"She means to do right by you, Maria; you must try to think so."

Maria said nothing.

"But father isn't going to let you go," said Harry. "He can't do without his little girl."

Then Maria's strange calm broke up. She clung, weeping, to her father, as if he were her only stay. Harry continued to soothe her.

"Father's blessing!" he whispered in her ear. "She was the best little girl that ever was. She is just like her own dear mother."

"I wish mother was back," Maria whispered, her whisper stifled against his ear.

"Oh, my G.o.d, so do I!" Harry said, with a half sob. For the minute the true significance of his position overwhelmed him. He felt a regret, a remembrance, that was a pa.s.sion. He realized, with no disguise, what it all meant: that he a man with the weakness of a child in the hands of a masterly woman, had formerly been in the leading-strings of love for himself, for his own best good, whereas he was now in the grasp of the self-love of another who cared for him only as he promoted her own interests. In a moment, however, he recovered himself. After all, he had a sense of loyalty and duty which amounted to positive strength. He put Maria gently from him with another kiss.

"Well, this won't bring your mother back, dear," he said, "and G.o.d took her away, you know, and what He does is for the best; and She means to do her duty by you, you know, dear. She thought it would be better for you, but father can't spare you, that's all there is about it."

Chapter XIII

It was an utter impossibility for Ida Edgham to be entirely balked of any purpose which she might form. There was something at once impressive and terrible about the strength of this beautiful, smiling creature's will, about its silence, its impa.s.sibility before obstacles, its persistency. It was as inevitable and unswervable as an avalanche or a cyclone. People might shriek out against it and struggle, but on it came, a mighty force, overwhelming petty things as well as great ones. It really seemed a pity, taking into consideration Ida's tremendous strength of character, that she had not some great national purpose upon which to exert herself, instead of such trivial domestic ones.

Ida realized that she could not send Maria to the school which she had proposed. Her strength had that subtlety which acknowledges its limitations and its closed doors, and can look about for other means and ways. Therefore, when Harry came down-stairs that Sunday afternoon, his face working with emotion but his eyes filled with a steady light, and said, with no preface, "It's no use talking, Ida, that child does not want to go, and she shall never be driven from under my roof, while I live," Ida only smiled, and replied, "Very well, dear, I only meant it for her good."

"She is not going," Harry said doggedly.

Harry resumed his seat with a gesture of defiance which was absurd, from its utter lack of any response from his wife. It was like tilting with a windmill.

Ida continued to sway gently back and forth, and smile.

"I think if the Adamses do come in to-night we will have a little salad, there will be enough left from the chicken, and some cake and tea," she observed presently. "We won't have the table set, because both the maids have asked to go out, but Maria can put on my India muslin ap.r.o.n and pa.s.s the things. I will have the salad made before they go, and I will make the tea. We can have it on the table in here." Ida indicated, by a graceful motion of her shoulder, a pretty little tea-table loaded with Dresden china.

"All right," replied Harry, with a baffled tone. He felt baffled without knowing exactly why.

Ida took up another sheet of the Herald, a fashion page was uppermost. She read something and smiled. "It says that gowns made like Maria's new one are the most fetching ones of the season," she said. "I am so glad I have the skirt plaited."

Harry made a gesture of a.s.sent. He felt, without in the least knowing why, like a man who had been completely worsted in a hand-to-hand combat. He felt humiliated and unhappy. His first wife, even with her high temper and her ready tongue, had never caused him such a sense of abjectness. He had often felt angry with her, but never with himself. She had never really attacked his self-respect as this woman did. He did not dare look up from his newspaper for a while, for he realized that he should experience agony at seeing the beautiful, radiant face of his second wife opposite him instead of the worn, stern, but altogether loving and single-hearted face of his first. He was glad when Maria came down-stairs, and looked up and greeted her with a smile of rea.s.suring confidence. Maria's pretty little face was still tear-stained, although she had bathed it with cold water. She also took up a sheet of the Sunday paper.

"Did you see Alice Lundy's new hat in church to-day, dear?" Ida presently asked her, and her manner was exactly as if nothing had occurred to disturb anybody.

Maria looked at her with a sort of wonder, which made her honest face almost idiotic.

"No, ma'am," said she.

Maria had been taught to say "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am" by her own mother, whose ideas of etiquette were old-fashioned, and dated from the precepts of her own childhood.

"It is a little better not to say ma'am," said Ida, sweetly. "I think that expression is not used so much as formerly."

Maria looked at her with a quick defiance, which gave her an almost startling resemblance to her own mother.

"Yes, ma'am," said she.

Harry's mouth twitched behind his paper. Ida said no more. She continued to smile, but she was not reading the paper which she held.

She was making new plans to gain her own ends. She was seeking new doors of liberty for her own ways, in lieu of those which she saw were closed to her, and by the time dinner was served she was quite sure that she had succeeded.

The next autumn, Maria began attending the Elliot Academy, in Wardway. The Elliot Academy was an endowed school of a very high standing, and Wardway was a large town, almost a city, about fifteen miles from Edgham. When this plan was broached by Ida, Maria did not make any opposition; she was secretly delighted. Wollaston Lee was going to the Elliot Academy that autumn, and there was another Edgham girl and her brother, besides Maria, who were going.

"Now, darling, you need not go to the Elliot Academy any more than to the other school she proposed, if you don't want to," Harry told Maria, privately, one Sat.u.r.day afternoon in September, shortly before the term began.

Ida had gone to her club, and Harry had come home early from the city, and he and Maria were alone in the parlor. Evelyn was having her nap up-stairs. A high wind was roaring about the house. A cherry-tree beside the house was fast losing its leaves in a yellow rain. In front of the window, a hydrangea bush, tipped with magnificent green-and-rosy plumes, swayed in all its limbs like a living thing. Somewhere up-stairs a blind banged.

"I think I would like to go," Maria replied, hurriedly. Then she jumped up. "That blind will wake Evelyn," she said, and ran out of the room.

She had colored unaccountably when her father spoke. When she returned, she had a demure, secretive expression on her face which made Harry stare at her in bewilderment. All his life Harry Edgham had been helpless and bewildered before womenkind, and now his little daughter was beginning to perplex him. She sat down and took up a piece of fancy-work, and her father continued to glance at her furtively over his paper. Presently he spoke of the academy again.

"You need not go if you do not want to," he repeated.

Then again Maria's delicate little face and neck became suffused with pink. Her reply was not as loud nor more intelligible than the murmur of the trees outside in the wind.

"What did you say, darling?" asked Harry. "Father did not understand."

"I would like to go there," Maria replied, in her sweet, decisive little pipe. A fresh wave of color swept over her face and neck, and she selected with great care a thread from a skein of linen floss.

"Well, she thought you might like that," Harry said, with an air of relief.

"Maud Page is going, too," said Maria.

"Is she? That will be nice. You won't have to go back and forth alone," said Harry.

Maria said nothing; she continued her work.

Her father turned his paper and looked at the stock-list. Once he had owned a hundred shares of one of the Industrials. He had long since sold out, not at a loss, but the stock had risen since. He always noted it with an odd feeling of proprietorship, in spite of not owning any. He saw with pride that it had advanced half a point.

Maria worked silently; and as she worked she dreamed, and the dream was visible on her face, had any one been astute enough to understand it. She was working a lace collar to wear with a certain blue blouse, and upon that flimsy keystone was erecting an air-castle. She was going to the Elliot Academy, wearing the blue blouse and the lace collar, and looking so lovely that Wollaston Lee worshipped her. She invented little love-scenes, love-words, and caresses. She blushed, and dimples appeared at the corners of her mouth, the blue light of her eyes under her downcast lids was like the light of living gems.

She viewed with complacency her little, soft white hands plying the needle. Maria had hands like a little princess. She cast a glance at the toe of her tiny shoe. She remembered how somebody had told her to keep her shoulders straight, and she threw them back with a charming motion, as if they had been wings. She was entirely oblivious of her father's covert glances. She was solitary, isolated in the crystal of her own thoughts. Presently, Evelyn woke and cried, and Maria roused herself with a start and ran up-stairs. Soon the two came into the room, Evelyn dancing with the uncertain motion of a winged seed on a spring wind. She was charming. One round cheek was more deeply flushed than the other, and creased with the pillow. Her yellow hair, fine and soft and full of electric life, tossed like a little crest.

She ran with both fat little hands spread palms outward, and pounced violently upon her father. Harry rolled her about on his knee, and played with her as if she had been a kitten. Maria stood by laughing.

The child was fairly screaming with mirth.

A graceful figure pa.s.sed the window, its garments tightly wrapped by the wind, flying out like a flag behind. Harry set the little girl down at once.

"Here is mamma coming," said he. "Go to sister and she will show you the pictures in the book papa brought home the other day."

Evelyn obeyed. She was a docile little thing, and she had a fear of her mother without knowing why. She was sitting beside Maria, looking demurely at the pictures which her sister pointed out to her, when Ida entered.

"See the horsey running away," said Maria. Then she added in a whisper, "Go and kiss mamma, baby."

The child hesitated, then she rose, and ran to her mother, who stooped her radiant face over her and kissed her coolly.

"Have you been a good little girl?" asked she. Ida was looking particularly self-satisfied to day, and more disposed consequently to question others as to their behavior.