Part 9

The mother went around all day with a stone on her heart, that made her face white and drawn and breathing difficult, while Annette and Elinor talked excitedly and incessantly with household avocations half done, and sought the dear little wayward sister separately afterwards, Annette with mute caresses, and larges pieces of bread and jam to supplement the lack of a breakfast, and Elinor with intelligent reasoning as she put the child’s collar straight and fastened her belt. Tina had never dressed herself alone in her life. “I thought I cared for Tommy Burns, Tina, when I was seventeen, and as for even looking at him now——! When it comes down to it, dear, what men have you ever seen?”

“I’ve seen—Robert,” said Tina dangerously, under her breath.

Elinor’s arms fell away from her office of tiring woman; she stood staring.

“Robert——?”

Tina’s eyes gleamed with a daring, revealing, lightning flash: “Well, if you’re never nice to a person yourself, Elinor——” She escaped to the doorway for a parting shot.

“Yes, _Robert_!” she called back elfishly, and fled, passing her mother with no recognition, and actually going out in young Fanshawe’s car with him for all the afternoon, only coming back in time for dinner, which was a state function, with guests, and going to bed immediately afterwards.

It is strange how one untoward event disrupts all the working order of the mind; that which has given joy loses its flavour, that which has been counted on as sure becomes fluctuant. Everything has to arrange itself anew. If Elinor wrote a note to a Robert who had neglected to appear, it was not from the dictates of reason, but from a novel and jealous desire for his presence. If Annette and Joseph sat up unusually late after the guests had departed it was, perhaps, because figuring over a housekeeping text-book wasn’t as satisfying as sometimes, and they had to keep at it a little longer to capture the pleasure of that future living together. Even to the most unselfish, the most vernally patient of lovers waiting may show a grim face, all “bare of bliss” at times, especially when confronted with a boy of twenty-one who has money and to spare for that leap over the matrimonial barriers. It was only after thoroughly studying a mysterious way of Approaching a Butcher, by which, although special cuts and roasts were so much a pound, you got a whole diagrammic ox for a dollar, that that prophetic feeling of happiness mingled once more with the lovers’ goodnight kiss. Heaven only knows what delicate sentiment was embedded in those visionary steaks and chops!

Long after Joseph had gone Mrs. Malison and Annette talked in the mother’s room, with low, painfully murmuring voices, taking counsel together into the small hours. It was three of the clock when the hurrying of soft footsteps and a touch at the chamber door startled them, and then a piteous voice:

“Momsey; oh, momsey!”

The mother was up on the instant, opening the door; by the light in the hall, Tina’s eyes, ice-blue, stared at her over the lace frills of her night-dress. “I came to tell you—if you feel like that—the way you looked to-day—I’ll tell Francis I won’t marry him; it will _kill_ me; but if you are happy it doesn’t make any difference. I can’t _stand_ seeing you look like that! It will kill me, but you’ll be happier, any way.”

“Oh, dear me!” said Mrs. Malison in despair—anxiety lent roughness to her voice. “This is nonsense, Tina. Come up-stairs this minute. The idea! with nothing on your feet—you’ll get your death of cold.” She led the girl to her own bed, tucking the soft form with resolute fingers, and lying down herself afterwards under the coverlet with her cheek against Tina’s chill flesh.

“Oh, Tina, as if mother could ever be glad if you were unhappy! It’s just because I fear that if you have what you want that it will only be for your unhappiness that I look as I do. If your father were only at home!”

Tina gave a movement of impatience, though she lay close cuddled in her mother’s arms. “I think it would have been a great deal better if we had eloped—Francis and I,” she murmured.

“Tina!” The mother gave a horrified gasp.

“Well, I do think so—it would have saved everything, all the feeling so badly, and the talk, and everything. Francis and I wanted to go off in the automobile this afternoon and get married then, and settle it all at once. People never seem to mind a bit after it’s all over—the Boggses made such a fuss about Lucy’s marrying that widower and now nobody says a word about it. She comes to Sunday-night’s tea with _his_ children.”

“But you didn’t elope, my darling,” said Mrs. Malison, searching for the one crumb of comfort.

“Francis thought you might mind.”

“That was _very_ right of Francis.”

“And he was afraid the car would break down; he had to take it to the garage for repairs.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed the poor mother once more.

It was only after Tina seemed to be asleep that she stole down-stairs again to drop into an uneasy slumber herself.

This battle was going to be a long and weary fray.

They were all down unusually early to breakfast but Tina.

“Don’t waken Miss Tina,” Mrs. Malison warned the maid.

“Sure she’s not in the house, ma’am.” Emma’s tone was glibly important. “Bridget said as how Miss Tina slipped out at six o’clock this morning; she came down the stairs a tiptoe in her new grey shuit. ’Twas towards the trolley car she wint.”

It had happened then already—the blow had fallen! The headstrong child had gone. Mrs. Malison whispered the words with lips that could hardly frame the words. Other people’s daughters had deceived them and done this thing—she had felt shamed for them—but hers! The room went around with her, some one was bringing her water. She saw the scared faces of Annette and Elinor bending over her—the moments seemed like dreary years as they passed.

The square, marble-pillared clock, in its old-fashioned glass case on the mantel, chimed eight musically as Tina came into the room. Her blue hat with its white feathers was pushed sideways on her rumpled hair, and the new grey suit was wrinkled and spotted with clay from an enormous pot of daisies hugged tightly in her arms. She set it down hastily on the white cloth of the breakfast table, and leaned back, panting, against the mahogany sideboard laden with its tall old silver; the light from the parting of the heavy curtains leaped towards her, and held her in its shining embrace.

“I didn’t know that was going to be so heavy. The trolleys were _so_ slow, they wouldn’t connect. I went to get the flowers for you, momsey, because you’re so fond of them.”

Her eyes took swift tally of the group, unheeding of their exclamations. “Please leave the room, Emma——” she went on speaking with a defiant hardness, broken now and then by an odd, piteous little catch in her young voice:

“I suppose you thought I’d eloped. I promise you now that I won’t; I won’t get married until you and daddy say I can. I’ll wait _forever_ if you say so. I can’t bear to hurt any one’s feelings. But I’ll never be happy here at home any more, and I’ll never care for anybody here. I may act as if I cared, but I won’t, really! I’ll only care for Francis—as he cares for me.” The wind from some far source seemed to shake her with its ruthless power. “You think I’m so young—you make me younger than I really am so that I don’t know how to tell you what I mean—to tell you so that you’ll understand. When I’m with Francis he doesn’t need to speak, he doesn’t even need to be _near_ me; but I’m just so happy!” Her voice had changed to the exquisite cadence of love. “It’s my _own_ life! And whether I’m glad or sorry, I want to spend it with him. I want to be with him anyway—I want to be with him if I _die_ for it!”

She put her hand on her heart with a quick, passionate gesture, her ice-blue eyes had in them that look which is as old as the world, as deep as life. She stepped past the weeping sisters to throw herself on her knees by her mother, to hide her bright head upon her mother’s breast, to reach her young arms up to clasp around her mother’s neck as she whispered:

“Oh, mother, mother, _you ought to know_!”

* * * * *

“It certainly was a beautiful wedding!” Little Miss Ward was calling once more at the Malisons; her voice was earnestly kind. “How lovely Miss Annette and Miss Elinor looked. I never saw girls keep their looks so well! And Miss Elinor engaged, too, at _last_! Every one was so surprised at Miss Tina’s getting married so soon. Mr. Fanshawe seemed very happy, I shouldn’t wonder if there really was more to him than people think; he shook my hand so—_cordially_, it’s a little lame yet. And as for the bride”—Miss Ward lowered her voice tenderly—“well, Mrs. Grandison said, when she saw that child’s sweet, young face going up the aisle, there was something so pathetic about it that she just broke down and gave up and cried, when she thought of all that might be before her. Have you ever thought what a lottery life is?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Malison. She had indeed! For good or for evil the portion of the youngest was Tina’s. She had had, as always, her own way.

Polly Townsend’s Rebellion

Polly Townsend’s Rebellion

The goings forth and the comings back of the head of a suburban household are the pendulum by which all the rest of the time swings. Polly Townsend, in a short white duck skirt, with a cheerful red bow in her light hair, was putting the finishing touches to the dinner-table in the now permanent absence of the “girl,” and listening for the returning footstep of her husband with more than her usual sense of expectation, which lately had been braced to divine what that footstep might imply as to the day’s success or non-success.

Mr. Townsend was “out of a position,” a stage of tenuous existence over which self-respecting families draw a decent veil. In the three months of his detachment he had experienced all its usual effects in his relations with a comfortably occupied world—the sympathetic indignation and inefficient, helpful efforts in his behalf, with the haphazard, temporary “jobs,” the gradual subsidence of poignant interest, and, finally, the semi-irritation at his “not having anything yet,” which would really seem to imply a culpable torpidity on his part to all but the wife who alone knew the struggle which he no longer heralded abroad. Her indignation daily burned stronger against the friends who couldn’t seem to do anything for him, but who were themselves successful without half of his talent.

She herself had done what she could, besides looking after the house and the two children. For ten weeks she had secretly given music lessons to the child of a friend, steadily refusing payment until the end of the term, and she now held in the little bag at her belt the princely sum of seven dollars and fifty cents, all her own, and destined for great uses. Mrs. Townsend was, above all things, a woman of action, and to resolve was to dare immediately.

It was with a faint sigh of farewell to a hope barely entertained that she heard the aggressive briskness of her husband’s tread, and she answered the florid cheerfulness of his greeting with the studied carelessness of custom in the well-worn words:

“Nothing new to-day, I suppose?”

“No, nothing new,” said Mr. Townsend heartily. He was a large, attractive-looking man, with the slightly greyish hair which had handicapped him so much in getting a position, though his wife was eagerly ready to tell every one how really young he was.

“Dinner’s about ready, I see; well I’m ready for it.” He relapsed into a chair by the table as he spoke. “Where are the children?”

“They’re spending the evening at the Mays’,” said his wife, bringing in the hot dishes from the kitchen and taking quick note of his unconscious lassitude and the new wrinkles in his broad forehead. “We can have a quiet, little cozy time all by ourselves. Would you mind tying the thread around this rag on my finger? I sliced it when I was peeling the potatoes.”

“You dash at everything so,” remonstrated the husband, accomplishing the thread-tying slowly and painstakingly. “I should think you would learn to be more careful after you had burned yourself so badly. Stand still. Don’t be in such a hurry; the dinner can wait.”

“No, it can’t,” said Mrs. Townsend, escaping to the head of the table. “Have you seen any one to-day?”

“About seven hundred people.”

“Francis! You know what I mean. Have you seen any one I know?”

“No. Yes, I did see Harry Jenkins for a moment.”

“What did he have to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, Francis!” Mrs. Townsend looked despairing. “Why do you make me drag things out of you this way? Didn’t he tell you anything about his wife’s return from England——?”

“Not a word.”

“And you didn’t ask——?”

“My dear Polly, I saw him for about two seconds, crossing the street on his way to the tailor’s. If that can give you any satisfaction you’re welcome to it.”

“I wish you could go to the tailor’s,” said Mrs. Townsend deeply, with a sudden moistening of her luminous grey eyes. “I wish—I wish your clothes weren’t getting so—so——”

“It will soon be cold enough for my overcoat,” said her husband consolingly.

“Yes, I know, but—Francis! I’ve been wanting to speak to you for ever so long. Those trousers you have on—really, you know they were always perfectly hideous. I nearly cried when you brought them home. How a man who has always dressed as well as you have could ever have chosen those things! Of course, I know you only bought them because they were so cheap, but there’s always a choice. And now they’re so shabby it makes me positively sick to see you in them. Last Sunday when you passed the plate in church—well, you thought I went out because I was faint, but it was simply because I couldn’t sit there and see you walk up the aisle and stand in front of the whole congregation until that anthem was finished.”

“Let’s change the subject,” said Mr. Townsend. “It’s a fine day.”

“No, I won’t change the subject. Do you know they’re advertising trousers at Brooker’s—such a good place!—for six dollars. Mrs. Bond says her husband got two pairs there yesterday—the very best quality. And—I want you to buy a pair to-morrow. She says they wear forever.”

“Where could I get the six dollars?” asked Mr. Townsend facetiously.

“I knew you’d say that. Oh, Francis! I have the money right here. I earned it myself.” Mrs. Townsend rose and swept her chair down beside her husband. “I never told you a word, but I’ve been giving Alice May music lessons ever since—Francis! Now see here, you’re not going to mind! How perfectly absurd! It’s been a real pleasure. Mrs. May paid me seven dollars and a-half to-day. Now, Francis, I want you to take this money and buy those trousers to-morrow.”

“Well, I’ll see myself—farther,” said Mr. Townsend comprehensively. He half rose, and pushed her gently from him. “I’d like to see myself take—take your little money. Spend it on yourself, now you’ve got it, or on the children if you want to—heaven knows you need things badly enough! I won’t touch a cent of it.”

“But Francis, you must! You never can get a position dressed as you are; you look like—— Clothes make such a difference! Oh, I didn’t want to say it but—Francis, you’ve got to take the money.” She strove to put it in his pocket and he thrust forth her hand with a grip that held her slender wrist like a vise.

“It’s no use, Polly. You don’t know how your having to earn it hurts me; I haven’t the right to forbid it but”—he stopped, and forced down something—“I haven’t come to such a pass that I’ll take your money to buy my clothes.” He fixed her sternly with a masterful eye. “There’s no use in your persisting. I’ll tell you once for all that I won’t do it; and I don’t want to hear any more on the subject.”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Townsend soothingly, in the tone of one who bides her time. She added afterwards in protest, “You haven’t half eaten your dinner—and I took such pains with it.”

“I think—you make it so nicely—but I think I’m just a little tired of stew,” said Mr. Townsend apologetically.

Later she found him rummaging in his closet, appearing as he heard her step to say explanatorily:

“I want to see if I can’t find another pair of trousers to wear to-morrow. I guess I’d better leave these I have on for you to fix up a little. The fact is—I didn’t tell you before, for I don’t want you to raise your hopes in any way—but I’ve at last got an appointment for the day after to-morrow to see Mr. Effingham.”

“An appointment with Mr. Effingham! Oh, Francis!”

“Cartwright’s letter was what did it. Cartwright says Effingham is the kind of a fellow who either likes you or doesn’t like you, straight off the bat. I tell you, I think a lot of Cartwright’s writing all the way from Chicago about this, taking so much pains for a man that’s almost a stranger to him.”

“Oh, you never do anything for people yourself!” said his wife sarcastically.

“I never did anything for Cartwright—except put his wife once on the right train,” said Mr. Townsend. “Now, what’s the matter with these trousers?” He held up a pair for inspection. “They look all right.”

“Oh, nothing’s the matter, nothing whatever,” said his wife scornfully, “except that they’re full of moth holes. Those are the winter trousers—the only good pair you had—that you left at your sister’s—you said you could get them any time—and she had them stuffed into a dark closet this summer while she was away in the country; she just sent them over Monday.”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Mr. Townsend hastily. “You’d better get rid of them. Now, here’s a pair—I didn’t know I had any so good.”

“Those are the ones you painted the attic in last spring,” said Mrs. Townsend, “and the pair next are what you keep for fishing. Those belong to your dress-suit, and the ones beyond are too short, and worn all over so that you were afraid to put them on.”

Mr. Townsend surveyed the last named with raised eyebrows and a consenting, cornerwise glance at his wife. “Yes, they are pretty bad—but I guess I’d better wear them to-morrow while you fix up these.”

“Francis, if you’re going to see Mr. Effingham you’ll just have to buy a pair of trousers.”

He turned on her sternly as he said: “Didn’t I tell you not to speak of it?”

“Yes, but I will speak of it!” Mrs. Townsend hurled herself into the fray. “Francis, I can’t help it! When I think of all you’ve suffered, and all you’ve done, and how much depends now on—oh, my dearest!” she tried to put her head on an eluding shoulder as she followed him around the room, flushed with her eloquence—“please take this money. If you knew how happy I’d been all the time to think that I was working for you, and how I had set my heart on it, you wouldn’t be so unkind. I know I told you my shoes were bad, but they do quite well as they are, and the children do not need warm underwear yet. It was very stupid of me to talk of it, and it will make all the difference how you are dressed when you go to see Mr. Effingham. You’ve often said what a difference a person’s appearance made—and it’s so unlike you to look shabby! You ought to do everything to try and get that position; you can’t afford to lose the ghost of a chance. You are so foolish, you won’t listen to reason! Oh, Francis, won’t you stand still and answer me?”

“Yes, I’ll answer you,” said Mr. Townsend deliberately. “You can ‘reason,’ as you call it, until you’re blind. Once for all, I will never take that money.”

“You will.”

“I will not. Now, Polly not another word; do you hear? Not another word!”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Townsend, as before with conventional obedience, and followed the words with a reckless flash of her grey eyes as she left the room, murmuring with quick breath: “But I give you fair warning, I’ll make you take that money yet; I don’t care whether you’re angry or not. You’ll see, you’ll see!”

If the subject was dropped from speech afterwards it was nevertheless present in thought. Mr. Townsend rose late in the morning, as is the habit of the man “out of a position,” who has no place on the early trains into town with his customary confrères, the workers, or in their busy offices. The heads of departments whom he goes in to see are only accessible in the later hours, and a delayed breakfast obviates the necessity for luncheon. When husband and wife parted, he in the trousers that were a good deal too short and a good deal too worn, she, indeed, broke through the ice with temerity to adjure him for goodness sake not to let any one see him to-day with those on, and he had retorted grimly that he would endeavour to keep his hundred and eighty pounds entirely invisible to oblige her.

During the course of the morning Mrs. Townsend went around with knitted brows, pondering deeply over the vexed question. Her back ached and her feet were weary long before her household labours were ended. She wasn’t accustomed to doing her own work, and, though she was willing, experience, that time-saver, was not hers. Mrs. Townsend knew that ladies were popularly supposed to bring a deftness and daintiness to kitchen work that was lacking in the efforts of a rougher class, but for herself it was just the opposite. The scalding kettles and saucepans she carried would perform a tremolo movement with the shaking of her slight wrists that sent greasy splashes of the contents over the kitchen floor; the beef-steak she broiled took in not only the fire but the whole top of the range in its sputterings, and plates and dishes, whether empty or filled with food for the table, slipped from her tired fingers and broke with ruinous celerity. After all the ceaseless effort of her heroic incapacity she was forced to long for the look of shining cleanliness accomplished easily by the strong, accustomed arms of an ordinary “girl.”

And the children were going half-clothed, she had so little time to sew! If this sort of thing didn’t stop soon she didn’t know what would become of them all. Depression had grown to be her usual frame of mind in the morning when there was no one to look at her. She had known that Francis couldn’t get a place when he was so shabby. People were afraid of men who looked poor; it seemed as if they couldn’t be capable. In spite of himself she must save him, though he hurled javelins at her afterwards. She would have gone and bought him the trousers out of hand if remembrance had not brought uncomfortably to mind a time when she had tried to demonstrate how economically she could regulate his smoking by purchasing an advertized box of cigars from a department store. To Polly Townsend, if you did a certain thing one certain effect ought to follow—that, instead, it ramified off into all sorts of different ways was the mean advantage life took over theory. She felt now that if she could only make her Francis buy those trousers he couldn’t help realizing gratefully afterwards how wise and good she’d been, and her heart glowed at the prospect.

But Mr. Effingham! He was a man whose old-fashioned punctiliousness was notably affected by externals: by suitable dress, by polish of manner, by a certain air in addition to more solid requirements. It was bad enough for Francis to hand the plate in those hideous, old, faded, mended trousers, but to go supplicantly in them to Mr. Effingham would be suicidal. She could have wept at the thought.

Yet later in the day Mrs. Townsend might have been seen with a face lightened by a persistent smile—a jimpy, sly, inwardly-lurking, swiftly-flashing, three-cornered gleam that took in two reckless eyes and a demure mouth, and brought forth curious comment from Mrs. Whymer, a friend whom she met in the street.