CHAPTER IX
A GLIMPSE FROM THE INSIDE
In the cool of the day Aunt Katharine and Esther walked together acrossthe fields to the little house on the county road. The sunset wasthrobbing itself out above the hills in a glory of crimson and gold, andthe girl's face seemed to have caught the shining as she movedtranquilly toward it.
In the doorway of the barn Tom and Kate watched them go, and exchangedcomments with their usual frankness. It was their favorite place fordiscussion--that and the wood-pile--and few were the subjects of currentinterest which did not receive a tossing back and forth at their handswhen the day's work was done.
"TOM AND KATE WATCHED THEM GO."]
"That's an uncommon queer thing for Aunt Katharine to do," observed Tom."When she's been left alone before she's always got one of the Rileygirls to stay there and paid her for doing it. She must have taken ashine to Esther. Maybe she thinks she can work her round to some of hernotions."
Kate shook her head. "Esther isn't her sort of person at all," she said."Aunt Katharine would take somebody that's strong-minded like herself ifshe wanted a follower in those things."
Tom flicked a kernel of corn at a swallow that swooped down from a beamabove his head, and remarked carelessly, "Maybe strong-minded folks hadrather have those that ain't so strong-minded to work on."
There was something in this that gave a passing uneasiness to the lookin Kate's black eyes. She was silent a moment, then said with emphasis,"Well, I'll risk Esther Northmore;" and a minute later, oddly enough,she was talking of Morton Elwell, and wondering what he found to do nowthat wheat harvest and haying were over at home.
"If he's out of a job I wish he'd come round this way," observed Tom."We need another hand in our meadow, and we'd set him to work rightoff."
"And supply him with a scythe to work with, I suppose," said Kate,scornfully. "I imagine Mort Elwell! He rides a mowing machine when _he_cuts grass."
"Well, he couldn't ride it in our meadow," retorted Tom. "There isn't aHoosier on top of the ground that could do it. I don't care how smart heis." (He had been tantalized at frequent intervals ever since Kate'scoming by accounts of Morton Elwell's smartness.) "A scythe is the onlything that'll work in a place like that."
"Out our way they wouldn't have such a place," said Kate, loftily."They'd put in tile and drain it, if they were going to use the groundat all."
"A nice job they'd have of it," grunted Tom; and then he remarkedincidentally: "I heard Esther tell Stella the other day that our meadowwas the prettiest place she ever saw. They were sitting by the brook,and she said it made her sick to think how your creek at home looked,all so brown and muddy."
This was a manifest digression, but Tom had a genius for that, and aquotation from Esther bearing on the attractions of New England was amissile he never failed to use, when it came to his hand in discussionwith Kate. She looked annoyed for a minute. There was no denying thatthe creek at home was a sorry-looking stream beside that beautifulmeadow brook, with its clear pebbly bottom. But she recovered herself inanother moment.
"Oh, your brook is pretty, of course," she said graciously, "but it'sall in the way you look at it. For my part I don't mind having a goodrich brown in the color of ours. It shows that the land isn't all rocks;that there's something in it soft enough to wash down."
Tom whistled. He was used to Kate now, and never really expected to havethe last word. Returning to the subject of the hay-making, he remarked:"Grandfather was down there for a while this afternoon, to show us howfast we ought to work, I suppose--you ought to have seen him bring downthe swath--but he couldn't keep it up very long, and made an errand tothe house; a good thing he did, too, or he'd have missed that call thattickled him so. I say, that fellow must have been a regular swell forall you girls to be so taken with him."
"Who said _I_ was taken with him?" demanded Kate. "It was his horse Ifell in love with."
"Well, the others were, if you weren't," persisted Tom. "Esther seemedto think she never saw such a young man."
"She's seen some that are a good deal nicer," said Kate, with emphasis,and then she added rather irritably: "I shouldn't think a fellow couldhave much to do who spends his time running round to find out what hisgreat-great-grandfather did. For my part I don't take much stock in thatsort of thing."
And on this point they were in perfect agreement. Tom, like Kate, had nogreat use for ancestors.
Meanwhile the shadows lengthened, and the two slow figures moving acrossthe fields reached the end of their walk. That the days to be spent withAunt Katharine would seem rather long, Esther fully expected. Yet shehad wanted them. She had been honest when she said to Stella at parting:"Don't pity me. I really like it!" and she wondered at the incredulouslook with which her cousin had regarded her. With all there was of tasteand artistic feeling in common between these two, there was something inEsther, something of seriousness and warmth, which the other partlylacked.
Possibly the girl expected--as Stella had warned her--that the old womanwould at once mount the hobby, which she was supposed to keep alwayssaddled and bridled, as soon as they were fairly in the house together,but as a matter of fact, Aunt Katharine did nothing of the kind. Shetalked, as they sat in the twilight, of Esther herself, of her work atschool, and the things she enjoyed most in this summer visit, and thenof Esther's mother, recalling incidents of her childhood, and speakingof her ways and traits with an appreciation that filled the girl withsurprise and delight.
"Your mother might have done something out of the common," she said asshe ended. "She was made larger than most folks, and with all her softways, she had more courage. She might have had a great influence. Ialways said it."
"Mother has a good deal of influence now," said Esther, smiling. "Fathersays there isn't a lady in our town whose opinions count for as much ashers."
"Of course, of course," said the old woman, with a note of impatiencecreeping into her voice; "and the upshot of it is that she makes oldways that are wrong seem right, because she, with all _her_ faculties,manages to make the best of 'em. She might have done better than that,_if she'd seen_."
And then she rose suddenly and lighted a lamp. "I always have a chapterbefore I go to bed," she said. "You might read it to-night."
Esther was surprised. She had somehow gained the impression, in AuntKatharine's talks with her brother, that she held the scriptures ratherlightly, but apparently this was wrong. "What shall I read?" she asked,going to the stand on which lay the Bible, a large and very old one.
"Read me that chapter about Judith," she said, "how she delivered herpeople out of the hand of Holofernes, and all the city stood up andblessed her."
Esther sat for a moment with a puzzled face, her finger between theleaves of the book. "Is that in Judges?" she asked, with a vagueremembrance of a prophetess who led Israel to battle.
The old woman lifted her eyebrows. "Oh, that is in the Apocrypha," shesaid. "Well, if you don't know about Judith you mustn't begin at the endof her story. Read me about Deborah; that's a good place."
There was no sweeter sleep under the stars that night than came toEsther. She had thought with some foreboding of a feather bed, but itwas the best of hair mattresses that Aunt Katharine provided. Even thehigh-post bedstead, with draperies of ancient pattern, which she hadreally hoped for, was wanting. There was nothing to prevent the airwhich came through the wide east window, full of woodsy odors and thedroning of happy insects, from coming straight to her pillow.
There was indeed nothing in the room to recall the fashions of the pastexcept the coverlet, wrought in mazy figures tufted of crochetingcotton, and a round silk pincushion mounted on a standard of glass,which standard suggested former service as part of a lamp. AuntKatharine had as little care to preserve the customs of her foremothersas their ways of thinking. She had told the girl to rise when she feltlike it; but in the early morning Esther found herself wide awake, andthe sound of stirring below brought her quickly to her feet.
Aunt Katha
rine was busy about the stove when she entered the kitchen,and the sight of her niece in her clean work-apron evidently pleasedher. They took a cup of tea with a fresh egg and a slice of toast at thekitchen table, and Esther tried to recall her dream of the night beforefor the entertainment of the other. "It must have been reading aboutDeborah that put it into my head," she said. "I thought I was living allby myself in a house that was under a great oak tree, and all sorts ofpeople were coming to me on all sorts of errands, and finally I wasgoing out with a great company of them to battle, but I don't know whatthe battle was about, or how it came out," she ended lightly. "I thinkthe dream must have broken off when I heard you moving about down here."
"Dreams are queer things," said Aunt Katharine, who had been listeningwith attention.
"Of course I don't believe in them," Esther made haste to say, "but AuntMilly always insisted that the first dream you had when you slept in astrange place meant something. I'm sure it meant something to sleep insuch a lovely room, and rest as sweetly as I did," she added, with anaffectionate smile at the old lady.
Miss Katharine Saxon had long prided herself on a complete indifferenceto any blandishments of words or manner on the part of herfellow-creatures. It wasn't what people said, nor how they said it, butthe principles they lived up to, that constituted a claim to her regard,as she often declared; but she fell a victim as easily as scores haddone before her to the pretty tactful ways of Esther Northmore and hergift for saying pleasant things. Not in years had she been as warm, asopen, and confiding as during that visit. In the entertainment of herniece she made no mistake. She let her help in the housework and watchedwith pleasure while she darned a tablecloth. She was studying the girl,with genuine liking to guide the study.
And Esther, for her part, was watching her Aunt Katharine with growingregard and sympathy. It was a surprise at first, to note the solicitudewith which she inquired after the sick child of Patrick Riley, theIrishman who carried on her farm, and came night and morning to attendto her chores; and the girl was not prepared for the almost maternalinterest with which the old woman looked after the dumb creatures on herplace.
On the subject which she was known to have most at heart--the wrongs ofher sex--she said nothing for a while, and Esther was too mindful ofthose old griefs in her life to provoke the theme. It came casually, thesecond day, as they sat seeding raisins in the kitchen. A boy hadbrought a pail of berries to the door, but she refused them. An hourlater a girl came with a similar errand, and without hesitating she madethe purchase.
"I hope you didn't change your mind on my account," said Esther, whenthe child was gone, remembering apologetically something she had said inthe interval about her own liking for huckleberries. "With all the fruityou have I'm sure we didn't need them."
Miss Saxon smiled. "I didn't change my mind," she said. "I thought somegirl would be along, and so I waited."
The boy's face had looked eager, and Esther felt rather sorry for him."Don't you suppose he needed the money as much as she did?" she askedrather timidly.
"Mebbe he needed it more," said Aunt Katharine. "The Billingses areworse off than the Esteys, but that ain't the p'int. It's a good thingfor a girl to be earning money. It's worth something to her to make afew cents, and know it's her own. That's what the girls need more 'nanything else, and I always help 'em every chance I get."
Esther pondered for a minute without speaking. The old woman's eyes hadtaken on a look of deep seriousness. "That's the root of all thetrouble," she said almost fiercely, "this notion that the women must beforever dependent on the men, and take what's given 'em and be thankful,without trying to do for themselves. I tell you it was never meant thatone half of the world should hang on the other half, and look to 'em forthe shelter over their heads, and the food they eat, and the clothesthey wear. It degrades 'em both."
Esther stopped seeding raisins and looked at her aunt in astonishment.An arraignment of the existing order of things such as she had not heardbefore was suggested here. Perhaps the very blankness of her expressionappealed more than any protest to the old woman. The defiance went outof her voice, and it was almost a pleading tone in which she went on:--
"Don't you see what comes of it? Don't you see? It makes the girls thinkthey must get married so 's to have a home and somebody to support 'em,and then they plan 'n' contrive--they 'n' their mothers with 'em--how tocatch a husband." She shut her lips hard, as if her loathing of thething were too great for utterance, then went on: "But small blame to'em, I say, if that's the only thing a woman's fit for; small blame to'em if they won't let her choose her work for herself and live by it,without calling shame on her for doing it. It's a little betternow--thank God and the women that have been brave enough to go ahead inthe face of it!--but I've seen the day when an old maid was looked on assomething almost out of nature. 'Let a girl dance in the pig's trough,'if her younger sister gets married before her. Let her own she'sdisgraced, and be done with it. That's the old saying, and the spirit ofit ain't all dead yet. It never will be till women are as free as men todo whatever thing is _in 'em_ to do, and make the most of it."
Her face had grown white as she talked, and the color had paled a littleeven in Esther's. "Oh," she said, "I've thought of that, too. I've hatedit when people talked as if there was nothing for girls but to getmarried." The color came back with a quick flush as she added: "I'drather die than be scheming about that myself; but what can you do? Boysalways talk about the work they mean to follow. People would think therewas something wrong with them, if they didn't; but if girls sayanything--I did try once to talk about what I could do to earn my ownliving, but father acted as if I was somehow reflecting on him, andmother--though I'm sure she understood me better--seemed worried andtroubled."
"That's it, that's it!" said Aunt Katharine, bitterly. "Even those thatsay a woman's got a right to choose, say under their breath that she'llnever be happy if it's anything but getting married. I tell you it'sfinding your own work and doing it that makes people happy, and that's alaw for women as much as men."
"But if you knew your work!" said Esther, piteously. "It seems to methere are very few girls who have anything special they can do."
"That's no more true of girls than 'tis of boys," said Aunt Katharine."We should find something for one as well as for the other, _something_they could work at, if we settled it once for all that they had the sameright and need. But we've got to start with that idea right from thebeginning."
After that, during the time which remained of the visit, the talk cameoften into the circle of this thought. Sometimes Miss Saxon talked ofthe wrongs of women, of their inequality before the law, and of thetyranny of men, with a bitterness before which the girl shrank, but thevery vehemence of the other's belief carried her with it, and through itall one thing grew more and more clear to her. It was not hatred of men,but love of her own sex, which lay at the bottom of Katharine Saxon'sdefiance of the social order. The longing to help women, to lift theminto what seemed to her a larger, freer living, had laid hold of herwholly, and held her in the white heat of its consuming passion.
Once, when she had been speaking of the struggle which lay before anywoman confronted with the problem of supporting a family, Esther saidsoftly: "Grandpa told me about you one night, Aunt Katharine; how yougave up everything and worked so hard to help your sister when she camehome with her children. I thought that was grand."
The old woman did not speak for a moment, then she said, with a singularlack of emotion in her voice: "Poor Nancy! Yes, I thought then 'twas myduty to do what I did, and mebbe 'twas; but sometimes I've thought--Nancyand her girls were only a han'ful out of the many--sometimes I've thoughtmebbe I might have done more good if I'd been fighting for 'em all. Igave the best fifteen years of my life to that old spinning-wheel, andscarcely looked out of my corner." And then the lines of her facestiffened as she added: "But I had my reward. I was saved frommarrying--marrying Levi Dodge."
The scorn in her voice as she said the last words was inde
scribable. Fora while neither of them spoke. Then Esther said, leaning toward theother, her heart in her eyes, and her breath coming quick, "AuntKatharine, wouldn't you have women marry at all?"
She threw up her head with the quick, impatient movement which Estherhad come to know so well. "They might all marry and welcome," shesaid,--"it's the Lord's way to preserve the race,--if only we could getrid of the notions that folks have joined onto it to spoil it."
And then the note that was not of defiance, but pleading, came back toher voice, as she added: "But I'd have some of the women that _see_ stayfree from it till we've worked this thing out, and made a fair chancefor those that come after us; I'd have 'em show that the world has someinterests for women outside of their own homes, and some work they cando besides waiting on their husbands and children; I'd have 'em showthat a woman ain't afraid nor ashamed to walk without leaning; and I'dhave 'em keep their eyes open to see what's going on. I'd have 'em holdthemselves clear of the danger of being blinded even by love to thethings that need doing."
No doubt there was much that was wholly vague to Esther Northmore in thevision of service which lay before the mind of Katharine Saxon. But thethought of some renunciation for the sake of others--some work, unselfishand lasting--what generous young soul has not at moments felt the thrillof it? Their eyes met in a glow of sympathy, if not of fullunderstanding, and the clock ticked solemnly in a stillness which, for aminute, neither of them could break.
It was a light step at the open door which suddenly drew theirattention. Kate was coming briskly up the walk with a letter in herhand.
"It's from home," she said, as Esther rose to meet her, "and I thoughtyou ought to have it."
She noticed the look of exaltation on her sister's face, and somethingshe had never seen before in Aunt Katharine's. Her efforts atconversation met with little response. She was conscious of someatmosphere surrounding these two which she herself could not penetrate,and she was glad to slip away at the end of a very short call.
"They must have been talking about something awfully serious," she saidto Tom afterward. "They looked as solemn as a pair of owls. I hope thatgirl of Aunt Katharine's will come home when she said she would. For mypart, I think Esther's stayed there long enough."