Polly Townsend’s Rebellion

The goings forth and the comings back of the head of a suburban household are the pendulum by which all the rest of the time swings. Polly Townsend, in a short white duck skirt, with a cheerful red bow in her light hair, was putting the finishing touches to the dinner-table in the now permanent absence of the “girl,” and listening for the returning footstep of her husband with more than her usual sense of expectation, which lately had been braced to divine what that footstep might imply as to the day’s success or non-success.

Mr. Townsend was “out of a position,” a stage of tenuous existence over which self-respecting families draw a decent veil. In the three months of his detachment he had experienced all its usual effects in his relations with a comfortably occupied world—the sympathetic indignation and inefficient, helpful efforts in his behalf, with the haphazard, temporary “jobs,” the gradual subsidence of poignant interest, and, finally, the semi-irritation at his “not having anything yet,” which would really seem to imply a culpable torpidity on his part to all but the wife who alone knew the struggle which he no longer heralded abroad. Her indignation daily burned stronger against the friends who couldn’t seem to do anything for him, but who were themselves successful without half of his talent.

She herself had done what she could, besides looking after the house and the two children. For ten weeks she had secretly given music lessons to the child of a friend, steadily refusing payment until the end of the term, and she now held in the little bag at her belt the princely sum of seven dollars and fifty cents, all her own, and destined for great uses. Mrs. Townsend was, above all things, a woman of action, and to resolve was to dare immediately.

It was with a faint sigh of farewell to a hope barely entertained that she heard the aggressive briskness of her husband’s tread, and she answered the florid cheerfulness of his greeting with the studied carelessness of custom in the well-worn words:

“Nothing new to-day, I suppose?”

“No, nothing new,” said Mr. Townsend heartily. He was a large, attractive-looking man, with the slightly greyish hair which had handicapped him so much in getting a position, though his wife was eagerly ready to tell every one how really young he was.

“Dinner’s about ready, I see; well I’m ready for it.” He relapsed into a chair by the table as he spoke. “Where are the children?”

“They’re spending the evening at the Mays’,” said his wife, bringing in the hot dishes from the kitchen and taking quick note of his unconscious lassitude and the new wrinkles in his broad forehead. “We can have a quiet, little cozy time all by ourselves. Would you mind tying the thread around this rag on my finger? I sliced it when I was peeling the potatoes.”

“You dash at everything so,” remonstrated the husband, accomplishing the thread-tying slowly and painstakingly. “I should think you would learn to be more careful after you had burned yourself so badly. Stand still. Don’t be in such a hurry; the dinner can wait.”

“No, it can’t,” said Mrs. Townsend, escaping to the head of the table. “Have you seen any one to-day?”

“About seven hundred people.”

“Francis! You know what I mean. Have you seen any one I know?”

“No. Yes, I did see Harry Jenkins for a moment.”

“What did he have to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, Francis!” Mrs. Townsend looked despairing. “Why do you make me drag things out of you this way? Didn’t he tell you anything about his wife’s return from England——?”

“Not a word.”

“And you didn’t ask——?”

“My dear Polly, I saw him for about two seconds, crossing the street on his way to the tailor’s. If that can give you any satisfaction you’re welcome to it.”

“I wish you could go to the tailor’s,” said Mrs. Townsend deeply, with a sudden moistening of her luminous grey eyes. “I wish—I wish your clothes weren’t getting so—so——”

“It will soon be cold enough for my overcoat,” said her husband consolingly.

“Yes, I know, but—Francis! I’ve been wanting to speak to you for ever so long. Those trousers you have on—really, you know they were always perfectly hideous. I nearly cried when you brought them home. How a man who has always dressed as well as you have could ever have chosen those things! Of course, I know you only bought them because they were so cheap, but there’s always a choice. And now they’re so shabby it makes me positively sick to see you in them. Last Sunday when you passed the plate in church—well, you thought I went out because I was faint, but it was simply because I couldn’t sit there and see you walk up the aisle and stand in front of the whole congregation until that anthem was finished.”

“Let’s change the subject,” said Mr. Townsend. “It’s a fine day.”

“No, I won’t change the subject. Do you know they’re advertising trousers at Brooker’s—such a good place!—for six dollars. Mrs. Bond says her husband got two pairs there yesterday—the very best quality. And—I want you to buy a pair to-morrow. She says they wear forever.”

“Where could I get the six dollars?” asked Mr. Townsend facetiously.

“I knew you’d say that. Oh, Francis! I have the money right here. I earned it myself.” Mrs. Townsend rose and swept her chair down beside her husband. “I never told you a word, but I’ve been giving Alice May music lessons ever since—Francis! Now see here, you’re not going to mind! How perfectly absurd! It’s been a real pleasure. Mrs. May paid me seven dollars and a-half to-day. Now, Francis, I want you to take this money and buy those trousers to-morrow.”

“Well, I’ll see myself—farther,” said Mr. Townsend comprehensively. He half rose, and pushed her gently from him. “I’d like to see myself take—take your little money. Spend it on yourself, now you’ve got it, or on the children if you want to—heaven knows you need things badly enough! I won’t touch a cent of it.”

“But Francis, you must! You never can get a position dressed as you are; you look like—— Clothes make such a difference! Oh, I didn’t want to say it but—Francis, you’ve got to take the money.” She strove to put it in his pocket and he thrust forth her hand with a grip that held her slender wrist like a vise.

“It’s no use, Polly. You don’t know how your having to earn it hurts me; I haven’t the right to forbid it but”—he stopped, and forced down something—“I haven’t come to such a pass that I’ll take your money to buy my clothes.” He fixed her sternly with a masterful eye. “There’s no use in your persisting. I’ll tell you once for all that I won’t do it; and I don’t want to hear any more on the subject.”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Townsend soothingly, in the tone of one who bides her time. She added afterwards in protest, “You haven’t half eaten your dinner—and I took such pains with it.”

“I think—you make it so nicely—but I think I’m just a little tired of stew,” said Mr. Townsend apologetically.

Later she found him rummaging in his closet, appearing as he heard her step to say explanatorily:

“I want to see if I can’t find another pair of trousers to wear to-morrow. I guess I’d better leave these I have on for you to fix up a little. The fact is—I didn’t tell you before, for I don’t want you to raise your hopes in any way—but I’ve at last got an appointment for the day after to-morrow to see Mr. Effingham.”

“An appointment with Mr. Effingham! Oh, Francis!”

“Cartwright’s letter was what did it. Cartwright says Effingham is the kind of a fellow who either likes you or doesn’t like you, straight off the bat. I tell you, I think a lot of Cartwright’s writing all the way from Chicago about this, taking so much pains for a man that’s almost a stranger to him.”

“Oh, you never do anything for people yourself!” said his wife sarcastically.

“I never did anything for Cartwright—except put his wife once on the right train,” said Mr. Townsend. “Now, what’s the matter with these trousers?” He held up a pair for inspection. “They look all right.”

“Oh, nothing’s the matter, nothing whatever,” said his wife scornfully, “except that they’re full of moth holes. Those are the winter trousers—the only good pair you had—that you left at your sister’s—you said you could get them any time—and she had them stuffed into a dark closet this summer while she was away in the country; she just sent them over Monday.”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Mr. Townsend hastily. “You’d better get rid of them. Now, here’s a pair—I didn’t know I had any so good.”

“Those are the ones you painted the attic in last spring,” said Mrs. Townsend, “and the pair next are what you keep for fishing. Those belong to your dress-suit, and the ones beyond are too short, and worn all over so that you were afraid to put them on.”

Mr. Townsend surveyed the last named with raised eyebrows and a consenting, cornerwise glance at his wife. “Yes, they are pretty bad—but I guess I’d better wear them to-morrow while you fix up these.”

“Francis, if you’re going to see Mr. Effingham you’ll just have to buy a pair of trousers.”

He turned on her sternly as he said: “Didn’t I tell you not to speak of it?”

“Yes, but I will speak of it!” Mrs. Townsend hurled herself into the fray. “Francis, I can’t help it! When I think of all you’ve suffered, and all you’ve done, and how much depends now on—oh, my dearest!” she tried to put her head on an eluding shoulder as she followed him around the room, flushed with her eloquence—“please take this money. If you knew how happy I’d been all the time to think that I was working for you, and how I had set my heart on it, you wouldn’t be so unkind. I know I told you my shoes were bad, but they do quite well as they are, and the children do not need warm underwear yet. It was very stupid of me to talk of it, and it will make all the difference how you are dressed when you go to see Mr. Effingham. You’ve often said what a difference a person’s appearance made—and it’s so unlike you to look shabby! You ought to do everything to try and get that position; you can’t afford to lose the ghost of a chance. You are so foolish, you won’t listen to reason! Oh, Francis, won’t you stand still and answer me?”

“Yes, I’ll answer you,” said Mr. Townsend deliberately. “You can ‘reason,’ as you call it, until you’re blind. Once for all, I will never take that money.”

“You will.”

“I will not. Now, Polly not another word; do you hear? Not another word!”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Townsend, as before with conventional obedience, and followed the words with a reckless flash of her grey eyes as she left the room, murmuring with quick breath: “But I give you fair warning, I’ll make you take that money yet; I don’t care whether you’re angry or not. You’ll see, you’ll see!”

If the subject was dropped from speech afterwards it was nevertheless present in thought. Mr. Townsend rose late in the morning, as is the habit of the man “out of a position,” who has no place on the early trains into town with his customary confrÈres, the workers, or in their busy offices. The heads of departments whom he goes in to see are only accessible in the later hours, and a delayed breakfast obviates the necessity for luncheon. When husband and wife parted, he in the trousers that were a good deal too short and a good deal too worn, she, indeed, broke through the ice with temerity to adjure him for goodness sake not to let any one see him to-day with those on, and he had retorted grimly that he would endeavour to keep his hundred and eighty pounds entirely invisible to oblige her.

During the course of the morning Mrs. Townsend went around with knitted brows, pondering deeply over the vexed question. Her back ached and her feet were weary long before her household labours were ended. She wasn’t accustomed to doing her own work, and, though she was willing, experience, that time-saver, was not hers. Mrs. Townsend knew that ladies were popularly supposed to bring a deftness and daintiness to kitchen work that was lacking in the efforts of a rougher class, but for herself it was just the opposite. The scalding kettles and saucepans she carried would perform a tremolo movement with the shaking of her slight wrists that sent greasy splashes of the contents over the kitchen floor; the beef-steak she broiled took in not only the fire but the whole top of the range in its sputterings, and plates and dishes, whether empty or filled with food for the table, slipped from her tired fingers and broke with ruinous celerity. After all the ceaseless effort of her heroic incapacity she was forced to long for the look of shining cleanliness accomplished easily by the strong, accustomed arms of an ordinary “girl.”

And the children were going half-clothed, she had so little time to sew! If this sort of thing didn’t stop soon she didn’t know what would become of them all. Depression had grown to be her usual frame of mind in the morning when there was no one to look at her. She had known that Francis couldn’t get a place when he was so shabby. People were afraid of men who looked poor; it seemed as if they couldn’t be capable. In spite of himself she must save him, though he hurled javelins at her afterwards. She would have gone and bought him the trousers out of hand if remembrance had not brought uncomfortably to mind a time when she had tried to demonstrate how economically she could regulate his smoking by purchasing an advertized box of cigars from a department store. To Polly Townsend, if you did a certain thing one certain effect ought to follow—that, instead, it ramified off into all sorts of different ways was the mean advantage life took over theory. She felt now that if she could only make her Francis buy those trousers he couldn’t help realizing gratefully afterwards how wise and good she’d been, and her heart glowed at the prospect.

But Mr. Effingham! He was a man whose old-fashioned punctiliousness was notably affected by externals: by suitable dress, by polish of manner, by a certain air in addition to more solid requirements. It was bad enough for Francis to hand the plate in those hideous, old, faded, mended trousers, but to go supplicantly in them to Mr. Effingham would be suicidal. She could have wept at the thought.

Yet later in the day Mrs. Townsend might have been seen with a face lightened by a persistent smile—a jimpy, sly, inwardly-lurking, swiftly-flashing, three-cornered gleam that took in two reckless eyes and a demure mouth, and brought forth curious comment from Mrs. Whymer, a friend whom she met in the street.

“How well you do look! No one would think you had a girl of ten—but you always did have colour. I feel all dragged out; the doctor says I’m just going on my nerves. My husband has been home all day. No, there’s nothing really the matter with him, just one of his attacks, but he always gets so worried about himself. I often tell him, when he sits there looking so depressed, if he only knew all I go through without saying a word! Having a man around the house is so upsetting, but I suppose you’re used to it. Mr. Townsend hasn’t anything yet, I believe?”

“He has several positions in view,” said Mrs. Townsend with elegant indefiniteness, and a quick, hot resentment at the implied reproach, which was answerable for the expenditure of twenty-five cents of her little hoard for peaches to be used in the manufacture of the deep peach pie which her Francis loved.

She derived an exquisite satisfaction from outwitting him in this way, forcing her money thus secretly down his throat, watching him eat each mouthful, and meeting his raised eyebrows and the “Isn’t this a little extravagant?” with the reassuring answer:

“Now, it’s all right; I just want you to enjoy it. No, Frankie, no more; you had a large plateful.”

“You made papa be helped three times,” said Frankie.

Her husband put an affectionate arm around her when she came up-stairs afterwards. “Fixed those trousers for me to-day, dear?”

“Yes, I fixed them,” said Mrs. Townsend.

“That’s a good girl. These I have on now—I don’t believe they’d last over another day.”

“You see Mr. Effingham to-morrow, don’t you?”

“Why, yes, I believe I do,” said Mr. Townsend with an effect of carelessness. Heaven only knew how their two thoughts travelled together in that long hopefulness that must have an end somewhere in something tangible. Yet even as they sat there Mr. Townsend became conscious of a not unknown quantity.

“What do you want to keep kissing my hand for? What have you been doing? You haven’t lamed your back again moving the flour-barrel, I hope. See here,” his tone suddenly stiffened, “you haven’t been spending that money of yours for——”

“No,” said Mrs. Townsend hurriedly. “Not a penny; well, just a few cents for peaches.”

“Oh, I knew you bought them,” said Mr. Townsend indulgently. “Well, that pie was awfully good, but don’t do so any more. I don’t like it, Polly; it hurts.”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Townsend in an odd voice. She faced him with gleaming eyes. “I’ll never do anything that doesn’t please you, no matter how foolish it is. If you say the sky is pea-green I’ll say it is pea-green, too. And if you want to kill yourself I’ll bring the carbolic acid. Oh, yes, I’m to be just too sweet for anything and never say boo when you want to go out looking like a tramp and ruin every chance you have just because it ‘hurts you’ to take this money from me, from your own wife. Haven’t I a right to earn money for you, and love and help you, and work my fingers off for you, if I want to?” Her voice trembled. “Wouldn’t I rather go barefoot than see the way you’ve looked this last month?” She refused to quail before his gaze as she went on piteously: “Oh, you’re so exactly like a man. I know you just hate to hear me talk like this. I know I’ll never convince you in this wide world, but some things hurt me! Francis——”

“Well,” said Mr. Townsend as she stopped short. He had withdrawn his arm from around her.

“I want you to take that money.”

“I think I’ll go down and read for a while if you don’t mind,” said Mr. Townsend dryly.

Francis Townsend was always a punctilious man as to his toilette, but the next morning he made it a sort of continuous performance. Mrs. Townsend down-stairs, “redding up” the place after the children, and keeping his breakfast hot, felt her heart thump and sink alternately as she heard his footstep advance and retreat interminably on the floor above. Her coat and hat lay upon a chair, in furtherance of her morning journey to market, but no matter what she was doing her eyes turned, in spite of herself, to the place set for Francis at the end of the table, where there was a fringed napkin, a plate, a knife and fork, and a coffee-cup with the unusual addition of a little roll of greenbacks sticking up in it. Prepared as she was for some commotion she involuntarily clutched a chair back as she caught the sound of a quick and angry stride across the room above to the hall, and heard the tone of towering wrath:

“Polly!”

“Yes, Francis.”

“Did you cut off the leg of this pair of trousers?”

“Your breakfast’s in the oven,” said Mrs. Townsend glibly, “and the coffee’s on the stove. I’ve got to go to market.” She flung herself into her jacket and hat as she spoke, jabbing in the hatpins viciously. The triumph was exciting, but she didn’t know she was going to be quite so scared. She hesitated a moment, and then called back: “Good-bye, dearest!” as she closed the hall door and then ran down the steps into the street.

“Seventy-five cents for each dancing lesson, but if there are two in the family she makes a reduction.”

Mrs. Whymer sat rocking idly while she watched Mrs. Townsend basting seams on a dark piece of cloth, in her little sewing-room.

“I’ll see about it to-morrow when I’m in town,” said Mrs. Townsend.

“Going shopping? If you want that skirt pattern I’ll get it for you.”

“Thank you, I would like it,” said Mrs. Townsend, “though I’m not going shopping exactly; I have to take Pinky to the dentist’s—it’s so long since she’s been—but I may get some material for myself on the way home.”

Her husband had been for several months with Mr. Effingham, and they were just about beginning to get their feet on the first rungs of the ladder which leads to the plateau of Living Like Other People.

“Why on earth did you cut up those trousers to make knickerbockers for Frankie?” said the other, taking up the end of Mrs. Townsend’s work. “They look just like new, and the cloth doesn’t seem worn at all.”

“It isn’t,” said Mrs. Townsend briefly; “Mr. Townsend only had them on a few times. They are the best material, they were bought at Brooker’s, and I thought he’d get such good wear out of them, but he says there’s something wrong with the cut.”

“Well, it’s no use to try and make a man wear anything he doesn’t want to,” said Mrs. Whymer. She yawned as she rose. “You don’t say I’ve been here over an hour! I do get so lonesome at home all day, and Mr. Whymer is working until eleven o’clock every night. I’m thinking of going to that new sanitarium at Westly for a while. I really haven’t been able to do a thing for the last six weeks. I get so tired out ordering the meals, and the doctor thinks I had better try a rest cure. Your husband likes it with Mr. Effingham, I hear. He was very fortunate in getting the position. Mr. Butts tried for it, but he always looked so—well, not up-to-date, you know. Clothes do make such a difference.”

“That’s what I always say,” returned Mrs. Townsend demurely, with a queer little hazy, retrospective smile, that was somehow wistful, too. Her wisdom had certainly been vindicated, yet there were results that, as usual, eluded theory. She was never quite sure whether her rebellion had been a success or not. The time might come when she and her Francis would laugh over it together in company—but it hadn’t come yet.