September 15. At last Kathie is gone. What with having dressmakers and
seeing to her, and doing the shopping, and corresponding with the
principal of the school, and all the rest of it, I have had my hands
full for the last three weeks. I have enjoyed it, though; I suppose it
is always a pleasure partaking of the moral for a woman when she can
conscientiously give her whole mind up to the making of clothes. I do
not doubt the delight of sewing fig-leaves together went for the moment
far toward comforting Eve for leaving Paradise. I cannot now help
smiling to see how entirely Kathie's fine scruples about breaking her
vow not to come into the house were forgotten when I had a dressmaker
here waiting to fit her frocks.
I feel a little as if I were trying to be Providence and to interfere in
her life unwarrantably now she is gone and there is nothing more to do
about it but to await the result. I have done what I thought best,
though, and that is the whole of it. As Father used to say, it is not
our duty to do the wisest thing, for we cannot always tell what it is,
but only to be honest in doing what seems to us wisest. I hope she will
do well, and I believe she will.
September 17. Cousin Mehitable writes me from Rome that she is sure I
am tired of baby, and had better come over for a couple of months. I
cannot tell whether she means what she says, or is only trying to carry
her point. She has never had a child near her, and can hardly know how
completely a baby takes possession of one. There are many things in the
world that I should enjoy, and I should certainly delight in going
abroad again, but baby has so taken the first place in my heart and life
that everything else is secondary. I wonder sometimes whether after a
woman has a child of her own she can any longer give her husband her
very warmest love. Perhaps the law of compensation comes in, and if men
grow less absorbed in their wives the wives have an equal likelihood of
coming to feel that the husband is less a part of their lives than the
child. Only if a woman really loved a man--
September 18. It is a childish habit to break off in the middle of a
sentence because one does not know how to finish it. I have been turning
over the leaves of this book to see if I had done it often, and I have
been amused and humiliated to find so many places where I have ended
with a dash, like an hysterical schoolgirl. Yet I do not see just what
one is to do when suddenly one finds a subject hopelessly too deep. Last
night when I got to a place where I was balancing the love of a mother
for her husband and for her child, I naturally realized suddenly that I
had never had a child, and very likely never really loved a man. The
love I had for George seems now so unreal that I feel completely fickle;
although I believe I am generally pretty constant. I could not bear to
think I am not loyal in my feelings. I have come to be so sure the
George I was fond of never existed, though, that I can hardly have the
same feelings I had before.
This is the sort of subject, however, which is sure to end in a dash if
I go on with it, so it seems wiser to stop before such a catastrophe is
reached.
September 19. To-day is Father's birthday. It is always a day which
moves me a good deal. I can never be reminded of an anniversary like
this without finding my head full of a swarm of thoughts. I cannot think
of the beginning or the ending of Father's life without looking at it as
a whole, and reckoning up somehow the effect of his having lived. This
is the real question, I suppose, in regard to any life. He was to me so
wonderful, he was so great a man, that I have almost to reason with
myself to appreciate why the world in general does not better remember
him. His life was and is so much to me that I find it hard to realize
how narrow is the circle which ever even knew of him at all. His books
and his decisions keep his name still in the memory of lawyers somewhat,
and those who knew him will not easily forget; but after all this is so
little in comparison to the fame he might have had.
How persistent is an old thought! I should have supposed this idea might
have died long ago. Father himself answered it when he told Cousin
Mehitable he was entirely satisfied if his part in the progress of
humanity was conducted decently and in order; he was not concerned
whether anybody knew he lived or did not know. "The thing is that I live
as well as I can," he said, "and not that it should be known about. I
shan't mind, Cousin Mehitable, whether anybody takes the trouble to
praise me after I am dead, but I do think it may make some tiny
difference to the race that I did my level best while I was alive."
I can see him now as he stood by the library fire saying this, with his
little half whimsical smile, and I remember thinking as he spoke how
perfectly he lived up to his theories. Certainly the best thing a man
can leave to his children is a memory like that which I have of Father:
a memory half love and half respect.
Father's feeling about the part of the individual in the general scheme
of things was like certain oriental doctrines I have read since his
death; and I suppose he may have been influenced by the writings of the
East. He seemed to feel that he was part of a process, and that the
lives of those who sometime would come after him might be made easier
and happier if he lived well and wisely. I am sure he was right. I do
not know how or where or when the accounts of life are settled, or
whether it makes any difference to the individual as an individual or
not; but I am sure what we do is of consequence, and I wish my life
might be as fine, as strong, as noble as was Father's.
September 20. Aunt Naomi came in this forenoon with her catlike step,
and seated herself by the south window in the sunshine. The only eye
which could be seen clearly was bright with intention, and it was
evident at a glance that she had things to say. She was rather
deliberate in coming at it. Aunt Naomi is an artist in gossip, and never
spoils the effect of what she has to tell by failing to arouse
expectation and interest. She leads one on and stirs up curiosity
before she tells her news, and with so much cleverness does she manage,
that a very tiny bit of gossip will seem a good deal when she has set it
forth. It is a pleasure to see anything well done, even gossip; so Aunt
Naomi is an unfailing source of amusement to me,--which is perhaps not
to my credit.
She made the usual remarks about the weather and asked after baby; she
observed that from the way Miss Charlotte breathed when she was asleep
in prayer-meeting last night she was afraid she had taken cold; she told
me Ranny Gargan's divorced wife was at death's door again, and tried to
get from me some sort of information of Rosa's feelings toward the
possible widower; then she gradually and skillfully approached her real
subject.
"It's strange how folks get over being in love when once they are
married," she said, hitching her chair into the sunlight, which had
moved a little from her while she talked.
I knew by her careless tone, too careless not to be intentional, that
something was coming, but I would not help her. I simply smiled vaguely,
and asked where the sewing-circle was to be next week. She was not
disconcerted by the question, but neatly turned it to her uses.
"At Mrs. Tobey's," she answered. "I hope we shan't see anything
unpleasant across the road."
"What do you mean?" I asked, rather startled at this plain allusion to
George's house.
"They say George Weston and his wife do rather queer things sometimes."
I asked her at once to say exactly what she meant, and not to play with
it. I added that I did not see why George and his wife should be so
much discussed.
"They are talked about because they deserve it," Aunt Naomi returned,
evidently delighted by the effect she had produced. "If they will
quarrel so all the neighborhood can hear and see, of course people will
talk about it. Why shouldn't they? We ought to take some interest in
folks, I should think."
I was silent a minute. I wanted to know why she said this, and what
George and his wife had been doing to make the village comment, but I
would not go on gossiping about them, and I dropped the subject
altogether. I made a remark about the Willeyville Fair. Aunt Naomi
chuckled audibly, but she did not persist in talking about the Westons.
September 22. Rosa is once more in a state of excitement, and the
household is correspondingly stirred. Hannah goes about with her head in
the air and an expression of the most lofty scorn on her face; Rosa
naturally resents this attitude, both of mind and of body; so I have to
act as a sort of buffer between the two.
The fuss is about Ranny again. I begin to feel that I should be
justified in having him kidnapped and carried off to some far country,
but I hardly see my way clear to measures so extreme. I am astonished to
find that Aunt Naomi did not know all the facts about the illness of
Ranny's wife; or perhaps she was too much occupied with the affairs of
the Westons to tell the whole. Ranny seems this time to have got into
real difficulty, and apparently as the result of his latest escapade is
likely to pay a visit to the county jail. It seems that while he was
pretty far gone in liquor ex-Mrs. Ranny came to plead with him to take
her back and marry her over again. She having had the greatest
difficulty in getting divorced from him in the first place, one would
think she might be content to let well enough alone; but she is
evidently madly fond of Gargan, who must be a good deal of an Adonis in
his own world, so completely does he sway the hearts of the women, even
though they know him to be brutal, drunken, disreputable, and generally
worthless. On this occasion Ranny behaved worse than usual, and met his
former wife's petition by giving her a severe beating with the first
thing which came to hand, the thing unluckily being an axe-handle. The
poor woman is helpless in her bed, and Ranny has been taken possession
of by the constable.
Rosa refuses to see anything in the incident which is in the least to
the discredit of Ranny. I was in the garden this morning, and overheard
her defending her lover against Hannah's severe censures upon him and
upon Rosa for siding with him.
"Why shouldn't he beat his own wife when she deserved it," Rosa
demanded, "and she nothing but a hateful, sharp-nosed pig?"
"She isn't his wife," Hannah retorted, apparently not prepared to
protest against a doctrine so well established as that a man might beat
his spouse.
"Well, she was, anyhow," persisted Rosa; "and that's the same thing. You
can't put a man and his wife apart just by going to law. Father
O'Rafferty said so."
"Oh, you can't, can't you?" Hannah said with scornful deliberation.
"Then you're a nice girl to be talking about marrying Ranny Gargan, if
he's got one wife alive already."
This blow struck too near home, I fear, for Rosa's voice was pretty
shrill when she retorted.
"What do you know about marrying anyhow, Hannah Elsmore? Nobody wants to
marry you, I'll be bound."
It seemed to be time to interfere, so I went nearer to the window and
called to Rosa to come out to baby and me.
"Rosa," I said, when she appeared, flushed and angry, "I wish you
wouldn't quarrel with Hannah."
"Then what for's she all the time twitting me about Ranny Gargan?"
demanded the girl with angry tears in her eyes. "She don't know what it
is to care for a man anyhow, and what for does she be taking me up short
when I'm that bad in my mind a'ready I can't stand it? Ranny Gargan's
old beast of a wife's got him into a scrape, but that don't make any
difference to me. I ain't going back on him."
I established myself on the grass beside the sun-dial, and took baby,
sweet and lovely, into my arms.
"I am sorry, Rosa," I said when we were settled comfortably. "I hoped
you'd got over thinking about Ranny Gargan. He is certainly not the sort
of man to make you happy, even if he were free. He'd never think of
sparing you or letting you have your own way."
"Who's wanting to have their own way, Miss Privet?" demanded my
astonishing handmaid; and then went on in her usual fashion of striking
me breathless when she comes to discourse of love and marriage. "That
ain't what women marry for, Miss Privet. They're just made so they marry
to be beat and broke and abused if that's what pleases the men; and
that's the way they're best off."
"But, Rosa," I put in, "you always talk as if you'd be meekness itself
if a husband wanted to abuse you, but I confess I never thought you
would be at all backward about defending yourself."
A droll look came into her rosy Irish face, and a funny little touch of
brogue into her voice.
"I'd think if he loved me the way he ought to, Miss Privet, he'd be
willing to take a whack himself now and then, just in the way of love.
Besides," she added, "I'd come it round Ranny when it was anything I
really wanted. Any man's soft enough if a woman knows how to treat him
right."
I abandoned the discussion, as I am always forced to abandon a talk of
this sort with Rosa. I suppose in her class the crude doctrine that it
is the right of the man to take and the duty of the woman to give still
exists with a good deal of simplicity and force, but it almost stops my
breath to hear Rosa state it. It is like a bit of primeval savagery
suddenly thrust into my face in the midst of nineteenth-century
civilization. The worst of it all is, moreover, to feel the habits of
old generations buzzing dizzily in my ears until I have a confused
sensation as if in principle the absurd vagaries of Rosa might be right.
I am tinglingly aware that fibres which belonged to some remote
progenitress, some barbaric woman captured by force, perhaps, after the
marriage customs of primitive peoples, retain the instinct of submission
to man and respond to Rosa's uncivilized theories. I have a sort of
second sense that if a man I loved came and asserted a brutal
sovereignty over me, it would appeal to these inherited instincts as
right and proper, according to the order appointed by nature. I know
what nonsense this is. The sense of justice has in the modern woman
displaced the old humiliating subjection,--although if one loved a man
the subjection would not be humiliating, but just the highest pleasure.
I can conceive of a woman's being so fond of a man that to be his abject
slave would be so much the happiest thing in the world that to serve him
to her very utmost would be so great a delight as almost to be
selfishness.
How Father would have shouted over a page like this! I would not have
supposed even Rosa could have spurred me into such an attempt at
philosophy, and I hardly believed I knew so many long words. After all I
doubt if Rosa and I are so far apart in our instincts; only she has the
coolness to put them into words I only imitate, and cannot pretend to
rival.
September 24. It is delightful to see how really fond Tom is becoming of
baby. I came home from a walk this afternoon, and there in the parlor
was Tom down on the floor with Tomine, shaking his head at her like a
bear, and making her laugh. Rosa beamed from the background with the
most complete approval. He sprang up when I appeared, but I ignored all
the strangeness, and only said how glad I was to see him. I think he
liked my taking as a matter of course his being there, and very likely
this was what made him confess he had been in two or three times to play
with baby when he knew that I was not at home.
"I saw you going down the other side of the river," he said, "so I came
to keep Thomasine from being lonesome."
I returned that it was not very complimentary to tell me he had tried to
avoid me, but that I appreciated how much more fascinating baby was than
I, so he need not apologize; and the end of it was that after this
nonsense had broken the ice we sat on the floor together to entertain
her ladyship. She was pleased to be in the most sunny mood imaginable,
and responded to our fooling most graciously. With truly feminine
preference, however, she bestowed most of her attention upon the man.
She is a more entrancing creature every day; and she certainly has her
father's eyes. I compared them this afternoon.
September 26. The reading-room seems really at last to be coming into
being. I have found a place for it. It is a kind of square box over the
post-office, but with furniture and pictures it can be made rather
attractive. I have made out a list of periodicals, and sent to Boston
for framed photographs for the walls. To-day I went to talk over the
plan with Deacon Richards.
The mill was fragrant with its sweet mealy smell, and Deacon Daniel was
as dusty as a moth-miller. As I stood in the doorway waiting for him to
come down from the wheel, where he was doing something or other about
the hopper, I fell to humming the old rhyme we sang as children when we
went by the mill:--
"'Miller, miller, musty-poll,
How many bags of wheat you stole?'
'One of wheat and one of rye.'
'You naughty miller, you must die!'"
"That isn't very polite," Deacon Daniel said, coming up behind me before
I knew he had left his perch.