understand without having gone through it, how, little by little,
I learned the ways of society, and on what a base foundation the
wealth we enjoyed was built. Robert was a speculator, and a reckless,
unscrupulous one. And besides this he was not honest in small things.
The husband I had imagined a fairy prince, full of noble qualities, was
not only false but mean. He gave me whatever was necessary to make a
show; nothing for my pleasure. Poor little sister! Don't you suppose I
wanted to send you presents? I never had a dollar of my own all those
seven years. But finally the end came. Robert failed--and it was a
dishonorable failure. He went away in the night, leaving me to bear the
brunt of everything."
"Oh, oh!" breathed Miss Phillida. "And didn't he come back?"
"He wrote me a letter from Canada, telling me to come over to him, for
he was sick. Well, I went! I nursed him, and worked for him,--and I put
up for two years with a life that was Purgatory. You mustn't expect me
to be very sorry he died then, Phillida. You wouldn't if you knew all.
I did hate to come back to you,--such a failure! But it was a miserable
existence all alone there, in Quebec, and--I knew you would be glad to
see me, dear!"
For a few moments the sisters wept together. Then Emma raised her head.
"I thought that perhaps I might get a school. Of course I intend to do
something."
"No, no!" cried Miss Phillida, wiping her eyes and taking her sister's
hand. "You needn't do that, dearest. With the garden and the cow and
chickens, there is plenty. And then, you know, the hundred a year that
comes from the railroad shares is as much yours as mine. Everything is
yours, and, thank heaven, you're at home now, where everybody'll be
good to you!"
"The same generous, self-sacrificing little soul! But, dear Phillida,
I must work, if only to keep myself happy. I should soon be miserable
and restless with nothing to do. Come, make up your mind to let me be a
help instead of a burden. I have set my heart upon the school. Tell me,
who are the trustees now?"
"Cousin Ned Miller's a trustee," replied Miss Phillida, who had grown
thoughtful. "Perhaps you're right, Emma. Maybe you'll be happier with
the children to think about. And he'll get you a school, I'm quite
sure."
Emma rocked softly back and forth, looking into the fire. Perhaps she
saw visions there of a new and happier life, for her face took on an
expression of content.
But some little personal worry preyed upon Miss Phillida's mind. She
said nothing about it, but one morning when Emma had gone for a drive
with one of the neighbors, she took from the bureau drawer the precious
parcel reposing there, and with an air of guilt made her way to the
store.
"I've brought back this dress," she said confidentially to Heaton. "And
if you'll be so kind as to change it, I'll take the black and white
piece. I feel it's more suitable, somehow."
He readily obliged her, and the new pattern was deposited in the
deep drawer, after which the little woman wore an air of chastened
cheerfulness.
Cousin Ned Miller justified Miss Phillida's confidence. He not only
promised Emma the school, but offered to get a class in French for her;
and he spent time running about, waiting on her, and cheering her in
every way that could suggest itself to his kind heart. His handsome
team stood almost every day before the little brown house, while he
loitered on the honeysuckle scented porch with the sisters. There was
always some plausible excuse for his coming, and the true meaning of
his visits did not dawn upon Miss Phillida's mind until one afternoon
when she suddenly entered the sitting-room and saw them on the sofa
together.
The little woman's face was aflame with joyous excitement, as she ran
into the kitchen and began moving things about, without knowing or
caring what she did. The happiest outcome!--the most natural, the most
comfortable, and most reasonable arrangement that could happen! Emma
and Cousin Ned! They were made for each other.
"I really can't keep still," thought Miss Phillida. "I must go
somewhere."
As she put on her old gray gown, a thought suddenly flashed into her
mind. "Maybe it'll look curious," she reflected. "But I declare if I
won't."
Once more she entered the store with a parcel under her cape.
Fortunately the accommodating clerk was the only one around.
Miss Phillida blushed as she laid the black and white dress pattern on
the counter.
"I'm ashamed to be so changeable, Heaton, indeed I am; but things have
altered lately, and--my mind's more given to bright colors, somehow.
So, if it won't inconvenience you any, and if you'd really just as
lief--I think I'll change back to the pink."
MRS. MAY'S PRIVATE INCOME.[5]
WHEN Laura McHenry quietly turned her back upon the wealthy and
desirable suitor her family had decided she should marry, and gave her
hand to William May, a middle-aged lawyer of no particular standing or
prospects, everybody decided that she had thrown herself away.
Mr. May began his married life upon a wind-fall of fifteen hundred
dollars, his largest fee in a dozen years. A pretty house in Richmond
was leased for a year, and the delightful experience of buying new
furniture and disposing it to the best advantage gave the young wife
such happy occupation for the first two months that she was always
in a sunny humor, full of brightness and variability, and that kind
of independent submissiveness which charms a man who likes to see a
woman much occupied with household affairs, and with himself, as the
center of the household. Her pretty show of activity amused him. He
said she made occupation for herself in moving the furniture from one
place to another and then back again. One of his jokes was to ask her
where he should find the bed when he came home. And upon this she would
pretend to pout, and then they would kiss each other without the least
awkwardness or shame-facedness, and he would go off to his work with a
pleasant sense of security in the devotion of his lovely wife, while
she would carry in her mind all day long the picture of his smiling
face, and love him for every pretty speech and admiring look.
They were really happy. And it lasted quite six months, till all the
fifteen hundred dollars had been drawn out of the bank, except the bare
moiety necessary to keep the account.
When Dinah's wages were a month over-due, her substantial presence
disappeared out of the kitchen, and Laura's dainty white hands
made acquaintance with dish-mops, stove-lifters and brooms. Such an
ignoramus as she found herself! And with what zeal she bent her mind to
the study of cookery books and the household corners of the newspapers.
And brains told. She left the flour out of her first cake, but her
second one was a triumph of art, and muffins, veal cutlets and custards
came out from under her clever fingers with a delicacy and deftness
that surprised herself and gratified May immensely. Although he was
sorry to have her work in the kitchen, and sorry to find her now too
tired to sing to him in the evenings with the same spirit and freshness
that used to breathe through her songs. But the worst thing was that
fatigue and unending attention to details, united to those perpetual
interruptions from the door-bell which drive busy women almost
distracted, had their effect upon Laura's delicate frame. She grew
"nervous," which is often a misnomer for combined worry and distasteful
labors. It will seem to the inexperienced that the housekeeping for
two people, in a convenient little house, should have been a mere
bagatelle to a clever woman. Perhaps it would have been if Laura had
not had her profession to learn as well as practise. She had not been
brought up to housework, but to sing. Music had always been so much a
part of her life that she no more thought of giving up her daily study
hours than she would have thought of giving up her William. It was not
that she chose to work at her piano three or four hours a day after her
morning housework was done, but that it simply did not occur to her
to do otherwise. She usually forgot or neglected to take any lunch,
and by dinner time had no appetite, which had its conveniences, for
it was rapidly coming to pass that the dinners she could compass upon
the scanty and irregular supplies of money she received were scarcely
sufficient for more than one person, and she contrived that her husband
should be that person.
She had a thousand devices for inducing him to eat the bit of steak,
the single cup-custard, or the slice of fish. He was far from realizing
that his delicately fair wife, with her dainty tastes, was illy
nourished upon the tea and toast to which she often confined herself.
Nor did Laura realize it.
But after all, it was not the housework, the scanty food, nor even the
lack of variety and refreshment in her life that was beginning to tell
heavily upon her health, that was spoiling her beautiful disposition
and making her apprehensive and irritable. It was something more
terrible to a loving woman, honoring and admiring her husband with all
her soul, than all these things combined.
The third anniversary of their wedding-day came. Laura remembered what
day it was as she opened her eyes in the early dawn. A sigh escaped her
before she knew it. The tendency to meditate, as Nathaniel Hawthorne
observed, makes a woman sad. Laura had always been thoughtful;
lately--being much alone and having some matters to think about not
tending to raise her spirits, she had insensibly become sober.
She put her feet out of bed into a pair of worn slippers, and shaking
down a heavy mass of dark brown hair that matched her eyes in color,
made her toilet without waking her husband, who slumbered serenely till
within ten minutes of the breakfast hour, when she called him, meeting
with a not overgracious response.
The little dining-room had a pleasant and comfortable air this chilly
September morning. The little round table bore a glass containing
a sprig or two of red geranium from the pot in the window, and the
coffee-urn of nickel was polished till it shone like silver.
Mr. May came in after keeping her waiting fifteen minutes, and after
helping her and himself to oatmeal, began to read the newspaper that
lay at his plate in apparent forgetfulness of everything else. He
was a stout, rather short man, with large, luminous brown eyes that
never seemed to be looking at anything in particular. A full beard and
mustache sprinkled with gray hid a mouth that in his youth had made
the lower part of his face strongly resemble that of Peter the Great.
There was some quality about him that caused one to dread arousing his
anger; a strong sense of his own importance, perhaps. Some persons have
the gift of reflecting their own egotism into the minds of others,
rendering themselves formidable entirely through an appeal to the
imagination.
Laura was a tall, gracefully-formed woman, with a presence that
promised to become majestic with increasing years. Yet at heart she
was timid and sensitive as a delicate child, needing affection and
encouragement in the same measure; the last woman in the world for
a man who lived entirely within himself, and to whom a wife was an
adjunct, to be put on and off at his pleasure. Yet May had in regard to
her--and in regard to all other things--a conscience void of offense.
He took credit to himself for having given her her heart's desire in
his love.
The door-bell jangled sharply. May looked up.
"If that is the landlord," he said impressively, "I don't want to see
him."
"What shall I tell him?" asked Laura.
"Tell him anything you please!" The tone was sternly impatient this
time.
She went slowly into the narrow hall, and after a momentary parley with
some one who spoke in a high, angry voice, returned with a bill which
she laid before him without a word.
"Tell him I will--attend to it."
"He says----" she murmured deprecatingly, but got no further; the
lowering expression that came over his face was too lacerating to her
feelings. She preferred confronting the irate butcher again.
But there was a lump in her throat as she quietly resumed her seat. One
of her ideas of the "protection" promised by the marriage ceremony had
been a shielding from the roughness of persons of this sort. Why did he
ask her to stand between him and the landlord, the coal man and the
butcher? Why, oh, why, was there any necessity for these evasions and
subterfuges? She looked at her husband as he arose at last, after a
leisurely breakfast hour, and stood by the window finishing a paragraph
in his paper. He was a strong, robust man in the prime of life, with
a profession and hosts of acquaintances to help on his interests. Why
could he not at least make the small income necessary to keep their
very modest establishment going?
The explanation lay in a single fact. May was a man of visionary
schemes, always chasing some will-o'-the-wisp which promised fortune
and distinction, finding his pleasure in holding honorary posts at his
political club, which gave him a chance to talk and repaid him in a
cheaply gained reputation for ability.
Little by little Laura's idealized vision of her husband had faded
before the pressure of facts. But she clung to the shreds of her faith
as women do hold to their illusions; as they must if the world is to go
on and homes continue to exist. There was something still for her to
learn, however, and not the easiest lesson that had been set for her.
She set rather indifferently about her practising that afternoon. It
seemed to be no matter whether Chopin or Mendelssohn spoke to her
soul; both were alike rendered with a cold brilliancy very far removed
from her usual sympathetic interpretation. Her thoughts were far
away, wandering amid scenes of her girlhood; a happy time, full of
social enjoyment, of affectionate family intercourse, of freedom from
care, from make-shifts, from the dishonor of debt; a dishonor that
bore lightly upon May, with his belief in the future, but that was
crushing to her sensitive nature. Idly her fingers wandered, swifter
her thoughts flew, till all at once a sentence of homely wisdom from
a modern novelist came into her mind: "Many women are struggling
under the burden of money-saving when they had far rather spend their
energies in money-getting."
She arose impetuously, her eyes suddenly full of light. What had she
been thinking of? There was a fund of unused wealth in her fine musical
education, in her beautiful voice, a little impaired by hardships, but
magnificent still. Here was the way out of all this mirage of poverty;
with what she could earn by taking a class in Madame Cable's school
combined with her husband's earnings, they could live with comparative
ease and comfort. Oh, happiness, oh, relief! Laura's hat and cape were
on in ten minutes and a car was taking her down-town to the dwelling of
her old teacher, sure of a welcome and of aid. Madame had offered her
this position five years ago, just after her graduation, but her mother
would not hear of it. Now her mother was two thousand miles away, on
a frontier post with Major McHenry, entirely ignorant of the state of
affairs in her daughter's household.
What a curiously elusive thing courage is! By the time Laura's finger
was on the bell at Madame's door, her breath was coming in gasps, and
while she waited in the lofty and handsomely furnished parlor for the
coming of her old teacher, all the strength went out of her knees, so
that she found it difficult to rise when that stately, self-possessed
woman came in with a little silken rustle of skirts and extended hand.
It is so hard to say outright to a friend, "Help me!" And yet, is not
the opportunity of giving help and comfort one of the rewards of a
successful life? Why do we distrust human goodness? It was the pride
in Laura's nature that made her talk of everything else rather than
the object of her call, that made her tongue falter and her cheek grow
paler, when at length she brought herself to her task.
But fate was not ill-disposed. It happened that Madame needed her
services. She had come at an opportune moment, and in a few minutes the
business was satisfactorily settled.
"At the same time, my dear," said Madame, folding her soft, fat hands
and shaking her head till the emerald drops in her ears emitted flashes
of green fire, "I must say that I never like to see a married woman
set out to earn money. It is apt to spoil her husband. A man should
support his wife. It is his duty and it ought to be his pleasure. And
another side of the matter is that women to whom the extra income they
can gain by their talents means luxury and possibly extravagance,
forget that such competition makes it harder for their needy sisters.
Money-making is not such a gracious task. It should be left to those
who really need the money."
"I am not going to tell you I need it," thought Laura. Aloud, she said
with much indifference:
"Madame, have you any one in your mind you would rather get to take
your classes--any one you think would do the work better?"
"No," the teacher acknowledged that she knew no other superior to her
old pupil. "To tell you the truth, if I did I should feel it a duty to
engage the better worker. The principal of a school like this cannot
let her feelings guide her, you know."
"Then as the advantage is mutual," said Laura, a smile breaking over
her serious face, "my conscience is at rest. It is a matter of the
success of the fittest. My needier sister is not so well prepared for
the post as I, and so I get it."
"Really, you are right," murmured Madame, with her head on one side.
"But," she added as her visitor rose, "take my advice about one thing:
keep your earnings for yourself; they belong to you. Don't let your
husband find out that there is a--another capable bread-winner in the
house."
Madame had not the highest opinion in the world of Mr. William May. But
who lays to heart words of selfish caution? Not the wife who in the
glow of comfort and peace arising from the prospect of an income of her
own, feels all the old confidence and affection return as she explains
matters to her husband with a careful avoidance of any wound to his
self-love, and a blissful dwelling upon the pleasure and advantage that
is to come to herself in the healthful exercise of her accomplishments.
May was a little afraid their social standing would suffer. He
certainly did not like the idea of his wife teaching in a school. It
was contrary to all his preconceptions of her domestic, home-loving
disposition.
"It is a reflection upon me," he said moodily, adding with a little
passionate movement that brought her within his arm, her cheek close to
his lips: "I didn't marry you to let you work, my darling!"
She might have answered that he had let her work at harder things,
but she did not. She dwelt upon the idea of the comfort a regular
occupation was to be to her during the long winter days. She would be
much happier and less lonely with something to do. Very little said she
of the salary that was an item of so much importance in her mind.
But after he had gone out to his club she got out a little blank book
and figured it all away for six months to come. She resolved to leave
out of consideration the house-rent and the table. Naturally, William
would continue to bear the burden of these responsibilities. Her design
was to fill in the vacancies which he was indifferent to. So much for
the gas bill, so much for laundry, so much for the seats in church. And
something over for the indispensable winter clothing and for the joy of
giving. She looked forward to the happiness of hanging a new hat upon
the rack in place of dear Will's shabby one, and of supplying a pair
of slippers. Bliss and comfort of a little control over circumstances,
instead of being compelled to stand helpless and anxious waiting upon
the good fortune of another! Could a man have any idea of what this
feeling is to a woman? Mr. May could not have had, or he would never
have done what he did.
All that first month Laura was buoyed up by the anticipation of that
comfortable check she was soon to finger. Cool autumn breezes were
beginning to blow, but when first one woman, then another, put on
wraps, until her plain undraped gown appeared odd, she merely smiled
indifferently and warmed herself with the thought of pay-day. When the
farina kettle sprang a leak she laughingly declared it was old enough
to be superannuated. A dollar seemed such a trifle to worry over now.
At last it was in her hands. The first earning of her life. With a
child's glee she hurried home and displayed it to her husband, enjoying
his teasing comments on her sudden accession to wealth. But the dinner
had to be cooked, and recalling herself to this duty, she ran into the
kitchen, leaving the check behind her on the desk.
"It is all right," said Mr. May, when she looked for it later in the
evening. "I put it in my private drawer."
"Oh, yes, it is safer there," she returned easily, and got out her
mending basket, humming a gay tune, more light of heart than she had
been in many a day.
The next day was Saturday, and she had more morning work to do than
usual, but she hurried through it, and by half-past ten she had her hat
and gloves on and was rummaging the desk for her check. It was nowhere
to be found.
"Impossible that it could have been stolen," she exclaimed.
"Impossible! It was not indorsed. No one could use it, even if a thief
had made his way in, and that is absurd to think of. It _must_ be here."
Only when every paper had been taken out and scrutinized did she desist
from her search, and almost crying with vexation, resigned herself to
await her husband's return and ask his advice.
"My check!" she cried breathlessly, almost before he was fairly inside
the door. "It is gone!"
He turned with a somewhat puzzled expression at her excited manner.
"The check? Oh, why, that is all right. I put it in the bank this
morning."
"You put it in the bank?" repeated Laura slowly. "But how could you?
It was not indorsed."
"I indorsed it," he answered rather shortly, annoyed at all this
explanation about a mere matter of course. Were not he and his wife
one, and was not everything in common between them? It had not entered
his head for a single instant that there was anything amiss about a
procedure that was to Laura a veritable thunderbolt.
She stood for a moment with her eyes lowered, ashamed for him who
thought of nothing less than of being ashamed for himself. It was
impossible to reproach him; he was a man whom a breath of censure
hardened into rock. While the sunshine of applause and sympathy shone
upon him he was debonair and charming, but the first chilling breath
of blame brought all the ice in his nature to the surface. She had
experienced the change; she dared not encounter it. Besides, it was not
in this first instant of a new revelation of his creed that she was to
feel all the sense of his moral flexibility. That was reserved for
later, when her keen instinct of justice and of individual rights had
been outraged again and again. She loved him. To win a smile and a kind
word from him what would she not have sacrificed? The mere trifle of
money was nothing. It was the feeling of having been unfairly treated,
of having been not considered at all where she had every right to
consideration. And yet the want of that trifle of money was to make her
miserable for a long time to come.
It was hard to be sweet and loving all day Sunday, with a weight of
suppressed thought upon her mind, but forbearance nourishes affection,
and by Monday she was her own tender, submissive self again. Besides,
it had occurred to her that the money was not quite out of her reach;
William would give her a check if she asked him for it.
When she made the suggestion he readily assented, and made out one to
her for five dollars before he left Monday morning. When she timidly
broached the subject again he looked annoyed, and said curtly that the
landlord had the money.
"But----" began Laura, flushing hotly, then closed her lips and went
quietly about her work. What was there to say? The landlord had to be
paid, of course. Only somehow, she had thought that her husband would
do that, as he had always managed it before.