The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems

Excerpt

THE NEW PENELOPE.

I may as well avow myself in the beginning of my story as that anomalous creature—a woman who loves her own sex, and naturally inclines to the study of their individual peculiarities and histories, in order to get at their collective qualities. If I were to lay before the reader all the good and bad I know about them by actual discovery, and all the mean, and heroic, attributes this habit I have of studying people has revealed to me, I should meet with incredulity, perhaps with opprobrium. However that may be, I have derived great enjoyment from having been made the recipient of the confidences of many women, and by learning therefrom to respect the moral greatness that is so often coupled with delicate physical structure, and almost perfect social helplessness. Pioneer life brings to light striking characteristics in a remarkable manner; because, in the absence of conventionalities and in the presence of absolute and imminent necessities, all real qualities come to the surface as they never would have done under different circumstances. In the early life of the Greeks, Homer found his Penelope; in the pioneer days of the Pacific Coast, I discovered mine.

My wanderings, up and down among the majestic mountains and the sunny valleys of California and Oregon, had made me acquainted with many persons, some of whom were to me, from the interest they inspired me with, like the friends of my girlhood. Among this select number was Mrs. Anna Greyfield, at whose home among the foot-hills of the Sierras in Northern California, I had spent one of the most delightful summers of my life. Intellectual and intelligent without being learned or particularly bookish; quick in her perceptions and nearly faultless in her judgment of others; broadly charitable, not through any laxity of principle on her own part, but through knowledge of the stumbling-blocks of which the world is full for the unwary, she was a constant surprise and pleasure to me. For, among the vices of women I had long counted uncharitableness; and among their disadvantages want of actual knowledge of things—the latter accounting for the former.

I had several times heard it mentioned that Mrs. Greyfield had been twice married; and as her son Benton was also called Greyfield, I presumed that he was the son of the second marriage. How I found out differently I am about to relate.

One rainy winter evening, on the occasion of my second visit to this friend, we were sitting alone before a bright wood fire in an open fireplace, when we chanced to refer to the subject of her son's personal qualities; he then being gone on a visit to San Francisco, and of course very constantly in his mother's thoughts, as only sons are sure to be.

"Benton is just like his father," she said. "He is self-possessed and full of expedients, but he says very little. I have often wished he conversed more readily, for I admire a good talker."

"And yet did not marry one:—the common lot!"

Mrs. Greyfield smiled, and gazed into the fire, whose pleasant radiance filled the room, bringing out the soft warm colors in the carpet, and making fantastic shadows of our easy-chairs and ourselves upon the wall....