By the Light of the Soul: A Novel

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

As she spoke she seemed to realize what a little thing a lie was, and how odd it was that she should realize it, who had been brought up to speak the truth.

“Your gingham would have been enough sight better to have worn this hot morning,” said Aunt Maria, still with that air of terror and suspicion.

“Oh, this dress is light,” replied Maria, going out.

“Where are you going now?”

“Into the parlor.”

Aunt Maria stood still, listening, until she heard the parlor door open. She was still filled with vague suspicion. She did not hear quite as acutely as formerly, and Maria had no difficulty about leaving the parlor unheard the second after she entered it, and getting her hat and coat and a small satchel which she had brought down-stairs with her from the hat-tree in the entry. Then she opened the front door noiselessly and stole out. She went rapidly down the street in the direction of the bridge, which she had been accustomed to cross when she taught school in Amity. She met Jessy Ramsey, now grown to be as tall as herself, and pretty with a half-starved, pathetic prettiness. Jessy was on her way to work. She went out by the day, doing washings. She stopped when she met Maria, and gave a little, shy look—her old little-girl look—at her. Maria also stopped. “Good-morning, Jessy,” said she. Then she asked how she was, if her cough was better, and where she was going to work. Then, suddenly, to Jessy's utter amazement and rapture, she kissed her. “I never forget what a good little girl you were,” said she, and was gone. Jessy stood for a moment staring after her. Then she wiped her eyes and proceed to her scene of labor.

Maria went to the railroad station. She was just in time for a train. She got on the rear car and sat in the last seat. She looked about and did not see anybody whom she knew. She recalled how she had run away before, and how Wollaston had brought her back. She knew that it would not happen so again. She was on a through train which did not stop at the station where he had found her. When the train slowed up a little in passing that station, she saw the bench on the platform where she had sat, and a curious sensation came over her. She was like one who has made the leap and realizes that there is nothing more to dread, and who gets even a certain abnormal pleasure from the sensation. When the conductor came through the car she purchased her ticket for New York, and asked when the train was due in the city. When she learned that it was due at an hour so late that it would be impossible for her to go, as she had planned, to Edgham that night, she did not, even then, for the time being, feel in the least dismayed. She had plenty of money. Her last quarter's salary was in her little satchel. The train was made up of Pullmans only, and it was by a good chance that she had secured a seat. She gazed out of the large window at the flying landscape, and again that sense of pleasure in the midst of pain was over her. The motion itself was exhilarating. She seemed to be speeding past herself and her own anxieties, which suddenly appeared as petty and evanescent as the flying telegraph-poles along the track. “It has to be over some time,” she reflected. “Nothing matters.” She felt comforted by a realization of immensity and the continuance of motion. She comprehended her own atomic nature in the great scheme of things. She had never done so before. Her own interests had always loomed up before her like a beam in the eye of God. Now she saw that they were infinitesimal, and the knowledge soothed her. She leaned her head back and dozed a little. She was awakened by the porter thrusting a menu into her hands. She ordered something. It was not served promptly, and she had no appetite. There was some tea which tasted of soap.

Chapter XXXVII

There were very few people in this car, for the reason that there had recently been a terrible rear-end collision on the road, and people had flocked into the forward cars. There were three young girls who filled the car with chatter, and irritated Maria unreasonably. They were very pretty and well dressed, and with no reserve. They were as inconsequently confidential about their own affairs as so many sparrows, but more intelligible. One by one the men left and went into the smoker, before this onslaught of harsh trebles shrieking above the roar of the train, obtruding their little, bird-like affairs, their miniature hoppings upon the stage of life, upon all in the car.

Finally, there were none left in the car except Maria, these young girls, an old lady, who accosted the conductors whenever they entered and asked when the train was due in New York (a tremulous, vibratory old lady in antiquated frills and an agitatedly sidewise bonnet, and loose black silk gloves), and across the aisle a tiny, deformed woman, a dwarf, in fact, with her maid. This little woman was richly dressed, and she had a fine face. She was old enough to be Maria's mother. Her eyes were dark and keen, her forehead domelike, and her square, resigned chin was sunken in the laces at her throat. Her maid was older than she, and waited upon her with a faithful solicitude. The little woman had some tea, which the maid produced from a small silver caddy in a travelling-bag, and the porter, with an obsequious air, brought boiling water in two squat, plated tea-pots. It was the tea which served to introduce Maria. She had just pushed aside, with an air half of indifference, half of disgust, her own luke-warm concoction flavored with soap, when the maid, at her mistress's order, touched the bell. When the porter appeared, Maria heard the dwarf ask for another pot of boiling water, and presently the maid stood beside her with a cup of fragrant tea.