When the road seemed to stop short off and end nowhere, with only blue water and blue sky as alternatives, a short turn round a bunch of cedars brought them to Miss Shortridge’s door.
‘Why, Jean Shortridge! I’d never have known you in the world!’ cried Mrs Weatherby, trying to kiss her affectionately, and somehow missing it as her hostess turned to greet Dr Whitcomb.
‘I am delighted to meet you again, Miss Shortridge,’ he said, holding her hand impulsively in both his. ‘How well you look! How young — if you will pardon me — how young you look!’
Even Mrs Weatherby, jealously scrutinizing her old friend, could not deny that there was something in what he said. Her own bright color and plump outlines had long since given way to the dragging softness of a face well nursed, but little used; expressing only the soft negation of an old child; and her figure now took shape more from the stays without than from the frame within.
Jean Shortridge stood erect and lightly upon her feet. She moved with swift alertness, and carried herself with agility. Her face was healthily weatherbeaten; high colored from sun and wind; her eyes bright and steady.
She was cordial, but not diffuse; installed them presently in their respective rooms, and sat smiling and well-gowned at the head of her table when they came to supper.
In the days that followed the new guests learned from the old ones much of their hostess’s present and recent achievements. This was her third season here, it appeared, and she was regarded as a wonder; she had bought this old place — mortgaged — and was understood to be paying the mortgage, or to have paid it; she was liked and respected in the little community and considered a solid citizen in spite of her wild eccentricity — she slept out of doors!
All this was commonly known, but what Mrs Weatherby wanted to know, and, if the truth must be told, Dr Whitcomb also, was the tale of those years unaccounted for since Jean Shortridge had last been ‘sighted’ — and set down as an absolute wreck.
It was extremely difficult to get Miss Shortridge’s ear. Her bedchamber on the roof of a porch was inaccessible to others, and she sought that skyey chamber immediately after supper. She was a-foot at dawn and at work, really at work, in her garden. Not a rose garden this, but several acres of highly cultivated land, which the active lady ‘worked with her hands,’ enough to satisfy the most ardent Tolstoyan.
Small time had she for casual conversation save at meals, and then competition was heavy.
So Mrs Weatherby must needs content herself, during a too short week of good air, good sleep, good food, and good company, with a very pretty campaign of ‘friendliness’ directed against that smoothly defended fortress of Dr Whitcomb’s elderly affections.
Well used was the plump widow to these lines of attack; but even better used was he to all the arts of courteous evasion. Not for nothing had he been a popular minister for nearly fifty years.
It was Friday evening (they had arrived on a Saturday) before, at Dr Whitcomb’s direct solicitation, Miss Shortridge agreed to give him an hour, Mrs Weatherby promptly chipping in to urge ‘her room’ as an excellent place for a talk.
It was; and Miss Shortridge in her own favorite chair looked more than ever the hostess; cordial, friendly, quite at ease.
‘Now, Jean Shortridge!’ Mrs Weatherby began, ‘we are old friends, and you needn’t make any mystery with us. We want to know what you did — what on earth you did — to — well — to arrive like this!’
‘Is this what you call “arriving”?’ asked Miss Shortridge. ‘I’m simply a hard-working woman with her living to earn — and earning it!’
‘And a benefactor to society in that process!’ blandly interposed the clergyman.
‘So is every honest worker, surely!’ she suggested, ‘but I know what you mean, Mrs Weatherby — I met your sister some seven or eight years ago — and I fancy she gave a pretty bad account of me.’
‘A sad account, Jean — not bad. She said you were not looking at all well.’
‘No, I was not looking well — nor feeling well — nor doing well,’ Miss Shortridge admitted.
‘And now you are all three,’ said Dr Whitcomb, with an inclination of the head and his admiring smile.
She laughed happily. ‘Thank you — I am,’ she frankly agreed. ‘Well, this is what happened. I was fifty, practically — forty-eight, that is — no money — no health — no happiness.’ Here her eyes rested a moment on Mrs Weatherby’s soft sagging face. ‘You see I never married and all I had earned was spent as it came; for mother for a long time — and doctors. I had no talent in particular, and it was increasingly hard to get work as a stenographer. They want them young and quick and pretty. So — it seemed to me then that I had come to the jumping-off place.’
Her hearers exchanged glances.
‘Yes, that’s why I named the place — but it’s a good name anyhow — and then I got hold of a book — found it by chance in the public library—’ Miss Shortridge paused and heaved a large sigh. ‘That was a book!’ she said.
‘What was it?’ eagerly inquired Mrs Weatherby.
‘It was called “The Woman of Fifty”; author, one “A. J. Smith.” But that book was written for me It told me what to do and I did it — and it was all true.’
‘What was it? Oh, do tell us! What did you do?’ Mrs Weatherby urged.
‘I began to live,’ said Miss Shortridge. ‘You see I thought my life was ended — such as it was — and pitied myself abominably. I got a new notion out of the book — that there was just as much life as ever there was, and it was mine; health — power — success — happiness.’
‘And so you “demonstrated” — is that the phrase?’ Dr Whitcomb asked benignly.
‘And so I went to work,’ she replied.
‘Work isn’t always easy to get, is it?’ inquired Mrs Weatherby.
‘Oh, yes — the kind I did. I selected a healthy suburban town — with a good library — and took a kitchen job for five months. Made my own terms — a good reading lamp and a place to sleep out of doors. I worked hard, slept well, ate good food, and saved money. Every evening I read an hour.’
‘May we ask what you read?’ asked Dr Whitcomb.
‘About nature; about health; about market gardening; and the lives of people who dared to be different. That was a good winter! By June I had over a hundred dollars. All that summer I lived on it. I tramped, rode on trolley cars, lived out of doors — rested. How I rested! Never before in my life had I learned what this world was really like.’
‘In wet spells I’d board at some farm house. And I gradually settled on the place where I wanted to live the next year — the man was a market gardener — I wanted to learn the business. I worked out doors and in that year; no time to read, slept like a log, grew strong — saved money.
‘I got acquainted, too, and learned a lot about horses and pigs and hens, as well as garden stuff. By the end of the second year I had 450 dollars and some experience. Then I went in with a woman who took summer boarders. She rented me her garden, I furnished enough for the house to pay for it; and I could sell what I had left. I made a lot that year.
‘Then I heard of this place, got it on good terms (it was heavily mortgaged you see), and — well, I’ve paid the mortgage. I own it clear.’
‘A magnificent record!’ said Dr Whitcomb.
‘But how hard you have worked — how hard you work now!’ Mrs Weatherby exclaimed. ‘I don’t see how you stand it.’
‘I like it, you see,’ said their hostess. ‘I like it while I’m doing it, I make a good living by it, and I’ve got something to look forward to. When I’ve saved enough I’m going to take a year off, and travel.’
‘But — it’s not like having a family,’ Mrs Weatherby ventured.
‘No, it’s not. I wish I had a family.... But since I haven’t — why, I might as well have a life of my own. By the time I’m sixty I mean to take that year abroad I speak of. After that I’ll keep on earning. Buy me an annuity, perhaps. There is a ho
me for old people in Los Angeles, I’ve heard, that’s pretty near perfect. I might go there to finish up.’
She looked so cheerful, so alert, so capable and assured, and full of hope, so perplexingly young in spite of her gray hair, that Mrs Weatherby was puzzled in her estimate of age.
‘Aren’t you older than I am, Jean,’ she said. ‘You used to be.’
Jean laughed. ‘Certainly I am. I’m fifty-seven; you’re fifty-three. We’ve both got many years to look forward to.’
‘I don’t see how you work such financial miracles, Miss Shortridge,’ the clergyman protested. ‘Surely it is not open to every woman of middle age to achieve independence as easily.’
‘Perhaps they wouldn’t all find it easy,’ she answered. ‘It did take some courage, and a definite, sustaining purpose. But the way is wide open. You see I have three lines of work: I raise vegetables and fruits and sell them during the summer. I preserve and can all I do not sell or use, and the boarders during the summer are a great help. By the way, Mrs Weatherby, are you to take the morning stage, or the afternoon?
‘Why, I was hoping you’d let me stay longer,’ said that lady lamely; ‘I’m very comfortable here; it has done me ever so much good.’
‘I am sorry, but I cannot spare the room,’ Miss Shortridge replied.
Dr Whitcomb did not wait for her to ask his hour of leaving— ‘The morning stage, if you please; and I am extremely grateful for this pleasant visit. It has been a great pleasure, too, to renew our old acquaintance.’
He was up betimes next morning, early enough to find Miss Shortridge in her well kept garden hard at work. He begged a few moments’ talk with her, and used his best powers to attract and hold her attention. He spoke of the changes of life; of her long, patient struggle to support herself and care for her mother; of her phenomenal enterprise and success.
She listened gravely, picking her beans with a deft, practiced hand, and stepping slowly along between the dew-wet rows, while he followed.
Then in deeper, softer tones he referred to his own life; to the pain of loss and loneliness; the injury to his work. He longed for true companionship to the end of the journey. Would she, for the time of rich autumnal peace, be his companion?
It is said that all women have at least one offer of marriage; but Jean Shortridge never expected to receive her first at fifty-seven. She thanked him sincerely for the compliment he paid her, but was not inclined to accept it.
He urged her to take time; to think it over. This was no boyish appeal, but a calm proposal for the joining of their declining years; no mad young passion, but real friendship; understanding; a warm, appreciative affection; she must think it over.
He went away on the morning stage, Mrs Weatherby accompanying him, at some inconvenience in the matter of packing.
Miss Shortridge considered her first offer of marriage for a full week, and then declined it.
‘Why should I?’ she said to herself. ‘I always hated nursing. Let Bessie have him, too!’
But Bessie failed this time.
IN TWO HOUSES
THE blank, boarded windows, with which the two old Marshall houses faced, or rather sided, each other, told no tales of midnight danger; but shrill infant screams were more successful.
‘Fire! Fire! O Lawdy, Lawdy, de house is afire!’ yelled little black Polly, her red-tied pigtails seeming to bristle and prance with horror.
‘Be still, child!’ said Miss Diana sternly. ‘Hold your tongue — we can put this out. Be still, I tell you!’
With a clear head and a strong hand she proceeded to assail the leaping flames in the back kitchen, but could not at the same time capture and quiet the vociferous Polly, who ran out into the moonlit silence of the back yard, shrieking to heaven that they would all be burned alive. The dark house next door stirred inwardly, it would seem reluctantly.
Distant knocks and cries were heard: ‘Mas’r Marshall! Mas’r Marshall! De house afire nex’ door! Dat lady’ll be bun in her baid! O Mas’r Marshall!’
Steps were heard; a moving light glimmered through the cracks of the close-shuttered windows and presently a tall man, somewhat incomplete in costume, leaped over the high brick wall and rushed in, followed by an old negro in a state of uncontrolled excitement.
Miss Diana Marshall paused in her task, smoky and dishevelled, but a commanding figure none the less.
‘I thank you for your kind intentions, Dr Blair,’ she said. ‘There is not the least necessity for assistance.’ Neither of the men paid any attention to her; Dr Marshall Blair taking hold with swift intelligence, while the old negro rushed about so madly that he seemed rather to spread the flames than to quench them, adding his cries to Polly’s.
‘Get out, Polyphemus!’ said his master at length. ‘Go out there and choke that child! I can put this out if you’ll let it alone.’
Polyphemus took himself off at the word, and a sudden silence fell upon him and Polly as they withdrew behind the smoke house.
‘Just pass me the water — let me throw it,’ the visitor commanded, and Miss Marshall, grim and silent, did as she was told. In a few moments the flames were entirely extinguished.
‘There is no great damage done,’ he remarked on examination.
‘I did not think there would be,’ replied Miss Marshall. ‘I could have put the fire out easily without any man’s assistance; but I couldn’t stop that foolish child.’
‘No,’ he politely agreed, ‘it is impossible to stop a woman’s tongue — even when very young.’
She regarded him coldly. Her thick, coppery hair was in a condition only to be described as tousled; a towel-girt wrapper and shapeless bedroom slippers formed her costume; but the free grace of her athletic body, and the rich color of health and sudden exertion made her a lovely picture for all that. Perhaps the glint of anger in her clear eyes heightened it; at any rate, he looked at her with admiration, though it seemed strangely reluctant.
‘I apologise for my intrusion,’ he said. ‘Kindly excuse me. I supposed the house was in danger.’
‘I thank you for your interest in the house, Dr Blair. As you see, it is still standing.’
He bowed with as much dignity as a black-smooched shirt and suspender-belted trousers allowed, and withdrew; taking the high wall with energy, if not grace. His servant must have rejoined him by some easier means, for the sound of severe reproof was presently heard. ‘The next time you get me out of bed on any such fool’s errand will be your last day in this house!’ stormed his master, with that disregard for likelihood which is often to be observed in those who scold. Pacificatory ‘Yassirs’ trailed off into silence as doors slammed shut, and darkness reigned again.
Diana Marshall felt an equal rage against her domestic imp of mischief, to whose carelessness the fire was evidently due; but the small, cowed figure that slunk back into the dismantled kitchen at her call was so pathetic in its remorseful terror, that she sent the child to bed with few words.
‘If I was fool enough to take in that ridiculous infant, I must at least be wise enough to put up with her,’ she said to herself, trying with much cold water to remove the soot from her hands, and the angry flush from her cheeks.
‘The idea of his coming in like that! The idea!’
It was a long time before she could sleep again; and all that her sad-eyed mother had told her of these old houses and the old quarrels within them, rose and revolved in her mind as she lay staring into the dark. She seemed to see them appear before her, the proud old Englishman, Blair Marshall, with his grant of land, his big stone house, and his twin sons, the pride of his heart and apple of his eye. For one of them he built the second house, identical with the first — close to it, connected with a bridge — that bridge which now gaped broken between them.
Marshall’s Folly it was called even then — as folk are apt to consider foolish anything unusual. ‘You can’t make any two families live together, not even by a bridge!’ the neighbors said.
Identical houses, equa
lly beautiful in furniture and decoration, standing in the great estate with wooded hills and rolling fields; monuments of parental love and pride, they were left to young Vance and Gregory on their father’s death.
Within a year they had quarreled, quarreled over a cousin — Diana Blair. Vance married her. Vance lived on the estate and Diana Marshall was his granddaughter and sole heir. Gregory became a traveler, bringing home in course of years a brilliant wife from France. Gregory’s one child, a daughter, married a Blair; and Gregory’s grandson was Dr Marshall Blair, Diana’s second cousin and next neighbor. Between them rose a higher wall than six feet of brick, a wider gulf than that between the sawed-off planks of the once connecting bridge; a wall of hatred, a chasm of total strangeness.
Diana’s mother was a Massachusetts girl, won by the handsome Virginian in what she afterwards called a moment of delirium. She bore a bitter widowhood during her husband’s frequent absences; suffered a more bitter wifehood when he was at home; and reared her daughter to hate men in general and Marshalls in particular.
‘You can’t escape the name unless you marry, and I hope you never will!’ her mother said to her, ‘and you can’t wholly escape the nature — though you have enough Wentworth to match it, I believe. But I pray Heaven you may steer clear of all Marshalls and their Follies!’
The girl grew up, a wild, free thing, on the old place; wild enough even to scale the wall and secretly study the shut-up house next door. It made her shiver — it was so like their own — and yet so different.
‘It’s like a Siamese twin,’ she used to say to herself. ‘A dead one! Ugh!’
After her husband’s unregretted death Mrs Marshall took Diana back to Massachusetts and gave her the college education she herself had relinquished for love, and always regretted. Then they had gone to England, traveled, studied, living always in the company of women; efficient, contented, successful women; where the girl heard more and more of the delinquencies and offenses of menkind.
When she was twenty-eight her mother died; and Diana, now well established professionally as a writer, felt a strong desire to return to her childhood’s home; but first made careful inquiries by letter as to the house next door, learning that it was still blank and vacant. She lived there quite alone, a handsome hermit, hunting, fishing, swimming in the deep cold lake that formed part of the boundary between the places, living on the garden products, on canned goods and biscuit, with what she added with line and gun; and working happily on her Book — a book she had been planning for ten years.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 152