A YOUNG woman who is in her twenty-third year, who is possessed of
bright wits, perfect health, great personal beauty, and a fortune
of nearly a million of dollars in her own right, and who moreover is
untroubled by a disquieting preference for any single individual in the
whole army of males, ought not, by all the rules, to be unhappy.
Kate Minster defied the rules, and moped. Not infrequently she found
herself in the mood to think, “Now I realize how rich girls must feel
when they commit themselves to entering a convent.” Oftener still,
perhaps, she caught her tongue framing impatient or even petulant
answers to her mother, to her mother’s friends, to everybody, in truth,
save her sister Ethel. The conviction that she was bad-tempered had
begun to enter her mind as it were without rapping, and with the air of
a familiar. By dint of repeated searchings in the mirror, she had almost
discovered a shadow between her brows which would presently develop into
a wrinkle, and notify to the whole world her innate vixenish tendencies.
And indeed, with all this brooding which grew upon her, it was something
of a triumph for youth that the wrinkle had still failed to come.
It is said that even queens yawn sometimes, when nobody is looking. But
at least they have work to do, such as it is, and grow tired. Miss
Kate had no work of any sort, and was utterly wearied. The vacuity of
existence oppressed her with formless fatigue, like a nightmare.
The mischief was that all of his own tremendous energy which Stephen
Minster had transmitted to the generation following him was concentrated
in this eldest child of his. The son had been a lightheaded weakling.
The other daughter, Ethel, was as fragile and tenderly delicate as a
Christmas rose. But Kate had always been the strong one of the family,
physically vigorous, restive under unintelligent discipline, rebellious
to teachers she disliked, and proudly confident of her position, her
ability, and the value of her plans and actions. She had loved her
father passionately, and never ceased to mourn that, favorite of his
though she was, business cares had robbed her of so much of his company
for years before his death. As a girl she had dreamed her dreams--bold,
sweepingly ambitious visions they were; but this father of whom she was
so proud, this powerful father who had so manfully subdued things under
his feet, was always the one who was to encompass their fulfilment.
When he died, her aêrial castles at a stroke tumbled into chaos. All her
plans and aspirations had turned upon him as their pivot. Without him
all was disorganized, shapeless, incomprehensible.
Nearly three years had gone by, and still matters about her and
possibilities before her alike refused to take on definite outlines.
She still did not do today the things she wanted to do, yet felt as
powerless as ever to tell what her purposes for to-morrow clearly were.
All the conditions for achievement were hers to command, and there was
nothing to achieve.
There was something alike grotesque and pathetic in the record of her
attempts to find work. She had gathered at considerable expense all
the books and data she could learn about relating to the life and
surroundings of Lady Arabella Stuart, and had started to write what
should be the authoritative work on the subject, only to discover that
she did not know how to make a book, and would not want to make that
kind of a book if she had known how. She had begun collections of
orchids, of coins, of engraved portraits, of cameos, and, at varying
times, of kindred other trifles, and then on some gray and rainy morning
had found herself impelled to turn upon each of these in its order with
disgust and wrath. For music she unluckily had no talent, and a very
exhaustive and costly outfit of materials for a painter’s studio amused
her for less than one short month. She had a considerable feeling for
color, but was too impatient to work laboriously at the effort to learn
to draw; and so she hated her pictures while they were being painted,
and laughed scornfully at them afterward. She wrote three or four short
stories, full of the passions she had read about, and was chagrined
to get them back from a whole group of polite but implacable editors.
Embroidery she detested, and gardening makes one’s back ache.
Miss Minster was perfectly aware that other young ladies, similarly
situated, got on very well indeed, without ever fluttering so much as
a feather for a flight toward the ether beyond their own personal
atmosphere; but she did not clearly comprehend what it was that they did
like. She had seen something of their daily life--perhaps more of their
amusements than of their occupations--and it was not wholly intelligible
to her. They seemed able to extract entertainment from a host of things
which were to her almost uninteresting. During her few visits to New
York, Newport, and Saratoga, for the most part made during her father’s
lifetime, people had been extremely kind to her, and had done their best
to make her feel that there existed for her, ready made, a very notable
social position. She had been invited to more dinners than there were
days at her disposal in which to eat them; she had been called with
something like public acclamation the belle of sundry theatre parties;
her appearance and her clothes had been canvassed with distinctly
overfree flattery in one or two newspapers; she had danced a little,
made a number of calls, suffered more than was usual from headaches, and
yawned a great deal. The women whom she met all seemed to take it for
granted that she was in the seventh heaven of enjoyment; and the young
men with huge expanses of shirt front, who sprang up everywhere
in indefinite profusion about her, like the clumps of white
double-hollyhocks in her garden at home, were evidently altogether
sincere in their desire to please her. But the women all received the
next comer with precisely the smile they gave her; and the young men,
aside from their eagerness to devise and provide diversions for her, and
the obvious honesty of their liking for her, were deadly commonplace.
She was always glad when it was time to return to Thessaly.
Yet in this same village she was practically secluded from the society
of her own generation. There were not a few excellent families in
Thessaly who were on calling and even dining terms with the Minsters,
but there had never been many children in these purely native
households, and now most of the grown-up sons had gone to seek fortune
in the great cities, and most of the girls had married either men who
lived elsewhere or men who did not quite come within the Minsters’
social pale.
It was a wearisome and vexatious thing, she said to herself very often,
this barrier of the millions beyond which she must not even let her
fancy float, and which encompassed her solitude like a prison wall.
Often, too, she approached the point of meditating revolt, but only to
realize with a fresh sigh that the thought was hopeless. What could she
do? If the people of her own class, even with the advantages of amiable
manners, cleanliness, sophisticated speech, and refined surroundings,
failed to interest her, it was certain enough that the others would be
even less tolerable. And she for whose own protection these impalpable
defences against unpleasant people, adventurers, fortune-hunters, and
the like, had all been reared, surely she ought to be the last in the
world to wish them levelled. And then she would see, of course, that she
did not wish this; yet, all the same, it was very, very dull!
There must be whole troops of good folk somewhere whom she could know
with pleasure and gain--nice women who would like her for herself, and
clever men who would think it worth their while to be genuine with her,
and would compliment her intelligence by revealing to it those high
thoughts, phrased in glowing language, of which the master sex at its
best is reputed to be capable--if only they would come in her way. But
there were no signs betokening their advent, and she did not know where
to look for them, and could not have sallied forth in the quest if she
had known; and oh, but this was a weary world, and riches were mere
useless rubbish, and life was a mistake!
Patient, soft-eyed Ethel was the one to whom such of these repinings
against existence as found their way into speech were customarily
addressed. She was sympathetic enough, but hers was a temperament placid
as it was tender, and Kate could do everything else save strike out
sparks from it when her mood was for a conflagration. As for the mother,
she knew in a general way that Kate had a complaining and unsatisfied
disposition, and had always had it, and accepted the fact much as she
did that of Ethel’s poor health--as something which could not be helped,
and therefore need not be worried about. Hence, she was but rarely made
the confidante of her elder daughter’s feelings, but Kate occasionally
railed at destiny in the hearing of Miss Tabitha Wilcox, whom she liked
sometimes much more than at others, but always enough to have a certain
satisfaction in mildly bullying her.
“You know as well as I do, Tabitha,” said Miss Kate one afternoon in
January, rising from the couch where she had been lounging in sheer
idleness, and walking over to the window with slow indolence of gait,
“that our whole life here is simply ridiculous. We girls have lived here
in Thessaly ever since we were little children, and if we left the place
for good to-morrow, positively there would not be a single personal tie
to be broken. So far as making friends go, we might as well have lived
in the moon, where I believe it is settled that there are no people at
all. And pray what is there in life worth having but friends--I mean
real friends?”
“I had supposed,” began the little lady with the iron-gray curls, who
sat primly beside the window at one corner of the great drawing-room--“I
had supposed that _I_ would be reckoned among--”
“Oh, don’t take me up in that way, Tabitha! Of course, I reckoned
you--you know that well enough--that is, you count and you don’t count,
for you are like one of us. Besides, I was thinking of people of my own
age. There are some few nice girls here, but they are never frank with
me as they are among themselves; I suppose because they are always
thinking that I am rich. And how many young men do I know? Say ten, and
I always think I can see dollar-marks shining in their eyes whenever I
look at them. Certainly they have nothing else inside their heads that
would shine.”
“I am sure you exaggerate their--”
“Oh, no, Tabitha! Don’t be sure of any such thing. They couldn’t be
exaggerated; they wouldn’t bear it. Candidly now, can you think of
a single man in the place whom you would like to hear mentioned as
entertaining the shadow of a hope that some time he might be--what
shall I say?--allowed to cherish the possibility of becoming the--the
son-in-law of my mother?”
“I didn’t think your mind ran on such--”
“And it doesn’t,” broke in the girl, “not in the least, I assure you. I
put it in that way merely to show you what I mean. You can’t associate
on terms of equality with people who would almost be put out of the
house if they ventured to dream of asking you to marry them. Both
sides are at a disadvantage. Don’t you see what I mean? There is a wall
between them. That is why I say we have no friends here; money brings us
nothing that is of value; this isn’t like a home at all.”
“Why, and everybody is talking of how much Thessaly has improved of late
years. And quite nice people coming in, too! They say the Bidwells,
who already talk of building a second factory for their button
business--they say they moved in very good society indeed at Troy. I’ve
met Mrs. Bid-well twice at church sociables--the stout lady, you know,
with the false front. They seem quite a knowable family.”
Kate did not reply, but drummed on the window-pane and watched the
fierce quarrels of some English sparrows flitting about on the frozen
snow outside. Miss Tabitha went on with more animation than sequence:
“Of course you’ve heard of the club they’re going to start, or have
started; they call it the Thessaly Citizens’ Club.”
“Who? the Bidwells?”
“Oh, dear, no! The young men of the village--or I suppose it will soon
be a city now. They tell all sorts of stories about what this club
is going to do; reform the whole town, if you believe them. I always
understood a club was for men to drink and play cards and sit up to all
hours in, but it seems this is to be different. At any rate, several
clergymen, Dr. Turner among them, have joined it, and Horace Boyce was
elected president.”
The sparrows had disappeared, but Kate made no answer, and musingly kept
her eyes fastened on the snow where the disagreeable birds had been.
“Now, _there’s_ a young man,” said Miss Tabitha, after a pause. Still no
comment came from the window, and so the elder maiden drifted forward:
“It’s all Horace Boyce now. You don’t hear anything else. Everybody
is saying he will soon be our leading man. They tell me that he speaks
beautifully--in public, I mean--and he is so good-looking and so bright;
they all expect he’ll make quite a mark when court sits next month. I
suppose hell throw his partner altogether into the shade; everybody at
least seems to think so. And Reuben Tracy had _such_ a chance--once.”
The tall, dark girl at the window still did not turn, but she took up
the conversation with an accent of interest.
“_Had_ a chance--what do you mean? I’ve never heard a word against him,
except that idle story you told here once.”
“Idle or not, Kate, you can’t deny that the girl is here.”
Kate laughed, in scornful amusement. “No; and so winter is here, and you
are here, and the snowbirds are here, and all the rest of it. But what
does that go to show?”
“And that reminds me,” exclaimed Tabitha, leaning forward in her chair
with added eagerness--“now, what _do_ you think?”
“The processes by which you are reminded of things, Tabitha, are not fit
subjects for light and frivolous brains like mine.”
“You laugh; but you really never _could_ guess it in all your born days.
That Lawton girl--she’s actually a tenant of mine; or, that is, she
rented from another party, but she’s in _my house!_ You can just fancy
what a state I was in when I heard of it.”
“How do you mean? What house?”
“You know those places of mine on Bridge Street--rickety old houses
they’re getting to be now, though I must say they’ve stood much better
than some built years and years after my father put them up, for he was
the most thorough man about such things you ever saw, and as old Major
Schoonmaker once said of him, he--”
“Yes, but what about that--that girl?”
Tabitha returned to her subject without impatience. All her life she had
been accustomed to being pulled up and warned from rambling, and if her
hearers neglected to do this the responsibility for the omission was
their own.
“Well, you know the one-story-and-attic place, painted brown, and
flat-roofed, just beyond where the Truemans live. It seems as if I had
had more than forty tenants for that place. Everybody that can’t keep
a store anywhere, and make a living, seems to hit upon that identical
building to fail in. Old Ikey Peters was the last; he started a sort of
fish store, along with peanuts and toys and root beer, and he came to me
a month or two back and said it was no go; he couldn’t pay the rent
any more, and he’d got a job as night watchman: so if he found another
tenant, might he turn it over to him until the first of May, when his
year would be up? and I said, ‘Yes, if it isn’t for a saloon.’ And next
I heard he had rented the place to a woman who had come from Tecumseh to
start a milliner’s shop. I went past there a few days afterward, and
I saw Ben Lawton fooling around inside with a jack-plane, fixing up a
table; but even then I hadn’t a suspicion in the world. It must have
been a week later that I went by again, and there I saw the sign over
the door, ‘J. Lawton--Millinery;’ and would you believe it, even _then_
I didn’t dream of what was up! So in walks I, to say ‘how do you do,’
and lo and behold! there was Ben Lawton’s eldest girl running the place,
and quite as much at home as I was. You could have knocked me over with
a feather!”
“Quite appropriately, in a milliner’s shop, too,” said Kate, who had
taken a chair opposite to Tabitha’s and seemed really interested in her
narrative.
“Well, there she was, anyway.”
“And what happened next? Did you faint or run away, or what?”
“Oh, she was quite civil, I must say. She recognized me--she used to see
me at my sister’s when she worked there--and asked me to sit down, and
explained that she hadn’t got entirely settled yet. Yes, I must admit
that she was polite enough.”
“How tiresome of her! Now, if she had thrown boiling water on you, or
even made faces at you, it would have been something like. But to ask
you to sit down! And _did_ you sit down, Tabitha?”
“I don’t see how I could have done otherwise. And she really has a great
deal of taste in her work. She saw in a minute what’s been the trouble
with my bonnets--you know I always told you there was something--they
were not high enough in front. Don’t you think yourself, now, that this
is an improvement?”
Miss Wilcox lifted her chin, and turned her head slowly around for
inspection; but, instead of the praise which was expected, there came a
merry outburst of laughter.
“And you really bought a bonnet of her!” Kate laughed again at the
thought, and then, with a sudden impulse, rose from her chair, glided
swiftly to where Tabitha sat, and kissed her. “You softhearted,
ridiculous, sweet old thing!” she said, beaming at her, and smoothing
the old maid’s cheek in affectionate patronage.
Tabitha smiled with pleasure at this rare caress, and preened her head
and thin shoulders with a bird-like motion. But then the serious side
of her experience loomed once more before her, and the smile vanished as
swiftly as it had come.
“She’s not living with her father, you know. She and one of her
half-sisters have had the back rooms rigged up to live in, and there
they are by themselves. I guess she saw by my face that I didn’t think
much of _that_ part of the business. Still, thank goodness, it’s only
till the first of May!”
“Shall you turn them out then, Tabitha?” Kate spoke seriously now.
“The place has always been respectable, Kate, even if it is tumble-down.
To be sure, I did hear certain stories about the family of the man who
sold non-explosive oil there two years ago, and his wife frizzed her
hair in a way that went against my grain, I must admit; but it would
never do to have a scandal about one of my houses, not even _that_ one!”
“I know nothing about these people, of course,” said Kate, slowly and
thoughtfully; “but it seems to me, to speak candidly, Tabitha, that you
are the only one who is making what you call a scandal. No--wait; let me
finish. In some curious way the thought of this girl has kept itself
in my head--perhaps it was because she came back here on the same train
with me, or something else equally trivial. Perhaps she is as bad a
character as you seem to think, but it may also be that she only wants a
little help to be a good girl and to make an honest living for herself.
To me, her starting a shop like that here in her native village seems to
show that she wants to work.”
“Why, Kate, everybody knows her character. There’s no secret in the
world about _that_.”
“But suppose I am right about her present wish. Suppose that she does
truly want to rehabilitate herself. Would you like to have it on your
conscience that you put so much as a straw in her way, let alone turned
her out of the little home she has made for herself? I know you better
than that, Tabitha: you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. But there is
this other thing. You may do her a great deal of injury by talking about
her, as, for example, you have been talking to me here to-day. I am
going to ask you a favor, a real personal favor. I want you to promise
me not to mention that girl’s name again to a living soul until--when
shall I say?--until the first of May; and if anybody else mentions it,
to say nothing at all. Now, will you promise that?”
“Of course, if you wish it, but I assure you there wasn’t the slightest
doubt in the world.”
“That I don’t care about. Why should we women be so brutal to each
other? You and I had good homes, good fathers, and never knew what it
was to want for anything, or to fight single-handed against the world.
How can we tell what might have crushed and overwhelmed us if we had
been really down in the thick of the battle, instead of watching it from
a private box up here? No: give the girl a chance, and remember your
promise.”
“Come to think of it, she has been to church twice now, two Sundays
running. And Mrs. Turner spoke to her in the vestibule, seeing that she
was a stranger and neatly dressed, and didn’t dream who she was; and
she told me she was never so mortified in her life as when she found out
afterward. A clergyman’s wife has to be so particular, you know.”
“Yes,” Kate answered, absently. Her heart was full of bitter and
sardonic things to say about Mrs. Turner and her conceptions of the
duties of a pastor’s helpmeet, but she withheld them because they might
grieve Tabitha, and then was amazed at herself for being so considerate,
and then fell to wondering whether she, too, was bitten by this
Pharisaical spirit, and so started as out of a dream when Tabitha rose
and said she must go and see Mrs. Minster before she took her departure.
“Remember your promise,” Kate said, with a little smile and another
caress. She had not been so affectionate before in a long, long time,
and the old maid mused flightily on this unwonted softness as she found
her way up-stairs.
The girl returned to the window and looked out once more upon the smooth
white crust which, broken only by half-buried dwarf firs, stretched
across the wide lawn. When at last she wearied of the prospect and her
thoughts, and turned to join the family on the floor above, she confided
these words aloud to the solitude of the big room:
“I almost wish I could start a milliner’s shop myself.”
The depreciatory reflection that she had never discovered in all these
years what was wrong with Tabitha’s bonnets rose with comical suddenness
in her mind, and she laughed as she opened the door.