The Mettle of the Pasture

by James Lane Allen

One morning about a week later she entered her carriage and was driven rapidly away. A soft-faced, middle-aged woman with gray ringlets and nervous eyes stepped timorously upon the veranda and watched her departure with an expression of relief—Miss Harriet Crane, the unredeemed daughter of the household.

She had been the only fruit of her mother's first marriage and she still remained attached to the parental stem despite the most vigorous wavings and shakings of that stem to shed its own product. Nearly fifty years of wintry neglect and summer scorching had not availed to disjoin Harriet from organic dependence upon her mother. And of all conceivable failings in a child of hers that mother could have found none so hard to forgive as the failure to attract a man in a world full of men nearly all bent upon being attracted.

It was by no choice of Harriet's that she was born of a woman who valued children as a kind of social collateral, high-class investments to mature after long periods with at least reasonable profits for the original investors. Nor was it by any volition of hers that she had commended herself to her mother in the beginning by being a beautiful and healthful child: initial pledge that she could be relied upon to turn out lucrative in the end. The parent herself was secretly astounded that she had given birth to a child of so seraphic a disposition.

Trouble and disappointment began with education, for education is long stout resistance. You cannot polish highly a stone that is not hard enough to resist being highly polished. Harriet's soft nature gave way before the advance of the serried phalanxes of knowledge: learning passed her by; and she like the many "passed through school."

By this time her mother had grown alarmed and she brought Harriet out prematurely, that she might be wedded before, so to speak, she was discovered. Meantime Mrs. Crane herself had married a second and a third time, with daughters by the last husband who were little younger than her eldest; and she laughingly protested that nothing is more confusing to a woman than to have in the house children by two husbands. Hence further reason for desiring immediate nuptials: she could remove from the parlors the trace of bi-marital collaboration.

At first only the most brilliant matches were planned for Harriet; these one by one unaccountably came to naught. Later the mother began to fall back: upon those young men who should be glad to embrace such an opportunity; but these less desirable young men failed to take that peculiar view of their destinies. In the meanwhile the Misses Conyers had come on as debutantes and were soon bespoken. At the marriage of the youngest, Harriet's mother had her act as first bridesmaid and dressed her, already fading, as though she were the very spirit of April.

The other sisters were long since gone, scattered north and south with half-grown families; and the big house was almost empty save when they came in troops to visit it.

Harriet's downward career as an article of human merchandise had passed through what are perhaps not wholly unrecognizable stages. At first she had been displayed near the entrance for immediate purchase by the unwary. Then she had been marked down as something that might be secured at a reduced price; but intending buyers preferred to pay more. By and by even this label was taken off and she became a remnant of stock for which there was no convenient space—being moved from shelf to shelf, always a little more shop-worn, a little more out of style. What was really needed was an auction.

Mrs. Conyers did not take much to heart the teachings of her Bible; but it had at least defined for her one point of view: all creatures worth saving had been saved in pairs.

Bitter as were those years for Harriet, others more humiliating followed. The maternal attempts having been discontinued, she, desperate with slights and insults, had put forth some efforts of her own. But it was as though one had been placed in a boat without oars and told to row for life: the little boat under the influence of cosmic tides had merely drifted into shallows and now lay there—forgotten.