A GLIMPSE FROM THE INSIDE
In the cool of the day Aunt Katharine and Esther walked together across
the fields to the little house on the county road. The sunset was
throbbing itself out above the hills in a glory of crimson and gold, and
the girl’s face seemed to have caught the shining as she moved
tranquilly toward it.
In the doorway of the barn Tom and Kate watched them go, and exchanged
comments with their usual frankness. It was their favorite place for
discussion—that and the wood-pile—and few were the subjects of current
interest which did not receive a tossing back and forth at their hands
when the day’s work was done.
[Illustration: “TOM AND KATE WATCHED THEM GO.”]
“That’s an uncommon queer thing for Aunt Katharine to do,” observed Tom.
“When she’s been left alone before she’s always got one of the Riley
girls to stay there and paid her for doing it. She must have taken a
shine to Esther. Maybe she thinks she can work her round to some of her
notions.”
Kate shook her head. “Esther isn’t her sort of person at all,” she said.
“Aunt Katharine would take somebody that’s strong-minded like herself if
she wanted a follower in those things.”
Tom flicked a kernel of corn at a swallow that swooped down from a beam
above his head, and remarked carelessly, “Maybe strong-minded folks had
rather have those that ain’t so strong-minded to work on.”
There was something in this that gave a passing uneasiness to the look
in Kate’s black eyes. She was silent a moment, then said with emphasis,
“Well, I’ll risk Esther Northmore;” and a minute later, oddly enough,
she was talking of Morton Elwell, and wondering what he found to do now
that wheat harvest and haying were over at home.
“If he’s out of a job I wish he’d come round this way,” observed Tom.
“We need another hand in our meadow, and we’d set him to work right
off.”
“And supply him with a scythe to work with, I suppose,” said Kate,
scornfully. “I imagine Mort Elwell! He rides a mowing machine when _he_
cuts grass.”
“Well, he couldn’t ride it in our meadow,” retorted Tom. “There isn’t a
Hoosier on top of the ground that could do it. I don’t care how smart he
is.” (He had been tantalized at frequent intervals ever since Kate’s
coming by accounts of Morton Elwell’s smartness.) “A scythe is the only
thing that’ll work in a place like that.”
“Out our way they wouldn’t have such a place,” said Kate, loftily.
“They’d put in tile and drain it, if they were going to use the ground
at all.”
“A nice job they’d have of it,” grunted Tom; and then he remarked
incidentally: “I heard Esther tell Stella the other day that our meadow
was the prettiest place she ever saw. They were sitting by the brook,
and she said it made her sick to think how your creek at home looked,
all so brown and muddy.”
This was a manifest digression, but Tom had a genius for that, and a
quotation from Esther bearing on the attractions of New England was a
missile he never failed to use, when it came to his hand in discussion
with Kate. She looked annoyed for a minute. There was no denying that
the creek at home was a sorry-looking stream beside that beautiful
meadow brook, with its clear pebbly bottom. But she recovered herself in
another moment.
“Oh, your brook is pretty, of course,” she said graciously, “but it’s
all in the way you look at it. For my part I don’t mind having a good
rich brown in the color of ours. It shows that the land isn’t all rocks;
that there’s something in it soft enough to wash down.”
Tom whistled. He was used to Kate now, and never really expected to have
the last word. Returning to the subject of the hay-making, he remarked:
“Grandfather was down there for a while this afternoon, to show us how
fast we ought to work, I suppose—you ought to have seen him bring down
the swath—but he couldn’t keep it up very long, and made an errand to
the house; a good thing he did, too, or he’d have missed that call that
tickled him so. I say, that fellow must have been a regular swell for
all you girls to be so taken with him.”
“Who said _I_ was taken with him?” demanded Kate. “It was his horse I
fell in love with.”
“Well, the others were, if you weren’t,” persisted Tom. “Esther seemed
to think she never saw such a young man.”
“She’s seen some that are a good deal nicer,” said Kate, with emphasis,
and then she added rather irritably: “I shouldn’t think a fellow could
have much to do who spends his time running round to find out what his
great-great-grandfather did. For my part I don’t take much stock in that
sort of thing.”
And on this point they were in perfect agreement. Tom, like Kate, had no
great use for ancestors.
Meanwhile the shadows lengthened, and the two slow figures moving across
the fields reached the end of their walk. That the days to be spent with
Aunt Katharine would seem rather long, Esther fully expected. Yet she
had wanted them. She had been honest when she said to Stella at parting:
“Don’t pity me. I really like it!” and she wondered at the incredulous
look with which her cousin had regarded her. With all there was of taste
and artistic feeling in common between these two, there was something in
Esther, something of seriousness and warmth, which the other partly
lacked.
Possibly the girl expected—as Stella had warned her—that the old woman
would at once mount the hobby, which she was supposed to keep always
saddled and bridled, as soon as they were fairly in the house together,
but as a matter of fact, Aunt Katharine did nothing of the kind. She
talked, as they sat in the twilight, of Esther herself, of her work at
school, and the things she enjoyed most in this summer visit, and then
of Esther’s mother, recalling incidents of her childhood, and speaking
of her ways and traits with an appreciation that filled the girl with
surprise and delight.
“Your mother might have done something out of the common,” she said as
she ended. “She was made larger than most folks, and with all her soft
ways, she had more courage. She might have had a great influence. I
always said it.”
“Mother has a good deal of influence now,” said Esther, smiling. “Father
says there isn’t a lady in our town whose opinions count for as much as
hers.”
“Of course, of course,” said the old woman, with a note of impatience
creeping into her voice; “and the upshot of it is that she makes old
ways that are wrong seem right, because she, with all _her_ faculties,
manages to make the best of ’em. She might have done better than that,
_if she’d seen_.”
And then she rose suddenly and lighted a lamp. “I always have a chapter
before I go to bed,” she said. “You might read it to-night.”
Esther was surprised. She had somehow gained the impression, in Aunt
Katharine’s talks with her brother, that she held the scriptures rather
lightly, but apparently this was wrong. “What shall I read?” she asked,
going to the stand on which lay the Bible, a large and very old one.
“Read me that chapter about Judith,” she said, “how she delivered her
people out of the hand of Holofernes, and all the city stood up and
blessed her.”
Esther sat for a moment with a puzzled face, her finger between the
leaves of the book. “Is that in Judges?” she asked, with a vague
remembrance of a prophetess who led Israel to battle.
The old woman lifted her eyebrows. “Oh, that is in the Apocrypha,” she
said. “Well, if you don’t know about Judith you mustn’t begin at the end
of her story. Read me about Deborah; that’s a good place.”
There was no sweeter sleep under the stars that night than came to
Esther. She had thought with some foreboding of a feather bed, but it
was the best of hair mattresses that Aunt Katharine provided. Even the
high-post bedstead, with draperies of ancient pattern, which she had
really hoped for, was wanting. There was nothing to prevent the air
which came through the wide east window, full of woodsy odors and the
droning of happy insects, from coming straight to her pillow.
There was indeed nothing in the room to recall the fashions of the past
except the coverlet, wrought in mazy figures tufted of crocheting
cotton, and a round silk pincushion mounted on a standard of glass,
which standard suggested former service as part of a lamp. Aunt
Katharine had as little care to preserve the customs of her foremothers
as their ways of thinking. She had told the girl to rise when she felt
like it; but in the early morning Esther found herself wide awake, and
the sound of stirring below brought her quickly to her feet.
Aunt Katharine was busy about the stove when she entered the kitchen,
and the sight of her niece in her clean work-apron evidently pleased
her. They took a cup of tea with a fresh egg and a slice of toast at the
kitchen table, and Esther tried to recall her dream of the night before
for the entertainment of the other. “It must have been reading about
Deborah that put it into my head,” she said. “I thought I was living all
by myself in a house that was under a great oak tree, and all sorts of
people were coming to me on all sorts of errands, and finally I was
going out with a great company of them to battle, but I don’t know what
the battle was about, or how it came out,” she ended lightly. “I think
the dream must have broken off when I heard you moving about down here.”
“Dreams are queer things,” said Aunt Katharine, who had been listening
with attention.
“Of course I don’t believe in them,” Esther made haste to say, “but Aunt
Milly always insisted that the first dream you had when you slept in a
strange place meant something. I’m sure it meant something to sleep in
such a lovely room, and rest as sweetly as I did,” she added, with an
affectionate smile at the old lady.
Miss Katharine Saxon had long prided herself on a complete indifference
to any blandishments of words or manner on the part of her
fellow-creatures. It wasn’t what people said, nor how they said it, but
the principles they lived up to, that constituted a claim to her regard,
as she often declared; but she fell a victim as easily as scores had
done before her to the pretty tactful ways of Esther Northmore and her
gift for saying pleasant things. Not in years had she been as warm, as
open, and confiding as during that visit. In the entertainment of her
niece she made no mistake. She let her help in the housework and watched
with pleasure while she darned a tablecloth. She was studying the girl,
with genuine liking to guide the study.
And Esther, for her part, was watching her Aunt Katharine with growing
regard and sympathy. It was a surprise at first, to note the solicitude
with which she inquired after the sick child of Patrick Riley, the
Irishman who carried on her farm, and came night and morning to attend
to her chores; and the girl was not prepared for the almost maternal
interest with which the old woman looked after the dumb creatures on her
place.
On the subject which she was known to have most at heart—the wrongs of
her sex—she said nothing for a while, and Esther was too mindful of
those old griefs in her life to provoke the theme. It came casually, the
second day, as they sat seeding raisins in the kitchen. A boy had
brought a pail of berries to the door, but she refused them. An hour
later a girl came with a similar errand, and without hesitating she made
the purchase.
“I hope you didn’t change your mind on my account,” said Esther, when
the child was gone, remembering apologetically something she had said in
the interval about her own liking for huckleberries. “With all the fruit
you have I’m sure we didn’t need them.”
Miss Saxon smiled. “I didn’t change my mind,” she said. “I thought some
girl would be along, and so I waited.”
The boy’s face had looked eager, and Esther felt rather sorry for him.
“Don’t you suppose he needed the money as much as she did?” she asked
rather timidly.
“Mebbe he needed it more,” said Aunt Katharine. “The Billingses are
worse off than the Esteys, but that ain’t the p’int. It’s a good thing
for a girl to be earning money. It’s worth something to her to make a
few cents, and know it’s her own. That’s what the girls need more ’n
anything else, and I always help ’em every chance I get.”
Esther pondered for a minute without speaking. The old woman’s eyes had
taken on a look of deep seriousness. “That’s the root of all the
trouble,” she said almost fiercely, “this notion that the women must be
forever dependent on the men, and take what’s given ’em and be thankful,
without trying to do for themselves. I tell you it was never meant that
one half of the world should hang on the other half, and look to ’em for
the shelter over their heads, and the food they eat, and the clothes
they wear. It degrades ’em both.”
Esther stopped seeding raisins and looked at her aunt in astonishment.
An arraignment of the existing order of things such as she had not heard
before was suggested here. Perhaps the very blankness of her expression
appealed more than any protest to the old woman. The defiance went out
of her voice, and it was almost a pleading tone in which she went on:—
“Don’t you see what comes of it? Don’t you see? It makes the girls think
they must get married so ’s to have a home and somebody to support ’em,
and then they plan ’n’ contrive—they ’n’ their mothers with ’em—how to
catch a husband.” She shut her lips hard, as if her loathing of the
thing were too great for utterance, then went on: “But small blame to
’em, I say, if that’s the only thing a woman’s fit for; small blame to
’em if they won’t let her choose her work for herself and live by it,
without calling shame on her for doing it. It’s a little better
now—thank God and the women that have been brave enough to go ahead in
the face of it!—but I’ve seen the day when an old maid was looked on as
something almost out of nature. ‘Let a girl dance in the pig’s trough,’
if her younger sister gets married before her. Let her own she’s
disgraced, and be done with it. That’s the old saying, and the spirit of
it ain’t all dead yet. It never will be till women are as free as men to
do whatever thing is _in ’em_ to do, and make the most of it.”
Her face had grown white as she talked, and the color had paled a little
even in Esther’s. “Oh,” she said, “I’ve thought of that, too. I’ve hated
it when people talked as if there was nothing for girls but to get
married.” The color came back with a quick flush as she added: “I’d
rather die than be scheming about that myself; but what can you do? Boys
always talk about the work they mean to follow. People would think there
was something wrong with them, if they didn’t; but if girls say
anything—I did try once to talk about what I could do to earn my own
living, but father acted as if I was somehow reflecting on him, and
mother—though I’m sure she understood me better—seemed worried and
troubled.”
“That’s it, that’s it!” said Aunt Katharine, bitterly. “Even those that
say a woman’s got a right to choose, say under their breath that she’ll
never be happy if it’s anything but getting married. I tell you it’s
finding your own work and doing it that makes people happy, and that’s a
law for women as much as men.”
“But if you knew your work!” said Esther, piteously. “It seems to me
there are very few girls who have anything special they can do.”
“That’s no more true of girls than ’tis of boys,” said Aunt Katharine.
“We should find something for one as well as for the other, _something_
they could work at, if we settled it once for all that they had the same
right and need. But we’ve got to start with that idea right from the
beginning.”
After that, during the time which remained of the visit, the talk came
often into the circle of this thought. Sometimes Miss Saxon talked of
the wrongs of women, of their inequality before the law, and of the
tyranny of men, with a bitterness before which the girl shrank, but the
very vehemence of the other’s belief carried her with it, and through it
all one thing grew more and more clear to her. It was not hatred of men,
but love of her own sex, which lay at the bottom of Katharine Saxon’s
defiance of the social order. The longing to help women, to lift them
into what seemed to her a larger, freer living, had laid hold of her
wholly, and held her in the white heat of its consuming passion.
Once, when she had been speaking of the struggle which lay before any
woman confronted with the problem of supporting a family, Esther said
softly: “Grandpa told me about you one night, Aunt Katharine; how you
gave up everything and worked so hard to help your sister when she came
home with her children. I thought that was grand.”
The old woman did not speak for a moment, then she said, with a singular
lack of emotion in her voice: “Poor Nancy! Yes, I thought then ’twas my
duty to do what I did, and mebbe ’twas; but sometimes I’ve thought—Nancy
and her girls were only a han’ful out of the many—sometimes I’ve thought
mebbe I might have done more good if I’d been fighting for ’em all. I
gave the best fifteen years of my life to that old spinning-wheel, and
scarcely looked out of my corner.” And then the lines of her face
stiffened as she added: “But I had my reward. I was saved from
marrying—marrying Levi Dodge.”
The scorn in her voice as she said the last words was indescribable. For
a while neither of them spoke. Then Esther said, leaning toward the
other, her heart in her eyes, and her breath coming quick, “Aunt
Katharine, wouldn’t you have women marry at all?”
She threw up her head with the quick, impatient movement which Esther
had come to know so well. “They might all marry and welcome,” she
said,—“it’s the Lord’s way to preserve the race,—if only we could get
rid of the notions that folks have joined onto it to spoil it.”
And then the note that was not of defiance, but pleading, came back to
her voice, as she added: “But I’d have some of the women that _see_ stay
free from it till we’ve worked this thing out, and made a fair chance
for those that come after us; I’d have ’em show that the world has some
interests for women outside of their own homes, and some work they can
do besides waiting on their husbands and children; I’d have ’em show
that a woman ain’t afraid nor ashamed to walk without leaning; and I’d
have ’em keep their eyes open to see what’s going on. I’d have ’em hold
themselves clear of the danger of being blinded even by love to the
things that need doing.”
No doubt there was much that was wholly vague to Esther Northmore in the
vision of service which lay before the mind of Katharine Saxon. But the
thought of some renunciation for the sake of others—some work, unselfish
and lasting—what generous young soul has not at moments felt the thrill
of it? Their eyes met in a glow of sympathy, if not of full
understanding, and the clock ticked solemnly in a stillness which, for a
minute, neither of them could break.
It was a light step at the open door which suddenly drew their
attention. Kate was coming briskly up the walk with a letter in her
hand.
“It’s from home,” she said, as Esther rose to meet her, “and I thought
you ought to have it.”
She noticed the look of exaltation on her sister’s face, and something
she had never seen before in Aunt Katharine’s. Her efforts at
conversation met with little response. She was conscious of some
atmosphere surrounding these two which she herself could not penetrate,
and she was glad to slip away at the end of a very short call.
“They must have been talking about something awfully serious,” she said
to Tom afterward. “They looked as solemn as a pair of owls. I hope that
girl of Aunt Katharine’s will come home when she said she would. For my
part, I think Esther’s stayed there long enough.”