By the Light of the Soul: A Novel

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

Maria began her teaching on a September day. It was raining hard, but there was all about an odd, fictitious golden light from the spray of maple-leaves which overhung the village. Amity was a typical little New England village—that is, it had departed but little from its original type, although there was now a large plant of paper-mills, which had called in outsiders. The outsiders were established by themselves on a sort of Tom Tidler's ground called “Across the River.” The river was little more than a brook, except in spring, when, after heavy snows, it sometimes verified its name of the Ramsey River. Ramsey was an old family name in Amity, as Edgham was in Edgham. Once, indeed, the little village had been called Ramsey Four Corners. Then the old Ramsey family waned and grew less in popular esteem, and one day the question of the appropriateness of naming the village after them came up. There was another old family, by the name of Saunders, between whom and the Ramseys had always been a dignified New England feud. The Saunders had held their own much better than the Ramseys. There was one branch especially, to which Judge Josiah Saunders belonged, which was still notable. Judge Josiah had served in the State legislature, he was a judge of the superior court, and he occupied the best house in Amity, a fine specimen of the old colonial mansion house, which had been in the Saunders family for generations. Judge Saunders had made additions to this old mansion, conservative, modern colonial additions, and it was really a noble building. It was shortly after he had made the additions to his house, and had served his first term as judge of the superior court, that the question of changing the name of the village from Ramsey Four Corners to Saunders had been broached. Meetings had been held, in which the name of our celebrated townsman, the Honorable Josiah Saunders, had been on every tongue. The Ramsey family obtained scant recognition for past merits, but a becoming silence had been maintained as to their present status. The only recognized survivors of the old house of Ramsey at that time were the widow, Amelia Ramsey, the wife of Anderson Ramsey, deceased, as she appeared in the minutes of the meetings, and her son George, a lad of sixteen, and the same who, in patched attire, had made love to Maria over the garden fence when she was a child. It was about that time that the meetings were taking place, and the name of the village had been changed to Amity. It had been held to be a happy, even a noble and generous thought, on the part of Josiah Saunders. “Would that in such wise, by a combination of poetical aspirations and practical deeds, all differences might be adjusted upon this globe,” said the Amity Argus, in an account of the meeting. Thenceforth, Ramsey Four Corners became Amity, and the most genteel of the ladies had Amity engraved on their note-paper.

Mrs. Amelia Ramsey and George, who had suffered somewhat in their feelings, in spite of the poetical adjustment of the difference, had no note-paper. They were poor, else Amity might never have been. They lived in a house which had been, in its day, as pretentious as the Saunders mansion. At the time of Maria's first visit to Amity it had been a weather-beaten old structure, which had not been painted for years, and had a curious effect as of a blur on the landscape, with its roof and walls of rain and sun stained shingles and clapboards, its leaning chimneys, and its Corinthian pillars widely out of the perpendicular, supporting crazily the roofs of the double veranda. When Maria went to Amity to begin teaching, the old house had undergone a transformation. She gazed at it with amazement out of the sitting-room window, which faced it, on the afternoon of her arrival.

“Why, what has happened to the old Ramsey house?” she asked her aunt Maria.

“Well, in the first place, a cousin died and left them some money,” replied Aunt Maria. “It was a matter of ten thousand dollars. Then Amelia and George went right to work and fixed up the house. It was none of my business, but it seemed dreadful silly to me. If I had been in their place, I'd have let that old ramshackle of a place go to pot and bought a nice little new house. There was one they could have got for fifteen hundred dollars, on this side of the river; but no, they went to work, and they must have laid out three thousand clear on that old thing.”

“It is beautiful!” said Maria, regarding it with admiration.

“Well, I don't think it's very beautiful, but everybody to their liking,” replied Aunt Maria, with a sniff of her high, transparent nostrils. “For my part, I'd rather have a little, clean new house before all the old ones, that folks have died in and worried in, in creation.”

But Maria continued to regard the renovated Ramsey house with admiration. It stood close to the street, as is the case with so many old houses in rural New England. It had a tiny brick strip of yard in front, on which was set, on either side of the stoop, a great century-plant in a pot. Above them rose a curving flight of steps to a broad veranda, supported with Corinthian pillars, which were now upright and glistening with white paint, as was the entire house.

“They had it all fixed up, inside and out,” said Aunt Maria. “There wasn't a room but was painted and papered, and a good many had to be plastered. They did not get much new furniture, though. I should have thought they'd wanted to. All they've got is awful old. But I heard George Ramsey say he wouldn't swap one of those old mahogany pieces for the best new thing to be bought. Well, everybody to their taste. If I had had my house all fixed up that way, I should have wanted new furniture to correspond.”

“What is George Ramsey doing?” asked Maria, with a little, conscious blush of which she was ashamed. Maria, all her life, would blush because people expected it of her. She knew as plainly as if she had spoken, that her aunt Maria was considering suddenly the advantages of a possible match between herself and George Ramsey. What Aunt Maria said immediately confirmed this opinion. She spoke with a sort of chary praise of George. Aunt Maria had in reality never liked the Ramseys; she considered that they felt above her, and for no good reason; still, she had an eye for the main chance. It flashed swiftly across her mind that her niece was pretty, and George might lose his heart to her and marry her, and then Mrs. Amelia Ramsey might have to treat her like an equal and no longer hold her old, aristocratic head so high.

“Well,” said she, “I suppose George Ramsey is pretty smart. They say he is. I guess he favors his grandfather. His father wasn't any too bright, if he was a Ramsey. George Ramsey, they say, worked his way through college, used to be bell-boy or waiter or something in a hotel summers, unbeknown to his mother. Amelia Ramsey would have had a conniption fit if she had known that her precious boy was working out. She used to talk as grand as you please about George's being away on his vacation. Maybe she did know, but if she did she never let on. I don't know as she let on even to herself. Amelia Ramsey is one of the kind who can shut their eyes even when they look at themselves. There never was a lookin'-glass made that could show Amelia Ramsey anything she didn't want to see. I never had any patience with her. I believe in being proud if you've got anything to be proud of, but I don't see any sense in it otherwise. Anyhow, I guess George is doing pretty well. A distant relation of his mother, an Allen, not a Ramsey, got a place in a bank for him, they say, and he gets good pay. I heard it was three thousand a year, but I don't believe it. He ain't much over twenty, and it ain't likely. I don't know jest how old he is. He's some older than you.”