By the Light of the Soul Part 63

"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," a.s.sented 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," a.s.sented 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 pa.s.sed 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 grat.i.tude 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 a.s.sured 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.

Chapter x.x.x

The next morning, which was Sunday, Maria could not go to church. An utter weariness and la.s.situde, 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 spa.r.s.e 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.