Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  A broad piazza ran all across the front, the door opening into a big square hall, a sort of general sitting-room; on either side were four good rooms, opening on a transverse passage. The long dining-room and kitchen were in the rear of the hall.

  Dr. Bellair had two, her office fronting on the side street, with a bedroom behind it. They gave Mrs. Pettigrew the front corner room on that side and kept the one opening from the hall as their own parlor. In the opposite wing was Miss Elder’s room next the hall, and the girls in the outer back corner, while the two front ones on that side were kept for the most impressive and high-priced boarders.

  Mrs. Pettigrew regarded her apartments with suspicion as being too “easy.”

  “I don’t mind stairs,” she said. “Dr. Bellair has to be next her office — but why do I have to be next Dr. Bellair?”

  It was represented to her that she would be nearer to everything that went on and she agreed without more words.

  Dr. Hale exhibited the house as if he owned it.

  “The agent’s out of town,” he said, “and we don’t need him anyway. He said he’d do anything you wanted, in reason.”

  Dr. Bellair watched with keen interest the effect of her somewhat daring description, as Miss Orella stepped from room to room examining everything with a careful eye, with an expression of growing generalship. Sue fluttered about delightedly, discovering advantages everywhere and making occasional disrespectful remarks to Vivian about Dr. Hale’s clothes.

  “Looks as if he never saw a clothes brush!” she said. “A finger out on his glove, a button off his coat. No need to tell us there’s no woman in his house!”

  “You can decide about your cook when you’ve tried her,” he said to Miss Elder. “I engaged her for a week — on trial. She’s in the kitchen now, and will have your dinner ready presently. I think you’ll like her, if — —”

  “Good boy!” said Dr. Bellair. “Sometimes you show as much sense as a woman — almost.”

  “What’s the ‘if’” asked Miss Orella, looking worried.

  “Question of character,” he answered. “She’s about forty-five, with a boy of sixteen or so. He’s not over bright, but a willing worker. She’s a good woman — from one standpoint. She won’t leave that boy nor give him up to strangers; but she has a past!”

  “What is her present?” Dr. Bellair asked, “that’s the main thing.”

  Dr. Hale clapped her approvingly on the shoulder, but looked doubtingly toward Miss Orella.

  “And what’s her future if somebody don’t help her?” Vivian urged.

  “Can she cook?” asked Grandma.

  “Is she a safe person to have in the house?” inquired Dr. Bellair meaningly.

  “She can cook,” he replied. “She’s French, or of French parentage. She used to keep a little — place of entertainment. The food was excellent. She’s been a patient of mine — off and on — for five years — and I should call her perfectly safe.”

  Miss Orella still looked worried. “I’d like to help her and the boy, but would it — look well? I don’t want to be mean about it, but this is a very serious venture with us, Dr. Hale, and I have these girls with me.”

  “With you and Dr. Bellair and Mrs. Pettigrew the young ladies will be quite safe, Miss Elder. As to the woman’s present character, she has suffered two changes of heart, she’s become a religious devotee — and a man-hater! And from a business point of view, I assure you that if Jeanne Jeaune is in your kitchen you’ll never have a room empty.”

  “Johnny Jones! queer name for a woman!” said Grandma. They repeated it to her carefully, but she only changed to “Jennie June,” and adhered to one or the other, thereafter. “What’s the boy’s name?” she asked further.

  “Theophile,” Dr. Hale replied.

  “Huh!” said she.

  “Why don’t she keep an eating-house still?” asked Dr. Bellair rather suspiciously.

  “That’s what I like best about her,” he answered. “She is trying to break altogether with her past. She wants to give up ‘public life’ — and private life won’t have her.”

  They decided to try the experiment, and found it worked well.

  There were two bedrooms over the kitchen where “Mrs. Jones” as Grandma generally called her, and her boy, could be quite comfortable and by themselves; and although of a somewhat sour and unsociable aspect, and fiercely watchful lest anyone offend her son, this questionable character proved an unquestionable advantage. With the boy’s help, she cooked for the houseful, which grew to be a family of twenty-five. He also wiped dishes, helped in the laundry work, cleaned and scrubbed and carried coal; and Miss Elder, seeing his steady usefulness, insisted on paying wages for him too. This unlooked for praise and gain won the mother’s heart, and as she grew more at home with them, and he less timid, she encouraged him to do the heavier cleaning in the rest of the house.

  “Huh!” said Grandma. “I wish more sane and moral persons would work like that!”

  Vivian watched with amazement the swift filling of the house.

  There was no trouble at all about boarders, except in discriminating among them. “Make them pay in advance, Rella,” Dr. Bellair advised, “it doesn’t cost them any more, and it is a great convenience. ‘References exchanged,’ of course. There are a good many here that I know — you can always count on Mr. Dykeman and Fordham Grier, and John Unwin.”

  Before a month was over the place was full to its limits with what Sue called “assorted boarders,” the work ran smoothly and the business end of Miss Elder’s venture seemed quite safe. They had the twenty Dr. Bellair prophesied, and except for her, Mrs. Pettigrew, Miss Peeder, a teacher of dancing and music; Mrs. Jocelyn, who was interested in mining, and Sarah Hart, who described herself as a “journalist,” all were men.

  Fifteen men to eight women. Miss Elder sat at the head of her table, looked down it and across the other one, and marvelled continuously. Never in her New England life had she been with so many men — except in church — and they were more scattered. This houseful of heavy feet and broad shoulders, these deep voices and loud laughs, the atmosphere of interchanging jests and tobacco smoke, was new to her. She hated the tobacco smoke, but that could not be helped. They did not smoke in her parlor, but the house was full of it none the less, in which constant presence she began to reverse the Irishman’s well known judgment of whiskey, allowing that while all tobacco was bad, some tobacco was much worse than others.

  CHAPTER V

  CONTRASTS

  Old England thinks our country

  Is a wilderness at best —

  And small New England thinks the same

  Of the large free-minded West.

  Some people know the good old way

  Is the only way to do,

  And find there must be something wrong

  In anything that’s new.

  To Vivian the new life offered a stimulus, a sense of stir and promise even beyond her expectations. She wrote dutiful letters to her mother, trying to describe the difference between this mountain town and Bainville, but found the New England viewpoint an insurmountable obstacle.

  To Bainville “Out West” was a large blank space on the map, and the blank space in the mind which matched it was but sparsely dotted with a few disconnected ideas such as “cowboy,” “blizzard,” “prairie fire,” “tornado,” “border ruffian,” and the like.

  The girl’s painstaking description of the spreading, vigorous young town, with its fine, modern buildings, its banks and stores and theatres, its country club and parks, its pleasant social life, made small impression on the Bainville mind. But the fact that Miss Elder’s venture was successful from the first did impress old acquaintances, and Mrs. Lane read aloud to selected visitors her daughter’s accounts of their new and agreeable friends. Nothing was said of “chaps,” “sombreros,” or “shooting up the town,” however, and therein a distinct sense of loss was felt.

  Much of what was passing in Vivian’s mind she c
ould not make clear to her mother had she wished to. The daily presence and very friendly advances of so many men, mostly young and all polite (with the exception of Dr. Hale, whose indifference was almost rude by contrast), gave a new life and color to the days.

  She could not help giving some thought to this varied assortment, and the carefully preserved image of Morton, already nine years dim, waxed dimmer. But she had a vague consciousness of being untrue to her ideals, or to Mrs. St. Cloud’s ideals, now somewhat discredited, and did not readily give herself up to the cheerful attractiveness of the position.

  Susie found no such difficulty. Her ideals were simple, and while quite within the bounds of decorum, left her plenty of room for amusement. So popular did she become, so constantly in demand for rides and walks and oft-recurring dances, that Vivian felt called upon to give elder sisterly advice.

  But Miss Susan scouted her admonitions.

  “Why shouldn’t I have a good time?” she said. “Think how we grew up! Half a dozen boys to twenty girls, and when there was anything to go to — the lordly way they’d pick and choose! And after all our efforts and machinations most of us had to dance with each other. And the quarrels we had! Here they stand around three deep asking for dances — and they have to dance with each other, and they do the quarreling. I’ve heard ‘em.” And Sue giggled delightedly.

  “There’s no reason we shouldn’t enjoy ourselves, Susie, of course, but aren’t you — rather hard on them?”

  “Oh, nonsense!” Sue protested. “Dr. Bellair said I should get married out here! She says the same old thing — that it’s ‘a woman’s duty,’ and I propose to do it. That is — they’ll propose, and I won’t do it! Not till I make up my mind. Now see how you like this!”

  She had taken a fine large block of “legal cap” and set down their fifteen men thereon, with casual comment.

  1. Mr. Unwin — Too old, big, quiet.

  2. Mr. Elmer Skee — Big, too old, funny.

  3. Jimmy Saunders — Middle-sized, amusing, nice.

  4. P. R. Gibbs — Too little, too thin, too cocky.

  5. George Waterson — Middling, pretty nice.

  6. J. J. Cuthbert — Big, horrid.

  7. Fordham Greer — Big, pleasant.

  8. W. S. Horton — Nothing much.

  9. A. L. Dykeman — Interesting, too old.

  10. Professor Toomey — Little, horrid.

  11. Arthur Fitzwilliam — Ridiculous, too young.

  12. Howard Winchester — Too nice, distrust him.

  13. Lawson W. Briggs — Nothing much.

  14. Edward S. Jenks — Fair to middling.

  15. Mr. A. Smith — Minus.

  She held it up in triumph. “I got ’em all out of the book — quite correct. Now, which’ll you have.”

  “Susie Elder! You little goose! Do you imagine that all these fifteen men are going to propose to you?”

  “I’m sure I hope so!” said the cheerful damsel. “We’ve only been settled a fortnight and one of ’em has already!”

  Vivian was impressed at once. “Which? — You don’t mean it!”

  Sue pointed to the one marked “minus.”

  “It was only ‘A. Smith.’ I never should be willing to belong to ‘A. Smith,’ it’s too indefinite — unless it was a last resort. Several more are — well, extremely friendly! Now don’t look so severe. You needn’t worry about me. I’m not quite so foolish as I talk, you know.”

  She was not. Her words were light and saucy, but she was as demure and decorous a little New Englander as need be desired; and she could not help it if the hearts of the unattached young men of whom the town was full, warmed towards her.

  Dr. Bellair astonished them at lunch one day in their first week.

  “Dick Hale wants us all to come over to tea this afternoon,” she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Tea? Where?” asked Mrs. Pettigrew sharply.

  “At his house. He has ‘a home of his own,’ you know. And he particularly wants you, Mrs. Pettigrew — and Miss Elder — the girls, of course.”

  “I’m sure I don’t care to go,” Vivian remarked with serene indifference, but Susie did.

  “Oh, come on, Vivian! It’ll be so funny! A man’s home! — and we may never get another chance. He’s such a bear!”

  Dr. Hale’s big house was only across the road from theirs, standing in a large lot with bushes and trees about it.

  “He’s been here nine years,” Dr. Bellair told them. “That’s an old inhabitant for us. He boarded in that house for a while; then it was for sale and he bought it. He built that little office of his at the corner — says he doesn’t like to live where he works, or work where he lives. He took his meals over here for a while — and then set up for himself.”

  “I should think he’d be lonely,” Miss Elder suggested.

  “Oh, he has his boys, you know — always three or four young fellows about him. It’s a mighty good thing for them, too.”

  Dr. Hale’s home proved a genuine surprise. They had regarded it as a big, neglected-looking place, and found on entering the gate that the inside view of that rampant shrubbery was extremely pleasant. Though not close cut and swept of leaves and twigs, it still was beautiful; and the tennis court and tether-ball ring showed the ground well used.

  Grandma looked about her with a keen interrogative eye, and was much impressed, as, indeed, were they all. She voiced their feelings justly when, the true inwardness of this pleasant home bursting fully upon them, she exclaimed:

  “Well, of all things! A man keeping house!”

  “Why not?” asked Dr. Hale with his dry smile. “Is there any deficiency, mental or physical, about a man, to prevent his attempting this abstruse art?”

  She looked at him sharply. “I don’t know about deficiency, but there seems to be somethin’ about ’em that keeps ’em out of the business. I guess it’s because women are so cheap.”

  “No doubt you are right, Mrs. Pettigrew. And here women are scarce and high. Hence my poor efforts.”

  His poor efforts had bought or built a roomy pleasant house, and furnished it with a solid comfort and calm attractiveness that was most satisfying. Two Chinamen did the work; cooking, cleaning, washing, waiting on table, with silent efficiency. “They are as steady as eight-day clocks,” said Dr. Hale. “I pay them good wages and they are worth it.”

  “Sun here had to go home once — to be married, also, to see his honored parents, I believe, and to leave a grand-’Sun’ to attend to the ancestors; but he brought in another Chink first and trained him so well that I hardly noticed the difference. Came back in a year or so, and resumed his place without a jar.”

  Miss Elder watched with fascinated eyes these soft-footed servants with clean, white garments and shiny coils of long, braided hair.

  “I may have to come to it,” she admitted, “but — dear me, it doesn’t seem natural to have a man doing housework!”

  Dr. Hale smiled again. “You don’t want men to escape from dependence, I see. Perhaps, if more men knew how comfortably they could live without women, the world would be happier.” There was a faint wire-edge to his tone, in spite of the courteous expression, but Miss Elder did not notice it and if Mrs. Pettigrew did, she made no comment.

  They noted the varied excellences of his housekeeping with high approval.

  “You certainly know how, Dr. Hale,” said Miss Orella; “I particularly admire these beds — with the sheets buttoned down, German fashion, isn’t it? What made you do that?”

  “I’ve slept so much in hotels,” he answered; “and found the sheets always inadequate to cover the blankets — and the marks of other men’s whiskers! I don’t like blankets in my neck. Besides it saves washing.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew nodded vehemently. “You have sense,” she said.

  The labor-saving devices were a real surprise to them. A “chute” for soiled clothing shot from the bathroom on each floor to the laundry in the basement; a dumbwaiter
of construction large and strong enough to carry trunks, went from cellar to roof; the fireplaces dropped their ashes down mysterious inner holes; and for the big one in the living-room a special “lift” raised a box of wood up to the floor level, hidden by one of the “settles.”

  “Saves work — saves dirt — saves expense,” said Dr. Hale.

  Miss Hale and her niece secretly thought the rooms rather bare, but Dr. Bellair was highly in favor of that very feature.

  “You see Dick don’t believe in jimcracks and dirt-catchers, and he likes sunlight. Books all under glass — no curtains to wash and darn and fuss with — none of those fancy pincushions and embroidered thingummies — I quite envy him.”

  “Why don’t you have one yourself, Johnny?” he asked her.

  “Because I don’t like housekeeping,” she said, “and you do. Masculine instinct, I suppose!”

  “Huh!” said Mrs. Pettigrew with her sudden one-syllable chuckle.

  The girls followed from room to room, scarce noticing these comments, or the eager politeness of the four pleasant-faced young fellows who formed the doctor’s present family. She could not but note the intelligent efficiency of the place, but felt more deeply the underlying spirit, the big-brotherly kindness which prompted his hospitable care of these nice boys. It was delightful to hear them praise him.

  “O, he’s simply great,” whispered Archie Burns, a ruddy-cheeked young Scotchman. “He pretends there’s nothing to it — that he wants company — that we pay for all we get — and that sort of thing, you know; but this is no boarding house, I can tell you!” And then he flushed till his very hair grew redder — remembering that the guests came from one.

  “Of course not!” Vivian cordially agreed with him. “You must have lovely times here. I don’t wonder you appreciate it!” and she smiled so sweetly that he felt at ease again.