MISS BANCROFT BEARDS THE OGRE
Miss Bancroft had not made her solemn declaration lightly. She never
made any announcements of her intentions without weighty consideration;
consequently she was a woman who meant what she said, and meant it
thoroughly. Moreover, she never procrastinated; she thought in a
straight line, and she acted in a straight line.
Like most women, she took a healthy human delight in "interfering";
but, unlike the majority of her sex, she indulged very rarely. When,
however, she had made up her mind on the point of allowing herself to
concern herself in other people's business, she experienced the
exquisite relish of a strictly self-controlled gamester, who allows
himself to play only rarely so that he may enjoy his sport with that
peculiar zest which only long abstinence can whet.
On a sunny, warm September day, mellow with the promise of an Indian
summer, Miss Bancroft, smart, though rotund, in lavender linen, set out
on her pilgrimage to the house of Thomas Prescott.
"I see that you aren't above the traditional wiles of your sex, Aunt,"
commented George Arnold, looking up from his book, and surveying her
with twinkling eyes, from the long wicker porch chair, where he had
been dozing in the sun. "You've rigged yourself out in full panoply.
That's a jaunty little parasol you have."
Miss Bancroft, standing on the broad steps, put up her parasol at this,
to shade the fine texture of her gaily beflowered straw hat from the
sun, and then glanced around at her nephew with a demure smile.
"I make a point of looking my best always when I'm going to see Tom
Prescott. Of course he thinks me a sensible woman, a remarkably
reasonable woman, and all that nonsense; but I like to leave him with
at least a half-formed notion that I'm surprisingly well preserved,
even if I have rather lost my waist-line. There was a time, you
know----" the demure smile quirked the corners of her big, mobile
mouth, and sparkled impishly in her eyes; then with a little wag of her
head, she ran down the steps like a fat, jolly schoolgirl.
George Arnold, leaning back against a chintz cushion, watched the
portly, festive figure that moved away under the trees of the long
drive. Miss Bancroft usually seemed to roll slowly, but efficiently,
along on wheels as ponderous and impressive as an old-fashioned
stage-coach. He caught a last glimpse of lavender and white through
the shrubs that bordered the end of the lawn. He felt a good deal of
interest in this pilgrimage of his aunt's, although he had no very
clear idea of the purpose of it. It had something to do with two very
pretty young girls whom he had seen at an otherwise stupid dance the
night before. One of the girls looked like a Dresden doll, the other
had dark eyes, and a direct, shy, almost boyish smile. Her name was
Anne--Nancy. Nancy suited her much better. He had thought about her
several times. For no particular reason--she was hardly eighteen, and
he was, well, he was thirty-three, though that was neither here nor
there. It was simply that he liked her rather better than one likes
most girls of that age. She had a way of listening to a man without
that stupid, flustered expression, as though she was only wondering
what in the world she should say when it should be her turn to talk.
She liked books. He wondered if she knew that he wrote them. Of
course he wasn't world-famous, but it might interest her to know that
he was the George Arnold whose collections of exquisitely delicate
children's stories had already been translated into six foreign
languages, "including the Scandinavian."
He smiled to himself at the naive vanity which had prompted this
thought; and chastised it by telling himself that it was only too
likely that her ignorance or knowledge of what he did or was were
matters of like indifference to her.
Meantime, Miss Bancroft, puffing a little under the combined
difficulties of avoirdupois and a beaming September sun, was looking
with an almost pathetic anticipation at the rich cool shadows beneath
which slept the rambling mansion of Thomas Prescott.
"I shall order some tea. A man is always so much more amenable to
reason over a tea-table--and for my part, I'll not survive half an hour
without a little light refreshment. I suppose I'll have to listen to a
long discourse on the origin of the Slavic races or the religious
customs of the Aztecs, until I can get him down to argue with me on his
duty toward his fellow creatures. I hope to Heaven that his principles
are drowsy to-day. I can't bear it if I have to combat a lot of
principles. It's absolutely heathenish to have principles in warm
weather anyway. Of course they are the proper things to have, but,
dear me, they _are_ such nuisances. It's all right to have them about
yourself, I suppose, but to have them about other people is priggish,
and quite useless, so far as I can see. My observation has taught me
that if you like a person it makes no difference whether their
principles coincide with your own or not, or even if they have none at
all; and if you don't like a person, it's downright irritating to have
to approve of them." Miss Bancroft's mental grammar, like much of her
spoken grammar, was inaccurate, of course; as in other matters, she
held rule to scorn, when the rule interfered with her personal
conception of what she was trying to make clear to other people or to
herself.
Under the vigorous thrust of her plump, direct forefinger, the
door-bell pealed clearly in the cool remote regions of the house.
Standing under the arch of the Norman doorway, she surveyed the broad,
shade-flecked lawns with interest and a sort of irritable appreciation.
Somewhere under the trees a gardener was raking the drive and burning
neat piles of warm, brown leaves, from which the pungent smoke ascended
in sinuous blue spirals, like languorously dancing phantoms of the dead
leaves; and the pleasant, rhythmic sound of the rake on the gravel
intensified the sober peaceful silence peculiar to that bachelor's
domain.
The door was opened.
"Tell Mr. Prescott that it's Miss Bancroft. Nonsense, I shan't sit
down in the drawing-room at all--it makes me feel like a member of the
Ladies' Aid come to petition a subscription for a new church carpet or
something. Tell Mr. Prescott that I'll be out on the porch."
"Will you come through this way, then, madam?" suggested the old
butler, meekly.
Miss Bancroft followed him, sighing a little with relief as the
coolness of the great hall, with its smell of old, polished wood and
waxed floors, closed about her.
"And, William," she called pathetically after the retreating butler,
"do put the kettle on!"
On her way through the house she passed a stately succession of large
rooms. A handsome drawing-room, with a polished parquetry floor, fit
for the dainty crimson heels of a laced and furbelowed French coquette;
its great glass chandelier shrouded in white tarlatan; the dining-room,
with high-wainscoted walls, on which hung three or four astonishingly
valuable and even beautiful pictures by masters of the eighteenth
century English school. For all its impressive grandeur, the long
table, covered with a rare piece of Italian brocade, was, with the
single carved chair set at the distant end, a barren table, indeed, for
a man whom Miss Bancroft knew to be possessed of one of the warmest,
tenderest and most affection-craving hearts in the whole world.
"Principles--fiddlesticks!" she observed aloud. "Tst!"
A living-room, in which no one ever lived, a writing-room, in which no
one ever wrote, and long halls, wainscoted in dark oak and quiet as
those of a college library, whose silence was never broken by the light
staccato footsteps of gay feet, or the murmur of roguish voices. But
the air of pathos which all these things wore seemed to rise from the
fact that they had been planned and secured not for the enjoyment of a
lonely old man, but for some happy purpose that had never been
realized. They seemed to wear an expression of disappointment, even of
apology for existing so uselessly.
"Tut! How can anyone be patient with a man of principles," again
commented Miss Bancroft; but her face had grown a little sad.
She was rocking gently back and forth in the shade of the cool stone
porch, when the sound of footsteps at last reached her ears, and she
looked up with the warm smile of a guest who knows she is always
welcome.
"Elizabeth! This is a very great pleasure. I thought you had
forgotten me!"
"You deserve to be forgotten, my dear friend. Ah, now you've disarmed
me, though. I've just conscience enough to have to tell you that I've
come this time with ulterior motives."
"I can find fault with no motives of yours, so long as they prompt you
to visit me. I look forward to my little chats with you as a child
looks forward to his Saturday treats."
"My dear Tom, your gift of saying delightful things is one of the
wonders of the age. Here you never see a woman from one year's end to
the other, and yet you can turn a compliment as charmingly as though
you practised on the fairest in the land every evening of your life."
"'In my youth, said the Father----'" quoted the old gentleman with a
twinkle. "However, let's hear your ulterior motives first, my dear
Elizabeth, so that afterwards we can chat with unburdened minds."
"No--no, I refuse to beard you until we have some tea. Thank goodness,
here's William bringing it now. I took the liberty of ordering it,
Tom."
"You took no liberties at all--you merely assumed your privileges.
Tut-tut! Tea. You women, with all your notions and your injurious
habits--how very delightful it is to be near you!"
"To hear you talk, Tom, how could _anyone_ suspect that you were a man
of principles!" cried Miss Bancroft. "How could anyone dream that you
were hard, and austere and--and unimaginative!" He looked at her in
mild astonishment.
He was a small old man, rather delicate in build, with the blunt broad
hands of a worker, and a high, smooth, massive forehead, from which his
perfectly white hair fell back, long and almost childishly soft and
fine. His eyes, set deep under the sharply defined bone of his
projecting brow, wore the gentle, far-away expression noticeable in
many near-sighted people; but his chin contradicted their softness, and
there was a hint of obstinacy in his close-set mouth and rather long
upper lip. He was dressed negligently, and indeed almost shabbily, and
he made no apologies for his appearance; since he never gave a thought
to it himself, he could not consider what other people might think of
it. His greatest hobby, lingering with him from earlier years, was
chemistry, and he spent virtually all his time in the laboratory which
he had fitted up in one of the odd towers that decorated his house.
His coat and trousers would have given a far less observant person than
Sherlock Holmes a clue to this favorite occupation of his, stained and
burned as they were with acids.
"Do you eat your _dinner_ in those clothes?" demanded Miss Bancroft.
"Why? What's the matter with them? Why not eat dinner in 'em? My
dear Elizabeth, surely at this late date you haven't taken it into your
head to reform my habits?"
"I don't know but that I have," replied Miss Bancroft with a touch of
grimness.
"Is that your ulterior motive? I suspected it. Tell me what you meant
when you accused me just now of being hard and austere and
unimaginative. Why unimaginative?"
"No really intelligent woman would ever try to explain anything so
subtle to a man. I mean that you are unimaginative because you allow
yourself to be rigid----"
"Rigid? Rigid about what?"
"About your principles. I like you, Tom--you know how much. I admire
you more than any man I have ever known, and I have known a good many
remarkable men. But one thing I cannot forgive you is your principles."
"My principles? When did I ever offend you with principles?"
Miss Bancroft poured herself another cup of tea, and laid a second
piece of bread-and-butter neatly on the side of her saucer.
"Come," said Mr. Prescott, with a keen glance at her. "Come, it's not
like you, Elizabeth, to beat about the bush. What can this matter be
which you find so difficult to broach in plain English?"
Miss Bancroft hesitated a moment. It touched her vanity to be accused
of beating about the bush, since she took an especial pride in her
reputation of being a woman who never minced matters, and who always
made a direct and fearless attack.
Then she said, simply:
"I came to talk to you about--George's daughters, Tom."
There was a short silence.
"It's not like you, Elizabeth, to--to touch upon a matter so very
delicate," remarked Mr. Prescott, quietly, his lips tightening
slightly. "Of course I can understand how my attitude in regard to
them must appear to you, but I fancied that there existed between you
and me a silent agreement that this was one subject which was never to
be mentioned."
"My dear Tom, you know that under ordinary circumstances I am not an
interfering woman; therefore you must realize that I should never have
spoken of this to you without the best of reasons for doing so. But I
feel that you are allowing certain principles, excellent no doubt in
themselves, but wrong in your particular application to them, to thwart
your own happiness; to say nothing of depriving others of the
advantages which it is in your power to bestow." Miss Bancroft was
very serious now. As she spoke she leaned over and laid her fat little
hand earnestly on the old man's shabby sleeve. He said nothing, and
she continued:
"There are two young girls, charming--beautiful, indeed--the daughters
of a man you loved far more even than most fathers love their
first-born sons----"
"Don't!" exclaimed Mr. Prescott, sharply, almost fiercely. "Don't
speak to me of that, Elizabeth. Can't you realize that just to mention
my--George recalls all my old rancor against that little, heartless
spendthrift who ruined him--_killed_ him----" his voice rose hoarsely,
then making an effort to control himself, he went on in a quieter tone:
"It's very difficult for me to discuss this with you, Elizabeth."
"I'm sorry, Tom. But you have no right to--it's a matter of your own
happiness as much as theirs--and I would be no friend of yours if I
were not willing and anxious to risk your anger for the sake of
righting this mistake you are making."
"My nieces are not in want. And familiarity with a certain degree of
poverty is the source of a wisdom that safeguards men and women from
follies that lead to many of the greatest miseries on earth."
"Want, my dear Tom, is a purely relative condition," said Miss
Bancroft. "There are needs, which to certain natures are more
intolerable than physical hunger. To deprive a young girl of simple,
innocent delights--companionship of her own kind, dainty clothes,
harmless enjoyments--is like robbing a plant of sun and rain."
"Do you mean to tell me that poverty need deprive any girl of such
things? Nonsense, Elizabeth! I have seen girls who had but two
dresses to their name, who worked and struggled and economized, and who
nevertheless had as much pleasure--indeed more, I'll wager--than the
most petted heiress in the land. And what's more, they made better
wives and better mothers and better citizens. They knew how many cents
make a dollar, and how many dollars their men could make in a week by
the sweat of their brow, working not eight hours a day, but ten and
twelve. One never heard this sickly whine from them--this talk that
women must be coddled and pampered, and that men can eat their hearts
out to provide the 'sun' in which they bask like pet lizards! They
didn't ask for 'sunlight'--they asked only that they might work and
save with their husbands--that they could be fit partners, and they
found their joy, not in 'dainty clothes' and 'harmless enjoyments' but
in giving their strength and their courage for their husbands and their
children!" Mr. Prescott had risen to his feet in the vehemence of his
feeling, and was walking back and forth, his hands locked behind his
back, and his head lowered and thrust forward between his hunched-up
shoulders.
"Good heavens, I've got him roused for fair," thought Miss Bancroft,
with a mixture of amusement and dismay. "And of course, theoretically
he's dead right. Now why is it that so many things which,
theoretically, are dead right, practically, are all wrong? That's what
I've got to prove to him--and I don't know whether I shall succeed
after all. I must take care not to be sentimental--that rouses him
dreadfully."
Aloud she said, in a quiet voice:
"Listen, Tom--under ordinary circumstances I should agree with you
absolutely. But a short time ago I spoke of want being relative. You
said that your nieces are not in want. You meant, of course, that they
had food and clothes and shelter. If they were girls who lived in an
absolutely different plane of life that would be sufficient for their
happiness. They could have pleasure with their two dresses and their
one best bonnet, because everyone else of their class would have no
more. But take one of them out of that class; put her where her only
companions would have to be sought for among men and women who lived on
a scale of comparative wealth, where, to make friends, she would have
to appear well, and so on--then, what in the first case was at least a
sufficiency, now becomes tragically inadequate. There is no cure but
for that girl to recede from the class to which by birth, breeding and
instinct she belongs.
"You have built up a great fortune. You yourself are what you boast of
being--a self-made man--a man originally of the people. But you made
your nephew a gentleman--understand that I am using the word in the
commonest sense. Consequently his children belong to a class in which
needs must be measured by a different scale from that used for working
women. They live--as you do, and most likely because you do--in a very
rich community. They suffer from wants that girls of a different class
would never know. They are deprived of things which your working girl
would not be deprived of. They are poorer on their two thousand a
year, or whatever it is, than a peasant woman would be on two hundred,
because their particular needs are more expensive."
"They will be very rich--after I die," said Mr. Prescott in a low
voice, after a short pause. "But I won't let them even suspect it.
That little wife of George's--I never want to see her again--she is a
great little gambler. If she felt sure that in a few years her
daughters were coming into a fortune of several millions, Heaven only
knows but that she'd have the last cent of it spent in advance. You
seem to have gleaned an immense amount of information concerning my
nieces--perhaps you know what her plans for them are."
"You know, Tom, that I was as much opposed--indeed more opposed,
perhaps, than you were to George's marrying Lallie. But that is
neither here nor there now. I am afraid that she is--well, attempting
things for her girls that lie beyond her income. You must not blame
her. She isn't a wise woman, but I am sure that she is one who suffers
more for her mistakes than she causes others to suffer. Of course I am
no judge of that.
"She is a little gambler, no doubt, as you said--but a gallant one.
She is playing against rather desperate odds--and she cannot be blamed
if she plays foolishly. As I understand it, I believe that her object
is to give her girls, by hook or crook, advantages that lie beyond her
means, the goal being that one of them or both will marry--well. If
she wins--well and good----"
"Well and good--fiddlesticks! Nonsense! Good Heavens!" shouted Mr.
Prescott. "Whatever are you driving at, Elizabeth? I can't make head
or tail of all this talking. You come to me, telling me that my nieces
are in want of some kind or other, that that mother of theirs is living
beyond her means in her attempt to put them on a footing with the
daughters of millionaires, so that they can marry some mother's son
whom they fancy can stand their extravagance, and as far as I can make
out, you want me to defray their expenses, so that the business of
ruining some other man's boy as mine was ruined will be less difficult
for them. Have you gone clean daft?"
"I see I haven't made myself perfectly clear," said Miss Bancroft,
patiently. "I should have told you that I saw both of your nieces last
night. It was because of the older one that I came here to-day--Nancy.
She looks enough like George to make your heart ache. And she is
facing poor George's problem. She is a very remarkable young girl--I
don't cotton to the average young miss very readily, as you know, but
there was something in that bright, eager young face that went to my
heart. She was at the Porterbridges'. They came in an old hack that
they were ashamed of. Do you like to think of George's daughters doing
that?
"She is a girl who deserves a fair chance, and she's not getting it.
But she isn't the sort that whimpers. She struck me as being full of a
fine courage--and an independence of spirit that made one member of the
family the very troublesome person he is. She is a girl who has her
teeth set against circumstance, and her own cool, sober views of life.
But she is very young--too young to have to cope with the difficulties
that face her, and far too proud to accept any help with strings tied
to it. Remember that. And in my opinion, it is a sin and a shame that
you, who could give her the help she needs, and who could get a great
deal of happiness in return--you won't even see her. I'm not asking
anything but that you see and talk to Nancy sometime." Miss Bancroft
rose, and shook out her skirt.
Mr. Prescott stood, looking straight ahead of him, with his under lip
thrust forward, a characteristic trick of that same grand-niece Nancy,
if he but knew it.
Presently he turned, and held out his hand with a queer, almost shy
smile.
"Do forgive me, Elizabeth, for bellowing at you as I have. You know,
my dear girl--and you have often agreed with me--that, while at my
death my nieces will become very rich, it has been my purpose to allow
them to know poverty, with all its sorrows and harassments, so that
they can use my fortune wisely for their own happiness and for the
happiness of the families that they will have in time. My theory is
right--but circumstances alter cases. I shall think over what you have
said--but I shall promise nothing."
Miss Bancroft accepted his hand and pressed it affectionately.
"Well, then, good-bye. No, don't bother to open the door for me; I'll
go this way."
He smiled at her again as she went down the steps.
"I always feel lonely when you have gone, even when we have been
quarrelling," he remarked, with a wistful look.
"Of course you feel lonely. You roll around in that huge house of
yours like a hazelnut in a shoe," returned Miss Bancroft, quickly. He
caught her meaning, and as quickly replied:
"Nonsense--I like plenty of room. Never could bear to have a lot of
people hanging around. No man can accomplish anything with an army of
women and things hanging to his coat-tails!"
"Tst!" observed Miss Bancroft, and because there was no answer to that,
she could retire with the satisfaction of having had the last word.