Invincible Minnie/Book 1/Chapter 6
A year and a half went by, and nothing changed. Minnie was the same serious little drudge, Frankie went on with her work in Mr. Petersen’s office; he too was quite the same. The old lady was uncomplainingly busy. And the “affair,” also, between Minnie and Mr. Petersen had progressed not at all. Minnie had so willed it; she knew quite well how to check her very prudent suitor.
Everything was going just as she wished. She was used now to Frankie’s being away all day; she rather liked it, it gave her a freer hand. She thought of nothing but the daily routine and never tired of it. She would sit with her grandmother and discuss for hours the advisability and the possibility of a new preserving kettle, or whether they should send the rags to be woven into a rug, or whether Thomas Washington had been unfair about the tomatoes. She liked to tell Frankie that she worried about the future, but she really never did. She was remarkably contented. No great effort was required of her; she wasn’t expected to read, or to keep up-to-date; even to trouble about clothes. She could work along in a sort of pleasant daze, just as she wished, praised by everyone for whatever she did, her numerous omissions and failures unknown. The animals were an unfailing happiness to her; she had her grandmother to talk to, and Frankie in the evening, and there was always the gratifying sense of Mr. Petersen’s admiration in the background. Everything going so smoothly, so beautifully, until once more Frankie spoiled it all.
She came home one evening in a fever of excitement. The librarian in the Carnegie Branch—a nice, jolly girl who extolled Mr. Petersen and liked Frankie—had told her of a position in New York.
“She was offered it, but it wouldn’t suit her, so she recommended me. She says she’s sure I could fill it. Wasn’t it nice of her?”
Minnie said nothing.
“It’s an authoress; she wants a secretary. She doesn’t care so much about experience or training, but she wants someone presentable—of good family.”
That was emphasised to appease Minnie.
“It’s thirty dollars a month, free and clear. I’d send you half.”
Minnie looked coldly at her.
“I suppose you’d be only too glad to go,” she said.
“Of course not,” said Frankie, and dropped the subject for the time. Only in her heart longed and longed for that wonderful job, that new, entrancing life in the city.
Of course she got it. That goes without saying. She was twenty-two, and passionately desirous. Of course she got it! But after what a struggle!
At first she renounced the plan utterly. It was selfish. She went to bed, lay by Minnie’s side, weeping quietly for a long time in the dark, longing and longing. Then she grew desperate. She must go! She couldn’t give up such an opportunity. The next day she wrote to the authoress and presently had a letter asking her to call. So she was obliged to tell them.
There was a dreadful scene. They even wept. She was amazed by her own ruthless firmness; she had never imagined she could so trample on these two beloved creatures. She tried, poor girl, to explain something of her own fiery restlessness and vigour, her need for more life. But to no purpose; they saw nothing but her wish and determination to leave them. She ended, as one usually does, by losing her temper, and shut herself in the bedroom, trembling with anger.
“Do they expect me to bury myself here?” she thought. “Just to stop here, forever and ever? It’s all very well for Grandma, she’s seventy-five, and it’s all right for Minnie. A little old maid like her! But me I won’t!”
She temporised, fully resolved to hurt them this once, and then to load them with benefits, when her wonderful future should begin.
Daylight faded; the old room grew quite dark, the pallid yellow in the west turned grey, then inky. Her lamp was downstairs, and not for anything would she have gone after it. She drew a rocking chair up to the window and sat there looking out over the melancholy wide fields stretching to the mountains. One of those immeasurably solemn and majestic moods came over her: the night breeze blew on her face, sighing through the pine trees; her spirit was not on earth. High resolves, divine unselfishness, fired her; she wanted to help everyone, not only Minnie and her grandmother, but every single human soul. She felt urged to a mighty destiny....
Then the mood ebbed, and left her chilled and lonely. She could hear Minnie in the kitchen directly beneath her; her pleasant voice talking to Michael; sometimes a cough from the old lady. Like a knife her love pierced her, love for everything safe, familiar and homely.
In another minute she would have rushed down the stairs to fling her arms round her sister, to tell her she would not, could not, ever leave her. But at that moment the door opened and Minnie entered, lamp in hand; her eyes were red, her plain face rather pale.
“Frankie,” she said, and setting down the lamp, caught her sister in a tight embrace.
“Frankie,” she went on, “I’ve been talking it over with Grandma.... And we’re both willing—for you to go”
She could keep her tears back no longer; they wept together on each other’s shoulders.
Minnie was the first to look up and dry her eyes.
“Now come downstairs, dear,” she said, “I’ve made delicious cornmeal gems for your supper.”
It was a bitter loss to Minnie. She drove Frankie to the station that last day with her heart like lead. And though she had voluntarily let her go, and said good-by to her steadily and cheerfully, her very real affection for her sister was hurt beyond remedy. She never again felt quite the same toward her, never lost that faint resentment; always remembered that Frances had wanted to go off and leave her, alone and lonely.
The house was dreadful when she re-entered it. She cried all day as she did her work, and went to sleep in miserable solitude. Oh, but she missed Frankie, the brilliant, the lovely, the ardent! And the more she missed her, the more deeply did she feel the wrong Frankie had done her.
Life had become unsupportable. She thought all the time of some way in which she could change it, a way which should, of course, satisfy her conscience.
For Minnie’s was a conscience which imperiously required satisfaction. She had always to feel sure that she was “doing right.” However, as she was always certain that all her aims were beyond reproach, her conscience never refused to sanction whatever means she employed in arriving at them.
She was more than a Jesuit. She did not so much believe that bad means were justified by a worthy end; she was simply convinced that no means used by her were, or could possibly be, bad.
Remorse and regret were unknown to her. And defeat, too, she had not as yet encountered. From her earliest years she had known how to get her own way. Either a serious manner made any request seem reasonable, or, if this failed, thoughtful consideration had always showed her a way to victory.
And yet, for all her crookedness and her muddle-headedness, and her fierce and ridiculous ruthlessness, wasn’t there something about Minnie that was really sublime? When you look at her whole life, in all its preposterousness, can you really say whether or not she was good? Or bad? Or perhaps was not either good or bad, but elemental and innocent, even in harm, like a force of nature?
She bent her mind now upon her problem, surveyed her situation from every angle. Useless to deny that she considered Mr. Petersen. She turned him over and over in her mind, and, not without deep study, rejected him. He absolutely would not do. She couldn’t be Mrs. Petersen. Although he had never asked her, never mentioned the subject at all.
She was quite determined to marry someone, though, and to marry soon. She couldn’t see any other end to her miseries and her loneliness. She realised that under the present circumstances she was not at all likely to meet anyone marriageable; she could not, like Frankie, roam the world to find a man; she had to use more subtle and more difficult means. And, actually, alone and unaided, the indomitable little thing thought of a way
It was difficult to find a pretext for getting into the village that day. It was not her regular day, nothing was really needed, and no mail expected. Her grandmother was a little annoyed at such obstinacy.
“I can’t see,” she protested, “why on earth you want to go gadding off again to-day, with so much to be done.”
“I’ve seen to everything,” Minnie answered, and it was true.
“You’ll have to go in on Saturday,” the old lady reminded her.
“I need the wire,” said Minnie, calmly. (Chicken wire being the pretext.)
The old lady argued that she could wait. Minnie wished to know what was to be gained by waiting: she had any number of excellent reasons for not waiting. In the end she went out to harness Bess, with secret triumph, knowing that she had disarmed all her grandmother’s suspicions, and wouldn’t need to make explanations when she returned home.
She drove off in the buggy, sitting very straight, with a full sense of her dignity as a young lady of fine old family. It never occurred to her that she was in the least ridiculous. She was not physically vain, but she did consider herself impressive, aristocratic, and it would have been a cruel shock to her to know that the cultured spinster, Miss Vanderhof, used to laugh when she saw her driving by, and say to her mother, “There goes Miss Quixote!”
Penniless and proud Minnie was, but farther than that the simile would not hold. No one less likely than she to tilt against windmills, no one less sympathetic toward a lost cause.
She was engrossed in the management of the silly old horse, scanning the road for anything that might disturb its absurd old nerves, sternly resolved that it shouldn’t over-exert itself. She was convinced that she had a most high-strung, mettlesome animal to handle.
At last she reached the village and drove regally along the Main Street, bowing right and left to the tradespeople, almost all of them her grandmother’s creditors.
She stopped in front of the up-to-date office building, leaving Bess in charge of a reliable little boy in spectacles, personally known to her, then she climbed the stairs and knocked on Mr. Petersen’s door.
He was delighted to see her, drew forward a chair and sat down opposite her with a pleasant smile.
“It’s something new to see you here,” he said. “The first time, isn’t it?”
Minnie said it was.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said appealingly, hesitatingly, “I know I shouldn’t take up your time, but—I don’t know anyone else I could possibly ask”
“I’m only too happy,” he assured her. “What can I do?”
“Your advice,” she said. “I—things aren’t going—very well.... I wanted to put this in a New York paper. But I didn’t know which was the best, the most—respectable. If you think it’s.... Would you just please look at it?”
She had taken a piece of paper from her shabby little purse and now handed it to him. He read it, read it again, and his face grew scarlet.
“Young gentleman would receive board and practical instruction in farming in refined family. Beautiful location. Moderate terms. Apply X”
“But” he faltered, “I don’t ... do you mean ... you would teach farming, Miss Minnie?”
“Yes,” she said, calmly. “I could always ask Thomas Washington about things I didn’t know, when they came up. His truck farm is quite a model, you know.”
Mr. Petersen was suffering horribly; he felt that he could not keep a straight face much longer.
“But—you see ...” he said. “People don’t do that much—in these days. There are—you know—any number of agricultural colleges”
“Yes,” said Minnie, scornfully. “That’s all very well. But practical experience is what anyone needs. You can’t learn farming out of books.”
Mr. Petersen tried to convince her that students at agricultural colleges didn’t occupy themselves exclusively with books, but he failed. She plainly considered all such institutions ridiculous and unpractical. He did convince her, however, that other people would very likely have the same silly notions as he had, and that it would be difficult, to say the least, for her to secure a pupil.
“Then suppose I simply advertise for a boarder?” she said.
Mr. Petersen was silent for some time, torn between a desire to placate Minnie, and a strong dislike for making a fool of himself. Suppose she were able to say afterward, “Well, you didn’t say anything against it. I consulted you!” No! He couldn’t; he had to be honest.
“The trouble is, nowadays people expect so much,” he said, with a distressed frown. “All sorts of conveniences. Bathroom, hot water, gas or electricity. I don’t believe—unless of course you were willing to make very low terms—and in that case you wouldn’t attract the sort of person you’d care to have in the house.”
“I’d have to take what I could get,” said Minnie.
Their points of view were so astonishingly different. Mr. Petersen wished to convey politely to her the idea that no sane person would dream of coming to board in a desolate old farm without even the classic advantages of fresh milk and “scenery.” And Minnie wondered that he couldn’t see the extraordinary and fascinating results which might follow the introduction of a strange man into their household. He might be an old man, who would naturally die and leave her all his money, or a young one who would marry her. She even thought, with irrational delight, of the possibility of an artist, or a poet.... Why wouldn’t the man understand that she didn’t care whether or not she made money from the venture? The essential thing was, that something should happen.
“And with the winter coming on,” said Mr. Petersen.
“I should think,” said Minnie, stiffly, “that there’d be plenty of people who would enjoy a nice, old-fashioned country winter.”
“An old person,” she added. “He might enjoy Grandpa’s library.”
This was absolutely too much for Mr. Petersen. He could no longer restrain himself; he burst into a tremendous laugh. He had a vision of a wretched old man, shivering in their frigid parlour, absorbed in that desolating accumulation of old hymn books, old volumes of sermons, bound volumes of long dead and forgotten magazines, and sickly old novels. By the time he had controlled his mirth, he had mortally and eternally offended Minnie. She rose.
“Thank you very much,” she said, with a polite smile. “It’s very good of you to advise me. I’ll think over all you’ve said.”
“Just a minute!” he cried in alarm. “Please!... Miss Minnie ... if it’s a question of—earning a—little pocket money—why don’t you consider a position in an office?”
A long silence.
“In my office, for instance? If you’d like your sister’s place”
“No, thank you; I couldn’t leave Grandma,” she answered.
And went out, burning with resentment against him. He knew it; as she drove off he watched her from the window with a sigh of regret. Her pitiful ignorance, her enterprise, her obstinacy, touched him profoundly. His heart positively ached for her.
Alas, Mr. Petersen! By reason of his compassion, forever lost!