By the Light of the Soul: A Novel

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

The platform of the chapel was occupied by a great Christmas-tree. The chapel itself was trimmed with evergreens and holly. The moment Maria entered, after she had removed her hat in a room which was utilized as a dressing-room, and pinned her roses on her shoulder, she became sensible of a peculiar intoxication as of some new happiness and festivity, of a cup of joy which she had hitherto not tasted. The spicy odor of the evergreens, even the odor of oyster-stew from a room beyond where supper was to be served, that, and cake, and the sweetness of her own roses, raised her to a sense of elation which she had never before had. She sat with the other teachers well towards the front. Wollaston was with his mother on the right. Maria saw with a feeling of relief the people with whom the Lees had formerly boarded presently enter and sit with them. She thought that Wollaston would be free to walk to the trolley with her if he so wished. She felt surer and surer that he did so wish. Once she caught him looking at her, and when she answered his smile she felt her own lips stiff, and realized how her heart pounded against her side. She experienced something like a great pain which was still a great joy. Suddenly everything seemed unreal to her. When the presents were distributed, it was still so unreal that she did not feel as pleased as she would have done with the number for poor little Evelyn at home. She hardly knew what she received herself. They were the usual useless and undesirable tokens from her class, and others more desirable from the other lady teachers. Wollaston Lee's name was often called. Again Maria experienced that unworthy sensation of malicious glee that all this was lavished upon him when he was in reality hers and beyond the reach of any of these smiling girls with eyes of covert wistfulness upon the handsome young principal.

After the festivities were over, Maria adjusted her hat in the dressing-room and fastened her long, blue cloak. She wrapped her roses again in the tissue-paper. They were very precious to her. The teacher whom she had met on entering the academy was fastening her cloak, and she gazed at Maria with a sort of envious admiration.

“You look like a princess, all in blue, Miss Edgham,” said she. Her words were sweet, but her voice rang false.

“Thank you,” said Maria, and went out swiftly. She feared lest the other teacher attach herself to her, and the other teacher lived on the road towards the trolley. When Maria went out of the academy, that which she had almost feared to hope for happened. Wollaston stepped beside her, and she heard him ask if he might walk with her to the trolley.

Maria took his arm.

“Mother is with the Gleasons,” said Wollaston. His voice trembled.

Just then the boy who had sat with Maria on the car coming over walked with a defiant stride to her other side.

“Good-evening, Mr. Lee,” he said, lifting his hat. “Good-evening, Miss Edgham,” as if that was the first time that evening he had seen her. Then he walked on with her and Wollaston, and nothing was to be done but accept the situation. The young fellow was fairly belligerent with jealous rage. He had lost his young head over his teacher, and was doing something for which he would scorn himself later on.

Wollaston pressed Maria's hand closely under his arm, and she felt her very soul thrill, but they all talked of the tree and the festivities of the evening, with an apparent disregard of the terrible undercurrent of human emotions which had them all in its grasp. Wollaston carried Maria's presents and Evelyn's. When they reached the trolley-line, and he gave them to her, she managed to whisper a thank you for his beautiful roses, and he pressed her hand and said good-night. The boy asked with a mixture of humility and defiance if he could not carry her parcels (he himself had nothing but three neckties and a great silk muffler, which he did not value highly, as he was well stocked already, and he had thrust them into his pockets). “No, thank you,” said Maria, “I prefer to carry them myself.” She was curt, but she was so lit up with rapture that she could not help smiling at him as she spoke, and he again sat in the same car-seat. She hardly spoke a word all the way to Amity, but he walked to her door with her, alighting from the car at the same time she did, although he lived half a mile farther on.

“You will have to walk a half mile,” Maria observed, when he handed her off and let the car go on.