"Come away, darling," she said. "Papa is tired, and you are a heavy little lump of honey," Ida smiled, entrancingly.

Harry looked at her with loving admiration, then at Maria.

"I tell you what it is, I feel pretty thankful to-night, when I think of last night--when I realize I have you all home," said he.

Ida smiled more radiantly. "Yes, we ought to be very thankful," she said.

Maria made up her mind that she would apologize to her if she had a chance. She did not wish to speak before her father, not because she did not wish him to know, but because she did not wish to annoy him, he looked so tired. She had a chance after dinner, when Josephine was putting Evelyn to bed, and Harry had been called to the door to speak to a man on business.

"I am sorry I spoke as I did to you," she said, in a low voice, to Ida.

They were both in the parlor. Maria had a school-book in her hand, and Ida was embroidering. The rosy shade of the lamp intensified the glow on her beautiful face. She looked smilingly at Maria.

"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 cla.s.ses, 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 gla.s.s. 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 att.i.tude 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 circ.u.mnavigate 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 cla.s.s. "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.

"I think I can get a school," Maria said.

"Where?"

"Aunt Maria said she thought I could get that little school near her in Amity. The teacher is engaged, and she said she thought she would get married before so very long. She said she thought she must have almost enough money for her wedding outfit. That is what she has been working for."

Harry smiled a little.

"Aunt Maria said she was to marry a man with means, and she was working quite a while in order to buy a nice trousseau," said Maria.

"Aunt Maria said she was a very high-spirited young lady. But she said she thought she had been engaged so long that she would probably not wait more than a year longer, and she could get the school for me. Uncle Henry is one of the committee, you know."

"You are pretty young to begin teaching," Harry said, thoughtfully.

"Aunt Maria said she thought I did not look as young as I really was, and there wouldn't be any difficulty about it," said Maria. "She said she thought I would have good government, and Uncle Henry thought so, too, and Aunt Eunice."

Aunt Eunice was Maria's Uncle Henry's wife. Maria had paid a visit to Amity the summer before, renewing her acquaintance with her relatives.

"Well, we will see," said Harry, after a pause. Then he added, somewhat pitifully: "Father wishes there was no need for his little girl to work. He wishes he had been able to put more by, but if--"

Maria looked at her father with quick concern.

"Father, what is the matter with you?" she asked. "I don't care about the working part. I want to work. I shall like to go to Amity, and board with Aunt Maria, and teach, except for leaving you and Evelyn, but--what is the matter with you, father?"

"Nothing is the matter. Why?" asked Harry; and he tried to smile.

"What made you speak so, father?"

Maria had sprung to her feet, and was standing in front of her father, with pale face and dilated eyes. Her father looked at her and hesitated.

"Tell me, father; I ought to know," said Maria.

"There is nothing immediate, as far as I know," said Harry, "but--"

"But what?"

"Well, dear, n.o.body can live always, and of course you can't realize it, young as you are, and with no responsibilities; but father is older, and sometimes he can't help thinking. He wishes he had been able to save a little more, in case anything happened to him, and he can't help planning what you would do if--anything happened to him.

You know, dear," Harry hesitated a little, then he continued--"you know, dear, that father had his life insured for--Ida, and I doubt if--I am older, you know, now, and those companies don't like to take chances. I doubt if I could, or I would have an additional insurance put on my life for you. Then Ida would have by law her share of this property, and Evelyn her share, and all you would have would be a very little, and--Well, father can't help thinking that perhaps it would be wise for you to make some plans so you can help yourself a little, but--it almost breaks father's heart to think that--his--little girl--" Poor Harry fairly broke down and sobbed.

Maria's arm was around his neck in a moment, and his poor gray head, which had always been, in a way, the head of an innocent boy, was on her young girl breast. She did not ask him any more questions. She knew. "Poor father!" she said. Her own voice broke, then she steadied it again with a resolute effort of her will. There was a good deal of her mother in Maria. The sight of another's weakness always aroused her own strength. "Father," she said, "now you just listen to me. I won't hear any more talk of anything happening to you. You have not eaten enough lately. I have noticed it. That is all that ails you.

You have not had enough nourishment. I want you to go to-morrow to Dr. Wells and get some of that tonic that helped you so much before, and, father, I want you to stop worrying about me. I honestly want to teach. I want to be independent. I should, if you were worth a million. It does not worry me at all to think I am not going to have enough money to live on without working, not at all. I want you to remember that, and not fret any more about it."

For answer, Harry sobbed against the girl's shoulder. "It seems as if I might have saved more," he said, pitifully, "but--I have had heavy expenses, and somehow I didn't seem to have the knack that some men have. I made one or two investments that didn't turn out well. I didn't say anything about them to--Ida."

"I sha'n't say a word, father," Maria responded, quickly.

"Well, I thought maybe--if they turned out all right, I might have something to leave you, but--they didn't. There's never any counting on those things, and I wasn't on the inside of the market. I thought they were all right. I meant it for the best."

Maria stroked the gray head, as her mother might have done. "Of course you did, father," said she. "Now, don't you worry one bit more about it. You get that tonic. You don't look just right, and you need something to give you an appet.i.te; and don't you ever have another thought as far as I am concerned. I have always wanted to teach, or do something to make myself independent."

"You may marry somebody who will look out for you after father has gone," half whimpered Harry. His disease and his distress were making him fairly childish, now he realized a supporting love beside him.

Maria quivered a little. "I shall never marry, father," she said.

Harry laughed a little, even in the midst of his distress. "Well, dear, we won't worry about that now," he said; "only, if you ever do marry, I hope you will marry a good, honest man who can take care of you."

"I never shall marry," Maria said again. There was an odd inflection in her voice which her father did not understand. Her cheeks burned hot against his, but it was not due to the modesty of young girlhood, which flees even that which it secretly desires. Maria was reflecting upon her horrible deception, how every day and every minute of her life she was deceiving her father, but she dared not tell him. She dared less now than ever, in the light of her sudden conviction concerning his ill-health. Maria had been accustomed so long to seeing her father look tired and old that the true significance of it had not struck her. She had not reflected that her father was not in reality an old man--but scarcely past middle age--and that there must be some disease to account for his appearance. Now she knew; but along with the knowledge came the conviction that he must not know that she had it, that it would only add to his distress. She kissed him, and took up the evening paper which had fallen from his knees to the floor.

"Suppose I read to you, father?" she said.

Harry looked gratefully at her. "But you have to learn your lesson."