Chapter 36

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_ Chapter XXXVI

Evelyn's return of appetite and spirits endured only a few days. Then she seemed worse than she had been before. In fact, Wollaston, thinking that he had done wrong in yielding for only a second to his impulse of tender protection and admiration for the young girl, went too far in the opposite direction. In order to make amends to Maria, himself, and Evelyn, he was actually rude, almost brutal. He scarcely spoke to Evelyn. On one occasion he even reprimanded her severely in a class for a slight mistake. Evelyn turned pale, and gave him a glance like that of some pretty, little, harmless animal which has nothing except love and devotion in its heart, and whose very mistakes are those of love and over-anxiety to please. Wollaston was struck to the heart by the look, but he did not relax one muscle of his stern face.

"I think Mr. Lee treated you mean, so there," Addie Hemingway said to Evelyn when they had left the room.

Evelyn said nothing. Her face continued pale and shocked. It was inconceivable to her that anybody, least of all Mr. Lee, could have spoken so to her.

"He's treating you like a child," Addie Hemingway continued. "Mr. Lee has no right to speak so to seniors." Addie's words were in themselves sympathetic, but there was an undertone of delight at the other girl's discomfiture in her voice which she could not eliminate. In reality she was saying to herself that Evelyn Edgham, in spite of her being so pretty, had had to meet a rebuff, and she exulted in it.

Evelyn still said nothing. She left Addie abruptly and joined Maria in her class-room. It was the noon-hour. Maria glanced anxiously at her sister as she entered.

"Why, darling, what is the matter?" she cried.

"Nothing," replied Evelyn. An impulse of loyalty seized her. She would not repeat, not even to Maria, the unkind words which Mr. Lee had used towards her.

"But you look so pale, dear," said Maria.

"It was warm in there," said Evelyn, with a quiet, dejected air unusual to her.

Maria could not get any admission that anything was wrong from her. Evelyn tried to eat her luncheon, making more of an effort than usual, but she could not. At last she laid her head down on her sister's table and wept with the utter abandon of a child, but she still would not tell what caused her tears.

After that Evelyn lost flesh so rapidly that it became alarming. Maria and her aunt wondered if they ought to allow her to go through the strain of the graduation exercises, but neither dared say anything about it to her. Evelyn's whole mind seemed fastened upon her graduation and the acquitting of herself with credit. She studied assiduously. She often used to go into the spare chamber and gaze at her graduating dress, which was spread out on the bed there covered with a sheet.

"She's so set on that graduation and wearing that dress," Aunt Maria said to Eunice Stillman, her sister-in-law, one day when she was alone with her in her parlor and heard Evelyn's light step overhead. "She goes in there almost every day and looks at it."

Eunice sighed. "Well, I wish she looked better," said she.

"So do I. It seems to me that she loses every day."

"Did you ever think--" began Eunice. Then she stopped and hesitated.

"Think what?"

"If--anything happened to her, that that dress--"

"Oh, for the land sake, stop, Eunice!" cried Aunt Maria, impatiently. "Ain't I had it on my mind the whole time. And that dress looks just as if it was laid out there."

"Do you think Maria notices?"

"Yes, she's just as worried as I am. But what can we do? Maybe if Evelyn gets through the graduation she will be better. I shall be thankful when it's over, for my part."

"How that child's mother could have gone off and left her all this time I don't see," Eunice said. "If I were in her place and anything happened to her, I should never forgive myself."

"Trust Ida Slome to forgive herself for most anything," Aunt Maria returned, bitterly. "But as far as that goes, I guess the child has had full as good care here as she would have had with her ma."

"I guess so, too," said Eunice; "better--only I should never forgive myself."

That was only a week before the graduation day, which was on a Wednesday. It was a clear June day, with a sky of blue, veiled here and there with wing-shaped clouds. It was quite warm. Evelyn dressed herself very early. She was ready long before it was time to take the car. Evelyn, in her white graduating dress, was fairly angelic. Although she had lost so much flesh, it had not affected her beauty, only made it more touching. Her articulations and bones were so fairy-like and delicate that even with her transparent sleeved and necked dress there were no unseemly protuberances. Her slenderness, moreover, was not so apparent in her fluffy gown. Above her necklace of pink corals her lovely face showed. It was full of a gentle and uncomplaining melancholy, yet that day there was a tinge of hope in it. The faintest and most appealing smile curved her lips. She looked at everybody with a sort of wistful challenge. It was as if she said: "After all, am I not pretty, and worthy of being loved? Am I not worthy of being loved, even if I am not, and I have all my books in my head, too?"

Maria had given her a bouquet of red roses. When Evelyn in her turn came forward to read her essay, holding her red roses, with red roses of excitement burning on her delicate cheeks, there was a low murmur of admiration. Then it was that Maria, in her blue gown, seated among the other teachers, caught the look on Wollaston Lee's face. It was unmistakable. It was a look of the utmost love and longing and admiration, the soul of the man, for the minute, was plainly to be read. In a second, the look was gone, but Maria had seen. "He is in love with her," she told herself, "only he is so honorable that he chokes the love back." Maria turned very pale, but she listened with smiling lips to Evelyn's essay. It was very good, but not much beyond the usual rate of such productions. Evelyn had nothing creative about her, although she was even a brilliant scholar. But the charm of that little flutelike voice, coming from that slight, white-clad beauty, made even platitudes seem like something higher than wisdom.

When Evelyn had finished there was a great round of applause and a shower of flowers. She returned again and again, and bowed, smiling delightedly. She was flushed with her triumph. She thought that even Mr. Lee must be pleased with her, if he did not love her, and be proud to have such a pupil.

That evening there was to be a reception for the teachers, and the graduating-class, at Mr. Lee's house. Evelyn and Maria had planned to go to one of the other teacher's, who lived in Westbridge, have supper, and go from there to the reception. But when the exercises were over, and they had reached the teacher's home, Evelyn's strength gave way. She had a slight fainting fit. The teacher, an elderly woman who lived alone, gave her home-made wine and made her take off her dress, put on one of her own wrappers, and lie down and rest until the last minute, in the hope that she would be able to go to the reception. But it became evident that the girl was too exhausted. When Maria and the teacher were fastening her dress again, she fainted the second time. The teacher, who was a decisive woman, spoke.

"There is no sense whatever in this child's leaving this house to-night," said she. "Maria, you go to the reception, and I will stay and take care of her."

"No," said Maria. "If Evelyn is not able to go, I think we had better take the trolley at once for home." Maria was as decided as the other teacher. When the white-clad graduates and the teachers were gathering at Wollaston Lee's, she and Evelyn boarded the trolley for Amity. Evelyn still held fast to her bouquet of red roses, and Maria was laden with baskets and bouquets which had been strewn at her shrine. Evelyn leaned back in her seat, with her head resting against the window, and did not speak. All her animation of the morning had vanished. She looked ghastly. Maria kept glancing furtively at her. She herself looked nearly as pale as Evelyn. She realized that she was face to face with a great wall of problem. She was as unhappy as Evelyn, but she was stronger to bear unhappiness. She had philosophy, and logic, and her young sister was a creature of pure emotion, and at the same time she was so innocent and ignorant that she was completely helpless before it. Evelyn closed her eyes as she leaned against the window-frame, and a chill crept over her sister as she thought that she could not look much different if she were dead. Then came to Maria the conviction that this sister's life meant more than anything else in the world to her. That she could bear the loss of everything rather than that, and when she too would not be able to avoid the sense of responsibility for it. If she had not been so headlong and absurdly impetuous years ago, Evelyn might easily have been happy and lived.

When they reached home, Aunt Maria, who had come on an earlier car, was already in her bedroom and the front-door was fastened and the sitting-room windows were dark. Maria knocked on the door, and presently she heard footsteps, then Aunt Maria's voice, asking, with an assumption of masculine harshness, who were there.

"It is only I and Evelyn," replied Maria.

Then the door was opened, and Aunt Maria, in her ruffled night-gown and cap, holding a streaming lamp, stood back hastily lest somebody see her. "Come in and shut the door quick, for goodness sake!" said she. "I am all undressed."

Maria and Evelyn went in, and Maria closed and locked the door.

"What have you come home for?" asked Aunt Maria. "Why didn't you go to the reception, and stay at Miss Thomas's, the way you said you were going to, I'd like to know?"

"Evelyn didn't feel very well, and I thought we'd better come home," replied Maria, with a little note of evasion in her voice.

Aunt Maria turned and looked sharply at Evelyn, who was leaning against the wall. She was faint again, and she looked, in her white dress with her slender curves, like a bas-relief. "What on earth is the matter with her?" asked Aunt Maria in her angry voice, which was still full of the most loving concern. She caught hold of Evelyn's slight arm. "You are all tired out, just as I expected," she said. "I call the whole thing pure tomfoolery. If girls want to get educated, let them, but when it comes to making such a parade when they are all worn out with education there is no sense in it. Maria, you get her up-stairs to bed."

Evelyn was too exhausted to make any resistance. She allowed Maria to assist her up-stairs and undress her. When her sister bent over her to kiss her good-night, she said, soothingly, "There now, darling; go to sleep. You will feel better now school is done and you will have a chance to rest."

But Evelyn responded with the weakest and most hopeless little sob.

"Don't cry, precious," said Maria.

"Won't you tell if I tell you something?" said Evelyn, raising herself on one slender arm.

"No, dear."

"Well--he does--care a good deal about me. I know now. I--I met him out in the grove after the exercises were over, and--there was nobody there, and he--he caught hold of my arms, and, Maria, he looked at me, but--" Evelyn burst into a weak little wail.

"What is it, dear?"

"Oh, I don't know what it is, but for some reason he thinks he can't tell me. He did not say so, but he made me know, and--and oh, Maria, he is going away! He is not coming back to Westbridge at all. He is going to get another place!"

"Nonsense!"

"Yes, it is so. He said so. Oh, Maria! you will think I am dreadful, and I do love you and Aunt Maria and Uncle Henry and Aunt Eunice, but I can't help minding his going away where I can never see him, more than anything else in the world. I can't help loving him most. I do feel so very badly, sister, that I think I shall die."

"Nonsense, darling."

"Yes, I shall. And I am not ashamed now. I was ashamed because I thought so much about a man who did not care anything about me, but now I am not ashamed. I am just killed. A person is not to blame for being killed. I am not ashamed. I am killed. He is going away, and I shall never see him again. The sight of him was something; I shall not even have that. You don't know, sister. I don't love him for my own self, but for himself. Just the knowing he is near is something, and I shall not even have that." Evelyn was too weak to cry tumultuously, but she made little, futile moans, and clung to Maria's hand. Maria tried to soothe her, and finally the child, worn out, seemed to be either asleep or in the coma of exhaustion.

Then Maria went into her own room. She undressed, and sat down beside the window with a wrapper over her night-gown. Now she had to solve her problem. She began as she might have done with a problem in higher algebra, this problem of the human heart and its emotions. She said to herself that there were three people. Evelyn, Wollaston and herself, three known quantities, and an unknown quantity of happiness, and perhaps life itself, which must be evolved from them. She eliminated herself and her own happiness not with any particular realization of self-sacrifice. She came of a race of women to whom self-sacrifice was more natural than self-gratification. She was unhappy, but there was no struggle for happiness to render the unhappiness keener. She thought first of Evelyn. She loved Wollaston. Maria reasoned, of course, that she was very young. This first love might not be her only one, but the girl's health might break under the strain, and she took into consideration, as she had often done, the fairly abnormal strength of Evelyn's emotional nature in a slight and frail young body. Evelyn was easily one who might die because of a thwarted love. Then Maria thought of Wollaston, and, loving him as she did, she acknowledged to herself coolly that he was the first to be considered, his happiness and well being. Even if Evelyn did break her heart, the man must have the first consideration. She tried to judge fairly as to whether she or Evelyn would on the whole be the best for him. She estimated herself, and she estimated Evelyn, and she estimated the man. Wollaston Lee was a man of a strong nature, she told herself. He was capable of self-restraint, of holding his head up from his own weaknesses forever. Maria reasoned that if he had been a weaker man she would have loved him just the same, and in that case Evelyn would have been the one to be sacrificed. She thought that a girl like Evelyn would not have been such a good wife for a weak man as she herself, who was stronger. But Wollaston did not need any extraneous strength. On the contrary, some one who was weaker than he might easily strengthen his strength. It seemed to her that Evelyn was distinctly better for the man than she. Then she remembered the look which she had seen on his face when Evelyn began her essay that day.

"If he does not love her now it is because he is bound to me," she thought. "He would most certainly love her if it were not for me."

Again it seemed to Maria distinctly better that she should die, better--that is, for Evelyn and the man. But she had the thought, with no morbid desire for suicide or any bitterness. It simply seemed to her as if her elimination would produce that desirable unknown quantity of happiness.

Elimination and not suicide seemed to her the only course for her to pursue. She sat far into the night thinking it over. She had great imagination and great daring. Things were possible to her which would not have been possible to many--that is, she considered things as possibilities which would have seemed to many simply vagaries. She thought of them seriously, with a belief in their fulfilment. It was almost morning, the birds had just begun to sing in scattering flute-like notes, when she crept into bed.

She hardly slept at all. She heard the gathering chorus of the birds, in a half doze, until seven o'clock. Then she got up and dressed herself. She peeped cautiously into Evelyn's room. The girl was sleeping, her long, dark lashes curled upon her wan cheeks. She looked ghastly, yet still lovely. Maria looked at her, and her mouth compressed. Then she turned away. She crept noiselessly down the stairs and into the kitchen where Aunt Maria was preparing breakfast. The stove smoked a little and the air was blue.

"How is she?" asked Aunt Maria, in a hushed voice.

"She is fast asleep."

"Better let her sleep just as long as she will," said Aunt Maria. "These exhibitions are pure tomfoolery. She is just tuckered out."

"Yes, I think she is," said Maria.

Aunt Maria looked keenly at her, and her face paled and lengthened.

"Maria Edgham, what on earth is the matter with _you?_" she said. "You look as bad as she does. Between both of you I am at my wit's end."

"Nothing ails me," said Maria.

"Nothing ails you? Look at yourself in the glass there."

Maria stole a look at herself in a glass which hung over the kitchen-table, and she hardly knew her own face, it had gathered such a strange fixedness of secret purpose. That had altered it more than her pallor. Maria tried to smile and say again that nothing ailed her, but she could not. Suddenly a tremendous pity for her aunt came over her. She had not thought so much about that. But now she looked at things from her aunt's point of view, and she saw the pain to which the poor old woman must be put. She saw no way of avoiding the giving her the pain, but she suffered it herself. She went up to Aunt Maria and kissed her.

Aunt Maria started back, and rubbed her face violently. "What did you do that for?" said she, in a frightened voice. Then she noticed Maria's dress, which was one which she seldom wore unless she was going out. "What have you got on your brown suit for this morning?" said she.

"I thought I would go down to the store after breakfast and get some embroidery silk for that centre-piece," replied Maria.

As she spoke she seemed to realize what a little thing a lie was, and how odd it was that she should realize it, who had been brought up to speak the truth.

"Your gingham would have been enough sight better to have worn this hot morning," said Aunt Maria, still with that air of terror and suspicion.

"Oh, this dress is light," replied Maria, going out.

"Where are you going now?"

"Into the parlor."

Aunt Maria stood still, listening, until she heard the parlor door open. She was still filled with vague suspicion. She did not hear quite as acutely as formerly, and Maria had no difficulty about leaving the parlor unheard the second after she entered it, and getting her hat and coat and a small satchel which she had brought down-stairs with her from the hat-tree in the entry. Then she opened the front door noiselessly and stole out. She went rapidly down the street in the direction of the bridge, which she had been accustomed to cross when she taught school in Amity. She met Jessy Ramsey, now grown to be as tall as herself, and pretty with a half-starved, pathetic prettiness. Jessy was on her way to work. She went out by the day, doing washings. She stopped when she met Maria, and gave a little, shy look--her old little-girl look--at her. Maria also stopped. "Good-morning, Jessy," said she. Then she asked how she was, if her cough was better, and where she was going to work. Then, suddenly, to Jessy's utter amazement and rapture, she kissed her. "I never forget what a good little girl you were," said she, and was gone. Jessy stood for a moment staring after her. Then she wiped her eyes and proceed to her scene of labor.

Maria went to the railroad station. She was just in time for a train. She got on the rear car and sat in the last seat. She looked about and did not see anybody whom she knew. She recalled how she had run away before, and how Wollaston had brought her back. She knew that it would not happen so again. She was on a through train which did not stop at the station where he had found her. When the train slowed up a little in passing that station, she saw the bench on the platform where she had sat, and a curious sensation came over her. She was like one who has made the leap and realizes that there is nothing more to dread, and who gets even a certain abnormal pleasure from the sensation. When the conductor came through the car she purchased her ticket for New York, and asked when the train was due in the city. When she learned that it was due at an hour so late that it would be impossible for her to go, as she had planned, to Edgham that night, she did not, even then, for the time being, feel in the least dismayed. She had plenty of money. Her last quarter's salary was in her little satchel. The train was made up of Pullmans only, and it was by a good chance that she had secured a seat. She gazed out of the large window at the flying landscape, and again that sense of pleasure in the midst of pain was over her. The motion itself was exhilarating. She seemed to be speeding past herself and her own anxieties, which suddenly appeared as petty and evanescent as the flying telegraph-poles along the track. "It has to be over some time," she reflected. "Nothing matters." She felt comforted by a realization of immensity and the continuance of motion. She comprehended her own atomic nature in the great scheme of things. She had never done so before. Her own interests had always loomed up before her like a beam in the eye of God. Now she saw that they were infinitesimal, and the knowledge soothed her. She leaned her head back and dozed a little. She was awakened by the porter thrusting a menu into her hands. She ordered something. It was not served promptly, and she had no appetite. There was some tea which tasted of soap. _

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