"Gertrude!" called out her mother to the girl, as she passed the library
door. "Gertrude! come in, your father and I wish to talk with you."
"Committee meeting?" laughed Gertrude, as she took a seat beside her
father. It had grown to be rather a joke in the family to speak of Mr.
Avery's calls as committee meetings, and Mr. Foster had tried vainly to
tease his daughter about it.
"In my time," he would say, "we did not go a courting to get advice.
we went for kisses. I never discussed any more profound topic with my
sweetheart than love--and perhaps poetry and music. Sometimes, as I sit
and listen to you two, I can't half believe that you are lovers. It's so
perfectly absurd. You talk about everything on earth. It's a deal more
like--why I should have looked upon that sort of thing as a species of
committee meeting, in my day."
Gertrude had laughed and said something about thinking that love ought
to enter into and run through all the interests of life, and not be held
merely as a thing apart. All women had a life to live. All would not
have the love. So the first problem was one of life and its work. The
love was only a phase of this. But her father had gone on laughing at
her about her queer love-making.
"Committee meeting?" asked she, again, as she glanced at her father,
smiling dryly. Her mother answered first.
"Yes--no--partly. Your father wanted to speak to you about--he thinks
you should not be seen with, or have those girls--You tell her yourself,
dear," she said, appealing to her husband. Mr. Foster was fidgeting
about in his chair; he had not felt comfortable before. He was less so
now, for Gertrude had turned her face full upon him, and her hand was on
his sleeve.
"'Well, there's nothing to tell, Gertrude," he said. "I guess you
can understand it without a scene. I simply don't want to see those
girls--that King girl and her friend--about here any more. It won't do.
It simply won't do at all. You'll be talked about. Of course, I know it
is all very kind of you, and all that, and that you don't mean any
harm; but men always have drawn, and they always will draw, unpleasant
conclusions. They may sympathize with that sort of girls, but they
simply won't stand having their own women folks associate with them. The
test of the respectability of a woman, is whether a man of position will
marry her or not. A man's respectable if he's out of jail. A woman if
she is marriageable or married. Now, unfortunately, that little Berton
girl is neither the one nor the other, and its going to make talk if you
are seen with her again. She must stay away from here, too."
There had come a most unusual tone of protest into his voice as he went
on, but he had looked steadily at a carved paper knife, which he held in
his hand, and with which he cut imaginary leaves upon the table. There
was a painful silence. Gertrude thought she did not remember having ever
before heard her father speak so sharply. She glanced at her mother,
but Katherine Foster had evidently made up her mind to leave this matter
entirely in the hands of her husband.
"Do you mean, papa, that you wish me to tell that child, Ettie Berton,
not to come here any more, and that I must not befriend her?" asked
Gertrude, in an unsteady voice.
"Befriend her all you've a mind to," responded her father, heartily.
"Certainly. Of course. But don't have her come here, and don't you be
seen with her, nor the other one again. You can send James or Susan
--better not send Susan though--send James with money or anything you
want to give her. Your mother tells me you are paying the Berton girl's
board. That's all right if you want to, but--your mother has told me the
whole outrageous story, and that cashier ought to be shot, but--"
"But instead of helping make the public opinion which would make him
less, and Ettie more, respectable, you ask me to help along the present
infamous order of things! Oh, papa! don't ask that of me! I have never
willingly done anything in my life that I knew you disapproved. Don't
ask me to help crush that child now, for I cannot. I cannot desert her
now. Don't ask that of me, papa. Why do men--even you good men--make it
so hard, so almost impossible for women to be kind to each other? What
has Ettie done that such as we should hold her to account. She is a
mere child. Fourteen years old in fact, but not over ten in feeling or
judgment. She has been deceived by one who fully understood. She did
not. And yet _even you_ ask me to hold her responsible! Oh, papa,
don't!" She slipped onto her father's knee and took his face in her
hands and kissed his forehead. She had never in her life stood against
her father or seemed to criticise him before. It hurt her and it vexed
him. A little frown came on his face. "Katherine," he said, turning to
his wife, "I wish you'd make Gertrude understand this thing rationally.
_You_ always have." Mrs. Foster glanced at her daughter and then at her
husband. She smiled.
"I always have, what dear?" she asked.
"Understood these things as I do--as everyone does," said her husband.
"You never took these freaks that Gertrude is growing into, and--"
The daughter winced and sat far back on her father's knee. Her mother
did not miss the action. She smiled at the girl, but her voice was
steady, and less light than usual.
"No, I never took freaks, as you say, but what I thought of things, or
how I may or may not have understood them, dear, no one ever inquired,
no one ever cared to know. That I acted like other people, and
acquiesced in established opinions, went without saying. That was
expected of me. That I did. Gertrude belongs to another generation,
dear. She cannot be so colorless as we women of my time--"
Her husband laughed.
"Colorless, is good, by Jove! _You_ colorless indeed!" He looked
admiringly at his wife. "Why, Katherine, you have more color and more
sense now than any half dozen girls of this generation. Colorless
indeed!" Mrs. Foster smiled. "Don't you think my cheerful, easy
reflection of your own shades of thought or mind have always passed
current as my own? Sometimes I fancy that is true, and that--it is
easier and--pleasanter all around. But--" she paused. "It was not my
color, my thought, my opinions, myself. It was an echo, dear; a pleasant
echo of yourself which has so charmed you. It was not I."
Gertrude felt uneasy, and as if she were lifting a curtain which had
been long drawn. Her father turned his face towards her and then toward
her mother.
"In God's name what does all this mean?" he asked. "Are you, the
most level-headed woman in the world, intending to uphold Gertrude in
this--suicidal policy--her--this--absurd nonsense about that girl?"
Gertrude's eyes widened. She slowly arose from his knee. The revelation
as to her father's mental outlook was, to her more sensitive and
developed nature, much what the one had been to Francis King that night
at the club.
"Oh, papa," she said softly. "I am so sorry for--so sorry--for us all.
We seem so far apart, and--"
"John Martin agrees with me perfectly," said her father, hotly. "I
talked with him to-day. He--"
Gertrude glanced at her mother, and there was a definite curl upon her
lip. "Mr. Martin," she said slowly, "is not a conscience for me. He and
I are leagues apart, papa. We--"
"More's the pity," said her father, as he arose from his chair. He moved
toward the door.
"I've said my say, Gertrude. It's perfectly incomprehensible to me what
you two are aiming at. But what I know is this: you must _do_ my way in
this particular case, think whatever you please. You know very well I
would not ask it except for your own good. I don't like to interfere
with your plans, but--you must give that girl up." He spoke kindly, but
Gertrude and her mother sat silent long after he had gone. The twilight
had passed into darkness. Presently Katherine's voice broke the
silence:--
"Shall you float with the tide, daughter, or shall you try to swim up
stream?" She was thinking of the first talk they had ever had on these
subjects, nearly two years ago now, but the girl recognized the old
question. She stood up slowly and then with quick steps came to her
mother's side.
"Don't try to swim with me, mamma. It only makes it harder for me to see
you hurt in the struggle. Don't try to help me any more when the eddies
come. Float, mamma; I shall swim. I shall! I shall! And while my head is
above the waves that poor little girl shall not sink."
She was stroking Katherine's hair, and her mother's hand drew her own
down to a soft cheek.
"Am I right, mother?" she asked, softly. "If you say I am right, it is
enough. My heart will ache to seem to papa to do wrong, but I can bear
it better than I could bear my own self-contempt. Am I right, mamma?"
Her mother drew her hand to her lips, and then with a quick action she
threw both arms about the girl and whispered in her ear: "I shall go
back to the old way. Swim if you can, daughter. You are right. If only
you are strong enough. That is the question. If only you are strong
enough. I am not. I shall remain in the old way." There was a steadiness
and calm in her voice which matched oddly enough with the fire in her
eyes and the flush on her cheeks.
"Little mother, little mother," murmured Gertrude, softly, as she
stroked her mother's hand. Then she kissed her and left the room. "With
her splendid spirit, that _she_ should be broken on the wheel!" the girl
said aloud to herself, when she had reached her own room. She did not
light the gas, but sat by the window watching the passers-by in the
street.
"Why should papa have sent me to college," she was thinking, "where I
matched my brains and thoughts with men, if I was to stifle them later
on, and subordinate them to brains I found no better than my own? Why
should my conscience be developed, if it must not be used; if I must use
as my guide the conscience of another? Why should I have a separate and
distinct nature in all things, if I may use only that part of it which
conforms to those who have not the same in type or kind? I will do what
seems right to myself. I shall not desert--"
She laid her cheek in her hand and sighed. A new train of thought was
rising. It had never come to her before.
"It is my father's money. He says I may send it, but I may not--it is my
father's money. He has the right to say how it may be used, and--and--"
(the blood was coming into her face) "I have nothing but what he gives
me. He wants a pleasant home; he pays for it. Susan and James, and the
rest, he hires to conduct the labor of the house. If they do not do it
to please him--if they are not willing to--they have no right to stay,
and then to complain. For his social life at home he has mamma and me.
If he wants--" She was walking up and down the room now. "Have we a
right to dictate? We have our places in _his_ home. We are not paid
wages like James and Susan, but--but--we are given what we have; we are
dependent. He has never refused us anything--any sum we wanted--but he
can. It is in his power, and really we do not know but that he should.
Perhaps we spend too much. We do not know. What can he afford? I do not
know. What can _I_ afford?" She spread her hands out before her, palms
up, in the darkness. She could see them by the flicker of the electric
light in the street.
"They are empty," she said, aloud, "and they are untrained, and they
are helpless. They are a pauper's hands." She smiled a little at the
conceit, and then, slowly: "It sounds absurd, almost funny, but it is
true. A pauper in lace and gold! I am over twenty-two. I am as much a
dependent and a pauper as if I were in a poorhouse. Love and kindness
save me! They have not saved Ettie, nor Francis. When the day came they
were compelled to yield utterly, or go. They can work, and I? I am a
dependent. Have I a right to stand against the will and pleasure of my
father, when by doing so I compel him to seem to sustain and support
that which he disapproves? Have I a right to do that?"
She was standing close to the window now, and she put her hot face
against the glass. "The problem is easy enough, if all think alike--if
one does not think at all; but now? I cannot follow my own conscience
and my father's too. We do not think alike. Is it right that I should,
to buy his approval and smiles, violate my own mind, and brain, and
heart? But is it right for me to violate _his_ sense of what is right,
while I live upon the lavish and loving bounty which he provides?"
And so, with her developed conscience, and reason, and individuality,
Gertrude had come to face the same problem, which, in its more brutal
form, had resulted so sorrowfully for the two girls whom she had hoped
to befriend. The ultimate question of individual domination of one by
another, with the purse as the final appeal--and even this strong and
fortunate girl wavered. "Shall I swim, after all? Have I the right to
try?" she asked herself.