Junior had been distinctly surprised at himself concerning Edith. In a fit of angry disappointment at Mahala’s rejection and her scathing arraignment of him, he had naturally turned to the girl, who all her life had taken pains to let him see that she highly approved of him. His one thought had been, that since he could not have Mahala it made no difference whom he married. But in courting Mahala, the thought of marriage had strongly entered his mind, and the night of Commencement had shown him that Edith was a woman of distinctive beauty. He worshipped beauty almost as deeply as he worshipped money. From the books in the bank he had been able to gather a very agreeable estimate of Edith’s fortune which was so considerable, that once convinced that Mahala would never marry him, Junior proved the reckless trait in his character by immediately marrying Edith.
She was quite as handsome as he had thought her. He was surprised to find himself enjoying the demonstrations of affection that she lavished upon him. He was willing to wait upon her. His father and mother were consumed with wonder when they saw him fetching and carrying, but if they protested, Junior merely laughed at them and went on doing everything that Edith asked.
One evening, to escape the constant chattering of women on the upstairs veranda, in whose talk Edith was not interested, she arose. She stepped into her room, and picking up a Persian shawl, threw it over her shoulders and walked the length of the veranda. At the corner of the building she turned down a side porch and made her way past the windows of the other guests, pausing occasionally to look down to the grounds below.
Seeing that she appeared ill and pale, a woman sitting before the French doors opening into her room, shoved a chair in Edith’s direction and asked if she did not wish to sit down and rest for a few minutes.
“Thank you,” replied Edith, “you’re very kind. I have been ill, but I am much better now.”
She glanced at the woman, and seeing that her dress and manner indicated that she was not a babbling person who would tire her with senseless chatter, she took the chair and sitting down, leaned against the balcony railing and looked at the people moving through the grounds below. There were wide stretches of beautifully kept lawns, every kind of tree and shrub imaginable. There were fountains around which grew tropical water plants and in which goldfishes swam lazily. It was the first minute of quiet that Edith had experienced outside of her rooms. She enjoyed the night air. She watched big, velvet-winged moths fluttering toward the lights at the entrance to the grounds and to the building. A sense of peace and rest stole through her. The torment of doubt and uncertainty that had racked her ever since her marriage to Junior eased slightly.
She had cared for him so intensely that she found herself doing what he asked without stopping to look into his reasons, but after a few weeks of deliberation, she had reached the conclusion that while he was doing his best to be nice to her, to keep her pleased and happy, he did not love her and he never had. This had bred a bitterness in her heart surpassing anything she ever before had experienced. Undoubtedly, it had been the cause of her illness. Her one hope had been that in time Junior would come to care for her as she knew he always had cared for Mahala. When the real breakdown came, and the mystery of the lost pocket book refused to be solved, Edith was tried to the breaking point. She could not eat; she could not sleep; she could not keep from thinking, and occasionally in her thoughts there would be thrust into her consciousness ugly things that she always had heard said about the elder Moreland and Junior.
Hour by hour, she kept reviewing her whole life in reference to her relations with Mahala. With Junior she never had come in contact except through Mahala. She remembered how she had stood with her programme ready Commencement night and he had not even asked her for one dance as he stood laughingly sprawling his name all over Mahala’s card. Even Henrick Schlotzensmelter had known that it was proper for each boy of the class to ask each girl for at least one dance. For a minute as she descended from the omnibus, Edith had thought that at last Junior had really seen her. His words had furnished her the spur that carried her through her first public appearance triumphantly, when she had started with every expectation that she would fail and be forced to resort to her written speech.
She had her hour of hope, but Junior had seen to it that it was promptly quenched; and then, in a short time, he had come to her urging the hasty marriage to which she had consented because she preferred whatever life might bring to her in his company to what it would bring without him.
To-night she was realizing more keenly than usual that it might be going to bring her a very sorry scheme of things. Leaning upon the railing, she forgot the woman sitting a few yards away, as she sat staring down into the rapidly deepening shadows.