INVINCIBLE MINNIE
ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING

INVINCIBLE
MINNIE

BY
ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING

NEW

YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A LITTLE FOREWORD

This is not intended to be a romantic story, or a realistic story—not a tale of anything that ever did happen, only of something which might have happened. If you know a Minnie, as you very likely do, you will admit that, whether or not she is actually guilty of such deplorable exploits as herein narrated, she is certainly capable of them. Capable of everything!

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE: THE CAMPAIGN OPENS

INVINCIBLE MINNIE

CHAPTER ONE

I

Mr. Petersen rode along in the choking dust, considering the problem with perplexity but with good-humour. After all, it was absurd.... He wanted to be kind, but he didn’t want to be ridiculous.

In spite of himself, a grin came over his face. He was remembering his last visit to the old lady. He had ridden out to the miserable old farm and very politely introduced himself as her new landlord. He had bought the place for next to nothing, and, considering this, and the dilapidated state it was in, his sensitive conscience required that he should reduce the rent. But he never got so far as to propose this.

The old lady received him with lofty affability and invited him to sit down in her parlour, then left him there for a long time while she prepared refreshments. He had waited awkwardly enough, touched by the shabbiness of the place and its evident decline. Old mahogany furniture, ugly in style, but good—once very good—and now so battered, arms gone, legs gone, splinters torn off, cushions disgorging hair, springs sagging. His skilful fingers longed to be at it.

She came in again, with a plate of cookies and a jug of lemonade, and sat down at a little table to dispense them, with a regal air.

“Well!” she said, with a grim smile, “I suppose you’ve come about the rent, Mr. Petersen. I might as well be frank. I haven’t got it. I’ve had orders for some preserves, so perhaps I’ll have it next month. I hope so, I’m sure. But you can’t draw blood from a stone, Mr. Petersen.”

He had gone away that time utterly defeated, and he was returning now without much hope. What was one to do in such a case? Impossible to turn out the poor little old woman of seventy, alone on earth. He didn’t need the money from the house, he was quite able to permit her to live there free for the rest of her life, but that would be, he saw, a ridiculous thing to do. Unbusinesslike. Fantastic. She would laugh at him, and so would everyone else. People would be sure to find out, and his reputation as a shrewd and sensible man would suffer. And although he was a Socialist, and opposed to the paying of rents, his common-sense forbade exceptions. Either no one must pay rent, or everyone must.

He pulled up his horse and wiped his face, for the house was in sight and he was anxious to look well in the eyes of the queenly and provoking old lady. She was a Defoe, and married to a cousin Defoe, and this was, to her, a fact of immense significance. From it she derived her superiority to everyone else. She regarded Mr. Petersen as nobody at all, and a foreigner at that. He was aware of her attitude, and not at all pleased, for he had his own modest pride.

He even went so far as to take out a small pocket mirror and smooth his moustache—a long yellow moustache, standing out fiercely like a cat’s. His appearance was at no time satisfactory to him; it was rather too Socialistic. He was an enormous fellow of five and thirty, with huge hands and a blunt red face, handsome in a way, but certainly lacking in distinction, certainly not an exterior to commend itself to a Defoe.

He was quite correctly dressed in riding breeches and a linen jacket, all fitting very well, but all the more offensive to a Defoe because of their excellence. In Brownsville Landing people of Mr. Petersen’s class didn’t ride horseback under any circumstances; above all, not in clothes designed for such a purpose. It was presumptuous and it was foreign.

The old lady saw him from the window, cantering along the almost obliterated driveway, and by the time he had dismounted and tied his horse to an old apple tree, she was standing in the doorway, in the attitude of a tenant insolvent but unbowed.

“Good day!” she said. “Step in, Mr. Petersen!”

So once again he went into that parlour, dim and cool, aged and forlorn like herself, and once more sat down to wait for the cookies and the lemonade which he detested.

But this time it was not the old lady who brought them in. It was Minnie. Minnie, until that instant unknown to him, unimagined, but predestined to his ruin....

II

He was, innocently enough, pleased with her appearance, and saw nothing sinister, nothing extraordinary about her. A rather short, full-bosomed young woman of perhaps twenty, with a dark, freckled face and an expression very pleasant and friendly. She smiled at him as soon as she entered.

“Mrs. Defoe will be back in a minute,” she said, as she set down her tray. She was wearing a ruffled little apron tied about her neat waist, and her air was altogether housewifely and homely, as if she had been brought up from infancy in that very house. He couldn’t imagine who she was. He knew that the old lady lived alone, had lived alone since the death of her husband twelve years ago. This agreeable young person was certainly not a servant, and he was sure she didn’t belong in the neighbourhood. If he had seen her, he knew he would have remembered her.

She gave him a glass of lemonade and sat down opposite him, amiably prepared to entertain him.

“It’s growing warm, isn’t it?” she said, and he recognised in her voice and accent something far superior to the native language of Brownsville Landing.

“It’s what we want, for the fruit,” he answered, in his sing-song drawl. “It was a cold Spring here.”

“So I’ve heard.... What a nice horse! Is it yours, Mr. Petersen?”

He was very much pleased; he said it was, and went on to tell of the virtues and eccentricities of his beloved mare.

Minnie said she didn’t ride, but was very fond of driving.

Riding suited Mr. Petersen better; it made one feel more independent.

“Oh, well, you’re a man!” said she. “A girl can’t go riding about alone, very well.”

In some way this made him suddenly conscious of her smallness and feminineness and of all the handicaps imposed upon her by God and by man. Mr. Petersen’s views about women were definite. She was neither above nor below, neither hallowed nor accursed, but a quite ordinary human being, like himself, equally responsible, equally privileged. A woman—the right sort—was a friend, simply. And he saw in Minnie a friend, candid and good-tempered.... (Minnie a friend!)

“I was so pleased,” she went on, “to find a horse here. Of course, I don’t really know much about them. I’ve never lived in the country, really. But I love animals. All animals. And I think I have a sort of knack with them——”

He was acquainted with Mrs. Defoe’s horse, a ridiculously coy old skeleton that came into the village once a week harnessed to a buggy and driven by a Negro truck farmer who cultivated the old lady’s arid fields on shares. He could not imagine anyone’s having much affection for that caricature. It touched him. He could think of nothing to say, and the young woman had once more to start up a conversation.

“I hope I haven’t made your lemonade too sweet!” she began, anxiously, but was interrupted by Mrs. Defoe calling from upstairs.

“Minnie! Minnie!”

“Excuse me,” she murmured, and vanished. He heard her running up the stairs, then not another sound for a long time. He sat still, with his glass in his hand, and waited.

She didn’t run down; she came slowly, with obvious reluctance.

“I’m very sorry,” she said, “but—Mrs. Defoe wants to know—if you’d be good enough to—wait just a little longer——”

She was very much distressed; said something about preserves and next week and the expensiveness of jelly glasses. Mr. Petersen’s face turned still redder.

“Pshaw!” he said, awkwardly, “It doesn’t matter to me. I can wait any length of time. Don’t worry. Tell Mrs. Defoe not to worry. I—perhaps she will send a message when she’s ready——”

“Positively next Tuesday,” said Minnie, firmly. “And I’m dreadfully sorry, Mr. Petersen. I appreciate your kindness.”

She held out a small plump hand which he grasped earnestly.

“But just the same, who is she?” he asked himself as he rode away.

III

He went home to his house on a shady street of the village, and strolled into the kitchen where his housekeeper was cooking a rabbit.

“Mrs. Hansen,” he said, “who’s that up at Mrs. Defoe’s?”

Of course she knew.

“Her granddaughter, Mr. Petersen. Two of them,” she answered, eagerly, delighted at being questioned. “They came from New York a week ago. Two young orphans. Just lost their father. He was thought to be rich, but it seems he wasn’t. He didn’t leave them a penny. And they’ve been brought up to expect the best of everything, so I’ve heard. It’s sad, isn’t it, Mr. Petersen?”

He thought it was; the phrase “two young orphans” stuck in his mind, and while he walked about his garden, inspecting his trees and vegetables, he reflected on it. “Young orphans.” He remembered that she had been wearing a black dress, and that the ribbons in her little apron had been black. And there had been a sobriety in her bearing....

Mrs. Hansen wished to pursue the subject. She began when she had put his excellent dinner on the table.

“Excuse me, Mr. Petersen,” she said—he wouldn’t allow “sir”—“But which of the young ladies did you see? I hear that one of them is very handsome.”

He reflected. No, Minnie was not very handsome; nice looking, and with fine dark eyes, but not handsome.

He smiled a little.

“It’s hard to say. I’m not a judge, Mrs. Hansen. The one I saw was dark——”

“They’re both dark. But one’s——”

“This rabbit stew is very good, Mrs. Hansen,” he interposed, and she took the hint and left him to read the local paper in peace, as was his custom during dinner.

Afterwards he went out to sit on his little porch and smoke. And thought very kindly of the “young orphan,” who hadn’t a penny.

The least he could do, he decided, was not to trouble them about the rent—a decision which suited them, apparently, for he neither saw nor heard anything of the Defoe family for a long time. In fact, until he was needed by one of them.

CHAPTER TWO

I

Two years previously Mr. Petersen had arrived in Brownsville Landing and had rented an office in the most up-to-date building there was, putting up a modest sign, “Christian Petersen, Lawyer.” The other lawyers, who announced themselves LL.D’s, laughed at his sign, but all the same, in spite of it, or perhaps because of its old-fashioned simplicity, he attracted clients from the beginning. People liked him; he was careful, polite and he knew his business. Although a foreigner, he was not offensively eccentric or ridiculous. There were one or two little things, such as riding a saddle horse, and wearing breeches and leggins, which were not approved of, nor was his polite avoidance of any social relations. Still, he was always friendly and antagonised no one.

After six months of legal practice, he branched out unexpectedly. A new sign appeared under the old one: “Real Estate.” Now he began making money in earnest. The town was growing, new factories were building, and he knew how to take advantage of the growth.

It was a horrible, squalid little town, too near the city for any but the pettiest of retail trade to flourish, too far for any influence of urbanity. It was technically on the Hudson River, but as a matter of fact, the river bank was used exclusively for commercial purposes, freight yards and so on, and the town itself lay in a little hollow, which was stiflingly hot all summer long. There were the old people, whose families had lived there for generations, who had old Colonial houses and furniture; they looked with alarm and hostility upon the new element, the workers in the mills, the factories, the brick yards, this foreign-born, incomprehensible rabble, which was, nevertheless, the life blood of the town, which sustained three savings banks and fourteen saloons, which lay dead drunk by the roadsides, and crowded the public library. Then there were “new people,” factory managers, and their like, who were respectable and well-to-do, but not “quite”.... And with all these people Mr. Petersen was perfectly at home, buying, selling, renting, and arranging for them all.

Before long a third sign appeared: “Contractor.” And in this capacity he had perhaps his greatest success. He began with the building of some little cottages for the workers in a cotton mill, and he was so excellent and painstaking and experienced a supervisor that his fame spread rapidly. He explained with simplicity that as a boy in the “old country” he had been apprenticed to a builder. And although a lawyer, he was not at all ashamed of this; he was, on the contrary, quite proud of his thorough knowledge of the trade.

He was a Swede, son of a poor man, and self-educated, but there were few people in the town who spoke English as well as he did, in spite of a singing drawl and an indefinably exotic note.

II

He was sitting, this summer morning, at his desk, in his shirt-sleeves, reading a contract with twofold attention, once as a lawyer, once as a builder. His door was open, and when someone knocked, he called out, “Come in!” without turning his head. He expected to be spoken to, and when he wasn’t, he looked up to see who could be there, waiting in silence. And saw a most splendid young creature, tall, broad-shouldered, with a healthy sunburned face of vivid colouring and severely perfect features, eager, vigorous, yet full of a fine young dignity.

He rose at once and put on his coat.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, with his invariable politeness.

The girl’s brown face flushed, but she answered without hesitation.

“I’m Frances Defoe—Mrs. Defoe’s granddaughter, you know. My sister told me how nice you’d been about—Grandma and the rent, so I thought perhaps you’d be good enough to—oh, to give me a little advice.”

“Please sit down,” he said cheerfully. “Now!”

“I want something to do, work of some sort. I heard that you were the most progressive man in the village, so I thought you’d be the best one to consult.”

He was pleased and embarrassed by the compliment, which he knew to be merited.

“I don’t suppose,” she went on, in her clear, somewhat imperious voice, “that there’s much opportunity here, is there?”

He had found opportunities enough; still he answered, no, not many, but that perhaps——

“Have you had any sort of experience?” he asked.

She said no; but that she’d studied a lot and was good at mathematics and figures in general, and knew something of French and German.

“And I can type a little,” she added. “I used to do my essays and things on a typewriter at college.”

“Fine!” said Mr. Petersen. “Now, let’s see where that would fit in.”

He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, thinking in his slow and prudent fashion.

At last he brought his glance back to the girl.

“If you’d care for it,” he remarked, “there’s an opening here. I need a young lady to help me, to be in the office while I’m out, to answer the telephone and so forth. It’s not much of a place—not more than eight dollars a week to begin——”

He paused.

“If it would suit you——”

“Oh, yes!” she cried. “If you think I’d do!”

He smiled; he had sufficient imagination to comprehend the thrill of a first job.

“Suppose we try then,” he said. “Let’s see.... This is Friday. Next Monday at nine, Miss Defoe.”

She gave him a bright, a grateful smile, and got up, ready to go.

“I’m awfully glad to get such a chance,” she said. “I hope I’ll be satisfactory.”

Mr. Petersen also rose.

“Mrs. Defoe quite well?” he enquired.

“Yes; at least she says so. She never complains.”

“And—I believe it was your sister I spoke to——”

“Minnie? Oh, she’s always well,” she answered, carelessly, and with still another glowing smile, went off, elated.

Undoubtedly she was the handsome one—a striking figure. But somehow, for him, at any rate, lacking the peculiar charm of her plainer sister; that sober and matronly young creature in the little apron.

He felt a most Quixotic interest in both of the “young orphans.” He would have done a very great deal for them. In fact, he did....

III

He was surprised and disappointed when she didn’t appear on Monday morning. At half past ten he gave her up and went out about some business, reflecting upon the instability of women. He came back in half an hour, and had just sat down at his desk when she entered, terribly flushed and dusty. Her expression was defiant, but her voice suspiciously uncertain.

“I’m very sorry to be so late,” she said. “It won’t happen again. I had to walk, and I missed the way. But I’ll arrange better after this.”

To hide his own distress and hers, he promptly gave her something to type—he didn’t care what—and sat down at his own desk, where he pretended to work. But he knew, without venturing to turn his head, that she was stealthily wiping her eyes, and he was sure there had been some serious trouble at home. A five-mile walk along that dusty road, on an August day! Poor girl!

There had indeed been a classic and unforgettable encounter, ending in a drawn battle. She couldn’t get it out of her head, no matter how she tried to concentrate her attention on this new work.

In the first place, her sister and her grandmother had both protested passionately against her plan as soon as they heard of it. She had gone home triumphantly to tell them that she had a “job” at eight dollars a week, in Mr. Petersen’s office.

“Why, child!” cried the old lady, affronted. “What an idea!”

She was really shocked. A Defoe working for a Petersen!

Minnie, too, was shocked; they both argued, reasoned and expostulated, but to no avail. Then Minnie, to the point:

“How do you expect to get there, Frankie?”

Her sister was slightly crestfallen.

“I thought you’d drive me in,” she admitted, “I’d pay you for it.”

“Thank you!” said Minnie, coldly. “But I couldn’t possibly. At that time in the morning, with all the work to be done.”

“Very well,” said Frankie, “I’ll walk.”

She was confident that when the time came, Minnie would yield, Minnie who was so kind-hearted, so self-sacrificing. And she couldn’t believe it when Monday morning actually came, and she remained obdurate.

“I said I wouldn’t, and I won’t,” she repeated. “I don’t approve of your working for that man, and I certainly shan’t help you in any way.”

Frances had no idea how to harness the horse; she was at her sister’s mercy, absolutely.

“Minnie, don’t be such a beast! And a prig. You’re not my nurse, you know. I’m old enough to decide for myself.”

“Decide everything you like,” Minnie replied, “but I shan’t help you in such a nasty, undignified affair. I can’t stop you. Why don’t you walk? You said you would.”

Frances looked at her with blazing scorn.

“You darned little hypocrite!” she cried. “Very well, I will walk, if it takes me all day.”

She wasn’t even sure of the way. She strode doggedly along in the dust and the scorching sun, furious and defiant, for more than two hours.

“I’ll walk back and forth every day,” she said to herself, “if it kills me. I won’t give in to her. She always gets her own way. Not this time, though. I’ll wait till I get my first pay, and then I’ll hire someone. I won’t give up this job!”

Twelve o’clock came.

“You’re a stranger here,” said Mr. Petersen, “perhaps you don’t know where to go for lunch. If you’d do me the honour, this first day——”

She was not quite sure what was the proper course for a business woman, but she knew that Mr. Petersen was absolutely “all right,” and to be trusted, so she accepted, and went up the street to the Eagle House with him.

The Eagle House was a fly-blown and extraordinarily dingy hotel patronised by travelling salesmen; the food was horrible but the atmosphere impeccably respectable. Frances was delighted with it. Never before had she felt so adult, so independent. She was sure that Mr. Petersen took her seriously, judged her upon her merits as an individual and not as a Defoe or as a young girl—not as a female at all. She liked him! She remembered what Minnie had said about him and rejected it all. “Common,” “presumptuous,” “thick-skinned”; snobbish nonsense, all that!

They walked back to the office and spent a very agreeable afternoon there. He explained the work to her, and was pleased by the quickness with which she grasped his explanations. He saw that she would soon be really very useful. She was not only intelligent and ambitious, but she had that remarkable feminine loyalty, that willingness to use all her powers in behalf of some one else, that is the curse and the glory of her sex. She never viewed Mr. Petersen as an ambitious young man would have done, as a stepping stone in her own career; she was genuinely concerned with how she could help Mr. Petersen with Mr. Petersen’s business.

Five o’clock came very soon, she thought. Mr. Petersen looked at the clock and closed his desk.

“Closing time!” he said cheerfully, “I hope your first day in business hasn’t——”

He stopped short because her face had changed so suddenly. She turned pale as he was speaking.

“Oh!” she said, with a gasp.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, anxiously. “Are you ill?”

“No—only—I’d forgotten.... Is there a short cut?”

Even her fine courage faltered at the prospect of once more walking those five dusty miles; it really appalled her. Yet, with a quite empty pocketbook, what could she do?

“A short cut?” he repeated, puzzled. “But—you don’t mean to say you expect to walk home?”

“I’ve got to!”

“Wait a bit!... I’ve a nice little trap in my stable. I’ll be back in ten minutes to fetch you. No; I shan’t listen to you. It’s out of the question, walking back.”

She was so relieved. She climbed into his nice little trap, behind his brisk little mare and they set off smartly. Of course, Mr. Petersen did look undeniably like a coachman, with his back like a ramrod and his red neck and his huge hands holding the reins so very correctly.... But what does it matter? “He’s a gentleman, if there ever was one,” she told herself. “He’s a dear!”

They had not gone half the distance, when whom should they meet but Minnie, in the ramshackle buggy, with the silly old horse. Her eyes were red and her expression uncertain.

“Frankie!” she cried, “I’ve been so worried! Come right in here!”

She smiled a wan greeting at Mr. Petersen.

“I didn’t think she’d really do it,” she said. “I thought she’d turn back. And when I realised that she’d really gone, all that long way—— You poor old Frankie!”

With her sister established by her side, she turned again to Mr. Petersen.

“Well!” she said. “We’ll have to give in. And let her go. No matter how much we miss her.”

Which gave him the impression that the objection to Frankie’s enterprise was solely one of sentiment. An impression altogether false, but then, he didn’t really know any of the Defoes or their principles. It never occurred to him that it was disgraceful and shameful to work in his office.

He looked after the sisters with a kindliness which had now become almost affection, and he thought what a loving, unreasonable little soul Minnie was. Couldn’t bear her sister out of her sight! A thorough woman, she was!

CHAPTER THREE

I

It was Frances who was usually considered the snob of the family, for Frances was imperious and inclined to be haughty, and had a sense of her personal dignity. But, as a matter of fact, she was as little snobbish as one so brought up could well be. She respected herself but she respected others. She was devilishly proud, but she permitted pride in others. She was capable of admiring worth wherever found and was quite honest about it. She really did not stand upon her Defoeness. She had, it must be admitted, a fair share of young conceit; she believed herself to be handsome and intelligent and resolute, and these were her claims upon the world’s regard. Whereas Minnie, far more humble as an individual, demanded a slavish servility from the majority of mankind simply because she was what she called a “gentlewoman.” It entailed no obligations, required no effort. One was, or one wasn’t. Like being born a sacred white bull. It was an involuntary sanctity which all right-minded people of the lower orders could instantly recognise.

Her grandmother thought as she did. Between them they ordained that Mr. Petersen did not exist, and they had tried in vain to convince Frankie of it. She had been very, very trying!

The two sisters drove on in a rather constrained silence after the bone of contention had gone. Minnie was absorbed in the management of the capricious skeleton, but was still able to suggest a forgiveness that irritated Frances. And Frances couldn’t quite stifle her remorse. She remembered dreadful things she had said to Minnie that morning. Things which had evidently made her weep.

All on account of Mr. Petersen; because he was so utterly unworthy of being served by one of the Brahmin caste. How vain their prayers and tears. She had suffered too much from that life without hope or sympathy. She knew that they could not comprehend her pain, and she could not endure attempting to explain. She knew that Mr. Petersen had saved her from despair.

She looked at Minnie’s obstinate, tear-stained face, and was filled with a great regret and a sort of loneliness.

“Oh, Minnie!” she cried. “Do try to understand a little! Don’t you see that I couldn’t bear a life like this?”

“There’s no use talking about it. Only, Frankie, don’t imagine it hasn’t been hard for me,” she answered. “After all, I suppose I am a human being.”

“I know it, darling, I’m awfully sorry for you!” Frances assured her contritely.

Minnie had a not very admirable trait of always pressing an advantage.

“In a way,” she went on, “I feel it more. I was home so much more—with him.”

Her eyes filled with tears; her thoughts flew back to that day, six weeks ago....

II

She was sitting alone in the studio, copying a cast of a child’s foot with great care. She had expressed a ladylike desire to “learn drawing” and her father had willingly consented, and arranged for private lessons, which she took in the afternoon, when the other girls had gone home. She was a bitter cross to her teacher, for not only was she quite without aptitude, but she likewise had no taste and no spirit. She couldn’t be fired. She wished to “learn drawing” simply; art and beauty had nothing to do with it. An artist, to Minnie, was a person who could so present things that you recognised them on paper. She was often pleased with her own drawings.

According to her habit, the young teacher had gone out of the room. Minnie was perfectly contented to be alone, to potter away with those exasperating fine little lines. She couldn’t be taught, anyway; it was of no use even to criticise. She had accepted what was told her about tacking paper on a board, about the mechanical uses of charcoal and fixative and so forth, and after that wished to go ahead in her own way, simply drawing. Nothing more to it. She sat before her easel very straight and serious. She was really absorbed in her messy little drawing; she thought it was “sweet,” and contemplated giving it to her father, nicely framed, as a Christmas present. He was sure to admire anything she did.

The big room was absolutely silent, peopled with ghostly white casts, heads, limbs, entire figures, lighted coldly from a skylight, so that she seemed in a world quite different from the brilliant autumn outside. Calm, quiet, satisfied, in the midst of an extraordinary peace—a peace which had surrounded her all her short years.

And which ended forever that day. She heard the footsteps of the teacher coming back along the corridor, more quickly than usual.

“Minnie, dear,” she said, “Miss Leland wishes to see you.”

This surprised Minnie mildly. With her usual docility she got up, put her charcoal in its little box, and hurried down the corridor, past all the rooms familiar to her for nearly ten years, rooms all empty now, with rows and rows of chairs and desks, with their blackboards and charts and maps, well known to her and more or less dear. She had been graduated from the school a year ago, and was now, of course, beyond all that and superior to it, but she enjoyed coming back for these drawing lessons. She clung to familiar places.

Down the stairs, three flights, and to the comfortable little study of the principal. Minnie had no reproof to dread, she was and had always been beyond reproach in everything, a model girl. She tapped on the door and was bidden to enter.

As soon as she saw her cousin there, she knew something was wrong. A great dread came over her. She didn’t look at Miss Leland at all.

“What is it, Cousin Ella?” she asked, sharply.

The forlorn spinster, who had years ago technically replaced their mother, suddenly burst into tears.

“My poor child!” she cried, “My poor child!”

She had come, trembling with dread and grief, prepared to “break” it to Minnie in a merciful way. But couldn’t endure the sight of the unsuspecting orphan.

“Minnie!” she sobbed. “Your poor father——”

Minnie had turned very pale.

“Hurry up!” she cried. “Is he—dead?”

Cousin Ella told her in a confused and broken way. A cable had come to tell of his death from pneumonia in Liverpool, the very day he had landed.

“I came to you at once” she said. “The very instant I had read it.”

That was her duty, of course. News of death must be spread without delay. She had driven off immediately to intercept Minnie, so that she should learn of it at least an hour sooner than if she had come home in the usual way.

Minnie was stunned and incredulous. Cousin Ella always got things mixed, anyway.

“Let’s see the cable!” she demanded.

Cousin Ella answered, with a shade of resentment, that she hadn’t brought it.

In a horrible nightmare daze, Minnie followed her to the carriage. It was not sorrow she felt, but dread; as if the catastrophe instead of having taken place already, were about to happen, were imminent. They drove along the familiar suburban roads, lined with charming houses, smooth lawns without fence or hedge, great trees, a domain prosperous, lovely and serene. They reached home, a grey stone house on a hill, planted with dwarf evergreens; they went in. Nothing in any way changed, the same well-ordered, comfortable dignity. It couldn’t be true! Father never coming back?

She again demanded the cable, and obtained it.

“Mr. Defoe died this morning. Pneumonia.
Seven o’clock. Writing. Johnson.”

So it wasn’t a mistake. She looked round instinctively for support, for reassurance, in her terror.

“Oh, father!” she cried, in a sort of shriek. “Cousin Ella! Oh.... Do something! Don’t let it be!”

In that instant, the very essence of her father’s soul was comprehended by her; she could realise him, all his fondness, his immeasurable indulgence for her. She saw what she had lost, and was overwhelmed. It was the end of her childhood, the last wholly genuine, wholly disinterested emotion she was ever to feel.

III

He had been a “business man,” engaged in a very vague business—promoting schemes and so on. He had spent money lavishly on his adored daughters, and when he was at home, in the intervals between mysterious trips, he liked to talk to them about their future, and ask them what they wanted him to do for them. Poor devil! Evidently he expected to live forever, for he had made no provision at all for them, not even life insurance. There was not a penny.

Frances had been at college just a month when she was recalled. The lawyer had gone out to break the news to her of her father’s death and her own destitution, and it must be admitted that she had behaved very badly. At first she refused absolutely to come home. She said she would go on, no matter what happened; she’d work her way through college; lots of girls did. She had made up her mind to become a doctor, and she wasn’t going to be stopped now, at the very start. The lawyer pointed out that as this plan demanded quite eight years of study, she might well spare a day or two now to attend to her poor sister. So she consented, though she felt in her heart that it was the end. She went, but she was markedly sullen.

Sober little Minnie, tired out with crying, reproved her.

“Can’t you think of something else beside yourself, Frankie?” she asked.

Frankie was abashed. She had an unbounded admiration for Minnie’s moral worth; the very fact of her being smaller, plainer and stupider than she was, was somehow proof of it. She really made an effort to look upon her ambition as selfish and petty and to concentrate her eager and vigorous mind solely on her father’s death.

Minnie had no ambition to give up. She supposed that in the course of time she would marry, and that would suffice. She was not able to show much sympathy for her sister’s intolerable disappointment.

“I know it’s hard to leave college and all that,” she said. “But after all, Frankie, I don’t think you’d have stuck it out for eight years. You wouldn’t have liked being a doctor, when the time came. Such a queer thing for a girl.”

“Nonsense!” cried Frances, angrily, “you have the stupidest, most antiquated ideas!”

“I’ll work my way through,” she went on, “I’ll be a waitress or something. But I won’t give up!”

Minnie began to cry.

“Please, Frankie, stay with me a little while,” she entreated. “I’m so lonely!”

Who could refuse?

IV

Cousin Ella advised them to accept the offer of their grandmother, their father’s mother. She was the only living soul who wanted them, anyway.

Frankie protested.

“Brownsville Landing!” she cried. “Oh, Cousin Ella! It’s the worst place!”

She remembered visits there in the summer holidays, the boredom of it, the ugliness. But Minnie assured her that it would only be temporary, while they looked about and made their plans. She brought forward the sensibleness of it, made Frances feel how rash and headstrong it would be not to go.

She had her way, as she always did. The house was closed, the furniture sold, the servants dismissed. After a curious fortnight in a boarding house nearby, where their friends came to say good-by, they went off, with all their effects in two modest trunks.

Early in the afternoon they reached Brownsville Landing.

Even grief could not blind them to the fact that they were interesting figures—two young orphans. They were aware that every one of the idlers in the station knew who they were and where they were going. They followed Thomas Washington to the battered old surrey and sat down, perfectly decorous, without turning their heads, conscious nevertheless of being regarded with sympathy, with speculation.

They were tacitly agreed that it would not be correct to talk; in silence and concealing all trace of curiosity they went rattling off up Main Street and along the dusty five-mile road to the farm.

Their grandmother was waiting for them in terror. How to console them? Their loss seemed to her so terrible, so desolating. She could with truth say nothing better than—“You are utterly ruined and alone in the world, friendless and penniless.” She watched the carriage coming, with the girls side by side, images of decent grief, perfectly restrained; then, when the carriage stopped, the restraint vanished, and they rushed into her arms, sobbing.

She led them into the darkened parlour, and sat down on the sofa between them, trying in a trembling voice to comfort them with religion and proverbs, inextricably mixed. But Frankie was not in any way to be quieted. She wept so violently, so passionately that the old lady could think of nothing better to do than to lead her upstairs and urge her to lie down.

“There! There!” she murmured. “What can Grandma do for you?”

She answered, in a muffled voice, her head buried in the pillows:

“Please—let me alone ... a little while.”

“I think we’d better,” whispered Minnie, and they went out, carefully closing the door upon Frankie’s weeping.

The first glimpse of the farm had overwhelmed her completely. She remembered the college, august, beautiful, with the orderly and purposeful life that so appealed to her, she thought of her old home, as it would look now, in the late afternoon sunshine, of its dignity and freedom, the hope she had known there. And then this, this shabby, forlorn old house standing alone in a weed-grown straggling garden, surrounded by the neglected fields, which stretched away to the cold and unknown blue hills. All that she hated most, solitude, stagnation, neglect.

V

The old lady turned with relief to Minnie, who was so much more amenable. She led her down into the kitchen where she had been cooking her choicest dishes for the orphans, gave her milk to drink and fresh cake to eat, and watched her with melancholy in which there was considerable satisfaction. So absolutely what it should be was Minnie’s attitude. She was worn and tired, her eyes reddened with crying, all of which rendered so touching her pleasantness and politeness, her willingness to answer questions. A womanly little soul, altogether. The old lady fancied she saw in her the amiable and domestic creature desired by all old people, the consolation of her age; youth with none of youth’s disadvantages, the sedateness, the responsibility of maturity with the vigour and charm proper to her twenty years. She acclaimed Minnie a paragon, a Phœnix among maidens.

Minnie herself began to feel comforted. The quiet kitchen in the last brightness of the Spring day, with the dinner pots and pans hissing on the stove and a pleasant fragrance of freshly baked bread and cake in the air, all the homeliness and friendly peace about her assuaged her grief, strengthened her soul. Her thoughts began to turn to the future—she tried to imagine a possible life there.

“Do you still live here all alone, Grandma?” she asked.

The old lady sighed. Poor creature! When she allowed herself to think of it, she wondered how she succeeded in living at all.

Her husband had been one of those happy and lavish persons who obtain, Heaven knows how, a reputation for wealth. He had always had plenty of money to spend, and everything he or his family needed, but it was, unfortunately, a sort of Fortunatus’ purse, into which he could dip without limit, but which couldn’t be bequeathed, which for everyone else lay flat and empty.

At least he had insured his life, and his widow received a monthly income of twenty-five dollars from this—her sole income. An impossible situation. How she struggled along, no one knew, not even herself. Although struggle is not the word; she didn’t struggle; she simply went on existing, miraculously sustained by the forbearance of others. It was impossible to turn the poor creature out, rent or no rent, or to refuse her credit for food, in this town where she had lived for sixty years. She “managed.” When she couldn’t pay, she didn’t pay. Her quite simple rule was to give cash when compelled, and to commandeer the rest of her necessities. She didn’t worry very much over her debts. She had a phrase which satisfied her completely. “You can’t draw blood from a stone,” she would say.

Her son had sent her money now and then, but very little. He had not been a good son; ‘his father over again,’ she often reflected, ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ A present at Christmas time, or when the girls came to visit. He never asked her how she managed, because he didn’t want to know.

And here were the girls left as she had been left.... Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at Minnie.

“Yes, I’ve been a lonely old woman,” she said, “but I hope I shan’t be any more.”

Minnie kissed her soberly.

“No, Grandma, dear,” she said. “We won’t leave you again.”

“Where else could we go, anyway?” she added to herself, in her practical way.

CHAPTER FOUR

I

Frances had waked up early that first morning. She looked round the big, low-ceilinged room, at the pictures on the walls, sheep in a snowstorm, ships at sea, religious maidens, hung with a sole aim of covering up the most badly stained places in the faded paper, at the white iron wash stand, the lame chest of drawers on which stood a quite unrelated and unattached mirror, the dusty strips of old carpets serving as rugs, at all the dinginess and shabbiness and deserted old age, and in a sort of frenzy, she began to shake Minnie.

Minnie opened her black eyes.

“Well!” she said, sleepy but good-humoured.

“Minnie, isn’t this awful!”

“The same as it always was,” she replied, slowly, “and it seems to me we can be pretty useful here.”

Frances frowned.

“To Grandma? Of course.... Only, isn’t it senseless for two healthy young women to spend their time looking after one old lady?”

“I shouldn’t call it senseless.”

“I could help much more by earning money and sending it to her,” said Frances.

“You don’t have to decide all that now,” Minnie returned, rather severely. “You can give yourself a week or so to rest—after what’s happened.”

Frankie said no more, but remained unconvinced. She made up her mind she wouldn’t stay on that farm—not for a week.

Poor Frankie! Doomed to stay there for how many weeks!

She tried in vain to think of some means of getting away. At first there were a dozen radiant vistas, possibilities of all sorts. She contemplated becoming a secretary, a writer, a doctor’s assistant, a teacher, or, as a last resort, the wife of an extraordinary man. It was a long time before she could realise of how little value she was, how undesired. She hadn’t even money for her fare to New York, and her answers to advertisements found in the city papers were always late and never regarded. She was amazed to find herself in this blind alley: her eager hands groped for some sort of outlet; she couldn’t believe that she was actually obliged to stay in Brownsville Landing.

It cannot be denied that she was a trial to the other two. She shirked her share of the housework and remained obstinately shut up in her room with her old school books. And every time they drove into the village she insisted upon stopping at the Carnegie Library and exchanging piles of books, keeping Minnie waiting an outrageous length of time. Minnie and her grandmother had each to take out cards so that she could get as many books as she could carry.

She used to cry, too, at night, and tell Minnie she couldn’t stand it. Some days she was scornful and silent, scarcely saw them except at meal times; then remorse would seize her and the next day she wouldn’t touch her books, but would work to the point of exhaustion cleaning the house. When she did bend her mind to such humble tasks she far surpassed Minnie. She was quick, thoroughgoing, altogether competent, and, when she wasn’t cross, she was a delight to the others, gay, endearing, irresistible.

They couldn’t understand, couldn’t see how her ardent spirit suffered. Her ambition, still so vague that she was not able to express it, was unintelligible to them. Sometimes she would confess to Minnie that she wanted to marry an explorer.

“Or someone like that. Someone awfully famous and yet not stuffy. Not anyone who sits down and works.”

And perhaps that same day she would say vehemently that she didn’t care a bit about getting married, ever. She wanted to be something on her own account. There wasn’t much chance now that she could be a doctor, but there were plenty of other things, useful and interesting.

Minnie often asked to be informed of the object of all the studying her sister did.

“I don’t know, exactly,” Frances would tell her, “only it’s some comfort to think I’m not slipping back.”

II

Minnie fitted into that life as if she had been made for it. Serious, anxious, good-tempered, she followed her grandmother about, helping her, deeply interested in the daily work. She was not very clever or skilful, but she supplied the lack of these by a great willingness. She did not suffer from any passion for perfection; she was satisfied if she could “get through” what was essential.

She assumed responsibilities. She took it upon herself to get up first and get the breakfast. Frances used to watch her, springing out of bed in the half-darkness directly the alarm clock rang, and beginning to dress without wasting time even to stretch.

And not only was she invaluable within doors, but almost at once she had taken charge of the decrepit old mare lingering on in a filthy old barn. This had formerly been Thomas Washington’s duty, but Minnie assured her grandmother that this arrangement was extravagant and that Thomas was rough. In a very few days she had learned from him all the essentials in the care of Bess, and herself assumed the work.

She had a passionate, an exaggerated love for animals; compassion rather than love; for every dumb creature she saw she felt a distressing pity and, of course, being Minnie, an anxious sense of responsibility. She was forever worried by the thought that some beast was being ill-used. She even went so far as to follow carters to make sure they weren’t cruel. She had repeated disagreements with her grandmother because the old lady wouldn’t allow Michael to usurp her chair.

Michael and the other cats had at once become her special property. She put them into the cellar at night and first thing in the morning would unbolt the door and let them out, welcoming them with a smile maternal and solicitous. They were always waiting near the door, and would come jostling in at once, uttering impatient little cries, and looking up at her with luminous and plaintive eyes. She would bend over the worn and unlovely Spotty, mother of uncounted drowned kittens, with kindly sympathy; her young son Teddy, who was still silly and charming, she treated with indulgence; but for old Michael she had a manner at once motherly and propitiating. Michael, truculent old blackguard, his thick, short coat striped like a tiger, arrogant and complacent as an old pirate chief! He never showed any affection, but a sort of shameless allegiance, knowing that from her came all his benefits. She was really very happy in this life....

III

Providence was always on Minnie’s side, and Providence, it would seem, was set firmly against Frankie’s worldly ambition to leave Brownsville Landing.

The poor old lady fell ill; not at all suddenly, simply one day she asked Minnie to stop at the doctor’s on her way home from the village and, if possible, fetch him with her. He came, and remained shut up with the old lady a long time. When he came out of her room, he saw neither of the girls; he had to waste his valuable time seeking them. Minnie he discovered at last in the barn, preparing the old horse for her journey back with him, and she was so concerned about this, so insistent that the doctor should perfectly understand Bess’s delicacy and nervousness, that she forgot to ask about her grandmother.

“She won’t pass a milk waggon,” she explained. “You’ll have to get out and lead her by if you happen to meet one. She’s....”

“I’ll look after your horse,” said the doctor. “It’s only a matter of six miles. I’ll send my man back with her as soon as he’s back from the blacksmith’s with my own. And now that your mind’s easy on that score, perhaps you’ll be interested to hear that your grandmother’s in a bad state.”

“Oh, what’s the matter!” she cried.

“We’ll bring her round; don’t worry,” he replied evasively, “but it won’t be in a week, or in a month. She needs care and nursing. And you’ll have to see that she doesn’t go down the stairs,” he added. “She’s not to leave that floor for the present.”

Minnie stopped long enough to see how he handled Bess, over that awful rut near the gate; then she flew upstairs.

“Grandma!” she entreated, “do tell me what’s wrong!”

But the old lady refused to discuss it.

“Don’t fret, child,” she said. “I’ll do very well.”

“But it worries me so dreadfully not to know.”

The old lady remained firm. Some obscure sense of pride informed her that it was not fitting and proper to discuss the physical body with one’s grandchild. She would only admit that her heart was not as strong as it might be....

She didn’t seem particularly ill; she sat propped up in bed, knitting, quite cheerful. It did not occur to Minnie that the poor old thing was worn out, that the organism which had worked without ceasing for seventy-five years was in need of rest—eternal rest.

She knocked vigorously on the bedroom door, which Frances insisted upon keeping locked. Frances let her in with a very bad grace, which she ignored.

“Now!” she said. “Now, we’re in for it. Poor Grandma’s sick and the doctor won’t allow her to go downstairs for months.”

They discussed it soberly, Frankie lying flat on the bed, her hands under her head, Minnie sitting beside her.

“We’ll simply have to do the best we can,” said Minnie.

Frances agreed.

“It’s dreadful for her,” she said, “when she’s always been so active.”

IV

Minnie at once instituted a new régime, under which her grandmother received the best possible care. She waited on her devotedly, spent all her scant leisure with her; was, as usual, faultless.

At least, that was how she appeared to her sister. Frankie honestly could not see a fault in her. Except that she was sometimes a bit too diplomatic, too anxious to keep things pleasant. That is, she didn’t always tell the truth—exactly.... She was not at all abashed if she were found out; she had always the same reply.

“I thought it was for the best.”

The long, long days went by, all alike. At five o’clock the alarm clock rang. Minnie jumped up and closed the window, and lighted the lamp on the bureau while Frances, pretending to be asleep, lay watching her. The lamp-light made a little bright spot in the big shadowy room, showing Minnie like an actress in the spotlight, only quite without self-consciousness, dressing herself quickly, wishing only to be neat.