"Shall you float with the tide, daughter, or shall you try to swim up stream?" She was thinking of the first talk they had ever had on these subjects, nearly two years ago now, but the girl recognized the old question. She stood up slowly and then with quick steps came to her mother's side.
"Don't try to swim with me, mamma. It only makes it harder for me to see you hurt in the struggle. Don't try to help me any more when the eddies come. Float, mamma; I shall swim. I shall! I shall! And while my head is above the waves that poor little girl shall not sink."
She was stroking Katherine's hair, and her mother's hand drew her own down to a soft cheek.
"Am I right, mother?" she asked, softly. "If you say I am right, it is enough. My heart will ache to seem to papa to do wrong, but I can bear it better than I could bear my own self-contempt. Am I right, mamma?"
Her mother drew her hand to her lips, and then with a quick action she threw both arms about the girl and whispered in her ear: "I shall go back to the old way. Swim if you can, daughter. You are right. If only you are strong enough. That is the question. If only you are strong enough. I am not. I shall remain in the old way." There was a steadiness and calm in her voice which matched oddly enough with the fire in her eyes and the flush on her cheeks.
"Little mother, little mother," murmured Gertrude, softly, as she stroked her mother's hand. Then she kissed her and left the room. "With her splendid spirit, that she should be broken on the wheel!" the girl said aloud to herself, when she had reached her own room. She did not light the gas, but sat by the window watching the passers-by in the street.
"Why should papa have sent me to college," she was thinking, "where I matched my brains and thoughts with men, if I was to stifle them later on, and subordinate them to brains I found no better than my own? Why should my conscience be developed, if it must not be used; if I must use as my guide the conscience of another? Why should I have a separate and distinct nature in all things, if I may use only that part of it which conforms to those who have not the same in type or kind? I will do what seems right to myself. I shall not desert—"
She laid her cheek in her hand and sighed. A new train of thought was rising. It had never come to her before.
"It is my father's money. He says I may send it, but I may not—it is my father's money. He has the right to say how it may be used, and—and—" (the blood was coming into her face) "I have nothing but what he gives me. He wants a pleasant home; he pays for it. Susan and James, and the rest, he hires to conduct the labor of the house. If they do not do it to please him—if they are not willing to—they have no right to stay, and then to complain. For his social life at home he has mamma and me. If he wants—" She was walking up and down the room now. "Have we a right to dictate? We have our places in his home. We are not paid wages like James and Susan, but—but—we are given what we have; we are dependent. He has never refused us anything—any sum we wanted—but he can. It is in his power, and really we do not know but that he should. Perhaps we spend too much. We do not know. What can he afford? I do not know. What can I afford?" She spread her hands out before her, palms up, in the darkness. She could see them by the flicker of the electric light in the street.
"They are empty," she said, aloud, "and they are untrained, and they are helpless. They are a pauper's hands." She smiled a little at the conceit, and then, slowly: "It sounds absurd, almost funny, but it is true. A pauper in lace and gold! I am over twenty-two. I am as much a dependent and a pauper as if I were in a poorhouse. Love and kindness save me! They have not saved Ettie, nor Francis. When the day came they were compelled to yield utterly, or go. They can work, and I? I am a dependent. Have I a right to stand against the will and pleasure of my father, when by doing so I compel him to seem to sustain and support that which he disapproves? Have I a right to do that?"