Helen Rutherford had been trying to sell Dr. Bartholomew’s wisdom in the cottages of Nangasakit for a week. On the morning of this, her last day, she had wandered into a neighborhood that seemed more substantial than anything else in the little resort. The houses were small—no bigger than bungalows—and yet all of them declaring by their mansards and spool railings and their porch latticework arched like the vents to a donjon that these were not summerhouses; these were places where men and women centered their lives and where children were conceived and reared. The sight might have cheered her if it hadn’t been for the dogs. The place was full of dogs; and it had begun to seem to Helen that her life was a martyrdom to dogs. As soon as her footsteps were heard the dogs began to bark, filling her with timidity and self-pity. From morning until night dogs sniffed at her heels, snapped at her ankles, bit the skirts of her best gray coat and tried to run off with her brief case. As soon as she entered a strange neighborhood dogs that had been sunning themselves peacefully in clothesyards or sleeping by stoves, dogs who had been chewing bones or daydreaming or sporting with one another would give up their peaceful occupations and sound the alarm. She had dreamed many times that she was torn to pieces by dogs. It seemed to her that she was a pilgrim and the soles of her shoes were so thin that she was virtually barefoot. She was surrounded, day after day, by strange houses and people and hostile beasts, and like a pilgrim she was now and then given a cup of tea and a piece of stale cake. Her lot was worse than a pilgrim’s for God alone knew in which direction her Rome, her Vatican would appear.
The first dog to come at her that day was a collie who snarled at her heels, a sound that frightened her more than a loud, straight-forward bark. The collie was joined by a small dog who seemed friendly, but you could never tell. It was a friendly-seeming dog who had torn her coat. A black dog joined these two and then a police dog, woofing and belling like a hound from hell. She walked half a block, trailed by four dogs, and then all but the collie went back to their occupations. The collie was still a little behind, snarling at her heels. She hoped, she prayed, that someone would open a door and call him home. She turned to speak to him. “Go home, doggie,” she said. “Go home, good doggie, go home, nice doggie.” Then he sprang at her coat sleeve and she struck at him with her brief case. Her heart was beating so that she thought she would die. The collie sank his teeth into the old leather of the brief case and began a tug of war. “Leave that poor lady alone, you nasty cur,” Helen heard someone say. A stranger appeared at her right with a kettle of water and let the dog have it. The dog went howling up the street. “Now you come into the house for a few minutes,” the stranger said. “You come in and tell me what you’re selling and rest your feet.”
Helen thanked the stranger and followed her into one of the little houses. Her savior was a short woman with eyes of a fine, pale blue and a very red face. She introduced herself as Mrs. Brown and in order to receive Helen she took off an apron and hung it over the back of a chair. She was a little woman with an extravagantly curved figure. Her breasts and buttocks stretched the cloth of her house dress. “Now tell me what it is that you’re selling,” she said, “and I’ll see if I want any.”
“I’m an accredited representative for Dr. Bartholomew’s Institute for Self-Improvement,” Helen said. “There are still a few subscriptions open for eligible men and women. Dr. Bartholomew feels that a college education is not a requirement. He feels …”
“Well, that’s good,” Mrs. Brown said, “because I’m not what you would call an educated woman. I graduated from the Nangasakit High School, which is one of the best high schools in the world—known all over the world—but the amount of education I got through learning is nothing to the amount of education that runs in my blood. I’m directly descended from Madame de Staël and many other well-educated and distinguished men and women. I suppose you don’t believe me, I suppose you think I’m crazy, but if you’ll notice that picture on the wall—it’s a picture post card of Madame de Staël—and then notice my own profile you’ll see the resemblance, no doubt.”
“There are many four-colored portraits of famous historical men and women,” Helen said.
“I’ll stand right up beside the portrait so’s you’ll be sure to see the resemblance,” Mrs. Brown said, and she went across the room and stood beside the card. “I guess you must have seen the resemblance by now. You see the resemblance, don’t you? You must see it. Everybody else does. A man came by here yesterday selling hot-water heaters and told me I looked enough like Madame de Staël to be her twin. Said we looked like identical twins.” She smoothed her house dress and then went back and sat on the edge of her chair. “It’s being directly descended from Madame de Staël and other distinguished men and women,” she said, “that accounts for the education in my blood. I have very expensive tastes. If I go into a store to buy a pocketbook and there’s a pocketbook for one dollar and a pocketbook for three dollars my eye goes straight to the one that costs three dollars. I’ve preferred expensive things all my life. Oh, I had great expectations! My great-grandfather was an ice merchant. He made a fortune selling ice to the niggers in Honduras. He wasn’t a man to put much stock in banks and he took all his money to California and put it into gold bullion and coming back his ship sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras, gold and all. Of course it’s still there—two and a half million dollars of it— and it’s all mine, but do you think the banks around here would loan me the money to have it raised? Not on your life. There’s over two and one half million dollars of my very own lying there in the sea and there’s not a man or woman in this part of the country with enough gumption or sense of honor to loan me the money to raise my own inheritance. Last week I went up to St. Botolphs to see this rich old Honora Wapshot and she …”
“Is she related to Leander Wapshot?”
“She’s the very same blood. Do you know him?”
“He’s my father,” Helen said.
“Well, for land’s sakes, if Leander Wapshot’s your father what are you doing going from door to door, trying to sell books?”
“He’s disowned me.” Helen began to cry.
“Oh, he has, has he? Well, that’s easier said than done. It’s crossed my mind to disown my own children, but I don’t know how to go about it. You know what my daughter—my very own daughter—did on Thanksgiving Day? We all sat down to the table and then she picked up this turkey, this twelve-pound turkey, and she threw it onto the floor and she jumped up and down on it and she kicked it from here to there and then she took the dish with the cranberry sauce in it and she threw it all over the ceiling— cranberry sauce all over the ceiling—and then she began to cry. Well, I thought of disowning her then and there but it’s easier said than done and if I can’t disown my own daughter how’s it Leander Wapshot can disown his? Well,” she said, getting to her feet and tying on her apron again, “I’ve got to get back to my housework now and I can’t spend any more time talking but my advice to you is to go to that old Leander Wapshot and tell him to buy you a decent pair of shoes. Why, when I saw you walking down the street with the dogs behind you and the holes in your shoes I didn’t feel it would be Christian not to come to your help but now that I know you’re a Wapshot it seems that your own flesh and blood could come to your aid. Good-by.”