The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains

  VIII. THE SINCERE SPINSTER

  I do not know with which of the two estimates--Mr. Taylor's or theVirginian's--you agreed. Did you think that Miss Mary Stark Wood ofBennington, Vermont, was forty years of age? That would have been anerror. At the time she wrote the letter to Mrs. Balaam, of whichletter certain portions have been quoted in these pages, she was inher twenty-first year; or, to be more precise, she had been twenty someeight months previous.

  Now, it is not usual for young ladies of twenty to contemplate a journeyof nearly two thousand miles to a country where Indians and wild animalslive unchained, unless they are to make such journey in company with aprotector, or are going to a protector's arms at the other end. Nor isschool 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 belongedto any number of those patriotic societies of which our American earshave grown accustomed to hear so much. She could have been enrolled inthe Boston Tea Party, the Ethan Allen Ticonderogas, the Green MountainDaughters, the Saratoga Sacred Circle, and the Confederated ColonialChatelaines. She traced direct descent from the historic lady whose nameshe bore, that Molly Stark who was not a widow after the battle whereher lord, her Captain John, battled so bravely as to send his namethrilling down through the blood of generations of schoolboys. Thisancestress was her chief claim to be a member of those shining societieswhich 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 tellyou her reason. Still, I can tell you this. When these societies weremuch spoken of in her presence, her very sprightly countenance becamemore sprightly, and she added her words of praise or respect to thegeneral chorus. But when she received an invitation to join one ofthese bodies, her countenance, as she read the missive, would assume anexpression which was known to her friends as "sticking her nose in theair." I do not think that Molly's reason for refusing to join could havebeen a truly good one. I should add that her most precious possession--atreasure which accompanied her even if she went away for only onenight's absence--was an heirloom, a little miniature portrait of the oldMolly Stark, painted when that far-off dame must have been scarce morethan twenty. And when each summer the young Molly went to Dunbarton, NewHampshire, to pay her established family visit to the last survivors ofher connection who bore the name of Stark, no word that she heard in theDunbarton houses pleased her so much as when a certain great-aunt wouldtake her by the hand, and, after looking with fond intentness at her,pronounce: "My dear, you're getting more like the General's wife everyyear you live."

  "I suppose you mean my nose," Molly would then reply.

  "Nonsense, child. You have the family length of nose, and I've neverheard 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 alwaysbeen punctual."

  And after this annual conversation, Molly would run to her room, andthere in its privacy, even at the risk of falling below the punctualityof the Starks, she would consult two objects for quite a minute beforeshe began to dress. These objects, as you have already correctlyguessed, 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. Thischaracter was the result of pride and family pluck battling with familyhardship.

  Just one year before she was to be presented to the world--not the greatmetropolitan world, but a world that would have made her welcome anddone her homage at its little dances and little dinners in Troy andRutland and Burlington--fortune had turned her back upon the Woods.Their possessions had never been great ones; but they had sufficed. Fromgeneration to generation the family had gone to school like gentlefolk,dressed like gentlefolk, used the speech and ways of gentlefolk, and asgentlefolk lived and died. And now the mills failed.

  Instead of thinking about her first evening dress, Molly found pupilsto whom she could give music lessons. She found handkerchiefs that shecould embroider with initials. And she found fruit that she couldmake into preserves. That machine called the typewriter was then inexistence, but the day of women typewriters had as yet scarcely begunto dawn, else I think Molly would have preferred this occupation to thehandkerchiefs and the preserves.

  There were people in Bennington who "wondered how Miss Wood could goabout from house to house teaching the piano, and she a lady." Therealways have been such people, I suppose, because the world must alwayshave a rubbish heap. But we need not dwell upon them further than tomention one other remark of theirs regarding Molly. They all with onevoice declared that Sam Bannett was good enough for anybody who didfancy embroidery at five cents a letter.

  "I dare say he had a great-grandmother quite as good as hers," remarkedMrs. 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 ofMolly's. After this little observation, Mrs. Flynt said no more, butcontinued her purchases in the store where she and the rector hadhappened to find themselves together. Later she stated to a friend thatshe had always thought the Episcopal Church a snobbish one, and now sheknew it.

  So public opinion went on being indignant over Molly's conduct. Shecould stoop to work for money, and yet she pretended to hold herselfabove the most rising young man in Hoosic Falls, and all just becausethere was a difference in their grandmothers!

  Was this the reason at the bottom of it? The very bottom? I cannot becertain, because I have never been a girl myself. Perhaps she thoughtthat work is not a stooping, and that marriage may be. Perhaps--But allI really know is that Molly Wood continued cheerfully to embroiderthe handkerchiefs, make the preserves, teach the pupils--and firmly toreject Sam Bannett.

  Thus it went on until she was twenty. There certain members of herfamily 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 andher desires as to migrating to Bear Creek. It was at this time alsothat her face grew a little paler, and her friends thought that she wasoverworked, and Mrs. Flynt feared she was losing her looks. It was atthis time, too, that she grew very intimate with that great-aunt over atDunbarton, 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 havesomething--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 thepersistent suitor. Mrs. Flynt watched him drive away in his smartsleigh.

  "That girl is a fool!" she said furiously; and she came away from herbedroom window where she had posted herself for observation.

  Inside the old house a door had also shut. This was the door of Molly'sown room. And there she sat, in floods of tears. For she could not bearto 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 camesoftly 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 shehad accepted the position on Bear Creek. In two months she started,heart-heavy, but with a spirit craving the unknown.