mantel, chimed eight musically as Tina came into the room. Her blue hat
with its white feathers was pushed sideways on her rumpled hair, and the
new grey suit was wrinkled and spotted with clay from an enormous pot
of daisies hugged tightly in her arms. She set it down hastily on the
white cloth of the breakfast table, and leaned back, panting, against the
mahogany sideboard laden with its tall old silver; the light from the
parting of the heavy curtains leaped towards her, and held her in its
shining embrace.
“I didn’t know that was going to be so heavy. The trolleys were _so_
slow, they wouldn’t connect. I went to get the flowers for you, momsey,
because you’re so fond of them.”
Her eyes took swift tally of the group, unheeding of their exclamations.
“Please leave the room, Emma——” she went on speaking with a defiant
hardness, broken now and then by an odd, piteous little catch in her
young voice:
“I suppose you thought I’d eloped. I promise you now that I won’t; I
won’t get married until you and daddy say I can. I’ll wait _forever_ if
you say so. I can’t bear to hurt any one’s feelings. But I’ll never be
happy here at home any more, and I’ll never care for anybody here. I may
act as if I cared, but I won’t, really! I’ll only care for Francis—as he
cares for me.” The wind from some far source seemed to shake her with
its ruthless power. “You think I’m so young—you make me younger than I
really am so that I don’t know how to tell you what I mean—to tell you so
that you’ll understand. When I’m with Francis he doesn’t need to speak,
he doesn’t even need to be _near_ me; but I’m just so happy!” Her voice
had changed to the exquisite cadence of love. “It’s my _own_ life! And
whether I’m glad or sorry, I want to spend it with him. I want to be with
him anyway—I want to be with him if I _die_ for it!”
She put her hand on her heart with a quick, passionate gesture, her
ice-blue eyes had in them that look which is as old as the world, as deep
as life. She stepped past the weeping sisters to throw herself on her
knees by her mother, to hide her bright head upon her mother’s breast,
to reach her young arms up to clasp around her mother’s neck as she
whispered:
“Oh, mother, mother, _you ought to know_!”
* * * * *
“It certainly was a beautiful wedding!” Little Miss Ward was calling
once more at the Malisons; her voice was earnestly kind. “How lovely Miss
Annette and Miss Elinor looked. I never saw girls keep their looks so
well! And Miss Elinor engaged, too, at _last_! Every one was so surprised
at Miss Tina’s getting married so soon. Mr. Fanshawe seemed very happy,
I shouldn’t wonder if there really was more to him than people think;
he shook my hand so—_cordially_, it’s a little lame yet. And as for the
bride”—Miss Ward lowered her voice tenderly—“well, Mrs. Grandison said,
when she saw that child’s sweet, young face going up the aisle, there was
something so pathetic about it that she just broke down and gave up and
cried, when she thought of all that might be before her. Have you ever
thought what a lottery life is?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Malison. She had indeed! For good or for evil the
portion of the youngest was Tina’s. She had had, as always, her own way.
Polly Townsend’s Rebellion
Polly Townsend’s Rebellion
The goings forth and the comings back of the head of a suburban household
are the pendulum by which all the rest of the time swings. Polly
Townsend, in a short white duck skirt, with a cheerful red bow in her
light hair, was putting the finishing touches to the dinner-table in the
now permanent absence of the “girl,” and listening for the returning
footstep of her husband with more than her usual sense of expectation,
which lately had been braced to divine what that footstep might imply as
to the day’s success or non-success.
Mr. Townsend was “out of a position,” a stage of tenuous existence over
which self-respecting families draw a decent veil. In the three months of
his detachment he had experienced all its usual effects in his relations
with a comfortably occupied world—the sympathetic indignation and
inefficient, helpful efforts in his behalf, with the haphazard, temporary
“jobs,” the gradual subsidence of poignant interest, and, finally, the
semi-irritation at his “not having anything yet,” which would really
seem to imply a culpable torpidity on his part to all but the wife
who alone knew the struggle which he no longer heralded abroad. Her
indignation daily burned stronger against the friends who couldn’t seem
to do anything for him, but who were themselves successful without half
of his talent.
She herself had done what she could, besides looking after the house and
the two children. For ten weeks she had secretly given music lessons to
the child of a friend, steadily refusing payment until the end of the
term, and she now held in the little bag at her belt the princely sum of
seven dollars and fifty cents, all her own, and destined for great uses.
Mrs. Townsend was, above all things, a woman of action, and to resolve
was to dare immediately.
It was with a faint sigh of farewell to a hope barely entertained
that she heard the aggressive briskness of her husband’s tread, and
she answered the florid cheerfulness of his greeting with the studied
carelessness of custom in the well-worn words:
“Nothing new to-day, I suppose?”
“No, nothing new,” said Mr. Townsend heartily. He was a large,
attractive-looking man, with the slightly greyish hair which had
handicapped him so much in getting a position, though his wife was
eagerly ready to tell every one how really young he was.
“Dinner’s about ready, I see; well I’m ready for it.” He relapsed into a
chair by the table as he spoke. “Where are the children?”
“They’re spending the evening at the Mays’,” said his wife, bringing in
the hot dishes from the kitchen and taking quick note of his unconscious
lassitude and the new wrinkles in his broad forehead. “We can have a
quiet, little cozy time all by ourselves. Would you mind tying the
thread around this rag on my finger? I sliced it when I was peeling the
potatoes.”
“You dash at everything so,” remonstrated the husband, accomplishing the
thread-tying slowly and painstakingly. “I should think you would learn
to be more careful after you had burned yourself so badly. Stand still.
Don’t be in such a hurry; the dinner can wait.”
“No, it can’t,” said Mrs. Townsend, escaping to the head of the table.
“Have you seen any one to-day?”
“About seven hundred people.”
“Francis! You know what I mean. Have you seen any one I know?”
“No. Yes, I did see Harry Jenkins for a moment.”
“What did he have to say?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, Francis!” Mrs. Townsend looked despairing. “Why do you make me drag
things out of you this way? Didn’t he tell you anything about his wife’s
return from England——?”
“Not a word.”
“And you didn’t ask——?”
“My dear Polly, I saw him for about two seconds, crossing the street on
his way to the tailor’s. If that can give you any satisfaction you’re
welcome to it.”
“I wish you could go to the tailor’s,” said Mrs. Townsend deeply, with a
sudden moistening of her luminous grey eyes. “I wish—I wish your clothes
weren’t getting so—so——”
“It will soon be cold enough for my overcoat,” said her husband
consolingly.
“Yes, I know, but—Francis! I’ve been wanting to speak to you for ever
so long. Those trousers you have on—really, you know they were always
perfectly hideous. I nearly cried when you brought them home. How a man
who has always dressed as well as you have could ever have chosen those
things! Of course, I know you only bought them because they were so
cheap, but there’s always a choice. And now they’re so shabby it makes
me positively sick to see you in them. Last Sunday when you passed the
plate in church—well, you thought I went out because I was faint, but it
was simply because I couldn’t sit there and see you walk up the aisle and
stand in front of the whole congregation until that anthem was finished.”
“Let’s change the subject,” said Mr. Townsend. “It’s a fine day.”
“No, I won’t change the subject. Do you know they’re advertising trousers
at Brooker’s—such a good place!—for six dollars. Mrs. Bond says her
husband got two pairs there yesterday—the very best quality. And—I want
you to buy a pair to-morrow. She says they wear forever.”
“Where could I get the six dollars?” asked Mr. Townsend facetiously.
“I knew you’d say that. Oh, Francis! I have the money right here. I
earned it myself.” Mrs. Townsend rose and swept her chair down beside
her husband. “I never told you a word, but I’ve been giving Alice May
music lessons ever since—Francis! Now see here, you’re not going to mind!
How perfectly absurd! It’s been a real pleasure. Mrs. May paid me seven
dollars and a-half to-day. Now, Francis, I want you to take this money
and buy those trousers to-morrow.”
“Well, I’ll see myself—farther,” said Mr. Townsend comprehensively.
He half rose, and pushed her gently from him. “I’d like to see myself
take—take your little money. Spend it on yourself, now you’ve got it, or
on the children if you want to—heaven knows you need things badly enough!
I won’t touch a cent of it.”
“But Francis, you must! You never can get a position dressed as you are;
you look like—— Clothes make such a difference! Oh, I didn’t want to say
it but—Francis, you’ve got to take the money.” She strove to put it in
his pocket and he thrust forth her hand with a grip that held her slender
wrist like a vise.
“It’s no use, Polly. You don’t know how your having to earn it hurts
me; I haven’t the right to forbid it but”—he stopped, and forced down
something—“I haven’t come to such a pass that I’ll take your money to buy
my clothes.” He fixed her sternly with a masterful eye. “There’s no use
in your persisting. I’ll tell you once for all that I won’t do it; and I
don’t want to hear any more on the subject.”
“Very well,” said Mrs. Townsend soothingly, in the tone of one who bides
her time. She added afterwards in protest, “You haven’t half eaten your
dinner—and I took such pains with it.”
“I think—you make it so nicely—but I think I’m just a little tired of
stew,” said Mr. Townsend apologetically.
Later she found him rummaging in his closet, appearing as he heard her
step to say explanatorily:
“I want to see if I can’t find another pair of trousers to wear
to-morrow. I guess I’d better leave these I have on for you to fix up a
little. The fact is—I didn’t tell you before, for I don’t want you to
raise your hopes in any way—but I’ve at last got an appointment for the
day after to-morrow to see Mr. Effingham.”
“An appointment with Mr. Effingham! Oh, Francis!”
“Cartwright’s letter was what did it. Cartwright says Effingham is the
kind of a fellow who either likes you or doesn’t like you, straight off
the bat. I tell you, I think a lot of Cartwright’s writing all the way
from Chicago about this, taking so much pains for a man that’s almost a
stranger to him.”
“Oh, you never do anything for people yourself!” said his wife
sarcastically.
“I never did anything for Cartwright—except put his wife once on the
right train,” said Mr. Townsend. “Now, what’s the matter with these
trousers?” He held up a pair for inspection. “They look all right.”
“Oh, nothing’s the matter, nothing whatever,” said his wife scornfully,
“except that they’re full of moth holes. Those are the winter
trousers—the only good pair you had—that you left at your sister’s—you
said you could get them any time—and she had them stuffed into a dark
closet this summer while she was away in the country; she just sent them
over Monday.”
“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Mr. Townsend hastily. “You’d better get rid
of them. Now, here’s a pair—I didn’t know I had any so good.”
“Those are the ones you painted the attic in last spring,” said Mrs.
Townsend, “and the pair next are what you keep for fishing. Those belong
to your dress-suit, and the ones beyond are too short, and worn all over
so that you were afraid to put them on.”
Mr. Townsend surveyed the last named with raised eyebrows and a
consenting, cornerwise glance at his wife. “Yes, they are pretty bad—but
I guess I’d better wear them to-morrow while you fix up these.”
“Francis, if you’re going to see Mr. Effingham you’ll just have to buy a
pair of trousers.”
He turned on her sternly as he said: “Didn’t I tell you not to speak of
it?”
“Yes, but I will speak of it!” Mrs. Townsend hurled herself into the
fray. “Francis, I can’t help it! When I think of all you’ve suffered, and
all you’ve done, and how much depends now on—oh, my dearest!” she tried
to put her head on an eluding shoulder as she followed him around the
room, flushed with her eloquence—“please take this money. If you knew how
happy I’d been all the time to think that I was working for you, and how
I had set my heart on it, you wouldn’t be so unkind. I know I told you my
shoes were bad, but they do quite well as they are, and the children do
not need warm underwear yet. It was very stupid of me to talk of it, and
it will make all the difference how you are dressed when you go to see
Mr. Effingham. You’ve often said what a difference a person’s appearance
made—and it’s so unlike you to look shabby! You ought to do everything
to try and get that position; you can’t afford to lose the ghost of a
chance. You are so foolish, you won’t listen to reason! Oh, Francis,
won’t you stand still and answer me?”
“Yes, I’ll answer you,” said Mr. Townsend deliberately. “You can
‘reason,’ as you call it, until you’re blind. Once for all, I will never
take that money.”
“You will.”
“I will not. Now, Polly not another word; do you hear? Not another word!”
“Very well,” said Mrs. Townsend, as before with conventional obedience,
and followed the words with a reckless flash of her grey eyes as she left
the room, murmuring with quick breath: “But I give you fair warning, I’ll
make you take that money yet; I don’t care whether you’re angry or not.
You’ll see, you’ll see!”
If the subject was dropped from speech afterwards it was nevertheless
present in thought. Mr. Townsend rose late in the morning, as is the
habit of the man “out of a position,” who has no place on the early
trains into town with his customary confrères, the workers, or in their
busy offices. The heads of departments whom he goes in to see are only
accessible in the later hours, and a delayed breakfast obviates the
necessity for luncheon. When husband and wife parted, he in the trousers
that were a good deal too short and a good deal too worn, she, indeed,
broke through the ice with temerity to adjure him for goodness sake not
to let any one see him to-day with those on, and he had retorted grimly
that he would endeavour to keep his hundred and eighty pounds entirely
invisible to oblige her.
During the course of the morning Mrs. Townsend went around with knitted
brows, pondering deeply over the vexed question. Her back ached and
her feet were weary long before her household labours were ended. She
wasn’t accustomed to doing her own work, and, though she was willing,
experience, that time-saver, was not hers. Mrs. Townsend knew that ladies
were popularly supposed to bring a deftness and daintiness to kitchen
work that was lacking in the efforts of a rougher class, but for herself
it was just the opposite. The scalding kettles and saucepans she carried
would perform a tremolo movement with the shaking of her slight wrists
that sent greasy splashes of the contents over the kitchen floor; the
beef-steak she broiled took in not only the fire but the whole top of the
range in its sputterings, and plates and dishes, whether empty or filled
with food for the table, slipped from her tired fingers and broke with
ruinous celerity. After all the ceaseless effort of her heroic incapacity
she was forced to long for the look of shining cleanliness accomplished
easily by the strong, accustomed arms of an ordinary “girl.”
And the children were going half-clothed, she had so little time to
sew! If this sort of thing didn’t stop soon she didn’t know what would
become of them all. Depression had grown to be her usual frame of mind
in the morning when there was no one to look at her. She had known that
Francis couldn’t get a place when he was so shabby. People were afraid
of men who looked poor; it seemed as if they couldn’t be capable. In
spite of himself she must save him, though he hurled javelins at her
afterwards. She would have gone and bought him the trousers out of hand
if remembrance had not brought uncomfortably to mind a time when she had
tried to demonstrate how economically she could regulate his smoking
by purchasing an advertized box of cigars from a department store. To
Polly Townsend, if you did a certain thing one certain effect ought to
follow—that, instead, it ramified off into all sorts of different ways
was the mean advantage life took over theory. She felt now that if she
could only make her Francis buy those trousers he couldn’t help realizing
gratefully afterwards how wise and good she’d been, and her heart glowed
at the prospect.
But Mr. Effingham! He was a man whose old-fashioned punctiliousness was
notably affected by externals: by suitable dress, by polish of manner,
by a certain air in addition to more solid requirements. It was bad
enough for Francis to hand the plate in those hideous, old, faded, mended
trousers, but to go supplicantly in them to Mr. Effingham would be
suicidal. She could have wept at the thought.
Yet later in the day Mrs. Townsend might have been seen with a face
lightened by a persistent smile—a jimpy, sly, inwardly-lurking,
swiftly-flashing, three-cornered gleam that took in two reckless eyes and
a demure mouth, and brought forth curious comment from Mrs. Whymer, a
friend whom she met in the street.
“How well you do look! No one would think you had a girl of ten—but you
always did have colour. I feel all dragged out; the doctor says I’m just
going on my nerves. My husband has been home all day. No, there’s nothing
really the matter with him, just one of his attacks, but he always gets
so worried about himself. I often tell him, when he sits there looking so
depressed, if he only knew all I go through without saying a word! Having
a man around the house is so upsetting, but I suppose you’re used to it.
Mr. Townsend hasn’t anything yet, I believe?”
“He has several positions in view,” said Mrs. Townsend with elegant
indefiniteness, and a quick, hot resentment at the implied reproach,
which was answerable for the expenditure of twenty-five cents of her
little hoard for peaches to be used in the manufacture of the deep peach
pie which her Francis loved.
She derived an exquisite satisfaction from outwitting him in this way,
forcing her money thus secretly down his throat, watching him eat each
mouthful, and meeting his raised eyebrows and the “Isn’t this a little
extravagant?” with the reassuring answer:
“Now, it’s all right; I just want you to enjoy it. No, Frankie, no more;
you had a large plateful.”
“You made papa be helped three times,” said Frankie.
Her husband put an affectionate arm around her when she came up-stairs
afterwards. “Fixed those trousers for me to-day, dear?”
“Yes, I fixed them,” said Mrs. Townsend.
“That’s a good girl. These I have on now—I don’t believe they’d last over
another day.”
“You see Mr. Effingham to-morrow, don’t you?”
“Why, yes, I believe I do,” said Mr. Townsend with an effect of
carelessness. Heaven only knew how their two thoughts travelled together
in that long hopefulness that must have an end somewhere in something
tangible. Yet even as they sat there Mr. Townsend became conscious of a
not unknown quantity.
“What do you want to keep kissing my hand for? What have you been doing?
You haven’t lamed your back again moving the flour-barrel, I hope. See
here,” his tone suddenly stiffened, “you haven’t been spending that money
of yours for——”
“No,” said Mrs. Townsend hurriedly. “Not a penny; well, just a few cents
for peaches.”
“Oh, I knew you bought them,” said Mr. Townsend indulgently. “Well, that
pie was awfully good, but don’t do so any more. I don’t like it, Polly;
it hurts.”
“Very well,” said Mrs. Townsend in an odd voice. She faced him with
gleaming eyes. “I’ll never do anything that doesn’t please you, no
matter how foolish it is. If you say the sky is pea-green I’ll say it is
pea-green, too. And if you want to kill yourself I’ll bring the carbolic
acid. Oh, yes, I’m to be just too sweet for anything and never say boo
when you want to go out looking like a tramp and ruin every chance you
have just because it ‘hurts you’ to take this money from me, from your
own wife. Haven’t I a right to earn money for you, and love and help
you, and work my fingers off for you, if I want to?” Her voice trembled.
“Wouldn’t I rather go barefoot than see the way you’ve looked this last
month?” She refused to quail before his gaze as she went on piteously:
“Oh, you’re so exactly like a man. I know you just hate to hear me talk
like this. I know I’ll never convince you in this wide world, but some
things hurt _me_! Francis——”
“Well,” said Mr. Townsend as she stopped short. He had withdrawn his arm
from around her.
“I want you to take that money.”
“I think I’ll go down and read for a while if you don’t mind,” said Mr.
Townsend dryly.
Francis Townsend was always a punctilious man as to his toilette, but the
next morning he made it a sort of continuous performance. Mrs. Townsend
down-stairs, “redding up” the place after the children, and keeping his
breakfast hot, felt her heart thump and sink alternately as she heard
his footstep advance and retreat interminably on the floor above. Her
coat and hat lay upon a chair, in furtherance of her morning journey to
market, but no matter what she was doing her eyes turned, in spite of
herself, to the place set for Francis at the end of the table, where
there was a fringed napkin, a plate, a knife and fork, and a coffee-cup
with the unusual addition of a little roll of greenbacks sticking up in
it. Prepared as she was for some commotion she involuntarily clutched a
chair back as she caught the sound of a quick and angry stride across the
room above to the hall, and heard the tone of towering wrath:
“Polly!”
“Yes, Francis.”
“Did you cut off the leg of this pair of trousers?”
“Your breakfast’s in the oven,” said Mrs. Townsend glibly, “and the
coffee’s on the stove. I’ve got to go to market.” She flung herself
into her jacket and hat as she spoke, jabbing in the hatpins viciously.
The triumph was exciting, but she didn’t know she was going to be quite
so scared. She hesitated a moment, and then called back: “Good-bye,
dearest!” as she closed the hall door and then ran down the steps into
the street.
* * * * *
“Seventy-five cents for each dancing lesson, but if there are two in the
family she makes a reduction.”
Mrs. Whymer sat rocking idly while she watched Mrs. Townsend basting
seams on a dark piece of cloth, in her little sewing-room.
“I’ll see about it to-morrow when I’m in town,” said Mrs. Townsend.
“Going shopping? If you want that skirt pattern I’ll get it for you.”
“Thank you, I would like it,” said Mrs. Townsend, “though I’m not going
shopping exactly; I have to take Pinky to the dentist’s—it’s so long
since she’s been—but I may get some material for myself on the way home.”
Her husband had been for several months with Mr. Effingham, and they were
just about beginning to get their feet on the first rungs of the ladder
which leads to the plateau of Living Like Other People.
“Why on earth did you cut up those trousers to make knickerbockers for
Frankie?” said the other, taking up the end of Mrs. Townsend’s work.
“They look just like new, and the cloth doesn’t seem worn at all.”
“It isn’t,” said Mrs. Townsend briefly; “Mr. Townsend only had them on
a few times. They are the best material, they were bought at Brooker’s,
and I thought he’d get such good wear out of them, but he says there’s
something wrong with the cut.”
“Well, it’s no use to try and make a man wear anything he doesn’t want
to,” said Mrs. Whymer. She yawned as she rose. “You don’t say I’ve been
here over an hour! I do get so lonesome at home all day, and Mr. Whymer
is working until eleven o’clock every night. I’m thinking of going to
that new sanitarium at Westly for a while. I really haven’t been able
to do a thing for the last six weeks. I get so tired out ordering the
meals, and the doctor thinks I had better try a rest cure. Your husband
likes it with Mr. Effingham, I hear. He was very fortunate in getting
the position. Mr. Butts tried for it, but he always looked so—well, not
up-to-date, you know. Clothes do make such a difference.”