Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Page 2

  When he found he loved this young neighbor of theirs, and that she loved him, the first flush of happiness made all life look easier. They had been engaged six months — and it was beginning to dawn upon the young man that it might be six years — or sixteen years — before he could marry.

  He could not sell the business — and if he could, he knew of no better way to take care of his family. The girls did not marry, and even when they did, he had figured this out to a dreary certainty, he would still not be free. To pay the mortgages off, and keep up the house, even without his sisters, would require all the money the store would bring in for some six years ahead. The young man set his teeth hard and turned his head sharply toward the road.

  And there was Diantha.

  She stood at the gate and smiled at him. He sprang to his feet, headacheless for the moment, and joined her. Mrs. Warden, from the lounge by her bedroom window, saw them move off together, and sighed.

  “Poor Roscoe!” she said to herself. “It is very hard for him. But he carries his difficulties nobly. He is a son to be proud of.” And she wept a little.

  Diantha slipped her hand in his offered arm — he clasped it warmly with his, and they walked along together.

  “You won’t come in and see mother and the girls?”

  “No, thank you; not this time. I must get home and get supper. Besides, I’d rather see just you.”

  He felt it a pity that there were so many houses along the road here, but squeezed her hand, anyhow.

  She looked at him keenly. “Headache?” she asked.

  “Yes; it’s nothing; it’s gone already.”

  “Worry?” she asked.

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” he answered. “But I ought not to worry. I’ve got a good home, a good mother, good sisters, and — you!” And he took advantage of a high hedge and an empty lot on either side of them.

  Diantha returned his kiss affectionately enough, but seemed preoccupied, and walked in silence till he asked her what she was thinking about.

  “About you, of course,” she answered, brightly. “There are things I want to say; and yet — I ought not to.”

  “You can say anything on earth to me,” he answered.

  “You are twenty-four,” she began, musingly.

  “Admitted at once.”

  “And I’m twenty-one and a half.”

  “That’s no such awful revelation, surely!”

  “And we’ve been engaged ever since my birthday,” the girl pursued.

  “All these are facts, dearest.”

  “Now, Ross, will you be perfectly frank with me? May I ask you an — an impertinent question?”

  “You may ask me any question you like; it couldn’t be impertinent.”

  “You’ll be scandalised, I know — but — well, here goes. What would you think if Madeline — or any of the girls — should go away to work?”

  He looked at her lovingly, but with a little smile on his firm mouth.

  “I shouldn’t allow it,” he said.

  “O — allow it? I asked you what you’d think.”

  “I should think it was a disgrace to the family, and a direct reproach to me,” he answered. “But it’s no use talking about that. None of the girls have any such foolish notion. And I wouldn’t permit it if they had.”

  Diantha smiled. “I suppose you never would permit your wife to work?”

  “My widow might have to — not my wife.” He held his fine head a trifle higher, and her hand ached for a moment.

  “Wouldn’t you let me work — to help you, Ross?”

  “My dearest girl, you’ve got something far harder than that to do for me, and that’s wait.”

  His face darkened again, and he passed his hand over his forehead. “Sometimes I feel as if I ought not to hold you at all!” he burst out, bitterly. “You ought to be free to marry a better man.”

  “There aren’t any!” said Diantha, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “And if there were — millions — I wouldn’t marry any of ‘em. I love you,” she firmly concluded.

  “Then we’ll just wait,” said he, setting his teeth on the word, as if he would crush it. “It won’t be hard with you to help. You’re better worth it than Rachael and Leah together.” They walked a few steps silently.

  “But how about science?” she asked him.

  “I don’t let myself think of it. I’ll take that up later. We’re young enough, both of us, to wait for our happiness.”

  “And have you any idea — we might as well face the worst — how many years do you think that will be, dearest?”

  He was a little annoyed at her persistence. Also, though he would not admit the thought, it did not seem quite the thing for her to ask. A woman should not seek too definite a period of waiting. She ought to trust — to just wait on general principles.

  “I can face a thing better if I know just what I’m facing,” said the girl, quietly, “and I’d wait for you, if I had to, all my life. Will it be twenty years, do you think?”

  He looked relieved. “Why, no, indeed, darling. It oughtn’t to be at the outside more than five. Or six,” he added, honest though reluctant.

  “You see, father had no time to settle anything; there were outstanding accounts, and the funeral expenses, and the mortgages. But the business is good; and I can carry it; I can build it up.” He shook his broad shoulders determinedly. “I should think it might be within five, perhaps even less. Good things happen sometimes — such as you, my heart’s delight.”

  They were at her gate now, and she stood a little while to say good-night. A step inside there was a seat, walled in by evergreen, roofed over by the wide acacia boughs. Many a long good-night had they exchanged there, under the large, brilliant California moon. They sat there, silent, now.

  Diantha’s heart was full of love for him, and pride and confidence in him; but it was full of other feelings, too, which he could not fathom. His trouble was clearer to her than to him; as heavy to bear. To her mind, trained in all the minutiae of domestic economy, the Warden family lived in careless wastefulness. That five women — for Dora was older than she had been when she began to do housework — should require servants, seemed to this New England-born girl mere laziness and pride. That two voting women over twenty should prefer being supported by their brother to supporting themselves, she condemned even more sharply. Moreover, she felt well assured that with a different family to “support,” Mr. Warden would never have broken down so suddenly and irrecoverably. Even that funeral — her face hardened as she thought of the conspicuous “lot,” the continual flowers, the monument (not wholly paid for yet, that monument, though this she did not know) — all that expenditure to do honor to the man they had worked to death (thus brutally Diantha put it) was probably enough to put off their happiness for a whole year.

  She rose at last, her hand still held in his. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get supper, dear,” she said, “and you must go. Good-night for the present; you’ll be round by and by?”

  “Yes, for a little while, after we close up,” said he, and took himself off, not too suddenly, walking straight and proud while her eyes were on him, throwing her a kiss from the corner; but his step lagging and his headache settling down upon him again as he neared the large house with the cupola.

  Diantha watched him out of sight, turned and marched up the path to her own door, her lips set tight, her well-shaped head as straightly held as his. “It’s a shame, a cruel, burning shame!” she told herself rebelliously. “A man of his ability. Why, he could do anything, in his own work! And he loved it so!

  “To keep a grocery store!!!!!

  “And nothing to show for all that splendid effort!”

  “They don’t do a thing? They just live — and ‘keep house!’ All those women!

  “Six years? Likely to be sixty! But I’m not going to wait!”

  CHAPTER II. AN UNNATURAL DAUGHTER

  The brooding bird fulfills her task,

  Or she-bear lean
and brown;

  All parent beasts see duty true,

  All parent beasts their duty do,

  We are the only kind that asks

  For duty upside down.

  The stiff-rayed windmill stood like a tall mechanical flower, turning slowly in the light afternoon wind; its faint regular metallic squeak pricked the dry silence wearingly. Rampant fuchsias, red-jewelled, heavy, ran up its framework, with crowding heliotrope and nasturtiums. Thick straggling roses hung over the kitchen windows, and a row of dusty eucalyptus trees rustled their stiff leaves, and gave an ineffectual shade to the house.

  It was one of those small frame houses common to the northeastern states, which must be dear to the hearts of their dwellers. For no other reason, surely, would the cold grey steep-roofed little boxes be repeated so faithfully in the broad glow of a semi-tropical landscape. There was an attempt at a “lawn,” the pet ambition of the transplanted easterner; and a further attempt at “flower-beds,” which merely served as a sort of springboard to their far-reaching products.

  The parlor, behind the closed blinds, was as New England parlors are; minus the hint of cosiness given by even a fireless stove; the little bedrooms baked under the roof; only the kitchen spoke of human living, and the living it portrayed was not, to say the least, joyous. It was clean, clean with a cleanness that spoke of conscientious labor and unremitting care. The zinc mat under the big cook-stove was scoured to a dull glimmer, while that swart altar itself shone darkly from its daily rubbing.

  There was no dust nor smell of dust; no grease spots, no litter anywhere. But the place bore no atmosphere of contented pride, as does a Dutch, German or French kitchen, it spoke of Labor, Economy and Duty — under restriction.

  In the dead quiet of the afternoon Diantha and her mother sat there sewing. The sun poured down through the dangling eucalyptus leaves. The dry air, rich with flower odors, flowed softly in, pushing the white sash curtains a steady inch or two. Ee-errr! — Ee-errr! — came the faint whine of the windmill.

  To the older woman rocking in her small splint chair by the rose-draped window, her thoughts dwelling on long dark green grass, the shade of elms, and cows knee-deep in river-shallows; this was California — hot, arid, tedious in endless sunlight — a place of exile.

  To the younger, the long seam of the turned sheet pinned tightly to her knee, her needle flying firmly and steadily, and her thoughts full of pouring moonlight through acacia boughs and Ross’s murmured words, it was California — rich, warm, full of sweet bloom and fruit, of boundless vitality, promise, and power — home!

  Mrs. Bell drew a long weary sigh, and laid down her work for a moment.

  “Why don’t you stop it Mother dear? There’s surely no hurry about these things.”

  “No — not particularly,” her mother answered, “but there’s plenty else to do.” And she went on with the long neat hemming. Diantha did the “over and over seam” up the middle.

  “What do you do it for anyway, Mother — I always hated this job — and you don’t seem to like it.”

  “They wear almost twice as long, child, you know. The middle gets worn and the edges don’t. Now they’re reversed. As to liking it—” She gave a little smile, a smile that was too tired to be sarcastic, but which certainly did not indicate pleasure.

  “What kind of work do you like best — really?” her daughter inquired suddenly, after a silent moment or two.

  “Why — I don’t know,” said her mother. “I never thought of it. I never tried any but teaching. I didn’t like that. Neither did your Aunt Esther, but she’s still teaching.”

  “Didn’t you like any of it?” pursued Diantha.

  “I liked arithmetic best. I always loved arithmetic, when I went to school — used to stand highest in that.”

  “And what part of housework do you like best?” the girl persisted.

  Mrs. Bell smiled again, wanly. “Seems to me sometimes as if I couldn’t tell sometimes what part I like least!” she answered. Then with sudden heat— “O my Child! Don’t you marry till Ross can afford at least one girl for you!”

  Diantha put her small, strong hands behind her head and leaned back in her chair. “We’ll have to wait some time for that I fancy,” she said. “But, Mother, there is one part you like — keeping accounts! I never saw anything like the way you manage the money, and I believe you’ve got every bill since you were married.”

  “Yes — I do love accounts,” Mrs. Bell admitted. “And I can keep run of things. I’ve often thought your Father’d have done better if he’d let me run that end of his business.”

  Diantha gave a fierce little laugh. She admired her father in some ways, enjoyed him in some ways, loved him as a child does if not ill-treated; but she loved her mother with a sort of passionate pity mixed with pride; feeling always nobler power in her than had ever had a fair chance to grow. It seemed to her an interminable dull tragedy; this graceful, eager, black-eyed woman, spending what to the girl was literally a lifetime, in the conscientious performance of duties she did not love.

  She knew her mother’s idea of duty, knew the clear head, the steady will, the active intelligence holding her relentlessly to the task; the chafe and fret of seeing her husband constantly attempting against her judgment, and failing for lack of the help he scorned. Young as she was, she realized that the nervous breakdown of these later years was wholly due to that common misery of “the square man in the round hole.”

  She folded her finished sheet in accurate lines and laid it away — taking her mother’s also. “Now you sit still for once, Mother dear, read or lie down. Don’t you stir till supper’s ready.”

  And from pantry to table she stepped, swiftly and lightly, setting out what was needed, greased her pans and set them before her, and proceeded to make biscuit.

  Her mother watched her admiringly. “How easy you do it!” she said. “I never could make bread without getting flour all over me. You don’t spill a speck!”

  Diantha smiled. “I ought to do it easily by this time. Father’s got to have hot bread for supper — or thinks he has! — and I’ve made ’em — every night when I was at home for this ten years back!”

  “I guess you have,” said Mrs. Bell proudly. “You were only eleven when you made your first batch. I can remember just as well! I had one of my bad headaches that night — and it did seem as if I couldn’t sit up! But your Father’s got to have his biscuit whether or no. And you said, ‘Now Mother you lie right still on that sofa and let me do it! I can!’ And you could! — you did! They were bettern’ mine that first time — and your Father praised ’em — and you’ve been at it ever since.”

  “Yes,” said Diantha, with a deeper note of feeling than her mother caught, “I’ve been at it ever since!”

  “Except when you were teaching school,” pursued her mother.

  “Except when I taught school at Medville,” Diantha corrected. “When I taught here I made ’em just the same.”

  “So you did,” agreed her mother. “So you did! No matter how tired you were — you wouldn’t admit it. You always were the best child!”

  “If I was tired it was not of making biscuits anyhow. I was tired enough of teaching school though. I’ve got something to tell you, presently, Mother.”

  She covered the biscuits with a light cloth and set them on the shelf over the stove; then poked among the greasewood roots to find what she wanted and started a fire. “Why don’t you get an oil stove? Or a gasoline? It would be a lot easier.”

  “Yes,” her mother agreed. “I’ve wanted one for twenty years; but you know your Father won’t have one in the house. He says they’re dangerous. What are you going to tell me, dear? I do hope you and Ross haven’t quarrelled.”

  “No indeed we haven’t, Mother. Ross is splendid. Only—”

  “Only what, Dinah?”

  “Only he’s so tied up!” said the girl, brushing every chip from the hearth. “He’s perfectly helpless there, with that mother of his — and tho
se four sisters.”

  “Ross is a good son,” said Mrs. Bell, “and a good brother. I never saw a better. He’s certainly doing his duty. Now if his father’d lived you two could have got married by this time maybe, though you’re too young yet.”

  Diantha washed and put away the dishes she had used, saw that the pantry was in its usual delicate order, and proceeded to set the table, with light steps and no clatter of dishes.

  “I’m twenty-one,” she said.

  “Yes, you’re twenty-one,” her mother allowed. “It don’t seem possible, but you are. My first baby!” she looked at her proudly.

  “If Ross has to wait for all those girls to marry — and to pay his father’s debts — I’ll be old enough,” said Diantha grimly.

  Her mother watched her quick assured movements with admiration, and listened with keen sympathy. “I know it’s hard, dear child. You’ve only been engaged six months — and it looks as if it might be some years before Ross’ll be able to marry. He’s got an awful load for a boy to carry alone.”

  “I should say he had!” Diantha burst forth. “Five helpless women! — or three women, and two girls. Though Cora’s as old as I was when I began to teach. And not one of ’em will lift a finger to earn her own living.”

  “They weren’t brought up that way,” said Mrs. Bell. “Their mother don’t approve of it. She thinks the home is the place for a woman — and so does Ross — and so do I,” she added rather faintly.

  Diantha put her pan of white puff-balls into the oven, sliced a quantity of smoked beef in thin shavings, and made white sauce for it, talking the while as if these acts were automatic. “I don’t agree with Mrs. Warden on that point, nor with Ross, nor with you, Mother,” she said, “What I’ve got to tell you is this — I’m going away from home. To work.”

  Mrs. Bell stopped rocking, stopped fanning, and regarded her daughter with wide frightened eyes.

  “Why Diantha!” she said. “Why Diantha! You wouldn’t go and leave your Mother!”

  Diantha drew a deep breath and stood for a moment looking at the feeble little woman in the chair. Then she went to her, knelt down and hugged her close — close.