THE HISTORY OF A LEGHORN HAT
Kate finished her school in the spring, then went for a visit with
Nancy Ellen and Robert, before George Holt returned. She was thankful
to leave Walden without having seen him, for she had decided, without
giving the matter much thought, that he was not the man she wanted to
marry. In her heart she regretted having previously contracted for the
Walden school another winter because she felt certain that with the
influence of Dr. Gray, she could now secure a position in Hartley that
would enable her either to live with, or to be near, her sister. With
this thought in mind, she tried to make the acquaintance of teachers in
the school who lived in Hartley and she soon became rather intimate
with one of them.
It was while visiting with this teacher that Kate spoke of attending
Normal again in an effort to prepare herself still better for the work
of the coming year. Her new friend advised against it. She said the
course would be only the same thing over again, with so little change
or advancement, that the trip was not worth the time and money it would
cost. She proposed that Kate go to Lake Chautauqua and take the
teachers' course, where all spare time could be put in attending
lectures, and concerts, and studying the recently devised methods of
education. Kate went from her to Nancy Ellen and Robert, determined at
heart to go.
She was pleased when they strongly advised her to, and offered to help
her get ready. Aside from having paid Agatha, and for her board, Kate
had spent almost nothing on herself. She figured the probable expenses
of the trip for a month, what it would cost her to live until school
began again, if she were forced to go to Walden, and then spent all her
remaining funds on the prettiest clothing she had ever owned. Each of
the sisters knew how to buy carefully; then the added advantage of
being able to cut and make their own clothes, made money go twice as
far as where a dressmaker had to be employed. When everything they had
planned was purchased, neatly made, and packed in a trunk, into which
Nancy Ellen slipped some of her prettiest belongings, Kate made a trip
to a milliner's shop to purchase her first real hat.
She had decided on a big, wide-brimmed Leghorn, far from cheap. While
she was trying the effect of flowers and ribbon on it, the wily
milliner slipped up and with the hat on Kate's golden crown, looped in
front a bow of wide black velvet ribbon and drooped over the brim a
long, exquisitely curling ostrich plume. Kate had one good view of
herself, before she turned her back on the temptation.
"You look lovely in that," said the milliner. "Don't you like it?"
"I certainly do," said Kate. "I look the best in that hat, with the
black velvet and the plume, I ever did, but there's no use to look
twice, I can't afford it."
"Oh, but it is very reasonable! We haven't a finer hat in the store,
nor a better plume," said the milliner.
She slowly waved it in all its glory before Kate's beauty-hungry eyes.
Kate turned so she could not see it.
"Please excuse one question. Are you teaching in Walden this winter?"
asked the milliner.
"Yes," said Kate. "I have signed the contract for that school."
"Then charge the hat and pay for it in September. I'd rather wait for
my money than see you fail to spend the summer under that plume. It
really is lovely against your gold hair."
"'Get thee behind me, Satan,'" quoted Kate. "No. I never had anything
charged, and never expect to. Please have the black velvet put on and
let me try it with the bows set and sewed."
"All right," said the milliner, "but I'm sorry."
She was so sorry that she carried the plume to the work room, and when
she walked up behind Kate, who sat waiting before the mirror, and
carefully set the hat on her head, at exactly the right angle, the long
plume crept down one side and drooped across the girl's shoulder.
"I will reduce it a dollar more," she said, "and send the bill to you
at Walden the last week of September."
Kate moved her head from side to side, lifted and dropped her chin.
Then she turned to the milliner.
"You should be killed!" she said.
The woman reached for a hat box.
"No, I shouldn't!" she said. "Waiting that long, I'll not make much on
the hat, but I'll make a good friend who will come again, and bring her
friends. What is your name, please?"
Kate took one look at herself--smooth pink cheeks, gray eyes, gold
hair, the sweeping wide brim, the trailing plume.
"Miss Katherine Eleanor Bates," she said. "Bates Corners, Hartley,
Indiana. Please call my carriage?"
The milliner laughed heartily. "That's the spirit of '76," she
commended. "I'd be willing to wager something worth while that this
very hat brings you the carriage before fall, if you show yourself in
it in the right place. It's a perfectly stunning hat. Shall I send it,
or will you wear it?"
Kate looked in the mirror again. "You may put a fresh blue band on the
sailor I was wearing, and send that to Dr. Gray's when it is finished,"
she said. "And put in a fancy bow, for my throat, of the same velvet
as the hat, please. I'll surely pay you the last week of September.
And if you can think up an equally becoming hat for winter----"
"You just bet I can, young lady," said the milliner to herself as Kate
walked down the street.
From afar, Kate saw Nancy Ellen on the veranda, so she walked slowly to
let the effect sink in, but it seemed to make no impression until she
looked up at Nancy Ellen's very feet and said: "Well, how do you like
it?"
"Good gracious!" cried Nancy Ellen. "I thought I was having a stylish
caller. I didn't know you! Why, I never saw YOU walk that way before."
"You wouldn't expect me to plod along as if I were plowing, with a
thing like this on my head, would you?"
"I wouldn't expect you to have a thing like that on your head; but
since you have, I don't mind telling you that you are stunning in it,"
said Nancy Ellen.
"Better and better!" laughed Kate, sitting down on the step. "The
milliner said it was a stunning HAT."
"The goose!" said Nancy Ellen. "You become that hat, Kate, quite as
much as the hat becomes you."
The following day, dressed in a linen suit of natural colour, with the
black bow at her throat, the new hat in a bandbox, and the renewed
sailor on her head, Kate waved her farewells to Nancy Ellen and Robert
on the platform, then walked straight to the dressing room of the car,
and changed the hats. Nancy Ellen had told her this was NOT the thing
to do. She should travel in a plain untrimmed hat, and when the dust
and heat of her journey were past, she should bathe, put on fresh
clothing, and wear such a fancy hat only with her best frocks, in the
afternoon. Kate need not have been told that. Right instincts and
Bates economy would have taught her the same thing, but she had a
perverse streak in her nature. She had SEEN herself in the hat.
The milliner, who knew enough of the world and human nature to know how
to sell Kate the hat, when she never intended to buy it, and knew she
should not in the way she did, had said that before fall it would bring
her a carriage, which put into bald terms meant a rich husband. Now
Kate liked her school and she gave it her full attention; she had done,
and still intended to keep on doing, first-class work in the future;
but her school, or anything pertaining to it, was not worth mentioning
beside Nancy Ellen's HOME, and the deep understanding and strong
feeling that showed so plainly between her and Robert Gray. Kate
expected to marry by the time she was twenty or soon after; all Bates
girls had, most of them had married very well indeed. She frankly
envied Nancy Ellen, while it never occurred to her that any one would
criticise her for saying so. Only one thing could happen to her that
would surpass what had come to her sister. If only she could have a
man like Robert Gray, and have him on a piece of land of their own.
Kate was a girl, but no man of the Bates tribe ever was more deeply
bitten by the lust for land. She was the true daughter of her father,
in more than one way. If that very expensive hat was going to produce
the man why not let it begin to work from the very start? If her man
was somewhere, only waiting to see her, and the hat would help him to
speedy recognition, why miss a change?
She thought over the year, and while she deplored the estrangement from
home, she knew that if she had to go back to one year ago, giving up
the present and what it had brought and promised to bring, for a
reconciliation with her father, she would not voluntarily return to the
old driving, nagging, overwork, and skimping, missing every real
comfort of life to buy land, in which she never would have any part.
"You get your knocks 'taking the wings of morning,'" thought Kate to
herself, "but after all it is the only thing to do. Nancy Ellen says
Sally Whistler is pleasing Mother very well, why should I miss my
chance and ruin my temper to stay at home and do the work done by a
woman who can do nothing else?"
Kate moved her head slightly to feel if the big, beautiful hat that sat
her braids so lightly was still there. "Go to work, you beauty,"
thought Kate. "Do something better for me than George Holt. I'll have
him to fall back on if I can't do better; but I think I can. Yes, I'm
very sure I can! If you do your part, you lovely plume, I KNOW I can!"
Toward noon the train ran into a violent summer storm. The sky grew
black, the lightning flashed, the wind raved, the rain fell in gusts.
The storm was at its height when Kate quit watching it and arose,
preoccupied with her first trip to a dining car, thinking about how
little food she could order and yet avoid a hunger headache. The
twisting whirlwind struck her face as she stepped from the day coach to
go to the dining car. She threw back her head and sucked her lungs
full of the pure, rain-chilled air. She was accustomed to being out in
storms, she liked them. One second she paused to watch the gale
sweeping the fields, the next a twitch at her hair caused her to throw
up her hands and clutch wildly at nothing. She sprang to the step
railing and leaned out in time to see her wonderful hat whirl against
the corner of the car, hold there an instant with the pressure of the
wind, then slide down, draw under, and drop across the rail, where
passing wheels ground it to pulp.
Kate stood very still a second, then she reached up and tried to pat
the disordered strands of hair into place. She turned and went back
into the day coach, opened the bandbox, and put on the sailor. She
resumed her old occupation of thinking things over. All the joy had
vanished from the day and the trip. Looking forward, it had seemed all
right to defy custom and Nancy Ellen's advice, and do as she pleased.
Looking backward, she saw that she had made a fool of herself in the
estimation of everyone in the car by not wearing the sailor, which was
suitable for her journey, and would have made no such mark for a
whirling wind.
She found travelling even easier than any one had told her. Each
station was announced. When she alighted, there were conveyances to
take her and her luggage to a hotel, patronized almost exclusively by
teachers, near the schools and lecture halls. Large front suites and
rooms were out of the question for Kate, but luckily a tiny corner room
at the back of the building was empty and when Kate specified how long
she would remain, she secured it at a less figure than she had expected
to pay. She began by almost starving herself at supper in order to
save enough money to replace her hat with whatever she could find that
would serve passably, and be cheap enough. That far she proceeded
stoically; but when night settled and she stood in her dressing jacket
brushing her hair, something gave way. Kate dropped on her bed and
cried into her pillow, as she never had cried before about anything.
It was not ALL about the hat. While she was at it, she shed a few
tears about every cruel thing that had happened to her since she could
remember that she had borne tearlessly at the time. It was a deluge
that left her breathless and exhausted. When she finally sat up, she
found the room so close, she gently opened her door and peeped into the
hall. There was a door opening on an outside veranda, running across
the end of the building and the length of the front.
As she looked from her door and listened intently, she heard the sound
of a woman's voice in choking, stifled sobs, in the room having a door
directly across the narrow hall from hers.
"My Lord! THERE'S TWO OF US!" said Kate.
She leaned closer, listening again, but when she heard a short groan
mingled with the sobs, she immediately tapped on the door. Instantly
the sobs ceased and the room became still. Kate put her lips to the
crack and said in her off-hand way: "It's only a school-marm, rooming
next you. If you're ill, could I get anything for you?"
"Will you please come in?" asked a muffled voice.
Kate turned the knob, and stepping inside, closed the door after her.
She could dimly see her way to the dresser, where she found matches and
lighted the gas. On the bed lay in a tumbled heap a tiny, elderly,
Dresden-china doll-woman. She was fully dressed, even to her wrap,
bonnet, and gloves; one hand clutched her side, the other held a
handkerchief to her lips. Kate stood an instant under the light,
studying the situation. The dark eyes in the narrow face looked
appealingly at her. The woman tried to speak, but gasped for breath.
Kate saw that she had heart trouble.
"The remedy! Where is it?" she cried.
The woman pointed to a purse on the dresser. Kate opened it, took out
a small bottle, and read the directions. In a second, she was holding
a glass to the woman's lips; soon she was better. She looked at Kate
eagerly.
"Oh, please don't leave me," she gasped.
"Of course not!" said Kate instantly. "I'll stay as long as you want
me."
She bent over the bed and gently drew the gloves from the frail hands.
She untied and slipped off the bonnet. She hunted keys in the purse,
opened a travelling bag, and found what she required. Then slowly and
carefully, she undressed the woman, helped her into a night robe, and
stooping she lifted her into a chair until she opened the bed. After
giving her time to rest, Kate pulled down the white wavy hair and
brushed it for the night. As she worked, she said a word of
encouragement now and again; when she had done all she could see to do,
she asked if there was more. The woman suddenly clung to her hand and
began to sob wildly. Kate knelt beside the bed, stroked the white hair,
patted the shoulder she could reach, and talked very much as she would
have to a little girl.
"Please don't cry," she begged. "It must be your heart; you'll surely
make it worse."
"I'm trying," said the woman, "but I've been scared sick. I most
certainly would have died if you hadn't come to me and found the
medicine. Oh, that dreadful Susette! How could she?"
The clothing Kate had removed from the woman had been of finest cloth
and silk. Her hands wore wonderful rings. A heavy purse was in her
bag. Everything she had was the finest that money could buy, while she
seemed as if a rough wind never had touched her. She appeared so frail
that Kate feared to let her sleep without knowing where to locate her
friends.
"She should be punished for leaving you alone among strangers," said
Kate indignantly.
"If I only could learn to mind John," sighed the little woman. "He
never liked Susette. But she was the very best maid I ever had. She
was like a loving daughter, until all at once, on the train, among
strangers, she flared out at me, and simply raved. Oh, it was dreadful!"
"And knowing you were subject to these attacks, she did the thing that
would precipitate one, and then left you alone among strangers. How
wicked! How cruel!" said Kate in tense indignation.
"John didn't want me to come. But I used to be a teacher, and I came
here when this place was mostly woods, with my dear husband. Then after
he died, through the long years of poverty and struggle, I would read
of the place and the wonderful meetings, but I could never afford to
come. Then when John began to work and made good so fast I was dizzy
half the time with his successes, I didn't think about the place. But
lately, since I've had everything else I could think of, something
possessed me to come back here, and take a suite among the women and
men who are teaching our young people so wonderfully; and to sail on
the lake, and hear the lectures, and dream my youth over again. I
think that was it most of all, to dream my youth over again, to try to
relive the past."
"There now, you have told me all about it," said Kate, stroking the
white forehead in an effort to produce drowsiness, "close your eyes and
go to sleep."
"I haven't even BEGUN to tell you," said the woman perversely. "If I
talked all night I couldn't tell you about John. How big he is, and
how brave he is, and how smart he is, and how he is the equal of any
business man in Chicago, and soon, if he keeps on, he will be worth as
much as some of them--more than any one of his age, who has had a lot
of help instead of having his way to make alone, and a sick old mother
to support besides. No, I couldn't tell you in a week half about John,
and he didn't want me to come. If I would come, then he wanted me to
wait a few days until he finished a deal so he could bring me, but the
minute I thought of it I was determined to come; you know how you get."
"I know how badly you want to do a thing you have set your heart on,"
admitted Kate.
"I had gone places with Susette in perfect comfort. I think the
trouble was that she tried from the first to attract John. About the
time we started, he let her see plainly that all he wanted of her was
to take care of me; she was pretty and smart, so it made her furious.
She was pampered in everything, as no maid I ever had before. John is
young yet, and I think he is very handsome, and he wouldn't pay any
attention to her. You see when other boys were going to school and
getting acquainted with girls by association, even when he was a little
bit of a fellow in knee breeches, I had to let him sell papers, and
then he got into a shop, and he invented a little thing, and then a
bigger, and bigger yet, and then he went into stocks and things, and he
doesn't know anything about girls, only about sick old women like me.
He never saw what Susette was up to. You do believe that I wasn't ugly
to her, don't you?"
"You COULDN'T be ugly if you tried," said Kate.
The woman suddenly began to sob again, this time slowly, as if her
forces were almost spent. She looked to Kate for the sympathy she
craved and for the first time really saw her closely.
"Why, you dear girl," she cried. "Your face is all tear stained.
You've been crying, yourself."
"Roaring in a pillow," admitted Kate.
"But my dear, forgive me! I was so upset with that dreadful woman.
Forgive me for not having seen that you, too, are in trouble. Won't
you please tell me?"
"Of course," said Kate. "I lost my new hat."
"But, my dear! Crying over a hat? When it is so easy to get another?
How foolish!" said the woman.
"Yes, but you didn't see the hat," said Kate. "And it will be far from
easy to get another, with this one not paid for yet. I'm only one
season removed from sunbonnets, so I never should have bought it at
all."
The woman moved in bed, and taking one of Kate's long, crinkly braids,
she drew the wealth of gold through her fingers repeatedly.
"Tell me about your hat," she said.
So to humour this fragile woman, and to keep from thinking of her own
trouble, Kate told the story of her Leghorn hat and ostrich plume, and
many things besides, for she was not her usual terse self with her new
friend who had to be soothed to forgetfulness.
Kate ended: "I was all wrong to buy such a hat in the first place. I
couldn't afford it; it was foolish vanity. I'm not really
good-looking; I shouldn't have flattered myself that I was. Losing it
before it was paid for was just good for me. Never again will I be so
foolish."
"Why, my dear, don't say such things or think them," chided the little
woman. "You had as good a right to a becoming hat as any girl. Now
let me ask you one question, and then I'll try to sleep. You said you
were a teacher. Did you come here to attend the Summer School for
Teachers?"
"Yes," said Kate.
"Would it make any great difference to you if you missed a few days?"
she asked.
"Not the least," said Kate.
"Well, then, you won't be offended, will you, if I ask you to remain
with me and take care of me until John comes? I could send him a
message to-night that I am alone, and bring him by this time to-morrow;
but I know he has business that will cause him to lose money should he
leave, and I was so wilful about coming, I dread to prove him right so
conclusively the very first day. That door opens into a room reserved
for Susette, if only you'd take it, and leave the door unclosed
to-night, and if only you would stay with me until John comes I could
well afford to pay you enough to lengthen your stay as long as you'd
like; and it makes me so happy to be with such a fresh young creature.
Will you stay with me, my dear?"
"I certainly will," said Kate heartily. "If you'll only tell me what I
should do; I'm not accustomed to rich ladies, you know."
"I'm not myself," said the little woman, "but I do seem to take to
being waited upon with the most remarkable facility!"