Nine years ago it was that Margaret, a girl of sixteen, had come out
from Charleston to live at Berkeley Hill as nurse, amanuensis,
housekeeper, and companion to her sickly, irritable, and eccentric old
Uncle Osmond Berkeley, eminent psychologist, scholar, and author, who
at that time owned and occupied the Berkeley homestead. It was the
death of her father and Harriet's immediate marriage that, leaving her
homeless and penniless, had precipitated upon her those years of
imprisonment with an irascible invalid. Indeed so completely stranded
had she been that she had accepted only too thankfully her uncle's
grudging offer to give her a home with him on condition that she give
him in return every hour of her time, making herself useful in every
variety of occupation he saw fit to impose, and to do it all with
entire cheerfulness and absolutely no complaining. That was the chief
of his many "unqualified conditions "--a cheerful countenance at all
times, no matter what her fancied reason for dissatisfaction, and no
matter how gloomy he might be.
"I'm never cheerful," he had affirmed, "and that's why I require you
always to be so. If that seems to you unreasonable and illogical,
you're stupid. Give the matter a little thought and light may come to
you. You'll have plenty of chance, living with me, to develop what
little thinking powers you may have--much more chance than you'd ever
have in a school for young ladies, where you no doubt think I ought to
send you for the next two or three years. Schools for young ladies!
Ha!" he laughed sardonically. "Ye gods! Thank me for rescuing you
from the fate of being 'finished' at one of them! Well named
'finishing schools!' They certainly are a girl's finish so far as
common sense, capacity for usefulness, and ability to think for herself
are concerned! And there actually are parents of daughters who
seriously regard such schools as institutions of 'education!' Yes,
education, by God! You'll get more education, my girl, from one week
of my conversation than you would from a decade of one of those
parasite factories!"
It was in the library at Berkeley Hill, the stately old country home
which for seven generations had belonged to the Berkeley family, that
this preliminary interview had taken place, her uncle in his reclining
chair before a great open hearth, the firelight playing upon his
pallid, intellectual face crowned with thick, white hair, and upon the
emaciated hands clasping a volume on his knee. Repellently harsh he
seemed to the shrinking maiden standing before him in her deep
mourning, to be inspected, appraised, and catechised; for in spite of
the fact that she had been born and brought up in the city of
Charleston, only two miles away, her uncle had never seen enough of her
to know anything about her.
Perceiving, now, how the girl shrank from him, his eyes sparkled; there
was something ghoulish in his love of cowing those who served him. For
the past ten years he had had no woman near him save hired attendants
who cringed before his bullying.
"A human creature who lets itself be bullied deserves no better," was
his theory, and he never spared a sycophant.
"The day I have you weeping on my hands," he warned his niece as she
stood pale and silent before him, "or even looking as though you were
trying not to weep, out you go!"
The fact that the girl was scarcely more than a child, that she was
alone and penniless, did not soften him.
"She's old enough to show her mettle if she has any. If she hasn't, no
loss if she's crushed in the grind of serving me, for I'm useful, and
shall be while I breathe and think."
"Well, what have you to say for yourself, wench?" he demanded when she
had heard without a word his uncompromising statements as to what he
would require of her in return for the "home" he would give her.
"I accept all your unqualified conditions, Uncle Osmond," she answered
quietly, no tremor in her voice; and the musical, soft drawl of her
tone fell with an oddly soothing and pleasing effect upon the invalid's
rasped nerves; "if you'll accept my one condition."
Her uncle's white head jerked like a startled animal's. "What? What?"
he ejaculated after an instant's stunned silence. "_Your_ condition?
Huh! You making a condition, upon my word! What pertness is this? A
'condition' upon which you'll accept my charity!"
"Not your 'charity.' The self-supporting position of your cheerful,
uncomplaining, industrious, capable, untiring, companionable,
intelligent chattel," came the musical, lazy drawl in reply. "My
condition is that you solemnly promise never again to call me a
'wench.'"
"I'll call you what I see fit to call you! If you're so damned
squeamish, I won't have you near me! I'd be hurling books at your
head!"
"I'm not 'damned squeamish,' Uncle Osmond, indeed I'm not. I really
rather like the way you swear, it's so manly and exciting. But I won't
be called a 'wench.'"
"Why not? I won't have my liberty of speech hampered!"
"Very well, then, Uncle Osmond, dear, I won't come."
"You shan't come! I wouldn't have you in the house, Miss Pernicketty!"
"Good-bye, then. I'm very sorry for you, Uncle Osmond. I'm sure the
loss is yours. I would have been very kind to you."
"Sorry for me! You think well of yourself, don't you, wench?"
"At least so well that I'll go out sewing by the day, or stand in a
store, or go on the stage, or turn evangelist (I've heard there's money
in that) before I'll be called a wench!"
"What in hell do you imagine the word means?"
"I don't know what it means, but I won't be addressed as a wench."
"Get the dictionary. Look it up."
"But I won't be called a wench no matter what it means."
"_Won't_ be called one! You dictate to me? Understand, girl, nobody
dictates to me! Read Shakespeare's sonnet, _Lucrece_:
"'_Know, gentle wench, it small avails my mood_.'
No offence in the word, you see, my authority being our greatest
English poet."
"Good-bye, Uncle Osmond," she said, turning away and walking toward the
door.
"Come back and behave yourself!"