‘Don’t you know it’s your wedding night?’ said they.
‘Why yes,’ said he, in that quiet, courteous, reasonable, sweet-tempered way of his, that endeared him to all hearts in spite of his innocent eccentricities; ‘why yes, I know that, but it rained so I thought they wouldn’t have it.’
The boys had to laugh, but Nettie was mad and wouldn’t be married that night at all, when they did bring him.
Next time he was interested in a case of smallpox and sent word that he was sorry, but he really couldn’t leave his patient.
But finally the thing was managed, and nobody was better pleased than Hank when it was all safely accomplished.
Nettie had insisted on one thing though, and she’d saved money enough from her school teaching during these vicissitudes to be able to compass it: this was that they should go off somewhere for a year before they settled down. So he arranged to pursue his medical studies abroad, and she got the tickets and the guide-books and rate-cards and time-tables and schedules, and they got started in about two weeks’ time from the date set. She didn’t chafe any under that, for she had allowed a month to make sure. Nettie was the most reasonable woman I ever saw.
When they really did start; when the gang plank was off and all those dear friends one has on those occasions had stood around to the last moment and made you feel every emotion you had in your bosom several times over, and were now standing all along the edge of the pier to make you feel them over again — or maybe a new one — I thought I saw a peculiar expression of — well, of scientific enthusiasm, in Nettie’s eye, as she held him securely by the arm. I was one of those friends; but then they wanted to see me there, and I never make a fool of myself at such times.
You see, after all, they were kindred spirits, though their walks in life were different. Nettie was a born educator, and just as fond of educating as he was of doctoring. She didn’t stop at children either; so when I saw that look I got at the reason of her patience and determination; the reason besides her undying affection. It became evident to me that she considered his faults eradicable, and intended to eradicate them.
He came home in a year’s time, as intended. He wrote on to have the house open on the fifteenth of April, and that they’d be there on the 10.30 a in train, but his folks just gave out that Hank was likely to get back this spring, and were as surprised as anybody to see them come.
They looked well, both of them. She regarded him with a sort of triumphant admiration, as a woman will a man that she’s plumb proud of; not a shadow of anxiety or doubt. But she’d a kind of a worn look too, same as Paracelsus might, or Archimedes, or any of those absorbed experimentalists.
As for him, his face was fairly illuminated. There was such a glory of determination about him, such an air of high resolve and definite purpose, that one was led to expect immortal deeds at once.
‘Is the house all ready?’ he asked his mother when he’d kissed her properly and answered everybody’s questions; and we all stood around with our smiles getting a little tired — just a little.
‘Why yes,’ said she, kind of dazed though, he looked at her so, sharp ‘we fixed it all, not being very busy — but we didn’t hardly expect you yet a while, dear.’
‘I dare say not,’ said he smiling, ‘but here we are, and I hope Simley has sent up the office book-shelves I ordered to match the other set, and Jenks put out my new sign. Do you want to stop and order at White’s, Nettie, or would you rather come down in the morning?’
‘I guess the morning will do,’ said she, with such a reposeful, restful look as would do your heart good to see, a real luxurious sort of expression — kind of bee-in-clovery — and they all went off without a vestige of shawl or umbrella or railroad novel left behind them. He had even remembered to leave out her sun umbrella when he sent up the baggage, and opened it for her as they started off.
My sister said that when they got home there was a great bowl of violets on Nettie’s bureau, and that Nettie turned to him and said, ‘How did you know I liked violets?’ and he said, ‘You told me so in the art gallery of Munich that day when we were talking about flower painting. It was — June 21st, I think,’ and Nettie just threw her arms around his neck and cried.
We all thought it was a miracle, or that maybe he had been changed at nurse, or something of that sort; but my sister found out the whole process after a while and told me. You may think it is strange for a brother and sister to be so confidential, but then she was only being a sister to me for a while — she isn’t that now. And it wasn’t in human nature for Nettie not to tell, for an achievement like that in one year is a thing to make the meekest Moses as boastful as a healthy newspaper. Nettie never really boasted; but you could see she was proud and gradually we learned the details of the process.
‘It was only a question of relating brain action,’ said she modestly, ‘and not nearly so hard as doing it to a child where you have to wait for years of growth. My husband has a splendid brain, and a well trained one too, only he had never been taught to focus and carry at the same time. He could focus all right and forget to carry, or he could carry all right and forget to focus. It’s a trick of the mind, like patting your head and rubbing on your chest at the same time. Most of us do this more or less well, but Mr Richardson didn’t take to it naturally, and nobody ever trained him.’
My sister — that was — was extremely awed by this opening. She hasn’t a scientific mind herself, but I have never cast it up at her. You see I don’t need any professional treatment myself. I never forget anything, but letters to mail, and to order the coal, and little things like that, — same as any man does.
‘How did you begin?’ asked my sister.
Nettie looked back over her path of victory and smiled: ‘I took care of everything without his knowing it, and arranged a series of openings for him to forget in. He did, of course.
‘The first time he missed connection he lost me, and it made a great impression on him. The second time, it left me in great danger; the third, I should have been dead — but for having planned it myself. That was in the Catacombs. These things made a deep impression on him. I planned so that there were no innocent lapses — only awful ones. Then I began a carefully prepared series of things to remember — good, loud things, to rouse his neglected powers of observation and retention. For instance, whenever we came to our room in the hotel I wrapped the match box in scarlet paper. I made a sign that said ‘matches’ in big letters. Then I put matches on the floor and on the stove and on the bureau and on the desk — on everything there was in the room.
‘What are you doing?’ said he.
‘Arranging the matches,’ said I calmly, and went on. Finally, I put them on the table by the bed near the light and begged his approval. He was unsuspecting and interested, but I talked about those matches and their location on that table till his brain revolted. Then I would ask him, at irregular intervals, but suddenly, where those matches were put; and after a while he could remember at once, even when I changed the position, and the color, and finally the thing itself. You see, the startling irregularity of my actions aroused a new interest, and my carefully adjusted inquiries did not let it die out. In time, he could remember every item of furniture in a room we had left a month before, and things that I had said about them, and it never tired him a bit.
‘Then I began on errands and things that you have to remember ahead instead of backwards; beginning with urgent demands for conspicuous things to be brought at once, and gradually shading off till the mere mention of a thing once would ensure its production at the desired time.
‘He saw through it all pretty soon and was as eager as I was; and soon got to enjoy the exercises. He’s in splendid condition now, and if I keep him in regular practice for another year I think it will be absolutely successful.’
And Nettie beamed and glowed like a young mother. She was a young mother, in course of time; and, if you’ll believe me, Hank Richardson could tell you that baby’s age as well
as he could the increase in the local death rate.
But if I tell you any more, perhaps you’ll discredit the whole story.
AN UNNATURAL MOTHER
‘DON’T tell me!’ said old Mis’ Briggs, with a forbidding shake of the head; ‘no mother that was a mother would desert her own child for anything on earth!’
‘And leaving it a care on the town, too!’ put in Susannah Jacobs, ‘as if we hadn’t enough to do to take care of our own!’
Miss Jacobs was a well-to-do old maid, owning a comfortable farm and homestead, and living alone with an impoverished cousin acting as general servant, companion and protegee. Mis’ Briggs, on the contrary, had had thirteen children, five of whom remained to bless her, so that what maternal feeling Miss Jacobs might lack, Mis’ Briggs could certainly supply.
‘I should think,’ piped little Martha Ann Simmons, the village dressmaker, ‘that she might a saved her young one first and then tried what she could do for the town.’
Martha had been married, had lost her husband, and had one sickly boy to care for.
The youngest Briggs girl, still unmarried at thirty-six, and in her mother’s eyes a most tender infant, now ventured to make a remark.
‘You don’t any of you seem to think what she did for all of us — if she hadn’t left hers we should all have lost ours, sure.’
‘You ain’t no call to judge, Maria Melia,’ her mother hastened to reply; ‘you’ve no children of your own, and you can’t judge of a mother’s duty. No mother ought to leave her child, whatever happens. The Lord gave it to her to take care of — he never gave her other people’s. You nedn’t tell me!’
‘She was an unnatural mother!’ repeated Miss Jacobs harshly, ‘as I said to begin with.’
‘What is the story?’ asked the City Boarder. The City Boarder was interested in stories from a business point of view, but they did not know that. ‘What did this woman do?’ she asked.
There was no difficulty in eliciting particulars. The difficulty was rather in discriminating amidst their profusion and contradictoriness. But when the City Boarder got it clear in her mind it was somewhat as follows:
The name of the much condemned heroine was Esther Greenwood, and she lived and died here in Toddsville.
Toddsville was a mill village. The Todds lived on a beautiful eminence overlooking the little town, as the castles of robber barons on the Rhine used to overlook their little towns. The mills and the mill hands’ houses were built close along the bed of the river. They had to be pretty close, because the valley was a narrow one, and the bordering hills were too steep for travel, but the water power was fine. Above the village was the reservoir, filling the entire valley save for a narrow road beside it, a fair blue smiling lake, edged with lilies and blue flag, rich in pickerel and perch. This lake gave them fish, it gave them ice, it gave the power that ran the mills that gave the town its bread. Blue Lake was both useful and ornamental.
In this pretty and industrious village Esther had grown up, the somewhat neglected child of a heart-broken widower. He had lost a young wife, and three fair babies before her — this one was left him, and he said he meant that she should have all the chance there was.
‘That was what ailed her in the first place!’ they all eagerly explained to the City Boarder. ‘She never knew what ’twas to have a mother, and she grew up a regular tomboy! Why she used to roam the country for miles around, in all weather like an Injun! And her father wouldn’t take no advice!’
This topic lent itself to eager discussion. The recreant father, it appeared, was a doctor, not their accepted standby, the resident physician of the neighborhood, but an alien doctor, possessed of ‘views.’
‘You never heard such things as he advocated,’ Miss Jacobs explained. ‘He wouldn’t give no medicines, hardly; said “nature” did the curing — he couldn’t.’
‘And he couldn’t either — that was clear,’ Mrs Briggs agreed. ‘Look at his wife and children dying on his hands, as it were! “Physician heal thyself,” I say.’
‘But, mother,’ Maria Amelia put in, ‘she was an invalid when he married her, they say; and those children died of polly — polly — what’s that thing that nobody can help?’
‘That may all be so,’ Miss Jacobs admitted, ‘but all the same it’s a doctor’s business to give medicine. If “nature” was all that was wanted, we needn’t have any doctor at all!’
‘I believe in medicine and plenty of it. I always gave my children a good clearance, spring and fall, whether anything ailed ’em or not, just to be on the safe side. And if there was anything the matter with ’em they had plenty more. I never had anything to reproach myself with on that score,’ stated Mrs Briggs, firmly. Then as a sort of concession to the family graveyard, she added piously, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’
‘You should have seen the way he dressed that child!’ pursued Miss Jacobs. ‘It was a reproach to the town. Why, you couldn’t tell at a distance whether it was a boy or a girl. And barefoot! He let that child go barefoot till she was so big we was actually mortified to see her.’
It appeared that a wild, healthy childhood had made Esther very different in her early womanhood from the meek, well-behaved damsels of the little place. She was well enough liked by those who knew her at all, and the children of the place adored her, but the worthy matrons shook their heads and prophesied no good of a girl who was ‘queer.’
She was described with rich detail in reminiscence, how she wore her hair short till she was fifteen— ‘just shingled like a boy’s — it did seem a shame that girl had no mother to look after her — and her clo’se was almost a scandal, even when she did put on shoes and stockings.’
‘Just gingham — brown gingham — and short!’
‘I think she was a real nice girl,’ said Maria Amelia. ‘I can remember her just as well! She was so nice to us children. She was five or six years older than I was, and most girls that age won’t have anything to do with little ones. But she was as kind and pleasant. She’d take us berrying and on all sorts of walks, and teach us new games and tell us things. I don’t remember any one that ever did us the good she did!’
Maria Amelia’s thin chest heaved with emotion; and there were tears in her eyes; but her mother took her up somewhat sharply.
‘That sounds well I must say — right before your own mother that’s toiled and slaved for you! It’s all very well for a young thing that’s got nothing on earth to do to make herself agreeable to young ones. That poor blinded father of hers never taught her to do the work a girl should — naturally he couldn’t.’
‘At least he might have married again and given her another mother,’ said Susannah Jacobs, with decision, with so much decision in fact that the City Boarder studied her expression for a moment and concluded that if this recreant father had not married again it was not for lack of opportunity.
Mrs Simmons cast an understanding glance upon Miss Jacobs, and nodded wisely.
‘Yes, he ought to have done that, of course. A man’s not fit to bring up children, anyhow — How can they? Mothers have the instinct — that is, all natural mothers have. But, dear me! There’s some as don’t seem to be mothers — even when they have a child!’
‘You’re quite right, Mis’ Simmons,’ agreed the mother of thirteen. ‘It’s a divine instinct, I say. I’m sorry for the child that lacks it. Now this Esther. We always knew she wan’t like other girls — she never seemed to care for dress and company and things girls naturally do, but was always philandering over the hills with a parcel of young ones. There wan’t a child in town but would run after her. She made more trouble ‘n a little in families, the young ones quotin’ what Aunt Esther said, and tellin’ what Aunt Esther did to their own mothers, and she only a young girl. Why she actually seemed to care more for them children than she did for beaux or anything — it wasn’t natural!’
‘But she did marry?’ pursued the City Boarder.
‘Marry! Yes, she married finally. We
all thought she never would, but she did. After the things her father taught her it did seem as if he’d ruined all her chances. It’s simply terrible the way that girl was trained.’
‘Him being a doctor,’ put in Mrs Simmons, ‘made it different, I suppose.’
‘Doctor or no doctor,’ Miss Jacobs rigidly interposed, ‘it was a crying shame to have a young girl so instructed.’
‘Maria Melia,’ said her mother, ‘I want you should get me my smelling salts. They’re up in the spare chamber, I believe —
When your Aunt Marcia was here she had one of her spells — don’t you remember? — and she asked for salts. Look in the top bureau drawer — they must be there.’
Maria Amelia, thirty-six, but unmarried, withdrew dutifully, and the other ladies drew closer to the City Boarder.
‘It’s the most shocking thing I ever heard of,’ murmured Mrs Briggs. ‘Do you know he — a father — actually taught his daughter how babies come!’
There was a breathless hush.
‘He did,’ eagerly chimed in the little dressmaker, ‘all the particulars. It was perfectly awful!’
‘He said,’ continued Mrs Briggs, ‘that he expected her to be a mother and that she ought to understand what was before her!’
‘He was waited on by a committee of ladies from the church, married ladies, all older than he was,’ explained Miss Jacobs severely. ‘They told him it was creating a scandal in the town — and what do you think he said?’
There was another breathless silence.
Above, the steps of Maria Amelia were heard, approaching the stairs.
‘It ain’t there, Ma!’
‘Well, you look in the high boy and in the top drawer; they’re somewhere up there,’ her mother replied.
Then, in a sepulchral whisper:
‘He told us — yes, ma’am, I was on that committee — he told us that until young women knew what was before them as mothers they would not do their duty in choosing a father for their children! That was his expression— “choosing a father!” A nice thing for a young girl to be thinking of — a father for her children!’
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 149
