TWO TRIPS IN THE TRAIN.
The seven o'clock morning train was starting from Dorbury Upper
Village.
Early business men, mechanics, clerks, shop-girls, sewing-girls,
office-boys,--these made up the list of passengers. Except, perhaps,
some travellers now and then, bound for a first express from Boston,
or an excursion party to take a harbor steamer for a day's trip to
Nantasket or Nahant.
Did you ever contrast one of these trains--when perhaps you were
such traveller or excursionist--with the after, leisurely,
comfortable one at ten or eleven; when gentlemen who only need to be
in the city through banking hours, and ladies bent on calls or
elegant shopping, come chatting and rustling to their seats, and
hold a little drawing-room exchange in the twenty-five minutes'
trip?
If you have,--and if you have a little sympathetic imagination that
fills out hints,--you have had a glimpse of some of these "other
girls" and the thing that daily living is to them, with which my
story means to concern itself.
Have you noticed the hats, with the rose or the feather behind or at
top, scrupulously according to the same dictate of style that rules
alike for seven and ten o'clock, but which has often to be worn
through wet and dry till the rose has been washed by too many a
shower, and the feather blown by too many a dusty wind, to stand for
anything but a sign that she knows what should be where, if she
only had it to put there? Have you seen the cheap alpacas, in two
shades, sure to fade in different ways and out of kindred with each
other, painfully looped in creasing folds, very much sat upon, but
which would not by any means resign themselves to simple smoothed
straightness, while silks were hitched and crisp Hernanis puffed?
Yet the alpacas, and all their innumerable cousinhood, have also
their first mornings of fresh gloss, when the newness of the counter
is still upon them; there is a youth for all things; a first time, a
charm that seems as if it might last, though we know it neither will
nor was meant to; if it would, or were, the counters might be taken
down. And people who wear gowns that are creased and faded, have
each, one at a time, their days of glory, when they begin again. The
farther apart they come, perhaps the more of the spring-time there
is in them.
Marion Kent bloomed out this clear, sweet, clean summer morning in a
span new tea-colored zephyrine polonaise with three little frills
edged with tiny brown braid, which set it off trimly with the due
contrasting depth of color, and cost nearly nothing except the
stitches and the kerosene she burned late in the hot July nights in
her only time for finishing it. She had covered her little old
curled leaf of a hat with a tea-colored corner that had been left,
and puffed it up high and light to the point of the new style, with
brown veil tissue that also floated off in an abundant cloudy grace
behind; and she had such an air of breezy and ecstatic elegance as
she came beaming and hastening into the early car, that nobody
really looked down to see that the underskirt was the identical
black brilliantine that had done service all the spring in the
dismal mornings of waterproofs and india-rubbers and general damp
woolen smells and blue nips and shivers.
Marion Kent always made you think of things that never at all
belonged to her. She gave you an impression of something that she
seemed to stand for, which she could not wholly be. Her zephyrine,
with its silky shine, hinted at the real lustres of far more costly
fabrics; her hat, perked up with puffs of grenadine (how all these
things do rhyme and repeat their little Frenchy tags of endings!)
put you in mind of lace and feathers, and a general float and
flutter of gay millinery; her step and expression, as she came
airily into this second-rate old car, put on for the "journeymen"
train, brought up a notion, almost, of some ball-room advent,
flushed and conscious and glad with the turning of all admiring eyes
upon it; her face, even, without being absolutely beautiful,
sparkled out at you a certain will and force and intent of beauty
that shot an idea or suggestion of brilliant prettiness instantly
through your unresisting imagination, compelling you to fill out
whatever was wanting; and what more, can you explain, do feature and
bearing that come nearest to perfect fulfillment effect?
The middle-aged cabinet-maker looked over his newspaper at her as
she came in; he had little daughters of his own growing up to
girlhood, and there might have been some thought in his head not
purely admiring; but still he looked up. The knot of office-boys,
crowding and skylarking across a couple of seats, stopped their
shuffle and noise for a second, and one said, "My! ain't she
stunning?" A young fellow, rather spruce in his own way also, with
precise necktie, deep paper cuffs and dollar-store studs and initial
sleeve-buttons, touched his hat with an air of taking credit to
himself, as she glanced at him; and another, in a sober old gray
suit, with only a black ribbon knotted under his linen collar,
turned slightly the other way as she approached, and with something
like a frown between his brows, looked out of the window at a
wood-pile.
Marion's cheeks were a tint brighter, and her white teeth seemed to
flash out a yet more determined smile, as, passing him by, she
seated herself with friendly bustle among some girls a little behind
him.
"In again, Marion?" said one. "I thought you'd left."
"Only in for a transient," said Marion, with a certain clear tone
that reminded one of the stage-trainer's direction to "speak to the
galleries." "Nellie Burton is sick, and Lufton sent for me. I'll do
for a month or so, and like it pretty well; then I shall have a
tiff, I suppose, and fling it up again; I can't stand being ordered
round longer than that."
"Or longer than the _new_ lasts," said the other slyly, touching the
drapery sleeve of the zephyrine. "It _is_ awful pretty, Marry!"
"Yes, and while the new lasts Lufton'll be awful polite," returned
Marion. "He likes to see his girls look stylish, I can tell you.
When things begin to shab out, then the snubbing begins. And how
they're going to help shabbing out I should like to know, dragging
round amongst the goods and polishing against the counters? and
who's going to afford ready-made, or pay for sewing, out of six
dollars a week and cars and dinners, let alone regular board, that
some of 'em have to take off? Why there isn't enough left for shoes!
No wonder Lufton's always changing. Well--there's one good of it!
You can always get a temporary there. Save up a month and then put
into port and refit. That's the way I do."
"But what does it come to, after all's said and done? and what if
you hadn't the port?" asked Hannah Upshaw, the girl with the shawl
on, who never wore suits.
Marion Kent shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't know, yet. I take things as they come to me. I don't
pretend to calculate for anybody else. I know one thing, though,
there is other things to be done,--and it isn't sewing-machines
either, if you can once get started. And when I can see my way
clear, I mean to start. See if I don't!"
The train stopped at the Pomantic station. The young man in the gray
clothes rose up, took something from under the car-seat and went
out. What he had with him was a carpenter's box. It was the same
youth who had greeted Ray Ingraham from beneath the elm branches. As
the train got slowly under way again, Marion looked straight out at
her window into Frank Sunderline's face, and bowed,--very modestly
and sweetly bowed. He was waiting for that instant on the platform,
until the track should be clear and he could cross.
What he caught in Marion's look, as she turned it full upon him,
nobody could see; but there was a quieter earnest in it, certainly,
when she turned back; and the young man had responded to her
salutation with a relaxing glance of friendly pleasantness that
seemed more native to his face than the frown of a few minutes
before.
Marion Kent had several selves; several relations, at any rate, into
which she could put herself with others. I think she showed young
Sunderline, for that instant, out of gentler, questioning, almost
beseeching eyes, a something she could not show to the whole
car-full with whom at the moment of her entrance she had been in
rapport, through frills and puffs and flutters, into which she had
allowed her consciousness to pass. Behind the little window he could
only see a face; a face quieted down from its gay flippancy; a face
that showed itself purposely and simply to him; eyes that said,
"What was that you thought of me just now? _Don't_ think it!"
They were old neighbors and child-friends. They had grown up
together; had they been growing away from each other in some things
since they had been older? Often it appeared so; but it was Marion
chiefly who seemed to change; then, all at once, in some unspoken
and intangible way, for a moment like this, she seemed to come
suddenly back again, or he seemed to catch a glimpse of that in her,
hidden, not altered, which _might_ come back one of these days. Was
it a glimpse, perhaps, like the sight the Lord has of each one of
us, always?
Meanwhile, what of Ray Ingraham?
Ray Ingraham was sweet, and proper, and still; just what Frank
Sunderline thought was prettiest and nicest for a woman to be. He
was always reminded by her ways of what it would be so pretty and
nice for Marion Kent to be. But Marion _would_ sparkle; and it is so
hard to be still and sparkle too. He liked the brightness and the
airiness; a little of it, near to; he did not like a whole car-full,
or room-full, or street full,--he did not like to see a woman
sparkle all round.
Mr. Ingraham had come into Dorbury Upper Village some half dozen
years since; had leased the bakery, house, and shop; and two years
afterward, Rachel had come home to stay. She had been left in Boston
with her grandmother when the family had moved out of the city, that
she might keep on a while with the school that she was used to and
stood so well in; with her Chapel classes, also, where she heard
literature and history lectures, each once a week. Ray could not
bear to leave them, nor to give up her Sunday lessons in the dear
old Mission Rooms. Dot was three years younger; she could begin
again anywhere, and their mother could not spare both. Besides,
"what Ray got she could always be giving to Dot afterwards." That is
not so easy, and by no means always follows. Dot turned out the
mother's girl,--the girl of the village, as was said; practical,
comfortable, pleasant, capable, sensible. Ray was something of all
these, with a touch of more; alive in a higher nature, awakened to
receive through upper channels, sensitive to some things that
neither pleased nor troubled Mrs. Ingraham and Dot.
It took a good while to come to know a girl like Ray Ingraham; most
of her young acquaintance felt the _step up_ that they must take to
stand fairly beside her, or come intimately near. Frank Sunderline
felt it too, in certain ways, and did not suppose that she could see
in him more than he saw in himself: a plain fellow, good at his
trade, or going to be; bright enough to know brightness in other
people when he came across it, and with enough of what, independent
of circumstances, goes to the essential making of a gentleman, to
perceive and be attracted by the delicate gentleness that makes a
lady.
That was just what Ray Ingraham did see; only he hardly set it down
in his self-estimate at its full value.
Do you perceive, story-reader, story-raveller, that Frank Sunderline
was not quite in love with either of these girls? Do you see that it
is not a matter of course that he should be?
I can tell you, you girls who make a romance out of the first word,
and who can tell from the first chapter how it will all end, that
you will make great mistakes if you go to interpreting life
so,--your own, or anybody's else.
I can tell you that men--those who are good for very much--come
often more slowly to their life-conclusions than you think; that
woman-_nature_ is a good deal to a man, and is meant to be, in
gradual bearing and influence, in the shaping of his perception, the
working of comparison, the coming to an understanding of his own
want, and the forming of his ideal,--yes, even in the mere general
pleasantness and gentle use of intercourse--before the _individual_
woman reveals herself, slowly or suddenly, as the one only central
need, and motive, and reward, and satisfying, that the world holds
and has kept for him. For him to gain or to lose: either way, to
have mightily to do with that soul-forging and shaping that the
Lord, in his handling of every man, is about.
That night they all came out together in the last train. Ray
Ingraham had gone in after dinner to make some purchases for her
mother, and had been to see some Chapel friends. Marion, as she came
in through the gate at the station, saw her far before, walking up
the long platform to the cars. She watched her enter the second in
the line, and hastened on, making up her mind instantly, like a
field general, to her own best manoeuvre. It was not exactly what
every girl would have done; and therein showed her generalship. She
would get into the same carriage, and take a seat with her. She knew
very well that Frank Sunderline would jump on at Pomantic, his day's
work just done. If he came and spoke to Ray he should speak also to
her. She did not risk trying _which_ he would come and speak to. It
should be, that joining them, and finding it pleasant, he should
not quite know which, after all, had most made it so. Different as
they were, she and Ray Ingraham toned and flavored each other, and
Marion knew it. They were like rose-color and gray; or like spice
and salt: you did not stop to think which ruled the taste, or which
your eye separately rested on. Something charming, delicious,
resulted of their being together; they set each other off, and
helped each other out. Then it was something that Frank Sunderline
should see that Ray would let her be her friend; that she was not
altogether too loud and pronounced for her. Ray did not turn aside
and look at wood-piles, and get rid of her.
Furthermore, the way home from the Dorbury depot, for Frank and
Marion both, lay _past_ the bakery, on down the under-hill road.
Marion did not _think out_ a syllable of all this; she grasped the
situation, and she acted in an instant. I told you she acted like a
general in the field: perhaps neither she nor the general would be
as skillful, always, with the maps and compasses, and time to plan
beforehand. I do not think Marion _was_ ever very wise in her
fore-thoughts.
Beyond Pomantic, the next one or two stations took off a good many
passengers, so that they had their part of the car almost to
themselves. Frank Sunderline had come in and taken a place upon the
other side; now he moved over into the seat behind them, accosting
them pleasantly, but not interrupting the conversation which had
been busily going on between them all the way. Ray was really
interested in some things Marion had brought up to notice; her face
was intent and thoughtful; perhaps she was not quite so pretty when
she was set thinking; her dimples were hidden; but Marion was
beaming, exhilarated partly by her own talk, somewhat by an honest,
if half mischievous earnestness in her subject, and very much also
by the consciousness of the young mechanic opposite, within
observing and listening distance. Marion could not help talking over
her shoulders, more or less, always.
"Men take the world in the rough, and do the work; women help, and
come in for the finishing off," said Rachel, just as Frank
Sunderline changed his place and joined them. "_We_ could not handle
those, for instance," she said, with a shy, quiet sign toward the
carpenter's tools, and lowering her already gentle voice.
"Men break in the fields, and plough, and sow, and mow; and women
ride home on the loads,--is that it?" said Marion, laughing, and
snatching her simile from a hay-field with toppling wagons, that the
train was at that moment skimming by. "Well, may be! All is, I shall
look out for my ride. After things _are_ broken in, I don't see why
we shouldn't get the good of it."
"Value is what things stand for, or might procure, isn't it?" said
Ray, turning to Sunderline, and taking him frankly and friendlily
into the conversation.
"No fair!" cried Marion. "He doesn't understand the drift of it. Do
you, see, Mr. Sunderline, why a man should be paid any more than a
woman, for standing behind a counter and measuring off the same
goods, or at a desk and keeping the same accounts? I don't! That's
what I'm complaining of."
"That's the complaint of the day, I know," said Sunderline. "And no
doubt there's a good deal of special unfairness that needs righting,
and will get it. But things don't come to be as they are quite
without a reason, either. There's a principle in it, you've got to
look back to that."
"Well?" said Marion, gleefully interrogatory, and settling herself
with an air of attention, and of demurely giving up the floor. She
was satisfied to listen, if only Frank Sunderline would talk.
"I believe I see what you meant," he said to Ray. "About the values
that things stand for. A man represents a certain amount of power in
the world."
"O, does he?" put in Marion, with an indescribable inflection. "I'm
glad to know."
"He _could_ be doing some things that a woman could not do at
all--was never meant to do. He stands for so much force. You may
apply things as you please, but if you don't use them according to
their relative capacity, the unused value has to be paid
for--somewhere."
"That's a nice principle!" said Marion. "I like that I should like
to be paid for what I _might_ be good for!"
Frank Sunderline laughed.
"It's a good principle; because by it things settle themselves, in
the long run. You may take mahogany or pine to make a table, and one
will answer the common convenience of a table as well as the other;
but you will learn not to take mahogany when the pine will serve the
purpose. You will keep it for what the pine wouldn't be fit for;
which wouldn't come to pass if the pine weren't cheapest. Women
wouldn't get those places to tend counters and keep books, if the
world hadn't found out that it was poor economy, as a general rule,
to take men for it."
"But what do you say about mental power? About pay for teaching, for
instance?" asked Ray.
"Why, you're coming round to _my_ side!" exclaimed Marion. "I should
really like to know _where_ you are?"
"I am wherever I can get nearest to the truth of things," said Ray,
smiling.
"That," said Sunderline, "is one of the specialties that is
getting righted. Women _are_ being paid more, in proportion, for
intellectual service, and the nearer you come to the pure mental
power, the nearer you come to equality in recompense. A woman who
writes a clever book, or paints a good picture, or sculptures a good
statue, can get as much for her work as a man. But where _time_ is
paid for,--where it is personal service,--the old principle at the
root of things comes in. Men open up the wildernesses, men sail the
seas, work the mines, forge the iron, build the cities, defend the
nations while they grow, do the physical work of the world, _make
way_ for all the finishings of education and opportunity that come
afterward, and that put women where they are to-day. And men must be
counted for such things. It is man's work that has made these
women's platforms. They have the capital of strength, and capital
draws interest. The right of the strongest isn't necessarily
_oppression_ by the strongest. That's the way I look at it. And I
think that what women lose in claim they gain in privilege."
"Only when women come to knock about the world without any claims,
they don't seem to get much privilege," said Marion.
"I don't know. It seems rude to say so, perhaps, but they find a
world ready made to knock round _in_, don't they? And it is because
there's so much done that they couldn't have done themselves, that
they find the chances waiting for them that they do. And the chances
are multiplying with civilization, all the time. You see the
question really goes back to first conditions, and lies upon the
fact that first conditions may come back any day,--do come back,
here and there, continually. Put man and woman together on the
primitive earth, and it is the man that has got to subdue it; the
woman is what Scripture calls her,--the helpmeet. And my notion is
that if everything was right, a woman never should have to 'knock
round alone.' It isn't the real order of Providence. I think
Providence has been very much interfered with."
"There are widows," said Rachel, gently.
"Yes; and the 'fatherless and the widows' are everybody's charge to
care for. I said--if things were right. I wish the energy was spent
in bringing round the right that is used up in fitting things to the
wrong."
"They say there are too many women in the world altogether!" said
Marion, squarely.
"I guess not--for all the little children," said Frank Sunderline;
and his tone sounded suddenly sweet and tender.
He was helping them out of the car, now, at the village station, and
they went up the long steps to the street. All three walked on
without more remark, for a little way. Then Marion broke out in her
odd fashion,--
"Ray Ingraham! you've got a home and everything sure and
comfortable. Just tell me what you'd do, if you were a widow and
fatherless or anything, and nobody took you in charge."
"The thing I knew best, I suppose," said Rachel, quietly. "I think
very likely I could be--a baker. But I'm certain of this much," she
added lightly. "I never would make a brick loaf; that always seemed
to me a man's perversion of the idea of bread."
A small boy was coming down the street toward them as she spoke,
from the bake-shop door; a brick loaf sticking out at the two ends
of an insufficient wrap of yellow brown paper under his arm.
As Ray glanced on beyond him, she caught sight of that which put
the brick loaf, and their talk, instantly out of her mind. The
doctor's chaise,--the horse fastened by the well-known strap and
weight,--was standing before the house. She quickened her steps,
without speaking.
"I say," called out the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her
as he passed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and
knowing eagerness,--"Yer know yer father's sick? Fit--or sunthin'!"
But Ray made no sign--to anybody. She had already hurried in toward
the side door, through the yard, under the elm.
A neighborly looking woman--such a woman as always "steps in" on an
emergency--met her at the entrance. "He's dreadful sick, I'm afraid,
dear," she said, reaching out and putting her hand on Ray's
shoulder. "The doctor's up-stairs; ben there an hour. And I believe
my soul every identical child in the village's ben sent in for a
brick loaf."
Marion and Sunderline kept on down the Underhill road. The
conversation was broken off. It was a startling occurrence that had
interrupted it; but it does not need startling occurrences to turn
aside the chance of talk just when one would have said something
that one was most anxious to say. A very little straw will do it. It
is like a game at croquet. The ball you want to hit lies close; but
it is not quite your turn; a play intervenes; and before you can be
allowed your strike the whole attitude and aspect are changed.
Nothing lies where it did a minute before. You yourself are driven
off, and forced into different combinations.
Marion wanted to try Sunderline with certain new notions--certain
half-purposes of her own, in the latter part of this walk they would
have together. Everything had led nicely up to it; when here, just
at the moment of her opportunity, it became impossible to go on from
where they were. An event had thrust itself in. It was not seemly to
disregard it. They could not help thinking of the Ingrahams. And
yet, "if it would have done," Marion Kent could have put off her
sympathies, made her own little point, and then gone back to the
sympathies again, just as really and truly, ten minutes afterward.
They would have kept. Why are things jostled up so?
"I am sorry for Ray," she said, presently.
Frank Sunderline, with a grave look, nodded his head thoughtfully,
twice.
"If anything happens to Mr. Ingraham, won't it be strange that I
should have asked her what I did, just that minute?"
"What? O, yes!"
It had fairly been jostled out of the young man's mind. They walked
on silently again. But Marion could not give it up.
"I don't doubt she _would_ be a baker; carry on the whole
concern,--if there was money. She keeps all her father's accounts,
now."
"Does she?"
"She wouldn't have had the chance if there had been a boy. That's
what I say isn't fair."
"I think you are mistaken. You can't change the way of the world.
There isn't anything to hinder a woman's doing work like that,--even
going on with it, as you say,--when it is set for her by special
circumstances. It's natural, and a duty; and the world will treat
her well and think the more of her. Things are so that it is
getting easier every day for it to be done. The facilities of the
times can't help serving women as much as men. But people won't
generally bring up their daughters to the work or the prospects that
they do their sons, simply because they can't depend upon them in
the same way afterwards. If a girl marries,--and she ought to if she
can _right_,"--
"And what if she _has_ to, if she can, wrong?"
"Then she interferes with Providence again. She hasn't patience. She
takes what wasn't meant for her, and she misses what was; whether
it's work, or--somebody to work for her."
They were coming near Mrs. Kent's little white gate.
"I've a great mind to tell you," said Marion, "I don't have anybody
to help me judge."
Sunderline was a little disconcerted. It is a difficult position for
a young man to find himself in: that of suddenly elected confidant
and judge concerning a young woman's personal affairs; unless,
indeed, he be quite ready to seek and assume the permanent
privilege. It is a hazardous appeal for a young woman to make. It
may win or lose, strengthen or disturb, much.
"Your mother"--began Sunderline.
"O, mother doesn't see; she doesn't understand. How can she, living
as she does? I could make her advise me to suit myself. She never
goes about. The world has run ahead of her. She says I must conclude
as I think best."
Sunderline was silent.
"I've a chance," said Marion, "if I will take it. A chance to do
something that I like, something that I think I _could_ do. I can't
stand the shops; there's a plenty of girls that are crazy for the
places; let them have 'em. And I can't stay at home and iron lace
curtains for other folks, or go round to rip up and make over other
folks' old dirty carpets. I don't mean mother shall do it much
longer. This is what I can do: I can get on to the lecture list, for
reading and reciting. The Leverings,--you remember Virginia
Levering, who gave a reading here last winter; her father was with
her,--Hamilton Levering, the elocutionist? Well, I know them very
well; I've got acquainted with them since; they say they'll help me,
and put me forward. Mr. Levering will give me lessons and get me
some evenings. He thinks I would do well. And next year they mean to
go out West, and want me to go with them. Would you?"
Marion looked eagerly and anxiously in Sunderline's face as she
asked the question. He could not help seeing that she cared what he
might think. And on his part, he could not help caring a good deal
what she might do. He did not like to see this girl, whom he had
known and been friends with from childhood, spoilt. There was good,
honest stuff in her, in spite of her second-rate vanities and
half-bred ambitions. If she would only grow out of these, what a
womanly woman she might be! That fair, grand-featured face of hers,
what might it not come to hold and be beautiful with, if it could
once let go its little airs and consciousnesses that cramped it? It
had a finer look in it now than she thought of, as she waited with
real ingenuous solicitude, his answer.
He gave it gravely and conscientiously.
"I don't think I have any business to advise. But I don't exactly
believe in that sort of thing. It isn't a genuine trade."
"Why not? People like it. Virginia Levering makes fifty dollars a
night, even when they have to hire a hall."
"And how often do the nights come? And how long is it likely to
last?"
"Long enough to make money, I guess," said Marion, laughing. She was
a little reassured at Sunderline's toleration of the idea, even so
far as to make calm and definite objection. "And it's pleasant at
the time. I like going about. I like to please people. I like to be
somebody. It may be silly, but that's the truth."
"And what would you be afterward, when you had had your day? For
none of these days last long, especially with women."
"O!" exclaimed Marion, with remonstrative astonishment. "Mrs.
Kemble! Charlotte Cushman!"
"It won't do to quote them, I'm afraid. I suppose you'd hardly
expect to come up into that row?" said Sunderline, smiling.
"They began, some time," returned Marion.
"Yes; but for one thing, it wasn't a time when everybody else was
beginning. Shall I tell you plainly how it seems to me?"
"I wish you would."
They had walked slowly for the last three or four minutes, till they
had come to the beginning of the paling in which, a little further
on, was the white gate. They paused here; Frank Sunderline rested
his box of tools on the low wall that ran up and joined the fence,
and Marion turned and stood with her face toward him in the western
light, and her little pink-lined linen sunshade up between her and
the low sun,--between her and the roadway also, down which might
come any curious passers-by.
"It seems to me," said Frank Sunderline, "that women are getting on
to the platforms nowadays, not so much for any real errand they have
there, as just for the sake of saying, I'm here! I think it is very
much the 'to be seen of men' motive,--the poorest part of women's
characters,--that plays itself out in this way, as it always has
done in dancing and dressing and acting, and what not. It isn't that
a woman might not be on a platform, if she were called there, as
well as anywhere else. There never was a woman came out before the
world in any grand, true way, that she wasn't all the more honored
and attended to because she _was_ a woman. There are some things too
good to be made common; things that ought to be saved up for a
special time, so that they may _be_ special. If it falls to a woman
to be a Queen, and to open and dismiss her Parliament, nobody in all
the kingdom but thinks the words come nobler and sweeter for a
woman's saying them. But that's because she is _put_ there, not
because she climbs up some other way. If a woman honestly has
something that she must say--some great word from the Lord, or for
her country, or for suffering people,--then let her say it; and
every real woman's husband, and every real mother's son, will hear
her with his very heart. Or if even she has some sure wonderful
gift,--if she can sing, or read, or recite; if she can stir people
up to good and beautiful things as _one in a thousand_, that's her
errand; let her do it, and let the thousand come to hear. But she
ought to be certain sure, or else she's leaving her real errand
behind. Don't let everybody, just because the door is open, rush in
without any sort of a pass or countersign. That's what it's coming
to. A _sham trade_, like hundreds of other sham trades; and the
shammer and the shamefuller, because women demean themselves to it.
I can't bear to see women changing so, away from themselves. We
shan't get them back again, this generation. The _homes_ are going.
Young men of these days have got to lose their wives--that they
ought to have--and their homes that they looked forward to, such as
their mothers made. It's hard upon them; it takes away their hopes
and their motives; it's as bad for them as for the women. It's the
abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. There's no end
to the mischief; but it works first and worst with exactly girls of
your class--_our_ class, Marion. Girls that are all upset out of
their natural places, and not really fit for the new things they
undertake to do. As I said,--how long will it last? How long will
the Mr. Hamilton Leverings put you forward and find chances for you?
Just as long as you are young and pretty and new. And then, what
have you got left? What are you going to turn round to?"
Sunderline stopped. The color flushed up in his face. He had spoken
faster and freer and longer than he had thought of; the feeling that
he had in him about this thing, and the interest he had in Marion
Kent, all rushed to words together, so that he almost forgot that
Marion Kent in bodily presence stood listening before him, he was
dealing so much more with his abstract thought of her, and his
notion of real womanhood.
But Marion Kent did stand there. She flushed up too, when he said,
"We are going to lose our wives by it." What did he mean? Would he
lose anything, if she took to this that she thought of, and went
abroad into the world, and before it? Why didn't he say so, then?
Why didn't he give her the choice?
But what difference need it make, in any such way? Why shouldn't a
girl be doing her part beforehand, as a man does? He was getting
ahead in his trade, and saving money. By and by, he would think he
had got enough, and then he would ask somebody to be his wife. What
should the wife have been doing in the mean time--before she was
sure that she should ever be a wife? Why shouldn't she look out for
herself?
She said so.
"I don't see exactly, Mr. Sunderline."
She called him "Mr. Sunderline," though she remembered very well
that in the earnestness of his talk he had called her "Marion." They
had grown to that time of life when a young man and a girl who have
known each other always, are apt to drop the familiar Christian
name, and not take up anything else if they can help it. The time
when they carefully secure attention before they speak, and then use
nothing but pronouns in addressing each other. A girl, however, says
"Mr." a little more easily than a man says "Miss." The girl has
always been "Miss" to the world in general; the boy grows up to his
manly title, and it is not a special personal matter to give it to
him. There is something, even, in the use of it, which delicately
marks an attitude--not of distance, but of a certain maidenly and
bewitching consciousness--in a girl friend grown into a woman, and
recognizing the man.
"I don't see, exactly, Mr. Sunderline," said Marion. "Why shouldn't
a girl do the best she can? Will she be any the worse for it
afterwards? Why should the wives be all spoilt, any more than the
husbands?"
"Real work wouldn't spoil; only the sham and the show. Don't do it,
Marion. I wouldn't want my sister to, if I had one--there!"
He had not meant so directly to answer her question. He came to this
end involuntarily.
Marion felt herself tingle from head to foot with the suddenness of
the negative that she had asked for and brought down upon herself.
Now, if she acted, she must act in defiance of it. She felt angrily
ashamed, too, of the position in which his words put her; that of a
girl seeking notoriety, for mere show's sake; desiring to do a sham
work; to make a pretension without a claim. How did he know what her
claim might be? She had a mind to find out, and let him see. Sister!
what did he say that for? He needn't have talked about sisters, or
wives either, after that fashion. Spoilt! Well, what should she save
herself for? It was pretty clear it wouldn't be much to him.
The color died down, and she grew quiet, or thought she did. She
meant to be very quiet; very indifferent and calm. She lifted up her
eyes, and there was a sort of still flash in them. Now that her
cheek was cool, they burned,--burned their own color, blue-gray that
deepened almost into black.
"I've a good will, however," she said slowly, "to find out what I
_can_ do. Perhaps neither you nor I know that, yet. Then I can make
up my mind. I rather believe in taking what comes. A bird in the
hand is worth two in the bush. Very likely nobody will ever care
particularly whether I'm spoilt or not. And if I'm spoilt for one
thing, I may be made for another. There have got to be all sorts of
people in the world, you know."
She was very handsome, with her white chin up, haughtily; her nose
making its straight, high line, as she turned her face half away;
her eyes so dark with will, and the curve of hurt pride in her lips
that yet might turn easily to a quiver. She spoke low and smooth;
her words dropped cool and clear, without a tone of temper in them;
if there was passionate force, it was from a fire far down.
If she could do so upon a stage; if she could look like that saying
other people's words--words out of a book: if she could feel into
the passions of a world, and interpret them; then, indeed! But
Marion Kent had never entered into heights and depths of thought and
of experience; she knew only Marion Kent's little passions as they
came to her, and spoke themselves in homely, unchoice words. Mrs.
Kemble or Charlotte Cushman might have made a study from that face
that would have served for a Queen Katharine; but Queen Katharine's
grand utterances would never have thrilled Marion Kent to wear the
look as she wore it now, piqued by the plain-speaking--and the _not_
speaking--of the young village carpenter.
"I hope you don't feel hurt with me; I've only been honest, and I
meant to be kind," said Frank Sunderline.
"No, indeed; I dare say you did," returned Marion. "After all,
everybody has got to judge for themselves. I was silly to think
anybody could help me."
"Perhaps you could help yourself better," said the young man, loth
to leave her in this mood, "if you thought how you would judge for
somebody you cared for. If your own little sister"--
Now the quiver came. Now all the hurt, and pique, and shame, and
jealous disappointment rushed together to mingle and disguise
themselves with a swell and pang that always rose in her at the name
of her little dead sister,--dead six years ago, when she was nine
and Marion twelve.
The tears sprang to the darkened eyes, and quenched down their
burning; the color swept into her face, like the color after a
blow; the lips gave way; and with words that came like a cry she
exclaimed passionately,--
"Don't speak of little Sue! I can't bear it! I never could! I don't
know what I say now. Good-night, good-by."
And she left him there with his box upon the wall; turned and
hurried along the path, and in through the little white gate.