"Are they?"

"Yes, they sail in three weeks--three weeks from next Sat.u.r.day."

Maria still waited, and still her step-mother hesitated. At last, however, she spoke out boldly and defiantly.

"Mrs. Voorhees's sister, Miss Angelica Wyatt, is going with them,"

said she. "Mrs. Voorhees is not going to take Paul; she will leave him with her mother. She says travelling is altogether too hard on children."

"Does she?"

"Yes; and so there are three in the party. Miss Wyatt has her state-room to herself, and--they have asked me to go. The pa.s.sage will not cost me anything. All the expense I shall have will be my board, and travelling fares abroad."

Maria looked at her step-mother, who visibly shrank before her, then looked at her with defiant eyes.

"Then you are going?" she said.

"Yes. I have made up my mind that it is a chance which Providence has put in my way, and I should be foolish, even wicked, to throw it away, especially now. I am not well. Your dear father's death has shattered my nerves."

Maria looked, with a sarcasm which she could not repress, at her step-mother's blooming face, and her rounded form.

"I have consulted Mrs. Voorhees's physician, in New York," said Ida quickly, for she understood the look. "I consulted him when I went to the city with Mrs. Voorhees last Monday, and he says I am a nervous wreck, and he will not answer for the consequences unless I have a complete change of scene."

"What about Evelyn?" asked Maria, in a dry voice.

"I wrote to your aunt Maria about her. The letter I got this morning was in reply to mine. She writes very brusquely--she is even ill-mannered--but she says she is perfectly willing for Evelyn to go there and board. I will pay four dollars a week--that is a large price for a child--and I knew you would love to have her."

"Yes, I should; I don't turn my back upon my own flesh and blood,"

Maria said, abruptly. "I guess I shall be glad to have her, poor little thing! with her father dead and her mother forsaking her."

"I think you must be very much like your aunt Maria," said Ida, in a cool, disagreeable voice. "I would fight against it, if I were you, Maria. It is not interesting, such a way as hers. It is especially not interesting to gentlemen. Gentlemen never like girls who speak so quickly and emphatically. They like girls to be gentle."

"I don't care what gentlemen think," said Maria, "but I do care for my poor, forsaken little sister." Maria's voice broke with rage and distress.

"You are exceedingly disagreeable, Maria," said Ida, with the radiant air of one who realizes her own perfect agreeableness.

Maria's lip curled. She said nothing.

"Evelyn's wardrobe is in perfect order for the summer," said Ida. "Of course she can wear her white frocks in warm weather, and she has her black silk frocks and coat. I have plenty of black sash ribbons for her to wear with her white frocks. You will see to it that she always wears a black sash with a white frock, I hope, Maria. I should not like people in Amity to think I was lacking in respect to your father's memory."

"Yes, I will be sure that Evelyn wears a black sash with a white frock," replied Maria, in a bitter voice.

She rose abruptly and left the room. Up in her own chamber she threw herself face downward upon her bed, and wept the tears of one who is oppressed and helpless at the sight of wrong and disloyalty to one beloved. Maria hardly thought of Evelyn in her own personality at all. She thought of her as her dead father's child, whose mother was going away and leaving her within less than three weeks after her father's death. She lost sight of her own happiness in having the child with her, in the bitter reflection over the disloyalty to her father.

"She never cared at all for father," she muttered to herself--"never at all; and now she does not really care because he is gone. She is perfectly delighted to be free, and have money enough to go to Europe, although she tries to hide it."

Maria felt as if she had caught sight of a stone of shame in the place where a wife's and mother's heart should have been. She felt sick with disgust, as if she had seen some monster. It never occurred to her that she was possibly unjust to Ida, who was, after all, as she was made, a being on a very simple and primitive plan, with an acute perception of her own welfare and the means whereby to achieve it. Ida was in reality as innocently self-seeking as a b.u.t.terfly or a honey-bee. She had never really seen anybody in the world except herself. She had been born humanity blind, and it was possibly no more her fault than if she had been born with a hump.

The next day Ida went to New York with Mrs. Voorhees to complete some preparations for her journey, and to meet Mrs. Voorhees's sister, who was expected to arrive from the South, where she had been spending the winter. That evening the Voorheeses came over and discussed their purchases, and Miss Wyatt, the sister, came with them. She was typically like Mrs. Voorhees, only younger, and with her figure in better restraint. She had so far successfully fought down an hereditary tendency to avoirdupois. She had brilliant yellow hair and a brilliant complexion, like her sister, and she was as well, even better, dressed. Ida had purchased that day a steamer-rug, a close little hat, and a long coat for the voyage, and the women talked over the purchases and their plans for travel with undisguised glee. Once, when Ida met Maria's sarcastic eyes, she colored a little and complained of a headache, which she had been suffering with all day.

"Yes, there is no doubt that you are simply a nervous wreck, and you would break down entirely without the sea-voyage and the change of scene," said Mrs. Voorhees, in her smooth, emotionless voice and with a covert glance at Maria. Ida had confided to her the att.i.tude which she knew Maria took with reference to her going away.

"All I regret--all that mars my perfect delight in the prospect of the trip--is parting with my darling little Paul," Mrs. Voorhees said, with a sigh.

"That is the way I feel with regard to Evelyn," said Ida.

Maria, who was sewing, took another st.i.tch. She did not seem to hear.

The next day but one Maria and Evelyn started for Amity. Ida did not go to the station with them. She was not up when they started. The curtains in her room were down, and she lay in bed, drawing down the corners of her mouth with resolution when Maria and Evelyn entered to bid her good-bye. Maria said good-bye first, and bent her cheek to Ida's lips; then it was Evelyn's turn. The little girl looked at her mother with fixed, solemn eyes, but there were no tears in them.

"Mamma is so sorry she cannot even go to the station with her darling little girl," said Ida, "but she is completely exhausted, and has not slept all night."

Evelyn continued to look at her, and there came into her face an innocent, uncomplaining accusation.

"Mamma cannot tell you how much she feels leaving her precious little daughter," whispered Ida, drawing the little figure, which resisted rigidly, towards her. "She would not do it if she were not afraid of losing her health completely." Evelyn remained in her att.i.tude of constrained affection, bending over her mother. "Mamma will write you very often," continued Ida. "Think how nice it will be for you to get letters! And she will bring you some beautiful things when she comes back." Then Ida's voice broke, and she found her handkerchief under her pillow and put it to her eyes.

Evelyn, released from her mother's arm, regarded her with that curiosity and unconscious accusation which was more pitiful than grief. The child was getting her first sense, not of loss, for one cannot lose that which one has never had, but of non-possession of something which was her birthright.

When at last they were on the train, Evelyn surprised her sister by weeping violently. Maria tried to hush her, but she could not. Evelyn wept convulsively at intervals all the way to New York. When they were in the cab, crossing the city, Maria put her arm around her sister and tried to comfort her.

"What is it, precious?" she whispered. "Do you feel so badly about leaving your mother?"

"No," sobbed the little girl. "I feel so badly because I don't feel badly."

Maria understood. She began talking to her of her future home in Amity, and the people whom she would see. All at once Maria reflected how Lily would be married to George Ramsey when she returned, that she should see George's wife going in and out the door that might have been the door of her own home, and she also had a keen pang of regret for the lack of regret. She no longer loved George Ramsey. It was nothing to her that he was married to Lily; but, nevertheless, her emotional nature, the best part of her, had undergone a mutilation. Love can be eradicated, but there remains a void and a scar, and sometimes through their whole lives such scars of some people burn.

Chapter XXVIII

Evelyn was happier in Amity, with Maria and her aunt, than she had ever been. It took a little while for her to grow accustomed to the lack of luxury with which she had always been surrounded; then she did not mind it in the least. Everybody petted her, and she acquired a sense of importance which was not offensive, because she had also a sense of the importance of everybody else. She loved everybody. Love seemed the key-note of her whole nature. It was babyish love as yet, but there were dangerous possibilities which n.o.body foresaw, except Henry Stillman.

"I don't know what will become of that child when she grows up if she can't have the man she falls in love with," he told Eunice one night, after Maria and Evelyn, who had been in for a few moments, had gone home.

Eunice, who was not subtle, looked at him wonderingly, and her husband replied to her unspoken question.

"That child's going to take everything hard," he said.

"I don't see what makes you think so."

"She is like a harp that's overstrung," said Henry.

"How queer you talk!"

"Well, she is; and if she is now, what is she going to be when she's older? Well, I hope the Lord will deal gently with her. He's given her too many feelings, and I hope He will see to it that they ain't tried too hard." Henry said this last with the half-bitter melancholy which was growing upon him.

"I guess she will get along all right," said Eunice, comfortably.

"She's a pretty little girl, and her mother has looked out for her clothes, if she did scoot off and leave her. I wonder how long she's going to stay in foreign parts?"