PART I.
“I am going to think this matter out to a practical issue, if it takes me all night!” said Mrs. Hiller, positively. “It may be that I am rowing against wind and tide, as you say, but I will hold to the oars until I am hopelessly swamped, or reach land!”
Her husband laughed. Not sneeringly; but as good-natured men always do laugh when women talk of finding their way out of a labyrinth by means of the clue of argument.
“You will accomplish no more than your conventions and women’s rights books”—
“Don’t call them mine!” protested the wife.
“I speak of the sex at large, my love. No more, then, than women’s rights books and conventions have achieved. All their battle for the equality of the sexes; the liberation of women from the necessity of marriage as a means of livelihood; for more avenues of remunerative labor, and the acknowledgment of the dignity of the same—now that the smoke has cleared away, and combatants and spectators can look about them—is seen to have resulted in nothing, or next to nothing. You have encouraged a few more women to paint poor pictures, and spoil blocks and plates in attempts to practise engraving; put some at bookkeepers’ desks where they are half paid; crowded the board-rooms of our public schools with applicants at the rate of a hundred for each vacancy; induced a similar rush upon telegraph offices, and every other place where ‘light, lady-like labor’ can be procured; brought down, rather than raised the salaries in each of these departments of industry—and made marriage more than ever the summum bonum of every thinking workwoman—the shining gate that is to give her liberation from ill-requited toil.”
“Philip! how you exaggerate!”
“Not in the least, my dear, sanguine wife! Who puts on her rose-colored spectacles whenever the subject of ‘woman’s emancipation’ is brought forward. I have studied this matter as closely as you have; hopefully, for a while, but, of late, with the fast-growing conviction that Nature and Society yoked are too strong a team for you to pull against. Combat the assertion as you will,—it is natural for a woman to look forward to matrimony as her happiest destiny; to desire, and to bring it about by every means which seems to her consistent with modesty and self-respect. And to this conclusion Society holds her by the refusal to receive into the ‘best circles’ her who earns her living by her own labor. Mrs. Million treads the charmed arena by virtue of her husband’s wealth. But, when Mrs. Sangpur is envious of her dear friend’s latest turn-out in equipage, dress, or furniture, she recurs, tauntingly, to the time when Mrs. Million was a work-girl in Miss Fitwell’s establishment, and shrugs her patrician shoulders over ‘new people.’ As Miss Fitwell’s assistant, forewoman, and successor, Miss Bias—now Mrs. Million—were she rich, refined, beautiful, could yet never hope for a card even to one of Mrs. Sangpur’s mass parties.”
“But there are distinctions of social degree, Philip, which must be maintained. You don’t bring your bootmaker home to dine with Judge Wright, or Honorable Senator Rider.”
“I am not a reformer, my love. When my bootmaker fits himself for the society of those you name, he will be welcomed by them, and his early history referred to as an honor, not disgrace. The annals of Court and Congress will tell you this. To return to the original question; I insist there is a want of practicalness—I won’t say of common sense—in your reform, as heretofore conducted; that no one woman in five thousand, especially in what are called the higher walks of life, is able to support herself, or would be allowed by popular sentiment to do so, were she able. There is a screw loose somewhere, and very loose at that. I, for one, am never rid of the rattle. Maybe, because I am the father of three daughters. If I had sons, I should be condemned by the entire community; stand convicted at the bar of my own conscience, if I had not trained each of them to some trade or profession. As it is, the case stands thus: I may live long enough to accumulate a fair competency for each of my girls, a sum, the interest of which will support her comfortably; for she, being a woman, will never increase the bulk of the principal. My more reasonable hope is to see her married to an energetic business man, or one who has inherited a fortune and knows how to take care of it. This accomplished, parental responsibility is supposed to end, so far as provision for the life that now is, goes. If her husband should fail, or die a poor man—the Lord help her and her children—if I cannot!”
He was not talking flippantly now. As he knocked the ashes from the tip of his cigar into the grate, his face was grave to sorrowfulness.
“Our girls have been carefully educated,” said Mrs. Hiller, a little hurt at the turn the dialogue had taken. “In this country a thorough education is a fortune. They could set up a school.”
“To compete with a thousand others conducted by those who have been trained expressly for this profession; whom constant practice has made au fait to the ever-changing modes of instruction and fashionable text-books. Why, I, whose Latin salutatory was praised as a model of classic composition, and who read Horace, Sallust, and Livy in the original almost every day, cannot understand more than half the quotations spouted in the court-house and at lawyers’ dinners, by youngsters who have learned the ‘continental method’ of pronunciation. I cannot even parse English, for the very parts of speech are disguised under new names. A noun-substantive is something else, an article is a pronoun, and, what with adjuncts, subjects, and modifiers, I stand abashed in the presence of a ten-year-old in the primary department of a public school. Our girls might go out as daily governesses at a dollar a day, or run their chances of getting music scholars away from professionals by offering lessons at half price. They are good, intelligent, and industrious. I don’t deny their ability to make a bare living, if forced to do it. I don’t believe they could do more. When the rainy day comes, He who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, must be their helper. Let us hope that day will never dawn. And by way of additional provision against it, I must leave you for an hour or two, to keep an engagement with a client. Don’t let the memory of our talk depress you. We won’t cross the bridge before we come to it. Here is ‘Old Kensington’ to amuse you. You know, darling, that I would work brains and fingers to nothing rather than have you and the lassies want for so much as the ‘latest thing’ in neck ribbons. And so would any man who is worthy of the name.”
“I know you would.”
The elderly love-couple gazed into each other’s eyes, exchanged a good-bye kiss as fondly as at their partings twenty-three years before.
“I could ask no fairer destiny for my daughters than has been mine,” murmured the mother, resettling herself in her luxurious chair before the sea-coal fire, and putting out her hand for the book the thoughtful kindness of her husband had provided for her evening’s entertainment. “But to every prize, there are so many blanks! It is worse for a woman to sell herself for a home and a livelihood than for her to fight, hand-to-hand with poverty, all her life. If girls would only believe this. I mean that mine shall!”
She did not open the book yet. Unrest and dissatisfaction were in the face that studied the seething, glowing pile in the grate.
“There are the Payne girls, for instance!” she said, presently, with increasing discomfort.
The book lay, still shut, in her lap. She folded her hands upon it; lay back in the chair, and did not move again in an hour. She was “thinking it out;” pulling: hard on the oar in the teeth of head-wind and fog.
She was haunted by the Payne girls. Their father, a popular physician, had lived handsomely; worked hard; been exemplary in his home, his profession, in church, and in city. He sent his five daughters to the best schools, and fitted them by culture and dress to make a creditable appearance in the world—the only world they cared for—a round of visits, parties and show-places for marriageable young people of both sexes. They were nice girls, said complaisant Everybody. Not beautiful, or gifted, but sprightly, well-bred and amiable—the very material out of which to make good wives and mothers. Two did marry before the sad day on which their father was brought home in an apoplectic fit, from which he never rallied. They married for love, but not imprudently. Their husbands were merchants with fair prospects, steady, enterprising, moral young men, who were yet not quite disposed to be burdened with the care of a maiden sister-in-law-and-a-half apiece in addition to the support of their families proper. That somebody would have to “look after the unmarried daughters” was soon bruited about. There were two boys—five and ten years old—to be educated; the widow to be provided for, and, when the estate was settled up, nothing except a life-insurance of eighteen thousand dollars was left with which to compass all this. Tenderhearted Everybody was sorry for the fatherless boys; sorrier for the widow, who had loved her husband very truly; sorriest for “the Payne girls.” Before their mourning was rusty, appreciative Everybody began to nudge Everybody Else slyly, when in company with the Payne girls, to call attention to the fact, daily more and more palpable, that the sisters three were anxious to get married. Not more anxious, if the secrets of feminine hearts had been revealed, than were dozens of others in their set, but they had not the art to dissemble their eagerness. Nobody stayed his, or her laugh at them by considering that, since they had deliberately, conscientiously, and humanely determined to relieve their mother from the crushing weight of their dependence, and saw no other way of doing this than by selling themselves in the licensed and respectable shambles of matrimony, they should have been commended for doing with all their might whatsoever their hands found to do. They angled earnestly, but with a zeal so little according to knowledge that the most bull-headed gudgeon in the preserved waters of bachelor and widowerdom scorned to be imposed upon by the bait. They borrowed the finery of their better-off sisters; made their own and their mother’s over and over again; went every where and tried every phase of fascination, “from grave to gay, from lively to severe,” until their eager, ceaseless smiles wore wrinkles about lips and eyes that ill-natured Everybody called crows-feet, and the tales of their fawnings, toadyisms, and manœuvres were stale in the ears of greedy Everybody—yet were still, at thirty-six, thirty-eight, and forty years of age, the Payne girls, “whose brothers were now able to do something for them.” What more suitable than that these fine young fellows—one of whom had chosen his father’s profession, while the other had gone into partnership with his brother-in-law, should bind pillions upon their backs whereon their sisters could ride in reputable indolence, behind the wives they had wedded and had a right to cherish?
“It was a pity,” considerate Everybody now began to whisper, “that they should be thus hampered; but what else could be done?”
Mrs. Hiller’s fresh-colored, matronly face might well be grave, as she recounted these things to herself, had the history of the Payne girls been an isolated case.
“But they are a type of so many!” she said, sadly. “Society is encrusted with such, like barnacles sticking to a ship. There is Lewis Carter, one of the ablest young lawyers at the bar, Philip says. He and Annie Morton have been in love with one another ever since he was twenty-one, and she nineteen, ten years ago. It is eight since his father died, and left him in charge of his mother and three sisters, only one of whom is younger than himself. They have not married, and, until they do, he cannot. Annie may wait for him until they are both fifty years old and upward—maybe all their lives—for the older the sisters grow, the more dependent they will become. They make a pleasant home for him, people say; manage his money judiciously, and fairly worship their benefactor. Yet he must compare them, mentally, to leeches, when he reflects how youth and hope are ebbing out of his heart and Annie’s. No doubt leeches are sincerely attached to what they feed upon. What right have they to expect a support from him, more than he from them? They are strong and well, and as much money was spent upon their education as upon his. Housekeepers, forsooth! Does it take four women to keep one man’s house?”
She was rowing very hard now, and the fog was denser than ever.
“There is Mr. Sibthorpe, with his four girls and three boys, and a salary, as bank-teller, of two thousand dollars a year. The daughters all ‘took’ French and music lessons at school. One of them is ‘passionately fond’ of worsted work; another does decalcomanie flower-pots and box-covers for fairs, and all crochet in various stitches, and one is great upon tatting. They ‘help about house,’ as our grandmothers used to say, all four of them; do contrive, with the aid of their mother and a strapping Irish girl, to keep the housework tolerably in hand, and ‘have in’ a dressmaker and seamstress, spring and fall, to give them a fresh start. They don’t read a book through once a year; they have no connected plans about anything, except to appear as well as girls whose fathers are worth ten times as much as is theirs—and to get married! They murder time by inches while waiting for the four coming men; mince it into worthlessness with their pitiful fal-lals of fancy work and the fine arts (save the mark!). Evelyn told me, the other day, that the sprig of wax hyacinths she showed me—a stiff, tasteless spike, that smelled of oil and turpentine—‘occupied’ her for ten hours! What will become of them when their pale, overworked father dies? It is frightful to think of a vessel thus freighted and cumbered being tied to safety by such a worn, frayed cord as that one man’s life.”
A dash of sleety rain against the window interrupted her.
“Philip said there would be a storm before morning. I wonder if he took his umbrella? He never thinks of himself. I am sorry he had to go out at all with such a cold.”
“One man’s life!” What flung the words back at her? What had she and her petted daughters between them and comparative—maybe absolute—poverty, save the life of this man, who, with a heavy cold on his lungs, had gone out into the fierce March night? Who would dare prophesy that his dream of amassing a competency for his children would be fulfilled? Why should she be vexing her soul with speculations about the Payne, and the Carter, and the Sibthorpe girls, when other women, as wise and far-sighted as she, were perhaps asking aloud, in friendly or impertinent gossip over their respective firesides, what would become of the “poor Hillers,” in the event of their father’s death.
She felt very much as if her barque had, like Robinson Crusoe’s ship,
“with a shock,
Struck plump on a rock!”
What were her daughters good for, if the question should arise how to keep the wolf from their own door? There was Philip’s life-insurance (everybody insured his life nowadays) of fifteen thousand dollars, secured to herself; and this house in which they lived, the lowest valuation of which was twenty thousand—and something—she wasn’t sure how much besides. That is, she supposed something would be left when all outstanding accounts were paid. Say, however, that they would have thirty-five thousand clear. At six per cent. interest, this would bring, she estimated, after a pause, an income of twenty-one hundred dollars per annum. Provided she sold the house! That was a pang, even in imagination. Out of this sum must come rent, fuel, clothes, and a thousand etceteras for a family of four grown people, whose present income was, at the least, ten thousand a year.
“Good Heavens!” The rosy face blanched even under the ruddy rays of the sea-coal fire. “Say, then, that we were worth fifty thousand dollars, free of incumbrance. That would be only three thousand a year; and, as Philip says, we could do nothing to increase the principal. Why we would have to be economical, if we had double that sum. And few men’s estates yield more. How do widows and orphans who have been reared in luxury, live, when the strong staff is broken? I seem never to have understood until this instant what helpless wretches women are; how most helpless of all classes are those who know themselves, and who have always been known as ladies, born and bred. Is there a remedy, a preventive for this? Is it impracticable to throw out an anchor to windward? What was the origin of this insane, wicked, cruel prejudice against independent thought and vigorous work on the part of women, that fills every rank of life with miserable wives, and mothers who ought never to be entrusted with the care of children? Does He, who can make even wickedness the instrument of His purposes, permit this to flourish rank in Christian lands, that the world may be lawfully populated?”
In the boat again, and in very deep, murky waters, but tugging at the oar with all the energy of her practical, common-sensible character.
“Philip says teaching does not pay any longer; nor painting, nor music, nor fine sewing. What does?”
Through the smooth, oily heart of the big lump of coal on the top of the mass in the grate, placed there carefully by Mr. Hiller’s tongs before he went out, ran a concealed layer of slate, not wider than a man’s finger, nor thicker than a plate of mica. But when the fire touched it, it cracked, and the big, justly-balanced lump exploded with force that sent the fragments helter-skelter in every direction.
Mrs. Hiller jumped up with a little scream, and shook her dress violently, inspected every flounce, lest the flutings might harbor a live coal or spark.
“All safe, fortunately,” she congratulated herself, after brushing off rug and fender, and pushing her chair a few paces further from the hearth. “It is a real calamity to scorch a dress in this day, when one pays so much for having it made. Our bills are absolutely shameful. Whoever loses money, or fails to make it, the milliners and dressmakers ought to be fat and flourishing. Their profits must be enormous, yet all of them—the competent and obliging ones—are overrun with work. Madame Champe, for example, gives herself the airs of a queen dispensing favors, when she consents to undertake a dress for me.”
At that instant, with that tart speech, Mrs. Hiller reached land and beached her boat.
The three girls did not return home from the party to which they had gone until twelve o’clock. The rain had not touched them in the close coach their father always hired for them on such occasions. Tossing off their wrappings as they ran, they trooped into their mother’s sitting-room, adjoining her chamber, where she awaited them.
“With such a superlugious home-sy fire! bright and warm as her own heart,” chattered Blanche, the youngest, rushing forward to throw herself on the rug at her mother’s knee. “And a heavenly cup of tea! I enter now into the full comprehension of the reason why it is called the celestial herb,” sniffing the air. “There never was, there never will be, there never could be, such another mamma.”
“You are right there!” cried the others, kissing her less noisily, but as fondly, as did the madcap of the flock.
Any mother might be proud of the trio, clustered about her, sipping the tea they declared to be more delicious than all the delicacies of the supper table; talking as fast as their nimble tongues could move of what they had done, and seen, and heard, since she had superintended their toilets, four hours before. That the understanding between her and them was perfect, hearty, and joyous, was plain.
Emma, the eldest, was twenty-one, tall, shapely, with a complexion and gait that bespoke healthy nervous organization, a sound mind and judgment. Her excellent sense and happy temper made her a safe counsellor, as well as agreeable companion, for her more volatile sisters. She dressed tastefully, as did they all; moved with composed grace through a systematic round of daily duties; was her father’s pride, the mother’s helper, and not a whit less popular in her circle than if she had been both wit and beauty, whereas she was neither.
Imogen was far handsomer, a decided blonde, while Emma had gray eyes and dark hair. The second daughter liked to set off her fairness by all justifiable and lady-like appliances of art and fashion, and knew how to do it. She was never florid or conspicuous in appearance, yet never en déshabille in the simplest attire. Her clothes became a part of her so soon as she put them on. A few touches of her deft fingers brought fitness out of disorder; added the nameless, inestimable air we term “style,” for the want of a fitter word, to whatever she touched or wore. A very busy bee she was in her way, with a mania for renovating her own paraphernalia and that of everybody else who would allow her the privilege; giving to the parlors, which were her especial charge, a new aspect every day by the variety of her elegant devices.
Blanche—eighteen and just “out,” was petite in figure, with light, fluffy hair, dancing blue eyes and small white teeth that somehow made more arch her merry smile. She was the pet and the mischief-maker of the household, affectionate and frolicsome, with innumerable tricksy, yet dainty ways that belonged only to herself; quick of wit and fearless of tongue, and facile in hand as Imogen, her room-mate and confederate in all her schemes of pleasure or work.
“Emma lays the foundation; Imogen builds thereupon. Mine is the ornamental department—the glossing over and decking, after the scaffold is down,” she had once said.
The mother recalled it, now, watching them as with unsealed eyes, and was confirmed in the resolutions which were the fruit of her evening’s musings.
“Away to bed, magpies!” she said, at length, “I won’t hear a word more! You are warmed and refreshed now. And unless you go soon, you will not be down in season to recount your adventures and conquests to papa at breakfast. He considers himself an ill-used person when he has to go off without getting the evening’s report. Moreover, I want you to have your brains steady and clear, for I must have a long business talk with you to-morrow forenoon.”
“Business! that sounds portentous,” said Imogen, in affected consternation.
“It sounds entrancing!” commented Blanche. “It savoreth of new dresses, and, perchance, jewelry—peradventure, though that is a bold flight of fancy, of a trip across the sea next summer.”
“Nothing has gone wrong, I hope, mother?” queried Emma.
“Nothing at all, my dear Lady Thoughtful,” was the smiling reply.
“Dear Lady Owl, you mean!” cried saucy Blanche, and she went off singing:—
“And what says the old gray owl?
To who? To who?”
“Happy children!” Mrs. Hiller heaved a confidential sigh to the fire that had shone on the young faces a moment ago. “Will what I have to tell them make them less happy or gay? Is mine, after all, the needless croak of the owl instead of a wise warning?”
The thought pierced her again, next day, when they met in her boudoir, eager and curious, their eyes and cheeks unmarred by the moderate dissipation of the preceding night. But she stood fast to her purpose; unfolded her scheme in bulk and detail, with the assured tone of one who had considered the cost to the last farthing. She was not accounted an eccentric woman by her acquaintances, but her proposal was novel, and, to her listeners, startling. Their days of school-study were over, she reminded them. It was time that upon the foundation of general information thus laid should be erected the superstructure of a profession.
“A specialty, if you prefer the word,” she said; “since I earnestly hope you will not be called upon to practice it for a livelihood. While papa’s strength and health last, he finds no more delightful use for his earnings than to purchase comfort and luxury for us. Were he to die, or to be unfortunate in business, or become incurably diseased—and such things are of almost daily occurrence—our style of living would be at once and entirely altered. You would be driven to the study of small, minute economies and false appearances, such as must rasp and narrow the souls of those who resort to them; to escape these by a marriage of convenience, or the lucky accident of a love-match, or to engage, in earnest, in some business that would, thanks to your previous training, continue to you the elegancies, with the decencies of life.”
This was the preamble to an abstract of the conversation with her husband, the troubled reverie and calculations that succeeded it.
“Of artists in music and painting, there are, perhaps, twenty in this city,” she observed. “Of pretenders and drudges in these arts, there are more than a thousand. Since not one of you has developed any decided talent for such pursuits, or for literature, and, since teaching for a living has become but another name for bondage and starvation, my plan is this: You, Emma, shall learn bookkeeping; Imogen, dressmaking; Blanche, millinery. Don’t look horrified! I shall not expose you to the uncongenial associations or unwholesome atmosphere of the crowded shop or work-room. All that affection and money can do to make the term of your novitiate pleasant shall be done. You shall fit up the old nursery as your academy of the useful arts, if you choose to call it by so dignified a name. I shall engage competent instructors for you and pay well for the lessons. But there must be no play-work, no superficial, amateur performance on either side. When your trades are learned, I shall expect you to keep yourselves in practice, and up with the latest improvements and fashions by practice in domestic manufactures. Milliners’ and dressmakers’ bills shall be among the things that were. Emma shall have charge of the housekeeping accounts and papa’s books. He will pay her as he would any other skilful accountant, and what you, Imogen and Blanche, shall adjudge to be a reasonable price for every dress and bonnet made for yourselves, your sister, or for me.”
The, for once, dumb trio found simultaneous voice at this.
“Mamma! would that be right? Would it not be an imposition?”
“It is his own proposal. We talked it all over last night after he came home, and again this morning. I need not tell you that he is the best, most indulgent father that ever loved and spoiled three loving daughters. I had some difficulty in persuading him to let me try the experiment. The tears stood in his dear eyes, while he debated the pros and cons of the case.
“‘My bonnie bairns!’ he said. ‘If I could, I would be their shield always. They should never dream of privation; never ink or prick their pretty fingers except for amusement, if I were sure of ten years more of life and prosperity.’”
She stopped to steady her voice.
Imogen was crying outright; Emma’s gray eyes were cloudy. Blanche broke forth, half-laughing, half-sobbing:—
“The angelic old papa! isn’t he a born seraph? I would peddle rags with a lean mule, and a string of bells across the cart, to save him an hour’s anxiety. I wish he would wear French hats—all flowers and moonshine! And have four every season. Would not I furnish them for nothing, kisses thrown into the bargain?”
The others had to laugh at the vision of papa’s six feet of stature, broad shoulders, strong features, and iron-gray hair crowned with a fancy hat of the prevailing mode. Mrs. Hiller went on:—
“‘But,’ he added, ‘I will not, while I can take care of them, derive one cent’s profit from their work. There is no surer way of learning how to take care of money than having money to manage. I will furnish each of the pusses with a bank-book. She shall make out quarterly bills against you, or me; deposit her gains in her own name, and invest as she will. Her earnings may thus be the nest-egg of a neat little fortune. I can’t imagine—I won’t believe that they will ever become mercenary. But I am sick of the limpness and insipidity and general know-nothingness of the women with whom I have business dealings. ‘My dear husband never suffered me to be annoyed by these matters,’ says the widow, her handkerchief to her eyes. And—‘If my poor papa had foreseen this day, it would have embittered his life!’ sobs the interesting spinster of forty-seven, who ‘hasn’t an idea how to make out a checque,’ and really doesn’t know the difference between real and personal estate!”
“The Payne girls!” uttered Imogen and Blanche, in wicked glee. “Mamma, you ‘did’ Arethusa to the life.”
She resumed more seriously. “Something papa heard last night caused us to lay this subject especially to heart. Doctor Jaynes says there is no doubt that Mr. Sibthorpe is threatened with softening of the brain. He has been doing extra work this winter—bookkeeping and copying in the evenings, at home, as he could pick up such jobs, to eke out his salary, and it has been too much for him. Nothing but absolute rest and freedom from care can save him. Doctor Jaynes told him so plainly, and he answered, with tears, that it was out of the question—he must die in harness. It was natural that the news should interest and sadden us.”
“He has a very helpless family,” remarked Emma, compassionately.
“Because so many of them—all who are grown up—are girls!” cried Blanche, impetuously. “That tells the whole story. And such a pitiful, disgraceful, humiliating one it is! I could be ashamed of being a woman. Mrs. Sibthorpe—indeed a majority of American mothers of the genteeler sort, ought to turn pagans, and drown their baby-girls as soon as they are born. That would be better than turning them loose—great, overgrown babies, forever whining, with their fingers in their mouths, over their feebleness, and timidity, and sentimental ignorance—upon a grinning, or groaning public!”
“But how strange that we have never taken this subject into serious consideration before,” said sensible Emma. “That other people do not, is certain. Mother, you won’t mind if I ask you a question or two?”
“My precious child! as many as you like. I wish you to state every objection frankly. You are of age, you know. I could not compel you to adopt my suggestion, if I were disposed to do so. Nor will I coerce the judgment of one of you three. We must go into this enterprise heartily and all together, or not at all.”
“Will not our action excite much talk when it is known, give rise to unpleasant surmises, and subject us to many impertinent inquiries?”
“Undoubtedly it will. We may as well prepare ourselves for this. And the same kind guardians of their neighbors’ behavior and general interests would buzz and sting yet more industriously were one of us to sicken with small-pox, or the house to burn down to-morrow. Or, if papa were to go off in a rapid consumption, they would bewail the number of girls in our family as loudly and as delightedly as they will soon be gossiping about poor, distraught Mr. Sibthorpe, and his quartette of what Blanche calls overgrown babies; would dole out to us such charity of word and deed as falls to the share of the Payne girls. My darlings, if I could tell you how I long to see you independent of such changes in fortune and fair-weather friends! each of you armed in herself to meet reverses and to defy them, with God’s help and blessing upon those who are trying to help themselves!”
Whatever error the tender mother may have made in her calculations of what was to be risked, gained, and lost by the bold step she purposed, she had not overrated the amount and quality of gossip caused by the practical operation of her scheme. Stories, having “Mrs. Hiller’s queer whim” for a starting-point, increased and multiplied, and flew over the town like thistle-down in a windy September day. The mother was a tyrant; the daughters were peculiar and strong-minded. The parents refused to maintain their offspring because they were not sons, and had informed them of their intention to bequeath every dollar of their property to a Boys’ Orphan Asylum. The offspring disdained to be fed and clothed by the hated parents. Mr. Hiller was insolvent; Mrs. Hiller was insane; both were misers. The sisters were engaged to be married to missionaries, and were bent upon engrafting the multifarious iniquities of the modern and Christian woman’s garb upon the scantily-clothed trunk of Ashantee, or Papuyan, or Root-digger fashions.
At first our heroines were annoyed, then diverted. In less than three months they ceased to think of the babble at all, in their growing interest in their active, varied home-life.
Just a year from the March night on which Mrs. Hiller had used so many nautical figures in her speech and reverie, two cards were brought up to the “academy of useful arts,” as the fair students therein persisted in calling a large room at the back of the house. It was airy and sunny, and, to-day, was full of life and enjoyment, for mother and daughters were gathered there, and the chirping was like that of a happily-crowded robin’s nest.
“The ladies say, do let ’em run right up, without ceremony,” reported the servant.
“‘Arethusa Payne,’ and ‘Marietta Sibthorpe,’” read Blanche from the cards. “Ask them to walk up to the work-room, Jane. Mind that you say ‘the work-room.’” As the amused girl left the chamber, the young lady continued: “An Inspection Committee! Let them come! Won’t I make them open their eyes, though?”
“I had no idea you were engaged with a dressmaker. I am afraid we intrude,” simpered Miss Payne, tiptoeing, like a cautious hen, between Blanche’s work-stand, piled with bonnet frames and linings, and Imogen’s, down which flowed a river of silken flounces, half gathered at the top; noting likewise, by turning her sharp face to the right, then the left, as she stepped (still like an inquisitive Partlet), that Emma’s tall desk, with a ledger open upon it, was in a corner.
Mrs. Hiller was ripping up a black silk dress; Emma was pulling a velvet hat to pieces.
“Only practising our trades a little in furbishing up things; giving a spring-ish look to hats and gowns,” rejoined Blanche, with saucy politeness. “One gets so sick of winter clothes!”
“Dear me, how convenient! What a source of amusement it must be to have that sort of knack!” said Miss Sibthorpe, self-compassionately. “It is a genuine talent, isn’t it now? downright genius! And can you actually make a hat, Blanche! I couldn’t put a bit of ribbon on mine to save my life!”
“But we are professionals,” put in Imogen. “You have no idea how we have worked to acquire the artistic touch. We had Miss Tiptop’s forewoman with us at the country cottage we rented last summer, all the ‘dull season,’ on purpose to teach me dressmaking, besides the lessons I had had in town. Blanche ran down to the city every week for an all-day lesson.”
“But how very odd!” ejaculated Arethusa.
“That people should pay such exorbitant milliners’ bills all their lives, when they could learn the business with one-fourth the labor and in one-tenth of the time music requires?” Blanche said, in wilful misunderstanding, setting her head on one side, and holding her unfinished hat off at arm’s length to examine the effect. “It is queer, as you say. I’ll be generous, girls. I’ll give you instructions, if you wish—take you as my apprentices. I should enjoy it hugely.”
Both laughed shrilly and affectedly, to disguise the offence her proposal gave them.
“I haven’t the least taste for such employment,” said Arethusa.
“You are very kind, but my social engagements are so numerous!” pleaded Marietta. “Honestly, what do you do it for? You can’t really like it! It seems so—so—very peculiar! such a queer whim, you know!”
“That is just what everybody says—such a queer whim! You get so much talked about, you know,” subjoined Arethusa. “And it is so excessively disagreeable to be talked about! I couldn’t stand it.”
“But you do not understand,” pursued Blanche, solemnly, “that you might make a living by it. Why, we three expect to be a rich firm in the course of time; to buy up bank stock and railway shares, and speculate in real estate, and all that. Emma is a capital book-keeper. Papa says she could command a salary of a thousand dollars a year already. Then, think of the luxury of having a new dress, or, what is the same thing, one that is made over to look like new, at every party; and as many hats a season as you want, for what it would cost to buy one at Madame Lavigne’s. And finally, you see, one respects herself so thoroughly and deliciously for being able to fill up a real place—a worker’s place—in the world. Most women remind me of marbles that have rolled somehow into holes. Sometimes it is a fit. But as often as not the marble is round, and the hole is square!”