Mrs. Gowan Gives Notice

I

I CONFESS at once to some misgivings as I opened the door to Mrs. Gowan and led her, not without ceremony, into my small living room. In both appearance and manner she was distinctly unlike any former applicant for general housework — a small, delicately made woman, perhaps forty years of age, with clear, hazel eyes in a still, expectant, almost wary face. She had lovely feet and ankles, which she crossed as she sat on the edge of my best armchair, leaning forward quite at ease, for all the world as though she were about to receive a cup of tea from an impeccable parlor maid. As for me, I felt genuinely embarrassed and found it difficult to approach the subject of our interview. She herself came to my rescue.

‘Miss Hanson of the Social Service Bureau tells me you want a woman for general work. Sort of a housekeeper, since you are busy and away a good deal.’

‘Yes,’ said I.

Her voice, I noted, was low and pleasing, with an odd, suppressed quality which baffled yet fascinated me.

‘ You teach, I believe. Are you away all day?’

I saw that the time had come for me to take the helm in this conversation, to question and to inform rather than to answer.

‘I teach at the college here. No, I’m hardly away all day. My programme varies. But if I’m not at college I ’m often in my study upstairs. I should want you to take charge of everything except the ordering and to do everything except the heavy washing, which goes out. The house is small, as you see. I don’t consider it a hard place.’

She cast approving eyes about the room and through the open doorway into the dining room beyond.

‘ You don’t have many things around except books. These rooms are easy to keep clean.’

I agreed. ‘And you must be used to managing a house. Miss Hanson tells me you have children.’

‘Two — though it’s been years since they lived with me. Miss Hanson has them now with a foster mother on a farm three miles from here. It seems a good plan and they like it. She’s a good woman. But as for managing a house, I can do that. The fact is,’ she concluded, staring suddenly at me with her extraordinarily bright eyes, ‘the fact is, there’s been many a time in my life when I’ve managed far worse things than a house.’

I felt a curious necessity to change the immediate subject.

‘You wish to leave your present place, I understand?’

‘I do and I don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s Miss Hanson’s idea more than mine. She thinks the hours are long and that it’s not the best place for the children when they can come in from the farm to see me. Probably she told you — it’s in the State Asylum. I’m housemaid in the Epileptic Wing.’

I fear my face registered a concern which she herself was far from feeling. ‘I should think,’ said I, not without fervor, ‘that a change might be most desirable.’

‘I suppose so. Perhaps. Still, there’s one thing to be said for it — we ’re never dull there. Not for an hour, and I ’ ve been there two years now. There’s no telling what may happen at any minute! And in the evening we girls get together and talk things over while we toast sandwiches on an electric plate.’ She stopped with a sudden question. ‘Do you eat alone, all by yourself? ’

‘Usually,’ I answered. ‘Now and again I have a guest or two, but not enough to make much extra work. I don’t think you’ll find there are too many.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind. They’ll liven things up a bit. You see, I’m used to excitement. I’ve had my share and more for fifteen years. That’s why I hesitate to leave the Asylum. But Miss Hanson quoted your price and said what free time I’d have for the children and — there, well, I don’t know.’

At this point I became definite and decided. I even essayed the humorous, but the attempt was ingloriously lost.

‘Once and for all, Mrs. Gowan,’ I said, ‘you must understand that my house can offer none of the inducements of an Insane Asylum and that I myself cannot compete in potential excitement with an epileptic! If you care to come at the price named and for the work outlined, I ’ll be glad to have you as soon as possible. But remember, you’ll be quiet here.’

Although my humor had quite escaped her, she felt my decision and acted upon it.

‘I’ll come,’ she said. ‘I’ll give notice right away and leave next week Saturday. I need the extra money, and without doubt the change will be good for me. I’m used to changes, and I’ll try to suit you. Maybe you would n’t mind,’ she continued, rising and buttoning her gloves, ’if in my spare time I took up some reading. These books here urge me on. When I was a girl, I longed to read, but was n’t able to, and since I married — well, since then I have n’t had time.’

As she spoke she looked, not at me, but at the rows of shelves reaching to the ceiling. I felt glad that they contained more palatable fare than those in my study, that their gay covers at least were enticing. Among them she ought to be able to satisfy many an old hunger.

‘I should be very glad,’ I said, ‘to have you read all you like. Have you anything in mind ? ’

My question was prompted by her face. She was still gazing at the books, her eyes preternaturally bright. I noticed the ease with which she stood in the centre of the living room, the graceful line of her raised head as she scanned the topmost shelves.

‘There is an author called Oppenheim,’ she ventured. ‘Perhaps you’ve read his books? I read one a while back and enjoyed it, once I stopped thinking on every page. The trouble with me is I concoct things so much more exciting than the author does, and then I get waylaid with my own thoughts.’

I promised to secure Oppenheim from the town library, not naming him among my venerables.

‘And there’s a book,’ she continued, moving now toward the door, ‘ that I started when I was twenty-two and never finished. My mother took it away from me as a harmful story. It was called Treasure Island, and when I had to give it up I was just at the point where a boy was hiding in an apple barrel and listening to pirates or mutineers. I’ve always meant to finish it and find out how he escaped.’

‘I have that,’ I said, reaching toward the Stevenson. ‘Would you care to take it now?’

‘No, I’ll wait till I come. I’d have no time there with so much to think and talk about. Three new patients came in this very day. A week from Saturday, then?’

I nodded. ‘I have forgotten,’ I said, ‘to ask your Christian name. What is it ? ’

She colored a little as she stood facing me on the steps. How finely set were her eyes, I thought, and how fresh her complexion!

‘It’s Susan. But I wonder if it would be the same to you if you did n’t use it. I like being “Mrs. Gowan,” and I promise not to presume at all. They would n’t consent at the Asylum, and it’s one of my reasons for wanting a change.’

I could not but assent. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Good night, Mrs. Gowan. I shall depend upon seeing you a week from Saturday.’

I confess yet again to more misgivings, tinged and tempered, howrever, with a lively curiosity, as I returned to my living room.

II

I cannot say that Mrs. Gowan’s brief sojourn with me was fraught with any memorable excitement except, indeed, for its final hour. We jogged on smoothly enough, she doubtless lonely for the epileptics, I immersed in galley proofs and teaching. Yet I was ever curiously aware of a suppressed excitement in my kitchen, a kind of slow fire in a tightly shut stove, a steaming pot within a boiling kettle. This, however, was atmospheric rather than actual or tangible. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Gowan was unconscionably slow in everything she did. She cooked and served passably well and was immaculate in her keeping of the house; but her cleaning and dusting were punctuated by long periods of reverie, and an unfailing accompaniment to my simple breakfast was the scraping of burnt toast which she had left too long in the kitchen toaster.

The reading she had planned to do fell short of her expectations at the start. It is true that she read, ostensibly, at her meals, which partook of a ritualistic character. She ate behind an improvised screen in the kitchen and always kept flowers on her table. She was very ceremonious about eating and unmercifully slow, although I cannot lay the latter trait to her absorption in the printed page. Indeed, after she had been engaged for two weeks on Treasure Island alone, I came to the conclusion that for her, as for Stevenson himself, books were ‘all very well in their way, but a mighty bloodless substitute for life.’

I, for whom they were the best substitute possible, must have annoyed Mrs. Gowan with my quiet, orderly days and my rather uneventful friends, who grew enthusiastic over the newly discovered Johnson manuscripts and desperate over the sacrifice of the classics at Yale. When she asked now and then for an extra evening to return to the Asylum, I granted it at once, feeling sure that my ways had become at last intolerable to her.

Miss Hanson, like most social workers, had been chary of her confidences, and I actually knew very little of Mrs. Gowan. That she was well enough born was obvious in her bearing as well as in her physical appearance. From her speech, which was easy and sufficiently correct, I knew she was not a New Englander and placed her vaguely in that vast region known as the Middle West. Whether death or divorce had removed her husband I knew not. During the two months she was with me she received, to my knowledge, no mail except the weekly letter required of her children by the Social Service Bureau.

They, who came every Saturday to sec her, were neither compelling nor entirely devoid of interest. The little girl of ten was like her mother in form and features; the boy, who was two years older and resembled his mother not at all, possessed an uncanny eagerness toward every object within his range of vision and touch, from the Dover egg beater to a Florentine bambino on the table in the front hall. The thing, indeed, which puzzled me most about the Gowan family was the mother’s evident lack of affection for her children and theirs for her. She was kind to them, even indulgent, but they were not uppermost in her mind even when they were in her kitchen; and they quite clearly looked upon her as a chance to come to town and spend the quarter which she always gave to each.

I, reared on a childhood allowance of twenty-five cents a month, was not a little anxious concerning this rash disbursement of her modest earnings. But I became more concerned when I discovered her habitual offering at one of the two churches she attended. Which leads me to her peculiar and interesting religious practices.

She invariably went to the Roman Catholic Church for the eleven-o’clock Mass on Sunday; and, her name suggesting at least an Irish affiliation, I had taken it for granted that she was a member. She had joined also, or at least attended, a club or sodality for Catholic women. Her Sunday evenings, which she always had out, I had supposed were spent among her friends at the Asylum, for she obviously knew no one else. I was, therefore, not a little surprised when one Sunday evening she asked me to lend her fifty cents for a church collection.

Having procured the money for her, I could not forbear a question. ‘Is there a Sunday evening service at the Catholic Church?’ I asked. ‘I did not know they were customary.’

‘They’re not,’ she said, quite without embarrassment. ‘This is for the Methodists. I go to their prayer meeting Sunday nights.’

‘Oh,’ said I. And then, to cover my perplexity, ‘You’re very generous with your contribution. Fifty cents a week seems a lot to me, especially since you have another obligation in the morning.’

She assented at once. ‘ ’T is. There have been times when this half dollar pinched a good bit, I tell you. But, you see, it’s sort of a debt of honor. That’s about the way I’d explain it. I’ve owed some other Methodists a big sum for fifteen years, and it kind of makes me feel easier to square it up little by little this way, now I’m where I can go to church without any trouble.’

‘But you are a Catholic, are n’t you?’ I persisted, so eager to reach the truth of this puzzling situation that I was actually following Mrs. Gowan to the door.

‘I suppose perhaps I’m both,’ she answered calmly, her hand on the knob. ‘It’s not queer, either, considering the way I’ve been mixed up with them both.’

Saying which, she disappeared into the November darkness, leaving me to neglect my Monday’s lecture while I pondered her words.

III

I cannot say that I was in the least surprised or even deeply concerned when a fortnight later, after exactly eight weeks in my employ, Mrs. Gowan somewhat abruptly terminated our relationship. From the beginning I had been acutely conscious that my sort of life and environment was exceedingly irksome to her. A tigress might well have felt as little at home in a Maine pasture as she in my house. I admit also, at her announcement, a sense of relief somewhat akin to that which I felt upon leaving San Francisco after a short visit in the summer of 1906. Both surprise and concern, however, were present in large measure during the half hour we spent together following her-declaration.

She gave her notice late on a December evening after some infrequent dinner guests had departed. Perhaps, indeed, the table conversation, which had had to do with certain recent Shakespearean discoveries, had been the final and deciding factor. I can see how dull and lifeless to her must have seemed researches in a Public Record Office somewhere across the seas!

I was about to go to bed, after screening the fire and returning the living-room chairs to their wonted places, when Mrs. Gowan suddenly appeared before me. I started, thinking her long since fast asleep, although once I had scanned her face I realized that few persons at any time or in any place have been more awake.

‘I’m leaving,’ she said, without peroration or ceremony. ‘I’d like to go as soon as I possibly can, though of course I won’t leave you with no one. Still, in these days it ought not to be hard to find someone else right away.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. Although it was not strictly true, it was all I could think of saying in the surcharged atmosphere which Mrs. Gowan had brought in with her and which was now electrifying the uttermost corners of my drowsy room. ‘I’ve felt for some time you have n’t been happy here.’

‘It’s not exactly that,’ she answered. ‘I’m sure you’ve been kind and easy to work for. It’s just that I can’t stand the stillness, all day and all night, nothing happening, and the hours all in a row, one just like another. I hope you won’t take offense at me. I’m sure I ’ve tried hard enough to settle down. But I’m afraid it’s not in me now. Time was when I was settled down as flat, as flat as — ’

I stopped brushing the hearth and looked at her. As she searched for a comparison which would at once clarify and intensify her meaning, she swayed backward and forward on her slender feet. It was as though some hidden force of momentum within her forbade her standing still.

She gave up her search after a brief interval and turned more directly toward me. ‘Perhaps,’ she began, ‘you would n’t mind if I told you why ’t is I can’t be contented here in nice place like this, why something keeps gnawing at me all the time. I’ve had what some folks would call hard life and what everybody would call a queer one.’

‘I’d be glad to hear about it,’ I said, feeling as though I were inescapably face to face with some messenger in ancient tragedy, bearing I knew not what. I walked across the room to the most comfortable chair, at the same time motioning Mrs. Gowan to take another. But she remained standing in the doorway by the corner of a bookcase, still swaying to and fro.

‘People say,’ she continued, not yet launched upon her narrative, ‘that after you’ve made your bed you must lie in it. But what they don’t seem to see is that it’s often another sort of bed you have to lie in than the one you made for yourself! ’T would n’t be so bad if you could keep right on lying in that one.’

I assented silently, struck suddenly by the ironic truth of her assertion. She went on.

‘But this is n’t telling you about my life as I set out to do. Somehow out in the kitchen, washing up at the sink, with you in here talking of things I never heard of, I got reviewing it all over for the millionth time; and after I’d decided to leave I decided then to try to tell you why.’

Again I motioned toward a chair; again Mrs. Gowan declined.

‘I’m forty years old. I was born in a town in Ohio down on the river — not a large town, but the most religious one that was ever known, and my mother was the most religious person in it. My father died when I was small, and my mother brought me up alone or with the help of all the Methodist preachers over a period of twenty-five years. I was n’t allowed a single pleasure that girls have now or that even some girls I knew had. I could n’t go anywhere but to school weekdays and to church Sundays — four times a Sunday, at that. I could n’t read any books I wanted to read, and my mother would n’t allow a magazine in the house. I could n’t go to a show of any kind, and my mother would sooner have died than allow me to dance. I could n’t speak to a young man except at school even when I got way along in my teens, though there was one once that I really liked and that liked me. I could n’t spend a cent of money on myself or even have a cent of my own, though my mother was n’t poor by any means. And, worst of all, I could n’t plan or dream about my future as all girls love to do, because my mother had set her heart on my being a Methodist deaconess or missionary and going to Asia to convert the heathen.

‘By the time I was thirteen I hated my mother. I mean just that — hated her. I used to dream wild things about how I killed her in horrible ways, and stole her money to get away with. And they’d stay all day with me, those dreams, while I washed dishes and dusted at home, or sewed and cleaned for the church, or went to the parsonage to help the preacher’s wife, who was always shiftless and slack and had too many children.

‘It went on like that year after year. I graduated from high school and wanted to go to college, but my mother refused. She said colleges were cloaks for wicked goings-on and sinful teachings. She made me become a sort of pastor’s assistant to prepare me for the missionary field. When I was twentyfive, she said, and knew my own mind and could keep out of fleshly temptations, I could begin to train for a deaconess.

‘ It got worse and worse. Some days I used to think if I’d go mad it would be a relief, for then they’d have to take me away. Once I thought I’d pretend to be mad, but I gave that up for fear my mother would n’t let me be put away anywhere, but would keep me there with her. Seven days a week, and all the same! Winter and summer, spring and fall, and no change at all! ’T was n’t long after I hated my mother that I began to hate God for making such a creature as my mother and for allowing such a life as mine. For years I hated Him. ’T was queer how I’d hate Him and pray to Him at the same time. And at last when I was nearly twenty-five years old, at last when I hated Him most and prayed to Him hardest, something happened! ’

Mrs. Gowan had stopped swaying. All the momentum within her seemed concentrated now, like a machine wound up to go and awaiting quick release. She stood taut by the bookcase, wedging a bit between it and the wainscoting of the entrance. She was still, all save her eyes and the color which came and went in her neck and cheeks. Suddenly, as though a spring had been touched somewhere within her, her words plunged forward.

‘One night I went to the drug store to get some stamps for my mother. I had to wait my turn, and I took the chance of opening a magazine on a rack. ’T was the only chance I ever got to read the stories I liked. I opened it just anywhere, and what do you think I saw? It was like the stories of John Wesley opening the Bible and being led by the Lord. I was led, too, and if ’t was by the Devil, I have the Devil to thank for it!

‘The first thing my eyes fell on was a queer notice in one of the back pages. It was an advertisement for a wife from a man in a town in Wyoming, and it was signed J. G. He said he wanted a woman about twenty-five. He said he did n’t care what kind so long as she’d stick by him through thick and thin. He said if she’d come to Oklahoma to a town he named, he’d meet her there and marry her. He said he could promise her kind treatment and a happy, exciting sort of life. I read it again and again until long after my turn at the window, and the address stayed in my mind and ran about there for hours and hours like an old hymn tune.

‘ I could n’t get it out of my head for days and days. And at last I stole a stamp from my mother’s desk when she was out, and I wrote to him that I’d come if he wanted me. I told him to write me General Delivery, mailing it on a certain day; and as the time drew near for an answer I watched my chances and called for mail.

‘One day the letter came. He said he thought I was the very woman for him, and he named a day when I was to meet him in Oklahoma City. He said he felt like a dog not sending me money for the journey, but he’d pay it back every cent if I could take my own. I laughed at that part, standing there in the post office without a cent in my purse that I could call my own!

‘But it was n’t as though I didn’t know where there was money. My mother was treasurer of the church, and she kept the collections in a tin box until they mounted to enough to deposit in the bank. I decided then and there not to wait a day, for fear my courage would fail me. ’T was Wednesday the day his letter came. That night, prayer-meeting night, I went to bed with a headache; and after my mother had left the house I wrote her a letter telling her what she’d done to me for twenty-five years and how I hated her and how I’d gone past all finding out. Then I took the key to the tin box from where she’d always kept it in the lining of an old hat in her closet. There was seventy dollars in the box. I took every cent. Then I packed the few clothes I had, and when the nine-o’clock Western train came through I boarded it and started for Chicago.

‘My mother may have tried to stop me somewheres along the line, but not that I ever knew of. I’ve never seen nor heard of her from that day to this, though I wrote her, after I was safely married, and got some more things off my chest. At Chicago I sent a telegram to Mr. Gowan — that was his name in his letter — and told him I was on my way. He met me in Oklahoma City, and we went to a priest there and were married. I was glad when I found out he was a Catholic, for I knew how mad it would make my mother.’

IV

During her recital Mrs. Gowan paused now and again, perhaps to allow me occasion for fuller dramatic appreciation, perhaps to indulge herself in reminiscence. As for me, I listened without comment or question, though I might have declared, with Miranda, that such a tale would cure deafness!

‘I don’t suppose you have any idea of what it seems like to start a brannew life at twenty-five, a life such as you’d never had an inkling of, such as you’d never dreamed of, asleep or awake. That was what happened to me. Wicked as I felt at the idea, all I could think of was Nicodemus in the Bible and of his being born again. Not that my rebirth was like the one the Lord wanted for him. It was as different as anything could be from that, but it was a rebirth all the same.

‘Mr. Gowan was, to put it in plain words, a thief. That’s how he got his living and spent his life. He was honest with me and told me right away, told me before we were married. He said when he saw me he knew he’d have to tell me, and he did. He’d made a good haul the day before I came, and he offered then and there to send me back home; but I said no, I’d stick to my part of the bargain. And stick I did, through thick and thin, just as I’d promised.

‘’T was thick and thin, too. Those are the very words for it. When it got too thick in one place, we’d move on to another. Where did n’t we go! What have n’t I seen in my life! Canada, Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Florida — there’s hardly a state I don’t know, I who never saw anything up to twenty-five. And sometimes it was thick, too! More than once I’ve held the bureau against the door to keep out the police while Jim Gowan got out the window or any other way he could!

‘There were thin times, too, especially after the children came, times when we did n’t have a cent. Sometimes he worked a bit, — he was a first-rate mechanic, — but he could n’t seem to stick to work, someway. There was something in him that he could n’t help. Call it sin and crime if you like, but there’t was. Twice he had to go to jail, and then’t was up to me to keep things going. What things didn’t I do!’ Her eyes dilated in excited memory. ‘One winter I joined the Salvation Army. I’ve got a good voice, and I’d learned enough talk from Methodist revivals and such to be a pretty good preacher, if I do say it. When the children got any age at all, we put them in a convent up in Canada. It seemed best all around. And just before we took them there, so it would be easier and more natural-like, I became a Catholic. Jim taught me all he knew; and then I went to a priest in the town where we were spending the winter, and he told me the rest. It’s a good religion, with things to keep you from worrying too much about your soul, and besides, by that time religion was all one with me.’

I found my voice at last, and at last, too, there came occasion in Mrs. Gowan’s pell-mell narrative for me to use it.

‘Was Mr. Gowan good to you?’ I asked. ‘That is, in his way?’

It was a stupid enough question, and I was made to feel it.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he was. And it was n’t such a bad way, either, his way was n’t! Remember, I have n’t a word to say against Jim Gowan. All I went through with him, thick and thin, seemed a kind of party to me. I always knew he’d get restless of me some time or other, and I made up my mind early to that. So when, two years ago, he lit out one night and never sent me any word, I just charged it up to profit and loss. It’s just as well for the children, and perhaps it’s just as well for me — I don’t know. But I do know one thing — I’ll thank him to my death for saving me from the life I was living. To some folks, perhaps, life with him would seem like Hell, but to me it was Heaven compared to my life with my mother!

‘And I want you to know,’ cried Mrs. Gowan, advancing quickly from her corner to the centre of the room and regarding me fixedly with suddenly clasped hands, ‘I want you to know that I don’t regret an hour of it and that I’m not sorry for a thing in it. I’m the best judge of my own soul, and I know as sure as I’m standing here that Jim Gowan saved it for me — in a queer way, perhaps, but saved it just the same. Only you see now why I can’t stay here with you. I feel like I was in a cage. All the things that have happened to me in fifteen years keep rushing through my head, and the difference is too great for me.’

‘I quite understand,’ I said quietly. And I did, although I could not communicate to Mrs. Gowan the poignancy of that understanding.

‘There’s just one thing I’d like to ask you before I go,’ she said, quietly now in her turn. ‘I said I wasn’t sorry for a thing, but sometimes I am, a little. That money I stole from the Methodists. If I could have taken it from my mother, I’d have no regrets. Things are easier now, with my earning steadily and the children cared for. Do you think I’d better send it back, a little now and then as I can? Giving here on Sunday evenings is n’t the same, of course. I see that, and I’ll gladly take your advice,’

I felt something suddenly boil within me, just as I myself had been conscious during the past weeks of internal boilings in my kitchen. I rose to my feet and impulsively seized Mrs. Gowan’s clasped hands in my own.

‘Don’t send back a cent of it!’ I cried. ‘Not one cent — ever — so long as you live! Promise me! They owe you seventy times seventy dollars! They owe you compensations they can never pay! Promise me, Mrs. Gowan, that you’ll never, so long as you live, send them back one penny!’

Mrs. Gowan promised. In fact, her face registered far more alarm and concern at my sudden and unprecedented outburst than it had once betrayed throughout her own extraordinary narrative. For an instant, indeed, I sensed a relenting within her. Perhaps she felt that, with the possibility of such fervor now and then overthrowing my usual demeanor and behavior, she might tolerate a longer sojourn! It was a fleeting impulse, however, if impulse it was. What chance had I, with my books and placid, academic friends, against scores of epileptics, freshly recruited at frequent intervals?

Now and again I see or hear of Mrs. Gowan. A year ago she graduated from her position as housemaid to that of probationer in the training school for nurses for the insane. She is reputed an outstanding success; her cap and uniform, indeed, seem certain. For her supervisors say that her versatility in any and all emergencies, no matter of how startling a nature, amounts to genius. And she still gives thanks to God, or to the Devil, who through Jim Gowan saved her soul.