Behold Minnie, a week or so later, harnessing Bess, this time for a mission authorised and altogether blameless. She was going to the station to meet Frankie, who was coming home for a week-end.
For days she and her grandmother had been making preparations, partly from an affectionate wish to please Frankie, and partly from a desire to impress her with their own importance and progressiveness. They had both an unspoken but perfectly understood feeling that it would be intolerable for her to say or to think that everything was unchanged since she had left. The old lady was specially proud of a pile of copies of a weekly magazine which she had audaciously subscribed for, seduced by a nice young agent.
As for Minnie, she had something up her sleeve which she knew would astonish and amaze, and utterly kill any news Frankie might bring. She whistled as she worked in the stable with a slightly malicious delight in anticipating the shock. Although she was terribly nervous, too. She had not yet had occasion to try her strength, and she was afraid that they—the practical, experienced wage-earning Frankie, and the quite incomprehensible old lady, might crush her. She was bound and determined to win, but she wasn’t altogether sure....
She drove off in her usual majestic fashion, agreeably conscious of a new hat. In order that she might compete upon equal terms with Frankie, her grandmother had presented it to her, bought with money withheld from Heaven knows how many creditors. A triumphal progress through the town, and she came up the gravel drive to the station with something faintly resembling a trot. There, however, she was forced to descend, and hold the old mare by the bridle, patting her nose, trying with intense seriousness to soothe her. She couldn’t bear to see her start and tremble, with that distressing rolling of her brown eyes, at the first sound of the engine’s whistle. She had suggested that Frances should walk as far as the drug-store, so that Bess could wait there, out of sight of the trains that so disturbed her, but Frances wrote back with some spirit that she did not intend to lug a heavy bag four blocks for the sake of a silly old horse. She threatened to hire a hack, and rather than suffer that affront to the Defoe pride, Minnie was ready to make great concessions.
She was too much taken up with the horse to see her sister at first, and Frances had an oddly illuminating view of her, an impersonal view. It seemed to her that she had never before looked at Minnie without Minnie’s looking back at her; this was not the Minnie familiar to her as her own reflection in the glass, but a stranger, a solemn, swarthy little woman, very countrified, inclined to plumpness, looking older than her years. She felt terribly sorry for her, hurried to her in affectionate remorse for having so seen her.
Minnie greeted her with her very agreeable smile.
“Frankie, you look splendid!” she said warmly.
So she did. She had a new tweed suit and a quite plain hat, correct, well-chosen things that suited her tall strong figure and permitted attention to fly at once to her gay, brilliant face. Oh, there was some foundation for the Defoe pride! Minnie, in her mind, saluted her sister as a princess, the vindication of the family. She felt not the slightest envy; that was not one of her faults. Or was it that she was too well satisfied with her own quite different allure?
They drove through the Main Street again and past the up-to-date brick building, and, as she hoped, Frances asked her:
“How’s old Petersen these days?”
“All right,” Minnie answered, and was able to tell her several quite satisfactory things he had said on his last visit. He was a poor enough swain, but he was better than none, and the lovely Frankie had none! She listened with interest.
“I’m sure he means something!” she said.
Minnie admitted that she thought so too.
“But of course I don’t encourage him,” she said. “Imagine his even thinking of such a thing—a man of his class!”
“That’s all nonsense,” said Frances, bluntly. “I think he’s splendid. And he’s well read and intelligent If you like him”
“Well, I don’t. Anyway, I’ve got other plans,” said Minnie. “I’ll tell you after supper.”
Frances didn’t ask what these plans were, didn’t show any special interest in them, never for an instant suspected their radical and disturbing character. She did not even notice that Minnie was unusually preoccupied.
She hastened into the house to embrace her grandmother and to make and answer all the traditional enquiries; then looked about her with a peculiar emotion that was almost pain. She loved the old place, in a way; looked toward it while absent as her home and sure refuge, dreamed of it often with longing, but with devout thankfulness that she was no longer imprisoned in it. The memory of the two years she had suffered there was ineradicable.
Minnie and her grandmother seemed to her pitiful, small and shabby. She wanted ardently to help them and to change and improve them. She tried to keep this benevolence out of her manner, but it was always there, and they felt it.
She told them that she hoped soon to be able to send money home regularly.
“I’m going to study shorthand,” she told them, “and then I’ll be able to earn much more.”
She saw their faces, unconvinced, not even much interested, and her enthusiasm waned. She would have to prove her good intentions to them.
Supper was over, and the dishes washed and put away. It was rather later than usual, on account of Frankie’s talkativeness, and the old lady announced that she was going “right straight to bed.” To her great surprise, Minnie stopped her.
“Please, Grandma,” she said, “I want to talk to you for a minute. Frankie too. Please come into the parlour.”
They followed her and waited while she lighted the blue china lamp on the centre table; then, at her request, they sat down. The occasion, as she intended it should, had taken on a solemn and important air; she faced them, flushed, serious, dogged.
“Grandma,” she began, “I’ve been thinking a great deal.... I don’t think we ought to go on like this.... Frankie and I aren’t children now, you know.... I think—we ought to know how things stand.”
The old lady looked at her but said nothing; she was waiting for a more definite challenge. She got it at once.
“I mean,” said Minnie, stoutly, “what have we got to live on?”
“What’s this!” cried the old lady tartly.
“I know we’re in debt. People are getting—horrid. They don’t want your—our trade. Really, Grandma, you ought to talk things over with Frankie and me.”
The old lady was almost unable to speak.
“I never!” she repeated, again and again, “I never! At my time of life ... talking things over with two girls of your age!”
“We only want to help,” said Minnie, ingeniously including her sister.
“I’ve got on pretty well for seventy-five years without your assistance,” said the old lady.
“Well,” observed Minnie, “it’s not what I call getting on. Grandma, we’ve got to have some sort of method. I ... do please let us know—what there is?”
“Really, Grandma, I do think it would be better,” Frankie interposed, “Minnie’s a wonderful manager, and I’m sure she could help you ever so much.”
“Two children! It’s outrageous! I’ve managed....”
“Grandma,” Minnie interrupted solemnly, “Mr. Simms spoke to me.”
This was a telling blow; the old lady winced under it.
“He was in a very bad temper,” Minnie went on, “and he said to me, in the rudest way, ‘How many years longer is this bill going to run, anyway?’”
Frances was distressed by the idea of debts.
“Oh, dear!” she cried, “That’s too bad! Do let’s talk it over, Grandma dear, and see what can be done.”
But Minnie met with an obstinacy inflexible as her own. Not one detail could they extract from the old lady. She took refuge in bitter reproach.
“I’ve worked for you both, day in and day out, for more than two years,” she said, “and whatever money I’ve spent was my own. I’m not accountable to anyone for it.” And she called them undutiful, ungrateful, unkind.
“Very well, then,” said Minnie at last, “if you’re going to take it that way ... if you refuse to—to co-operate, Grandma, then I’ll have to accept an offer I had of a position in an office.”
“What office?” Frankie asked, with interest.
“Mr. Petersen’s. He says I can have your place. I’ll go down to the village to-morrow and find a girl to stay with Grandma while I’m away.”
Now, both Frances and Minnie knew that, on account of her liability to those mysterious “attacks,” it wouldn’t do to leave the old lady alone, and they wouldn’t have done so under any circumstances, but she, poor old soul, terrified before their confident youth, not knowing what resources they had, felt them to be capable of everything. She pictured herself, solitary again, ill perhaps, with a strange servant prowling about, prying into everything, pilfering, undoubtedly setting the house on fire....
It was a most painful scene; she broke down, cried, surrendered. Minnie, although with tears in her eyes, saw her opportunity and pressed her point.
“Grandma dear,” she said, “tell us just what you have, and we’ll arrange some way to manage.”
The old lady confessed resentfully to a sole income of twenty-five dollars a month. They were incredulous.
“But in that case,” said Frances, “you must.... Why, there must be....”
“About how much do you suppose—we—owe?” asked Minnie.
This question the old lady couldn’t answer, because she actually did not know. She had never attempted to calculate; it was a topic she did not care to think about. She mentioned a number of tradespeople who had been “very nice”; in fact, she deluded herself into the belief they enjoyed serving a Defoe. They were, she assured the girls, perfectly willing to wait. Wait for Heaven knows what!
“Mr. Petersen, too, I suppose,” Minnie asked with a frown, “I suppose we owe him money?”
“Dear me, child, he’s only too pleased to have someone living here. He told me so himself. He couldn’t rent this place to anyone else; he’d simply have to pay a caretaker.”
“Why did he buy it then?” enquired Frankie.
The subject was not pursued, however, for Minnie had got up, a little pale as her great minute approached.
“Now then, Grandma and Frankie,” she said, “here’s my plan. I want to take charge of the housekeeping and—and the money.... I’ll keep things going and try to pay off the debts.”
“Nonsense, child! What are you going to pay them off with? How far do you imagine”
“I’ve found a boarder,” she said.
“A boarder!” they both cried, simultaneously.
“A literary gentleman,” she explained, “from New York. He’ll only pay eight dollars a week, but he’s a start, anyway.”
“But, my dear,” Frances objected, “where could you put him?”
“Nowhere in my house!” cried the old lady. “I won’t hear of it! It’s disgraceful! It’s vulgar! I won’t have it!”
“I must!” said Minnie, “I’ve made up my mind. I can’t and won’t go on this way. Either you’ll let me have this boarder or I’ll have to go into Mr. Petersen’s office.”
They argued, wrangled, remonstrated. It was of vital importance to them both. To the old lady a boarder meant incalculable loss of dignity, it meant degradation. She defended her position vehemently, fought to the last ditch for her honour.
But Minnie won. Her grandmother’s resistance crumpled at last before her iron determination. She went up to bed that night in a sort of ecstasy of triumph, drunk with her first victory. Her career had begun. The tiger had tasted blood.
She met with some slight opposition from Frances, loyally concealed until they were alone, but this she easily ended by a great deal of talk about the necessity of earning a living.
That’s what she called it; never facing the truth. If someone else had confronted her with it, she very likely wouldn’t have recognised it. Even in her own soul she called it a chance to “earn a living,” when it was really nothing but a ferocious determination to seek another man before accepting Mr. Petersen. She was resolved upon getting married. Mr. Petersen she would take if no one else presented, but not without a struggle, a gallant struggle to find a better. No one, nothing should balk her of this literary man from New York.
It was another little triumph, too, to be the object of such deep interest to her sister. They sat in the gloomy, cold bedroom, Frances on the bed with a blanket round her shoulders, while Minnie, erect on a broken little chair near the lamp, combed her heavy black hair with conscientious vigour.
“How on earth did you ever find him?” Frances asked.
“I saw his advertisement in a New York paper; he wanted country board some place where he could be quiet, for his writing. So I answered it.”
Frances expressed admiration for her enterprise.
“It was wonderful for you to think of such a thing,” she said, “But, Minnie, what an awful lot of work and bother for you!”
“I don’t mind that,” Minnie answered scornfully, “I like to work hard.”
They sat up late, discussing the arrangement of the boarder’s room and everything connected with him. They forgot nothing, overlooked nothing, except the effect of all this upon their grandmother.
She lay awake in her room, vaguely bitter, very unhappy. She had died and been buried that evening. She was supplanted. She was no longer to be the guardian of Frankie and Minnie; in the future they were to take care of her. As far as they were concerned, she was unnecessary; she was—one might say—no longer anything but an urn of sacred ashes, to be reverenced as the receptacle of what had once been an important human being.
They heard her coughing feebly.
“No wonder she coughs!” said Minnie. “She will not have the window open the least crack.”
Frances spent all the next day, which was Sunday, in helping Minnie give the boarder’s room a “good cleaning.” They cherished a tradition that they detested such work, that it disgusted and exhausted them, but one had only to hear their voices to know that the vigorous work delighted them and that they were tremendously happy in doing it. Frankie was on her knees scrubbing the floor, while Minnie cleaned the windows. They talked incessantly; when it became necessary for Minnie to clean the outsides of the panes, Frankie always had to stop work and stand beside her, so that she could still hear.
As a sort of silent protest, their grandmother had dressed herself in her best dress and was sitting in the parlour, reading a book of sermons. The girls insisted that they were too busy to go to church.
“I’ll drive you, if you want,” Minnie told her, grudgingly, “but I can’t spare the time to stay through the service.”
The old lady then said that all this work on the Sabbath was godless and altogether wrong, and that she wouldn’t help in the least. Which Minnie smartly parried by giving her to understand that there was nothing she could do—at her age. Relations were very much strained....
They sat down to supper, weary but profoundly satisfied.
“Well!” said Frances, “I hope he’ll be all right. I hope he’ll be the right sort.”
Minnie shook her head gravely.
“Not likely,” she said, “at eight dollars a week.”
“It isn’t money that gives people distinction,” Frances protested.
“Generally it is,” said Minnie.
Frances departed the next morning with a comfortable feeling that now Minnie wouldn’t be so lonely. Perhaps she had a secret hope like the one Minnie so cunningly dissembled....
A fortnight later she had an enthusiastic letter from Minnie, enclosing a blurred and artistic photograph of herself and the old lady, sitting in the sunset. The polite, the well-informed Mr. Blair had taken it. Then for a long time she heard no more on the subject, and she was too much engrossed in her own affairs to make enquiries about those of anyone else.