Edgewater People E-Book

Mary Wilkins Freeman

• Herausgeber: Mary Wilkins Freeman
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (October 31, 1852 – March 13, 1930) was a prominent 19th-century American author.

Leseprobe

Edgewater People

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Sarah Edgewater

Dorena went out of the room. She went airily, leaving a trail of strong perfume, her first minor assertion of real emancipation, and Sarah Edgewater realized that the beginning of the end, which she had secretly dreaded for years, had come.

Dorena had given notice.

She had given it regretfully, even emotionally. She was too much like her mother, who had lived and died in the service of the Edgewater family, not to feel loving misgivings at leaving her "Miss Sarah." But Dorena was in love with a handsome young man, as light-colored as she, and he was insistent.

"I'd rather be daid, than tell po' Miss Sarah," Dorena had wailed but she had told her.

Sarah sitting, magazine in hand, had heard her with calm dignity and kindness. She was aware of the situation and respected it. When Dorena left she would be quite alone. She would fall to depths of spiritual woe which she could not as yet fathom; but she showed no dismay.

"You may go up in the attic, Dorena," she said, "and select anything you would like; then Sam can come and take them away to your new house."

Sarah Edgewater was a good woman. In the midst of her dismay, her more than dismay, her utter panic, a thrill of pure pleasure in the delight of this other woman upon a threshold which she had herself never crossed, the threshold of complete earthly life, came over her. A smile enhanced the effect of her handsome face. Sarah Edgewater, although middle-aged, was a very handsome woman. Her thick dark hair rose strongly from her full temples in fine waves. Her color was clear red and white. She was a large woman, but not stout. Only her eyes might have betrayed her inmost self to an astute observer. They were of such a deep blue as to seem black, and they were set in wistful fashion, although their outlook was clear and level.

When she heard Dorena pounding about overhead, her eyes, despite her smile, were tragic. She realized what Dorena's going would mean. She, Sarah, would then be left alone in the great Edgewater house. She thought, in a sort of panic, of woman after woman, who might, who would, come to live with her. She knew, of course, the perfect practicability of obtaining another servant in Dorena's place. But along with Sarah's abnormal dread of solitude, was another trait even more insistent, the reluctance to admit strangers into that solitude. Not one woman of whom she thought could ever be possible as a home sharer, and she shuddered at the thought of a strange servant. Dorena and her mother and grandmother, and two sisters and a brother, had been the only servants who had ever reigned in the Edgewater family. After dinner that night, when Dorena told her about a girl whom she might secure to fill her place, Sarah shook her head.

"We will not discuss that, Dorena," she said.

Dorena was half sobbing. "What will you do, Miss Sarah?" she lamented.

"I am glad you found so many things you like in the attic," said her mistress, sweetly.

Sarah Edgewater felt a thrill of real delight in the delight of another, and she enjoyed many such thrills during the next few weeks. She engineered the making of Dorena's trousseau and gave her a beautiful wedding.

"It has been just like white folks," Dorena said, with exultation, as she and her husband set off for their honeymoon.

Then the thrills were over for Sarah, also the pleasure in unselfishness. For a few days after the wedding sheer hard physical labor blinded her to the situation, but there came a day when the house was entirely set to rights, and she faced it. She faced it with head up. Sarah was no coward. She had won heights of physical and mental stress without flinching, but this was different. This was no cowardice, rather an idiosyncrasy deep-rooted in obscure heredity, which had been awakened and grafted upon her very soul by untoward circumstance, a tragedy of life, years before.