last night, and you didn't come up to bed till past three? What _is_
the matter? And this thing of no money again for the bills? What _does_
it all mean?'"
Mamma lifted her head again. Her spirit had returned. "And he said,"
she spoke indignantly, "'For God's sake, Lavinia, when I'm trying to
spare you as long as I can, don't come at me now with questions.' I
didn't ask him to spare me!" with spirit. "I'm tired of pretending his
way of keeping me in the dark's right. I've been pretending so when I
didn't feel so for twenty years. I'm going to say it out now. And I
didn't ask him to spare me. I asked him to tell me."
"Mamma, little Mamma!" from Selina, hurrying across the room to her
side.
"Of course I wasn't competent at first, and proved I couldn't be
trusted with money and the rest of it. I never had been trusted with
anything. My mother bought my clothes and my father took the bills from
her and paid them. But it doesn't go to prove I couldn't have been
made trustworthy if Robert had been patient and showed me a little and
trusted me till I could."
"Lavinia," from Auntie piteously, "I've misjudged you. You wouldn't
criticize Robert and you wouldn't allow anyone else to criticize him
before you?"
Mamma had resumed her soft crying and Selina was on her knees by her,
trying to comfort her.
"Have you any idea what _is_ the matter, Mamma? The matter with Papa's
affairs, I mean?"
"He's been worried all summer, and you've seen for yourself how haggard
he's come to be. There was some talk of his losing his two best
agencies last spring. The rest of the business doesn't amount to much,
and I'm afraid it must be that he's lost them."
"Mamma, don't you think we've a right to know? I'll go down to him at
his office now, if you're willing I may, and ask him? I'll dress and go
down to him, if you'll let me?"
"I'm through," said her mother, "I feel that I've failed. The heart's
gone out of me. Do what you please."
Matters this time were past the point where Selina felt at all that she
wanted to cry. She went quietly back to her room and set about putting
things in order with rather more faithfulness than usual, the while
thinking and planning her morning so that she might go to her father as
she said.
It was past ten o'clock. By the time she dressed and started it would
be near or quite eleven. At one o'clock, Tuttle Jones, his mother, Mrs.
Sampson, his sister, and a bevy of young people were coming by for her
in a tally-ho driven by Tuttle. Their destination was the jockey-club,
where they would have lunch before the races, the fall trots opening
to-day.
Selina had never been to a clubhouse, and for knowledge of races had
seen a derby once in company with her father and Culpepper. But she
would have given all chances to come of ever seeing the one or the
other, if she'd known how to get out of going to-day. Her soul was sick
and also her spirit. Papa, haggard and broken! And Mamma turned on him
with reproach, after giving up the fight!
And yet this coaching-party was result of the discovery by Tuttle that
she, Selina, never had been to so routine a thing as the race-course
clubhouse, or to so perfunctory a piece of business as the trotting
races. His manner concerning these sins of omission in her bringing-up
was perfect, but he filled up the blanks in her all too meager
experience as rapidly as possible after discovery.
Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle had given her nephew's point of view on the social
obligation to Selina one day when she had her out driving.
"Tuttle will endeavor to meet his God with a perfect manner and calmly.
He'd feel he'd failed 'em both to show gaucherie or surprise. And
Tuttle's devout."
* * * * *
About eleven o'clock Selina showed herself at her mother's door again.
She had on a summer silk in biscuit tones, one of Mamma's several
extravagances for her that had worried her this summer and her leghorn
hat with its wreath. And she was carrying Mamma's further extravagance
for her, a silk dust-coat. Tuttle had a smart trap and a fast roadster,
and throughout the summer had come around about an hour before sundown
to take her for a spin out the avenue, or through town and out the
country road following the banks of the river. Mamma said this made a
coat for her imperative.
Also, as she stood here in the door, she held in her hand a parasol,
biscuit-colored too, with a rose lining. Mamma had noticed that
everybody in traps or stanhopes, every lady that is, starting forth
with the sun still an hour high, had a parasol. As Selina got these
things together to-day, she could only hope they were paid for.
"Mamma, I'm starting down to see Papa now. I dressed so as to be ready
for the races when they come by for me. It's off my mind and easier for
me than to have to hurry when I get back. Mamma, I won't kiss you, nor
you either, Auntie. It won't do for me to break down and cry."
She went downstairs and out into the September midday glare. She would
walk the two squares to the street-car line and there for the sake of
time take a car. Otherwise even carfare might be an extravagance now.
And then as she went along the hot street, Selina with a rush of
despair and bitterness began to take stock.
As an economic factor--she was indebted to Miss Emma McRanney for the
phrase--where was she, Selina Wistar, after two years of effort?
"Exactly where I started," she told herself still more bitterly,
"listening to Mamma say there's no money to pay Aunt Viney."
True, in June just past, she had taken the examinations over again, and
this time obtained her teacher's certificate. And to what end? To learn
that in lieu of any normal training for teachers in the public schools,
she must supply as an assistant without pay for a year to achieve such
training.
She had answered some advertisements in Mamma's church paper, for
private teaching in Southern families. The result had been to learn
that French, drawing, music, and in one instance, needlework, were
part of the requirements, for which board and one hundred dollars for
the ten months was the largest of the offered remunerations. And this
last week she had applied for a chance vacancy in a private school
here at home. The polite refusal of her application lay at home now on
her table. One line of the reply from the lady principal of the school
stayed with her, "Experience in my estimation is the most essential
qualification for teaching." It was the thing, Selina told herself, she
was begging to be allowed to get!
Here she reached the car-line and at the approach of the jogging car
and its little mules got aboard, and, finding herself alone, resumed
her communings. More, she got out a small bundle of letters from the
pocket of her silk coat, letters she had taken over two nights ago to
read to Maud who was just home from six weeks' travel with some cousins.
It had been a long summer for Selina, unbroken except for Tuttle Jones,
and since August, by the return of Culpepper. Amanthus had written to
her once from Bar Harbor, she had the letter here now, apparently to
say Mr. Cyril Doe was there visiting the embassy which had removed
itself to that place for the summer. For having said this, Amanthus
said nothing else. It was plain that Mr. Doe continued to impress her,
and few things in this life so far had. She and her mother since then
had left for London. Mr. Tate had written very happily to Culpepper,
saying he and Amanthus would be married on his arrival in London.
And Maud had been doing her first real traveling. As said, she was just
home and, according to her mother, her first sight of the snow-topped
mountains, plains and a few of the cities of her continent had not
subdued her discontent.
She had come across to see Selina only yesterday and to talk about her
dissatisfaction. "What does Culpepper hear from Mr. Welling, Selina?
Has he decided to settle in his part of the state and practice law
under his father? I haven't heard from him. I didn't expect to. I told
him I didn't believe I cared to correspond. And I didn't care to. If
ever he and I take up our friendship again, his glee is going to be
with me, and not at me. Selina, what is it I want? Is it the moon, do
you suppose? Or only a path under the moon that goes to somewhere?"
Selina here in the jogging street-car, remembering Maud's question,
almost cried for her, its appeal was so great!
Then the old Maud, in all the old vigor and energy, had spoken up
again. "I'm going to New York and spend the winter as one of those
chaperoned parlor-boarders at some school, if Papa will let me. I'll
take up something, if it's only horseback riding," bitterly. "There's
a fad for riding-schools right now. I really think maybe I'll look
into elocution. Though some way that doesn't sound distingué, does it?
Perhaps it had better be designing for carpets or wall-paper, I read
about women doing these."
So Maud, splendid, loyal, honest, restless Maud!
Selina looked out the car-window and got her bearings. She had time in
plenty yet and could resume her communings. Adele had been away since
July at Cape May and to the mountains with her mother and grandmother.
She would be home about the first of October. Her several letters to
Selina had been listless and devoid of much hope.
"I don't quite see what I'm coming back to," she said in the last
one here on Selina's lap "and can only hope Mamma and Grandmamma do
see. Débutantes of the first and second rank when they lapse over to
a second winter, I've noticed, form into euchre clubs that play in
the daytime with each other, and take classes in the Saturday morning
sewing-schools. What becomes of lapsed-over débutantes of the third or
even as bad as the fourth rank, apparently I'm being taken back home
to find out. I didn't tell you before I left that Mr. Cannon has been
engaged all this time to a cousin up at his own home. He told me about
it when he came to say good-bye. I thought I'd like you to know, and
now we'll drop it."
Selina took up the last of the letters. It was from Juliette and she
wrote cheerfully in her crisp, spirited backhand.
Both Granddad and Grandfather came around in their stands, after they
found I'd actually done the thing, and agreed to put me through the
four years of college. And Algy went to see them it seems and up and
told them he purposed doing this himself! That, as he understands it,
and unless he was laboring under a mistake, he was the person whose
name I'd undertaken to bear. And he's been sending me money right
along while I'm here with my cousin making up my two conditions. But
it's the money both Granddad and Grandfather have put in the bank for
me I'm using and shall use. And so I can't understand all this talk
from everybody at home of the shocking great deal I've taken from Algy
in marrying him in this way. He and I, at any rate, understood it
when we talked it over. My cousin asked me the other day what I meant
to do about it when I got through college? Did I look on myself as
Algy's wife, or did I not? I hadn't thought about this, and it's been
worrying me considerably. Do you suppose he thinks that's the way of
it? Do you know, Mamma never once spoke to me about the possibilities
of my being anybody's wife in my life?
Selina, glancing up, put her letters hastily together and thrust them
in her pocket and rang the bell. She had reached the corner where she
left the car, half a block from her father's office.
CHAPTER FORTY
The street where Selina left the car was cool and dank between shabby
brick stores and shabbier warehouses. It smelled of sugar and molasses
and leather. The floor-space occupied by her father for fifteen years
was in one of these buildings on the second floor.
Coming to it she went up the worn stairs by which this second floor
was reached from the street, and, opening the glass-sashed door at the
head of the staircase, came in on the long floor-space occupied with
boilers, pumps, portable mills, what not, most of them second-hand. She
went back through the long aisle between these to the office in the
rear, which was shut off by a glass partition and overlooked an alley
where, as she remembered it, drays drawn by mules forever stood being
loaded or unloaded with heavy freight.
The door in this partition was open and through it she could see the
interior of the office--two tall, shabby, sloping-topped desks, two
tall stools one before either desk, two chairs, a stove and a strip of
cocoa matting. That was the whole of it! That and her father and his
general factotum, old Jerry, who was clerk, office boy, janitor, and,
with some help from the outside for the lifting of machinery, porter.
The whole of it, this, where her father for fifteen years had spent the
larger part of his waking hours! And for the rest paid the bills Mamma
made for the family, and played whist with a congenial group of his own
sex once a fortnight! Husbands and fathers then did not always get a
great deal out of it themselves!
Selina had slowed her steps as she came to the open door. Within the
office old Jerry was bringing out ledgers, she had a general idea you
called 'em ledgers, or daybooks, she'd heard somewhere of daybooks too.
And as he placed these on one of the sloping desks and shuffled out of
the way, she saw her father leaning against the other desk and talking
to, why, so it was, he was talking with Cousin Willoughby Tomlinson!
They had not seen her yet, and something made her stop where she was
outside the doorway.
Perhaps it was the little hand wave of her father, which was quietly
eloquent. "Thank you for coming to me, Willoughby. A little counseling
with somebody of one's own family at a time like this is a relief."
Somebody of his own family! She liked that! This dear, mistaken Papa!
He was talking on. "Yes, it's the end of things here for me, I'm
afraid. I've lost my only worth-while agencies. I daresay they're
right about it. I'm fogy and they want a hustler to represent 'em for
a change. The question is--and I want your counsel about it, Jerry's
getting out the books for us--can I make it a wind-up in any possible
way, or is it going to have to be an assignment?"
Selina turned and hurried back through the long aisle between the
oily machines. Her heart beat cruelly, but the rest of her, thoughts,
feelings, body itself, was numb. She went down the worn stairway and
came out into the dankness of the street.
They had not seen her, her father and Cousin Willoughby. She was glad
of that. What would have been the use? It would have disturbed them in
their talk and upset her father, and she knew now what she'd come to
ask without his having to tell her.
It was early. She still had part of the time she had allowed for her
talk with him. Certainly carfare _was_ to be considered. She'd walk
home, walk and think.
Think? Think of what? She knew! Think how if she had been a poor man's
_son_ where she was a poor man's _daughter_, that son would have been
prepared and shaped by every condition and circumstance to take care of
himself. A son long ago would have been at work.
Just what then _is_ expected of poor men's daughters by the world they
live in and are to exist by? _What?_
The answer came to her with staggering suddenness and illuminating
clarity as she never had grasped it before. A truth is a truism and
slips through the consciousness glibly until one discovers it for
oneself. Another illuminating discovery! Then it is mighty and will
prevail!
_Daughters are expected to solve their economic problems through
marriage!_ Daughters have but the one business in life, which is
to find husbands! Marriage as a solution for all her problems is a
daughter's profession!
And if she fail? If she find no economic salvation for herself through
a husband?
Rage, fury, shame, swept through Selina. The symbol of such failure
stood piteously before her, Auntie! Auntie with a pittance doled out to
her barely sufficient for her church dues and her few garments! Auntie
stitching on fine muslin hands with no remuneration from any source
for the perfection of those stitches, Auntie with all that magnificent
endowment of perfect health and untiring energy that wasted itself so
piteously in polishing brasses. Fury swept through Selina again, fury
and resentment so hot they scorched and seared her. Say, for instance,
that had Auntie been the man, and Papa the woman of the two of them?
Selina hurried along, one block, two blocks, three blocks, not that
time pressed but that misery and indignation drove.
Then as she looked up and saw where she was, at the turn of a block
where it touched on the courthouse neighborhood and the region of
lawyers and their offices, she knew by prescience what was going to
happen. Knew it with such certainty that her heart quickened and her
breath caught even as a step came hurrying behind her, a cheerful voice
as the steps drew nearer, spoke her name, and Culpepper, catching up
with her, joined her.
"Our offices are in the second story back yonder. I saw you out the
window as you went by."
He took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with one of those
amazingly big and wonderful linen handkerchiefs Cousin Maria gloried
in keeping him supplied with. In his vigor, his strength, his
confidence, he was overwhelming. He towered above Selina. To surrender
to masterfulness like his? To lose oneself through such dominance?
Could she? And be at peace forever in the certainty of his care, and
the knowledge the fight was his, not hers? It all were easy then if one
could.
Culpepper's blue eyes bold through those black lashes, but softened by
solicitude right now, scanned her face, then looked relieved.
"You know then?"
She nodded, pretty creature that she was, the wealth of her shining
hair showing beneath her wreathed hat. "And _you_ know?"
"I was round with Cousin Robert at the office last night, going over
the books and the chances with him."
Here he waved a car. It was a belt line and went the long way round,
but in its own good time would get them to their home neighborhood.
He led her out to the track, put her on the car, and followed. "How'd
you know?" he asked as he sat down by her. "Cousin Robert told me
he wouldn't mention it to any of you at the house till matters were
decided."
"He ought to have told it at home from the start," she cried, and
explained how she knew and they talked it and the situation at home
over in their sorry details. Then she burst forth again, the more
passionately that being here on the street-car, it must be restrainedly.
"Look at me, Culpepper? What am I? What am I fit for? What am I able to
do as anything should be done? I've been given no way at all to earn my
living. I've never been allowed to order a meal, or go to market to fit
me even that way. I've never drawn a check, and I've never paid a bill.
I'm past nineteen and at as pitiful a beginning as I was at sixteen."
She swallowed, looking ahead, her eyes fixed absently on the only other
passenger in the car at the moment. Her profile thus was to Culpepper
and he loved it. Fair and clear-cut and fine, he had loved it in her
when she was a child.
She was seeing not the other passenger at all at whom she gazed
so bitterly, poor man, but a grievance because of which she was
passionately rebellious.
"You were made ready from the start, Culpepper; everybody concerned
saw to it _you_ were prepared. I'm hard about it. I'm resentful. I
accuse--who or what is it I _do_ accuse?" piteously. "Mamma? Papa?
Conditions? The system? If there is any system for bringing up girls,
and it isn't _all_ just haphazard! And Culpepper, at home they're all
so helpless! Mamma and Auntie! And Papa's so sensitive and is going
to grow pitiful under this second failure and the having to take, as
I suppose he will, some little clerkship, somebody'll be charitable
enough to give him. It's up to me. And I want it to be up to me. You
must see that the whole measure of what I'll ever be depends on my
seeing right now that it _is_ up to me. And, Oh, what way is there for
me to meet it?"
He laid a hand on her arm and nodded abruptly toward the window. She
followed his indicating nod and looked out. The car had turned into a
residence street, and they were passing the house where Tuttle Jones
made his home with his exceedingly well-to-do parents. Pompous and
broad, and of comely stone was this home in its wide yard, its flower
vases overflowing with bloom and color. But it was to something more
pertinent than the Jones' house Culpepper with his nod referred.
Tuttle himself and his tally-ho were just wheeling in at the curb,
and the groom at the back was leaping down. And if the whole, horses,
tandem, coach, Tuttle himself in his belted dust-coat, groom breeched
and booted, were more than a bit spectacular, one could rest easy in
the knowledge that it was because in this case it was eminently the
correct thing to be spectacular. Tuttle was arrived here at home,
Selina judged, to get his mother, preparatory to gathering up the
remainder of his party, herself among these.
"Tuttle will be by for me by the time we reach home, Culpepper. He's
horrified that I haven't had my share in social experience as included
in races."
The car jogged past, and as it came to the corner, the point nearest
their own neighborhood, Culpepper rang the bell.
As they reached the pavement he spoke. His eyes were narrowed and
he did not look at her. For the first time in their lives he was
approaching a subject to her with entire seriousness.
"I reckon we'll have to allow it was coincidence offered me Tuttle and
his circus wagon just now. What I meant was, honey, that the world and
the system, as you call it, would point to Tuttle and tell you you've
done everything and even more, expected of you. Catch my meaning?"
Did she? Her cheeks blazed. He was only corroborating what within the
half-hour she had said for herself.
Culpepper was going on, still avoiding all look at her. "And I want to
say further, honey, that Tuttle's a great chap, Tut's all right. I gave
in when he showed what was in him by appreciating _you_." His eyes
swept around to her here with mock challenge. "How's that my lady, for
magnanimity toward a flaunting rival?"
She didn't pretend not to understand him. She was rising to honesty
these days through a force within her which itself craved truth. Color,
however, had surged to her face with a violence which the rose lining
to the open parasol on her shoulder could not be held responsible
for--a growing violence, which finally overcame her, and she stumbled.
His hand quick and sure, righted her little gesture.
She made a disclaiming with her head.
"The world and the system may be mistaken," she said hotly. And as she
said it she now looked straight ahead, though her face was spirited.
He checked their steps. Their own corner was in sight, a block straight
ahead.
"So?" from this Culpepper, watching her. "So, honey? All the better
then. It clears the decks. It seemed decenter somehow to include his
claims. And now for mine. Everybody knows where I stand. What I want.
You know. My mother for godspeed, when I came away in August, said, 'Go
on down and take your job and marry Selina.' Will you do it, honey?"
Her color was gone with the violence with which it came, leaving her
white. A tremor went over her.
Watching her as closely still, he went on. "What a fool time and fool
place to ask it, where I can't pick you up and tell you a few things.
Can't comfort you, honey, the way we used to comfort your hurt fingers
and feelings when you'd bring 'em to us when you were around five!
Remember how I used to cure 'em, Selina?" coaxingly. "And ole Miss'll
belong to us? She's a little more mine even than she's yours? What say
now, honey, don't let's go teasing each other this way any longer?"
Up the home street ahead of them Tuttle, his tally-ho a-blossom now
with gay parasols, was wheeling round the far intersection and about
to come toward them. A moment or so more, and as they themselves would
arrive at Selina's squat house, he would be wheeling in at the curb
before it.
"As you say, Culpepper, it's a foolish time to try to talk. But I must
try, and quickly, before we get there, please."
Her color was all gone so that even her pretty lips, a bit compressed
to hide their trembling, were white. So white his hand went out to
touch hers, hanging at her side, for reassurance.
But hers clenched so that he could not grasp it. Blessed child! And yet
so obviously now, woman, too, through the child.