Meanwhile, Catharine and Mr. Muller walked down the street in absolute
silence, Kitty bearing herself with her usual grave politeness,
though there was a quizzical laugh in her eyes. "Lover? My lover?"
she thought. But she did not blush, as some other innocent girls would
have done. She had never talked an hour in her life to a young man, or
heard from other girls their incessant chirping of "he--he," like that
of birds in spring wooing their mates. Her nearest acquaintance with
lovers was old Peter's rendering of Romeo or Othello. She remembered
them well enough as her eye furtively ran over the jaunty little
figure beside her. "Is his hose ungartered, his beard neglected, his
shoe untied?" she thought. "Pshaw! he is not Orlando, any more than I
am Rosalind." Her mother had been mistaken, that was all: she let the
matter slip easily past her. There was a certain tough common sense in
Catharine that summarily sent mistakes and sentimental fancies to the
right about.
Mr. Muller, finding the words he wished to speak would not come at
once, and ashamed of jogging on in silence, began to overflow with
the ordinary ideas of which he was full. They passed the grape-packing
house. "Eight thousand boxes despatched last season, Catharine! And
there is the Freedmen's Agency. Three teachers supported, five hundred
primers furnished to Virginia alone since January, and I really forget
the number of Bibles. But the world moves: yes indeed. And I think
sometimes Berrytown moves in the van."
"I've no doubt of that," said Kitty politely. "Dear me! Five hundred
spelling-books!" But she felt humiliated. She had neither picked
grapes nor taught freedmen. What thin wisps of hair these women had
stopping to speak to Mr. Muller! She put her hand suddenly to the back
of her head.
"Those are employees in the canning-house," he said as they passed on.
"One is educating herself as a short-hand reporter, and the other has
a lecture ready for next winter on Shakespeare's Women."
"What admirable persons they must be! Ah! now I have it right!"
setting her hat higher on the light chestnut coils. Mr. Muller looked,
and his eye rested there. She knew that, though the back of her head
was toward him. But lover? Nonsense! He meant no doubt to propose that
she should go into the typesetting business or stenography.
Now, to tell Kitty's secret, she had had her love-affair her mother
knew nothing about, which made her purblind in this matter. It was
this: There was a certain cave (originally a spring-house) behind
the walnut trees, quite covered over with trumpet-vines and
partridge-berries. She had a bench there, from which she could see
only the shady old house and the sun going down. When she was a child
of about eight, alone all day long, year in and out, she had taken
down this bench, and working stealthily and blushing terribly, had
made it large enough for two. She never allowed anybody, not even
Peter, dearest of all, to come into the cave or sit on the bench
afterward. What her childish fancy of an unknown friend was, or how
it grew and altered with her years, only she knew, though after she
was grown she told her father of a certain Sir Guy in some of his
crusading stories in whom she had believed as a fact. "I actually
thought he would come to woo me," she said laughing, "and I had a
castle where I sat and waited for him. There never was a child so full
of absurd fancies."
But she never said where the castle was, and she was fond still of
sitting alone for hours on the old bench, over which the shade grew
heavier year by year, and the moonlight crept with more mysterious
glitter. She came in sometimes when she had been there in the evening,
and the sound of old Peter's violin alone broke the silence, with her
cheeks feverish, as though there had been an actual presence with her
to share her secret thoughts. The only living being she had ever taken
into her hiding-place was, oddly enough, a baby of whom she was fond.
It happened to fall asleep in her arms one day, and Catharine stole
out with it and sat on the old seat, feeling its warm breath on
her breast. The girl was shaken by an emotion which she did not
understand: her blood grew hot, her breath came and went, she stroked
the baby's hand and foot, kissed it, glanced about her with eyes
guilty yet pure.
But it is certain Kitty had no thought of her cave this afternoon. Mr.
Muller and his affairs were quite another matter. There was an awkward
silence. Mr. Muller was collecting his forces: he cleared his throat.
"Catharine--" he said.
"Ah, William!" cried a clear, well-toned voice behind them. He turned,
half annoyed and half relieved, to meet a young lady in gray, stepping
alertly from the doorway of the Water-cure House.
"Maria? This is my sister Maria, Miss Vogdes."
The lady looked at Kitty--a steady, straightforward look--then held
out her hand. It was a large, warm, hearty hand, and gripped yours
like a man's. Kitty took it, but felt like shirking the eyes. She
had no mind to be so weighed and measured. She had an uncomfortable
consciousness that her inner nature was all bared and sorted by this
agreeable young woman in this first moment to the last odd and end in
it, though she could not have put the consciousness into words.
"Going to the school, William? I am."
"Well--yes, we will go there." He turned irresolutely, and they walked
together down the plank pathway, Kitty with an oppressive sense of
having fallen into the clutch of one of the Primal Forces, who was
about to settle her destiny for her; in which she stumbled almost on
the truth. Miss Muller was quite aware of the fact of her brother's
visits at the book-shop, and their motive. She glanced at her watch:
she could give herself half an hour to find out what stuff was in the
girl, though it hardly needed so long. "A good type of the Domestic
Woman in the raw state," she thought. (She always jotted down her
thoughts sharply to herself, as a busy shopkeeper makes entries in his
day-book.) "Pulpy, kissable. A vine to which poor William would appear
an oak. A devoted wife, and, if he died, a gay widow, ready to be a
fond wife to somebody else."
"What do you mean to make of yourself, Miss Vogdes?" she snapped
suddenly, just as Kitty was counting the hen-coops of the society in
the field they were passing, and wondering how she could contrive to
get a pair of their Cochin Chinas.
"To make?" stammered Kitty ("I knew she would take me by the throat
somehow," she thought)--"of myself?--Why, I am Peter Guinness's
daughter."
"You poor child!" Miss Muller laughed. It was a very merry, infectious
laugh. She laid her hand on Kitty's shoulder gently, as though she
had been a helpless kitten. "Now you see how our social system works,
William. Ask a boy that question, and his answer comes pat--a doctor,
carpenter, what not. In any case, he has a career, an independent soul
and identity. This poor girl is--Peter Guinness's daughter, is content
to be that. Though perhaps," turning sharply on her, "she thinks of
the day when she will be the wife of somebody, the mother of children.
Those, two ideas are enough to fill the brains of most women."
Mr. Muller colored, and smiled significantly to himself. Catharine
looked at her with a grave suspense, but made no answer.
"Yes," Miss Muller went on, a certain heat coming into her delicate
face, "that contents the most of them--to be the fool or slave of a
lover or a husband or son. 'The perfume and suppliance of a minute--no
more but that.'"
She walked on in silence after this, and Catharine scanned her
quietly. She was not at all the mad woman Mrs. Guinness had always
described her--not at all what Kitty had fancied a lecturer on woman
suffrage, a manager of the Water-cure and a skillful operating surgeon
must be. She was little, pretty, frail, with a very genuine look and
voice--almost as young as Kitty, and far more tastefully dressed.
Catharine eyed her wonderful coiffure with envy, and was quite sure
those rosy-tipped, well-kept fingers never had anything to do with
cutting up dead babies.
Mr. Muller at the moment was comparing the two girls critically. The
point on which he dwelt longest was that his sister's eyes, fine,
limpid and brown, were those of an actress, acting to herself very
probably. They went through the whole imperative mood--exhorted,
commanded, entreated in five minutes: even a certain woeful sadness
which came into them at times, and was there now, was quite bare and
ready to be seen of all men.
"She is always on review before herself: she is conscious of herself
from head to foot," he thought with shrewdness only born out of long
knowledge. "Her very toes, I've no doubt, say to each other, 'I,
Maria.'"
As for his future wife, her eyes were given her to see with,
nothing more. "And she looks out with them, never in," he reflected
complacently. For he had come by this time to regard her as his future
wife. It seemed quite natural when Maria presently took Kitty in hand
as one of the family, and began to manage for her as she did for them
all, from Grandfather Hicks down to the dog Tar.
"I think, William, Miss Vogdes has the maternal instinct largely
developed," looking at her face and the shape of her head as a
naturalist would at a new bug. "You could find work for her in here,"
unlatching the gate of the Reformatory school. "She could serve
humanity here just as well as if she had more--more--well, we'll say
stamina."
"Precisely what I thought of," cheerfully. "You've hit the nail on
the head about her, Maria." He was a peaceable, affectionate fellow at
bottom. He had never hoped that his sister would tolerate Kitty, and
women's squabbles in a family he abhorred, like every other man; and
here she was extending a hospitable greeting, finding work for Kitty
already. _Io triumphe!_
"Suppose you show Miss Vogdes the institution, sister?" he said,
rubbing his eye-glasses and putting them on again in a flutter of
pleasure and cordiality.
Miss Muller nodded authoritatively, and he fell into the background.
"You'll observe, Miss Vogdes," with a laugh and shrug, "Berrytown has
given its best of æsthetic instincts here: five square stories painted
white, with green shutters; pebble walks; six straight evergreens to
testify of the Beautiful. Inside--here we are! Parlor: yellow-pine
floors, spotless; green paper blinds in the windows, that hang
stirless the year round. This is the kitchen: white boards, shining
caldrons. William, show the soup."
Mr. Muller gravely held up a ladleful: "Beef and cabbage. To each
child we allow per diem three parts of animal food, three purely
farinaceous, four vegetable. The proper scale, I hold, of healthful
nourishment," putting back the ladle. He had not spilled a drop.
"Dining-room," continued Miss Muller: "more white boards; shining
tin plates; these three hundred little figures in blue jeans ranged
against the wall are the--the patients. Now observe." Mr. Muller
rapped once, they raised their hands; twice, they clasped them; three
times, they rattled off the Lord's Prayer; the next moment they were
shoveling their soup into their mouths in silence.
"Miss Vogdes does not approve their religious teaching, William. You
see," turning to her, "how they need a real motherly care. _You_ could
give it to them."
But Kitty, who perhaps did "want stamina," and who was more of a child
than any before her, made no answer. Vice and disease faced her as
never before: those hundreds of hungry eyes fenced her in.
"Are you sick?" said Mr. Muller anxiously, seeing her face. "It is
the smell of the soup, perhaps. Come out of this. Let me pass, Maria.
You forget how foolishly tender her life has been: she never probably
looked at crime before. Come out to the fresh air."
"You'd better stay," said Maria coolly, aside. "These children will
plead your cause with such a girl as that better than you can do or
have done, I take it. Now, my dear," putting Kitty's hand between her
own, "this is my brother's work, in which he wishes you to join him.
Put it to yourself whether it is not your duty. You're very young;
you've dreamed a good deal, most likely: this wakening to the fact
that there is work in the world besides marrying and nursing babies
revolts and shocks most young girls. Yet here it is." Her voice was
very gentle, and sincere in every cadence, the words true: there lay
the terrible grinding power of them. "Talk over your future life with
William, my dear. There is the matron. I must go and see about that
charge for pepper she made last month. Pepper for these children's
stomachs, indeed!"
Mr. Muller drew Catharine's hand in his arm. "I did not mean to
bring you here to-day," he said, nervously mopping his face with his
handkerchief. "Maria is so fond of managing! But--but it was as my
wife I wanted your help."
"_My wife._" Kitty was not surprised. At eighteen one reasons as the
bird flies. Since she passed the six straight evergreens yonder she
had learned that life was not an old book-house, a few sad and merry
tunes, meals, and a bench to dream on. It was work--for Christ. Not
far-off pagans, but little children with sin and disease heavy upon
them, asking her to take it away.
She might want stamina or any other intellectual power, but her
emotions were hot and near the surface: these children and their
misery wounded and bruised her as they had never done Mr. Muller or
his sister: her sense of duty and affection for her God, too, was as
real and urgent with her as that of a dog for his master.
"Take me home now," she said quietly.
"But, Catharine--This is no answer. And my love for you is of such
long standing!" pleaded the little man, whose mouth, being once opened
by his passion, found it difficult to close. He forgot, too, the
hundreds of eyes staring at him over the soup-spoons.
"Shall we go out?" said Kitty with an impatient laugh, which would not
be polite. "There's too much beef here. And cabbage."
They passed Miss Muller, who nodded down on Catharine from the heights
of brusque sincerity of the Woman's Rights people: "Come and see me,
my dear. You and I shall get on very comfortably, I dare say;" to
which Kitty replied with her old-fashioned manner, which had a fine
courteous quality in it, whether it meant anything or not.
They were out in the street again. The sun was still hot and glaring.
Past the new row of Morse's blue-painted shops, down the factory
alley, all along the cinder path, Mr. Muller pressed and urged his
suit. She heard every word with sharp distinctness.
The children: her work for Christ. Under all was a dull consciousness
that this thing had been coming on her since the day, years ago, when
she had suffered conviction at a revival and been converted. All His
followers must give their lives to His service. Give their lives!
These were words which to the poor little girl had always been
terribly real, never a hackneyed form. Now the time had come, there
was a dreadful wrenching at her heart.
"Oh, God! oh, my God! I want to do what's right!" cried Kitty
silently, looking away to the farthest horizon.
Mr. Muller remembered by this time some of his long-planned endearing
speeches, and used them. But he could not bring a blush to her cheek.
She did presently look straight at him, her eye passing quickly and
critically over the neat paunchy little figure in its fashionably-cut
coat and tight-fitting trowsers. When she was a girl of ten she had
fancied that Dr. Brownlee would be her future husband--the actual
Sir Guy. She would listen Sunday after Sunday to the gray-bearded old
fellow dealing the thunders of Sinai from the pulpit overhead, in a
rapt delight, thinking how sweet it would be to be guided step by step
by so holy and great a man. Long after she grew out of that, indeed
only a year or two ago, she used to tremble and grow hot to her
finger-tips when young Herr Bluhm, the music-master, went by the gate.
A nod of his curly bullet head or the tramp of his sturdy cowskin
boots along the road made her nerves tingle as never before. "What was
this that ailed her?" she had asked herself a dozen times a day. All
Mr. Muller's love-making did not move her now as one note of Bluhm's
voluntaries on the organ had done. She had thought him Mendelssohn and
Mozart in one: the tears came now, thinking of that divine music. But
one day Mrs. Guinness had brought him in, being a phrenologist, to
"feel Kitty's head." She felt the astonished indignation yet which
stunned her from his thick thumb and fore finger as they gripped and
fumbled over her head as if she had been a log of wood. But what could
poor Bluhm know of the delicate fancies about himself in her brain as
he measured it, which his heavy paws, smelling of garlic and tobacco,
were putting to flight? "Philoprogenitiveness--whew! this little girl
will be fond of children, madam. Tune, time!--has no more notion of
music than a frog."
"At least," thought Catharine now, "Mr. Muller is a gentleman. I shall
never feel disgust for him."
They had reached the gate now. He waited. "I shall not come in. I've
confused and startled you, Catharine. You want time to think," he said
gently.
"I understand, oh, I quite understand. But I never thought of myself
as your wife," she said quietly. "It would be better you gave me
time."
"Good-bye, then, my--my darling."
"Good-bye."
She stood looking over the gate, the walnut branches dark overhead, a
level ray of sunlight on her strange alluring eyes and full bosom. Mr.
Muller lingered, smoothing his hat before he put it on.
"She has not at all the intellectual power of Maria," he thought.
"Maria's the sort of woman I ought to have chosen, I suppose," being
a reformer, first of all, in the very grain. But the silly thought of
holding her hand or kissing her lips came to him at the moment, and
tormented him thereafter with a feverish desire.