Chapter XII: When Greek Meets Greek

It was a long letter that went to Mrs. Northmore the next morning. Indeed, there were three; for Stella, in her delight over the prospect of keeping Esther, filled a sheet with an ecstatic picture of the joys which a winter in Boston would surely furnish, and Ruel Saxon supplied another, impressing upon his daughter his own deep satisfaction in the thought of having one of her children with him a little longer, and adding tenderly that since she herself went out of the home so long ago, no young presence there had been as dear and comforting to him as this of Esther.

He had been amazed when the girl brought the news of Aunt Katharine’s proposal, and certainly nothing in his sister’s behavior for years had pleased him as much. He visited her promptly the next morning to assure her of his approval, and congratulate her (as he told Aunt Elsie) on having for once acted with such eminent good sense. But either he did not do it in the most tactful manner, or he found his sister in an unfortunate mood, for it appeared from his own account of it that, after the brightest preliminaries, she had proceeded to air her most obnoxious views; views which, as he pensively declared, he had smitten hip and thigh and put utterly to rout more than once; and he ended his report of the interview with an expression of irritated wonder as to how so amiable a girl as Esther Northmore ever came to be a favorite with her Aunt Katharine Saxon.

But there was one person who found it even harder than he to understand the partiality. This was Kate; and in her the wonder was mingled with a sort of resentment which she could not throw off. She alone of the household had not rejoiced when her sister came in that night with the announcement of the invitation which seemed to her such great good fortune. There was no touch of envy in it. To the exclamation of all, “If Kate could only stay, too!” she had responded with perfect honesty, “I don’t want to. I’ve had a splendid time here; but I’m about ready to go home now, and I wouldn’t stay away longer than we planned if I could.”

It was none of her business perhaps,—she said it to herself again and again,—but she did not like the growing influence which Aunt Katharine was gaining over Esther. It did not matter so much while the intimacy was thought to be only passing, and going home lay in the near distance, but to leave her sister behind, within touch of this masterful spirit, and all the more open to her influence through receiving her favors, _this_ was a prospect before which Kate chafed with a growing uneasiness. That thing which Tom had told her so long ago, which had only amused her then, that Aunt Katharine had said she would leave her money to that one of her female relatives who would promise never to marry, came back to her now to vex and trouble her. That the woman would definitely make so bald a proposal, or that the girl would definitely accept it, were suggestions which at moments seemed too foolish to entertain; she could brush them aside with scorn; and then, in some new form, they would come creeping back. If not a definite proposal, a formal promise, there might be tacit understanding, something which would rest upon the girl and bind her as subtly as any pledge. Poor Kate! She could not even understand her own state of mind. Was it love of Esther? Was it thought of Morton Elwell, and a haunting sense of a hope which she felt sure he carried deep in his heart? Or was it simply the revolt of a spirit as stout as Aunt Katharine’s own against the possibility of any bondage, for her sister as for herself?

As the days went on—the days before the letter came from home which finally settled the question—she grew restless and depressed. Even the disputes with Tom fell off, and he rallied her sometimes on her lack of spirit.

“I believe it’s the notion of going West again that makes you so down in the mouth, for all you pretend you’re so keen to go,” he said to her once, as they were tramping home in the late afternoon from the wood-lot, where they had gone in search of sassafras.

She tossed her head. “You know better,” she said, “and between ourselves and the post you aren’t so very lively yourself lately. I believe you’d like to go home with me and grow up with the West a while.”

They exchanged a good-natured laugh. There was no denying that there were moments when the thought of parting with his cousin Kate really depressed Tom Saxon. She had the next word, and she said it with unaffected seriousness.

“Honestly, Tom, I don’t know what ails me. If I could have a good out-and-out cry I believe I could get over it; but there isn’t anything really to cry about. I’ll tell you how I do sometimes at home, when I feel blue. I get down Dickens, and read, the death of little Nell, or how they killed Sydney Carton, or something awfully harrowing like that, you know, and then I have it out and feel better. But you haven’t got Dickens here,” she added ruefully.

“Grandfather’s got Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs,’” said Tom, grinning, and then he added, in a tone of curiosity, “Do _you_ cry over books?” It was a feminine weakness which he had not suspected of Kate.

“Cry!” she repeated. “Yes, I do; and I don’t care who knows it. I’ll tell you how I got through ‘Nicholas Nickleby.’ It used me up so every time I read how Squeers treated those poor fellows in his school that I couldn’t stand it. Well, I knew he got his come-up-ance from Nicholas in the end, so every time I read one of those mean places, I’d just turn ahead and read how Nicholas flogged him. I reckon I must have read that scene a dozen times before I fairly came to it, and it did me more good every time. I believe that story would have killed me if I hadn’t.”

There was plenty of fight in Kate. Tom had known that for some time. That there were tears, too, need not have surprised any one but a boy, and he liked her none the less for it. She gave a long sigh, and came back to her own troubles. The sympathetic tone in which Tom said, “I wish I could do something for you,” was a comfort in itself, and the need of talking to some one drew her on.

“Right down at the bottom of it, Tom, I suppose it’s the thought of going home without Esther; and yet it isn’t because I hate to leave her behind. I shall miss her, of course; but I could stand that. She was off at school a whole year and I didn’t pine for her so dreadfully much. But—but it’s Aunt Katharine! Tom, I can’t bear to have Esther get so intimate with Aunt Katharine.”

She had actually said it now, and for the rest of the way home she poured out her heart with a girlish freedom. Perhaps her feelings grew more clear to herself as she tried to make them plain to him. He understood better than she expected, and fully agreed with her as to the undesirability of Aunt Katharine’s “making a slave of Esther”; but he thought her fears on this point much exaggerated, and it was good advice that he gave her as they neared the house.

“If I was in your place I wouldn’t worry about it. I guess Aunt Katharine’s got some sense if she _is_ so cranky. And Esther’s old enough to know what she’s about. Just leave her alone to get sick of some of those notions herself before she’s done with ’em, and you ease up on the fretting. It doesn’t do a bit of good, anyhow.”

She really meant to “ease up.” Tom’s opinion on the last point was distinctly sound, but the old disquiet had possession of her again within five minutes from the time that conversation ended. The letter had come from home—she learned it as she entered the house—giving hearty consent that Esther should remain in New England, and the girl was already off to carry the word to Aunt Katharine. She had said she would be back soon, but no one really expected it, and supper was over before they saw her coming across the fields. Kate, who was watching, saw her first, and slipping out of the house hurried to meet her.

She had brought happy thoughts from Aunt Katharine’s, happy and serious too, it would seem from the look in her face, and they occupied her so intently that she had almost met her sister before she saw her coming. Then she put out both her hands with an eager greeting.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said. “I wanted to talk it over a little by ourselves.” She slipped her arm through Kate’s, and turned back into the darkening fields. “You weren’t surprised at what the letter said, were you? I was sorry you weren’t there when it came; but I had to take it down to Aunt Katharine, for it was partly to her, and I couldn’t wait.”

“No, I wasn’t surprised. I felt sure they’d let you stay,” said Kate, and then she added, “I do hope you’ll have a good time, Esther, and enjoy everything as much as you expect to.”

She had made an effort to speak heartily, but there was such a sober note in her voice that Esther’s face clouded, and she looked quickly at her sister. “If you were only going to be here too, Kate, it would be perfect,” she said. “I shall be wishing all the way along that you were in the good times with me. And if you hadn’t said so positively that you wanted to go home, I should have felt like proposing to Aunt Katharine to cut my time in Boston in two and let us be there together for a little while.”

“I shouldn’t have thanked you for it if you had,” said Kate, a sudden impatience leaping into her voice. Then, with a bitterness she ought to have kept down, she added, “I don’t like Aunt Katharine, and I don’t want her favors.”

The look in Esther’s face changed. “You don’t do Aunt Katharine justice, Kate,” she said. “Nobody does here. She isn’t hateful and hard-hearted, as you all seem to think. She’s good and kind and true—oh, so true! I believe she’d do more and give more than any other person I ever saw to bring about what she thinks is right. I don’t know, I’m sure, how she came to like me, but I know why I like her. I admire her and I love her, and there’s nobody in the world I’d rather take a favor from than Aunt Katharine.”

Kate set her teeth hard. She had prejudiced everything she had meant to say by the heat with which she had spoken. She was silent a moment, then she said almost piteously: “I don’t wonder she likes you. But I may as well be honest, Esther; I do hate to see her getting such an influence over you. It’s all well enough to admire her for standing up for her own opinions, but I don’t see how _you_ can fall in with some of them. I don’t see how you can bear it to hear her talk so bitterly against the ways we’ve always been used to. And especially I don’t see how you can stand it to hear her run down the men as she does.”

“I don’t agree with all her opinions,” said Esther, quickly, “but I can see how she comes to hold them, and she doesn’t always talk as harshly as you think. But it isn’t her opinions any way; it’s her own self that I care about.”

“And you’ll end by wanting to look at everything just as she does, because you like her so much and feel so indebted to her,” said Kate. Then, with an accent that was fairly tragic, she added: “Oh, she knows it, she knows it, and that’s what she wants to keep you here for! She’ll end by wanting you never to marry, and offering to leave you all her money if you’ll promise not to do it.”

Esther drew her arm away from her sister, and the flush that swept over her face was plain even in the twilight. “I think you’d better leave all that to Aunt Katharine and me. It doesn’t strike me as coming under your charge,” she said proudly. And then the coldness in her voice melted with a sudden heat as she added: “But suppose I _should_ come to see things as she does—suppose I _should_ come to take a different view of life from what I did once, what then? I’ll go where my honest convictions lead me. It’s my right and my duty, and I shall do it.”

It sounded very brave and solemn in the twilight. A whippoorwill from the woods behind Aunt Katharine’s house had the only word that followed, and he called it across the stillness with a long soft cadence that sounded like a wail.

They turned their faces to the house and walked toward it without speaking. It was a relief to both when Stella came out to meet them.

“I thought you were never coming,” she said to Esther. “Dear me, I shall be glad when I get you in Boston, with Aunt Katharine too far away to use her magnet on you.”

A half hour later Kate was in conference with Tom again. She had called him into the shadows of the barn, and her voice was almost a whisper as she said:—

“Tom, I want you to wake me up to-morrow morning when you come down to do the milking. I’m going to make a call before breakfast.”

Tom gave a low whistle. “At that time in the morning! Where are you going?” he demanded.

“To Aunt Katharine’s,” she said.

Tom gave another whistle, this time a louder one. “Great Scott!” he ejaculated. “So you’re going to keep it right up, are you?”

“I’m going to keep it up till I’ve had one good square talk with her,” said Kate, with decision. “Very likely it’s none of my business,—you’ve told me that, and so has Esther,—but she’s tremendously clear that she’s got to follow her conscience where it leads her, and mine leads _me_ right down there to Aunt Katharine’s. I can’t go home without doing it, and there’s only a week longer for me to stay, so I may as well take time by the forelock.”

“I should think it was taking time by the forelock with a vengeance to go down there at five o’clock. Why don’t you go at a reasonable hour?” growled Tom.

Kate was losing patience. “Because I don’t want Esther to know I’m going,” she said. “If I go later she might happen to come in while I’m there, or she might ask me where I’d been. No, I’ve made up my mind to go before breakfast, and all you have to do is to wake me up.”

“I’d like to know how I’m going to do it without waking her, too,” he said.

“Oh, I’ll fix that part,” she replied, beginning to smile a little. “Of course you can’t pound on the door; but I’ve got a trick worth two of that. I’ll tie a string round my wrist and let the end hang out of the window. Then, when you come by, you can pull it and that’ll wake me up. I waked a girl that way once, on Fourth of July (only the string was round her ankle), and she slept so like a log that she said I almost pulled her out of the window before she was fairly awake. But you needn’t be afraid of pulling me out. Just give a twitch and I shall feel it. I sleep on the front side.”

“All right,” said Tom, and then he could not help adding, “but I’ll tell you now that your going down there won’t do a bit of good, and you’d better keep out of it.”

“It’ll do _me_ good to free my mind,” said Kate. “And after that I mean to take your advice, Tom, and quit worrying.”

The allusion to his advice was gratifying. Tom agreed to administer the twitch at half-past four the next morning, and they separated, feeling like a pair of conspirators, Kate at least clear in the opinion that she was conspiring for the good of humanity.

She lay awake so long that night, turning in her mind what she would say to Aunt Katharine, and never getting it settled, for the singular reason that she could never foresee what Aunt Katharine would say next, that it seemed to her she had not been asleep at all when there came the appointed signal in the cool of the morning. For a moment she had a passing dream that some one was trying to amputate her hand with a wood-saw, then it all came back to her. Her eyes flew open, and she crept stealthily out of bed. A flutter of the curtain showed Tom she was astir, but after that there was as little flutter as possible.

She slipped into her clothes as noiselessly as a ghost, with fearful glances at Esther, who slept on in serene oblivion of the plot against her, carried her shoes in her hand to the foot of the stairs, and went out through the kitchen, where even Aunt Elsie had not yet made her appearance. At the barn she paused a minute for a word with Tom and a cup of new milk, then flew down the lane, anxious still lest some one, looking unseasonably from the house, should see her, till the bend of the first hill hid her from view.

Some one has acutely remarked that people who break their usual habits by rising very early in the morning are apt to be a little conceited in the first part of the day and somewhat stupid in the last. There was certainly no lack of self-assurance in Kate Northmore, as she took that walk across the dewy fields, with the fresh air blowing on her face, and the twitter of birds sounding from the woods. Not till she actually stood at Aunt Katharine’s threshold was there any tremor of her nerves or any flutter at her heart.

Miss Saxon herself answered the knock, and a look of something like alarm came into her face as she saw the caller. “Is anybody sick at your house?” she asked quickly.

Kate had not foreseen the question. “No,” she said, taken a little aback. “Nobody’s sick, but I wanted to see you, and I thought I’d come early.”

“I should think so,” ejaculated the old woman, her face relaxing into a grim sort of a smile. “Well, come in and se’ down.”

She had no notion of preparing the way for the announcement of a pressing errand, or of hindering it by any observations of her own, and she took the chair opposite Kate’s with her hands clasped on the top of her cane, waiting in perfect silence for the girl to begin.

Kate’s heart began to thump now, and her mouth felt suddenly dry. “I’m going home in a week,” she said, “and I—I wanted to talk about something with you before I went.” And then suddenly she stopped. There was a queer sort of clutch at her throat, and for a minute she could not go on.

The old woman’s eyebrows bent themselves into a puzzled frown. “Well,” she said at last, “you hain’t favored me with much of your company this summer. If you’ve got any particular reason for coming now, I s’pose you know what ’tis.”

The sharpness of her tone brought Kate back to herself. “Yes’m I do,” she said, “and it’s about Esther. You’ve asked her to stay here and she’s going to do it—no, I don’t want to stay myself,”—she threw in quickly. “I’m ready to go home; but _she_ wants to. She thinks it’s glorious.” And then she stopped again, that unaccountable clutch at the throat coming for a second time.

“And you don’t want her to do it? Is that what you’re driving at?” said Aunt Katharine. She was in no mood now for delays.

“I should just as lief she’d do it as not—I want her to have a good time,” cried Kate, “if—if you only wouldn’t try to make her think as you do about some things.”

It was out now, and the clutch at her throat relaxed.

“Oh,” said Miss Saxon. There was a volume of meaning in the monosyllable as she spoke it, and then her face grew cold and sharp as an icicle. “What things?”

It was really a pity that Kate was not better informed as to her aunt’s peculiar views. But she caught at the one which had offended her most, and thrust it forward roughly. “About hating everything, especially the men,” she cried, “and not wanting girls to be married. They say you want to leave your money to somebody who’ll promise to stay single all her life.”

Miss Saxon started, and a faint pink color rose in her cheeks, old and wrinkled as they were. “Did your sister tell you that?” she demanded.

“No,” said Kate, “I don’t know as she ever heard of it till I told her. I told her last night, and how I felt about it, too.”

“And she said—?” queried Miss Saxon. The pink was still in her cheeks.

“Well,” said Kate—she hesitated a moment and then looked straight at the questioner—“she as good as said it was none of my business, and she’d do what she thought was right whatever came of it.”

“Ah!” said Aunt Katharine, with an accent of relief. “And I presume you didn’t tell her that you were coming here this morning. I see now why you came so early.” She looked at her niece with a faint sarcastic smile, then said coldly, “I am very fond of your sister.”

The words sounded somehow like a threat. The blood mounted in Kate’s face, and she clinched her hands on the sides of her chair. “I know it,” she said, “and so is every one else fond of her. Grandfather likes her just as much as you do. Perhaps it’s new for you to care for a girl as you care for her, but it’s no new thing for Esther. It’s been the way ever since she was little.”

The bearing of the fact on Kate’s ground of quarrel with her aunt was perhaps not clear, but some fine wrinkles gathered in Miss Saxon’s forehead.

“And does Esther like everybody?” she asked, with a returning sharpness.

“She keeps it to herself if she doesn’t,” said Kate. “She’s kind to everybody—most everybody,” she added, with a sudden remembrance of the one person to whom Esther had not of late seemed always kind. “And that’s how she gets into trouble, making everybody like her, with her soft pleasant ways and saying nice things. Oh, I’ve had to stand up for her so many times to keep her from being imposed on! I’m standing up for her now,” she went on passionately. “It’s your _ideas_ you care about, and you want her to take up with them, whether they’ll make her happy or not. But I care for _her_, and I want to make you stop.”

The old woman’s face had grown as tense as a drawn bow. “So you think my ideas are getting hold of her, do you?” she asked.

“_She_ thinks they are,” cried Kate, “but I don’t believe it. I believe it’s just because she thinks so much of you. But if she _should_ come to feel as you do about all those things, what good would it do? She couldn’t fight for them. Do you think there’s any fight in Esther Northmore?” She threw out her hand with an impatient gesture. “Oh, they say you’re so clever! But you’re not clever at all if you think _that_. She’d bear things till they broke her heart before she’d fight.”

Miss Saxon’s lips were drawn tight, and her eyes narrowed to a bright dark line, as if these side-lights that Kate had been throwing on Esther’s character had blinded her a little. She did not speak for a moment, and the girl went on hotly, even fiercely.

“You talk about wanting women to be so free and independent, but you want to bind Esther to those ideas of yours and make her carry them out. I’ll tell you what would be the end of it if she should come into your plan. She’d stand by what she promised, but ’twould kill her. She’s made for loving, and for caring about the things we’ve always cared about, and she wouldn’t be happy any other way. She isn’t that kind.”

Aunt Katharine’s lips parted now. They seemed to be as dry as Kate’s had been a little while ago. She leaned forward on her cane and asked a question slowly. “You pretend to know so much about your sister, tell me, do you think there’s anybody she cares for now?”

Kate dropped her head for a moment, but it was no time for evasions. The excitement and strain of the situation were too much for her at last. “No, I don’t,” she said, with the tears springing into her eyes. “But there’s somebody that cares a sight for her; and if she should ever come to care for him she’d be a thousand times happier than she’d ever be with anything _you_ could do for her. Oh, if you should make her promise—if you should leave your money to her—I should hate you as long as I live, and she would hate you, too, after a while.”

Miss Katharine Saxon rose from her seat. She had not been as straight in years, but she trembled from head to foot as she stood there facing the girl.

“Katharine Northmore,—for you’re my namesake, if you do hate me,—” she said slowly, “you’ve said enough. You took upon yourself to do a very impertinent thing when you came down here to give instructions to me. I shall walk by the light I’ve got, and do my duty as I see it, by myself and your sister too. Now go home. And you needn’t be afraid I shall tell Esther you were here. I shan’t shame her nor myself by ever speaking of it.”

But when she was left alone she sank back in her chair, and there was almost a sob in her voice as she said, “If it were only _that_ girl who saw things as I see them!”