The Virginian
VIII
THE SINCERE SPINSTER
I do not know with which of the two estimates—Mr. Taylor's or the
Virginian's—you agreed. Did you think that Miss Mary Stark Wood of Bennington,
Vermont, was forty years of age? That would have been an error. At the time she
wrote the letter to Mrs. Balaam, of which letter certain portions have been
quoted in these pages, she was in her twenty-first year; or, to be more precise,
she had been twenty some eight months previous.
Now, it is not usual for young ladies of twenty to contemplate a journey of
nearly two thousand miles to a country where Indians and wild animals live
unchained, unless they are to make such journey in company with a protector, or
are going to a protector's arms at the other end. Nor is school teaching on Bear
Creek a usual ambition for such young ladies.
But Miss Mary Stark Wood was not a usual young lady for two reasons.
First, there was her descent. Had she so wished, she could have belonged to
any number of those patriotic societies of which our American ears have grown
accustomed to hear so much. She could have been enrolled in the Boston Tea
Party, the Ethan Allen Ticonderogas, the Green Mountain Daughters, the Saratoga
Sacred Circle, and the Confederated Colonial Chatelaines. She traced direct
descent from the historic lady whose name she bore, that Molly Stark who was not
a widow after the battle where her lord, her Captain John, battled so bravely as
to send his name thrilling down through the blood of generations of schoolboys.
This ancestress was her chief claim to be a member of those shining societies
which I have enumerated. But she had been willing to join none of them, although
invitations to do so were by no means lacking. I cannot tell you her reason.
Still, I can tell you this. When these societies were much spoken of in her
presence, her very sprightly countenance became more sprightly, and she added
her words of praise or respect to the general chorus. But when she received an
invitation to join one of these bodies, her countenance, as she read the
missive, would assume an expression which was known to her friends as "sticking
her nose in the air." I do not think that Molly's reason for refusing to join
could have been a truly good one. I should add that her most precious
possession—a treasure which accompanied her even if she went away for only one
night's absence—was an heirloom, a little miniature portrait of the old Molly
Stark, painted when that far-off dame must have been scarce more than twenty.
And when each summer the young Molly went to Dunbarton, New Hampshire, to pay
her established family visit to the last survivors of her connection who bore
the name of Stark, no word that she heard in the Dunbarton houses pleased her so
much as when a certain great-aunt would take her by the hand, and, after looking
with fond intentness at her, pronounce: "My dear, you're getting more like the
General's wife every year you live."
"I suppose you mean my nose," Molly would then reply.
"Nonsense, child. You have the family length of nose, and I've never heard
that it has disgraced us."
"But I don't think I'm tall enough for it."
"There now, run to your room, and dress for tea. The Starks have always been
punctual."
And after this annual conversation, Molly would run to her room, and there in
its privacy, even at the risk of falling below the punctuality of the Starks,
she would consult two objects for quite a minute before she began to dress.
These objects, as you have already correctly guessed, were the miniature of the
General's wife and the looking glass.
So much for Miss Molly Stark Wood's descent.
The second reason why she was not a usual girl was her character. This
character was the result of pride and family pluck battling with family
hardship.
Just one year before she was to be presented to the world—not the great
metropolitan world, but a world that would have made her welcome and done her
homage at its little dances and little dinners in Troy and Rutland and
Burlington—fortune had turned her back upon the Woods. Their possessions had
never been great ones; but they had sufficed. From generation to generation the
family had gone to school like gentlefolk, dressed like gentlefolk, used the
speech and ways of gentlefolk, and as gentlefolk lived and died. And now the
mills failed.
Instead of thinking about her first evening dress, Molly found pupils to whom
she could give music lessons. She found handkerchiefs that she could embroider
with initials. And she found fruit that she could make into preserves. That
machine called the typewriter was then in existence, but the day of women
typewriters had as yet scarcely begun to dawn, else I think Molly would have
preferred this occupation to the handkerchiefs and the preserves.
There were people in Bennington who "wondered how Miss Wood could go about
from house to house teaching the piano, and she a lady." There always have been
such people, I suppose, because the world must always have a rubbish heap. But
we need not dwell upon them further than to mention one other remark of theirs
regarding Molly. They all with one voice declared that Sam Bannett was good
enough for anybody who did fancy embroidery at five cents a letter.
"I dare say he had a great-grandmother quite as good as hers," remarked Mrs.
Flynt, the wife of the Baptist minister.
"That's entirely possible," returned the Episcopal rector of Hoosic, "only we
don't happen to know who she was." The rector was a friend of Molly's. After
this little observation, Mrs. Flynt said no more, but continued her purchases in
the store where she and the rector had happened to find themselves together.
Later she stated to a friend that she had always thought the Episcopal Church a
snobbish one, and now she knew it.
So public opinion went on being indignant over Molly's conduct. She could
stoop to work for money, and yet she pretended to hold herself above the most
rising young man in Hoosic Falls, and all just because there was a difference in
their grandmothers!
Was this the reason at the bottom of it? The very bottom? I cannot be
certain, because I have never been a girl myself. Perhaps she thought that work
is not a stooping, and that marriage may be. Perhaps—But all I really know is
that Molly Wood continued cheerfully to embroider the handkerchiefs, make the
preserves, teach the pupils—and firmly to reject Sam Bannett.
Thus it went on until she was twenty. There certain members of her family
began to tell her how rich Sam was going to be—was, indeed, already. It was at
this time that she wrote Mrs. Balaam her doubts and her desires as to migrating
to Bear Creek. It was at this time also that her face grew a little paler, and
her friends thought that she was overworked, and Mrs. Flynt feared she was
losing her looks. It was at this time, too, that she grew very intimate with
that great-aunt over at Dunbarton, and from her received much comfort and
strengthening.
"Never!" said the old lady, "especially if you can't love him."
"I do like him," said Molly; "and he is very kind."
"Never!" said the old lady again. "When I die, you'll have something—and that
will not be long now."
Molly flung her arms around her aunt, and stopped her words with a kiss. And
then one winter afternoon, two years later, came the last straw.
The front door of the old house had shut. Out of it had stepped the
persistent suitor. Mrs. Flynt watched him drive away in his smart sleigh.
"That girl is a fool!" she said furiously; and she came away from her bedroom
window where she had posted herself for observation.
Inside the old house a door had also shut. This was the door of Molly's own
room. And there she sat, in floods of tears. For she could not bear to hurt a
man who loved her with all the power of love that was in him.
It was about twilight when her door opened, and an elderly lady came softly
in.
"My dear," she ventured, "and you were not able—"
"Oh, mother!" cried the girl, "have you come to say that too?"
The next day Miss Wood had become very hard. In three weeks she had accepted
the position on Bear Creek. In two months she started, heart-heavy, but with a
spirit craving the unknown.