People Like That | Page 6

they don't
educate. For cultural purposes, for acquiring knowledge of facts, their
system may be admirable, but for the pursuit of a happy livelihood--"
I stopped. Aunt Matilda was looking at me as if I were suffering from
an attack of some kind. Marriage to her was the divinely arranged
destiny for a woman, and she had neither patience nor sympathy with
my refusal to accept the opportunity that was mine to fulfil the destiny
of my sex and at the same time become the wife of the man she had
long wished me to marry. The power of money was dear to her. She
understood it well, and my failure to appreciate it properly was
peculiarly exasperating to her. Discussion was useless. It never got
farther than where it started. If I said that which I wanted much to say,
it would merely mean hearing again what I did not want to hear.
Concerning the pursuit of a happy livelihood we were not apt to agree.
For a half-minute longer I hesitated. Should I make the issue now or
wait until there had been time for her to realize I meant what I said?
Before I could speak she did that which I had never seen her do before.
She burst into tears.
"You must never mention such a thing as this again." Her words came
stumblingly and her usually firm and strong hands trembled badly.
"With my health in its present condition I couldn't get on without you.
You are all I have to really love, and I need you. Don't you see what
you have done? You have made me ill. Ill!"
She was strangely upset and in her eyes was a confused and frightened
look that was new to them, and quickly I went toward her, but she

motioned me away.
"Give me my medicine, and don't ever speak of such a thing
again--such a thing as you have just spoken of! You have always been
beyond my comprehension."
She swallowed the medicine I brought her in nervous gulps, the tears
running down her face as they might have done down a child's, but she
would not let me do anything for her, insisting only that she wanted to
be quiet. Seeing it was best to leave her, I went to my room and locked
the door, and for hours I fought the hardest fight of my life.
The one weapon she knew she could use effectively, she had used. If
she needed me I could not leave her, but her complete self-reliance
made it difficult to feel that any one was necessary to her. I was
indignant at the way she had treated me. I was not a child to be
disposed of, and yet of my future she was disposing as though it were a
thing that could be tied to a string, and untied at will. Were she well
and strong, I would take matters in my own hands and make the break.
Surely I could do something! I had no earning capacity, but other
women had made their way, and I could make mine. If she were
perfectly well--
But she was not well. Through those first hours, and through most of
the hours of the night that followed, the knowledge of the insidious
disease that was hers was the high, hard wall against which I struck at
every turn of thought, at every possibility at which I grasped, and in the
dawn of a new day I knew I must not go away.
It was not easy to surrender. Always my two selves are fighting and I
wanted much to know more of life than I could know in the costly
shelter, controlled by custom and convention, wherein I lived. I had
long been looking through stained glass. I was restless to get out and
see clearly, to know all sorts of people, all conditions of life, and the
chance had seemed within my grasp--and now it must be given up.
There are times when I am heedless of results, when I am daring and
audacious and count no cost, but that is only where I alone am

concerned. When it comes to making decisions which affect others I
am a coward. I lack the courage to have my own way at the expense of
some one else; and though through the night I protested stormily, if
inwardly, that I was not meant for gilded cages, but for contact, for
encounter, I knew I should yield in the end.
The next day I told her I would not go away. She said nothing save she
hardly thought I had entirely lost my senses, but the thing I am gladdest
to remember since her death is the look that came into her eyes when