“She’s gone to New York,” she told him. “She has a position there. I don’t hear from her often.”
There came a day when she even said, biting her lip:
“I’d rather not talk about Minnie. She—we’re not on very good terms.”
This had caused him a pang, for he surmised that it meant a man. He had said he was sorry, and he was. He pitied that bright, lovely Frances, condemned to lonely drudgery. He wished to be nice to her; to help her; he attempted to make little friendly visits now and then, very patient with her growing irritability. He saw how things were; she didn’t get on with the old lady as Minnie had, relations were strained. He watched the four years pass, crushing her, embittering her, ageing her. Her youth died, she became severe, still beautiful but no longer charming. She managed the moribund old house better than her sister ever had done, but it had lost its old air of homeliness. It was deserted, it was desolate. She earned a bit of money by baking cakes for the Woman’s Exchange, and embroidering tablecloths. Like her grandmother, she “managed,” never able, of course, to pay the accumulating debts, never a penny the richer at the end of a year than at the beginning; simply keeping her head above water, procuring food for them to eat, clothes for them to wear, maintaining an appearance not too humiliating for a Defoe. It was touching and horrible. Mr. Petersen urged her to come back into his office again, but she refused.
“You could get some young girl from the village to look after your grandmother,” he said, but she stopped him.
“Not at any price could I get anyone to do what I do.”
It was quite true. A servant would have required lunch, which Frankie didn’t; would have expected to be warm in winter, to rest in the terrible heat which overwhelmed the river valley in mid-summer.
Mr. Petersen waived the question of rent. After a time it was mentioned no more. The two women didn’t thank him; it seemed not only proper but essential that Defoes should live in the Defoe house. Mr. Petersen, after all, was a stranger, an intruder, a Swede. And he didn’t need the money, either. So he didn’t get it.
In the middle of a terrible winter the old lady died of pneumonia, and, as soon as the funeral had taken place, conducted in a seemly manner, Frankie went off. He heard nothing more of her. She never wrote to him, or to anyone he knew.
He remodelled the house. With what curious, painful feelings did he watch its dismantlement, walk into that gloomy room Minnie had so long inhabited and see for the first time its poverty. All the furniture was left there; doubtless it belonged to the creditors, but none of them troubled to claim it. All old, shabby, ugly. There were lots of closets, cupboards, a big attic, filled with astounding rubbish, clothes, old papers, broken furniture, pictures. Whatever was worth saving, Mr. Petersen removed to his own house, the rest he burned in a sort of sacrificial bonfire. He saw the sagging old bed, the little rocking chair, the lame bureau from Minnie’s room go up in smoke and all the while he thought with profound melancholy of the brisk, pleasant little woman. He sighed over her, wished with all his heart that he could find her again and put her into his own orderly and comfortable home. Solemnly he led the silly old horse, more provoking than ever in its senility, back to his own stable, while his housekeeper carried the cats.