It must be said of this note that it was the sort that puts its best
foot foremost. First impressions of it were agreeable, but it did not
wear. On the second reading, Angela perceived that, though as nice as
possible, Mr. Garrott's reply said nothing about calling, which, in a
manner of speaking, was the true subject of the correspondence. By the
time she had read the reply half a dozen times, she found it flatly
disappointing. Two days later, when she heard through Cousin Mary Wing
that Mr. Garrott had gone to the country, not to return till after the
New Year, she was conscious of a sudden and pervading hopelessness.
The feeling applied, not to her principal friend alone, but to all the
conditions of her life.
Angela understood, of course, that Mr. Garrott's remarkable offer to
tutor Wallie for nothing was an attention to her, and a very handsome
one. Still, it was not just the sort of attention that a young girl
prizes most, perhaps; and in especial it did not meet the needs of this
particular situation. To have a busy man-friend teaching German to your
little brother on your account is very flattering, indeed; but it does
not necessarily lead to the early clearing-up of a personal
misunderstanding. That Mr. Garrott had been much worried by their
misunderstanding, all along, Angela had known, by means of that womanly
intuition of which we read so much; now his note said so, in so many
words. But, manlike, he still did not see that, at heart, she was the
same girl that had attracted him so in the beginning, and that if he
would but call, she would make everything as it had been before.
How was she ever to see him again now?
At nineteen, youth accepts life's vicissitudes unquestioningly, but at
twenty-five, a womanly woman (if still without a home, a husband and
three curly-headed little children) has had time to whittle a number of
observations to a fairly sharp point. Angela thought her situation a
hard one, and it was. Wealth, influence, valuable connections--these
aids were not for her. All the ordinary opportunities enjoyed by girls
"in society," she lacked--in chief, opportunities of meeting people
casually, as at parties, of seeing the same people again and again,
under the most agreeable auspices. Her family simply failed to put her
in a party position, as it might be called; in consequence of which, it
came to this, that really her only meeting-place for the few people she
knew was on the street, walking. And even at the best, of course, that
method (by the mere laws of choice and chance) was most unsatisfactory.
Suppose that Mr. Garrott _had_ been taking walks all the time, for
instance, but, by reason of her having called him a brute, was choosing
other streets--how was she to know? A city is a big place, and one young
girl in a tight skirt cannot walk very fast or far, or cover a large
amount of space in a given time.
"Marna" alone was outstanding; and it carried but the slenderest
anticipations. Moreover, that question, all these depressing questions,
were academic now, and would be for weeks to come. The little coterie
had scattered far, and she had no means of filling the empty places.
There followed the dreariest days Angela had known since winter before
last in Mitchellton.
"How can you _expect_ anybody to notice us, mother?" she exclaimed, one
day. "The family of a poor, obscure doctor, living in a _hut_ on a back
street, with not a living soul to help us! I think it's remarkable I
accomplish as much as I do."
It was on this day, a cold Sunday afternoon shortly before Christmas,
that the lonely girl carried out a good intention she had had in mind
for some time. She wrote a long, intimate, sisterly letter to her
favorite brother Tommy, who had got so far away since he married money
in Pittsburg.
Angela had just come in from a freezing, eventless walk with Fanny
Warder. (Fanny, who as Mrs. Flower said, had made a great success of her
life, marrying at twenty, seemed to be on an indefinite "visit"; there
was talk, of course.) Having first thawed her hands at her register,
which was supposed to waft up heat from the stove in the dining-room
below, but didn't particularly, Angela drew up her rocking-chair into
the zone of ostensible warmth. She sat with one slender foot curled
under her, by a trick that no man has ever mastered. And this time she
had not searched for the formal tools of a note-writer, but employed a
stub of a pencil and a pad upon her lifted knee.
"Dearest Tommy," wrote Angela, and followed with a solid paragraph of
very affectionate greeting. She went on:--
Well, Tommy, I promised to write you how things were, after we
got settled down. I must say the outlook is rather discouraging
at times--and home isn't what it was as you remember it! Do you
remember what fun we used to have even in Hunter's
Run--driving in to "the balls"--and how fine it was in
Mitchellton as long as you were there? Well, everything is
_sadly_ changed now! Wallie, I'm afraid, hasn't improved as he
gets older, he seems to rarely or never think of anybody but
himself--and, of course, having fun is simply something he
_doesn't care for_! He shuts himself up in his room every
night, making horrible mixtures in a "sink" he's put in--that
smell up the whole house, and never _dreams_ of contributing to
the housekeeping expenses--though he's been raised now to _ten
dollars a week_! Father is sadly changed, he gets quieter and
quieter all the time.
Sometimes I'm really worried about him, he's so _indifferent_!
He never jokes any more, and doesn't try to get any patients,
though I _know_ he could get lots with his reputation. He seems
despondent, Tommy, and sometimes doesn't even come in for his
office-hour--and the other day he lost a patient that way that
the Finchmans sent, she waited half an hour and then went! But
though he may have liked the country life better; and let us
all _vegetate_; that can't be it--for he certainly made no
objection when the family _consensus_ seemed to be that we
should move here! Of course, we have to face the fact that he
and mother aren't very _congenial_, it is her problem, and
while I wouldn't criticize mother for worlds and she certainly
does her duty as wife and mother--I do think it's a _great
mistake_ for her to always make her attitude a sort of
_reproach_, saying how "she's sacrificed herself to him" and
all--you know what I mean--
Mother really gets along better than any of us--especially as I
now do _all_ the work of the entire house!
The young writer paused, staring chillily at the register. She rarely
looked out the window now, hers being the blank certainty that there
would be nothing to see. Moreover, it was dusk. So, rising presently,
she lighted the gas, and resumed her sad sisterly letter.
Of her mother she wrote in some detail: of the various friends of her
girlhood she had renewed acquaintance with, and how she was always
exchanging calls with Cousin This or Martha That, who was So-and-So
before she married. To Angela, it had really seemed funny how all these
connections of her mother's, whose social possibilities they had so
often discussed before they left Mitchellton, had resolved themselves
into dejected old ladies who had had unhappy marriages, and whose
children had also had unhappy marriages, as a rule, or were in some
other way unavailable as friends. Out of five families thus exhumed by
Mrs. Flower, positively only one unattached young person had emerged,
and this one, named Jennie Finchman (!), while certainly well-meaning,
was a shy, anxious, painfully homely little thing who had never had a
good time in her life, and gave all her pocket-money to a mission in the
Dutch East Indies.
Well, Tommy [continued Angela], I've tried to give you a
picture of the new home like I promised--and I only wish it was
more encouraging! As for myself--the only outside person I had
to help me was Cousin Mary Wing, and she is a "New Woman," as I
wrote you in my Thanksgiving Day letter, and doesn't go with
anybody but _advanced older_ people!--and, besides, she got
into a terrible scrape, poor dear, and was dismissed from the
school! Cousin Mary, it's only fair to say, has done more for
me than anybody else, introducing me to her older woman
friends--who have called on me, and several have invited me to
teas, lectures, and etc.! But, of course, none of them were
_social_ people really, or at least of the younger set--and I
practically haven't been invited to a single party, except
"dove ones"! The one exception was a meeting of an "advanced
club," where I met several attractive men, who have been as
nice to me as you could _possibly expect_.
But the truth is, Tommy, money counts a great deal more here
than it did in Mitchellton; all the girls who are prominent
socially have wealthy families behind them! I think I would
hold up the family end quite well on very little--but I have
hardly a decent "rag to my back," my _clothes_ let everybody
know I am a person of _no importance_, so the little inner
circle sees no reason to take me up,--mother and I have figured
that with only _fifty dollars_ I could get a really nice new
suit, and a simple evening dress as well,--and perhaps hat and
shoes, all of which I _sorely need_! But, of course, poor
father simply hasn't got such a sum, and Wallie puts all his in
the bank--for college next year, he has $240 there now! Tommy,
you know I don't mean to accuse the family of being
selfish,--father told us in advance that we would be poorer
here,--but besides that--nobody in the family but you ever
seemed to _understand_ that a girl can't accomplish anything
unless she is given some sort of a _chance_. Even mother
doesn't understand, she just thinks "things happen"! She is
always telling how in _her_ day men would work hard all day
"superintending the farms"--and then at night ride twenty miles
on horseback, to just talk for an hour to some girl of no
special attractions! I can't make her see that men simply
_aren't like that_ any more.
The concluding paragraph of the letter merely described the writer's own
daily round, especially touching on the dull walks, so rarely broken by
a familiar face, which remained almost her only form of recreation. Here
Angela decided to put in one sentence in a less reserved vein, which she
did: "Well, Tommy, if you mean to make any thank-offerings to 'the poor'
this Christmas, you know where they will be _most appreciated_!" But, as
she loved her brother devotedly, it was also natural for her to return
to a sweet and generous note in farewell: "For your sake, Tommy, I am
glad you aren't here, with all the trials and hardships, but out in the
world having a happy life of your own!"
The completion, stamping, and sending-off of the letter to Tommy left
Angela with a sense of definite accomplishment. It was as if something
pleasant had happened in the family at last, or at least was going to
happen very soon. Unfortunately, however, this agreeable feeling, having
such small relation to reality, was born but to sicken and die. Time
proceeded with no pleasanter happenings than before, and a letter from
Daniel Jenney, of Mitchellton--whose ring had caused the trouble--became
a positive event.
By now, no doubt, the first natural excitement of "going to the city" to
live had subsided. Enthusiastic anticipations had been rubbed bare by
hard actuality, poverty, Finchmans, and so on. By this time also the
young home-maker had systematized her housekeeping, as she herself
said, and commonly ordered from butcher and grocer by means of Mrs.
Doremus's telephone, three doors away. With experience, too, Angela had
cut down the daily area of cleaning and polishing, from her first
youthful excesses. Small incentive there was to rub your fingers to the
bone on a house which was hopeless from the start, and which practically
nobody but her mother's sad friends ever set foot in. Thus--and also
through the all but eccentric indifference of the men of her family to
beauty and charm--Angela had more time than ever for thinking. And the
more she thought, the more clearly she saw that social progress in a
strange city was solely a matter of what might be called favorable
self-advertisement, and that this sort of advertisement, in her case at
least, was solely a matter of just a little money.
But where was money to come from? Little could be expected from Tommy,
even at the best. As for the housekeeping allowance (on which
home-makers properly rely for some personal "pickings"), that held out,
alas, yet frailer hopes. So closely had her father and mother calculated
the budget, indeed, that in three months she had squeezed but five
dollars and a half out of it: this, though she had early investigated
the cheaper cuts of meat and learned the desirability of never paying
cash.
"Oh," thought the girl, again and again,--"if father'd _only_ get some
patients!"
Mary Wing's pretty sitting-room had, indeed, established definitely in
Angela's mind the close connection between money and work in an office.
But, for the sound reasons explained by her to Cousin Mary, Angela could
never consider work in an office as a possibility for herself. What,
really, would become of the Home, while she went rushing daily to an
office, to make money for her personal adornment? Besides, she could not
but see that Cousin Mary was herself proof of the fact that going to an
office had a very unfortunate effect upon a girl. Argue as you liked,
the fact remained that, even in this so-called advanced age, the normal,
sweet, attractive girls, the girls who were prominent socially, were
never office-girls.
In short, how to get money without working for it? That, truly, was the
great question confronting every nice girl, every womanly woman....
To Angela, it gradually came to seem that nothing pleasant was ever to
happen to her again. Not only that, but the pleasantest sort of things
seemed to be happening all the time to everybody else.
Returning Mary Wing's call one day, in the hope of news (Cousin Mary's
disgrace was being generously forgiven, now that the Badwoman had gone
away), Angela picked up two items that depressed her curiously. One was
that Donald Manford had got that position he was trying for in Wyoming:
that meant that one member of the coterie would vanish for good within
three months' time. The other item concerned a remarkable series of
articles about Cousin Mary that were coming out in the magazines all of
a sudden, and which Cousin Mary said were written by Mr. Garrott, though
admitting that his name wasn't signed to them. The Finchmans, whom
Angela had met on the street, said, "How do you like having a celebrity
for a cousin?" Cousin Mary, for her part, seemed to like being a
celebrity immensely. Angela had never seen her in such high spirits; it
really seemed in bad taste, considering the recent past. And, of course,
Angela wondered a little if Mr. Garrott, the departed, wouldn't have
written something about her, too, but for the misunderstanding.
A chance meeting with Mr. Tilletts, on the way home from this visit,
hardly helped much. The seeking widower, afoot for once, had seemed
hurried; he merely paused for a hasty word or two, and then was on his
way again.
"Considering I haven't a soul to help me, I think I've done remarkably
well," the girl protested once more, as if answering an inner voice, to
her mother next day. "We've been here only a little while, and I have
three men-friends already."
"Who is the third?" inquired Mrs. Flower.
When Angela mentioned Mr. Tilletts, her mother said, laconically: "He
has never called."
"Men don't call any more, mother, I've said again and again! It's
practically gone out."
Not feeling very well to-day, she lay in an old wrapper atop the
sway-backed bed. Mrs. Flower sat, for company, by the outlooking window,
dutifully stitching at a frilly "waist" which Angela had begun, but not
finished. But her mother was a beautiful seamstress and really enjoyed
an occasional task.
"Besides," said Angela, listlessly making a dimple in her pretty cheek
with the end of a bone-handled button-hook, "I think Mr. Tilletts will
call. He specially asked to--only a little while ago."
Mrs. Flower, after a speaking silence, observed: "Donald Manford never
sent you the post-card from Wyoming."
"Well--all the time in the world hasn't passed yet, mother!"
"Your Cousin Ellie Finchman says he is deeply interested in this Miss
Carson. She hears he has made her an offer."
"How could Mrs. Finchman possibly know that, mother? Besides, _I_ don't
care! I like Mr. _Tilletts_ better than Mr. Manford!"
Coming to bloom in the age of Chivalry, Angela's mother had enjoyed a
great deal of "attention" before she decided to bestow herself upon the
worthy Doctor. Hence it was constitutional with her to take a belittling
position toward less successful young women, including even her own
daughter. Equally natural was it for Angela, with no such opportunities
as her mother had had, to hold fast to what successes she had, and even,
it may be, for memory to magnify them somewhat. And yet, in the
freemasonry of women, she never resented her mother's coolly judicial
summaries, and in this case, frankly felt the maternal slap to be
justified. Really, Mr. Manford had never paid her any direct attentions,
which perhaps had something or other to do with her admiring him so
little as yet.
On this day, the lonely young girl's spirits seemed to touch their
nadir. How _could_ anything pleasant happen? There was no imaginable
way.
"Oh, mother!" she exclaimed, with an exasperation rare to her. "Why,
_why_, couldn't you and father give us _one_ relation that would help
us? Did you ever _hear_ of any poor people before that didn't have a
_single_ rich relation?"