Cousin Ella advised them to accept the offer of their grandmother, their
father’s mother. She was the only living soul who wanted them, anyway.
Frankie protested.
“Brownsville Landing!” she cried. “Oh, Cousin Ella! It’s the _worst_
place!”
She remembered visits there in the summer holidays, the boredom of it,
the ugliness. But Minnie assured her that it would only be temporary,
while they looked about and made their plans. She brought forward the
sensibleness of it, made Frances feel how rash and headstrong it would
be not to go.
She had her way, as she always did. The house was closed, the furniture
sold, the servants dismissed. After a curious fortnight in a boarding
house nearby, where their friends came to say good-by, they went off,
with all their effects in two modest trunks.
Early in the afternoon they reached Brownsville Landing.
Even grief could not blind them to the fact that they were interesting
figures--two young orphans. They were aware that every one of the idlers
in the station knew who they were and where they were going. They
followed Thomas Washington to the battered old surrey and sat down,
perfectly decorous, without turning their heads, conscious nevertheless
of being regarded with sympathy, with speculation.
They were tacitly agreed that it would not be correct to talk; in
silence and concealing all trace of curiosity they went rattling off up
Main Street and along the dusty five-mile road to the farm.
Their grandmother was waiting for them in terror. How to console them?
Their loss seemed to her so terrible, so desolating. She could with
truth say nothing better than--“You are utterly ruined and alone in the
world, friendless and penniless.” She watched the carriage coming, with
the girls side by side, images of decent grief, perfectly restrained;
then, when the carriage stopped, the restraint vanished, and they rushed
into her arms, sobbing.
She led them into the darkened parlour, and sat down on the sofa between
them, trying in a trembling voice to comfort them with religion and
proverbs, inextricably mixed. But Frankie was not in any way to be
quieted. She wept so violently, so passionately that the old lady could
think of nothing better to do than to lead her upstairs and urge her to
lie down.
“There! There!” she murmured. “What can Grandma do for you?”
She answered, in a muffled voice, her head buried in the pillows:
“Please--let me alone ... a little while.”
“I think we’d better,” whispered Minnie, and they went out, carefully
closing the door upon Frankie’s weeping.
The first glimpse of the farm had overwhelmed her completely. She
remembered the college, august, beautiful, with the orderly and
purposeful life that so appealed to her, she thought of her old home, as
it would look now, in the late afternoon sunshine, of its dignity and
freedom, the hope she had known there. And then this, this shabby,
forlorn old house standing alone in a weed-grown straggling garden,
surrounded by the neglected fields, which stretched away to the cold and
unknown blue hills. All that she hated most, solitude, stagnation,
neglect.
V
The old lady turned with relief to Minnie, who was so much more
amenable. She led her down into the kitchen where she had been cooking
her choicest dishes for the orphans, gave her milk to drink and fresh
cake to eat, and watched her with melancholy in which there was
considerable satisfaction. So absolutely what it should be was Minnie’s
attitude. She was worn and tired, her eyes reddened with crying, all of
which rendered so touching her pleasantness and politeness, her
willingness to answer questions. A womanly little soul, altogether. The
old lady fancied she saw in her the amiable and domestic creature
desired by all old people, the consolation of her age; youth with none
of youth’s disadvantages, the sedateness, the responsibility of maturity
with the vigour and charm proper to her twenty years. She acclaimed
Minnie a paragon, a Phœnix among maidens.
Minnie herself began to feel comforted. The quiet kitchen in the last
brightness of the Spring day, with the dinner pots and pans hissing on
the stove and a pleasant fragrance of freshly baked bread and cake in
the air, all the homeliness and friendly peace about her assuaged her
grief, strengthened her soul. Her thoughts began to turn to the
future--she tried to imagine a possible life there.
“Do you still live here all alone, Grandma?” she asked.
The old lady sighed. Poor creature! When she allowed herself to think of
it, she wondered how she succeeded in living at all.
Her husband had been one of those happy and lavish persons who obtain,
Heaven knows how, a reputation for wealth. He had always had plenty of
money to spend, and everything he or his family needed, but it was,
unfortunately, a sort of Fortunatus’ purse, into which he could dip
without limit, but which couldn’t be bequeathed, which for everyone else
lay flat and empty.
At least he had insured his life, and his widow received a monthly
income of twenty-five dollars from this--her sole income. An impossible
situation. How she struggled along, no one knew, not even herself.
Although struggle is not the word; she didn’t struggle; she simply went
on existing, miraculously sustained by the forbearance of others. It was
impossible to turn the poor creature out, rent or no rent, or to refuse
her credit for food, in this town where she had lived for sixty years.
She “managed.” When she couldn’t pay, she didn’t pay. Her quite simple
rule was to give cash when compelled, and to commandeer the rest of her
necessities. She didn’t worry very much over her debts. She had a phrase
which satisfied her completely. “You can’t draw blood from a stone,” she
would say.
Her son had sent her money now and then, but very little. He had not
been a good son; ‘his father over again,’ she often reflected, ‘out of
sight, out of mind.’ A present at Christmas time, or when the girls came
to visit. He never asked her how she managed, because he didn’t want to
know.
And here were the girls left as she had been left.... Her eyes filled
with tears as she looked at Minnie.
“Yes, I’ve been a lonely old woman,” she said, “but I hope I shan’t be
any more.”
Minnie kissed her soberly.
“No, Grandma, dear,” she said. “We won’t leave you again.”
“Where else could we go, anyway?” she added to herself, in her practical
way.