Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  And the writing he could not distinguish.

  That is what comes of being twins and having one writing-master.

  It was the valentine party that he expected to settle it. A valentine party is a good thing when properly conducted. The Orchester girls had one once, when every guest was treated to a separate surprise. But that isn’t the story I’m telling. Pendleton Oaks had never attended a valentine party before. They do not have them at home.

  And he was not good at joking. However, when the valentine first came it made him quite happy.

  He knew now.

  He knew now that she must care for him, or she never would have written such beautiful verses. And if he was not quite sure yet as to whether it was Miss Maisie or Miss Maud — why the occasion would settle that matter forever. For did not it say that he should know her then at last; and did not that suffice to illumine the Past with a new intelligence, and fill the Future with most roseate light?

  When a man is as young as Pendleton Oaks and thinks as much of himself, a valentine like that is rather fetching.

  Here it is:

  Blessed St. Valentine once a year

  Banisheth shame and scattereth fear

  Biddeth each maiden reveal her heart,

  Sweet St. Valentine! Kind thou art!

  If I a Valentine write for thee

  Wilt thou not wear a flower for me?

  A passion flower of scarlet bright,

  Wear it for me on Wednesday night.

  There thou’lt see thy Valentine,

  And thou wilt know her by this sign:

  That she for thee will surely wear

  An azure love knot in her hair.

  O red is the color for love and for lover.

  And blue is for truth the wide world over!

  See thou forget not the token and sign, Thy faithful lover and Valentine.

  That settled it.

  A girl who could write like that must be a Genius, he was sure of that; and he knew she was a Beauty. Whichever of them it was, the beauty was undeniable; and that is more than could be said of Miss Delmars. Yet her costumes came from Paris.

  When Pendleton Oaks first read that valentine he was fairly awed by its grandeur.

  You see when a man cannot rhyme two words even with the aid of a T square, he is impressionable on that side.

  The worst of it was that it went to his head. He couldn’t hold it. Now that is bad.

  You may let out your horse on a falling incline,

  Or your sail on the hurricane’s wing,

  But the tongue you should hold

  Till the doom-record’s told.

  For the tongue is a different thing.

  Now if Pendleton Oaks had known that! But he didn’t.

  First he told the Galoot. The Galoot threw back his head and snorted. Pendleton would have rebelled with violence, but the Galoot was a bigger man. So he demanded an explanation.

  The Galoot looked at him for a few moments, visibly bursting; but withheld his information, and went off, snorting at intervals.

  Then, after a while, Pendleton told Exeter. Exeter looked at him very earnestly and opened his mouth as if to speak. He did not speak, however, to any purpose, — merely congratulated him on his prowess with the fair, and seemed anxious to get away.

  Afterwards he and the Galoot were seen to roll in the alfalfa, with uproarious outcry.

  Pendleton felt hurt. But he could not keep it to himself.

  The thing was so deucedly clever — and — it was too good to keep, really.

  So he told it to Forsyth. Then it came out.

  Forsyth was more merciful, or not so self-restrained. Perhaps he thought it was too good to keep, also. At any rate he showed him his copy.

  It is as well to pause here. There are emotions which no rude pen should seek to paint for the heartless beholder.

  When a young man, and such a young man as Pendleton Oaks, receives a valentine from the object of his affections — even granting that he is not quite sure which she is — he is naturally complimented.

  But when he finds that every last one of the regular dancing party set has received the same thing, it is not nice. Pendleton Oaks experienced various sensations, of a kind quite new in his history. After a while they consoled him.

  ‘Come,’ said they all, led by the Galoot’s cheerful voice, ‘let’s go in a body, and wear that red thing unanimously, and pay our respects to the fair deceiver as one man.’

  This was a fine plan. They were not to show any consciousness of having betrayed the crafty secret, but simply to surround and overwhelm the perpetrator. “Tis sport to see the engineer hoist with his own petard,’ hummed little Mortarson as they went, and the Galoot punched him, for the tune was atrocious.

  Meanwhile the Orchester house was full of light inside, and the Orchester girls were apparently in the best of spirits, both Miss Maud and Miss Maisie.

  Which of them had put the little ‘M’ to so many dainty missives is not here told, and as the girls gathered in the big bedrooms and laid their ‘things’ elbow deep on the beds, there was no hint of other mischief toward than it has pleased God to put in the young female heart at all times.

  To this scene came Pendleton and his brethren in iniquity, exulting hugely that they had risen to the occasion.

  And she for thee will surely wear

  An azure love knot in her hair, hummed little Mortarson as the crucial moment approached. The Galoot punched him for his sins.

  Into the great parlors they marched in a body, each wearing upon his front a scarlet passion flower, and gloating over the forthcoming discomfiture of the wily fair.

  These were but men, however, and the Orchester girls were Women.

  Every woman in that room wore a knot of blue ribbon in her hair.

  A DAY’S BERYYIN’

  THE sun was very hot on the round humpy little hills above ‘the smut.’ It was hot enough down there, on the black cracked surface of the peat bog; or where the still blacker pools reflected the cloudless sky in filmy lustre.

  But up here it was hotter, and the lovely white moss crumbled under foot as you walked on it.

  ‘That moss makes first-rate kindlin’ if you keep it dry,’ said Dothea Hopkins, crushing through the brittle masses. ‘That is, I’ve always heard say it did — I ain’t never tried it.’

  ‘Goodness! how hot ’tis up here!’ ejaculated her sister in reply. She was a little thin woman, and apparently nimbler than Dothea, whose square back was now bent low over the huckleberry bushes, while a brisk, hopping sound in the six-quart pail she wore at her waist told of the day’s work being already begun. ‘Yes, it takes just such sun to sweeten the berries,’ Dothea replied. ‘They’re real good this year. It’s rained some, so they ain’t little, and now it’s hot enough so s’t they’ll be sweet.’ She rolled a few about in the palm of her large hand, blew off the bits of leaf and twig and put them in her mouth.

  ‘I like these better’n the blueb’rys, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Well, I do’ know’s I do,’ responded her sister, still panting a little from her climb up the hill, and looking gingerly about her for the very thickest place to pick in.

  Dothea’s big pail had ceased to thump and rattle, and only gave forth a dull soft sound, long before Almira had found a spot to her liking. Once settled, however, she picked steadily and with care. You did not have to pick over Almira’s berries — they could go on the table at once.

  ‘The swamp blues is the best, I think,’ pursued Almira. ‘Them big bushes you can bend down and sit on — I used to when I was little. But after all I do’ know’s they’re any better’n the low blues — the real little ones that knock against your shoes so heavy.’

  ‘The black ones is the best,’ said Dothea firmly. ‘Blueb’rys is good for a change, I admit, but for steady wear, ‘n above all for cookin’, give me good black huckleberries!’

  ‘O, for cookin’, of course, I thought you meant jest a matter of taste,’
said Almira, and they relapsed into silence, moving farther away from each other and picking steadily.

  It was hot. The big stones crusted with lichen, that lay in the midst of the huckleberry patches, were too hot to sit on comfortably, and the stiff little juniper trees filled the dry air with aromatic breath. In the shade, a few large speckled mosquitoes lurked hungrily.

  ‘It’s an awful bad year for mosquitoes,’ suddenly burst out Almira. ‘Down stairs where I live in the city they’ve got screen doors and screen windows and nettin’s over the beds, and then they complain.’

  ‘Is that Hines girl married yet?’ inquired Dothea, brightening up at the mention of her sister’s tenants.

  ‘No, she ain’t,’ said Almira.

  Almira Hopkins had married a ‘city feller’ in her youth; and while she never said much of her life with him and mourned him decorously in whole, half and quarter mourning when he died; still it was observed that she did not marry again.

  ‘Marriage,’ she would say sagely, ‘is a lott’ry. I’ve got a house and lot, and I’m independent — why should I marry again?’ Yet Almira had plenty of chances, for her ‘city house’ was a solid attraction, and her domestic skill was added to year by year with marvelous new recipes. Still she serenely declined any further experiment, making no explanation, and lived up stairs in her small city home, in two or three slant-roofed rooms, renting the lower part.

  ‘She ain’t, and I don’t think it’s likely she will,’ continued Almira, ‘with that mother of her’n. How much did I tell you about her, anyway?’

  ‘Only that she was strong-minded and queer, and hadn’t a beau for all her good looks. But Bijah Sterns sells ’em potatoes; he knew her mother when they lived over in Pendleton, and he says she’s got a beau now. Has she?’

  ‘Well, it’s hard tellin’,’ answered Almira slowly, ‘but I’ll tell you what I know about it. That girl works like a horse anyway.

  Her mother frets to have her work so hard; but she will do it, and I suppose there’s reason good. Did you bring anythin’ to drink, Dothea, or shall I hev to go down to the spring?’

  ‘There’s cold tea, lots of it,’ replied Dothea. ‘We didn’t git started till near noon time, anyhow; and we might as well eat now as ever, if you’re ready. I’ve filled this pail, anyhow, and we want the one with the things in it.’

  So they sat down together in a shady spot, kept off the mosquitoes as best they might with waving of sweet-fern bushes, and continued to discuss the Hines girl’s marriage.

  ‘She’s a good girl for all she’s so queer,’ pursued Almira, ‘and her mother has kept her awful strict. Then when she come of age she kind of asserted herself, and done as she pleased. She don’t do no manner of harm; only she won’t be put upon as if she was a child any more. Her room is on the top floor with me and she pays reg’lar board to her mother. Pays some of the bills beside I guess, and does consid’able of the housework; but she’s real independent and her mother can’t abide it. She is a domineerin’ sort of woman, I think, for all her religion.

  ‘Well, when this young feller began to come — he was a photographer and good at his business, they said; but he had no faculty, and his folks were not up to what Mis’ Hines wanted for her daughter.

  ‘Anyhow, when he first come Mis’ Hines never thought her Car’line would take up with him; and she was awful polite — kind of patronizin’, I think. Car’line didn’t like it, for she wasn’t encouragin’ him much, but her mother would ask him to tea, and set and talk with him Sunday evenin’s while Car’line went to church. She would go to church regular and he wouldn’t, not even for her company, it appears. So she’d go just the same to all the services, and her mother’d keep him to tea, as I say, and to spend the evenin’.

  ‘Car’line never altered what she was doin’ fer any man, or woman either. I never saw a young person so sot.

  ‘Well, it run along, and bye ‘n bye it begun to look as if she would have him after all. Then Mis’ Hines turned right around. She’d been doin’ all she could to encourage him, it looked to be, before that; more’n Car’line did by a long chalk. But now she thought the girl was goin’ to have him, she began to behave — well, it was most peculiar, I think. Why, she told Car’line that he couldn’t stay to tea no more, and that she’d got to tell him so! And here he’d been comin’ right along every Sunday, and she keepin’ him to tea as a reg’lar thing!’

  ‘Well, of all things!’ said Dothea. Dothea was unimaginative — unromantic. She had lived with her mother until that good woman, after five years in her chair and two in her bed, had died and left her the little house and a tiny bit in the bank. She was a nurse by profession, not from choice, particularly, but because she had been a nurse for seven years. This story of Almira’s seemed to stir some faint memory in her broad breast, for she sat up straighter, shook the flakes of pie crust off her brown gingham apron, and asked, with some eagerness:

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Do? Why she had to tell him, of course. It come tea time, and we was thinkin’, of course, he was goin’ to stay, and there was no plate set, and Car’line’s mother just rung the bell and said nothin’. So she had to tell him.’

  ‘What’d he do?’ asked Dothea, eagerly.

  ‘Oh, of course he said he wouldn’t come any more. But Car’line held her head right up straight. I heard ‘em, ‘cause they was in the front hall, and I was up stairs lookin’ out the window. “I pay my board here,” says Car’line, “and if I can’t receive my friends here where I board, I will board somewhere else!”

  ‘So he’s comin’ yet, but her mother don’t speak to him, and I think he feels kinder stiff there now.’

  Dothea sighed a long, slow sigh.

  ‘When’d Bijah Sterns get back from Idaho,’ asked Almira, suddenly.

  Dothea colored a little.

  ‘Last June,’ said she.

  ‘And is he waitin’ on you agin?’ eagerly inquired Almira.

  ‘He has called once or twice,’ slowly assented Dothea, looking far over the sun-burned meadows to where the white, dusty road lay like a piece of faded tape between its yellow-green border.

  An old horse jogged slowly along in the sun, and a man sat dozing over the reins, his elbows on his knees.

  ‘Come, let’s go home,’ said she suddenly. ‘There’s berries enough, and it looks as if’t was goin’ to shower.’

  It was black in the north, and the air was hotter than ever. So they gathered up the pails, and reached the road by the shortest cut, the sweet fern breathing fragrant remonstrance, as they crushed it under foot.

  ‘Why, Dothea! and here’s Almira, too!’ said Bijah Stems, from his wagon, overtaking them, as they walked single file in the narrow footpath by the fence, the dust rising in clouds from the laden grass.

  ‘Get right in, and lem’me take you home. It’s goin’ to shower!’

  ‘How lucky ‘t you should come along!’ said Almira. ‘It’s a special providence, I think.’

  Almira was rather nearsighted.

  FIVE GIRLS

  ‘THERE won’t be many more such good times as these for us,’ said Olive Sargent, mournfully hugging her knees as she sat on the floor under the big Victory; ‘we’ve got to go out into the cold world presently and earn our livings.’

  ‘I don’t mind earning the living a bit,’ pretty Molly Edgerton asserted; ‘I like to, and I shall never give it up; but I do hate to be separated the way we shall be. I wish we needn’t.’ And Molly dusted the crumbs of her luncheon from her spotless gingham apron.

  The other girls always had charcoal on their aprons, or water colors, or oil, or dabs of clay; even sometimes all of these; but Molly’s was always clean. To be sure, her work was mostly pencil drawing, the making of delicately beautiful designs for jewelry, for fans, for wood carving, for lace even — she was a born designer, and made the other girls green with envy.

  Then Serena Woods opened her mouth and spoke. Serena was going to be an architect; indeed she was
one already in a modest way, having planned the school-house in her native town, and also the dwelling of her married sister. To be sure, the sister did sometimes complain to intimate friends of certain minor deficiencies in the edifice, but what is that to a rising architect whose brain glows with enthusiasm and lives in a luminous cloud of architraves, pediments, and facades. She spoke slowly, looking down from her perch on a high stool. ‘Girls, let’s not separate. Let’s go and live together in a house of our own. I’ll build it.’

  ‘O do!’ said Julia Morse, ‘I’ll decorate it! We shall each have a room in our favorite color, with most appropriate designs, and the rooms down stairs shall be a real sermon and poem in one!’ And Julia gushed on with fervid descriptions of her proposed scheme of mural decoration, while the others joined in rapturous applause.

  Then Maud Annersley joined in. Maud was a tall, pale, slender girl, with dark, thoughtful, blue eyes and a quiet voice. She was a painter, and had had a picture in the last exhibition which had won approval from the best critics. ‘Do you know,’ she said earnestly, ‘that we really might do this thing? We are all good friends and used to rooming together for these two years. We know all we mean to each other and when to stop — when to let each other alone. We’ve all got to earn our living, as Olive says, and it would be cheaper to earn it together than it would apart.’ And Maud rinsed her biggest brush in the turpentine cup with severe decision.

  Olive rose to her feet tempestuously.

  ‘I do believe we could!’ she said, her blue eyes lighting with sudden fervor. ‘What is to hinder our joining forces and working on together, having the sweetest, grandest, most useful life in the world! We could club our funds, go to some nice place where land is cheap, and Serena could really plan for us one of those splendid compound houses that are so beautiful and convenient. We could arrange it with studios, all as they should be, and other artists could rent them of us to help on. You know I shall have some money as soon as I’m twenty-one; and I’d rather invest it so than any way I know.’ Olive stopped for breath, flushed and triumphant; and the others looked at each other with new earnestness.