Invincible Minnie

CHAPTER FIVE

Unknown to the old lady, who would have been deeply shocked, Frankie and Minnie were in the parlour the next Sunday afternoon sewing, putting the final touches to a dress which Frankie was to wear in the office next day. When, suddenly, as she happened to look up, Minnie saw Mr. Petersen riding up the drive, on his splendid horse, and wearing his breeches and leggins and a quite new coat.

“Frankie!” she cried, in horror. “He’s coming in! Hide the sewing, quick!”

“He wouldn’t care,” Frankie objected, but nevertheless she obeyed, and every trace of their activity had vanished by the time Minnie admitted him.

“Might I see Mrs. Defoe?” he asked.

Minnie explained that she wasn’t able to come downstairs.

“So I’ve heard. But it’s a business matter. Perhaps she’d let me go up.”

She did; they watched him mounting the stairs, which creaked and shook under his heavy tread.

“What can he want?” asked Frances, nervously. “Oh, Minnie, I hope and pray it’s nothing about my not going on!”

“I don’t see what else it can be,” said Minnie, consolingly.

But she was soon enlightened. Mr. Petersen came tramping down again after twenty minutes’ talk and announced that Mrs. Defoe would like to see Miss Minnie.

The old lady was rather agitated.

“Dear! Dear!” she whispered. “The man’s arranged a second mortgage on the east field, so that I can pay off part of that first mortgage Mr. Bascom is so rude about. I don’t understand it very well, but I must say he’s very considerate—very considerate. Dear me! You’ll have to be civil to him, pet. Ask him to sit down and give him a piece of the fruit cake.”

She found him standing in the hall, talking to Frankie, and when she invited him into the parlour, he accepted cheerfully.

“Get Mr. Petersen a piece of cake, Frankie,” said Minnie. She couldn’t bring herself to wait on him.

He was polite, he was clean and well-dressed, he said nothing that could offend her, and yet she was grossly offended, merely by the sight of him, sitting there, in the Defoe parlour, holding his straw hat in his great red hands. Couldn’t he realise?

The fact of his being a Swede was enough. She had a very vague idea where and what Sweden was, knew nothing at all about its people, its history, its music, its literature. She considered all Scandinavians “low.” There was no appeal from that.

Unconscious of his lowness, Mr. Petersen talked on pleasantly, told them what was going on in the town, and all the bits of news he thought they might like to hear. He was actuated by a great good-will toward both of the girls, and a peculiar interest in Minnie. He had thought of her often since that first meeting.

He stopped a long time. When he had gone, Frankie began to laugh.

“Minnie!” she cried. “Did you notice? He really looks awfully like old Michael.”

Minnie refused to smile.

“I think he’s a horrid, presumptuous man,” she said. “I call it a shame that we have to put up with him.”

“Nonsense,” Frankie interrupted her, “it’s he who puts up with us. A darn good thing for us he does! I like him!”

Minnie was destined to see him often. As the old lady had requested, with great dignity, he called regularly every month and was conducted upstairs. She felt pretty sure that he didn’t get his rent, all of it, at any rate, but it didn’t affect him. He was as kind, as cheerful as ever, and always willing to make any repairs that were needed.

It didn’t occur to her for some time that she was the object of “attentions” on his part. She knew that he liked to chat with her, and now and then he brought her fruit from his garden. But she didn’t think, she couldn’t think, that he “meant anything.” With the gulf there was between a Defoe and a Petersen!

It was Frankie who first mentioned it.

“Do you know,” she said, “I think Mr. Petersen’s gone on you, Minnie.”

“Don’t be so vulgar!” Minnie reproved her.

“He’s always asking about you,” Frankie went on. “Oh, he is, Minnie, I know it!”

Quite true; he was. He saw Frankie every day, and was yet proof against her beauty and her happy courage; his heart never beat the quicker for her. He liked her very much, and respected her, and was courteous and kind and friendly toward her, but she had no appeal for him. In Minnie he saw every quality he most admired in a woman. He was happy to sit and look at her, always with an apron on, going about her business in her terribly serious way. He thought her kind, gentle and sympathetic, he thought her thrifty and capable, he admired her fine dark eyes and her matronly figure. He even fancied that she was peculiarly intelligent, because she always listened attentively to him, and was so silent, so mysterious herself. He noticed, too, how her grandmother doted on her, and how Frances looked up to her. He was, in his cautious way, always studying her, until he thought he understood her. While, as a matter of fact, he misunderstood her completely, in every way, like the others.

She was the quietest and the stupidest person in the house, and she ruled both the others; she was the least scrupulous, and they exalted her “goodness”; she did nothing well, and continually they praised her for her wonderful housekeeping. Enigma; extraordinary Minnie, quintessence of womanliness—in Heaven’s name, who is to sit in judgment on you?

III

In the autumn the old lady was permitted to go downstairs once a day, and on the first of these occasions, Mr. Petersen came with a gift of fruit which he had bought in New York. Frances had told him of the old lady’s improvement and he wanted, so he said, to congratulate her. He came as usual on his horse, and Mrs. Defoe, who was sitting by the parlour window, was the first to see him. She frowned.

“Silly nonsense!” she said, half aloud. “A carpenter, capering round the country like a fine gentleman!”

(A carpenter she had decided to consider him.)

He came in; his face and hands looked redder than ever, and he was frankly wiping his forehead with a huge handkerchief.

“Well!” he said cheerfully, “I’m very glad to see you so much better, Mrs. Defoe.”

“Thank you, Mr. Petersen,” she replied, demurely.

“We’re likely to have a mild winter, I believe,” he went on, “from all indications——”

He rose as Minnie came in, grave, like one interrupted in the midst of important work, but mindful of the duties of hospitality.

“I was saying,” he resumed, in his singing drawl, “I think we’ll have a fine, mild winter. I was working in my garden on Sunday——”

“On Sunday!” cried the old lady.

“That’s the only day I have time,” he explained.

“But—— Well, I have my little notions.... Very old-fashioned, I dare say.... You’re not a member of Our church, Mr. Petersen? I don’t remember ever having seen you there.”

He shook his head.

“A Lutheran?”

“No.”

“A—Catholic?”

“I am a Freethinker,” he said gravely.

This was the final straw; Minnie and the old lady stared at him in open disapproval.

“I think maybe on the other side we are not so—religious,” he said.

Mrs. Defoe had long been convinced of that, as she was of their immorality in general, but she was genuinely shocked that, under her roof, in the very room where the minister had sat not a week ago, in the very presence of her Bible and her prayer books, he should openly and without shame proclaim himself a Freethinker! Neither he nor Minnie had any idea what that word implied for her, with what horror and repulsion she had heard her husband speak of Tom Paine. She made some sort of excuse and, supported by Minnie, disappeared into the kitchen.

“I’ll sit here,” she whispered, “until that man’s gone.”

Mr. Petersen remained, happy and undisturbed, talking on and on, while Minnie listened with her usual polite attention, giving no hint of her burning anxiety to get on with her work. She scarcely heard a word; no matter what he was saying, she was thinking, “Oh, dear! Eleven o’clock and Grandma’s bed isn’t made yet!” That was of so much more importance and interest than anything he could say.

He went away, imagining that he had ingratiated himself with them both, by his present of fruit, and by his agreeable conversation; he didn’t suspect that there was now another and still blacker mark against him.

He had only one friend in that household, and that was Frances. Before she had been working a week in his office, she realised something of his quality and as time went on she grew enthusiastic.

“He’s a fine man,” she told her sister. “He’d make a wonderful husband. He has the disposition of an angel, really. He’s so honest, too. Everyone respects him.”

“I wouldn’t marry him if I were starving,” said Minnie, “that common, vulgar carpenter!”

“He’s not common and he’s not vulgar and he’s not a carpenter. I wish you could see his house.”

“I never shall,” said Minnie.

Frances often went there to fetch books for him when he was busy in his office. He lived in the town, in a solid old brick house which he had remodelled and greatly improved, with a respectable Swede and his wife to attend to his wants. Everything very orderly, very simple, very comfortable, a hundred times more civilised than the Defoe home. He had his garden, which gave him a great deal of pleasure, and an excellent little library of Scandinavian and English books, law books, novels, plays, a number of books on Socialism and economics. He read a great deal, in a laborious sort of way, slowly going through page after page and taking the ideas into his own head, to be examined there. His chief interest was Socialism; he could be—and often was—quite eloquent on that topic.

He was rather lonely in Brownsville Landing. He had found no one who was interested in his kind of Socialism, which was something more than discontent and jealousy; he found no one who had read what he had read on the subject; he was not able to interest himself in pool or poker, the popular recreations. Without being unduly vain, he believed himself to be considerably superior to the average inhabitant of the village. Even to the Defoes, as far as intellect and experience were concerned. He actually thought that he might be a good match for Minnie.

Frances thought so too. She read his books with more and more respect and liked to hear him talk. She insisted upon quoting him to Minnie. She liked his plain and fine manner of living, she honoured his virtues.

“Minnie, you’re an idiot,” she said, bluntly. “You couldn’t do better. If you’d come out of the middle ages and really look at him——”

“I don’t pretend to be a modern woman,” said Minnie, virtuously.

CHAPTER SIX

Everything was going just as she wished. She was used now to Frankie’s being away all day; she rather liked it, it gave her a freer hand. She thought of nothing but the daily routine and never tired of it. She would sit with her grandmother and discuss for hours the advisability and the possibility of a new preserving kettle, or whether they should send the rags to be woven into a rug, or whether Thomas Washington had been unfair about the tomatoes. She liked to tell Frankie that she worried about the future, but she really never did. She was remarkably contented. No great effort was required of her; she wasn’t expected to read, or to keep up-to-date; even to trouble about clothes. She could work along in a sort of pleasant daze, just as she wished, praised by everyone for whatever she did, her numerous omissions and failures unknown. The animals were an unfailing happiness to her; she had her grandmother to talk to, and Frankie in the evening, and there was always the gratifying sense of Mr. Petersen’s admiration in the background. Everything going so smoothly, so beautifully, until once more Frankie spoiled it all.

She came home one evening in a fever of excitement. The librarian in the Carnegie Branch—a nice, jolly girl who extolled Mr. Petersen and liked Frankie—had told her of a position in New York.

“She was offered it, but it wouldn’t suit her, so she recommended me. She says she’s sure I could fill it. Wasn’t it nice of her?”

Minnie said nothing.

“It’s an authoress; she wants a secretary. She doesn’t care so much about experience or training, but she wants someone presentable—of good family.”

That was emphasised to appease Minnie.

“It’s thirty dollars a month, free and clear. I’d send you half.”

Minnie looked coldly at her.

“I suppose you’d be only too glad to go,” she said.

“Of course not,” said Frankie, and dropped the subject for the time. Only in her heart longed and longed for that wonderful job, that new, entrancing life in the city.

Of course she got it. That goes without saying. She was twenty-two, and passionately desirous. Of course she got it! But after what a struggle!

At first she renounced the plan utterly. It was selfish. She went to bed, lay by Minnie’s side, weeping quietly for a long time in the dark, longing and longing. Then she grew desperate. She must go! She couldn’t give up such an opportunity. The next day she wrote to the authoress and presently had a letter asking her to call. So she was obliged to tell them.

There was a dreadful scene. They even wept. She was amazed by her own ruthless firmness; she had never imagined she could so trample on these two beloved creatures. She tried, poor girl, to explain something of her own fiery restlessness and vigour, her need for more life. But to no purpose; they saw nothing but her wish and determination to leave them. She ended, as one usually does, by losing her temper, and shut herself in the bedroom, trembling with anger.

“Do they expect me to bury myself here?” she thought. “Just to stop here, forever and ever? It’s all very well for Grandma, she’s seventy-five, and it’s all right for Minnie. A little old maid like her! But me—— I won’t!”

She temporised, fully resolved to hurt them this once, and then to load them with benefits, when her wonderful future should begin.

Daylight faded; the old room grew quite dark, the pallid yellow in the west turned grey, then inky. Her lamp was downstairs, and not for anything would she have gone after it. She drew a rocking chair up to the window and sat there looking out over the melancholy wide fields stretching to the mountains. One of those immeasurably solemn and majestic moods came over her: the night breeze blew on her face, sighing through the pine trees; her spirit was not on earth. High resolves, divine unselfishness, fired her; she wanted to help everyone, not only Minnie and her grandmother, but every single human soul. She felt urged to a mighty destiny....

Then the mood ebbed, and left her chilled and lonely. She could hear Minnie in the kitchen directly beneath her; her pleasant voice talking to Michael; sometimes a cough from the old lady. Like a knife her love pierced her, love for everything safe, familiar and homely.

In another minute she would have rushed down the stairs to fling her arms round her sister, to tell her she would not, could not, ever leave her. But at that moment the door opened and Minnie entered, lamp in hand; her eyes were red, her plain face rather pale.

“Frankie,” she said, and setting down the lamp, caught her sister in a tight embrace.

“Frankie,” she went on, “I’ve been talking it over with Grandma.... And we’re both willing—for you to go——”

She could keep her tears back no longer; they wept together on each other’s shoulders.

Minnie was the first to look up and dry her eyes.

“Now come downstairs, dear,” she said, “I’ve made delicious cornmeal gems for your supper.”

II

It was a bitter loss to Minnie. She drove Frankie to the station that last day with her heart like lead. And though she had voluntarily let her go, and said good-by to her steadily and cheerfully, her very real affection for her sister was hurt beyond remedy. She never again felt quite the same toward her, never lost that faint resentment; always remembered that Frances had wanted to go off and leave her, alone and lonely.

The house was dreadful when she re-entered it. She cried all day as she did her work, and went to sleep in miserable solitude. Oh, but she missed Frankie, the brilliant, the lovely, the ardent! And the more she missed her, the more deeply did she feel the wrong Frankie had done her.

Life had become unsupportable. She thought all the time of some way in which she could change it, a way which should, of course, satisfy her conscience.

For Minnie’s was a conscience which imperiously required satisfaction. She had always to feel sure that she was “doing right.” However, as she was always certain that all her aims were beyond reproach, her conscience never refused to sanction whatever means she employed in arriving at them.

She was more than a Jesuit. She did not so much believe that bad means were justified by a worthy end; she was simply convinced that no means used by her were, or could possibly be, bad.

Remorse and regret were unknown to her. And defeat, too, she had not as yet encountered. From her earliest years she had known how to get her own way. Either a serious manner made any request seem reasonable, or, if this failed, thoughtful consideration had always showed her a way to victory.

And yet, for all her crookedness and her muddle-headedness, and her fierce and ridiculous ruthlessness, wasn’t there something about Minnie that was really sublime? When you look at her whole life, in all its preposterousness, can you really say whether or not she was good? Or bad? Or perhaps was not either good or bad, but elemental and innocent, even in harm, like a force of nature?

She bent her mind now upon her problem, surveyed her situation from every angle. Useless to deny that she considered Mr. Petersen. She turned him over and over in her mind, and, not without deep study, rejected him. He absolutely would not do. She couldn’t be Mrs. Petersen. Although he had never asked her, never mentioned the subject at all.

She was quite determined to marry someone, though, and to marry soon. She couldn’t see any other end to her miseries and her loneliness. She realised that under the present circumstances she was not at all likely to meet anyone marriageable; she could not, like Frankie, roam the world to find a man; she had to use more subtle and more difficult means. And, actually, alone and unaided, the indomitable little thing thought of a way——

III

It was difficult to find a pretext for getting into the village that day. It was not her regular day, nothing was really needed, and no mail expected. Her grandmother was a little annoyed at such obstinacy.

“I can’t see,” she protested, “why on earth you want to go gadding off again to-day, with so much to be done.”

“I’ve seen to everything,” Minnie answered, and it was true.

“You’ll have to go in on Saturday,” the old lady reminded her.

“I need the wire,” said Minnie, calmly. (Chicken wire being the pretext.)

The old lady argued that she could wait. Minnie wished to know what was to be gained by waiting: she had any number of excellent reasons for not waiting. In the end she went out to harness Bess, with secret triumph, knowing that she had disarmed all her grandmother’s suspicions, and wouldn’t need to make explanations when she returned home.

She drove off in the buggy, sitting very straight, with a full sense of her dignity as a young lady of fine old family. It never occurred to her that she was in the least ridiculous. She was not physically vain, but she did consider herself impressive, aristocratic, and it would have been a cruel shock to her to know that the cultured spinster, Miss Vanderhof, used to laugh when she saw her driving by, and say to her mother, “There goes Miss Quixote!”

Penniless and proud Minnie was, but farther than that the simile would not hold. No one less likely than she to tilt against windmills, no one less sympathetic toward a lost cause.

She was engrossed in the management of the silly old horse, scanning the road for anything that might disturb its absurd old nerves, sternly resolved that it shouldn’t over-exert itself. She was convinced that she had a most high-strung, mettlesome animal to handle.

At last she reached the village and drove regally along the Main Street, bowing right and left to the tradespeople, almost all of them her grandmother’s creditors.

She stopped in front of the up-to-date office building, leaving Bess in charge of a reliable little boy in spectacles, personally known to her, then she climbed the stairs and knocked on Mr. Petersen’s door.

He was delighted to see her, drew forward a chair and sat down opposite her with a pleasant smile.

“It’s something new to see you here,” he said. “The first time, isn’t it?”

Minnie said it was.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said appealingly, hesitatingly, “I know I shouldn’t take up your time, but—I don’t know anyone else I could possibly ask——”

“I’m only too happy,” he assured her. “What can I do?”

“Your advice,” she said. “I—things aren’t going—very well.... I wanted to put this in a New York paper. But I didn’t know which was the best, the most—respectable. If you think it’s.... Would you just please look at it?”

She had taken a piece of paper from her shabby little purse and now handed it to him. He read it, read it again, and his face grew scarlet.

“But——” he faltered, “I don’t ... do you mean ... you would teach farming, Miss Minnie?”

“Yes,” she said, calmly. “I could always ask Thomas Washington about things I didn’t know, when they came up. His truck farm is quite a model, you know.”

Mr. Petersen was suffering horribly; he felt that he could not keep a straight face much longer.

“But—you see ...” he said. “People don’t do that much—in these days. There are—you know—any number of agricultural colleges——”

“Yes,” said Minnie, scornfully. “That’s all very well. But practical experience is what anyone needs. You can’t learn farming out of books.”

Mr. Petersen tried to convince her that students at agricultural colleges didn’t occupy themselves exclusively with books, but he failed. She plainly considered all such institutions ridiculous and unpractical. He did convince her, however, that other people would very likely have the same silly notions as he had, and that it would be difficult, to say the least, for her to secure a pupil.

“Then suppose I simply advertise for a boarder?” she said.

Mr. Petersen was silent for some time, torn between a desire to placate Minnie, and a strong dislike for making a fool of himself. Suppose she were able to say afterward, “Well, you didn’t say anything against it. I consulted you!” No! He couldn’t; he had to be honest.

“The trouble is, nowadays people expect so much,” he said, with a distressed frown. “All sorts of conveniences. Bathroom, hot water, gas or electricity. I don’t believe—unless of course you were willing to make very low terms—and in that case you wouldn’t attract the sort of person you’d care to have in the house.”

“I’d have to take what I could get,” said Minnie.

Their points of view were so astonishingly different. Mr. Petersen wished to convey politely to her the idea that no sane person would dream of coming to board in a desolate old farm without even the classic advantages of fresh milk and “scenery.” And Minnie wondered that he couldn’t see the extraordinary and fascinating results which might follow the introduction of a strange man into their household. He might be an old man, who would naturally die and leave her all his money, or a young one who would marry her. She even thought, with irrational delight, of the possibility of an artist, or a poet.... Why wouldn’t the man understand that she didn’t care whether or not she made money from the venture? The essential thing was, that something should happen.

“And with the winter coming on,” said Mr. Petersen.

“I should think,” said Minnie, stiffly, “that there’d be plenty of people who would enjoy a nice, old-fashioned country winter.”

“An old person,” she added. “He might enjoy Grandpa’s library.”

This was absolutely too much for Mr. Petersen. He could no longer restrain himself; he burst into a tremendous laugh. He had a vision of a wretched old man, shivering in their frigid parlour, absorbed in that desolating accumulation of old hymn books, old volumes of sermons, bound volumes of long dead and forgotten magazines, and sickly old novels. By the time he had controlled his mirth, he had mortally and eternally offended Minnie. She rose.

“Thank you very much,” she said, with a polite smile. “It’s very good of you to advise me. I’ll think over all you’ve said.”

“Just a minute!” he cried in alarm. “Please!... Miss Minnie ... if it’s a question of—earning a—little pocket money—why don’t you consider a position in an office?”

A long silence.

“In my office, for instance? If you’d like your sister’s place——”

“No, thank you; I couldn’t leave Grandma,” she answered.

And went out, burning with resentment against him. He knew it; as she drove off he watched her from the window with a sigh of regret. Her pitiful ignorance, her enterprise, her obstinacy, touched him profoundly. His heart positively ached for her.

Alas, Mr. Petersen! By reason of his compassion, forever lost!

CHAPTER SEVEN

She drove off in her usual majestic fashion, agreeably conscious of a new hat. In order that she might compete upon equal terms with Frankie, her grandmother had presented it to her, bought with money withheld from Heaven knows how many creditors. A triumphal progress through the town, and she came up the gravel drive to the station with something faintly resembling a trot. There, however, she was forced to descend, and hold the old mare by the bridle, patting her nose, trying with intense seriousness to soothe her. She couldn’t bear to see her start and tremble, with that distressing rolling of her brown eyes, at the first sound of the engine’s whistle. She had suggested that Frances should walk as far as the drug-store, so that Bess could wait there, out of sight of the trains that so disturbed her, but Frances wrote back with some spirit that she did not intend to lug a heavy bag four blocks for the sake of a silly old horse. She threatened to hire a hack, and rather than suffer that affront to the Defoe pride, Minnie was ready to make great concessions.

She was too much taken up with the horse to see her sister at first, and Frances had an oddly illuminating view of her, an impersonal view. It seemed to her that she had never before looked at Minnie without Minnie’s looking back at her; this was not the Minnie familiar to her as her own reflection in the glass, but a stranger, a solemn, swarthy little woman, very countrified, inclined to plumpness, looking older than her years. She felt terribly sorry for her, hurried to her in affectionate remorse for having so seen her.

Minnie greeted her with her very agreeable smile.

“Frankie, you look splendid!” she said warmly.

So she did. She had a new tweed suit and a quite plain hat, correct, well-chosen things that suited her tall strong figure and permitted attention to fly at once to her gay, brilliant face. Oh, there was some foundation for the Defoe pride! Minnie, in her mind, saluted her sister as a princess, the vindication of the family. She felt not the slightest envy; that was not one of her faults. Or was it that she was too well satisfied with her own quite different allure?

They drove through the Main Street again and past the up-to-date brick building, and, as she hoped, Frances asked her:

“How’s old Petersen these days?”

“All right,” Minnie answered, and was able to tell her several quite satisfactory things he had said on his last visit. He was a poor enough swain, but he was better than none, and the lovely Frankie had none! She listened with interest.

“I’m sure he means something!” she said.

Minnie admitted that she thought so too.

“But of course I don’t encourage him,” she said. “Imagine his even thinking of such a thing—a man of his class!”

“That’s all nonsense,” said Frances, bluntly. “I think he’s splendid. And he’s well read and intelligent—— If you like him——”

“Well, I don’t. Anyway, I’ve got other plans,” said Minnie. “I’ll tell you after supper.”

Frances didn’t ask what these plans were, didn’t show any special interest in them, never for an instant suspected their radical and disturbing character. She did not even notice that Minnie was unusually preoccupied.

She hastened into the house to embrace her grandmother and to make and answer all the traditional enquiries; then looked about her with a peculiar emotion that was almost pain. She loved the old place, in a way; looked toward it while absent as her home and sure refuge, dreamed of it often with longing, but with devout thankfulness that she was no longer imprisoned in it. The memory of the two years she had suffered there was ineradicable.

Minnie and her grandmother seemed to her pitiful, small and shabby. She wanted ardently to help them and to change and improve them. She tried to keep this benevolence out of her manner, but it was always there, and they felt it.

She told them that she hoped soon to be able to send money home regularly.

“I’m going to study shorthand,” she told them, “and then I’ll be able to earn much more.”

She saw their faces, unconvinced, not even much interested, and her enthusiasm waned. She would have to prove her good intentions to them.

II

Supper was over, and the dishes washed and put away. It was rather later than usual, on account of Frankie’s talkativeness, and the old lady announced that she was going “right straight to bed.” To her great surprise, Minnie stopped her.

“Please, Grandma,” she said, “I want to talk to you for a minute. Frankie too. Please come into the parlour.”

They followed her and waited while she lighted the blue china lamp on the centre table; then, at her request, they sat down. The occasion, as she intended it should, had taken on a solemn and important air; she faced them, flushed, serious, dogged.

“Grandma,” she began, “I’ve been thinking a great deal.... I don’t think we ought to go on like this.... Frankie and I aren’t children now, you know.... I think—we ought to know how things stand.”

The old lady looked at her but said nothing; she was waiting for a more definite challenge. She got it at once.

“I mean,” said Minnie, stoutly, “what have we got to live on?”

“What’s this!” cried the old lady tartly.

“I know we’re in debt. People are getting—horrid. They don’t want your—our trade. Really, Grandma, you ought to talk things over with Frankie and me.”

The old lady was almost unable to speak.

“I never!” she repeated, again and again, “I never! At my time of life ... talking things over with two girls of your age!”

“We only want to help,” said Minnie, ingeniously including her sister.

“I’ve got on pretty well for seventy-five years without your assistance,” said the old lady.

“Well,” observed Minnie, “it’s not what I call getting on. Grandma, we’ve got to have some sort of method. I ... do please let us know—what there is?”

“Really, Grandma, I do think it would be better,” Frankie interposed, “Minnie’s a wonderful manager, and I’m sure she could help you ever so much.”

“Two children! It’s outrageous! I’ve managed....”

“Grandma,” Minnie interrupted solemnly, “Mr. Simms spoke to me.”

This was a telling blow; the old lady winced under it.

“He was in a very bad temper,” Minnie went on, “and he said to me, in the rudest way, ‘How many years longer is this bill going to run, anyway?’”

Frances was distressed by the idea of debts.

“Oh, dear!” she cried, “That’s too bad! Do let’s talk it over, Grandma dear, and see what can be done.”

But Minnie met with an obstinacy inflexible as her own. Not one detail could they extract from the old lady. She took refuge in bitter reproach.

“I’ve worked for you both, day in and day out, for more than two years,” she said, “and whatever money I’ve spent was my own. I’m not accountable to anyone for it.” And she called them undutiful, ungrateful, unkind.

“Very well, then,” said Minnie at last, “if you’re going to take it that way ... if you refuse to—to co-operate, Grandma, then I’ll have to accept an offer I had of a position in an office.”

“What office?” Frankie asked, with interest.

“Mr. Petersen’s. He says I can have your place. I’ll go down to the village to-morrow and find a girl to stay with Grandma while I’m away.”

Now, both Frances and Minnie knew that, on account of her liability to those mysterious “attacks,” it wouldn’t do to leave the old lady alone, and they wouldn’t have done so under any circumstances, but she, poor old soul, terrified before their confident youth, not knowing what resources they had, felt them to be capable of everything. She pictured herself, solitary again, ill perhaps, with a strange servant prowling about, prying into everything, pilfering, undoubtedly setting the house on fire....

It was a most painful scene; she broke down, cried, surrendered. Minnie, although with tears in her eyes, saw her opportunity and pressed her point.

“Grandma dear,” she said, “tell us just what you have, and we’ll arrange some way to manage.”

The old lady confessed resentfully to a sole income of twenty-five dollars a month. They were incredulous.

“But in that case,” said Frances, “you must.... Why, there must be....”

“About how much do you suppose—we—owe?” asked Minnie.

This question the old lady couldn’t answer, because she actually did not know. She had never attempted to calculate; it was a topic she did not care to think about. She mentioned a number of tradespeople who had been “very nice”; in fact, she deluded herself into the belief they enjoyed serving a Defoe. They were, she assured the girls, perfectly willing to wait. Wait for Heaven knows what!

“Mr. Petersen, too, I suppose,” Minnie asked with a frown, “I suppose we owe him money?”

“Dear me, child, he’s only too pleased to have someone living here. He told me so himself. He couldn’t rent this place to anyone else; he’d simply have to pay a caretaker.”

“Why did he buy it then?” enquired Frankie.

The subject was not pursued, however, for Minnie had got up, a little pale as her great minute approached.

“Now then, Grandma and Frankie,” she said, “here’s my plan. I want to take charge of the housekeeping and—and the money.... I’ll keep things going and try to pay off the debts.”

“Nonsense, child! What are you going to pay them off with? How far do you imagine——”

“I’ve found a boarder,” she said.

“A boarder!” they both cried, simultaneously.

“A literary gentleman,” she explained, “from New York. He’ll only pay eight dollars a week, but he’s a start, anyway.”

“But, my dear,” Frances objected, “where could you put him?”

“Nowhere in my house!” cried the old lady. “I won’t hear of it! It’s disgraceful! It’s vulgar! I won’t have it!”

“I must!” said Minnie, “I’ve made up my mind. I can’t and won’t go on this way. Either you’ll let me have this boarder or I’ll have to go into Mr. Petersen’s office.”

They argued, wrangled, remonstrated. It was of vital importance to them both. To the old lady a boarder meant incalculable loss of dignity, it meant degradation. She defended her position vehemently, fought to the last ditch for her honour.

But Minnie won. Her grandmother’s resistance crumpled at last before her iron determination. She went up to bed that night in a sort of ecstasy of triumph, drunk with her first victory. Her career had begun. The tiger had tasted blood.

III

She met with some slight opposition from Frances, loyally concealed until they were alone, but this she easily ended by a great deal of talk about the necessity of earning a living.

That’s what she called it; never facing the truth. If someone else had confronted her with it, she very likely wouldn’t have recognised it. Even in her own soul she called it a chance to “earn a living,” when it was really nothing but a ferocious determination to seek another man before accepting Mr. Petersen. She was resolved upon getting married. Mr. Petersen she would take if no one else presented, but not without a struggle, a gallant struggle to find a better. No one, nothing should balk her of this literary man from New York.

It was another little triumph, too, to be the object of such deep interest to her sister. They sat in the gloomy, cold bedroom, Frances on the bed with a blanket round her shoulders, while Minnie, erect on a broken little chair near the lamp, combed her heavy black hair with conscientious vigour.

“How on earth did you ever find him?” Frances asked.

“I saw his advertisement in a New York paper; he wanted country board some place where he could be quiet, for his writing. So I answered it.”

Frances expressed admiration for her enterprise.

“It was wonderful for you to think of such a thing,” she said, “But, Minnie, what an awful lot of work and bother for you!”

“I don’t mind that,” Minnie answered scornfully, “I like to work hard.”

They sat up late, discussing the arrangement of the boarder’s room and everything connected with him. They forgot nothing, overlooked nothing, except the effect of all this upon their grandmother.

She lay awake in her room, vaguely bitter, very unhappy. She had died and been buried that evening. She was supplanted. She was no longer to be the guardian of Frankie and Minnie; in the future they were to take care of her. As far as they were concerned, she was unnecessary; she was—one might say—no longer anything but an urn of sacred ashes, to be reverenced as the receptacle of what had once been an important human being.

They heard her coughing feebly.

“No wonder she coughs!” said Minnie. “She will not have the window open the least crack.”

Frances spent all the next day, which was Sunday, in helping Minnie give the boarder’s room a “good cleaning.” They cherished a tradition that they detested such work, that it disgusted and exhausted them, but one had only to hear their voices to know that the vigorous work delighted them and that they were tremendously happy in doing it. Frankie was on her knees scrubbing the floor, while Minnie cleaned the windows. They talked incessantly; when it became necessary for Minnie to clean the outsides of the panes, Frankie always had to stop work and stand beside her, so that she could still hear.

As a sort of silent protest, their grandmother had dressed herself in her best dress and was sitting in the parlour, reading a book of sermons. The girls insisted that they were too busy to go to church.

“I’ll drive you, if you want,” Minnie told her, grudgingly, “but I can’t spare the time to stay through the service.”

The old lady then said that all this work on the Sabbath was godless and altogether wrong, and that she wouldn’t help in the least. Which Minnie smartly parried by giving her to understand that there was nothing she could do—at her age. Relations were very much strained....

They sat down to supper, weary but profoundly satisfied.

“Well!” said Frances, “I hope he’ll be all right. I hope he’ll be the right sort.”

Minnie shook her head gravely.

“Not likely,” she said, “at eight dollars a week.”

“It isn’t money that gives people distinction,” Frances protested.

“Generally it is,” said Minnie.

Frances departed the next morning with a comfortable feeling that now Minnie wouldn’t be so lonely. Perhaps she had a secret hope like the one Minnie so cunningly dissembled....

A fortnight later she had an enthusiastic letter from Minnie, enclosing a blurred and artistic photograph of herself and the old lady, sitting in the sunset. The polite, the well-informed Mr. Blair had taken it. Then for a long time she heard no more on the subject, and she was too much engrossed in her own affairs to make enquiries about those of anyone else.

CHAPTER EIGHT

But before they had reached the house, she had begun to see compensations in him. He was affable, obliging, and courtly; so attentive that she was disposed to overlook his age, his bagginess and his dustiness.

His conversation was remarkable. He talked ceaselessly, in a bland, slow voice. He explained everything, because all things were known to him. They passed the rubber factory, and he explained the entire process of rubber manufacture, went back to the gathering of rubber, and finally to curious facts about rubber trees. He took pains to use terms she would understand. Also he explained to her why Bess refused to pass milk waggons, and told her a great deal about horses hitherto unknown to her.

Of the old lady he made an easy conquest. He obeyed the call to supper with alacrity, but although he had had quite an hour and a half to rest and make ready, although warm water and a clean towel and a new cake of scented soap had been provided for him, it was evident that he had spent no time in washing. His nails were grimy, like his cuffs. Still, he was so pleasant and so courtly, so full of interesting information, that the two women couldn’t withstand him. Especially the old lady.

“Minnie,” she whispered, when the girl rose to clear the table, “why don’t you make some of your fudge for Mr. Blair?”

Minnie was quite willing and Mr. Blair very much pleased; he rather archly admitted a “sweet tooth.” She made haste to clear the table, and while the kettle was heating for the dishes, she started her confectionery, bending seriously over a saucepan on the fire. Michael sat watching her with scornful eyes. He never looked at anyone else; all his faith was placed in Minnie; he expected nothing from any other source.

She was somewhat surprised at seeing Mr. Blair saunter in; the kitchen was not the place for any man, let alone a boarder. He was, however, oblivious of the proprieties. He offered to, and insisted upon, drying the dishes for her. Humorously he tied about his ample middle a gingham apron and set to work slowly but competently. He gave her many points, too, about how things might be done better, how she could save steps, and so forth. About the range, and the coal, about soaps, about how a kitchen should be arranged efficiently.

Then, when everything was neat and clean, the fire banked and Michael and his brethren locked in the cellar, he followed Minnie into the parlour, bringing a plate of the fudge.

They sat up unusually late, very cosy, about the blue china lamp, eating Minnie’s candy and hearing Mr. Blair’s stately voice telling of dairy farming in Holland. He admitted that he had never been there, but he knew. This was a curious feature about Mr. Blair; he always spoke as a witness, irrefutable and calmly positive; apparently his knowledge came through inspiration or clairvoyance, for he never mentioned having read or heard any of it.

“Well,” said the old lady to Minnie, as they were going up to bed, “I don’t know when I’ve spent a pleasanter evening!”

II

Mr. Blair had a remarkable opportunity to display his quality the next day, for the old lady had another of her “attacks.” He at once assumed a position of authority. He sat by her bedside making the most professional enquiries, and establishing boundless confidence by his graveness and his assurance. When the doctor arrived, he met him as a colleague, conferred secretly with him, gave his own opinion and listened with professional courtesy to that of the other. Then went out to the stable to comfort Minnie.

“It is not immediately serious,” he told her; “I studied medicine for some time, and I understand these things.”

He not only comforted Minnie, but he helped her in material ways. He was very “handy,” somewhat in her own manner. That is, he had a certain manual facility, and was very easily satisfied: he didn’t require his “jobs” either to look well or to wear well. He was of a most domestic disposition. He really enjoyed sitting in the kitchen and peeling potatoes while he talked; he even swept the parlour with wet tea leaves. He put up shelves and hooks, convenient although not quite trustworthy; he carried the old lady’s trays upstairs, made the coffee for breakfast after a scientific method which required a large amount of coffee and took quite half an hour; he looked after the fire night and morning; did everything except the literary work he had come there to do.

It appeared that he had not yet begun this literary career; he had been, he said, a business man, but his health had failed, and he had decided to earn his bread by his pen. In a series of special articles on America’s Industries. He had planned them all meticulously, the twelve articles, with their titles, sub-titles, number of words in each, and the space that was to be occupied by photographs. Only he had not as yet written a single sentence.

His health was deceptive; no one would have suspected him of being so broken-down, except for a lassitude that was almost incredible. He ate very well, and slept well, and was always cheerful; still it was necessary for him to take a tonic, a “heart medicine,” and a “digestive stimulant.” Every morning he read the newspaper thoroughly from end to end, then, after he had helped Minnie with the housework, he sat. Not reading, simply sitting, in the sun, if there were any, but always by a window, for he liked to see anything that passed.

The relations between him and Minnie were curious. She knew that he admired her; he often said so, and she exhibited a very discreet complacence toward his compliments. She was, as always, impersonal, detached, with an agreeableness difficult to misunderstand. She was considerate and pleasant toward him, just as she was toward her grandmother—or toward Thomas Washington. What she really thought of him no one knew, but Mr. Blair, with characteristic simplicity, was sure that she was well-disposed toward him, if not something more....

He was a Southerner, and a mighty consequential one. He believed that he understood women, that his gallantry, learning and courtliness combined could not fail to conquer. Even the hard fact that he made no headway did not disconcert him. He knew it was impossible for him to fail.

It was not long before his too affectionate disposition became evident. He wanted to take Minnie’s hand and pat it, or even put an arm about her waist in a fatherly way. Dalliance, however, had no part in Minnie’s life; it was not one of her weaknesses, and she discouraged him pretty brusquely. Or rather, tried to discourage him. After a rebuff he would stroll over to Thomas Washington’s cottage and bargain to be taken into the village in Thomas’s Ford. Thomas, in spite of his dignity, was not above a certain pride in being seen talking confidentially with a white man; he almost always accommodated him. And Mr. Blair would buy things for Minnie and the old lady and come cheerfully home again. They couldn’t help being pleased, they had so very few pleasures. They would all sit in the old lady’s room, eating the ice-cream he had brought and, of course, listening to him. Only when he recurred to the subject of Thomas Washington and his race did they become restive. They disagreed with him strongly. In the first place, they didn’t at all like the word “nigger.” Then, his opinions, boiled down, amounted simply to this: that “niggers” were created simply for the convenience of Southern whites, that it was impudent and radical and altogether harmful to Southern industry for Northerners to have them in their country at all; that no one but a Southerner knew anything about them, had any right to their services, or could possibly get on with them. He and he alone knew how to “handle” Thomas Washington—that is, to exploit him. He did not think it necessary to tell them that he had to pay well for any favour received from Thomas. He wanted them to think that he stood in place of the Lord to that family—that the Washingtons, young and old, couldn’t help adoring and respecting his Southernness. But Minnie and the old lady knew Thomas too well.

A great triumph for Minnie was the showing of this boarder to Mr. Petersen. He had said that she couldn’t get one! He came in one afternoon and she presented them to each other, carefully watching the Swedish countenance for some sort of chagrin. Useless; he smiled his slow smile and held out a huge paw, quite willing to sit down and talk—or listen.

III

She was glad, though, that Mr. Petersen didn’t know all about the boarder, for then her triumph wouldn’t have been quite so complete.... His affectionateness, for instance, and his absent-mindedness. He continually forgot to pay his board. Minnie would be forced to remind him, then he would immediately take out a pocketbook and pay a week’s board, apparently not realising that he owed for two weeks, or perhaps three. He never got up to date. It was a great worry. She had to buy things for him, food and the “root beer” he was so fond of, under the most dreadful difficulties. The tradespeople, knowing that she had a boarder, presupposed cash, and grew more and more grudging. She couldn’t offend and perhaps lose the precious boarder by too strict insistence upon the letter of the contract; he was supposed to pay in advance, of course, but if he didn’t!...

There were certain times when he really alarmed her, when there was something about him that she could not endure, something not fully understood but none the less comprehended. For, in spite of her soberness and her sedateness, Minnie was after all only a young girl, and a very ignorant one. She had nothing but her instincts and her cool temperament to protect her. She had, one might say, no sex at all, no trace of passion. She adored compliments and attentions, and very sensibly wanted a husband to work for her, but she recoiled with a quite morbid aversion from the idea of a kiss. Mr. Blair’s little attempts were repulsive to her.

He used to propose walks after supper, but after one trial, she never accepted again. It was a horrible experience. She was too innocent to know whether she had been insulted or whether it was all quite harmless, but she could not deny her own distress. She lay awake and wept—a very little—at the idea of marrying Mr. Blair. Of course, she could, and she would, but it wasn’t an agreeable prospect.

She believed that he must have a fair enough income, for he did no work and yet had all he wanted. Tobacco and magazines and new neckties were his sole indulgences, with an occasional bag of cheap candy. He was the most contented fellow alive. It was not possible that he suffered from the usual human “money worries.” His slowness in paying his board she attributed to his literariness.

IV

It was a fine morning, late in April; Minnie had finished her work in the kitchen and was on the point of going up to “do” the bedrooms when Mr. Blair came in with a camera in his hand.

“I’m going to try to get a picture of you,” he said.

She said she was busy but he waved that aside.

“Call your cats,” he said pompously, “I’ve got an idea.”

He ordered her to sit on the back steps, with Michael in her arms and the others one on each side.

“‘My Lady of the Cats,’ I’ll call it,” he said. And went on to tell her, not for the first time, of the artistic photographs he had had in various exhibitions. He told her that photography was quite as great an art as painting. She knew nothing to the contrary; she had not a drop of artist blood in her veins; who knows if perhaps she wouldn’t have admired extravagantly his shadowy ladies in kimonos with light gleaming on rippling hair. She had observed that his subjects were always women, and that he had a strong penchant for glowing glimpses of white breasts and arms, and a certain unrestraint of attitude which disturbed her. He went as far as he dared with her. He wanted to take her picture climbing a ladder with an apronful of peaches, but somehow she knew that the peaches were a subterfuge, and so discouraged his artistic fancy. Then he proposed “Day Dreams,” in which she was to be lying, very much stretched out, on the sofa. That too she rejected, uneasily.

This new idea, however, showed itself quite innocent from every side, and she willingly tried to help. It was an unruly group, though; it took a tremendous time to prepare it and even at that it didn’t entirely satisfy him. He looked at them through the lens, came over to Minnie and looked down at her critically.

“A little to this side,” he said, and, quite unnecessarily, put a hand under her chin and turned her head.

“You have a lovely neck,” he said, but though his tone was impersonal and professional, there was a repulsive look about his big, loose mouth.

He would have had a severe rebuke, boarder or no boarder, if Mr. Petersen had not saved him. But at the sight of his horse coming along the drive, she stifled her anger. She would not, in his presence, admit a failing in this boarder whom she had so brilliantly evoked. She was uneasy, though, very uneasy, wondering if Mr. Petersen had seen....

“I stopped at the post-office,” he said, “and fetched your mail.”

She thanked him and took the solitary letter from his hand. She had, of course, to ask him to dismount, which he did, and sat on the steps, chatting with Mr. Blair and stroking Michael, whose prototype he unknowingly was. Minnie apologised and opened the letter.

Fatal letter! Fatal news! Without a word she handed it to Mr. Blair and went into the house.

She reflected over it all that night, lying awake longer than she ever had before. She knew she was beaten, that she had failed.

But this very defeat, the first she had yet known, had a curious effect upon her. She was humiliated and shaken, but far from despair. She had never felt so calm, so sensible, so competent. She wasted little time in anger or regret; she turned her thoughts firmly toward the future, looking for a way out of her trouble.

And found one, an amazing one, the first of her remarkable ventures. She planned it out in every detail that night, envisaged the obstacles and arranged her campaign against them. She certainly did not intend to stop where she was, for Mr. Petersen to laugh at, for the brilliant Frankie to pity. Wounded vanity, mixed with envy, pricked her.

Her life really began that night. Until then she had been dormant, untried; now came her first opportunity to prove her spirit, and she rose to it magnificently, gallantly, ruthlessly.

V

The day before Christmas Frankie came home.

A new Frankie, who blushed as she caught sight of Minnie at the end of the platform, engaged with Bess. Impossible that her Minnie should not notice the change in her, not read the happiness in her trembling smile.

She hugged her passionately, and climbed into the buggy beside her. She was disappointed that Minnie noticed nothing unusual, hadn’t a single question to ask. And Minnie, doggedly silent, was resentful because Frankie couldn’t see that something was wrong. They did not speak for a long time; then Frankie, too happy not to be affectionate, turned a bright face to her sister.

“What’s the news at home?” she asked. “How’s Grandma? And Mr. Blair?”

“Mr. Blair’s gone,” said Minnie, curtly.

“Gone! Not really!”

She was shocked to see tears in Minnie’s eyes.

“But, my dear, what happened?”

Minnie turned away her head.

“A letter from his wife....”

“So he was married!...”

“Yes.... He never mentioned it.... She wrote that he’d written her again for his board money. She’d already given it to him twice, and couldn’t afford to give it again. She said she hoped he’d pay me, but that she couldn’t be responsible for his debts. That she was a business woman and found it hard enough to get along anyway. And advised me not to ‘place too much confidence in his statements.’ She said she was sure that by this time his health was much improved——”

“Was he ill, then?”

“Ill! He was as strong as an ox. He ate and ate.... And he just calmly went off.... He said he was going into the city to get some money from the bank, and would come back on the last train, and never did. And he owed for five weeks.”

She wiped her eyes sternly and went on.

“Grandma’s so mean and petty about it. Keeps saying ‘I told you so, Miss.’ You know she never did. She liked him more than anyone did. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Frances did her best to console the frustrated Minnie.

“Maybe he’ll come back,” she suggested, inanely.

“He’d better not!” said Minnie, “Nasty, lazy cheat! Oh, Frankie, I will admit that I was deceived in that man!”

Obviously this was no moment in which to tell her news. With patience and good temper Frankie waited, listened to the long and harrowing story of Mr. Blair and said what she could to heal her sister’s wound. She was really distressed about Minnie, she was so unlike her usual self; she was severe and cold. It would be nothing less than cruel to tell the poor soul of her own good-fortune.

So she kept it to herself all the afternoon. With the superstition so natural to the happy, she fancied she was making her happiness more secure, earning it, in a way, by repressing and disciplining herself, pretending to take an interest in the affairs of the household, effacing herself and her important news.

No one questioned her; they were absorbed in their own calamity. The old lady showed her a sort of diary of the expenses incurred by Mr. Blair, “to say nothing of the extra work.” She did crow over Minnie without mercy; she was vindicated, once more the infallible adult, competent to guide and rebuke youth. Minnie said very little; she had, however, a sinister air of having something up her sleeve.

VI