I kept close watch for that paper to come, which it did in time. Alison read it solemnly through in the afternoon, sitting in her painfully clean kitchen by the window. She got her work done like a sort of cold whirlwind, and then used to sit there with a big, stiff white apron on, and not a sound but the flies on the sticky paper. I borrowed the News and Observer just before she went to bed and, yes, there it was.
So I put the paper down on the little stand by Father’s elbow and sat down by the lamp with my knitting. Peggy had been playing for an hour or so; the room still seemed to be crooning with “The Land o’ the Leal” and “Auld Lang Syne.” Nobody was up now but just us. He read along, and read along. I thought he’d never come to it. But by and by he gave a start and sat there staring.
“What is it, Father?” I said, and half rose to my feet, but he folded the paper up tight, and put it in his pocket. I knew what he had read, well enough:
If the next of kin to the late Andrew Angus MacAvelly of this city will call in person within 10 days at 109 Blackie St., Edinburgh, it will be to the advantage of the family.
I had been at great pains with the working of that advertisement. 109 Blackie Street was the address of a firm of engineers. I thought they could advise him about that coal — maybe. As to the advantage of the family, I was sure of that.
He was pacing up and down now, very grim indeed.
“Father,” I said, “you don’t look well. I wish you could get a vacation somehow. I believe if you were better Mother would be, too.”
He stopped short and stared at me. “Benigna,” he said grimly, “by a singular coincidence I was making up my mind to take a trip at once. It is only a question of persuading your mother...”
I didn’t like the way he said “persuading.”
“See here, Father,” I said, “I know you could in time, but I wish you’d let me try. You know sometimes she’ll listen to me, and it will save you the worry. Just let me take the deed. If I can get it signed without her realizing that you’re going, I think that will be easiest. She’s so weak now, you know.”
He showed me the paper presently; he just had to talk to somebody.
“Here it is, maybe the chance of a lifetime. I must go, and go at once. It’ll be the making of our fortunes.”
“I tell you, Father, let me pack your things, and you start off right away without getting Mother excited. Isn’t this Thursday? Isn’t there a boat going Saturday usually? Could you get the money tomorrow, if you had that deed? And go off tomorrow night, and then write Mother a letter from New York before sailing?”
We began to plan. He was as excited as a boy.
“If you can do that, Ben, you can do me a service. Just get her to sign it, if you can. I have a man ready and waiting with the money.” (Part of it was owing him. That was why he was so willing, I found out later.)
“Will it be enough, Father?” I asked anxiously.
“It will be enough to get me there, at any rate, I can manage afterward. There will be more when I get to work over there.”
It was late before we went to bed. There was so much to talk over. But I assured him that I could get the signature early in the morning, and that his best plan was not to disturb her at all.
“I’ll tell her you were called away on business,” I said. “And Peggy and I’ll take good care of her. We can get along for a month or so all right — or until we hear from you.”
I packed his bags for him — he said he didn’t need a trunk — and that he could buy things on the other side far better and far cheaper. He looked quite eager and young — fairly smelled the heather already. He planned for a very early start, but he was up so late that he didn’t wake at all in the morning until I slipped in, with the deed in my hand, all signed and acknowledged.
“She’s asleep again,” I said, “and Peggy’s not awake. They’ll understand that you had to go in a hurry.”
He looked at the document carefully before he hurried off. “How ever did you persuade her?” he demanded.
But I just reached up and kissed him goodbye. “Hurry up!” I said. “So long as she’s not worried it doesn’t matter, does it? Be sure and bring me some cairngorms when you come back, won’t you?”
So off he went in a sort of clumsy rush, and I watched him go, “a prey to conflicting emotions.” Everything was as still as could be in the house, and nothing moving in sight but a milk wagon. I felt like Lady Macbeth, or — who was that girl in the turban who killed her father? — or they said she did.
Then I drew a long breath.
“Now, Benigna Machiavelli,” I said to myself, “you’ve got to take care of your mother and sister. And it’s no crime to sign your own name, that I know of!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
You needn’t imagine that I let Father go off without having some sort of provision in mind for Mother. I had been studying Mother all my life, more or less, and had a theory as to what would make her happiest.
It’s particularly hard to understand your own parents. They stand so close to you and they are always there. It’s like living on the side of a mountain — you can’t see it.
Of course you love them, at first anyway, and admire them, and all that. Then, if they turn out to be conspicuously unpleasant, like Father, you have to struggle with your upbringing to recognize it.
Of course I know the commandment “Honor thy father and mother,” as a means to longevity. But if your father drinks, and isn’t any earthly use, and abuses your mother, can you honor that? I couldn’t, and I’m willing to die sooner, if that’s the consequence.
Then again, once you begin to criticize and blame a parent it is hard to do them justice — they are so near. The child — the little thing that has looked up to the big thing for so long — all his or her life — cannot easily see around a parent’s faults when she or he first recognizes them, cannot make allowances and be patient. If I’d been thirty or forty I might have been more patient with Father, maybe, but I would have assisted his departure just the same. It was the best thing possible under the circumstances.
The great difficulty with Mother was her patient discouragement. I couldn’t seem to get her ambitious for anything.
“My life is over,” she used to say patiently. “I must not complain. You girls have your lives before you. You will go on and marry and be happy, I hope, and I will live in your happiness. A mother’s life is in her children.”
Now I loved Mother enough, I’m sure of that. But I wasn’t at all contented with this prospect of her just living around in Peggy’s and my happiness all the rest of her life. If it was just metaphorical, that would be a very slim sort of diet for her. And if meant practically, to live in our houses after we were married, that didn’t seem to be fair to any of us. I’ve seen it done, lots of times.
When one gets to be a genuine, well-established Grandma — cap and glasses and soft shoes — it’s all right; there’s no other right place for a real helpless, amiable Grandma. But for an able-bodied, middle-aged woman to try to be a professional Grandma at forty or fifty, it doesn’t fully employ her faculties.
Here was my dear mother, only forty years old — young, for a man, and by no means aged for a woman. Living in a daughter’s happiness — even two daughters’ happiness — is not a sufficient occupation for a middle-aged woman. Sometimes, being still active and having no other field of interest, they mess up the daughter’s happiness a good deal. I’ve seen that done too.
So I used to sit and look at dear Mother with those noncommittal eyes of mine. (I was always proud of my eyes. They were so inexpressive; they didn’t give me away.) And I’d wonder how I could get her roused up to see that she ought to have ten, twenty, thirty years of satisfying life before her, with lots of happiness of her own, to use and give away. She thought it was all over with her life on account of Father, but what sort of a life did she have with him?
I had a secret conviction that there was a stretch before her which she would find much pleasanter than
what lay behind. So I had planned out a career for Mother.
Our assets were the house, and Mother’s motherliness. Of course, the obvious thing was boarders. I’d had that in mind for some years, more or less, and had been studying the business, as far as I could.
There was Mrs. Gale next door. She kept boarders because she had a house, and a daughter to bring up, and no other business. But she didn’t like it, and Jennie didn’t like it, and the boarders didn’t like it. Mrs. Gale was an awfully cross woman. Jennie said it was nervous trouble, that naturally she was lovely, but I guess I never saw her when she was natural. Nervous or not, the servants couldn’t stand it. They wouldn’t ever stay long. Mrs. Gale worked and fussed and scolded, but somehow the house was never clean, in spite of always being cleaned. That is, things were continually torn up, and there was dust and flapping, but none of that still freshness that feels so good in a room.
She wanted Jennie to do more work in the house, but Jennie hated housework, and wanted to be a stenographer and typist. She said she could earn enough to take care of her mother that way, and would much rather.
I backed her up, told her what wages expert stenographers got, and how keeping boarders wasn’t a bit good for her mother, and it was really her duty to struggle on even if scolded — for her mother’s sake. So she struggled.
I taught her stenography. It was good for both of us. We took turns dictating, and I tried to keep her spirits up. But what with keeping on at school, and helping her mother, and our night work besides, it was very hard on Jennie. If it hadn’t been for me she would have given it up, I know. But I used to figure out for her what fine pay she would get by and by, and how she and her mother could have a little apartment and live so comfortably on that, how it was really for her mother’s good, and she must bear up for her sake. So Jennie hung on.
Mrs. Gale’s house was close to her side of the fence, and ours was close to our side. They were both big, comfortable, elderly houses, with plenty of rooms, and built on about the same plan by a rich family who lived there once — brothers or sisters or something. They used to have a covered way connecting them, but that had been taken away later, when the estate changed hands.
Grandpa Chesterton, I think, may have had a sort of half thought of the professional advantages of the place when he bought our house, but if he hadn’t, I had now. You see it was only ten minutes’ walk from the city hall, but owing to the sudden hill it was quiet and pleasant — a nice residential street, yet close to business.
With such a house and such a mother, boarders were the obvious resource, but there was Mrs. Gale. She had rather prejudiced Mother.
“Oh, Mrs. MacAvelly,” she would say, sitting rocking in our parlor when she ought to have been attending to business, “don’t let anything ever induce you to take boarders. Such a care! And such an expense! And so ungrateful! And the trouble one has with servants. It is bad enough in a private family, but in a boarding house!”
She would rock and fan herself and complain, telling how three of her young gentlemen had failed to pay their bills last year, and how one had left a trunk, which turned out to have nothing in it but worn-out clothes and newspapers and coal. “My own coal, too, Mrs. MacAvelly!”
And Mother would agree with her sweetly, and accept all her misadventures as a needful part of the business, and thank her stars that she didn’t have to keep boarders.
I was pretty good friends with Mrs. Gale. Saturdays she would sometimes take me to market with her. I’d offer to carry the basket, and she would complain to me, just as she did to Mother, of the direful disadvantages of her business.
“Why do you do it, Mrs. Gale?” I asked her.
“To keep a home for Jennie, of course,” was her reply. “A mother must do many things for a child whether she likes it or not.”
“How would you prefer to live if you could?” I inquired.
“When Jennie has a position as teacher,” she said, “then we shall board.”
She said it with a good deal of determination, an expression of great relief. Also, I thought, she had a vengeful glitter in the eye, as if she, in boarding, would wreak on some future landlady all the injury she had suffered from her own boarders.
Meanwhile I studied her methods of marketing — and learned how not to do it.
Well, I had all this in my mind, and put out some feelers, as it were, before Father left.
I kept his going from Mother quite successfully. If she had known, I’m sure she’d have tried to keep him. Mother never did know when she was well off. If she thought it was her duty to have a fox gnawing at her vitals she would have absolutely petted that fox. I respect duty as much as anyone, but I do think there is room for some discrimination.
As to telling her about that mortgage, all at once, right there on the garden path, with Father in a disappearing streetcar, the idea struck me that perhaps she needn’t know, after all. The man who was to lend the money on it lived in New York now — old Mr. Burt. I’d seen him. He would never bother us if his interest was paid — eight percent, it said in the deed, $80.00 a year. That wasn’t so much — about $1.50 a week — surely I could earn more than that! I sat down on the steps and figured it out, then and there. Anyway she need not know until she was better.
But that meant a new crime — intercepting letters. I felt sure I could catch the first one, but Father would write more of course. I couldn’t be certain of getting them all.
Then I thought of that old rhyme:
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive.
But it didn’t trouble me any. I love tangled webs; it’s such fun to tangle and untangle them.
Then I thought of a fine thing, and I was mortified that I hadn’t thought of it before, but it had taken all my intellect to manage Father.
I determined to stop that first letter, just tell Mother that Father had gone to Scotland. I’d not tell her how he got the money, except that he borrowed it, and not that, unless she asked. Meanwhile I’d get Grandpa to take her away for a visit. I had other plans to get started before she came back.
So I wrote a nice letter to Grandpa, told him that now Father had gone abroad I thought Mother would be willing to take a trip somewhere for her health. He’d asked her to before, but she never would leave Father. I told him how really miserable she was, and that the doctor said she must have change of air and scene, and that we girls could get along perfectly with Alison.
When I took up Mother’s breakfast and she had had her coffee and was leaning back on the piled-up pillows looking like a faded pink sweet pea, I told her in a casual, offhand way that Father had gone off on a business trip and left her in my care. She looked anxious at once.
“Where’s he gone, Ben?” she said. “When did he go? When’s he coming back?” And then she shut her eyes, and little streaks of tears ran down. “He didn’t even say goodbye to me,” she said, very softly. Mother was as weak as that.
“Now Motherkins, you mustn’t mind,” I said. “It’s a business trip. I didn’t want to worry you about it and really I persuaded him to go off without telling you. He’ll write presently, dear. Meanwhile you must get as well as you can so as to astonish him when he comes back. Please forgive me, Mother, if I did wrong.”
Mother would forgive anybody for the asking, especially us children, and she didn’t ask any more questions, except, “Did he say how long he’d be gone?”
“No, he didn’t, but then it must be quite a good while.” I thought rapidly and decided that she ought to know as much as possible about it, so as to be settled in her mind. So I told her frankly that he had seen an advertisement in the Edinburgh paper and had started for Scotland.
She looked at me with her large eyes. “How could he, Benigna! Where’d he get the money?”
“He was going to borrow it, Mother, of a man in New York. He took an early train on purpose. I think he thought you might disapprove. Anyway I’m the one to blame, so if you’ve forgiven me,
you’ll have to forgive him. And really I think it will do Father lots of good. He has seemed actually homesick lately. Just seeing his native land again will make him happy.”
Peggy was tremendously interested when she heard of it, and Alison McNab was not only interested but angry.
“He has gone to Scotland, is it, and not a word to me? I should have been glad to send messages to my people there, and presents perhaps. Gone to Scotland — without a word!”
Peggy sat with Mother, and Alison of course was busy enough, but my main occupation now was to watch for the postman. I could see him coming up James Street, if I kept a steady eye on one place between the trees, and then it was easy to meet him between the corner and our house.
“Good morning, Mr. Reilly. Any letters for us?”
There weren’t any at all, so I had it all to do over for the noon mail. But Father had forgotten, or been in too much of a hurry maybe, and only sent a hasty word on steamer paper just before starting. It came next day.
I smuggled it up to my room, steamed it, opened it, and read it, feeling more Machiavellian than ever in my life. To my great satisfaction it didn’t say a word about the deed and the money. I suppose he couldn’t bear to thank her. So Mother got her letter all right, and felt relieved in her mind.
Then I put my trust in Providence. “Perhaps he’ll never mention it,” I thought to myself.
Meanwhile Grandpa had come. He didn’t write, he didn’t even telegraph. He just came.
“Pack up her things, Benigna!” he said. “She’s going back with me. She can have ‘rest and change’ there for a while, and then we’ll see.”
He wanted me to come too, but I urged that Peggy ought to be the one this time.
“Peggy’s so sweet with Mother,” I told him. “I’ll be all right here with Alison. There’s a lot of housecleaning and things to do.”
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 95
