nine years ago it was that margaret, a girl of sixteen, had come out from charleston to live at berkeley hill as nurse, amanuensis, housekeeper, and companion to her sickly, irritable, and eccentric old uncle osmond berkeley, eminent psychologist, scholar, and author, who at that time owned and occupied the berkeley homestead. it was the death of her father and harriet's immediate marriage that, leaving her homeless and penniless, had precipitated upon her those years of imprisonment with an irascible invalid. indeed so completely stranded had she been that she had accepted only too thankfully her uncle's grudging offer to give her a home with him on condition that she give him in return every hour of her time, making herself useful in every variety of occupation he saw fit to impose, and to do it all with entire cheerfulness and absolutely no complaining. that was the chief of his many "unqualified conditions "—a cheerful countenance at all times, no matter what her fancied reason for dissatisfaction, and no matter how gloomy he might be.
"i'm never cheerful," he had affirmed, "and that's why i require you always to be so. if that seems to you unreasonable and illogical, you're stupid. give the matter a little thought and light may come to you. you'll have plenty of chance, living with me, to develop what little thinking powers you may have—much more chance than you'd ever have in a school for young ladies, where you no doubt think i ought to send you for the next two or three years. schools for young ladies! ha!" he laughed sardonically. "ye gods! thank me for rescuing you from the fate of being 'finished' at one of them! well named 'finishing schools!' they certainly are a girl's finish so far as common sense, capacity for usefulness, and ability to think for herself are concerned! and there actually are parents of daughters who seriously regard such schools as institutions of 'education!' yes, education, by god! you'll get more education, my girl, from one week of my conversation than you would from a decade of one of those parasite factories!"
it was in the library at berkeley hill, the stately old country home which for seven generations had belonged to the berkeley family, that this preliminary interview had taken place, her uncle in his reclining chair before a great open hearth, the firelight playing upon his pallid, intellectual face crowned with thick, white hair, and upon the emaciated hands clasping a volume on his knee. repellently harsh he seemed to the shrinking maiden standing before him in her deep mourning, to be inspected, appraised, and catechised; for in spite of the fact that she had been born and brought up in the city of charleston, only two miles away, her uncle had never seen enough of her to know anything about her.
perceiving, now, how the girl shrank from him, his eyes sparkled; there was something ghoulish in his love of cowing those who served him. for the past ten years he had had no woman near him save hired attendants who cringed before his bullying.
"a human creature who lets itself be bullied deserves no better," was his theory, and he never spared a sycophant.
"the day i have you weeping on my hands," he warned his niece as she stood pale and silent before him, "or even looking as though you were trying not to weep, out you go!"
the fact that the girl was scarcely more than a child, that she was alone and penniless, did not soften him.
"she's old enough to show her mettle if she has any. if she hasn't, no loss if she's crushed in the grind of serving me, for i'm useful, and shall be while i breathe and think."
"well, what have you to say for yourself, wench?" he demanded when she had heard without a word his uncompromising statements as to what he would require of her in return for the "home" he would give her.
"i accept all your unqualified conditions, uncle osmond," she answered quietly, no tremor in her voice; and the musical, soft drawl of her tone fell with an oddly soothing and pleasing effect upon the invalid's rasped nerves; "if you'll accept my one condition."
her uncle's white head jerked like a startled animal's. "what? what?" he ejaculated after an instant's stunned silence. "your condition? huh! you making a condition, upon my word! what pertness is this? a 'condition' upon which you'll accept my charity!"
"not your 'charity.' the self-supporting position of your cheerful, uncomplaining, industrious, capable, untiring, companionable, intelligent chattel," came the musical, lazy drawl in reply. "my condition is that you solemnly promise never again to call me a 'wench.'"
"i'll call you what i see fit to call you! if you're so damned squeamish, i won't have you near me! i'd be hurling books at your head!"
"i'm not 'damned squeamish,' uncle osmond, indeed i'm not. i really rather like the way you swear, it's so manly and exciting. but i won't be called a 'wench.'"
"why not? i won't have my liberty of speech hampered!"
"very well, then, uncle osmond, dear, i won't come."
"you shan't come! i wouldn't have you in the house, miss pernicketty!"
"good-bye, then. i'm very sorry for you, uncle osmond. i'm sure the loss is yours. i would have been very kind to you."
"sorry for me! you think well of yourself, don't you, wench?"
"at least so well that i'll go out sewing by the day, or stand in a store, or go on the stage, or turn evangelist (i've heard there's money in that) before i'll be called a wench!"
"what in hell do you imagine the word means?"
"i don't know what it means, but i won't be addressed as a wench."
"get the dictionary. look it up."
"but i won't be called a wench no matter what it means."
"won't be called one! you dictate to me? understand, girl, nobody dictates to me! read shakespeare's sonnet, lucrece:
"'know, gentle wench, it small avails my mood.'
no offence in the word, you see, my authority being our greatest english poet."
"good-bye, uncle osmond," she said, turning away and walking toward the door.
"come back and behave yourself!"
she came back at once. "all right—and don't ever forget your promise."
"i promised nothing. i never make promises."
"your acceptance of my condition is a promise."
"acceptance of your condition!" he choked and spluttered over it.
"and it's a mighty small condition considering all i'm going to do for you with cheerfulness, amiability, a pleasant smile——"
"hold your tongue and speak when you are spoken to!" he growled, apparently furious, but secretly exulting at the child's refreshing fearlessness with him.
it had been an instinct of self-preservation that had led margaret to demonstrate to her uncle, in that very first hour with him, that the line would have to be drawn somewhere in his browbeating. and the word "wench" had served her purpose. thereafter, in the eight years that she lived with him, docile and patient as she always was, he never forgot, and she never had to remind him, that there was a limit past which he could not safely venture in the indulgence of his tendency to tyrannize.
but her life was hard; most girls would have found its monotony and self-sacrifice unbearable; its gloomy environment in the great empty barn of a house too depressing; its close confinement within the narrow limits of the unkept grounds, overgrown with weeds and bushes, and dark with big trees and a high hedge of hemlocks, as bad as any jail. there were sometimes weeks at a stretch during which she saw no human being save her uncle and the old negro couple who had lived on the place for a quarter of a century; for though harriet and her husband lived in charleston, her uncle would spare her so seldom to visit them, and was so exacting as to her speedy return to him that she soon fell into the way of confining her intercourse with her sister almost entirely to a weekly exchange of letters.
in spite, however, of her isolation margaret felt that there were compensations in her lot. she had resources within herself in her love of books, and she found in her uncle's rich intellectual equipment, of which he freely gave her the benefit in their daily association, a stimulus, a variety, and even an excitement that meant much more to her than the usual girl's diversions of frocks, parties, and beaus would have meant. it is true she often longed for a congenial companion of her own age, she hungered for affection, she suffered keenly in her occasional feverish paroxysms of restlessness, and there were times when the surging fountains of her youth threatened to break down the barriers that imprisoned a nature that was both large and impassioned.
"she's temperamental enough!" was her uncle's early conclusion as, from day to day, the girl's mind and heart were unfolded to his keen observation.
her rare periods of passionate discontent, however, though leaving her spent and listless for a time after they had passed over her, did not embitter her. there was a fund of native sweetness in margaret's soul that even her life with cynical old osmond berkeley could not blight. that philosopher marvelled often at his inability to spoil her, remarkably open as he found her young mind to the ideas and theories which he delighted in impressing upon her. it was indeed amazing how readily she would select from the intellectual feast daily spread before her what was wholesome and pure and reject what was morbid.
"that's right," he would approve when she would frankly refuse to accept a dogma laid down to her. "better think for yourself, even though you think wrongly, than do as the other females of the species do—believe whatever they are told to believe—or, worse, what it suits their personal interests to believe. be everlastingly thankful to me that i encourage you to think for yourself, to face the facts of life. george meredith writes, 'the education of girls is to make them think that facts are their enemies.' you shall not escape some knowledge of facts if i can help it!"
"it's awfully nice of you to care so much about my mind, uncle osmond," she gratefully responded. "to really care for anything about me. i do love to be mothered and coddled and made much of!"
"huh! 'mothered and coddled and made much of!' you're at the wrong shop! and don't let me hear you misuse that word 'nice.'"
"i insist upon being pleased at your caring at least about my mind! i'd be grateful even to a dog that was good to me."
"i'm not a dog, and i'm never so 'good' to any one that you could notice it particularly."
"don't try to make yourself out worse than you are; you're bad enough, honey, in all conscience!"
"hold your impudence and bring me volume third of kant's 'critique.'"
"oh, dear!" margaret sighed as she obeyed, "is it going to be that awful dope to-day? i hoped up to the last you'd choose an exciting novel. do you know i don't think it's womanly to understand kant's 'critique.'"
"i've no desire to be womanly. do as i tell you."
in addition to finding his niece capable and patient as a nurse and housekeeper, margaret interested him more than any individual he had known in many years. he secretly blessed the hour when she had come into his sombre life to enliven and, yes, enrich it. not for worlds, however, would he have let her know what she was to him.
there were rare moments when he was actually moved to an expression of gratitude and tenderness for his long-suffering victim; but margaret's touchingly eager response to such overtures (heart-hungry as she was in her loneliness) while gratifying him, had always the effect of making him promptly withdraw into his hard shell again and to counteract, by his most trying exactions, his momentary softness; so that in time she learned to dread any least sign of amiability.
she did not know the full extent of her uncle's selfishness in his treatment of her: how ruthlessly he schemed to avert the danger which he thought often threatened him of losing her to some one of the half-dozen middle-aged or elderly gentlemen of learning who had the habit of visiting him in his retirement and who, to the last man of them, whether married or single, adored his niece. it seemed that no man could lay eyes on her without promptly loving her (what men called love). even his physician, happily married and the father of four lusty boys, was, berkeley could see, quite mad about her, though margaret never discovered it; she only thought him extremely agreeable and kind and liked him accordingly. indeed the only fun she ever got out of this train of admirers was an occasional hour of liberty while they were closeted with her uncle; for he took care, as soon as he realized how alluring she was to most men, to have her out of the way when his acquaintances dropped in, a deprivation to his own comfort for which the visitor paid in an extra dose of pessimism and irony.
"when that child falls in love," berkeley once told himself, "as of course so temperamental a girl is bound to do sooner or later, it will go hard with her. let her wait, however, until i'm gone. time enough for her then. i need her. couldn't endure life without her now that i'm used to her!"
so he not only gave her no opportunity to meet marriageable men, he tried to unsex her, to engraft upon her mind his own cynicism as to the thing named love, his conviction of its gross selfishness, his scorn of sentimentality and of "the hypocrisy that would idealize an ephemeral emotion grounded in base, egoistic appetite."
"all 'love,' all attraction of whatever nature, is grounded in sex," he would affirm. "the universe is upheld and constantly recreated by the ceaseless action of so-called love. a purely natural, physical phenomenon, therefore. there is not in life such a thing as a disinterested love."
"a mother's love?" margaret once suggested in reply to this avowal.
"entirely selfish. she loves her child as part of herself; all her pride and ambition for it are because it is hers."
"well, if you call a mother's love selfish, there's no use saying anything more."
"and not to mince matters," he reaffirmed, "i want you to know for your own protection that a man's love for a woman is that of a beast of prey for its victim!"
"but i'm so safe here, i don't need such protection; i never see a man. no one but learned scholars ever come here."
"'learned scholars' are not men, then, in your category?"
"not the interesting wild kind that you warn me against."
"the man, woman, or 'learned scholar,' who has not a devil as well as an angel in his soul, a beast as well as a god, is too limited a creature to see life whole and big and round."
"am i, then," she inquired with interest, "a devil and a beast as well as an angel and a goddess, do you think?"
"mostly devil, you! i couldn't stand the angel-goddess combination. even you, my girl, are wholly selfish; you would not stay with me for one day if it were not that i give you a home. come, now," he invited, and evidently expected a protest against this assertion.
"why, of course i shouldn't. why would i?"
he looked rather blank at this, though privately he never failed to find her honesty refreshing.
"i never understood," she added, "that it was a question of affection between you and me, did you, my dear?"
"'affection!'" he sneered bitterly. "affection for ourselves!"
"of course. you wouldn't give me a bright and happy home like this if you did not need me to wait on you thirty-six hours out of the twenty-four with a cheerful, cheshire-cat smile, and all for my food, bed, and two new frocks and hats a year."
"have you no appreciation, girl, of the liberal education it is for you to be with me, to be permitted to read to me, to have such a library as mine at your command?"
"yes, indeed, uncle osmond."
"well, then?"
"but i don't stay here for the pleasure of your amiable society, dear," she assured him, patting his hand. "you're far too much like your old scotch thomas carlyle that you admire so much. my goodness, what a life jane must have led with that old curmudgeon!"
"hold your impudent tongue!"
"yes, dear."
"don't speak to me again to-day!"
"thanks; i'm so glad you don't also require me to be brilliantly conversational. i'd really have to charge extra for that, uncle osmond."
"get me my eggnog!"
in spite of all osmond berkeley's precautions, however, margaret did, of course, go through the intense and fiery ordeal of "falling in love"; for when a maiden's budding soul begins to unfold to the beauty of life, to throb and thrill before the wonder and mystery of the universe, no walled imprisonment can check the course of nature—she is bound to suffer the bitter-sweet experience of becoming enamoured of something, it doesn't much matter what; a cigar-shop indian will suffice if nothing more lively comes her way. for circumstances are, after all, nothing but "machinery, just meant to give thy life its bent." berkeley, priding himself on his knowledge of sex-psychology, knowing that girls isolated in boarding-schools fall in love with their woman teachers, and in colleges with each other, nevertheless persuaded himself that he could, in this instance, defeat nature; that margaret was being safeguarded too absolutely to admit of her finding any outlet whatever for the pent-up emotional current of her womanhood.
but there came to berkeley hill one day a stranger, an earnest young minister of charleston, who, having read a magazine article of osmond berkeley's in which "the hysterical, unwholesome excitement of evangelistic revivals" was demonstrated to be purely physiological, wished to remonstrate with its author and point out to him that he was grievously mistaken.
one keenly appraising, glance at the embarrassed, awkward young man as he was shown into the library where berkeley sat in his armchair before the fire, with margaret at his side reading to him from a just published work by josiah royce, made her uncle decide that it would be superfluous to send her from the room—"on account of a creature like this, with no manners, no brains, and an adam's apple!"
but it was the young man's deadly earnestness in the discussion between these two unequal protagonists that impressed itself upon margaret's hungry imagination; his courage in coming with what he conceived to be his burning message of truth to such a formidable "enemy to truth" as the famous scholar, dr. osmond berkeley. evidently, the young man's conscience, in spite of his painful shyness, had lashed him to this visit, more dreadful than a den of lions. there were still, even in these days, it seemed, martyrs for religion.
now, while margaret of course recognized the intellectual feebleness of the young minister's side of the question which was under fire, nevertheless, before his visit was concluded, his brow wore for her a halo; his thin little voice was rich music to her quivering nerves; his unsophisticated manner the outward sign of a beautiful simplicity; his adam's apple a peculiar distinction.
berkeley, as soon as he found his visitor a bore, made short work of him and got rid of him without ceremony. in margaret's eyes the young man stood up to his rebuffs like a hero and a martyr.
her uncle did not notice, upon her return to the library after seeing the young man into the hall, how bright were her eyes, how flushed her cheeks, how sensitive the curve of her lips.
"ha, ha!" he laughed sardonically, "wouldn't you rather go to hell than have to hear him preach?"
"you laugh like a villain in a melodrama!" retorted margaret.
"i haven't laughed for twenty years except at damned fools. when did you ever see a melodrama?"
"aunt virginia took harriet and me to see the two orphans once."
"damned presumption of the fellow to come here and take up my time! he isn't even a gentleman."
"i thought you prided yourself on not being a snob, uncle osmond."
"don't be stupid. breeding is breeding."
"well, what is good breeding if it isn't being courteous in your own house? you may call that young man common, but i doubt whether he bullies women!"
"you're cross!" he snapped at her. "look pleasant!" he commanded, bringing his hand down heavily on the arm of his chair.
"i won't!" and for the first and only time in all the eight years of her life with him, margaret turned upon him with a stamp of her foot.
he stared at her incredulously.
"you call that good breeding, do you, stamping your foot at your benefactor?"
"'benefactor?'" margaret flew across the room and violently turned the pages of the dictionary on a stand in the corner. "'benefactor,'" she read, '"a doer of kindly deeds; a friendly helper.' you see, i'm your benefactor, according to the standard."
"you're begging the question: is it well-bred for a young lady to stamp her foot?"
"i'm ashamed that i did it, uncle osmond, and i beg your pardon."
"your tone is not contrite!" he objected. but an unwonted flash in her eyes made him see that this was one of the places where he would have to "draw the line."
"you are tired," he said abruptly. "no wonder, after listening to the braying of that evangelical ass for nearly an hour! put on your wraps and take a run about the grounds."
as with a look of relief margaret turned to leave the room, he added in a tone that was almost gentle, "put on your heavy coat, child, the air is very raw."
"thank you, uncle osmond."
"and come back looking cheerful."
"i shall have to turn christian scientist if i'm to be cheerful under all circumstances—and you say you hate christian scientists because they are always so damned pleasant."
"you can't turn christian scientist and live in the same house with me!"
"but, uncle osmond, dear, i'm beginning to see that a christian scientist is the only thing that could live in the same house with you!"
with that she left him, to a half-hour of anxious consideration of her final thrust; for the one dread that hung over his life was the possibility of margaret's deserting him.
