Martha's Lady

"Martha's Lady" is a novella by Sarah Orne Jewett that captures the intricacies of rural life in New England through the lens of human relationships and social dynamics. The story revolves around Martha, a strong-willed and independent woman, as she navigates her role within her community and her family. Jewett's vivid portrayal of the characters and settings reflects the themes of feminism, autonomy, and the bonds between nature and personal identity. With her signature style, Jewett delves into the emotional and psychological landscapes of her characters, offering readers a poignant exploration of love, duty, and self-discovery in a changing world.

• Short story

								
I.

One day, many years ago, the old Judge Pyne house wore an unwonted look
of gayety and youthfulness.  The high-fenced green garden was bright
with June flowers.  Under the elms in the large shady front yard you
might see some chairs placed near together, as they often used to be
when the family were all at home and life was going on gayly with eager
talk and pleasure-making; when the elder judge, the grandfather, used
to quote that great author, Dr. Johnson, and say to his girls, "Be
brisk, be splendid, and be public."

One of the chairs had a crimson silk shawl thrown carelessly over its
straight back, and a passer-by, who looked in through the latticed gate
between the tall gate-posts with their white urns, might think that
this piece of shining East Indian color was a huge red lily that had
suddenly bloomed against the syringa bush.  There were certain windows
thrown wide open that were usually shut, and their curtains were
blowing free in the light wind of a summer afternoon; it looked as if a
large household had returned to the old house to fill the prim best
rooms and find them full of cheer.

It was evident to every one in town that Miss Harriet Pyne, to use the
village phrase, had company.  She was the last of her family, and was
by no means old; but being the last, and wonted to live with people
much older than herself, she had formed all the habits of a serious
elderly person.  Ladies of her age, something past thirty, often wore
discreet caps in those days, especially if they were married, but being
single, Miss Harriet clung to youth in this respect, making the one
concession of keeping her waving chestnut hair as smooth and stiffly
arranged as possible.  She had been the dutiful companion of her father
and mother in their latest years, all her elder brothers and sisters
having married and gone, or died and gone, out of the old house.  Now
that she was left alone it seemed quite the best thing frankly to
accept the fact of age, and to turn more resolutely than ever to the
companionship of duty and serious books.  She was more serious and
given to routine than her elders themselves, as sometimes happened when
the daughters of New England gentlefolks were brought up wholly in the
society of their elders.  At thirty-five she had more reluctance than
her mother to face an unforeseen occasion, certainly more than her
grandmother, who had preserved some cheerful inheritance of gayety and
worldliness from colonial times.

There was something about the look of the crimson silk shawl in the
front yard to make one suspect that the sober customs of the best house
in a quiet New England village were all being set at defiance, and once
when the mistress of the house came to stand in her own doorway, she
wore the pleased but somewhat apprehensive look of a guest.  In these
days New England life held the necessity of much dignity and discretion
of behavior; there was the truest hospitality and good cheer in all
occasional festivities, but it was sometimes a self-conscious
hospitality, followed by an inexorable return to asceticism both of
diet and of behavior.  Miss Harriet Pyne belonged to the very dullest
days of New England, those which perhaps held the most priggishness for
the learned professions, the most limited interpretation of the word
"evangelical," and the pettiest indifference to large things.  The
outbreak of a desire for larger religious freedom caused at first a
most determined reaction toward formalism, especially in small and
quiet villages like Ashford, intently busy with their own concerns.  It
was high time for a little leaven to begin its work, in this moment
when the great impulses of the war for liberty had died away and those
of the coming war for patriotism and a new freedom had hardly yet begun.

The dull interior, the changed life of the old house, whose former
activities seemed to have fallen sound asleep, really typified these
larger conditions, and a little leaven had made its easily recognized
appearance in the shape of a light-hearted girl.  She was Miss
Harriet's young Boston cousin, Helena Vernon, who, half-amused and
half-impatient at the unnecessary sober-mindedness of her hostess and
of Ashford in general, had set herself to the difficult task of gayety.
Cousin Harriet looked on at a succession of ingenious and, on the
whole, innocent attempts at pleasure, as she might have looked on at
the frolics of a kitten who easily substitutes a ball of yarn for the
uncertainties of a bird or a wind-blown leaf, and who may at any moment
ravel the fringe of a sacred curtain-tassel in preference to either.

Helena, with her mischievous appealing eyes, with her enchanting old
songs and her guitar, seemed the more delightful and even reasonable
because she was so kind to everybody, and because she was a beauty.
She had the gift of most charming manners.  There was all the
unconscious lovely ease and grace that had come with the good breeding
of her city home, where many pleasant people came and went; she had no
fear, one had almost said no respect, of the individual, and she did
not need to think of herself.  Cousin Harriet turned cold with
apprehension when she saw the minister coming in at the front gate, and
wondered in agony if Martha were properly attired to go to the door,
and would by any chance hear the knocker; it was Helena who, delighted
to have anything happen, ran to the door to welcome the Reverend Mr.
Crofton as if he were a congenial friend of her own age.  She could
behave with more or less propriety during the stately first visit, and
even contrive to lighten it with modest mirth, and to extort the
confession that the guest had a tenor voice, though sadly out of
practice; but when the minister departed a little flattered, and hoping
that he had not expressed himself too strongly for a pastor upon the
poems of Emerson, and feeling the unusual stir of gallantry in his
proper heart, it was Helena who caught the honored hat of the late
Judge Pyne from its last resting-place in the hall, and holding it
securely in both hands, mimicked the minister's self-conscious
entrance.  She copied his pompous and anxious expression in the dim
parlor in such delicious fashion that Miss Harriet, who could not
always extinguish a ready spark of the original sin of humor, laughed
aloud.

"My dear!" she exclaimed severely the next moment, "I am ashamed of
your being so disrespectful!" and then laughed again, and took the
affecting old hat and carried it back to its place.

"I would not have had any one else see you for the world," she said
sorrowfully as she returned, feeling quite self-possessed again, to the
parlor doorway; but Helena still sat in the minister's chair, with her
small feet placed as his stiff boots had been, and a copy of his solemn
expression before they came to speaking of Emerson and of the guitar.
"I wish I had asked him if he would be so kind as to climb the
cherry-tree," said Helena, unbending a little at the discovery that her

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes