Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Grandpa set his jaw. He had a big, quiet face, a lot of strong gray hair, eyes that looked as if they’d like to be fierce, but with the little wrinkles around them that laughing makes.

  “I’ll send you home in good order,” he said, “and in good time. Don’t you worry about that.”

  I didn’t, any more.

  Mother told me afterwards that Father wrote a very peremptory letter, very peremptory indeed. He told her all about it, and she cried and tried to make him not send it. But he did.

  They were looking for me the next day, in answer to the telegram, it appeared, and I didn’t come, and then he wrote.

  Meanwhile I’d given Grandpa the big handkerchief I’d initialed for him, and he’d taken me all over the farm, and we’d had a long ride over the place and around it and had a real nice evening together. I sat on a little stool by his knee, and asked him to tell me things about when he was a boy, and about his mother, when she was a little girl, and we got on beautifully.

  Next morning I was up early and got all the morning mail and brought it in. Sure enough there was that letter.

  I gave Grandpa all the others first, and then slowly brought that one out.

  “Here it is,” I said. “And you’ll have to read it — and it’ll say to send me back at once, and I’ll have to go.”

  Grandpa turned it over in his hand and studied it a while.

  “It’s your father’s writing, and I dare say you are correct as to what he says, but as to having to read it, I do not know of any law that compels a man to read his letters until he gets ready to. I can answer it,” he went on, a slow smile crinkling around the corners of his eyes, “without reading it.”

  Mother told me about that, too, long afterward. Father was so enraged that he shook it in her face, made her read it, and blamed her for the whole thing.

  Grandpa acknowledged his “favor postmarked the 14th,” said he had not yet found time to read it, and went on to tell what an extremely pleasant visit he was having with me.

  Of course, Father answered furiously, got no reply to that, and then made Mother write. She was frightened and worried, but Grandpa wrote her a letter saying that I was perfectly well and happy and in safe hands. He added, “If her father disinherits her, I will not.” That quieted Father some.

  I learned a lot at Grandpa’s.

  Having already picked up a good bit of the theory of dairy farming, I was immensely interested and studied the practical workings with real enthusiasm. I was up early to watch the milking, and Grandpa let me learn to milk on an unimportant cow they kept for their own use. She was just as good as the others, but they weren’t watching her record so religiously.

  So I milked assiduously, morning and night. You never know when a thing like that is going to be useful.

  I watched the dairymen. The real difficulty, Grandpa told me, was with them. There had to be a good many of them, young fellows mostly, and they simply would not be as careful as they ought to.

  “Do they earn much?” I asked.

  “More than they deserve,” he said, and gruffly, too. I saw that there were limits to the legitimate curiosity of granddaughters. But I learned all he told me and a good deal more.

  And I studied Grandpa assiduously. (I like that word. It seems to stick right to a thing, and shake it.) I tried to think of something I could do for him, but beyond small services and presents there wasn’t anything to do. He had plenty of money. He had plenty of occupation. He had plenty of servants to wait on him. And he had a housekeeper — a fine one.

  She was a big, handsome woman, very efficient, with smooth, pleasant manners, but I could feel at once that she didn’t like me. Now, why shouldn’t she? I’d never done her any harm, and I wasn’t staying long enough to alienate Grandpa’s affections, as they call it. She was polite enough — more than I liked; but I was just as polite as she was.

  All at once I remembered. Of course. She wanted to marry Grandpa. Wasn’t he a widower, and rich, and old, and alone? That is, with no real family of his own to love and do for?

  In the books I had read there were many of these housekeepers — very designing persons, and sometimes successful.

  I studied the situation carefully. What could I do? If it was so, what on earth could I do?

  Maybe she didn’t want to marry him after all. I looked at her, and I looked at him, and studied about it. Of course, I didn’t look as if I was studying.

  She was not the oily kind of villain you read about, just calm and interested and agreeable. I made up my mind to find out if that was her natural manner, or put on.

  It was not hard to make friends with her. She was being as friendly as could be to me, and I stayed with her quite a little when Grandpa was busy.

  Her housekeeping was admirable. I admired it warmly, praised her preserves — which were really praiseworthy — and her way of managing everything. She showed me about, showed me the linen closet and the cedar closet and cedar chests. I guessed she wanted me to be impressed and tell Grandpa. I was impressed, and said so, too, right in front of her. But I also got very friendly with the maids, as far as I could. There was a new one, a chambermaid who did my room, and I found that she was awfully afraid of Mrs. Mason, the housekeeper, that she was very strict and harsh with them. That wouldn’t appeal to Grandpa as any harm — he liked discipline. Gerta was a Swede — the chambermaid, I mean. The parlor maid was German. It took a lot of people to keep that big house in order.

  Gerta was very pretty, and very lonesome and homesick, poor dear. She had no end of admirers, though, not only the dairymen and farmhands, but the tradesmen who came driving up in their joggly little carts. And she used to tell me about it, what they said and did, having no one else to confide in. She didn’t like the German one, or the cook, who was English. She said they didn’t like her, either.

  One day she was feeling dreadful because Mrs. Mason had scolded her for flirting with the dairy foreman, and she confided her feelings to me. Of course I encouraged it, or she wouldn’t have dared. She said Mrs. Mason was so severe with them all, and so hard on them if they did any little thing, that she threatened to send her away without a character reference if she caught her alone with any of the men again.

  “She said, ‘You Swedes are all alike!’” sobbed Gerta. “She may scold me, but not my country! And she is not so good herself. I know that!”

  I wondered what Gerta knew, and set myself to find out. It was not very difficult; she was angry and miserable enough to tell me anything for a little kindness. I comforted her all I could (she seemed younger than I was, though really older in years), told her I knew she was a good girl, and had perfect confidence in her. I had. I could see just the kind of a person she was — the victim kind: good, but childish and weak, not using her brains at all.

  Well, it appeared that one of the young butcher men had resented Mrs. Mason’s snapping at him for joking with Gerta, and had told Gerta, afterward, that “the Old Lady” had better be careful how she pitched into him, that he could “take her down a peg” if he wanted to tell all he knew.

  I told Gerta that it was her duty to her employer to find out about it, that Mrs. Mason was only an employee, and that if Mrs. Mason was doing anything she shouldn’t, Grandpa ought to know it. Then I represented to her what fun it would be to have a sort of stick to hold over her — even if we never told — and then I said I didn’t feel sure the young butcher man really knew anything, or that he would tell her if he did.

  Gerta tossed her head at that, and a very decided sparkle came into her clear blue eyes. She had such a peachy complexion. And her neck was round and straight as... well, in the books they say “an alabaster column,” but hers was so soft and cuddly that it didn’t remind me of a column at all, nor yet of alabaster.

  I teased her a little more and she just said, “You shall see, Miss MacAvelly,” and went off to make more beds, as we heard Mrs. Mason’s foot on the stairs.

  Gerta was a very determined person when she made
up her mind. She began to encourage not only the butcher, but the baker and the... I want to say “candlestick maker,” but it was only the grocer, and one and all of them told the same story.

  “She hass a ‘rake-off,’ Miss MacAvelly — that iss what they call it. There go large bills to Mr. Chesterton, and not all of it is to the tradesmen. She does all the ordering, and gets her ‘ten percent off,’ but Mr. Chesterton does not get it — not at all.”

  Now, this was something worthwhile. I felt as Machiavellian as could be, and wondered how I could get the facts and prove it to Grandpa.

  For once I was helped by Fate. Fate is not very dependable as an assistant, and is quite apt to work the wrong way. But this time it happened beautifully.

  It appeared Mrs. Mason had a son. She always represented him as a most noble young man, but I had my doubts of that. Anyway, this son was sick in a hospital, and she had to go to him.

  I was all sympathy and told Grandpa that he could let her go as easily as not, that I’d keep house for him; I had done it at home and knew how.

  He hadn’t much confidence in me, I guess, but the cook was a dependable woman, and Mrs. Mason said she would be back in a few days — a week at most, she thought.

  He let me try. There really was nothing else to do. It surely wasn’t worthwhile to get a new housekeeper just for a week.

  Off went Mrs. Mason on a Saturday, in real distress. I was quite sorry for her. No woman wants her son to be sick, no matter what her own designs may be. Whether she was that kind of a “designing woman” I don’t know — and as a matter of fact I never did find out — but that she was cheating Grandpa was clear enough.

  I spent Saturday evening studying cookbooks and menus; Sunday, the market reports; and started out early Monday morning to see all those tradesmen. Grandpa was much amused at my businesslike airs.

  He let me have the buggy with the old mare, and a good deal older man to drive me about, one who knew the people we traded with. It was lucky that I’d been about a good deal already, and picked up some information, now I was in a position to use it.

  It had not taken long to run over the supplies in the house; the cook helped me do that. She was a very competent sort of person, and I had shown great respect for her ability without treating her as an equal. I learned about that from our Alison. She had worked for fine English families, and had always had a good deal to say about their manners, and how superior they were to ours in America.

  There was a lot of food on hand, stored away, and yet Mrs. Mason had kept buying and buying. I determined to keep all my accounts separate, and asked Grandpa to let me pay cash for the week, so as not to confuse the accounts. So he made an estimate from a number of the monthly bills and gave me a quarter of their average amount.

  Then I used all the intelligence and experience I had, as well as a disarming expression of childlike confidence. I had the catalog of the biggest grocer in the town where we traded, and a list of things — quite a good-sized one, because there were a lot of us to feed. With the list and the prices, I asked the principal man in the store if he would give me a cash discount if I ordered all my groceries there, in weekly supplies like this.

  I showed him the money all ready, told him my name was MacAvelly, that I was newly come to the place, and was being allowed to try my hand as housekeeper, and that I wanted to show how much I could save. He never realized that it was the Chesterton account until he agreed to make the discount I asked. Then he inquired about Mrs. Mason and I told him she had left rather suddenly.

  I didn’t tell him why, nor that she was expected to be back, just tightened my mouth a little and said my grandfather was letting me try, and I was considering where to place our trade.

  He looked at me a little queerly, seemed to realize that a small honest bird in the hand was worth a dishonest cassowary in the bush, and said he hoped I would make no change, that he was sure I should find everything satisfactory. I told him I was sure of it, with a confiding smile, and skipped out. There was singularly little trouble with the tradesmen.

  Of course we raised our own vegetables — lovely fresh ones, of all sorts and kinds; and we had our own milk and eggs and chickens. The eggs, Grandpa said, did not pay very well, but I had a shrewd suspicion as to the reason.

  The man who had charge of the hennery was very friendly with Mrs. Mason, and I felt sure there was a leak there. He had showed me all over the place in the first day or two of my visit, showed me the nests, and even told me how many hens were laying. Since then he had been at some pains to explain that they were not laying at all regularly, and there were certainly not enough, after our family consumption, to suit Grandpa’s ideas of profit.

  I made a special study of that hennery — hen’s eggs are golden eggs to the producer. Then I asked Grandpa if he would do me a favor — just one.

  “What now, young lady?” he demanded. “Housekeeping money gone already?” It was only Wednesday.

  “Oh no,” I said. “The housekeeping’s getting along all right, and I do hope you like the meals, Grandfather.”

  “They do very well,” said Grandpa. He did not believe in praising people overmuch. I didn’t mind what he said about the meals. I’d seen him eat them.

  “This is something very particular,” I told him. “You know I’ve kept hens at home, and made them pay too. I really do know quite a lot about them. And I think it’s funny, really very funny, that you don’t get more eggs. Now will you let me collect them, for just one day? Send Joe Farrel on some errand or other, make him take a day off. I can attend to everything for one day — the incubators and chicks and all.”

  Grandpa put down his paper and looked at me severely. “Do you mean to say you think Joe Farrel is dishonest?”

  “I don’t know, Grandfather, and I can’t tell until I count the eggs myself, but so many hens, on the proper food, at this time of year, ought to produce about so many eggs” (I forget now what the number was, but then I had it all worked out). “And they don’t, not by a good thirty percent.”

  He looked at my figures. I had the books there to show him, and the poultry journal, and he nodded his big head slowly up and down.

  “You take a very lively interest in affairs, for so young a person,” he said, looking at me almost disapprovingly.

  “I guess it’s because I am so young, Grandfather. You see, all this is fresh to me, and I’m, well, I suppose I am proud of the way I worked my little hennery.” I was. It always gave me pleasure to recall how many more eggs I had than there were hens.

  “Of course I’m only a beginner at housekeeping, but I did it all the summer Mother was so poorly, and she said I did as well as she herself.” Really I did it better, a lot better, but I never told her so, nor yet Grandpa.

  After a while he agreed to send Farrel away on a sudden errand, told him he’d be responsible for the hens for one day, and I had my chance.

  The hens were all right. There were three dozen more eggs than the day before — thirty-eight, to be exact. I was awfully pleased. Grandpa wasn’t. He sent Farrel off again, for another day, and the hens kept up the record. Then the man returned, nothing being said, and he seemed to have a most discouraging influence on those birds.

  Well, he was fired pretty quick, and a new man found that “knew not Joseph” — that is, Mrs. Mason. Farrel was mean enough to accuse her of putting him up to it, and sharing the profit, but Grandpa didn’t believe him. I didn’t say anything — not yet — but “kept house” for all I was worth.

  She didn’t come back at the end of the week. She sent word that her son was worse, asked for two weeks, and hoped we were getting along all right under “the young lady’s care.”

  We were. We got along beautifully. Gerta tried to be lazy, to take advantage of our previous friendliness. I told her I was a real professional now, that I meant to be nice to all of them, but she’d have to do her work, not only as well, but quite a bit better than she did before — and I showed her how.

  You see
my mother was an Exquisite Housekeeper — not a Good Business Manager, not at all — but as a Work Manager she was fine.

  Grandpa began to look very appreciative.

  “The place seems more as it used to when your mother was with me,” he said, “and your grandmother. You look like her, a little.”

  I don’t really believe I did a single bit, but he thought so. And if I didn’t look like her, I’m sure the things he had to eat looked like what he used to have, and tasted so too. I had brought Mother’s old recipe book with me — the little handwritten one that was her mother’s — and when the solemn English cook wouldn’t undertake a thing, I just made it myself.

  There were popovers — she had never seen or heard of popovers. And there was real sponge cake — all eggs, no baking powder; and real pound cake — pound o’ butter, pound o’ sugar, pound o’ flour, and a dozen eggs.

  The most Pennsylvanianish things he had had right along, but they seemed to please him better now. And I made some sweet pickle, the green tomato kind. He smiled all over his face that night.

  “You certainly know how to cook, Benigna,” he said, as pleased as could be. “You take after your mother and your grandmother too. I don’t begrudge you the housekeeping, my dear, no matter what it costs.”

  That was a lot for Grandpa to say, and it pleased me ever so much — just to succeed like that, to say nothing of what else I was trying to do.

  I kept account of the eggs we used, the milk we used, and the butter — all the stuff of the farm — and found that I was getting on with less. I had a real square talk with the cook about it.

  “I know I am young, Mrs. Owens,” I said, “and you have had far more experience, but I will give you a dollar a week extra out of the housekeeping money, if you will help me save it.”

  She was a desperately saving person — in money, I mean — had some family dependent on her, I imagined, though she never said so, and this pleased her. There was almost a gleam in her large dull eyes, but all she said was “Certainly, Miss.”