Kitty's mother had been dead only a year when Aunt Matilda, who had
adopted me several years earlier on the death of my parents, married
her father. I was twelve and Kitty eight when the marriage took
place, and with canny care I tried to shield her from the severity of
Aunt Matilda's system in rearing a child. I had been reared by it.
I owe much to Aunt Matilda. She sent me to good schools, to a good
college; took me with her on most of her trips abroad, and at twenty
presented me to society, but she never knew me, never in the least
understood the hunger in my heart for what it was not in her power to
give. I never told her there was hunger in my heart. I rarely told
her of anything she could not see for herself.
In childhood I had learned the fixedness of her ideas, the rigidity
of her type of mind, the relentlessness of her will; and that
independence on my part survived was due to sturdy stubbornness, to a
refusal to be dominated, and an incapacity for subjection. But this,
too, she failed to understand.
That I would not marry as she wished was a grievous blow to her. I
had no desire to marry, and it was when refusing to do so that
certain realizations came to me sharply, and all the more acutely,
because I had so long been seemingly indifferent to them. On the
morning following the night in which I had faced frankly undeniable
facts I went to Aunt Matilda's room and told her I could no longer be
dependent, told her of my purpose to earn my own living. I was
strong, healthy, well educated. There was no reason why I should not
do what other women were doing.
As I talked her amazement and indignation deepened into anger, and
had I been a child I "would undoubtedly have been punished for my
impertinence and audacity in daring to desire to go out into the
world to earn what there was no necessity for my earning. Socially,
a woman could be autocratic, I was told, but in all things else she
should be dependent on the stronger sex.
"But there is no stronger-sex person for me to be dependent upon,
even were I willing to depend," I said, and made effort to keep back
what I must not say to her, but surely would have said to others.
For years I had been the recipient of her bounty, the object of her
care, and she still thought of me as something to be protected. That
I should prefer to work, prefer to take my place in the world of
women-workers, was beyond her grasp.
"Mr. Chesmond understood when I married him--it is part of our
marriage contract--that you were to have the same advantages as his
daughter. He has very willingly given you these. If you no longer
care to accept his protection, you can marry. Opportunities such as
come to few girls have come to you. A home of your own is yours for
the taking. In my day--"
"But this is not your day!" I bit my lip. When Aunt Matilda's face
got a certain shade of red and her breath became short and quick, I
was uneasy. The doctor had warned us of the seriousness of her
condition. She was pitifully afraid of death--it was the only thing
she was afraid of--and death might come at any time. To prevent
excitement there must be with her no discussion, and, as far as
possible, no opposition to her will.
"Your day and mine are very far apart." I made effort to speak
quietly. "Women no longer have to be adjuncts to men because they
don't know how to be anything else. They can stand up now by
themselves. Conditions have forced them to face life much more--"
"Face fiddlesticks!" Aunt Matilda's hands made an impatient gesture.
"Women have no business doing what many of them are doing today.
They are forgetting the place to which they were appointed by their
Creator. But even if you were at liberty to carry out your silly
ideas, what could you do? How could you earn your living? You play
well, paint a little, read books that do you no good, and hardly
enough of the new novels to discuss them. All this sociological
stuff, those scientific things I see in your room, are absurd for a
woman to bother with. Men dislike women who think too much and know
too much. You are well educated and clever enough, but what could
you do if you were suddenly left without means of support?"
"I don't know what I could do. It's what I want to find out. Half
of my life has been spent in school and college, and during these
years I was taught little that would be of practical service in case
of need. I'd like to use part of my time trying to make educators
understand they don't educate. For cultural purposes, for acquiring
knowledge of facts, their system may be admirable, but for the
pursuit of a happy livelihood--"
I stopped. Aunt Matilda was looking at me as if I were suffering
from an attack of some kind. Marriage to her was the divinely
arranged destiny for a woman, and she had neither patience nor
sympathy with my refusal to accept the opportunity that was mine to
fulfil the destiny of my sex and at the same time become the wife of
the man she had long wished me to marry. The power of money was dear
to her. She understood it well, and my failure to appreciate it
properly was peculiarly exasperating to her. Discussion was useless.
It never got farther than where it started. If I said that which I
wanted much to say, it would merely mean hearing again what I did not
want to hear. Concerning the pursuit of a happy livelihood we were
not apt to agree.
For a half-minute longer I hesitated. Should I make the issue now or
wait until there had been time for her to realize I meant what I
said? Before I could speak she did that which I had never seen her
do before. She burst into tears.
"You must never mention such a thing as this again." Her words came
stumblingly and her usually firm and strong hands trembled badly.
"With my health in its present condition I couldn't get on without
you. You are all I have to really love, and I need you. Don't you
see what you have done? You have made me ill. Ill!"
She was strangely upset and in her eyes was a confused and frightened
look that was new to them, and quickly I went toward her, but she
motioned me away.
"Give me my medicine, and don't ever speak of such a thing
again--such a thing as you have just spoken of! You have always been
beyond my comprehension."
She swallowed the medicine I brought her in nervous gulps, the tears
running down her face as they might have done down a child's, but she
would not let me do anything for her, insisting only that she wanted
to be quiet. Seeing it was best to leave her, I went to my room and
locked the door, and for hours I fought the hardest fight of my life.
The one weapon she knew she could use effectively, she had used. If
she needed me I could not leave her, but her complete self-reliance
made it difficult to feel that any one was necessary to her. I was
indignant at the way she had treated me. I was not a child to be
disposed of, and yet of my future she was disposing as though it were
a thing that could be tied to a string, and untied at will. Were she
well and strong, I would take matters in my own hands and make the
break. Surely I could do something! I had no earning capacity, but
other women had made their way, and I could make mine. If she were
perfectly well--
But she was not well. Through those first hours, and through most of
the hours of the night that followed, the knowledge of the insidious
disease that was hers was the high, hard wall against which I struck
at every turn of thought, at every possibility at which I grasped,
and in the dawn of a new day I knew I must not go away.
It was not easy to surrender. Always my two selves are fighting and
I wanted much to know more of life than I could know in the costly
shelter, controlled by custom and convention, wherein I lived. I had
long been looking through stained glass. I was restless to get out
and see clearly, to know all sorts of people, all conditions of life,
and the chance had seemed within my grasp--and now it must be given
up.
There are times when I am heedless of results, when I am daring and
audacious and count no cost, but that is only where I alone am
concerned. When it comes to making decisions which affect others I
am a coward. I lack the courage to have my own way at the expense of
some one else; and though through the night I protested stormily, if
inwardly, that I was not meant for gilded cages, but for contact, for
encounter, I knew I should yield in the end.
The next day I told her I would not go away. She said nothing save
she hardly thought I had entirely lost my senses, but the thing I am
gladdest to remember since her death is the look that came into her
eyes when I told her. For two years longer I lived with her, years
for her of practical invalidism, and for me of opportunity to do for
her what she had never permitted me to do before. Two weeks after
Kitty's marriage she died suddenly, and at times I still shiver with
the cold clamminess that came over me as I stood by her in her last
sleep and realized my aloneness in the world. My parents had died in
my early childhood. I had no brothers or sisters, no near relatives,
save an uncle who lived abroad and some cousins here in town. Mr.
Chesmond was very kind, but I could not continue to accept what he
had willingly given his wife's adopted child, and Kitty no longer
needed me. It is a fearful feeling, this sense of belonging to no
one, of having no one belonging to you. Lest it overwhelm me, I went
at once to work upon the house in Scarborough Square left me by Aunt
Matilda, together with an annuity of a thousand dollars. Already it
means much to me. For a while, at least, it is a haven, a shelter, a
home. What it may prove--
I have been thinking much to-day of Aunt Matilda. Perhaps it is
because Selwyn was here last night. She was afraid I would marry him.