The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress (14 page)

     She thought a great deal about it and she did a good deal of talking and at last she decided to choose Fanny Hissen.
     Martha, David Hersland's sister, who always did whatever it was right for her to do, to her feeling, was not very unpleasing. In some ways she was quite pleasing, she was so to her husband, to him she was very pleasing. She was not really pleasing to her brother David Hersland, to him she was not appealing nor domineering and it took women of these two kinds to be pleasing to him, but he knew she was a good woman who would always do what was right for her to do to her feeling, and mostly he thought she was right in her feeling and in her way of doing what was right to her feeling and so he was willing that she should choose a wife to content him.
     To her husband this Martha was almost always pleasing. He was a big man with strong passion in him and a sentimental feeling and he wanted a wife, not to be domineering, but to hold him with her attraction, and always to be equal to him. He did not want a wife to appeal to him, he would not have one to domineer over him. It was his sentimental feeling that made him not want his wife to be appealing, he wanted to make her an ideal to him. He was a man to be master in his living and so he never would have a wife to domineer over him.
     Martha Hersland who was married to him was just right for him. She was the woman to hold him and this one can see from the nature of her as it will come out from her in the history of her as she makes the marriage for her brother.
     In some ways Martha was not very pleasing, she was a woman to make a beginning and to keep on going when it was right to do so, to her feeling. When she met with stronger women she would not stop herself from winning, she would not know that she was then losing she only dropped out of that working and made for herself a new beginning. She was not a strong woman, as her mother had been, the mother who was like a mountain, who had it in her to uphold around her, her man, her family, and everybody whom she saw needing directing. Martha was not in such a way a strong woman, she was not in any such way pleasing. She was like her father in her important feeling, but she was stronger than he ever had been, in keeping going, she was fonder of making a beginning, she always liked to be doing, and so she was not very pleasing, in some ways she was very pleasing.
     It is this that we must use as a beginning to understand this kind of woman, to feel what she was doing in arranging a marriage for her brother David to content him, to see what she had strongly inside her of an important feeling, to know why she had the right way of doing whatever was right to her feeling in the business of living, to know how her husband could find her so satisfying, to find out how she was pleasing.
     Martha was a good woman in doing whatever it was right for her to do, to her feeling. She was fond of doing, good at making a beginning, and almost strong enough to keep on going. It was always all right for her when there was not any strong person resisting, for then she was always strong enough to keep on going and then, though mostly, not altogether winning, she came then near enough to winning to give to her her important feeling. She would not end in any kind of winning if any other one kept up any resisting, then Martha would not know she was losing, she would begin with some other beginning and so she never could lose her important feeling. Her husband listened to her talking, he knew what she did from her telling, she was not strong to be domineering, she was strong enough not to be appealing, she was always attractive to him, she filled up his sentimental feeling, she was an ideal to him with no power to disturb him, she was always pleasing to him.
     As I was saying her brother did not find her pleasing but he knew she was a good woman, he felt that she was mostly right in her feeling and in her ways of doing, he was willing that she should choose a wife for him to content him and he was right to let her choose for him.
     Martha's husband had a cousin who had once worked for old Mr. Hissen. This cousin and his wife came to know them enough to see them very often. There were not many people who came to know them enough to see them very often. The old man Hissen had his wife and children shut up with him as much and as long as he could keep them. One of them, the eldest girl among them, the one that had most in her, of all of them, of religion, had already come to her marrying. A cousin from another town came to see them and she wanted him and he wanted her to take care of him, and then they made the father consent to their marrying. Perhaps he liked it better that they had no good prospects before them. Marrying should be a sorrow to them, and the mother sorrowed in them, living was all sadness and she knew that it would be so for them. Anyway they were married and they were living happily enough when the wife did not feel too strongly her importance in religion. Now that they were married the old folks did not interfere with them.
     This cousin of Martha's husband who had come to see a good deal of them tried to arrange a marriage between his brother and another of the Hissen sisters, one of the pleasantest of them. It was a good chance for her for the brother of the cousin was a very well to do man and he was a good enough man though a very stupid and a dull one. It was a good chance for one of them and this one, one of the pleasant ones of them was willing to meet him but seeing him set her off laughing and every time she saw him again she went on laughing and at last he grew angry and that was the end of her marrying. She never came again to the point of having a man want her to content him.
     There were a number of the Hissen women who never came to marrying. Their way of living and with no one except strangers to help them and the eldest daughter not doing very well in her marrying and being gloomy and important in religion and never very strong in pushing or doing things to help them, it came to their being a family of women and three of them, and they were of the pleasant ones among them never came to have a man who wanted any one of them to content him. They lived with their father and later with another one of them who had done very well in marrying and they were all together then gentle cheerful little older women, they were each in their circle cheerful in the present, they lived and died in mildness and contentment.
     But now there was a chance for the marrying of another one of them, of Fanny Hissen and she was soon now to meet David Hersland and to see whether she would be pleasing to him, to make a wife to him to content him.
     Martha had come to know them well enough to see them fairly often. She was pleasing to the old man Hissen. She was a sensible good woman and always neat in her dressing. She was not afraid of him. She was a patient woman and would listen to the trickling little woman who had always in her sorrowing, who told her often what she thought of living. She was a friend of the eldest daughter of them the one who was married to her cousin. Martha was sure that it was right to do whatever was good in religion. For her it was not religion, for her it was the right way to do in the business of living that was important in her being, but she had a sentiment for religion, she had a respect for the oldest daughter's important feeling. It was alright for both of them for Martha had her important feeling and it was not in religion, it was in the matter of every day living, and so there was no quarrelling between these two women and their kind of important feeling. They each had much respect in them for the other one's way of feeling and right way of doing.
     Martha was a neat woman. She was a strong enough woman and always active in doing. She had a kind of sentimental feeling and that made her respect the Hissen religion, she had a hard way of thinking and that made her like the gentleness of all the pleasant Hissen women, she had a kind of a common feeling and that made her respect the old Hissen woman who spent her life in sorrowing, in weeping out the sadness of all living. And yet always Martha had the important feeling, she knew what was the right way to do to keep on living, to help people to marrying, to make the world keep on as it was in the beginning.
     Martha was always talking about the Hissen girls and their way of living. She got almost to feel that she was a sister and a mother to them. They did not have in them any such feeling but then the Hissen women all had a pride in them that they did not have any kind of a common feeling in them, even the eldest one who was so unpleasant to the others of them never had any common feeling. Such a thing could never be in any of the Hissen men or women.
     To the Hissen women this Martha was always a little common. But they were wrong in their feeling. This Martha was not really inside her even a little common, it was her hard way of thinking that gave the Hissens such a feeling. It was that she did not have in her any fine feeling. All the Hissen men and women had fine feeling. This Martha did not have any fine feeling but she was not common in her feeling. In Martha it was a hard way of thinking that was deceiving.
     Any way the Hissen girls who were coming now to be women and who began to feel in them the liking to have men choose them to content them, were very willing to let this Martha do what they could not do themselves with the finer kind of feeling they all had in them. Not that Martha ever had a common match making feeling or ever wanted to do anything except just what it was right for her to do to her feeling. It was not a common or mean feeling that made Martha do what she did for them. It was a strong sense of what was right for her to do in the business of living to make the world go on as it was in the beginning; it was too, that she had a feeling for the gentle dignity that was the most important thing in all Hissen men and women so that they could not help themselves to win for themselves the things every one needs to have for his living.
     And so it came that she chose Fanny Hissen to be the one that should be married to her brother David Hersland who needed now to have a wife to content him, to go to Gossols with him, to help him in his living, to have children for him so that the world could go on as it had from the beginning.
     Martha was right to choose Fanny Hissen to content him. As I was saying Martha was not very pleasing to her brother David Hersland who needed a woman to be appealing or a woman to have power, to make her attractive to him. One can see by the feeling that this Martha had for all the Hissen men and women that she was not appealing nor had strongly a power of attracting, and yet she was a good woman, and not very unpleasing, and David was right to let her choose a wife to content him. She could never have any reason to do anything that was not right to her feeling. She had enough of important feeling so that she would not have any jealous feeling to interfere with her right judging, and she had a hard feeling and that gave her a kind of common being that made her have in her a feeling that always would respect the fine being in the Hissen men and women, and yet she never could feel that she was not right to manage for them, for they had the weakness in them from being so fine in the gentle dignity and feeling that made all them, that they could never do for themselves what was necessary, for them to ever be winning what they needed for their living. And so she arranged a marriage for them for marrying David Hersland and Fanny Hissen.
     It went very quickly from the beginning for Fanny Hissen was very pleasing to him and David Hersland had nothing common in him for them. He was too big in his feeling and in the way he made any one who saw him feel him ever to give any one, even gentle Hissen men and women any such feeling.
     Martha was in a way common to them. David never gave any one of them any such feeling. Martha was not low in her feeling. It was her hard being that gave them such a feeling. She was always considering them in her feeling, she had respect for them and felt in them all the fine things they had inside them but to them she was not sensitive in her feeling, she was always a little common to them always a little low to them, they felt it always inside in them. With her brother David Hersland they never had any such feeling. David never gave any one of them any such feeling. And yet, as I was saying, it was not because Martha was lower in her being that they had always this feeling. The old man Hissen had not such a feeling. Martha was more pleasing to him then than she was to any of the others of them. To the others of them it was a certain thing inside her that was not so much hard but not sensitive or appealing that made them feel her to be a little common, to their feeling. David Hersland never gave any of them such a feeling.
     It was not because Martha was low in her feeling. Martha was not low in her feeling, she had no dirty ways inside her in her feeling. Always she would do what it was right to do to her feeling. But not having the delicate kind of feeling made her feel things to be right that were right to the Hissen feeling but were not pleasant to them to see anybody doing. As I was saying, the old man Hissen had not any such feeling. No Martha was not low in her feeling and she was strong to do what was right to her feeling and only in little ways was she unpleasant to the Hissen men and women, though she was never really pleasing to them. She had not in her any power to impress them or anything appealing to win them.
     No Martha was not low in her feeling. David had things in him that would be very low to them if they knew they were inside him but they never could come to know such things in him. He was so big in his feeling he could always carry them along inside him, inside him or outside him it was all one, he was in them they were in him and they could never come to any judgment toward him and so they never could come to know any low thing in him. It was very different with the feeling they always had that Martha was below them Martha had very little of any low or dirty feeling. She was not delicate in her feeling. She was a good enough looking woman, not unpleasing, always neat in her dressing and attractive enough like most good enough looking women. It was mostly never a low feeling she had in her and never toward any one of them but they mostly all always had inside them a certain sense that she was common to them. David Hersland never gave to any of them any such feeling. He was as big as all the world in his beginning and low and high and noisy and delicate it was all in him, he was it, they were in him and low things were big in him so that no one could ever feel them in him as low things inside him, no never not even when he was an old man and things were falling down inside him and around him in his being.