The Greatest Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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grandmother was too much for immediate comprehension.
She looked from one to the other, sparkling, triumphant.
"I made up my mind, same as you did, hearing Jane Bellair talk," she explained. "Sounded like good sense. I always wanted to travel, always, and never had the opportunity. This was a real good chance." Her mouth shut, tightened, widened, drew into a crinkly delighted smile.
They sat still staring at her.
"You needn't look at me like that! I guess it's a free country! I bought my ticket—sent for it same as you did. And I didn't have to ask anybody—I'm no daughter. My duty, as far as I know it, is done! This is a pleasure trip!"
She was triumph incarnate.
"And you never said a word!" This from Vivian.
"Not a word. Saved lots of trouble. Take care of me indeed! Laura needn't think I'm dependent on her yet!"
Vivian's heart rather yearned over her mother, thus doubly bereft.
"The truth is," her grandmother went on, "Samuel wants to go to Florida the worst way; I heard 'em talking about it! He wasn't willing to go alone—not he! Wants somebody to hear him cough, I say! And Laura couldn't go—'Mother was so dependent'—Huh!"
Vivian began to smile. She knew this had been talked over, and given up on that account. She herself could have been easily disposed of, but Mrs. Lane chose to think her mother a lifelong charge.
"Act as if I was ninety!" the old lady burst forth again. "I'll show 'em!"
"I think you're dead right, Mrs. Pettigrew," said Dr. Bellair. "Sixty isn't anything. You ought to have twenty years of enjoyable life yet, before they call you 'old'—maybe more."
Mrs. Pettigrew cocked an eye at her. "My grandmother lived to be a hundred and four," said she, "and kept on working up to the last year. I don't know about enjoyin' life, but she was useful for pretty near a solid century. After she broke her hip the last time she sat still and sewed and knitted. After her eyes gave out she took to hooking rugs."
"I hope it will be forty years, Mrs. Pettigrew," said Sue, "and I'm real glad you're coming. It'll make it more like home."
Miss Elder was a little slow in accommodating herself to this new accession. She liked Mrs. Pettigrew very much—but—a grandmother thus airily at large seemed to unsettle the foundations of things. She was polite, even cordial, but evidently found it difficult to accept the facts.
"Besides," said Mrs. Pettigrew, "you may not get all those boarders at once and I'll be one to count on. I stopped at the bank this morning and had 'em arrange for my account out in Carston. They were some surprised, but there was no time to ask questions!" She relapsed into silence and gazed with keen interest at the whirling landscape.
Throughout the journey she proved the best of travelers; was never car-sick, slept well in the joggling berth, enjoyed the food, and continually astonished them by producing from her handbag the most diverse and unlooked for conveniences. An old-fashioned traveller had forgotten her watchkey—Grandma produced an automatic one warranted to fit anything. "Takes up mighty little room—and I thought maybe it would come in handy," she said.
She had a small bottle of liquid court-plaster, and plenty of the solid kind. She had a delectable lotion for the hands, a real treasure on the dusty journey; also a tiny corkscrew, a strong pair of "pinchers," sewing materials, playing cards, string, safety-pins, elastic bands, lime drops, stamped envelopes, smelling salts, troches, needles and thread.
"Did you bring a trunk, Grandma?" asked Vivian.
"Two," said Grandma, "excess baggage. All paid for and checked."
"How did you ever learn to arrange things so well?" Sue asked admiringly.
"Read about it," the old lady answered. "There's no end of directions nowadays. I've been studying up."
She was so gleeful and triumphant, so variously useful, so steadily gay and stimulating, that they all grew to value her presence long before they reached Carston; but they had no conception of the ultimate effect of a resident grandmother in that new and bustling town.
To Vivian the journey was a daily and nightly revelation. She had read much but traveled very little, never at night. The spreading beauty of the land was to her a new stimulus; she watched by the hour the endless panorama fly past her window, its countless shades of green, the brown and red soil, the fleeting dashes of color where wild flowers gathered thickly. She was repeatedly impressed by seeing suddenly beside her the name of some town which had only existed in her mind as "capital city" associated with "principal exports" and "bounded on the north."
At night, sleeping little, she would raise her curtain and look out, sideways, at the stars. Big shadowy trees ran by, steep cuttings rose like a wall of darkness, and the hilly curves of open country rose and fell against the sky line like a shaken carpet.
She faced the long, bright vistas of the car and studied people's faces—such different people from any she had seen before. A heavy young man with small, light eyes, sat near by, and cast frequent glances at both the girls, going by their seat at intervals. Vivian considered this distinctly rude, and Sue did not like his looks, so he got nothing for his pains, yet even this added color to the day.
The strange, new sense of freedom grew in her heart, a feeling of lightness and hope and unfolding purpose.
There was continued discussion as to what the girls should do.
"We can be waitresses for Auntie till we get something else," Sue practically insisted. "The doctor says it will be hard to get good service and I'm sure the boarders would like us."
"You can both find work if you want it. What do you want to do, Vivian?" asked Dr. Bellair, not for the first time.
Vivian was still uncertain.
"I love children best," she said. "I could teach—but I haven't a certificate. I'd love a kindergarten; I've studied that—at home."
"Shouldn't wonder if you could get up a kindergarten right off," the doctor assured her. "Meantime, as this kitten says, you could help Miss Elder out and turn an honest penny while you're waiting."
"Wouldn't it—interfere with my teaching later?" the girl inquired.
"Not a bit, not a bit. We're not so foolish out here. We'll fix you up all right in no time."
It was morning when they arrived at last and came out of the cindery, noisy crowded cars into the wide, clean, brilliant stillness of the high plateau. They drew deep breaths; the doctor squared her shoulders with a glad, homecoming smile. Vivian lifted her head and faced the new surroundings as an unknown world. Grandma gazed all ways, still cheerful, and their baggage accrued about them as a rampart.
A big bearded man, carelessly dressed, whirled up in a dusty runabout, and stepped out smiling. He seized Dr. Bellair by both hands, and shook them warmly.
"Thought I'd catch you, Johnny," he said. "Glad to see you back. If you've got the landlady, I've got the cook!"
"Here we are," said she. "Miss Orella Elder—Dr. Hale; Mrs. Pettigrew, Miss Susie Elder, Miss Lane—Dr. Richard Hale."
He bowed deeply to Mrs. Pettigrew, shook hands with Miss Orella, and addressed himself to her, giving only a cold nod to the two girls, and quite turning away from them.
Susie, in quiet aside to Vivian, made unfavorable comment.
"This is your Western chivalry, is it?" she said. "Even Bainville does better than that."
"I don't know why we should mind," Vivian answered. "It's Dr. Bellair's friend; he don't care anything about us."
But she was rather of Sue's opinion.
The big man took Dr. Bellair in his car, and they followed in a station carriage, eagerly observing their new surroundings, and surprised, as most Easterners are,