Linda Starts a Revolution
The last glimpse Marian Thorne had of Linda was as she stood alone,
waving her hand, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining, her final word
cheery and encouraging. Marian smiled and waved in return until the
train bore her away. Then she sat down wearily and stared unseeingly
from a window. Life did such very dreadful things to people. Her
girlhood had been so happy. Then came the day of the Black Shadow, but
in her blackest hour she had not felt alone. She had supposed she was
leaning on John Gilman as securely as she had leaned on her father. She
had learned, with the loss of her father, that one cannot be sure of
anything in this world least of all of human life. Yet in her darkest
days she had depended on John Gilman. She had every reason to believe
that it was for her that he struggled daily to gain a footing in his
chosen profession. When success came, when there was no reason that
Marian could see why they might not have begun life together, there
had come a subtle change in John, and that change had developed so
rapidly that in a few weeks’ time, she was forced to admit that the
companionship and loving attentions that once had been all hers were
now all Eileen’s.
She sat in the train, steadily carrying her mile after mile farther
from her home, and tried to think what had happened and how and why
it had happened. She could not feel that she had been wrong in her
estimate of John Gilman. Her valuation of him had been taught her
by her father and mother and by Doctor and Mrs. Strong and by John
Gilman himself. Dating from the time that Doctor Strong had purchased
the property and built a home in Lilac Valley beside Hawthorne House,
Marian had admired Eileen and had loved her. She was several years
older than the beautiful girl she had grown up beside. Age had not
mattered; Eileen’s beauty had not mattered. Marian was good looking
herself.
She always had known that Eileen had imposed upon her and was selfish
with her, but Eileen’s impositions were so skillfully maneuvered,
her selfishness was so adorably taken for granted that Marian in
retrospection felt that perhaps she was responsible for at least a
small part of it. She never had been able to see the inner workings
of Eileen’s heart. She was not capable of understanding that when
John Gilman was poor and struggling Eileen had ignored him. It had
not occurred to Marian that when the success for which he struggled
began to come generously, Eileen would begin to covet the man she had
previously disdained. She had always striven to find friends among
people of wealth and distinction. How was Marian to know that when John
began to achieve wealth and distinction, Eileen would covet him also?
Marian could not know that Eileen had studied her harder than she
ever studied any book, that she had deliberately set herself to make
the most of every defect or idiosyncrasy in Marian, at the same time
offering herself as a charming substitute. Marian was prepared to be
the mental, the spiritual, and the physical mate of a man.
Eileen was not prepared to be in truth and honour any of these. She
was prepared to make any emergency of life subservient to her own
selfish desires. She was prepared to use any man with whom she came in
contact for the furtherance of any whim that at the hour possessed her.
What she wanted was unbridled personal liberty, unlimited financial
resources.
Marian, almost numbed with physical fatigue and weeks of mental strain,
came repeatedly against the dead wall of ignorance when she tried to
fathom the change that had taken place between herself and John Gilman
and between herself and Eileen.
Daniel Thorne was an older man than Doctor Strong. He had accumulated
more property. Marian had sufficient means at her command to make it
unnecessary for her to acquire a profession or work for her living, but
she had always been interested in and loved to plan houses and help her
friends with buildings they were erecting. When the silence and the
loneliness of her empty home enveloped her, she had begun, at first as
a distraction, to work on the drawings for a home that an architect had
made for one of her neighbors. She had been able to suggest so many
comforts and conveniences, and so to revise these plans that, at first
in a desultory way, later in real earnest, she had begun to draw plans
for houses. Then, being of methodical habit and mathematical mind, she
began scaling up the plans and figuring on the cost of building, and so
she had worked until she felt that she was evolving homes that could be
built for the same amount of money and lived in with more comfort and
convenience than the homes that many of her friends were having planned
for them by architects of the city.
To one spot in the valley she had gone from childhood as a secret
place in which to dream and study. She had loved that retreat until it
had become a living passion with her. The more John Gilman neglected
her, the more she concentrated upon her plans, and when the hour came
in which she realized what she had lost and what Eileen had won, she
reached the decision to sell her home, go to the city, and study until
she knew whether she really could succeed at her chosen profession.
Then she would come back to the valley, buy the spot she coveted, build
the house of which she dreamed, and in it she would spend the remainder
of her life making homes for the women who knew how to hold the love of
men. When she reached the city she had decided that if one could not
have the best in life, one must be content with the next best, and for
her the next best would be homes for other people, since she might not
materialize the home she had dreamed for John Gilman and herself. She
had not wanted to leave the valley. She had not wanted to lose John
Gilman. She had not wanted to part with the home she had been reared
in. Yet all of these things seemed to have been forced upon her. All
Marian knew to do was to square her shoulders, take a deep breath, put
regrets behind her, and move steadily toward the best future she could
devise for herself.
She carried letters of introduction to the San Francisco architects,
Nicholson and Snow, who had offered a prize for the best house that
could be built in a reasonable time for fifteen thousand dollars. She
meant to offer her plans in this competition. Through friends she had
secured a comfortable place in which to live and work. She need undergo
no hardships in searching for a home, in clothing herself, in paying
for instruction in the course in architecture she meant to pursue.
Concerning Linda she could not resist a feeling of exultation. Linda
was one of the friends in Lilac Valley about whom Marian could think
whole-heartedly and lovingly. Sometimes she had been on the point of
making a suggestion to Linda, and then she had contented herself with
waiting in the thought that very soon there must come to the girl a
proper sense of her position and her rights. The experience of the
previous night taught Marian that Linda had arrived. She would no
longer be the compliant little sister who would run Eileen’s errands,
wait upon her guests and wear disreputable clothing. When Linda reached
a point where she was capable of the performance of the previous night,
Marian knew that she would proceed to live up to her blue china in
every ramification of life. She did not know exactly how Linda would
follow up the assertion of her rights that she had made, but she did
know that in some way she would follow it up, because Linda was a very
close reproduction of her father.
She had been almost constantly with him during his life, very much
alone since his death. She was a busy young person. From Marian’s
windows she had watched the business of carrying on the wild flower
garden that Linda and her father had begun. What the occupation was
that kept the light burning in Linda’s room far into the night Marian
did not know. For a long time she had supposed that her studies
were difficult for her, and when she had asked Linda if it were not
possible for her to prepare her lessons without so many hours of
midnight study she had caught the stare of frank amazement with which
the girl regarded her, and in that surprised, almost grieved look
she had realized that very probably a daughter of Alexander Strong,
so resembling him as Linda resembled him, would not be compelled to
overwork to master the prescribed course of any city high school.
What Linda was doing during those midnight hours Marian did not know,
but she did know that she was not wrestling with mathematics and
languages—at least not all of the time. So Marian, knowing Linda’s
gift with a pencil, had come to the conclusion that she was drawing
pictures; but circumstantial evidence was all she had as a basis
for her conviction. Linda went her way silently and alone. She was
acquainted with everyone living in Lilac Valley, frank and friendly
with all of them; aside from Marian she had no intimate friend. Not
another girl in the valley cared to follow Linda’s pursuits or to
cultivate the acquaintance of the breeched, booted girl, constantly
devoting herself to outdoor study with her father during his lifetime,
afterward alone.
For an instant after Marian had boarded her train Linda stood looking
at it, her heart so heavy that it pained acutely. She had not said one
word to make Marian feel that she did not want her to go. Not once had
she put forward the argument that Marian’s going would leave her to
depend entirely for human sympathy upon the cook, and her guardian,
also administrator of the Strong estate, John Gilman. So long as he was
Marian’s friend Linda had admired John Gilman. She had gone to him for
some measure of the companionship she had missed in losing her father.
Since Gilman had allowed himself to be captivated by Eileen, Linda had
harbored a feeling concerning him almost of contempt. Linda was so
familiar with every move that Eileen made, so thoroughly understood
that there was a motive back of her every action, that she could not
see why John Gilman, having known her from childhood, should not
understand her also.
She had decided that the time had come when she would force Eileen to
give her an allowance, however small, for her own personal expenses,
that she must in some way manage to be clothed so that she was not a
matter of comment even among the boys of her school, and she could see
no reason why the absolute personal liberty she always had enjoyed so
long as she disappeared when Eileen did not want her and appeared when
she did, should not extend to her own convenience as well as Eileen’s.
Life was a busy affair for Linda. She had not time to watch Marian’s
train from sight. She must hurry to the nearest street car and make all
possible haste or she would be late for her classes. Throughout the day
she worked with the deepest concentration, but she could not keep down
the knowledge that Eileen would have things to say, possibly things to
do, when they met that evening, for Eileen was capable of disconcerting
hysteria. Previously Linda had remained stubbornly silent during any
tirade in which Eileen chose to indulge. She had allowed herself to
be nagged into doing many things that she despised, because she would
not assert herself against apparent injustice. But since she had come
fully to realize the results of Eileen’s course of action for Marian
and for herself, she was deliberately arriving at the conclusion that
hereafter she would speak when she had a defense, and she would make it
her business to let the sun shine on any dark spot that she discovered
in Eileen.
Linda knew that if John Gilman were well acquainted with Eileen, he
could not come any nearer to loving her than she did. Such an idea as
loving Eileen never had entered Linda’s thoughts. To Linda, Eileen was
not lovable. That she should be expected to love her because they had
the same parents and lived in the same home seemed absurd. She was
slightly disappointed, on reaching home, to find that Eileen was not
there.
“Will the lady of the house dine with us this evening?” she asked as
she stood eating an apple in the kitchen.
“She didn’t say,” answered Katy. “Have ye had it out about last night
yet?”
“No,” answered Linda. “That is why I was asking about her. I want to
clear the atmosphere before I make my new start in life.”
“Now, don’t ye be going too far, lambie,” cautioned Katy “Ye young
things make such an awful serious business of life these days. In your
scramble to wring artificial joy out of it you miss all the natural joy
the good God provided ye.”
“It seems to me, Katy,” said Linda slowly, “that you should put that
statement the other way round. It seems that life makes a mighty
serious business for us young things, and it seems to me that if we
don’t get the right start and have a proper foundation, life Is going
to be spoiled for us. One life is all I’ve got to live in this world;
and I would like it to be the interesting and the beautiful kind of
life that Father lived.”
Linda dropped to a chair.
“Katy,” she said, leaning forward and looking intently into the earnest
face of the woman before her, “Katy, I have been thinking an awful lot
lately. There is a question you could answer for me if you wanted to.”
“Well, I don’t see any raison,” said Katy, “why I shouldn’t answer ye
any question ye’d be asking me.”
Linda’s eyes narrowed as they did habitually in deep thought She was
looking past Katy down the sunlit spaces of the wild garden that was
her dearest possession, and then her eyes strayed higher to where the
blue walls that shut in Lilac Valley ranged their peaks against the sky.
“Katy,” she said, scarcely above her breath, “was Mother like Eileen?”
Katy stiffened. Her red face paled slightly. She turned her back and
slowly slid into the oven the pie she was carrying. She closed the door
with more force than was necessary and then turned and deliberately
studied Linda from the top of her shining black head to the tip of her
shoe.
“Some,” she said tersely.
“Yes, I know ‘some’,” said Linda, “but you know I was too young to pay
much attention, and Daddy managed always to make me so happy that I
never realized until he was gone that he not only had been my father
but my mother as well. You know what I mean, Katy.”
“Yes,” said Katy deliberately, “I know what ye mean, lambie, and I’ll
tell ye the truth as far as I know it. She managed your father, she
pampered him, but she deceived him every day, just about little things.
She always made the household accounts bigger than they were, and used
the extra money for Miss Eileen and herself—things like that. I’m
thinkin’ he never knew it. I’m thinking he loved her deeply and trusted
her complete. I know what ye’re getting at. She was not enough like
Eileen to make him unhappy with her. He might have been if he had known
all there was to know, but for his own sake I was not the one to give
her away, though she constantly made him think that I was extravagant
and wasteful in me work.”
Linda’s eyes came back from the mountains and met Katy’s straightly.
“Katy,” she said, “did you ever see sisters as different as Eileen and
I are?”
“No, I don’t think I ever did,” said Katy.
“It puzzles me,” said Linda slowly. “The more I think about it, the
less I can understand why, if we are sisters, we would not accidentally
resemble each other a tiny bit in some way, and I must say I can’t see
that we do physically or mentally.”
“No,” said Katy, “ye were just as different as ye are now when I came
to this house new and ye were both little things.”
“And we are going to be as different and to keep on growing more
different every day of our lives, because red war breaks out the minute
Eileen comes home. I haven’t a notion what she will say to me for what
I did last night and what I am going to do in the future, but I have a
definite idea as to what I am going to say to her.”
“Now, easy; ye go easy, lambie,” cautioned Katy.
“I wouldn’t regret it,” said Linda, “if I took Eileen by the
shoulders and shook her till I shook the rouge off her cheek, and the
brilliantine off her hair, and a million mean little subterfuges out
of her soul. You know Eileen is lovely when she is natural, and if
she would be straight-off-the-bat square, I would be proud to be her
sister. As it is, I have my doubts, even about this sister business.”
“Why, Linda, child, ye are just plain crazy,” said Katy. “What kind of
notions are you getting into your head?”
“I hear the front door,” said Linda, “and I am going to march straight
to battle. She’s going up the front stairs. I did mean to short-cut up
the back, but, come to think of it, I have served my apprenticeship
on the back stairs. I believe I’ll ascend the front myself. Good-bye,
darlin’, wish me luck.”
Linda swung Katy around, hugged her tight, and dropped a kiss on the
top of her faithful head.
“Ye just stick right up for your rights,” Katy advised her. “Ye’re a
great big girl. ’Tain’t going to be long till ye’re eighteen. But mind
your old Katy about going too far. If ye lose your temper and cat-spit,
it won’t get ye anywhere. The fellow that keeps the coolest can always
do the best headwork.”
“I get you,” said Linda, “and that is good advice for which I thank
you.”