XXXI. ABOUT WOMEN.
“Like a blind spinner in the sun,
I tread my days;
I know that all the threads will run
Appointed ways;
I know each day will bring its task,
And, being blind, no more I ask.”
—H. H.
“I wish you would tell Judith Mackenzie all you know about women’s doings,” said Jean Draper Prince one morning late in November.
“I am ready to give the Bensalem girls a lecture upon what women outside of Bensalem are doing,” said the lady in the bamboo rocker with her knitting. “All the ambitious girls, all the discouraged girls.”
The bamboo rocker was Jean’s wedding present from Judith Mackenzie; Jean had told Mrs. Lane that the broad blue ribbon bow tied upon it was exactly the color of Judith’s eyes.
Mrs. Lane had not visited Bensalem since the summer she gave Jean Draper the inspiration of her outing; but many letters had kept alive her interest in the Bensalem girl, and kept growing the love and admiration of the village girl for the lady who lived in the world and knew all about it.
Jean said her loveliest wedding present was the week Mrs. Lane came to Bensalem to give to her. The loveliest wedding present was shared with Judith Mackenzie.
Jean’s husband was the village blacksmith; his new, pretty house was next door to his shop. It was not all paid for, and Jean was helping to pay for it by saving all the money she could out of her housekeeping. If she only might earn money, she sighed, but her husband laughed at the idea, saying his two strong hands were to be forever at her service.
The small parlor was in its usual pretty order; in the sitting-room were a flower stand, and a canary’s cage; Mrs. Lane preferred the sitting-room, but with her instinct that “company” should have the best room, Jean had urged her into the parlor, drawing down the shades a little that the sunlight should not fade the roses in the new carpet.
“Judith is the craziest girl about doing things,” replied Jean; “she is ambitious, and she thinks she must earn money. I told her you wrote for a paper that was full of business for women, and could tell her what to do.”
“What does she wish to do?”
“Study, and write—she writes the dearest little stories,—or anything else, if she cannot do that. She has ideas,” said Jean, gravely; “she is a rusher into new things. I wish she would be married and have a nice little home and care how the bread rises and the pudding comes out of the oven.”
“Isn’t she interested in housekeeping?”
“Oh, yes. But it is Miss Marion’s. Not her own. It is the own that makes the difference,” replied the girl-wife contentedly, nodding and smiling out the window to the man in shirt-sleeves and leather apron who stood in the doorway of the shop talking to the minister on horseback.
How could she ever tell Judith that Bensalem was gossiping about her staying at the parsonage?
“Your work is your own; it comes to be your own, whatever it is. Every girl cannot marry a blacksmith, Jean, and have a small home of her own.”
“I know it. I wish they could. What I wish most for Judith is for her to go back to Aunt Affy’s.”
That afternoon as the three sat together in the blacksmith’s parlor, Jean with towels she was hemming for her mother, and the other two with idle hands and work upon their laps, Jean suddenly asked Mrs. Lane to tell them about women and their doings.
“As I waited in the station for my train the day I came here,” began Mrs. Lane in the conversational tone of one prepared for a long talk, “a lady sat near me, also waiting, with a bag in her hand. I had a bag in my hand, but there was nothing unusual in mine; she told me she was going to Dunellen to take care of ladies’ finger-nails. She had a good business in Dunellen and the suburbs in summer, when the people were in their country homes; there were a few ladies who expected her that day.”
“I wouldn’t like to do that,” declared Jean, “although I would do almost anything to pay off our mortgage.”
“In Buffalo is a woman who runs a street-cleaning bureau; in Kansas City a woman is at the head of a fire department.”
“Worse and worse,” laughed Jean.
“A Louisville lady makes shopping trips to Paris.”
“Splendid,” exclaimed Jean, who still dreamed of outings.
“A lady in New York makes flat-furnishing a business.”
“That is making a home for other people,” said Jean.
“But her own at the same time,” answered Judith.
“New Hampshire has a woman president of a street railway company; and in Chicago is a woman who embalms—”
“Dead people,” interrupted Jean; “oh, dear me!”
“The world is learning the resources of the nineteenth century woman. A Swiss woman has invented a watch for the blind. The hours on the dial are indicated by pegs, which sink in, one every hour.”
“That is worth doing,” observed Judith; “I want to do real work. I know I do not mean my work to end with myself.”
“Lady Somebody has classified her husband’s books, with a catalogue—his papers fill five rooms; think of the work before her.”
“But that is not for herself,” demurred Judith.
“I believe Judith would like to be famous,” said Jean with a laugh. “Bensalem is such a little spot to her.”
“A lady is about to translate King Oscar of Sweden’s works into English; would you like to do that, Judith?” asked Mrs. Lane, who felt that she had been a friend of Judith MacKenzie’s ever since Jean Draper had known her and written of their girlhood together.
“Not exactly that,” said Judith.
“The first woman rabbi in the world is in California. She has been trained in a Hebrew College; Rabbi Moses, the celebrated Jewish divine in Chicago, urges her to take a congregation.”
“Then how can the men give thanks in their prayers that they are not born women?” asked Judith quickly.
“Do the Jews do that?” inquired Jean.
“Yes. But I don’t believe old Moses did, or this Rabbi Moses,” said Judith.
“A lady has received the degree of electrical engineer,” continued Mrs. Lane, who appeared to both her listeners to be a Cyclopedia of Information Concerning Women.
“Judith doesn’t mean such things,” explained Jean; “I don’t believe she wants David to teach her to be a blacksmith. But there is a woman in Dunellen who has a sick husband, and she is doing his work in the butcher’s shop.”
“Would you rather go to Washington, that city of opportunities for girls? The government offices are filled with women, and young women. Those who pass the civil service examination must be over twenty. Many states of the Union are represented. As the departments close at four in the afternoon, some of the girls take time for other employments, or for study. One I read of attends medical lectures at night. Some, who love study, belong to the Chautauqua Circle. French women, as a rule, have a good business education. In the common schools they are taught household bookkeeping. The French woman is expected to help her husband in his business.”
“Not if he is a blacksmith,” interjects the blacksmith’s wife.
“Harper has published a series called the Distaff Series: all the mechanical work, type-setting, printing, binding, covering, and designing was all done by women.”
“I think I would rather make the inside of a book,” said Judith. “But think of the women that do that and every kind of a book.”
“A lady took the four hundred dollar prize mathematical scholarship at Cornell University. There were twelve applicants; nine were women.”
“That is hard work,” acknowledged Judith, to whom Arithmetic and Algebra were never a success. She had even shed tears over Geometry, and how Roger had laughed at her.
“There’s a lady on Long Island who has a farm of five hundred acres; they call the farm, ‘Old Brick.’”
“Horrid name,” interrupted Jean, turning carefully the narrow hem of the coarse towel.
“It was a dairy farm, but she found milk not profitable enough, and gave it up and made a study of live stock. She has made a reputation as a stock raiser; she raises trotters and road horses,” said Mrs. Lane, watching the effect of her words upon Judith.
Judith colored and looked displeased. Was this all Mrs. Lane, Jean’s ideal lady, had to tell her of women’s brave work?
“In Italy nearly two millions of women are employed in industrial pursuits, cotton, silk, linen, and jute. Three million women are busy in agriculture. You might try agriculture here in Bensalem.”
“What do their homes do?” inquired Jean, the home-maker.
“Oh, they do woman’s work, beside.”
“It is all woman’s work, I suppose, if women do it,” answered Judith, discouraged.
“Judith, who is the sweetest woman you know?” asked Mrs. Lane, touched by the droop of the girl’s head and the trouble in her eyes.
“I know ever so many. No one could be sweeter than my mother. And my Aunt Affy is strong and sweet, and doing good to everybody. And Mrs. Kenney, Marion’s mother, she is in things, busy and bright always.”
“I have told you some things women may do; now I’ll tell you some things a woman—one woman—may not do. She cannot do—is not allowed to do—some things a washer-woman in Bensalem may do—But I’ll read you the slip; I have it in my pocket-book.”
She took the cutting from her pocket-book and asked Judith to read it aloud.
Judith read: “Queen Victoria, not being born a queen, probably learned to read just like other persons. But after she became afflicted with royalty she found that a queen is not allowed to have a great many privileges that the humblest of her subjects can boast. For instance, she isn’t allowed to handle a newspaper of any kind, nor a magazine, nor a letter from any person except from her own family, and no member of the royal family or household is allowed to speak to her of any piece of news in any publication. All the information the queen is permitted must first be strained through the intellect of a man whose business it is to cut out from the papers each day what he thinks she would like to know. These scraps he fastens on a silken sheet with a gold fringe all about it, and presents to her unfortunate majesty. This silken sheet with gold fringe is imperative for all communications to the queen.
“Any one who wishes to send the queen a personal poem or a communication of any kind (except a personal letter, which the poor lady isn’t allowed to have at all) must have it printed in gold letters on one side of these silk sheets with a gold fringe, just so many inches wide and no wider, all about it. These gold trimmings will be returned to him in time, as they are expensive, and the queen is kindly and thrifty; but for the queen’s presents they are imperative. The deprivations of the queen’s life are pathetically illustrated by an incident which occurred not long ago. An American lad sent her majesty an immense collection of the flowers of this country, pressed and mounted. The queen was delighted with the collection and kept it for three months, turning over the leaves frequently with great delight. At the end of that time, which was as long as she was allowed by the court etiquette to keep it, she had it sent back with a letter saying that, being queen of England, she was not allowed to have any gifts, and that she parted from them with deep regret.”
“Well,” exclaimed Jean, with an energy that brought a laugh from her small audience, “I would rather be the Bensalem blacksmith’s wife.”
“I wish I could take this to Nettie,” said Judith; “she thinks sometimes she would like to be a queen.”
“She is, in her small province,” replied Mrs. Lane. “I have something for her; I think I can help her step out into as wide a world as she cares to live in. No; don’t ask me; it is to be her secret and my own. Now, Judith, tell me, what is the secret of the happy and useful lives you know?”
“I don’t know,” replied Judith, truthfully. “But they are all married. I am thinking of girls—like me. Their work came to them.”
“As mine did,” said Jean, contentedly, with a glance from her work out the window where the blacksmith was shoeing a horse.
“Your Aunt Affy was not married—”
“No, she was not. She had her work. It was in her home. She was born among her work. But I have not a home like that,” Judith answered in short, sharp sentences.
“Why, Judith,” reproached Jean, “what would Aunt Affy say to that?”
“It would hurt her. She would look sorry. I do not know what gets into me, sometimes. She would adopt me and be like my own mother.”
“Do you resist such a sweet mothering as that?” rebuked Mrs. Lane. “I think I lost some of the sermon Sunday morning by looking at her face.”
“I do not mean to resist her,” said Judith, not able to keep the tears back.
“She told mother her heart ached to have you back,” persuaded Jean, “since her sister died she had so longed for her little girl.”
“I’m afraid I am not doing right,” confessed Judith, “but I was almost homesick there, when Aunt Rody was sick. And then, I think I must learn to support myself, and not be dependent.”
“Oh, you American girl,” said Mrs. Lane.
“And with Aunt Affy for your mother,” added Jean; “I told Mrs. Lane you had ideas.”
“I should think I had,” said Judith, laughing to keep the tears back. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten Aunt Affy. She loves two people in me, she says; my mother and me. I don’t know what has possessed me.”
“Ambition, perhaps,” Mrs. Lane suggested, taking up her knitting,—a long black stocking for her only grandchild.
“Not just that,” Judith reasoned; “it is more making something of myself for myself. Culture for its own sake,” she quoted from Roger, who had warned her against her devotion to self-culture; “and I give it a self-sacrificing name; the desire to be independent. I do not know why I should not be dependent on Aunt Affy. My mother was—and loved it.”
“No service could be more acceptable than serving her,” said Mrs. Lane; “the world is only a larger Bensalem.”
“It isn’t the world I wanted,” replied Judith, impatiently.
When Judith went away Jean walked down the street with her. “Are you disappointed in Mrs. Lane?” she asked.
“She did not tell me what I hoped and expected. She told me something better. I think I can study at Aunt Affy’s,” in the tone of one having made a sacrifice.
“And go to the parsonage every day,” said Jean eagerly, and yet afraid of pressing her point.
“Yes—if I wish to,” replied Judith slowly, surprising herself by coming to a decision.
“Bensalem is such a place for talk,” Jean ventured, not that she was confident of success. “Everybody knows everybody’s business and is interested in it.”
“But it is kindly talk,” said Judith, whom gossip had touched lightly.
“Yes, sometimes—not always,” Jean hesitated; “people will misjudge.”
“Jean Draper, what do you mean?” asked Judith, blazing angrily; “are you trying to tell me something?”
“No,” replied Jean, startled at Judith’s unusual vehemence. “I only want you to understand that Aunt Affy is talked about for letting you stay so much at the parsonage.”
“How could it hurt anybody?”
“They say Aunt Affy is—scheming,” she said, watching the effect of her words.
“Scheming. What about? What does she gain?” asked Judith, provoked.
“The gain is for you,” said Jean, at last, desperately; “they say she wants to marry you to the minister.”
Now she had said it. She stood still, frightened. Judith left her without another word, going straight on to the parsonage. After a moment Jean turned and went home.
What would Judith do? She looked angry enough to do anything. But she had shielded her from further talk. Bensalem should have no more to say.
Judith went on dazed. Now she understood it all; Martha was coming that she might go; they did not like to tell her to go; they were all too kind. As if Aunt Affy could plot like that. As if Aunt Affy cared for that: Aunt Affy who wanted to keep her always.
Had Marion heard the talk? And Roger? Was he glad to send her away with his mother? She would fly to Aunt Affy that very night; the old house would be her refuge. She would go back to Aunt Affy—and her mother’s home. Roger, her saint, her hero, her ideal—he could never think of her—like that.
She opened the door and went in. Marion had taken her mother for a drive. The study door was shut, the usual signal when Roger was busy. But she often ventured; the shut door had never barred her out. Nothing had ever kept her away from Roger. She tapped; Roger called: “Come in.”
He was writing and did not lift his eyes.
She waited; he looked up and smiled.
“Can you stop one minute?” she asked, faintly.
“One and a half.”
“I came to tell you that I have thought it over; I would rather not go home with Mrs. Kenney.”
“Stay then, with all my heart.”
“But not with all my heart. I am going to Aunt Affy’s instead. She wants me,” she said, quietly, with a quiver of the lip.
“I should think she would.”
“I did not know how much. She herself would not tell me. Jean Draper told me. Aunt Affy told her mother.”
“That will not change our plans of study at all.”
“No; it need not.”
“It shall not.”
“I think I can get on alone awhile. You have taught me how to use books. You have shown me that they are tools. I can write by myself. You have been to me like Maria Edgeworth’s father. Perhaps it is time for Maria to stand alone.”
“You are tired of my teaching.”
“Oh, no; I am not tired of anything—excepting Bensalem. I hate Bensalem,” she burst out with anger and contrition.
“What has Bensalem done now?”
“Nothing unusual. Will you tell Marion I am going—home to stay to-night? Martha will come and help her in the housekeeping.”
“Judith, has any one hurt you?”
“No,” said Judith, smiling with the tears starting; “you are all too kind.”
“Is it for Aunt Affy you are going? Judith, you cannot deceive me.”
“No; I do not think I can. I am going for Aunt Affy’s sake, Roger.”
“Because she misses you?”
“Yes, because she misses me, and needs me. People think and say—she is not taking good care of me. I wish to prove to them that she is.”
“That is sheer nonsense,” he exclaimed, angrily.
“It is not nonsense that she misses me now that her sister is gone. I never had any sister excepting Marion, but I know it was dreadful for Aunt Affy to lose her sister. If you haven’t helped me to study alone, to depend upon myself, you have been very little help to me.”
“That is true,” he laughed, “but the studying is only a part of what the parsonage is to you.”
“It was my reason for coming, and staying,” she said, simply, flushing and trembling.
“True; I had forgotten that. Yes; it is better for you to go; best for you to go. Come to-morrow and talk it over to Marion and my mother. I will tell them only that you have gone—home, to spend the night.”
He took up his pen, it trembled in his grasp; Judith went out and shut the door that he might not be disturbed.
“I am giving it all up,” she thought, as she pressed a few things into a satchel; “all I was going away to get; perhaps this is the way my prayer for work is being answered.”
They were at supper when she stood in the doorway; Aunt Affy at the head of the table behind the tea-pot and the cups and saucers; her husband opposite her, genial, handsome, satisfied, and Joe, at one side of the round table, tall, fine-looking, with his gray, thoughtful eyes, refined lips, and modest manner. Joe was a son to be proud of, the old people sometimes said to each other.
There was no chair opposite Joe, no plate, and knife and fork and napkin. Uncle Cephas liked a hot supper; they had chicken stew to-night, and boiled rice. It was like home, the faces, the things on the supper-table. She was homesick enough to long for some place “like” home. The parsonage could never be her home again, with Martha in her place; perhaps Martha had been wishing to come for years; perhaps her selfishness had kept Martha away.
John would be married, Martha would be in her place at the parsonage,—Don was too far away to know, and too absorbed in his wife to care; Mrs. Kenney did not really want her, she had only asked her to go home with her to get her away from the parsonage; the only home she had a right to was this home where her mother had been a little girl.
“Why, Judith,” cried Aunt Affy, rising, “dear child, what is the matter?”
“I wanted to come home,” said Judith.