Pennington was buried in the yard of the church wherein he had taught
school. No detail of the arrangements was submitted to the Major. For a
time he held out that the family burial ground was the proper place for
the interment, under the trees where his father and his mother were laid
to rest, but Louise stood in strong opposition to this plan, even though
appearances called for its adoption. So, after this, the Major offered
no suggestion.
At the grave there was no hysterical grief. The day was bleak and the
services were short. When all had been done, the Major gently put his
arm about his daughter and said that she must go home with him.
"Not now," she replied; and she did not look up at him. "But please
don't worry over me; don't feel that you have to do something. Mother is
going with me, and after that you may know what I intend to do. Please
don't urge me. Let me have my way just a little longer."
He stepped back from her and Mrs. Cranceford took her arm and led her
away. The Major slowly followed them. He felt the inquisitive look of a
neighbor, and his shoulders stiffened.
In a buggy the mother and the daughter had followed the hearse; the
Major, Tom and big Jim Taylor were driven in the family carriage. Louise
was to go back to the desolate house. The Major stoutly opposed this,
pleaded with her after she had seated herself in the buggy, clutched the
spoke of a muddy wheel as if he would hold her back. She took the lines
from her mother, tossed them upon the horse, folded her arms, and in
silence waited.
"John, dear," said Mrs. Cranceford, "let us drive on. There, please
don't attract the attention of those people. You know what gossips they
are."
The Major spoke to Louise. "Will you answer me one question?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is it your intention to live alone in that wretched house?"
"No, sir; but I must go there to think."
The Major stepped back, and with a handkerchief wiped his muddy hand.
"Margaret, I leave her with you," he said.
Shortly after the Major reached home his wife arrived, but Louise was
not with her. "I could do nothing," she said. "When we drove up to the
gate she jumped out and declared that I must come on home. I pleaded
with her, but she wouldn't yield. Two old women were in the house and
she said that they were company enough; she wanted to think and they
would not distract her thoughts. I told her that if she would agree to
let me stay I would not say a word, but she shook her head. 'You shall
hear from me to-morrow,' were her words, 'but you must leave me to
myself to-night. It is of no use to urge me.' I saw that it wasn't, and
I drove away. I declare I can't make her out."
"Most unreasonable creature I ever saw," the Major replied, uneasily
walking up and down the room. "She has made me contemptible in the eyes
of this neighborhood, and now appears determined to disgrace herself."
"Don't say that, John."
"Why not? It's a fact."
"It is not a fact. I am not afraid of a daughter of mine disgracing
herself. It's only bad blood that disgraces itself."
"I am not so sure about that when women throughout the entire country
are striving to be unnatural. By the blood----"
"John."
He wheeled about and looked at her. "But I ask you if it isn't enough to
make a saint pull out his hair? Simply opposed her marriage, used
legitimate argument, and afterward begged like a dog. Isn't it enough to
make me spurn the restraints of the church and take up the language of
the mud-clerk?"
"No, dear; nothing should prompt you to do that. You have a soul to be
saved."
"But is it necessary that my life should be tortured out of me in order
that my soul may be saved? I don't care to pay such a price. Is it put
down that I must be a second Job? Is a boil the sign of salvation?"
"For goodness' sake don't talk that way," she pleaded, but she had to
turn her face away to hide her smile from him.
"But I've got to talk some way. Just reflect on her treatment of me and
how I have humbled myself and whined at her feet. And I ask what may we
not expect of such a creature? Is it that she wants to be different from
anyone else? Let me tell you one thing: The woman who seeks to be
strongly individualized may attain her aim, but it leads to a sacrifice
of her modesty. I say she is in danger of disgracing herself."
Mrs. Cranceford shook her head. "You wait and we shall see. No member of
my family was ever disgraced. I may be distressed at her peculiarities,
at times, but I shall never be afraid for her conduct."
Early the next morning a negro brought a letter from Louise. Mrs.
Cranceford hastened to the office to read it to the Major. It appeared
to have been written with care and thus was it worded:
"My Dear Mother:--I am thankful that I am not to look upon the surprise
and sorrow you must feel in reading this letter. I hardly know how to
rake together and assort what I desire to say, but I will do the best I
can, and if you fail to understand me, do not charge it against
yourself, but list it with my other faults. What I have recently gone
through with is quite enough to unstring the nerves of a stronger woman
than I am, and what must be my condition? Worn out and weary of any life
that I could conceive of here--don't you see how I am floundering about?
But give me time and in all honesty you shall know the true state of my
mind. Many a time father has said that he did not understand me, and
more than once you have charged me with being strange. But I am sure
that I have never tried to be mysterious. I have had thoughts that would
not have appeared sane, had I written them, but I have never been
foolishly romantic, although my education has been far from practical.
The first thing I remember was a disappointment, and that was not being
a boy. It may be a vanity, but at that early age I seemed to recognize
the little privileges given to a boy and denied a girl. But as I grew
older I was shocked by the roughness and cruelty of boys, and then I was
pleased to reflect that I was of gentler mold. At some time of life I
suppose we are all enigmas unto ourselves; the mystery of being, the
ability to move, and the marvelous something we call emotion, startles
us and drives us into a moody and speculative silence. I give this in
explanation of my earlier strangeness. I could always talk readily, but
never, not even to you, could I tell completely what I thought. Most
young people are warned against the trash that finds its way--no one
appears to know how--into the library of the home, but I remember to
have been taken to task for reading mannish books. And in some measure I
heeded the lecture thus delivered, but it is to mannish books that I owe
my semblance of common sense."
"What is she trying to get at?" the Major broke in. "Have you read it?
If you have, tell me what she says."
"I am reading it now," his wife replied; and thus she continued:
"The strongest emotion of my life has been pity, and you know that I
never could keep a doll nor a trinket if a strong appeal was made for
it. I grew up to know that this was a weakness rather than a virtue, but
never has my judgment been strong enough to prevail against it. And this
leads me to speak of my marriage. That was the result of pity and fear.
Let me see if I can make you understand me. That poor man's condition
smote my heart as never before had it been smitten. And when he made his
appeal to me, hollowed-eyed and coughing, I trembled, for I knew that
my nature would prompt me to yield, although I might fully estimate the
injustice to myself. So my judgment fought with my sense of pity, and in
the end, perhaps, might have conquered it, but for the element of fear
which was then introduced. The question of his soul was brought forward,
and he swore that I would send it to heaven or to hell. In the light of
what I have read, and in the recollection of what I have often heard
father say in his arguments with preachers, perhaps I should have been
strong enough to scout the idea of a literal torment, but I could not.
You remember old Aunt Betsy Taylor, Jim's black mammy. When I was very
young she was still living on the place, and was to me a curiosity, the
last of her race, I was told. I did not know what this meant, but it
gave her words great weight. Once she pictured hell for me, the roaring
furnace, the writhing of the damned, and no reason and no reading has
ever served to clear my mind of her awful painting. With her as the
advocate I could hear the groans of lost souls; and in my childish way I
believed that the old woman was inspired to spread the terrors of
perdition; nor has education and the little I have seen of society,
wholly changed this belief. So when Mr. Pennington swore to me that if I
refused to marry him he would die blaspheming the name of God, my
judgment tottered and fell. I sit here now, looking at the bed whereon
he died. You saw him breathe his last, saw his smile of peace and hope.
That smile was my reward. For it I had wrung the heart of my father and
wiped my feet upon his pride. But I had sent a soul above. I have set
myself to the task of perfect frankness, and I must tell you that in my
heart there was not the semblance of love for him, love as you know it;
there was only pity and I can say that pity is not akin to love. Yes. I
sold myself, not as many a woman has, not as I would have been praised
and flattered for doing--not for money, but to save a soul. This is
written at night, with a still clock above me, the hands recording the
hour and the minute of his death, and the light of the sun may fade my
words and make them ghastly, but I am revealing, to my mother, my inner
self."
Mrs. Cranceford paused to wipe her eyes, and the Major, who had been
walking up and down the room, now stood looking through the window at
the sweep of yellow river, far away.
"But does she say when she is coming home?" he asked without turning his
head. "Read on, please."
The sheets were disarranged and it was some time before she obeyed.
"Read on, please," he repeated, and he moved from the window and stood
with his hands resting on the back of a chair. Mrs. Cranceford read on:
"There is one misfortune of mine that has always been apparent to you
and that is my painful sensitiveness. It was, however, not looked upon
as a misfortune, but rather as a fault which at will I might correct,
but I could no more have obviated it than I could have changed my entire
nature. When father charged me with ingratitude I realized the justice
of the rebuke (from his point of view), while feeling on my side the
injustice of the imputation, for I was not ungrateful, but simply in a
desperate state of mind. I am afraid that I am not making myself clear.
But let me affirm that I do not lose sight of the debt I owe him, the
debt of gallantry. I had always admired him for his bravery, and
hundreds of times have I foolishly day-dreamed of performing a
life-saving office for him. But the manner--and pardon me for saying
it--the arrogance which he assumed over me, wounded me, and the wound is
still slowly bleeding. But in time it will heal, and when it does I will
go to him, but now I cannot."
"But she must come to me or let me go to her!" the Major broke in. "I
confess that I didn't understand her. Why, there is heroism in her
composition. Go ahead, Margaret. She's got more sense than all of us. Go
ahead."
Mrs. Cranceford continued: "I can conceive of nothing more useless than
my life at home would be. The truth is, I must do something, see
something, feel the throb rather than the continuous pressure of life.
Thousands of women are making their way in the world. Why should not I?
And it is not that I mean wholly to desert you or to love you less, but
I must go away, and before this letter reaches you I shall be on my
journey----"
Mrs. Cranceford's trembling hands let the paper fall. The Major grabbed
it up, fumbled with it, put it upon the desk and sat down. In silence
they looked at each other, and their vision was not clear. "Read on," he
said. "We can stand anything now."
She wiped her eyes and obeyed him: "Shall be on my journey. I have in
mind a certain place, but what place it is I must not tell you. If I
succeed I shall let you know, and if I fail--but I will base nothing
upon the probability of failure. I know that you will look upon this
almost as an act of insanity, and carrying out my resolve to be frank, I
must say that I do not know but that it is. It is, though, the only
course that promises relief and therefore I must take it. You must not
charge me with a lack of love for you and never must you lose faith in
me. It is singular that after all these years, after all our
confidences, I should choose a pen wherewith to make myself known to
you, and you may call me a most unnatural daughter, but you must charge
my unnaturalness to nature, and nothing that nature does should appear
unnatural when once we have come to understand it. I have money enough
to last me until I can secure employment. I hope that I know what sort
of employment it may be, but as there is in my hope a fear of failure, I
will not tell you. My training has not been systematic enough to enable
me to be a school teacher, for I know a little of many things, but am
thorough in nothing. But in some other line the mannish books may help
me. In reading this over I realize that I am vain and affected. But put
it down as another frankness. God bless you and good-bye."
"I told you she would disgrace herself," the Major exclaimed, slapping
his hand upon the desk.
"She has done nothing of the sort," his wife replied, stepping out and
closing the door.