I
Behold Minnie, a week or so later, harnessing Bess, this time for a
mission authorised and altogether blameless. She was going to the
station to meet Frankie, who was coming home for a week-end.
For days she and her grandmother had been making preparations, partly
from an affectionate wish to please Frankie, and partly from a desire to
impress her with their own importance and progressiveness. They had both
an unspoken but perfectly understood feeling that it would be
intolerable for her to say or to think that everything was unchanged
since she had left. The old lady was specially proud of a pile of copies
of a weekly magazine which she had audaciously subscribed for, seduced
by a nice young agent.
As for Minnie, she had something up her sleeve which she _knew_ would
astonish and amaze, and utterly kill any news Frankie might bring. She
whistled as she worked in the stable with a slightly malicious delight
in anticipating the shock. Although she was terribly nervous, too. She
had not yet had occasion to try her strength, and she was afraid that
they--the practical, experienced wage-earning Frankie, and the quite
incomprehensible old lady, might crush her. She was bound and determined
to win, but she wasn’t altogether sure....
She drove off in her usual majestic fashion, agreeably conscious of a
new hat. In order that she might compete upon equal terms with Frankie,
her grandmother had presented it to her, bought with money withheld
from Heaven knows how many creditors. A triumphal progress through the
town, and she came up the gravel drive to the station with something
faintly resembling a trot. There, however, she was forced to descend,
and hold the old mare by the bridle, patting her nose, trying with
intense seriousness to soothe her. She couldn’t bear to see her start
and tremble, with that distressing rolling of her brown eyes, at the
first sound of the engine’s whistle. She had suggested that Frances
should walk as far as the drug-store, so that Bess could wait there, out
of sight of the trains that so disturbed her, but Frances wrote back
with some spirit that she did not intend to lug a heavy bag four blocks
for the sake of a silly old horse. She threatened to hire a hack, and
rather than suffer that affront to the Defoe pride, Minnie was ready to
make great concessions.
She was too much taken up with the horse to see her sister at first, and
Frances had an oddly illuminating view of her, an impersonal view. It
seemed to her that she had never before looked at Minnie without
Minnie’s looking back at her; this was not the Minnie familiar to her as
her own reflection in the glass, but a stranger, a solemn, swarthy
little woman, very countrified, inclined to plumpness, looking older
than her years. She felt terribly sorry for her, hurried to her in
affectionate remorse for having so seen her.
Minnie greeted her with her very agreeable smile.
“Frankie, you look splendid!” she said warmly.
So she did. She had a new tweed suit and a quite plain hat, correct,
well-chosen things that suited her tall strong figure and permitted
attention to fly at once to her gay, brilliant face. Oh, there was some
foundation for the Defoe pride! Minnie, in her mind, saluted her sister
as a princess, the vindication of the family. She felt not the
slightest envy; that was not one of her faults. Or was it that she was
too well satisfied with her own quite different allure?
They drove through the Main Street again and past the up-to-date brick
building, and, as she hoped, Frances asked her:
“How’s old Petersen these days?”
“All right,” Minnie answered, and was able to tell her several quite
satisfactory things he had said on his last visit. He was a poor enough
swain, but he was better than none, and the lovely Frankie had none! She
listened with interest.
“I’m sure he _means something_!” she said.
Minnie admitted that she thought so too.
“But of course I don’t encourage him,” she said. “Imagine his even
thinking of such a thing--a man of his class!”
“That’s all nonsense,” said Frances, bluntly. “I think he’s splendid.
And he’s well read and intelligent---- If you like him----”
“Well, I don’t. Anyway, I’ve got other plans,” said Minnie. “I’ll tell
you after supper.”
Frances didn’t ask what these plans were, didn’t show any special
interest in them, never for an instant suspected their radical and
disturbing character. She did not even notice that Minnie was unusually
preoccupied.
She hastened into the house to embrace her grandmother and to make and
answer all the traditional enquiries; then looked about her with a
peculiar emotion that was almost pain. She loved the old place, in a
way; looked toward it while absent as her home and sure refuge, dreamed
of it often with longing, but with devout thankfulness that she was no
longer imprisoned in it. The memory of the two years she had suffered
there was ineradicable.
Minnie and her grandmother seemed to her pitiful, small and shabby. She
wanted ardently to help them and to change and improve them. She tried
to keep this benevolence out of her manner, but it was always there, and
they felt it.
She told them that she hoped soon to be able to send money home
regularly.
“I’m going to study shorthand,” she told them, “and then I’ll be able to
earn much more.”
She saw their faces, unconvinced, not even much interested, and her
enthusiasm waned. She would have to prove her good intentions to them.