left her desk, came over to Maria, and, in spite of her shrinking away, caught her in her arms.
"You are a little darling," said she, "and I am not a bit afraid of your temper." She hesitated a moment, looking at the child's averted face, and coloring. "My dear, has your father told you?" she whispered; then, "I didn't know he had."
"No, ma'am, he hasn't," said Maria. She fairly pulled herself loose from Miss Slome and ran out of the room. Her eyes were almost blinded with tears; she could scarcely see Wollaston Lee on the road, ahead of her, also running. He seemed to waver as he ran. Maria called out faintly. He evidently heard, for he slackened his pace a little; then he ran faster than ever. Maria called again. This time the boy stopped until the girl came up. He picked a piece of grass, as he waited, and began chewing it.
"How do you know that isn't poison?" said Maria, breathlessly.
"Don't care if it is; hope it is," said the boy.
"It's wicked to talk so."
"Let it be wicked then."
"I don't see how I am to blame for any of it," Maria said, in a bewildered sort of way. It was the cry of the woman, the primitive cry of the primitive scape-goat of Creation. Already Maria began to feel the necessity of fitting her little shoulders to the blame of life, which she had inherited from her Mother Eve, but she was as yet bewildered by the necessity.
"Ain't it your father that's going to marry her?" inquired Wollaston, fiercely.
"I don't want him to marry her any more than you do," said Maria. "I don't want her for a mother."
"I told you how it would come out, if I asked her," cried the boy, still heaping the blame upon the girl.
"I would enough sight rather marry you than my father, if I were the teacher," said Maria, and her blue eyes looked into Wollaston's with the boldness of absolute guilelessness.
"Hush!" responded Wollaston, with a gesture of disdain. "Who'd want you? You're nothing but a girl, anyway."
With that scant courtesy Wollaston Lee resumed his race homeward, and Maria went her own way.
It was that very night, after Harry Edgham had returned from his call upon Ida Slome, that he told Maria. Maria, as usual, had gone to bed, but she was not asleep. Maria heard his hand on her door-knob, and his voice calling out, softly: "Are you asleep, dear?"
"No," responded Maria.
Then her father entered and approached the child staring at him from her white nest. The room was full of moonlight, and Maria's face looked like a nucleus of innocence upon which it centred. Harry leaned over his little daughter and kissed her.
"Father has got something to tell you, precious," he said.
Maria hitched away a little from him, and made no reply.
"Ida, Miss Slome, tells me that she thinks you know, and so I made up my mind I had better tell you, and not wait any longer, although I shall not take any decisive step before--before November. What would you say if father should bring home a new mother for his little girl, dear?"
"I should say I would rather have Aunt Maria," replied Maria, decisively. She choked back a sob.
"I've got nothing to say against Aunt Maria," said Harry. "She's been very kind to come here, and she's done all she could, but--well, I think in some ways, some one else--Father thinks you will be much happier with another mother, dear."
"No, I sha'n't."
Harry hesitated. The child's voice sounded so like her dead mother's that he felt a sudden guilt, and almost terror.
"But if father were happier--you want father to be happy, don't you, dear?" he asked, after a little.
Then Maria began to sob in good earnest. She threw her arms around her father's neck. "Yes, father, I do want you to be happy," she whispered, brokenly.
"If father's little girl were large enough to keep his house for him, and were through school, father would never think of taking such a step," said Harry Edgham, and he honestly believed what he said. For the moment his old love of life seemed to clutch him fast, and Ida Slome's radiant visage seemed to pale.
"Oh, father," pleaded Maria. "Aunt Maria would marry you, and I would a great deal rather have her."
"Nonsense," said Harry Edgham, laughing, with a glance towards the door.
"Yes, she would, father; that was the reason she got her pompadour."
Harry laughed again, but softly, for he was afraid of Aunt Maria overhearing. "Nonsense, dear," he said again. Then he kissed Maria in a final sort of way. "It will be all for the best," he said, "and we shall all be happier. Father doesn't think any the less of you, and never will, and he is never going to forget your own dear mother; but it is all for the best, the way he has decided. Now, good-night, darling, try to go to sleep, and don't worry about anything."
It was not long before Maria did fall asleep. Her thoughts were in such a whirl that it was almost like intoxication. She could not seem to fix her mind on anything long enough to hold herself awake. It was not merely the fact of her father's going to marry again, it was everything which that involved. She felt as if she were looking into a kaleidoscope shaken by fate into endless changes. The changes seemed fairly to tire her eyes into sleep.
The very next afternoon Aunt Maria went home. Harry announced his matrimonial intentions to her before he went to New York, and she said immediately that she would take the afternoon train.
"But," said Harry, "I thought maybe you would stay and be at the--wedding, Maria. I don't mean to get married until the November vacation, and it is only the first of September now. I don't see why you are in such a hurry."
"Yes," replied Aunt Maria, "I suppose you thought I would stay and get the house cleaned, and slave here like a dog, getting ready for you to be married. Well, I sha'n't; I'm tired out. I'm going to take the train this afternoon."
Harry looked helplessly at her.
"I don't see what Maria and I are going to do then," said he.
"If it wasn't for taking Maria away from school, I would ask her to come and make me a visit, poor child," said Aunt Maria, "until you brought her new ma home. I have only a hundred dollars a year to live on, but I'd risk it but I could make her comfortable; but she can't leave her school."
"No, I don't see how she can," said Harry, still helplessly. "I thought you'd stay, Maria. There is the house to be cleaned, and some painting and papering. I thought--"
"Yes, I'll warrant you thought," said Aunt Maria, with undisguised viciousness. "But you were mistaken; I am not going to stay."
"But I don't see exactly--"
"Oh, Lord, you and Maria can take your meals at Mrs. Jonas White's, she'll be glad enough to have you; and you can hire the cleaning done," said Aunt Maria, with a certain pity in the midst of her disappointment and contempt.
It seemed to Maria, when her aunt went away that afternoon, as if she could not bear it. There is a law of gravitation for the soul as well as for the body, and Maria felt as one who had fallen from a known quantity into strangeness, with a horrible shock.
"Now, if she don't treat you well, you send word, and I'll have you come and stay with me," whispered Aunt Maria at the last.
Maria loved Aunt Maria when she went away. She went to school late for the sake of seeing her off; and she was late in the geography class, but Miss Slome only greeted her with a smile of radiant reassurance.
At recess, Gladys Mann snuggled up to her.
"Say, is it true?" she whispered.
"Is what true?"
"Is your father goin' to get married to teacher?"
"Yes," said Maria. Then she gave Gladys a little push. "I wish you'd let me alone," she said. _