By the Light of the Soul: A Novel

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

“Why, my dear,” she said, “I don't know what you said. I have forgotten.”

Chapter XVI

Now commenced an odd period of her existence for Maria Edgham. She escaped a transition stage which comes to nearly every girl by her experience in New York, the night when Evelyn was lost. There is usually for a girl, if not for a boy, a stage of existence when she flutters, as it were, over the rose of life, neither lighting upon it nor leaving it, when she is not yet herself, when she does not comprehend herself at all, except by glimpses of emotions, as one may see one facet of a diamond but never the complete stone. Maria had, in a few hours, become settled, crystallized, and she gave evidence of it indisputably in one way—she had lost her dreams. When a girl no longer dreams of her future she has found herself. Maria had always been accustomed to go to sleep lulled by her dreams of innocent romance. Now she no longer had them, it was as if a child missed a lullaby. She was a long time in getting to sleep at all, and she did not sleep well. She no longer stared over the page of a lesson-book into her own future, as into a crystal well wherein she saw herself glorified by new and strange happiness. She studied, and took higher places in her classes, but she did not look as young or as well. She grew taller and thinner, and she looked older. People said Maria Edgham was losing her beauty, that she would not be as pretty a woman as she had promised to make, after all. Maria no longer dwelt so long and pleasurably upon her reflection in the glass. She simply arranged her hair and neck-gear tidily and went her way. She did not care so much for her pretty clothes. A girl without her dreams is a girl without her glory of youth. She did not quite realize what was the matter, but she knew that she was no longer so fair to see, and that the combination of herself and a new gown was not what it had been. She felt as if she had reached the last page of her book of life, and the ennui of middle age came over her. She had not reached the last page; she was, of course, mistaken; but she had reached a paragraph so tremendous that it seemed to her the climax, as if there could be nothing beyond it. She was married—that is, she had been pronounced a wife! There was, there could be, nothing further. She was both afraid of, and disliked, the boy who had married her. There was nothing ahead that she could see but a commonplace existence without romance and without love. She as yet did not dwell upon the possible complications which might arise from her marriage. It simply seemed to her that she should always live a spinster, although the marriage ceremony had been pronounced over her. She began to realize that in order to live in this way she must take definite steps. She knew that her father was not rich. The necessity for work and earning her own living in the future began to present itself. She made up her mind to fit herself for a teacher.

“Papa, I am going to teach,” she told her father one afternoon.

Ida had gone out. It was two years after her marriage, and Maria looked quite a woman. She and her father were alone. Evelyn had gone to bed. Maria had tucked her in and kissed her good-night. Josephine was no longer a member of the family. In a number of ways expenses had been retrenched. Harry would not admit it, and Ida did not seem aware of it, but his health was slowly but surely failing. That very day he had consulted a specialist in New York, taking his turn in the long line of waiting applicants in the office. When he came out he had a curious expression on his face, which made more than one of the other patients, however engrossed in their own complaints, turn around and look after him. He looked paler than when he had entered the office, but not exactly cast down. He had rather a settled expression, as of one who had come in sight, not of a goal of triumph, but of the end of a long and wearisome journey. In these days Harry Edgham was so unutterably weary, he drove himself to his work with such lashes of spirit, that he was almost incapable of revolt against any sentence of fate. There comes a time to every one, to some when young, to some when old, that too great a burden of labor, or of days, renders the thought of the last bed of earth unterrifying. The spirit, overcome with weariness of matter, droops earthward with no rebellion. Harry, who had gotten his death-sentence, went out of the doctor's office and hailed his ferry-bound car, and realized very little difference in his attitude from what he had done before. He had still time before him, possibly quite a long time. He thought of leaving Ida and the little one and Maria, but he had a feeling as if he were beginning the traversing of a circle which would in the end bring him back, rather than of departure. It was as if he were about to circumnavigate life itself. Suddenly, however, his forehead contracted. Material matters began to irritate him. He thought of Maria, and how slight a provision he had made for her. His life was already insured for the benefit of Ida. Ida would have that and her widow's share. Little Evelyn would also have her share of his tiny estate, which consisted of nothing more than his house and lot in Edgham and a few hundreds in the bank, and poor Maria would have nothing except the paltry third remaining. When Maria, sitting alone with him in the parlor, announced her intention of fitting herself for a teacher, he viewed her with quick interest. It was the evening of the very day on which he had consulted the specialist.

“Let me see, dear,” he returned; “how many years more have you at the academy?”

“I can graduate next year,” Maria replied, with pride. This last year she had been taking enormous strides, which had placed her ahead of her class. “At least, I can if I work hard,” she added.

“I don't want you to work too hard,” Harry said, anxiously.

“I am perfectly well,” said Maria. And she did in reality look entirely well, in spite of her thinness and expression of premature maturity. There was a wiriness about her every movement which argued, if not actual robustness, the elasticity of bending and not breaking before the stresses of life.

“Let me see, you will be pretty young to teach, then,” said Harry.