The Dwelling Place of Light | Page 6

in the autumn, with cranberries, apples, cabbages, and spinach.
With little outer complaint she had adapted herself to the constantly
lowering levels to which her husband had dropped, and if she hoped
that in Fillmore Street they had reached bottom, she did not say so. Her
unbetrayed regret was for the loss of what she would have called
"respectability"; and the giving up, long ago, in the little city which had
been their home, of the servant girl had been the first wrench. Until
they came to Hampton they had always lived in houses, and her
adaptation to a flat had been hard--a flat without a parlour. Hannah
Bumpus regarded a parlour as necessary to a respectable family as a
wedding ring to a virtuous woman. Janet and Lise would be growing up,
there would be young men, and no place to see them save the sidewalks.
The fear that haunted her came true, and she never was reconciled. The
two girls went to the public schools, and afterwards, inevitably, to work,
and it seemed to be a part of her punishment for the sins of her
forefathers that she had no more control over them than if they had
been boarders; while she looked on helplessly, they did what they
pleased; Janet, whom she never understood, was almost as much a
source of apprehension as Lise, who became part and parcel of all
Hannah deemed reprehensible in this new America which she refused

to recognize and acknowledge as her own country.
To send them through the public schools had been a struggle. Hannah
used to lie awake nights wondering what would happen if Edward
became sick. It worried her that they never saved any money: try as she
would to cut the expenses down, there was a limit of decency; New
England thrift, hitherto justly celebrated, was put to shame by that
which the foreigners displayed, and which would have delighted the
souls of gentlemen of the Manchester school. Every once in a while
there rose up before her fabulous instances of this thrift, of Italians and
Jews who, ignorant emigrants, had entered the mills only a few years
before they, the Bumpuses, had come to Hampton, and were now
independent property owners. Still rankling in Hannah's memory was a
day when Lise had returned from school, dark and mutinous, with a tale
of such a family. One of the younger children was a classmate.
"They live on Jordan Street in a house, and Laura has roller skates. I
don't see why I can't."
This was one of the occasions on which Hannah had given vent to her
indignation. Lise was fourteen. Her open rebellion was less annoying
than Janet's silent reproach, but at least she had something to take hold
of.
"Well, Lise," she said, shifting the saucepan to another part of the stove,
"I guess if your father and I had put both you girls in the mills and
crowded into one room and cooked in a corner, and lived on onions and
macaroni, and put four boarders each in the other rooms, I guess we
could have had a house, too. We can start in right now, if you're
willing."
But Lise had only looked darker.
"I don't see why father can't make money--other men do."
"Isn't he working as hard as he can to send you to school, and give you
a chance?"

"I don't want that kind of a chance. There's Sadie Howard at
school--she don't have to work. She liked me before she found out
where I lived..."
There was an element of selfishness in Hannah's mania for keeping
busy, for doing all their housework and cooking herself. She could not
bear to have her daughters interfere; perhaps she did not want to give
herself time to think. Her affection for Edward, such as it was, her
loyalty to him, was the logical result of a conviction ingrained in early
youth that marriage was an indissoluble bond; a point of views once
having a religious sanction, no less powerful now that--all
unconsciously--it had deteriorated into a superstition. Hannah, being a
fatalist, was not religious. The beliefs of other days, when she had
donned her best dress and gone to church on Sundays, had simply
lapsed and left--habits. No new beliefs had taken their place....
Even after Janet and Lise had gone to work the household never
seemed to gain that margin of safety for which Hannah yearned.
Always, when they were on the verge of putting something by, some
untoward need or accident seemed to arise on purpose to swallow it up:
Edward, for instance, had been forced to buy a new overcoat, the
linoleum on the dining-room floor must be renewed, and Lise had had a
spell of sickness, losing her position in a