A QUESTION OF CONTRACTS
"HELLO, Folks!" cried Kate, waving her hand to the occupants of the
veranda as she went up the walk. "Glad to find you at home."
"That is where you will always find me unless I am forced away on
business," said her brother as they shook hands.
Agatha was pleased with this, and stiff as steel, she bent the length
of her body toward Kate and gave her a tight-lipped little peck on the
cheek.
"I came over, as soon as I could," said Kate as she took the chair her
brother offered, "to thank you for the big thing you did for me,
Agatha, when you lent me that money. If I had known where I was going,
or the help it would be to me, I should have gone if I'd had to walk
and work for my board. Why, I feel so sure of myself! I've learned so
much that I'm like the girl fresh from boarding school: 'The only
wonder is that one small head can contain it all.' Thank you over and
over and I've got a good school, so I can pay you back the very first
month, I think. If there are things I must have, I can pay part the
first month and the remainder the second. I am eager for pay-day. I
can't even picture the bliss of having that much money in my fingers,
all my own, to do with as I please. Won't it be grand?"
In the same breath said Agatha: "Procure yourself some clothes!" Said
Adam: "Start a bank account!"
Said Kate: "Right you are! I shall do both."
"Even our little Susan has a bank account," said Adam, Jr., proudly.
"Which is no reflection whatever on me," laughed Kate. "Susan did not
have the same father and mother I had. I'd like to see a girl of my
branch of the Bates family start a bank account at ten."
"No, I guess she wouldn't," admitted Adam, dryly.
"But have you heard that Nancy Ellen has started?" cried Kate. "Only
think! A lawn-mower! The house and barn to be painted! All the dinge
possible to remove scoured away, inside! She must have worn her
fingers almost to the bone! And really, Agatha, have you seen the man?
He's as big as Adam, and just fine looking. I'm simply consumed with
envy."
"Miss Medira, Dora, Ann, cast her net, and catched a man!" recited
Susan from the top step, at which they all laughed.
"No, I have not had the pleasure of casting my optics upon the
individual of Nancy Ellen's choice," said Agatha primly, "but Miss
Amelia Lang tells me he is a very distinguished person, of quite
superior education in a medical way. I shall call him if I ever have
the misfortune to fall ill again. I hope you will tell Nancy Ellen
that we shall be very pleased to have her bring him to see us some
evening, and if she will let me know a short time ahead I shall take
great pleasure in compounding a cake and freezing custard."
"Of course I shall tell her, and she will feel a trifle more stuck up
than she does now, if that is possible," laughed Kate in deep amusement.
She surely was feeling fine. Everything had come out so splendidly.
That was what came of having a little spirit and standing up for your
rights. Also she was bubbling inside while Agatha talked. Kate
wondered how Adam survived it every day. She glanced at him to see if
she could detect any marks of shattered nerves, then laughed outright.
Adam was the finest physical specimen of a man she knew. He was good
looking also, and spoke as well as the average, better in fact, for
from the day of their marriage, Agatha sat on his lap each night and
said these words: "My beloved, to-day I noted an error in your speech.
It would put a former teacher to much embarrassment to have this occur
in public. In the future will you not try to remember that you should
say, 'have gone,' instead of 'have went?'" As she talked Agatha
rumpled Adam's hair, pulled off his string tie, upon which she
insisted, even when he was plowing; laid her hard little face against
his, and held him tight with her frail arms, so that Adam being part
human as well as part Bates, held her closely also and said these
words: "You bet your sweet life I will!" And what is more he did. He
followed a furrow the next day, softly muttering over to himself:
"Langs have gone to town. I have gone to work. The birds have gone to
building nests." So Adam seldom said: "have went," or made any other
error in speech that Agatha had once corrected.
As Kate watched him leaning back in his chair, vital, a study in
well-being, the supremest kind of satisfaction on his face, she noted
the flash that lighted his eye when Agatha offered to "freeze a
custard." How like Agatha! Any other woman Kate knew would have said,
"make ice cream." Agatha explained to them that when they beat up
eggs, added milk, sugar, and corn-starch it was custard. When they
used pure cream, sweetened and frozen, it was iced cream. Personally,
she preferred the custard, but she did not propose to call it custard
cream. It was not correct. Why persist in misstatements and
inaccuracies when one knew better? So Agatha said iced cream when she
meant it, and frozen custard, when custard it was, but every other
woman in the neighbourhood, had she acted as she felt, would have
slapped Agatha's face when she said it: this both Adam and Kate well
knew, so it made Kate laugh despite the fact that she would not have
offended Agatha purposely.
"I think--I think," said Agatha, "that Nancy Ellen has much upon which
to congratulate herself. More education would not injure her, but she
has enough that if she will allow her ambition to rule her and study in
private and spend her spare time communing with the best writers, she
can make an exceedingly fair intellectual showing, while she surely is
a handsome woman. With a good home and such a fine young professional
man as she has had the good fortune to attract, she should immediately
put herself at the head of society in Hartley and become its leader to
a much higher moral and intellectual plane than it now occupies."
"Bet she has a good time," said young Adam. "He's awful nice."
"Son," said Agatha, "'awful,' means full of awe. A cyclone, a
cloudburst, a great conflagration are awful things. By no stretch of
the imagination could they be called nice."
"But, Ma, if a cyclone blew away your worst enemy wouldn't it be nice?"
Adam, Jr., and Kate laughed. Not the trace of a smile crossed Agatha's
pale face.
"The words do not belong in contiguity," she said. "They are
diametrically opposite in meaning. Please do not allow my ears to be
offended by hearing you place them in propinquity again."
"I'll try not to, Ma," said young Adam; then Agatha smiled on him
approvingly. "When did you meet Mr. Gray, Katherine?" she asked.
"On the foot-log crossing the creek beside Lang's line fence. Near the
spot Nancy Ellen first met him I imagine."
"How did you recognize him?"
"Nancy Ellen had just been showing me his picture and telling me about
him. Great Day, but she's in love with him!"
"And so he is with her, if Lang's conclusions from his behaviour can be
depended upon. They inform me that he can be induced to converse on no
other subject. The whole arrangement appeals to me as distinctly
admirable."
"And you should see the lilac bush and the cabbage roses," said Kate.
"And the strangest thing is Father. He is peaceable as a lamb. She is
not to teach, but to spend the winter sewing on her clothes and
bedding, and Father told her he would give her the necessary money.
She said so. And I suspect he will. He always favoured her because
she was so pretty, and she can come closer to wheedling him than any of
the rest of us excepting you, Agatha."
"It is an innovation, surely!"
"Mother is nearly as bad. Father furnishing money for clothes and
painting the barn is no more remarkable than Mother letting her turn
the house inside out. If it had been I, Father would have told me to
teach my school this winter, buy my own clothes and linen with the
money I had earned, and do my sewing next summer. But I am not jealous.
It is because she is handsome, and the man fine-looking and with such
good prospects."
"There you have it!" said Adam emphatically. "If it were you, marrying
Jim Lang, to live on Lang's west forty, you WOULD pay your own way.
But if it were you marrying a fine-looking young doctor, who will soon
be a power in Hartley, no doubt, it would tickle Father's vanity until
he would do the same for you."
"I doubt it!" said Kate. "I can't see the vanity in Father."
"You can't?" said Adam, Jr., bitterly. "Maybe not! You have not been
with him in the Treasurer's office when he calls for 'the tax on those
little parcels of land of mine.' He looks every inch of six feet six
then, and swells like a toad. To hear him you would think sixteen
hundred and fifty acres of the cream of this county could be tied in a
bandanna and carried on a walking stick, he is so casual about it. And
those men fly around like buttons on a barn door to wait on him and
it's 'Mister Bates this' and 'Mister Bates that,' until it turns my
stomach. Vanity! He rolls in it! He eats it! He risks losing our
land for us that some of us have slaved over for twenty years, to feed
that especial vein of his vanity. Where should we be if he let
anything happen to those deeds?"
"How refreshing!" cried Kate. "I love to hear you grouching! I hear
nothing else from the women of the Bates family, but I didn't even know
the men had a grouch. Are Peter, and John, and Hiram, and the other
boys sore, too?"
"I should say they are! But they are too diplomatic to say so. They
are afraid to cheep. I just open my head and say right out loud in
meeting that since I've turned in the taxes and insurance for all these
years and improved my land more than fifty per cent., I'd like to own
it, and pay my taxes myself, like a man."
"I'd like to have some land under any conditions," said Kate, "but
probably I never shall. And I bet you never get a flipper on that deed
until Father has crossed over Jordan, which with his health and
strength won't be for twenty-five years yet at least. He's performing
a miracle that will make the other girls rave, when he gives Nancy
Ellen money to buy her outfit; but they won't dare let him hear a
whisper of it. They'll take it all out on Mother, and she'll be afraid
to tell him."
"Afraid? Mother afraid of him? Not on your life. She is hand in
glove with him. She thinks as he does, and helps him in everything he
undertakes."
"That's so, too. Come to think of it, she isn't a particle afraid of
him. She agrees with him perfectly. It would be interesting to hear
them having a private conversation. They never talk a word before us.
But they always agree, and they heartily agree on Nancy Ellen's man,
that is plainly to be seen."
"It will make a very difficult winter for you, Katherine," said Agatha.
"When Nancy Ellen becomes interested in dresses and table linen and
bedding she will want to sew all the time, and leave the cooking and
dishes for you as well as your schoolwork."
Kate turned toward Agatha in surprise. "But I won't be there! I told
you I had taken a school."
"You taken a school!" shouted Adam. "Why, didn't they tell you that
Father has signed up for the home school for you?"
"Good Heavens!" said Kate. "What will be to pay now?"
"Did you contract for another school?" cried Adam.
"I surely did," said Kate slowly. "I signed an agreement to teach the
village school in Walden. It's a brick building with a janitor to
sweep and watch fires, only a few blocks to walk, and it pays twenty
dollars a month more than the home school where you can wade snow three
miles, build your own fires, and freeze all day in a little frame
building at that. I teach the school I have taken."
"And throw our school out of a teacher? Father could be sued, and
probably will be," said Adam. "And throw the housework Nancy Ellen
expected you to do on her," said Agatha, at the same time.
"I see," said Kate. "Well, if he is sued, he will have to settle. He
wouldn't help me a penny to go to school, I am of age, the debt is my
own, and I don't owe it to him. He's had all my work has been worth
all my life, and I've surely paid my way. I shall teach the school I
have signed for."
"You will get into a pretty kettle of fish!" said Adam.
"Agatha, will you sell me your telescope for what you paid for it, and
get yourself a new one the next time you go to Hartley? It is only a
few days until time to go to my school, it opens sooner than in the
country, and closes later. The term is four months longer, so I earn
that much more. I haven't gotten a telescope yet. You can add it to
my first payment."
"You may take it," said Agatha, "but hadn't you better reconsider,
Katherine? Things are progressing so nicely, and this will upset
everything for Nancy Ellen."
"That taking the home school will upset everything for me, doesn't seem
to count. It is late, late to find teachers, and I can be held
responsible if I break the contract I have made. Father can stand the
racket better than I can. When he wouldn't consent to my going, he had
no business to make plans for me. I had to make my own plans and go in
spite of him; he might have known I'd do all in my power to get a
school. Besides, I don't want the home school, or the home work piled
on me. My hands look like a human being's for the first time in my
life; then I need all my time outside of school to study and map out
lessons. I am going to try for a room in the Hartley schools next
year, or the next after that, surely. They sha'n't change my plans and
boss me, I am going to be free to work, and study, and help myself,
like other teachers."
"A grand row this will be," commented young Adam. "And as usual Kate
will be right, while all of them will be trying to use her to their
advantage. Ma has done her share. Now it is your turn, Pa. Ain't you
going to go over and help her?"
"What could I do?" demanded his father. "The mischief is done now."
"Well, if you can't do anything to help, you can let me have the buggy
to drive her to Walden, if they turn her out."
"'Forcibly invite her to proceed to her destination,' you mean, son,"
said Agatha.
"Yes, Ma, that is exactly what I mean," said young Adam. "Do I get the
buggy?"
"Yes, you may take my private conveyance. But do nothing to publish
the fact. There is no need to incur antagonism if it can be avoided."
"Kate, I'll be driving past the privet bush about nine in the morning.
If you need me, hang a white rag on it, and I'll stop at the corner of
the orchard."
"I shall probably be standing in the road waiting for you," said Kate.
"Oh, I hope not," said Agatha.
"Looks remarkably like it to me," said Kate.
Then she picked up the telescope, said good-bye to each of them, and in
acute misery started back to her home. This time she followed the
footpath beside the highway. She was so busy with her indignant
thought that she forgot to protect her skirts from the dust of wayside
weeds, while in her excitement she walked so fast her face was red and
perspiring when she approached the church.
"Oh, dear, I don't know about it," said Kate to the small, silent
building. "I am trying to follow your advice, but it seems to me that
life is very difficult, any way you go at it. If it isn't one thing,
it is another. An hour ago I was the happiest I have ever been in my
life; only look at me now! Any one who wants 'the wings of morning'
may have them for all of me. It seems definitely settled that I walk,
carry a load, and fight for the chance to do even that."
A big tear rolled down either side of Kate's nose and her face twisted
in self-pity for an instant. But when she came in sight of home her
shoulders squared, the blue-gray of her eyes deepened to steel, and her
lips set in a line that was an exact counterpart of her father's when
he had made up his mind and was ready to drive his family, with their
consent or without it. As she passed the vegetable garden--there was
no time or room for flowers in a Bates garden--Kate, looking ahead,
could see Nancy Ellen and Robert Gray beneath the cherry trees. She
hoped Nancy Ellen would see that she was tired and dusty, and should
have time to brush and make herself more presentable to meet a
stranger, and so Nancy Ellen did; for which reason she immediately
arose and came to the gate, followed by her suitor whom she at once
introduced. Kate was in no mood for words; one glance at her proved to
Robert Gray that she was tired and dusty, that there were tear marks
dried on her face. They hastily shook hands, but neither mentioned the
previous meeting. Excusing herself Kate went into the house saying she
would soon return.
Nancy Ellen glanced at Robert, and saw the look of concern on his face.
"I believe she has been crying," she said. "And if she has, it's
something new, for I never saw a tear on her face before in my life."
"Truly?" he questioned in amazement.
"Why, of course! The Bates family are not weepers."
"So I have heard," said the man, rather dryly.
Nancy Ellen resented his tone.
"Would you like us better if we were?"
"I couldn't like you better than I do, but because of what I have heard
and seen, it naturally makes me wonder what could have happened that
has made her cry."
"We are rather outspoken, and not at all secretive," said Nancy Ellen,
carelessly, "you will soon know."
Kate followed the walk around the house and entered at the side door,
finding her father and mother in the dining room reading the weekly
papers. Her mother glanced up as she entered.
"What did you bring Agatha's telescope back with you for?" she
instantly demanded.
For a second Kate hesitated. It had to come, she might as well get it
over. Possibly it would be easier with them alone than if Nancy Ellen
were present.
"It is mine," she said. "It represents my first purchase on my own
hook and line."
"You are not very choicy to begin on second-hand stuff. Nancy Ellen
would have had a new one."
"No doubt!" said Kate. "But this will do for me."
Her father lowered his paper and asked harshly: "What did you buy that
thing for?"
Kate gripped the handle and braced herself.
"To pack my clothes in when I go to my school next week," she said
simply.
"What?" he shouted. "What?" cried her mother.
"I don't know why you seem surprised," said Kate. "Surely you knew I
went to Normal to prepare myself to teach. Did you think I couldn't
find a school?"
"Now look here, young woman," shouted Adam Bates, "you are done taking
the bit in your teeth. Nancy Ellen is not going to teach this winter.
I have taken the home school for you; you will teach it. That is
settled. I have signed the contract. It must be fulfilled."
"Then Nancy Ellen will have to fulfill it," said Kate. "I also have
signed a contract that must be fulfilled. I am of age, and you had no
authority from me to sign a contract for me."
For an instant Kate thought there was danger that the purple rush of
blood to her father's head might kill him. He opened his mouth, but no
distinct words came. Her face paled with fright, but she was of his
blood, so she faced him quietly. Her mother was quicker of wit, and
sharper of tongue.
"Where did you get a school? Why didn't you wait until you got home?"
she demanded.
"I am going to teach the village school in Walden," said Kate. "It is a
brick building, has a janitor, I can board reasonably, near my work,
and I get twenty dollars more a month than our school pays, while the
term is four months longer."
"Well, it is a pity about that; but it makes no difference," said her
mother. "Our home school has got to be taught as Pa contracted, and
Nancy Ellen has got to have her chance."
"What about my chance?" asked Kate evenly. "Not one of the girls, even
Exceptional Ability, ever had as good a school or as high wages to
start on. If I do well there this winter, I am sure I can get in the
Hartley graded schools next fall."
"Don't you dare nickname your sister," cried Mrs. Bates, shrilly. "You
stop your impudence and mind your father."
"Ma, you leave this to me," said Adam Bates, thickly. Then he glared
at Kate as he arose, stretching himself to full height. "You've signed
a contract for a school?" he demanded.
"I have," said Kate.
"Why didn't you wait until you got home and talked it over with us?" he
questioned.
"I went to you to talk over the subject to going," said Kate. "You
would not even allow me to speak. How was I to know that you would
have the slightest interest in what school I took, or where."
"When did you sign this contract?" he continued.
"Yesterday afternoon, in Hartley," said Kate.
"Aha! Then I did miss a letter from my pocket. When did you get to be
a thief?" he demanded.
"Oh, Father!" cried Kate. "It was my letter. I could see my name on
the envelope. I ASKED you for it, before I took it."
"From behind my back, like the sneak-thief you are. You are not fit to
teach in a school where half the scholars are the children of your
brothers and sisters, and you are not fit to live with honest people.
Pack your things and be off!"
"Now? This afternoon?" asked Kate.
"This minute!" he cried.
"All right. You will be surprised at how quickly I can go," said Kate.
She set down the telescope and gathered a straw sunshade and an apron
from the hooks at the end of the room, opened the dish cupboard, and
took out a mug decorated with the pinkest of wild roses and the reddest
and fattest of robins, bearing the inscription in gold, "For a Good
Girl" on a banner in its beak. Kate smiled at it grimly as she took the
telescope and ran upstairs. It was the work of only a few minutes to
gather her books and clothing and pack the big telescope, then she went
down the front stairs and left the house by the front door carrying in
her hand everything she possessed on earth. As she went down the walk
Nancy Ellen sprang up and ran to her while Robert Gray followed.
"You'll have to talk to me on the road," said Kate. "I am forbidden
the house which also means the grounds, I suppose."
She walked across the road, set the telescope on the grass under a big
elm tree, and sat down beside it.
"I find I am rather tired," she said. "Will you share the sofa with
me?"
Nancy Ellen lifted her pink skirt and sat beside Kate. Robert Gray
stood looking down at them.
"What in the world is the matter?" asked Nancy Ellen.
"You know, of course, that Father signed a contract for me to teach the
home school this winter," explained Kate. "Well, I am of age, and he
had no authority from me, so his contract isn't legal. None of you
would lift a finger to help me get away to Normal, how was I to know
that you would take any interest in finding me a school while I was
gone? I thought it was all up to me, so I applied for the school in
Walden, got it, and signed the contract to teach it. It is a better
school, at higher wages. I thought you would teach here--I can't break
my contract. Father is furious and has ordered me out of the house.
So there you are, or rather here I am."
"Well, it isn't much of a joke," said Nancy Ellen, thinking intently.
What she might have said had they been alone, Kate always wondered.
What she did say while her betrothed looked at her with indignant eyes
was possibly another matter. It proved to be merely: "Oh, Kate, I am
so sorry!"
"So am I," said Kate. "If I had known what your plans were, of course
I should gladly have helped you out. If only you had written me and
told me."
"I wanted to surprise you," said Nancy Ellen.
"You have," said Kate. "Enough to last a lifetime. I don't see how
you figured. You knew how late it was. You knew it would be nip and
tuck if I got a school at all."
"Of course we did! We thought you couldn't possibly get one, this
late, so we fixed up the scheme to let you have my school, and let me
sew on my linen this winter. We thought you would be as pleased as we
were."
"I am too sorry for words," said Kate. "If I had known your plan, I
would have followed it, even though I gave up a better school at a
higher salary. But I didn't know. I thought I had to paddle my own
canoe, so I made my own plans. Now I must live up to them, because my
contract is legal, while Father's is not. I would have taught the
school for you, in the circumstances, but since I can't, so far as I am
concerned, the arrangement I have made is much better. The thing that
really hurts the worst, aside from disappointing you, is that Father
says I was not honest in what I did."
"But what DID you do?" cried Nancy Ellen.
So Kate told them exactly what she had done.
"Of course you had a right to your own letter, when you could see the
address on it, and it was where you could pick it up," said Robert Gray.
Kate lifted dull eyes to his face.
"Thank you for so much grace, at any rate," she said.
"I don't blame you a bit," said Nancy Ellen. "In the same place I'd
have taken it myself."
"You wouldn't have had to," said Kate. "I'm too abrupt--too much like
the gentleman himself. You would have asked him in a way that would
have secured you the letter with no trouble."
Nancy Ellen highly appreciated these words of praise before her lover.
She arose immediately.
"Maybe I could do something with him now," she said. "I'll go and see."
"You shall do nothing of the kind," said Kate. "I am as much Bates as
he is. I won't be taunted afterward that he turned me out and that I
sent you to him to plead for me."
"I'll tell him you didn't want me to come, that I came of my own
accord," offered Nancy Ellen.
"And he won't believe you," said Kate.
"Would you consent for me to go?" asked Robert Gray.
"Certainly not! I can look out for myself."
"What shall you do?" asked Nancy Ellen anxiously.
"That is getting slightly ahead of me," said Kate. "If I had been
diplomatic I could have evaded this until morning. Adam, 3d, is to be
over then, prepared to take me anywhere I want to go. What I have to
face now is a way to spend the night without letting the neighbours
know that I am turned out. How can I manage that?"
Nancy Ellen and Robert each began making suggestions, but Kate
preferred to solve her own problems.
"I think," she said, "that I shall hide the telescope under the privet
bush, there isn't going to be rain to-night; and then I will go down to
Hiram's and stay all night and watch for Adam when he passes in the
morning. Hiram always grumbles because we don't come oftener."
"Then we will go with you," said Nancy Ellen. "It will be a pleasant
evening walk, and we can keep you company and pacify my twin brother at
the same time."
So they all walked to the adjoining farm on the south and when Nancy
Ellen and Robert were ready to start back, Kate said she was tired and
she believed she would stay until morning, which was agreeable to Hiram
and his wife, a girlhood friend of Kate's. As Nancy Ellen and Robert
walked back toward home: "How is this going to come out?" he asked,
anxiously.
"It will come out all right," said Nancy Ellen, serenely. "Kate hasn't
a particle of tact. She is Father himself, all over again. It will
come out this way: he will tell me that Kate has gone back on him and
I shall have to teach the school, and I will say that is the ONLY
solution and the BEST thing to do. Then I shall talk all evening about
how provoking it is, and how I hate to change my plans, and say I am
afraid I shall lose you if I have to put off our wedding to teach the
school, and things like that," Nancy Ellen turned a flushed sparkling
face to Robert, smiling quizzically, "and to-morrow I shall go early to
see Serena Woodruff, who is a fine scholar and a good teacher, but
missed her school in the spring by being so sick she was afraid to
contract for it. She is all right now, and she will be delighted to
have the school, and when I know she will take it then I shall just
happen to think of her in a day or two and I'll suggest her, after I've
wailed a lot more; and Father will go to see her of his own accord, and
it will all be settled as easy as falling off a chunk, only I shall not
get on so fast with my sewing, because of having to help Mother; but I
shall do my best, and everything will be all right."
The spot was secluded. Robert Gray stopped to tell Nancy Ellen what a
wonderful girl she was. He said he was rather afraid of such
diplomacy. He foresaw clearly that he was going to be a managed man.
Nancy Ellen told him of course he was, all men were, the thing was not
to let them know it. Then they laughed and listened to a wood robin
singing out his little heart in an evening song that was almost as
melodious as his spring performances had been.