“Don’t you want to sit by the window here, Mrs. Farnham?” suggested
Mrs. Prouty, the rector’s wife. “The light’ll be better for your
sewing. That dark material is hard on the eyes.”
All the Ladies’ Guild understood that Mrs. Farnham was being posted
there to give the alarm when Mrs. Knapp turned into the walk leading to
the Parish House, and they went on talking with an agreeable sense of
security.
“It’s pretty hard on those Willing’s Emporium people, I say,” Mrs.
Prouty remarked, “after years of faithful service, to have everything
turned topsy-turvy over their heads by a young whippersnapper. They say
he’s going to change the store all around too; put the Ladies’ Cloak
Department upstairs where the shoes always were; and he’s taken that
top floor that old Mr. Willing rented to the Knights of Pythias and is
going to add some new departments. A body won’t know where to find a
thing! In my opinion he’ll live to regret it.”
They all reflected silently that if the young Mr. Willing had only been
an Episcopalian like his defunct uncle, instead of a Presbyterian, Mrs.
Prouty might not have taken the change of the Ladies’ Cloak Department
quite so hard.
“Poor Mrs. Knapp feels simply terrible about her husband’s not being
promoted,” said Mrs. Merritt, the doctor’s wife. “I saw her yesterday
at Wertheimer’s for an instant. Not that she said anything. She
wouldn’t, you know, not if she died for it. But you could feel it. All
over her. And no wonder!”
“Poor thing!” (Mrs. Prouty had acquired the full, solicitous intonation
of the parish visitor.) “She has many burdens to bear. Mr. Prouty often
says that in these days it is wonderful to see a woman so devoted to
her duty as a home-maker. She simply gives up her whole life to her
family! Absolutely!”
“The children are such delicate little things, too, a constant
care.” Mrs. Merritt snatched the opportunity to display her inside
information. “There’s hardly a week that Doctor isn’t called in there
for one or another of them. He often tells me that _he_ doesn’t know
what to do for them. They don’t seem to have anything to do _with_! No
digestions, no constitutions. Just like their father. All but little
Stephen. He’s _strong_ enough!”
“He’s a perfect imp of darkness!” cried old Mrs. Anderson, lifting her
thin gray face from her sewing. “I’ve raised a lot of children in my
day and seen a lot more, but I never saw such a naughty contrary child
as he is in all my born days. Nor so hateful! He never does anything
unless it’s to plague somebody by it. The other day, in the last
thaw it was, I’d just got my back porch mopped up after the grocer’s
boy--you know how he tracks mud in--and I heard somebody fussing
around out there, and I opened the door quick, and there was Stephen
Knapp lugging over a great pail of mud to dump it on my porch. He’d
dumped one already and got it all spread out on the boards. I said,
‘Why, Stephen Knapp, what makes you do such a bad thing?’ I was really
paralyzed to see him at it. ‘What _makes_ you be so bad, Stephen?’ I
said. And he said--he’s got the hardest, coolest way of saying those
wicked things--he said, as cool as you please, ‘’Tause I hate you, Mis’
Anderson, ’tause I hate you.’ And gave me that black look of his....”
Through the tepid, stagnant air of the room flickered a sulphurous
zig-zag of passion. The women shrank back from it, horrified and
fascinated.
“Mr. Prouty says,” quoted his wife, “that Stephen Knapp makes him think
of the old Bible stories about people possessed of the devil. His
mother is at her wit’s end. Mr. Prouty says she has asked him to help
her with prayer. And Stephen gets worse all the time. And yet she’s
always perfectly firm with him, never spoils him. And it’s wonderful,
her iron self-control when he is in one of his tempers. I never could
keep _my_ temper like that. It can’t be due to anything about the way
she manages him, for she never had a particle of trouble with the other
two. Well, it’ll be a great relief to her, as she often says, when he
goes to school with the others.”
Mrs. Merritt now said, lowering her voice, “You know she has a chronic
skin trouble too that she never says anything about.”
“Like St. Paul, Mr. Prouty says.”
“Doctor has tried everything to cure it. Diet. Electricity. X-rays. All
the salves in the drugstores. Oh, no,” she explained hastily in answer
to an unspoken thought somewhere in the room. “Oh, _no_, it’s nothing
_horrid_! Her husband is a _nice_ enough man, as far as that goes.
Doctor thinks it may be nervous, may be due to....”
“Nervous!” cried Mrs. Mattie Farnham. “Why, it’s a real eruption,
discharging pus and everything. I had to help her dress a place on her
back once when Stephen was a tiny baby. Nervous!”
“Oh, Doctor doesn’t mean it is anything she could help. He often says
that just because you’ve called a thing nervous is no reason for
thinking it’s not serious. It’s as real to _them_, he says, as a broken
leg.”
“Well, I’d have something worse than eczema if I had three delicate
children to bring up and only that broken reed of a Lester Knapp to
lean on,” said Mrs. Prouty with energy. “They tell me that he all
but lost his job in the shake-up at Willing’s--let alone not getting
advanced. Young Mrs. Willing told Mr. Prouty that her husband told
her that he’d be blessed if he knew anything Lester Knapp _would_
be good for--unless teaching poetry, maybe. Young Mrs. Willing is a
Churchwoman, you know. It’s only her husband who is a Presbyterian.
That’s how she happened to be talking to Mr. Prouty. She was telling
him that if it depended on _her_ which church....”
“He’s a _nice_ man, Lester Knapp is,” broke in Mrs. Farnham stoutly.
“You know we’re sort of related. His sister married my husband’s
brother. The children call me Aunt. When you come to know Lester he’s a
real nice man. And he’s a smart man too, in his way. When he was at the
State University he was considered one of the best students there, I’ve
always heard ’em say. If he hadn’t married so young, he was lotting on
being....” Her tone changed suddenly--“Oh, Mrs. Merritt, do you think I
ought to hem this or face it?”
“It’d be pretty bungling to hem, wouldn’t it?” Mrs. Merritt responded
on the same note, “such heavy material--to turn _in_ the hem, anyhow.
Maybe you could feather-stitch it down--oh, how do you _do_, Mrs.
Knapp? So glad to see you out. But then you’re one of the faithful
ones, as Mr. Prouty always says.”
They all looked up from their work, smiling earnestly at her, drawing
their needles in and out rapidly, and Evangeline Knapp knew from the
expression of their eyes that they had been talking of her, of Lester’s
failure to make good; that they had been pitying her from their
superior position of women whose husbands were good providers.
She resented their pity--and yet it was a comfort to her. She loved
coming to these weekly meetings of the Guild, the only outings of
her life, and always went home refreshed and strengthened by her
contact with people who looked at things as she did. She passed her
life in solitary confinement, as home-makers always do, with a man
who naturally looked at things from a man’s standpoint (and in her
case from a very queer standpoint of his own) and with children who
could not in the nature of things share a single interest of hers; it
was an inexpressible relief to her to have these weekly glimpses of
human beings who talked of things she liked, who had her standards and
desires.
She _liked_ women, anyhow, and had the deepest sympathy for their
struggle to arrange in a decent pattern the crude masculine and crude
childish raw material of their home-lives. She liked too the respect
of these women for her, the way they all asked her advice, and saved up
perplexities for her to solve. To-day, for instance, she had scarcely
taken out her thimble when Mrs. Prouty passed over a sample of blue
material to ask whether it was really linen as claimed--when anybody
with an eye in her head could see that it was not even a very good
imitation. After that, Mrs. Merritt said she had noticed that Paisley
effects were coming in. Would it be possible to drape one of those old
shawls--she had a lovely one from her grandmother--to make a cloak--to
simulate the wide-sleeved effect--without cutting it, you know--of
course you wouldn’t want to _cut_ it!
Mrs. Knapp said she would think it over, and as she rapidly basted the
collar on the child’s dress she was making, she concentrated her inner
vision on the problem. She saw it as though it were there--the great
square of richly patterned fabric. She draped it in imagination this
way and that. No, that would be too bungling at the neck--perhaps drawn
up in the middle....
They felt her absorption and preserved a respectful silence, sewing and
glancing up occasionally at her inward-looking face to see how she was
progressing. Their own minds were quite relaxed and vacant. Mrs. Knapp
had taken up the problem. What need for any one else to think of it?
They had such confidence in Mrs. Knapp.
Presently, “I believe you could do it this way, Mrs. Merritt,” she
said. “Mrs. Anderson, hand me that piece of sateen, will you, please.
See, this is your shawl. You make a fold in the middle, so, half-way
up--and catch it between with a....” They laid down their work to give
their whole attention to her explanation, their eyes following her
fingers, their minds accepting her conclusions without question.
She felt very happy, very warm, very kind. She loved being able to help
Mrs. Merritt out this way. Dr. Merritt was such a splendid doctor and
so good always to Henry and Helen. And she loved helping somebody to
make use of something, to rescue something fine, as she had rescued the
sofa. It would be a beautiful, beautiful cloak, especially with Mrs.
Merritt’s mink neckpiece made over into a collar, a detail that came
into her mind like an inspiration as she talked.
Yes, she was very happy the afternoons when the Guild met.
* * * * *
Mr. Prouty usually brought his rosy-gilled face and round collar into
the Guild Room before the group broke up and chatted with the ladies
over the cup of tea which ended their meetings. He had something on
his mind to-day--that was evident to every one of those married women
the instant he stepped into the room. But he did not bring it out at
once, making pleasant conversation with the preoccupied dexterity of an
elderly clergyman. As he talked, he looked often at Mrs. Knapp’s dark
intense face, bent over her work. She never stopped for tea. And when
he said in his well-known, colloquial, facetious way, “Ladies, I’ve got
a big job for you. Take a brace. I’m going to shoot!” it was towards
Mrs. Knapp that he spoke.
He tried to address himself to them all equally as he made his appeal,
but unconsciously he turned almost constantly to the keen attentive
eyes which never left his for an instant as he talked. He spoke
earnestly, partly because he feared lest the Presbyterians might steal
a march on him, and partly because of a very real sympathy with the
wretched children whose needs he was describing. When he finished, they
all waited for Mrs. Knapp to speak.
She said firmly, “There’s just one thing to do. A good visiting nurse
attached to our parish work is the only way we could get anywhere.
Anything else--baskets of food, volunteer visiting--they never amount
to a row of pins.”
The feeble, amateur, fumbling plans which they were beginning to
formulate fell to earth. But they were aghast at her.
“A _nurse_! How ever could we get the money to pay one?”
“Only big-city parishes can hope to....”
“We could if we _tried_!” she said, quelling them by her accent. She
looked around at them with burning eyes. She was like a falcon in a
barnyard. “A visiting nurse would cost--let us say a thousand a year.”
“Oh, more than that!” cried Mr. Prouty.
“Not if we supplied her with lodging and heat. Why couldn’t we arrange
the little storeroom at the head of the stairs here in the Parish House
for a bedroom for her? We could....”
“How could you heat it? There’s no radiator there.”
“There’s a steam-riser goes through that room. I noticed it when we
were putting the folding chairs away last week. That would make it warm
enough. We could furnish it by contributions, without its costing a
cent in cash. Everybody has at least one piece of furniture she could
spare from her house--in such a cause. About the pay, now. We have
more than four hundred dollars in the Ladies’ Guild Treasury, and next
Christmas our Bazaar ought to bring in two hundred more; it always
does. We could hire Hunt’s Hall on Union Street for it, and have the
bazaar bigger, and make more than two hundred easily. Then, there’s
Miss Jelliffe, the music supervisor in the public schools, you know.
Now that she’s joined St. Peter’s, I’m very sure she would help us
get up some concerts later on. We could give ‘Songs of All Countries’
in costume, with the children. When you have lots of children in a
program, you can always sell tickets. Their folks want to see them.
And we could get a certain amount from the poor families the nurse
visits--perhaps enough to make up the rest of her salary. They’d
appreciate the service more if they paid something for it. Folks do.”
All this had poured from her effortlessly, as if she had been simply
pointing out what lay there to see, not as though she were beating her
brains to invent it.
They gaped at her breathlessly.
“I wish you would be chairman of the Committee,” said Mr. Prouty
deferentially, “and take charge of the campaign for funds.”
Her face which had been for an instant clear and open, clouded and
shut. “I’d _love_ to!” she said passionately. “I see it all!” She began
to roll her sewing together as though to give herself time to be able
to speak more calmly. “But I mustn’t think of it,” she said at last. “I
have too much to do at home. It’s all I can manage to get to church and
to Guild meeting once a week. I never leave the house for anything else
except to go to market. I can take Stephen with me there. Of course,
after he starts going to school....”
Yes, they all knew what a relief it was when the children started going
to school, and you could keep the house in some kind of order, and have
a little peace.
Their silent, sympathetic understanding brought out from her now
something she had not meant to say, something which had been like a
lump of lead on her heart, the dread that her only open door, would
soon close upon her. “Even for Guild-meetings,” she said, speaking
grimly to keep her lips from trembling, “I may have to give them up,
too. Mr. Knapp has always been able to make an arrangement to get away
from the store an hour and a half earlier on Thursdays to stay with
Stephen and the other two after school. But I don’t know whether he
will be able to manage that now. Mr. Willing, I mean old Mr. Willing
saw no objection. But now....”
Her voice was harsh and dry; but they all knew why. And she was quite
aware of the silent glosses and commentaries she knew them to be
supplying mentally. She pinned her roll of sewing together firmly.
Nobody could put in a pin with her gesture of mastery. “My first duty
is to my home and children,” she said.
“Oh, yes, oh, yes, we all know that, of course.” Mr. Prouty gave to
the aphorism a lip-service which scantily covered his bitter objection
to it in this case.
“Our circumstances don’t permit us to hire help,” she added, making
this resolutely a statement of fact and not a complaint. “I do the
washings, you know.”
“I know. Wonderful! Wonderful!” said Mr. Prouty irritably.
“She sets an example to us all, I always tell ’em,” said Mrs. Farnham.
“Yes, indeed you _do_, Mrs. Knapp!” they all agreed fervently.
Evangeline knew that this was their way of trying to make up to her
for having a poor stick of a husband. She savored their compassion
with a bitter-sweet mixture of humiliation over her need for it and of
triumph that she had drawn this sympathy from them under the appearance
of repelling it. “Nobody ever heard _me_ complain!” she was saying to
herself.
“Well, I’ll do what I can,” she said, standing up to go. “I’ll think
of things. I’ve just thought of another. If we can provide the nurse
with dinner every day, that ought to cut down on cash expenses. There
are twenty-four members of the Guild. That’d hardly mean more than one
dinner a month for each of us. And it would cut off fifteen dollars a
month from the money we’d have to provide. And in that way we could
keep in closer touch with her. Seeing her every day and hearing about
her work, we’d be more apt to coöperate with her right along.”
“Splendid! Simply splendid!” cried Mr. Prouty. “We will be the only
parish of our size in the State to have a visiting nurse of our own.”
He saw himself at the next diocesan meeting the center of a group of
envious clergymen, expounding to them the ingenious devices by which
this remarkable result had been achieved. He had had a good deal of
this sort of gratification since the Knapps had moved into his parish.