A Daughter of the Morning

"Oh," I says, "don't you s'pose I've thought of that? But I can't get away."

"Yes, you can," he says, looking at me, earnest. "Yes, you can. If you just say the word."

I was as tall as he was, and I looked right at him, with all the strength I had.

"Do you think," I says, "that because I'm from the country I ain't on to all such talk as that? Do you think I don't know what them kind of hold-outs means? We ain't such fools as you think we are, not since Hattie Duffy thought she was going to Paris, and ended in the bottom of a pond. They's only one way any of us ever gets to see any of them things, and don't you think we're fooled unless we want to be. No, sir. We ain't that fresh."

He scared me the way he whirled round at me.

"You miserable little creature!" he said. "What are you talking about?"

"Well," I says, "don't you ever think I – "

Then he done a funny thing. He drew a deep breath, and took his hat off and looked up at the sky and off over the fields.

"After all," he said, "thank God this is the way you are beginning to take it! When a country girl can protect herself like that, it is growing safe for her to be born. Listen to me, child," he says.

He had me puzzled for fair by then. I just listened.

"Just now," he says, "I called you a miserable little creature. That was because you quite naturally mistook me for one of the wretched hunters whom women have been trying to evade since the beginning. Well, I was wrong to call you that. Instead, I applaud your magnificent ability to take care of yourself. I applaud even more in the incident – but I won't bother you with that."

I kept trying to see what he meant.

"Now you must," he said, "try to understand me. What I meant to say to you was that with the whole world to choose from, you are, in my opinion, quite wrong to settle down here to your farm and your Luke and the drudgery you say you loathe, without ever giving yourself a chance to choose at all. Perhaps you would come back and settle here because you wanted to… I hope you would do that, under somewhat different conditions. But don't settle here because you're trapped and can't get out."

"But I can't get out – " I was beginning, but he went on:

"I know perfectly well that a great part of the world would think that I ought not to be talking to you like that. They would say that you are 'safe' here. That you and Luke would have a quiet, contented life. But I care nothing at all for such safety. I think that unreasonable contentment leads to various kinds of damnation. If you were an ordinary girl I should not be talking to you like this. I should not have the courage – yet; not while life treats women as it treats them now. But in spite of your vulgarity, you are a remarkable woman."

"In spite of what?" I says.

"I mean it," he says, "and you must let me tell you, because you seem to be, in all but one thing, a fine straightforward creature. But in the way you treat men, you are vulgar, you know. Not hopelessly, just deplorably. Now tell me the truth. Why did you pretend to flirt with me? For that isn't your natural manner. You put it on. Why did you do that?"

I could tell him that well enough.

"Why," I says, "I guess it was the same as the singing. I wanted you to know I wasn't a stick. I wanted you to think I was lively and fun. It's the way the girls do. I can't do it as good as they do, I know that."

"Promise me," he says, "that if ever you do get out, you'll be the fine and straightforward one – not the other one."

"I shan't get out," I says. "I can't get out."

"'I can't get out,'" he says over. "'I can't get out.' It's a great mistake. If you feel it in you to get out, then you'll get out. That's the answer."

"I do," I says. "I always have. I wake up in the mornings…"

I'll never know what it was that come over me. But all of a sudden, the me that laid awake nights and thought, and the me that had come out in the sun that morning was the only me I had, and it could talk.

"Oh," I says, "don't you think I'm the way I seemed back there on the road. I'm different; but I'm the only one that knows that. I like nice things. I'd like to act nice. I'd like to be the way I could be. But there ain't enough of me to be that way. And I don't know what to do."

He took both my hands.

"And I don't know what you're to do," he said. "That is the part you must find for yourself. It's like dying – yet a while, till they get us going."

We stood still for a minute. And then I saw what I hadn't seen before – what a grand face he had. He wasn't like the handsome men on calendars or on cigar boxes, or on the signs. He was like somebody else I hadn't ever seen before. His face wasn't young at all, but it looked glad, and that made it seem young.

"I wish you wouldn't ever go way," I says.

"I ought to be miles from here at this moment," he says. "Now see here … I want to give you these."

He took two cards out of his pocket, and wrote on them.

"This one is mine," he says. "If you do come to the city, you are surely to let me know that you are there. And if you take this other card to this address here, this gentleman may be able to give you work. Now good-by. I'm going to cut through the meadow, and I suppose you'll be going back."

He put out his hand.

"Don't go," I says. "Don't go. I shan't ever find anybody to talk to again."

"That's part of your job, you know," he says. "Remember you have a job. Good-by, child."

He went off down the slope. At the foot of it he stopped.

"Cosma!" he shouts, "don't ever let them call you anything else, you know!"

"I won't," I says. "Honest, I won't, Mr. Ember."

I watched him just as far as I could see him. On the road he turned and waved his hand. When he was out of sight I started to go back home. But when I see things again, I'll never forget the lonesomeness. Things was like a sucked-out sack. I laid down in the grass – I haven't cried since the last time Pa whipped me, six years ago, but I thought I was going to cry now. Then I happened to think that was the way I'd have done before I met him; but it wasn't the way I must do now. Instead, I got up on to my feet and I started for home on the run. It was like something was starting somewheres, and I had to hurry.

CHAPTER III

Mother was scrubbing the well-house.

"Cossy Wakely," she says, "where you been?"

"Walking," I says.

"Walking!" says she; "with all I got to do. I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself. My land, what you got on your best clothes for?"

"Mother," I says, "you call me 'Cosma' after this, will you?"

She stared at me. "Such airs," she says. "And callin' me 'Mother.' Who you been with? What you rigged out like that for?"

"I didn't dress up for anybody," I says, "only because I wanted to."

"Such a young one as you've turned out," says she. "What's to become of you I don't know. Wait till your Pa comes in – I'll tell him."

"Mother," I says, "I'm twenty years old. You call me 'Cosma,' and let me call you 'Mother.' And don't feel you have to scold me all the time."

"I'll quit scolding you fast enough," she says, "when you quit deserving it. Go and get out of them togs, the dishes are waiting for you."