Invincible Minnie/Book 1/Chapter 3
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....
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.
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?
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.
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.