Miss Yale did not underrate the difficulties of the work she had laid out for herself. Never in her life had she planned more carefully, or for more years ahead. Before they left Marseilles Miss Yale had her plan well in mind.
“I’ll educate her in France and Germany — the best — if she’ll take it. I hope she’ll choose the medical profession. We need women there. She can’t see much of the child — except on vacations — we’ll try to fix that.
“No — the child is the spur — a splendid one. Maybe it won’t live. Perhaps that would be as well — but never mind that possibility.
“Now for the hard part — the mind building. I need help here.... This year especially.... This year must be health, and peace of mind, and — just foundations. Then she must work.
“Dear me — suppose she shouldn’t be equal to it!”
But doubts of that kind never troubled Miss Yale long.
She had fixed her determined mind on the difficulties confronting this misguided child as a type of world-old injustice, an injustice which she was sure could be remedied. If any of her friends had known of this particular undertaking they would have branded it as the most quixotic yet, but it was no part of her plan to have it known or criticized.
She wrote to this friend and that of her next two or three months of easy travel, and if any of them chanced to meet her or to hear of her having a young companion, she made no secret of “the La Salle child” or of finding her in Marseilles. The absent cousin was quite generally distrusted; and some thought Miss Yale was being victimized; a few even said “as usual,” but twenty years of benevolent eccentricity, based on perfect independence and a comfortable fortune, allows one considerable freedom of conduct.
“She always has some lame duck in tow,” they said.
In these three months, besides enjoying, as she usually did, seeing new places or revisiting old favorites, her most constant exploration was in the rapidly opening mind of the girl beside her.
It was not difficult, with a few good maps and well-selected books, to mark out the foundation of later studies, even to lay the cornerstones of historic knowledge. In the language work, Maggie made rapid progress, and the mere process of seeing a strange country, its people and customs, had an effect at once stimulating and soothing.
Miss Yale was increasingly happy. To the satisfaction of her benevolent impulses, she now added the growing hope of establishing a principle, and in this stage of the process she found not only the pleasure of giving instruction and experience to an eager mind, but, somewhat to her surprise, a growing affection for the girl herself.
Little Mag, in New Hampshire, had been raw and rude and willful, self-confident, a little vulgar. Marguerite, in Europe, began to show agreeable changes. Her self-esteem was for the present quite in abeyance. No ruder proof could have been given her of her real ignorance and deficiencies. In the new land and language there appeared, from unused depths within her, new characteristics far more pleasant than the old ones. She showed a patience, a perseverance and courage in meeting difficulties, and a quiet gentleness which was beyond her friend’s immediate hopes.
She had feared recurrent trouble as to “obligation,” but the girl seemed to have quite settled that question. She brought the matter up once, very early in their travels, when they had a compartment to themselves.
“Miss Yale!” she suddenly demanded — in the one hour a day that English was allowed, “can you tell me how long it will take — and — how much it will cost?”
“It” was not difficult to define.
“If you choose a profession,” the other answered, “and I very much hope you will, it will be ten years I should think before you’ll be absolutely on your feet. Twenty-seven is young enough to be a lawyer or a doctor. If you do as well as I think you can, you’ll know enough by the time you’re twenty to take up your special studies. Then there will be the apprenticeship years — clerk or intern, and all the harder because you are a woman.”
The girl’s eyes were far away, across the flying landscape.
Miss Yale went on calmly, “Ten years — yes — she will be ten years old before you can give her a home. As to how much — I will show you the estimate I have made.”
Maggie was appalled.
“Could I ever earn that much?”
“Bless you, yes — easily.”
“In how long, do you think?” The girl’s voice was very low.
“In another ten years’ time, at the outside — in half that if you are very successful.”
“Twenty years!” said Maggie. “Twenty years! I shall be thirty-seven!” She said it as if it meant centuries.
Miss Yale faced the fact cheerfully.
“Yes, you’ll be thirty-seven by that time. You’ll have a daughter of twenty — or a son. You’ll have an honorable and paying position in the world. You’ll be useful, respected, beloved. You’ll be able to save life — that is, if you choose medicine — to heal the sick, to help women and children — men, too. You’ll have a home of your own.”
“Twenty years!” murmured Maggie again. Then, eagerly, “Couldn’t I do something less — expensive?”
“I’ve thought of that, too,” explained Miss Yale. “You could, as a matter of fact, go to work as soon as you can leave the baby. But you could not have her with you that way, any more than this way, and you could not afford to give her the kind of education and the kind of home you’d like to. Besides — though you would not owe so much, it would take you just as long to save it out of your small wages.” Maggie counted the poplars as they rushed into sight and out again, across their darkening window. Her fingers twisted and untwisted themselves in her lap. Large, slow tears rose, swelled and dropped on the slender fingers.
Miss Yale leaned forward and took the girl’s hands, holding them in a strong and tender clasp. “Now my dear child,” she said, “don’t be appalled by this. Remember the mischief is done and cannot be helped. We won’t give a thought to that. Remember that, though this road I’m trying to start you on is hard and long, it is the best that opens. You can’t get out from under as if it had never happened. In any case you have to pay, pay heavily. But in this case you get something worth paying for!”
The girl turned grateful eyes to the kind face opposite but found no words.
“And always remember this, my dear, when everything else fails — your own ambition is a good deal, your mother love will be more; you may even want to prove my experiment a success; but the big thing to remember is — the other women! The principle of the thing, Maggie! You are working to establish a principle.”
The shadows grew outside, the small dim button of light glimmered overhead. When at last the girl spoke, she delighted her friend by remarking slowly, “Oui, mademoiselle; je comprends. Je ferai cela” in quite passable French.
Toward Christmastime they made a visit with a family in a remote Alpine valley, old and beloved friends of Mary Yale.
Gerard Hauptman was a real teacher, of German birth and training, a man of large ideas and very small income. His wife was French, also a teacher by profession before her marriage and a social theorist, in eager agreement with her husband. Their home was quite outside the town, a place of wide, far views and bracing air, and their only family a young widowed daughter, Julie by name, who had returned with her baby to her father’s house.
To her particularly Miss Yale talked of Maggie, of her orphanhood, of her misfortune and her good fortune, of the brave future she was facing; and the young mother’s heart warmed to the lonely girl, so soon to be a mother, too. When their old friend asked of the family in conclave assembled if they would take her protegee as a pupil and boarder, teach her and befriend her for the next year at least, father, mother and daughter were all willing.
It was hard indeed for Maggie when Miss Yale left her, but by this time she felt at home with these good people, and really fond of Julie.
There she stayed in peace and quiet for nearly two years, growing in health an
d strength and peace of mind, helping Madame about the house and in the wide blossoming garden, walking and climbing with Julie as long as she was able, spending peaceful hours alone with the lake, the mountain and the sky for friends, and studying under the wisest care.
The talk at that family table was an education in itself, the books they read and discussed, the atmosphere of easy acquaintance with things worth knowing; and the lessons given her were not the year consuming drills and examinations of the schools, but such selections and combinations as best and soonest gave the foundation knowledge she most needed.
Her baby came with the May blossoms; and if the neighbors criticized the American woman’s protegee they quite appreciated that it was some object to the Hauptmans to have this boarding pupil, even if she was under a cloud.
In the summer, Miss Yale came again, making a long visit, sitting by the hour to watch Marguerite’s quiet happiness with her little one.
They called her Dorothea, and her girl mother found her wholly charming.
“I don’t have to leave her now, do I?” she pleaded.
“Not for another year — if you do as well as you’ve been doing. You couldn’t have better care for body or mind. It’s going to be like pulling teeth when you do go, I know, but that’s part of the price, sister. I think they will keep little Dolly here for you. I believe they would even for nothing — and I know they need the money. We’ll call her Yale from the first. I’m to adopt her for the present, as you know. If you should die — and I’m sure I hope you won’t, for I’ve grown very fond of you, my dear — I’ll stand by Dolly as I would have by you. But you don’t look much like dying!”
She did not. This peaceful, pleasant home, the high sweet air and noble prospect, the society of people who thought far and clearly and talked out their thoughts together, and the comforting affection of Julie, made a most congenial environment for the long-starved girl.
Dorothea was born to a mother strong, calm and cheerful, safe in the present and confident of the future; and if the mother’s heart was wrung as she saw the father in that small pink face, she had power to put that pain aside.
The child’s orphanage would be not so hard to bear as her own had been.
“She has a mother, anyway!” she said, and her heart seemed to grow like a giant as she faced now not only her own future, but the child’s.
Miss Yale had watched eagerly for just that dawn of future power. She had expected it, counted on it theoretically, and was not disappointed.
Maggie turned her eyes upon her wise friend.
“I begin — just begin — to see what you have done for me,” she said, “and what you are going to do! When I think of what sort of a mother this child would have had — without you — O, Miss Yale!
You can trust me! I won’t fail! I’ll do just as you want me to. I’ll be a doctor. I’ll be a good one!”
Miss Yale patted her hand, and kissed the baby.
“That’s all right, Marguerite. I knew I should be proud of you, and I never had such a satisfactory baby before. I’m really much obliged to you, my dear.”
Then they planned for the coming years, planned more freely and in detail than had been possible before. The young mother now growing strong again, plumper and rosier than Miss Yale had yet seen her, listened eagerly, and appreciated the careful outline of her coming work far better than she had the year before.
“You see, you have certain advantages now, as well as disadvantages. My friends have lost track of you altogether. When any of them asked me what I’d done with ‘that La Salle child’ I said I’d placed her with a good family in the country — and this little place is entirely out of the way. From here I want you to go, a year from this fall, to a good school I know — in Germany. You’ll be just a girl there, a girl of eighteen — as far as they know. I think you are quite wise enough now to carry it through.”
“I have to leave Dorothea — altogether?”
“Yes, for a while. For her sake as well as your own. You see you’re staying long enough to see her through the second summer — and not long enough for her to miss you. These dear friends will keep her and teach her for the present. She couldn’t be better off. But — she must not know you are her mother until you are ready to claim her. I shall be ‘Aunt Mary.’ I shall come to get her in the summer, and if I happen to bring her to a place where I have another protegee with me — a brilliant young scholar I am interested in — it is nobody’s business!”
“After this year, I only see her on vacations?”
“Yes, until she is ten years old. I’ll see that you pass your summers together.”
“And what will she call me?”
“Sister. I’m sorry, Margaret. It is going to hurt. But think it out for yourself. You will be able to make a better record without her — the world being as it is. When you are able you shall claim her openly if you wish to. Anyway you can be with her — as a sister.”
The young mother held her baby close, close, and hid her tears in the white little garments.
“Anyway she won’t call anybody else ‘Mother’!” she said.
Margaret Yale, in her special course year in that exacting school, made a record that astonished her teachers. They did not know what coiled springs of repressed emotion urged her on. She was friendly and pleasant with her classmates, and many were much attached to her, but they seemed somewhat young and light-minded to the girl who was no older in years, but who had lived so much more.
She herself was astonished, as well as her instructors, not at her progress, for she had put her shoulder to the wheel with the highest determination, but at the amount of pleasure she found in her work. Having no experience of any other educational processes, she had no means of appreciating the kind of training which had given her French, German and Latin in three years’ time, had opened the world of science as a field of boundless fascination, had taught her how to study and how to avoid unnecessary labor.
Herr Hauptman was an enthusiast in natural science. In her eighteen months in that scholastic household she had acquired with pleasure an amount of knowledge which would have meant painful years of ordinary schooling. Both the good man and his wife had given her a special interest in biology and physiology; and the books, so cautiously selected and liberally supplied by Miss Yale, had filled her eager mind with a consistent background of general information.
Her mental strength had not been exhausted in forced study; she knew what was necessary for her to know, did not know much that was unnecessary, and realized the need of such elimination and concentration in the study of science. Her mind was easy about the child, though her heart ached steadily. She knew that “Aunt Julie” was as good to little Dorothea as to her own boy, only a year older; that both children had the loving care of wise grandparents; that the place was ideal for happy and healthy childhood — yet her heart ached for her own baby in her arms.
Then she learned, out of her own keen intelligence, what no books could have taught her, how to hold down her grief, and use it as a spur. She rigidly closed her mind to thoughts of her child during the hours of work, and the hours of play. She allowed, however, one period of tender retrospect, before sleeping, letting her mind dwell on that small rosy sweetness her arms so hungered to hold; and then she checked her tears and restocked her armory of patience by the thought that if she really loved her child and wished to serve her, she must simply work.
And she did work.
Wise teaching, the excellent rules of the school, and her own vivid intelligent perception of its advantages made health an immediate necessity, special strength and endurance for the long years of effort. “For her sake,” she said to herself — meaning sometimes Dorothea, and sometimes Miss Yale; and she applied her mind to physical development as well as mental. Her hope was high and steady, and set far ahead.
For immediate joy she had the growing delight of feeding and exercising a healthy brain, and the recurrent happiness of summer vacations. In one and another
sweet wild place, by the seashore or in the wooded hills, she met Julie, now dear as a sister, and Julie’s two babies. Sometimes, Miss Yale was with them, sometimes not; but the two friends rested and read together and the two babies loved them both.
No part of Miss Yale’s program showed more wisdom and resulted more effectively than her choice of friends in placing the girl. Her own life of travel and wide interest in human improvement had put her in touch with all manner of progressive doers and thinkers, and among them were always some who from either necessity or goodwill to Miss Yale, or both, were willing to take an earnest girl student to board.
In Heidelberg, she was particularly fortunate, finding a home with a widow of limited means, but unlimited ideals, a lady in whose parlors Marguerite met men and women who thought and taught and wrote to help the world. She was always quiet, listening much and talking little, but she opened like a flower in this stimulating atmosphere. She grew from year to year in more ways than one, more than she could possibly realize.
When Miss Yale, after an unexpectedly long absence, arranged to spend a winter in Paris, and to have Marguerite with her there for the year’s studies, she found a young woman of twenty-three who had even added to her stature since she had seen her.
“Why, child, I do believe you’re growing!”
Marguerite laughed. “Yes, I’m almost an inch taller than when I was sixteen. And haven’t stopped, either.”
“You’re looking splendidly. How do you do it — with all your work?”
“I work to do it,” said the girl, “or at least play. Julie and I learned a lot that summer you took your family to Sweden. You haven’t been over since — but you remember she has taken it up as a regular business, this physical culture work. She teaches in two schools already. In my school we had good training, too. When there is no gymnasium I walk — and run — and row, and play tennis.”
“And what will you do in Paris?”
“Fence!” cried Marguerite, “I’ve always had a secret ambition to fence, but no chance for more than the rudiments. Now, if you’re willing, dear friend, I’ll add that to my accomplishments.”
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 56