What Can She Do? Part 30

Such was the false but plausible missive that was aimed as an arrow at poor little Zell. There was nothing in her training or education, and little in her character, to s.h.i.+eld her. Moreover the increasing miseries of their situation were Van Dam's allies.

Edith rose the next morning greatly refreshed, and her naturally courageous nature rallied to meet the difficulties of their position.

But in her strength, as was too often the case, she made too little allowance for the weakness of the others. She took the reins in her hand in a masterful and not merciful way, and dictated to the rest in a manner that they secretly resented.

The store wagon was a little earlier than usual that morning, and a note from Mr. Hard was handed in, stating that he had payments to make that day and would therefore request that his little account might be met. Two or three other persons brought up bills from the village, saying that for some reason or another the money was greatly needed.

Tom Crowl's gossip was doing its legitimate work.

In the post-office Edith found all the other accounts against the family, with requests for payment, polite enough, but pressing.

She resolved to pay all she could, and went first to Mr. Hard's, That worthy citizen's eyes grew less stony as he saw half the amount of his bill on the counter. The rumor of Edith's visit to the city had reached even him, and he had his fears that collecting might involve some unpleasant business; but, however unpleasant it might be, Mr.

Hard always collected.

"I hope our method of dealing has satisfied you. Miss Allen," he ventured politely.

"Oh, yes," said Edith dryly, "you have been very liberal and prompt with everything, especially your bill."

At this Mr. Hard's eyes grew quite pebbly, and he muttered something about its being the rule to settle monthly.

"Oh, certainly," said Edith, "and like most rules, no doubt, has many exceptions. Good-morning."

She also paid something on the other bills, and found that she had but a few dollars left. Though there was a certain sense of relief in the feeling that she now owed much less, still she looked with dismay on the small sum remaining. Where was more to come from? She had determined that she would not go to New York again to sell anything except in the direst extremity.

That evening Hannibal gave them a meagre supper, for Edith had told him of the absolute necessity of economy. There was a little grumbling over the fare. So Edith pushed her chair back, laid seven dollars on the table, saying:

"That's all the money I have in the world. Who's got any more?"

They raised ten dollars among them.

"Now," said Edith, "this is all we have. Where is more coming from?"

Helpless sighs and silence were her only answers.

"There is nothing clearer in the world," continued Edith, "than that we must earn money. What can we do?"

"I never thought I should have to work," said Laura piteously.

"But, my dear sister," said Edith earnestly, "isn't it clear to you now that you must? You certainly don't expect me to earn enough to support you all. One pair of hands can't do it, and it wouldn't be fair in the bargain."

"Oh, certainly not," said Laura. "I will do anything you say as well as I can, though, for the life of me, I don't see what I can do."

"Nor I either," said Zell pa.s.sionately. "I don't know how to work. I never did anything useful in my life that I know of. What right have parents to bring up girls in this way, unless they make it a perfect certainty that they will always be rich? Here we are as helpless as four children. We have not got enough to keep us from starving more than a week at best. Just to think of it! Men are speculating and risking all they have every day. Ever since I was a child I have heard about the risks of business. I knew some people whose fathers failed, and they went away, I don't know where, to suffer as we have perhaps, and yet girls are not taught to do a single thing by which they can earn a penny if they need to. If anybody will pay me for jabbering a little bad French and Italian, and strumming a few operatic airs on the piano, I am at their service. I think I also understand dressing, flirting, and receiving compliments very well. I had a taste for these things, and never had any special motive given me for doing anything else. What becomes of all the girls thus taught to be helpless, and then tossed out into the world to sink or swim?"

"They find some self-sustaining work in it," said Edith.

"Not all of them, I guess," muttered Zell sullenly.

"Then they do worse, and had better starve," said Edith sternly.

"You don't know anything about starving," retorted Zell, bitterly. "I repeat, it's a burning shame to bring girls up so that they don't know how to do anything, if there's ever any possibility that they must.

And it's a worse shame that respect and encouragement are not given to girls who earn a living. Mother says that if we become working girls, not one of our old wealthy, fas.h.i.+onable set will have anything to do with us. What makes people act so silly? Any one of them on the avenue may be where we are in a year. I've no patience with the ways of the world. People don't help each other to be good, and don't help others up. Grown-up folks act like children. How parents can look forward to the barest chance of their children being poor, and bring them up as we were, I don't see. I'm no more fit to be poor than to be President."

Zell never before had said a word that reflected on her father, but in the light of events her criticism seemed so Just that no one reproved her.

Mrs. Allen only sighed over her part of the implied blame. She had reached the hopeless stage of one lost in a foreign land, where the language is unknown and every sight and sound unfamiliar and bewildering. This weak fas.h.i.+onable woman, the costly product of an artificial luxurious life, seemed capable of being little better than a millstone around the necks of her children in this hour of their need. If there had been some innate strength and n.o.bility in Mrs.

Allen's character it might have developed now into something worthy of respect under this sharp attrition of trouble, however perverted before. But where a precious stone will take l.u.s.tre a pumice stone will crumble. There is a mult.i.tude of natures so weak to begin with that they need tonic treatment all through life. What must such become under the influence of enervating luxury, flattery, and uncurbed selfishness from childhood? Poor, faded, sighing, helpless Mrs. Allen, s.h.i.+vering before the trouble she had largely occasioned, is the answer.

Edith soon broke the forlorn silence that followed Zell's outburst by saying:

"All the blame doesn't rest on the parents. I might have improved my advantages far better. I might have so mastered the mere rudiments of an English education as to be able to teach little children, but I can scarcely remember a single thing now."

"I can remember one thing," interrupted Zell, who was fresh from her books, "that there was mighty little attention given to the rudiments, as you call them, in the fas.h.i.+onable schools to which I went. To give the outward airs and graces of a fine lady seemed their whole aim.

Accomplishments, deportment were everything. The way I was hustled over the rudiments almost takes away my breath to remember, and I have as remote an idea of vulgar fractions as of how to do the vulgar work before us. I tell you the whole thing is a cruel farce. If girls are educated like b.u.t.terflies, it ought to be made certain that they can live like b.u.t.terflies."

"Well, then," continued Edith, "we ought to have perfected ourselves in some accomplishment. They are always in demand. See what some French and music teachers obtain."

"Nonsense," said Zell pettishly, "you know well enough that by the time we were sixteen our heads were so full of beaux, parties, and dress, that French and music were a bore. We went through the fas.h.i.+onable mills like the rest, and if father had continued worth a million or so, no one would have found fault with our education."

"We can't help the past now," said Edith after a moment, "but I am not so old yet but that I can choose some kind of work and so thoroughly master it that I can get the highest price paid for that form of labor. I wish it could be gardening, for I have no taste for the shut-up work of woman; sitting in a close room all day with a needle would be slow suicide to me."

"Gardening!" said Zell contemptuously. "You couldn't plow as well as that snuffy old fellow who scratched your garden about as deeply as a hen would have done it. A woman can't dig and hoe in the hot sun, that is, an American girl can't, and I don't think she ought."

"Nor I either," said Mrs. Allen, with some returning vitality. "The very idea is horrid."

"But plowing, digging, and hoeing are not all of gardening," said Edith with some irritation.

"I guess you would make a slim support by just snipping around among the rose-bushes," retorted Zell provokingly.

"That's always the way with you, Zell," said Edith sharply, "from one extreme to another. Well, what would you like to do?"

"If I had to work I would like housekeeping. That admits of great variety and activity. I wish I could open a summer boarding-house up here. Wouldn't I make it attractive!"

"Such black eyes and red cheeks certainly would--to the gentlemen,"

answered Edith satirically.

"They would be mere accessories. I think I could give to a boarding-house, that place of hash and harrowing discomfort, a dainty, homelike air. If father, when he risked a failure, had only put aside enough to set me up in a boarding-house, I should have been made."

"A boarding-house! What horror next?" sighed Mrs. Allen.

"Don't be alarmed, mother," said Zell bitterly. "We can scarcely start one of the forlornest hash species on ten dollars. I admit I would rather keep house for a good husband, and it seems to me I could soon learn to give him the perfection of a good home," and her eyes filled with wistful tears. Das.h.i.+ng them scornfully away, she added, "The idea of a woman loving a man, and letting his home be dependent on the cruel mercies of foreign servants! If it's a shame that girls are not taught to make a living if they need to, it's a worse shame that they are not taught to keep house. Half the brides I know of ought to have been arrested and imprisoned for obtaining property on false pretences. They had inveigled men into the vain expectation that they would make a home for them, when they no more knew how to make a home than a heaven. The best they can do is to go to one of those places so satirically called an 'intelligence office,' and import them into their elegant houses a small mob of quarrelsome, drunken, dishonest foreigners, and then they and their husbands live on such conditions as are permitted. I would be mistress of my house, just as a man is master of his store or office, and I would know thoroughly how work of all kinds was done, and see that it was done thoroughly. If they wouldn't do it, I'd discharge them. I am satisfied that our bad servants are the result of bad housekeepers more than anything else."

"Poor little Zell!" said Edith, smiling sadly. "I hope you will have a chance to put your theories into most happy and successful practice."

"Little chance of it here in 'Bushtown,' as Hannibal calls it," said Zell suddenly.

"Well," said Edith, in a kind of desperate tone, "we've got to decide on something at once. I will suggest this. Laura must take care of mother, and teach a few little children if she can get them. We will give up the parlor to her at certain hours. I will put up a notice in the post-office asking for such patronage, and perhaps we can put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Pushton Recorder, if it doesn't cost too much.

Zell, you must take the housekeeping mainly, for which you have a taste, and help me with any sewing that I can get. Hannibal will go into the garden and I will help him there all I can. I shall go to the village to-morrow and see if I can find anything to do that will bring in money."

There was a silent acquiescence in Edith's plan, for no one had anything else to offer.