The New Penelope, and Other Stories and Poems. Frances Fuller Victor
matter of very great consequence. I had been established in the new house and business four or five weeks, when one evening, Benton being unusually ill, I asked Mr. Seabrook's advice about him. My bed-room was up stairs, against the partition which separated my apartments from those occupied by a family of Germans. I chose that room for myself because it seemed less lonely, and safer for me, to be where I could hear the voice of the little German woman, and she could hear mine. In the same manner my kitchen joined on to hers, and we could hear each other at our work. Benton being too ill to be dressed, was lying on the bed in my room, and I asked Mr. Seabrook to go up and look at him. He examined him and told me what to do, in his usual decided and assured manner, and went back to the dining-room, which was also my sitting-room. As soon as Benton was quieted, so that I could leave him, I also returned to the lower part of the house to finish my evening tasks.
"There is such a feeling of hatred arises in my heart when I recall that part of my history that it makes me fear my own wickedness! Do you think we can hate so much as to curse and blight our own natures?"
"Undoubtedly; but that would be a sort of frenzy, and would finally end in madness. You do not feel in that way. It is the over-mastering sense of wrong suffered, for which there can be no redress. Terrible as the feeling is, it must be free from the wickedness you impute to yourself. Your nature is sound and sweet at the core—I feel sure of that."
"Thank you. I have had many grave doubts about myself. But to go on. Contrary to his usual habit, Mr. Seabrook remained at the house that evening, and in the dining-room instead of his own room. I was so busy with my work and anxious about Benton, that I did not give more than a passing thought to him. He, also, seemed much pre-occupied.
"At last my work was done, and I took a light to go to my room, telling Mr. Seabrook to put out the lights below stairs, as I should not be down again. 'Stop a moment,' said he, 'I have something to tell you that you ought to know.' He very politely placed a chair for me, which I took. His manners were faultless in the matter of etiquette—and how very far a fine manner goes, in our estimate of people! I had not the shadow of a suspicion of what was coming. 'Mrs. Greyfield,' he said, with great gravity, 'I fear I have unintentionally compromised you very seriously. In advising you to take this house, and open it for boarders, I was governed entirely by what I conceived to be your best interests; but it seems that I erred in my judgment. You are very young—only twenty-three, I believe, and—I beg your pardon—too beautiful to pass unnoticed in a community like this. Your boarders, so far, are all gentlemen. Further, it has been noticed and commented upon that—really, I do not know how to express it—that I have seemed to take the place in your household that—pray, forgive me, Mrs. Greyfield—only a husband, in fact or in expectancy, could be expected or permitted to occupy. Do you see what I mean?'
"I sat stunned and speechless while he went on. 'I presume your good sense will direct you in this matter, and that you will grasp the right horn of the dilemma. If you would allow me to help you out of it, you would really promote my happiness. Dear Mrs. Greyfield, permit me to offer you the love and protection of a husband, and stop these gossips' mouths.'"
"You do not think he had premeditated this?" I asked.
"I did not take it in then, but afterwards I saw it plainly enough. He pressed me for an answer, all the time plausibly protesting that although he had hoped some time to win my love, he had not anticipated the necessity for urging his suit as a matter of expediency. In vain I argued that if his presence in the house was an injury to me, he could leave it. It was too late, he said. I indignantly declared that it was not my fault that my boarders were all men. I was working for my living, and would just as willingly have boarded any other creature if I could have got my money for it; a monkey or a sheep; it was all the same to me. He smiled superiorly on my fretfulness; and when I at last burst into a passion of tears, bade me good night with such an air of being extremely forbearing and judicious that I could not help regarding myself as a foolish and undisciplined child.
"That night I scarcely slept at all. Benton was feverish, and I half wild. All sorts of plans ran through my head; but turn the matter over any way I would, it amounted to the same thing. The money I must earn, must come from men. Whether I sewed or cooked, or whatever I did, they were the paymasters to whom I looked for my wages. How, then, was it possible to escape contact with them, or avoid being misunderstood. In one breath I resented, with all the ardor of my soul, the impertinence of the world's judgment, and in the next I declared to myself that I did not care; that conscious innocence should sustain me, and that I had a right to do the best I could for myself and child.
"But that was only sham courage. I was morally a coward, and could not possibly face the evil spirit of detraction. Therefore, the morning found me feverish in body and faint in spirit. I kept out of sight of my boarders, except Mr. Seabrook, who looked into the kitchen with a sympathizing face, and inquired very kindly after Bennie, as he pet-named Benton. When my dinner was over that day, I asked the little German woman to keep the child until I could go on an errand, and went over to Mrs. ——, my old house-mate, to get advice.
"Do you know how much advice is worth? If you like it, you haven't needed it; and if you do not like it, you will not take it. Mrs. ——told me that if she were in my place, as if she could be in my place! she would get rid of all her troubles by getting some man to take charge of her and her affairs. When I asked, with transparent duplicity, where I was to find a man for this service, she laughed in my face. People did talk so then, and what Mr. Seabrook said was the unexaggerated truth. It did not occur to me to examine into the authorship of the rumors; I was too shrinking and sensitive for that.
"When I reached home I found Mr. Seabrook at the house. A sudden feeling of anger flashed into my mind, and must have illuminated my eyes; for he gave me one deprecating glance, and immediately went out. This made me fear I was unjust to him. That evening he did not come to tea, but sent me a note saying he had business at Vancouver and would not return for two or three days; but that when he did return it would be better to have my mind made up to dismiss him entirely out of the country, or to have our engagement made known.
"That threw the whole responsibility upon me; and it was, as he knew it would be, too heavy for my twenty-three years to carry. To lose the most helpful and agreeable friend I had in the country, to banish him for no fault but being too kind to me, or to take him in place of one whose image would always stand between us: that was the alternative.
"The next day an incident occurred that decided my destiny. I had to go out to make some purchases for the house. At the store where I usually bought provisions I chanced to meet a woman who had crossed the continent in my company; and she turned her back upon me without speaking. She was an ignorant, bigoted sort of woman, of an uncertain temper, and at another time I might not have cared for the slight; but coming at a time when I was in a state of nervous alarm, it cut me to the quick. With great difficulty I restrained my tears, and left the store. While hurrying home with a basket on my arm, almost choked with grief, I passed a kind old gentleman who had always before had a pleasant word for me, and an inquiry about my child. He, too, passed me with only the slightest sign of recognition. I thought my heart would burst in my breast, so terrible was the sense of outrage and shame—"
"Which was, after all, probably imaginary," I interrupted. "The insult of the ignorant, ill-tempered woman was purely an accidental display of those qualities, and the slight recognition of your old friend the consequence of the other, for your face certainly expressed the state of your feelings, and your friend was surprised into silence by seeing you in such distress."
"That, very likely, is the true explanation. But it did not so impress me then. You cannot, in the state of mind I was in, go after people, and ask them to tell you whether or not they really mean to insult you, because you are only too certain that they do. I was sick with pain and mortification. How I got through my day's work I do not remember; but you can understand that my demoralization was complete by this time, and that when Mr. Seabrook returned I was like wax in his hands. All that I stipulated for was a little more time; he had my permission to announce our engagement.
"My boarders and every one who spoke to me about it congratulated me. When I look back upon it now, it seems strange that no one ever suggested to me the importance of knowing