Invincible Minnie/Book 3/Chapter 17
Mr. Petersen had remained faithful to the memory of Minnie for five years. It cannot be said that he had grieved, or suffered; his attachment had not been a very passionate one; yet Minnie had not misread him. He really had wanted to marry her, had felt for her a mild and kindly sort of love.
He had not, however, been over-anxious for marriage. He cared little for women; in all these five years his heart had never been touched, and he had formed no ties. Nor was he lonely, except very rarely, perhaps in a Spring twilight, or while listening to certain beloved pieces of music. He had the most admirable sort of reputation. Temperate, honest, thrifty, his life was without a secret; he didn’t talk about his affairs, but he was perfectly willing that others should find out about them. In his own sober way, he cherished a terrific pride, not so much for his achievements, as for his spotless honour. He was the Socialist of the world’s dream, the man who harmed no one, who was always just, always open to argument, always generous. As far as was humanly and sensibly possible he put into practice his convictions. He fraternised with the workmen—the intelligent ones—asked them to dinner on Sunday. He admitted making and keeping a considerable sum of money, and was always ready and willing to explain this course.
“The only valuable Socialist,” said he, “is the one who works for the advancement of all. How do you wish me to so work then if I strip myself of power? Money, in our modern world, is power. The Socialists must first of all concentrate money in their own hands.”
He quite satisfied his comrades. He was respected everywhere, because he was without arrogance or ostentation, and yet had so admirable a balance in the bank. He had made most of his money through a “development park,” which he had planned and executed; scores of little houses along orderly streets, planted with saplings; each house with its lawn, its tiny back garden, all neat, bright and prosperous. They were built for the factory workers, and Mr. Petersen had included a number of what he called “built-in features”; little bookcases, china closets, window seats, and so on. He knew what the comrades wanted, and he gave them honest and generous measure for their money. How could he not succeed?
He lived in the same solid, modest house in the village, with the same Swede and his wife serving him in Socialistic fashion. In appearance too he was quite unchanged; immense, red-faced, fair-haired, blonde-moustached; slow, good-tempered, rather silent. Within himself, however, he was conscious of those profound changes we all experience and which the world ignores. He had read, had thought, had seen; he had grown. He believed himself in every way a better and a stronger man. Although he had felt very little.
Minnie’s abrupt disappearance had distressed him and worried him; he had made many enquiries about her, but her sister was surprisingly curt and discouraged him.
“She’s gone to New York,” she told him. “She has a position there. I don’t hear from her often.”
There came a day when she even said, biting her lip:
“I’d rather not talk about Minnie. She—we’re not on very good terms.”
This had caused him a pang, for he surmised that it meant a man. He had said he was sorry, and he was. He pitied that bright, lovely Frances, condemned to lonely drudgery. He wished to be nice to her; to help her; he attempted to make little friendly visits now and then, very patient with her growing irritability. He saw how things were; she didn’t get on with the old lady as Minnie had, relations were strained. He watched the four years pass, crushing her, embittering her, ageing her. Her youth died, she became severe, still beautiful but no longer charming. She managed the moribund old house better than her sister ever had done, but it had lost its old air of homeliness. It was deserted, it was desolate. She earned a bit of money by baking cakes for the Woman’s Exchange, and embroidering tablecloths. Like her grandmother, she “managed,” never able, of course, to pay the accumulating debts, never a penny the richer at the end of a year than at the beginning; simply keeping her head above water, procuring food for them to eat, clothes for them to wear, maintaining an appearance not too humiliating for a Defoe. It was touching and horrible. Mr. Petersen urged her to come back into his office again, but she refused.
“You could get some young girl from the village to look after your grandmother,” he said, but she stopped him.
“Not at any price could I get anyone to do what I do.”
It was quite true. A servant would have required lunch, which Frankie didn’t; would have expected to be warm in winter, to rest in the terrible heat which overwhelmed the river valley in mid-summer.
Mr. Petersen waived the question of rent. After a time it was mentioned no more. The two women didn’t thank him; it seemed not only proper but essential that Defoes should live in the Defoe house. Mr. Petersen, after all, was a stranger, an intruder, a Swede. And he didn’t need the money, either. So he didn’t get it.
In the middle of a terrible winter the old lady died of pneumonia, and, as soon as the funeral had taken place, conducted in a seemly manner, Frankie went off. He heard nothing more of her. She never wrote to him, or to anyone he knew.
He remodelled the house. With what curious, painful feelings did he watch its dismantlement, walk into that gloomy room Minnie had so long inhabited and see for the first time its poverty. All the furniture was left there; doubtless it belonged to the creditors, but none of them troubled to claim it. All old, shabby, ugly. There were lots of closets, cupboards, a big attic, filled with astounding rubbish, clothes, old papers, broken furniture, pictures. Whatever was worth saving, Mr. Petersen removed to his own house, the rest he burned in a sort of sacrificial bonfire. He saw the sagging old bed, the little rocking chair, the lame bureau from Minnie’s room go up in smoke and all the while he thought with profound melancholy of the brisk, pleasant little woman. He sighed over her, wished with all his heart that he could find her again and put her into his own orderly and comfortable home. Solemnly he led the silly old horse, more provoking than ever in its senility, back to his own stable, while his housekeeper carried the cats.
The house, because of its size, was destined for a boarding-house. That too put him in mind of intrepid Minnie and her venture.
“Poor girl!” he thought. “A brave little soul! What’s become of her, I wonder?”
This day he was not thinking about her; he was busy in his office, dictating letters to his spinster stenographer, the sound of his drawling, hesitating voice filling the little room. A window was open to let in the sweet May air, and a breeze ruffled his hair. As usual he was in his shirt sleeves.
The door was open, and in she came; said, gently:
“Mr. Petersen!”
“Miss Minnie!” he cried, jumping up, and according to his custom, hurrying into his respectable dark coat. “Well, well, Miss Minnie!”
She shook her head.
“Mrs. Naylor,” she corrected him, with a smile; the very same pleasant, kindly smile. He stared at her, smiling himself, and shaking his head.
“Well, well!” he repeated.
She hadn’t changed much; she was stouter and a trifle more serious, that was all. He observed that she was in mourning, wearing a black blouse and skirt somewhat like his housekeeper but dowdier and cheaper. Nevertheless, she didn’t look poor; somehow you didn’t pity her.
“Mrs. Naylor,” he repeated.
“I’m a widow,” she said, simply. He answered, in very much the same simple and friendly way—
“I’m sorry.”
Then she said, smiling again, but with a hint of melancholy:
“I’ve come to you for advice again. I look on you as an old friend, Mr. Petersen.”
“I am!” he assured her.
“I know it!”
He held out a huge hand.
“Sit down,” he said. “Miss Layne, you shall have a holiday in honour of Mrs. Naylor’s return.”
The spinster stenographer, disapproving, suspicious, with a comically false smile, put on a pinched little jacket and a hat and jerked out, nodding in duty bound to this odious widow.
“Now!” said Mr. Petersen.
Without too much emphasis, in just the quiet, well-bred way he admired, she told him her little story.
“My husband had a great deal of trouble ... in business, and so on. He was English, and I don’t think he understood our ways very well. So ... when he ... died, there wasn’t anything. Nothing at all. And I have a little girl.... I sold everything I could, and then—somehow—I wanted to come back here—where father was born.... And I remembered all your kindness and I thought perhaps you’d help me—advise me.”
“To the very best of my ability,” he said, soberly.
“I thought of a boarding-house. Would there be a good chance for one here?”
Still the same idea; perhaps it is an obsession with the womanly woman.
Mr. Petersen suggested a thorough discussion of her problem from every side.
“Do you mind, then, if I bring little Sandra in?” Minnie asked. “I didn’t want to bother you”
“By all means. Where is she? I’ll fetch her.”
“Downstairs,” said Minnie. “Just inside the door.”
She was standing there with a patience that touched his heart, a thin, tall, little girl-baby, with limpid grey eyes and straight black hair. One of those indescribably appealing children, filled with a divine pathos, a soul-stirring beauty. She was very quiet, too subdued, he thought, and too fragile. She took his hand willingly and toiled up the stairs at his side; she said nothing, except:
“Is Mother there?”
“Yes, pet,” he answered.
He knew at that instant that he was going to marry Minnie and take care of her and of this little creature too. He looked down upon its dark head with a new and poignant tenderness. He would be its father.
The child ran up to Minnie and stood beside her, looking up into her face calmly. And she looked back at it with an expression he had never conceived her capable of: rapturous, idolatrous passion. Her proud eyes questioned him, and he willingly responded.
“She is beautiful,” he said.
“I can’t help thinking so,” said Minnie.
Their business discussion amounted to very little. No one could discuss business with Minnie, anyway. It was an absurd idea.
Simply, Mr. Petersen asked if he couldn’t lend her a bit until she had “looked round,” and without demur Minnie accepted. In some intangible but perfectly plain way she suggested that she accepted only because of her little Sandra and that accordingly the acceptance was justified, if not sanctified. Mr. Petersen was ready to believe this.
“And now,” he said, when the money had changed hands, “there’s the problem of finding a place for you to live.”
He suggested several places for her to telephone, and she did so. The extreme propriety of both of them forbade his appearing in any such transaction. There was nothing suitable to be had; as a very last resort he proposed the Eagle House, and there she was obliged to go.
“I’ll call this evening, if I may,” he said, “to see if you’re all right.”
The Eagle House was little changed from the days when Frankie had lunched there, the same four-story, brown brick building with awnings, much the worse for wear, boldly marked “Eagle House.” It still derived its support from the “Pool Room and Café,” reached by a separate entrance, but something had been done for the comfort of the “guest,” as well—a sun-baked, uneven little tennis court now appeared on the hitherto vacant lot beside the hotel. Inside it was just as sordid, as fly-blown, as horribly gloomy.
But Minnie was not fastidious. She discovered that there was at least one other lady stopping there, the wife of a visiting cotton-mill magnate, and that satisfied her. With her child by the hand she walked sedately through the lobby, thick with tobacco smoke, crowded with the travelling salesmen and the village loafers who composed the clientele of the Eagle House, and went upstairs to take possession of a tiny bedroom with a single bed for both of them. It was very cheap and that was what she required. She unpacked their very few belongings quite cheerfully and washed the little girl’s face.
“Shan’t we be happy here!” she said.
They were rather late in coming down, and the dining room was full of men, the waitresses flying round, exchanging sallies with the guests, a brilliant glare pouring down from an electrolier high overhead. Minnie stood in the doorway, still holding the child’s hand, a little bewildered by the noise and bustle and by the frankness with which everyone turned to regard them. Unassailably respectable, she met and countered the general regard and with dignity advanced to a little table in a corner. A book was brought for the little girl to sit on and an interested waitress presented a grease-spotted menu. They ate their meal composedly; once in a while the clear voice of the child could be heard asking a question. It behaved wonderfully well. It ate what its mother ate, without regard for any silly modern ideas as to what was suitable to its little wants—and it ate mighty little.
They finished and went upstairs to what was known as the “Ladies’ Sitting Room,” a big room, unseparated from the hall, furnished with a mouldering “set” in mahogany and obliterated brocade; a most desolating room, with one naked electric light. But how respectable, situated as it was, directly at the head of the stairs, baldly open to the gaze of each and every one of the guests, passing by on the way to his room! There was a table piled with magazines years and years old; Minnie and the child sat down by this and began looking them over in silence. So Mr. Petersen found them, and wondered at and pitied the precocious sobriety of the tiny girl. He took her on his knee and lifted up her face.
“A beautiful child!” he said again.
Again Minnie beamed.
“And so good!” she said. “Never a bit of trouble! Mother’s comfort, aren’t you, Sandra?”
“I are,” said the baby, seriously.
“When does she go to bed?” he enquired. He thought the little face looked pale and tired.
“Whenever I do,” Minnie answered, and then and there expressed her unalterable opposition to all these silly, high-flown ideas that women got out of books. (Mr. Petersen fancied he recognised this antagonism to book learning.) She brought up her Sandra according to her own common-sense and the dictates of a mother’s heart, and not according to doctors and books. In a natural way.
Mr. Petersen had nothing to say on that dangerous subject. He had come to ask Minnie if she would like to go to work in his office.
“But I don’t know anything. I can’t do anything!”
“You’ll learn easily.”
“And what could I do with Sandra?”
“I thought of that. My housekeeper’s a very fine woman; I spoke to her; she says she’d be glad to take care of the little girl all day.”
Thus it was arranged.
“I might as well stop here,” said Minnie, “until I’m more settled, anyway.”
Mr. Petersen agreed, and as he didn’t think it proper that his visit should be a long one, rose to take leave. He clasped Minnie’s hand over the head of her child.
“A brave, fine, sensible woman!” he thought.