The position of an older woman in her daughter's house is often
difficult. It makes no difference to me that Ada is a mother herself;
she might be even a great-grandmother, and yet in my eyes she would
still be Ada, my little girl. I feel the need of guiding her and
protecting her just as much this minute as when she was a baby in the
nursery; only now the task is much more difficult. That is why I say
that the position of women placed as I am is often hard, harder than if
I lived somewhere else, because although I am with Ada I can no longer
protect her from anything--not even from myself, my illnesses and
weaknesses. It sometimes seems to me, so eagerly do I follow the
lights and shadows of my daughter's life, as if I were living a second
existence together with my own. Only as I grow older I am less fitted
physically to bear things, even though I take them philosophically.
When Ada and the rest of my children were little, I could guard against
the menaces to their happiness; I could keep them out of danger; if
their little friends didn't behave, I sent them home. When it was
needed, I didn't hesitate to administer a good wholesome spanking to my
children. There isn't one of these various things but needs doing now
in Ada's house. I can't, however, very well spank Cyrus, nor can I send
Elizabeth home. All I CAN do is to sit still and hold my tongue, though
I don't know, I'm sure, what the end of it all is to be.
Life brings new lessons at every turn in the road, and one of the
hardest of all is the one we older people have to learn--to sit still
while our children hurt themselves, or, what is worse, to sit still
while other people hurt our children. It is especially hard for me
to bear, when life is made difficult for my Ada, for if ever any one
deserved happiness my daughter does. I try to do justice to every one,
and I hope I am not unfair when I say that the best of men, and Cyrus is
one of them, are sometimes blind and obstinate. Of all my children, Ada
gave me the least trouble, and was always the most loving and tender and
considerate. Indeed, if Ada has a fault, it is being too considerate. I
could, if she only would let me, help her a great deal more around the
house; although Ada is a very good housekeeper, I am constantly seeing
little things that need doing. I do my best to prevent the awful waste
of soap that goes on, and there are a great many little ways Ada could
let me save for her if she would. When I suggest this to her she laughs
and says, “Wait till we need to save as badly as that, mother,” which
doesn't seem to me good reasoning at all. “Waste not, want not,” say
I, and when it comes to throwing out perfectly good glass jars, as the
girls would do if I didn't see to it they saved them, why, I put my foot
down. If Ada doesn't want them herself to put things up in, why, some
poor woman will. I don't believe in throwing things away that may come
in handy sometime. When I kept house nobody ever went lacking strings or
a box of whatever size, to send things away in, or paper in which to
do it up, and I can remember in mother's day there was never a time she
hadn't pieces put by for a handsome quilt. Machinery has put a stop to
many of our old occupations, and the result is a generation of nervous
women who haven't a single thing in life to occupy themselves with but
their own feelings, while girls like Peggy, who are active and useful,
have nothing to do but to go to school and keep on going to school. If
one wanted to dig into the remote cause of things, one might find the
root of our present trouble in these changed conditions, for Cyrus's
sister, Elizabeth, is one of these unoccupied women. Formerly in a
family like ours there would have been so much to do that, whether she
liked it or not, and whether she had married or not, Elizabeth would
have had to be a useful woman--and now the less said the better.
It is hard, I say, to see the causes for unhappiness set in action and
yet do nothing, or, if one speaks, to speak to deaf ears. Oh, it is very
hard to do this, and this has been the portion of older women always.
Our children sometimes won't even let us dry their tears for them, but
cry by themselves, as I know Ada has been doing lately--though in the
end she came to me, or rather I went to her, for, after all, I am living
in the same world with the rest of them. I have not passed over to the
other side yet, and while I stay I am not going to be treated as if I
were a disembodied spirit. I have eyes of my own, and ears too, and I
can see as well as the next man when things go wrong.
I have always known that no good would come of sending Peggy to a
coeducational college. I urged Ada to set her foot down, for Ada didn't
wish to send Peggy there, naturally enough, but she wouldn't.
“Well,” said I, “I'M not afraid to speak my mind to your husband.” Now
I very seldom open my mouth to Cyrus, or to any one else in this house,
for it is more than ever the fashion for people to disregard the advice
of others, and the older I get the more I find it wise to save my breath
to cool my porridge--there come times, however, when I feel it my duty
to speak.
“Mark my words, Cyrus,” I said. “You'll be sorry you sent Peggy off to
a boys' school. Girls at her age are impressionable, and if they aren't
under their mothers' roofs, where they can be protected and sheltered,
why, then send them to a seminary where they will see as few young men
as possible.”
Cyrus only laughed and said:
“Well, mother, you can say 'I told you so' if anything bad comes of it.”
“It's all very well to laugh, Cyrus,” I answered, “but _I_ don't believe
in putting difficulties into life that aren't there already, and that's
what sending young men and young women off to the same college seems to
ME!”
When Peggy came home engaged, after her last year, everybody was
surprised.
“I'm sure I don't know what Cyrus expected,” I said to Ada. “You can't
go out in the rain without getting wet. Let us pray that this young man
will turn out to be all right, though we know so little about him.”
For all we knew was what Peggy told us, and you know the kind of things
young girls have to tell one about their sweethearts. Peggy didn't even
know what church his people went to! I couldn't bear the thought of
that dear child setting out on the long journey of marriage in such a
fashion. I looked forward with fear to what Ada might have to go through
if it didn't turn out all right. For one's daughter's sorrows are one's
own; what she suffers one must suffer, too. It is hard for a mother to
see a care-free, happy young girl turn into a woman before her eyes.
Even if a woman is very happy, marriage brings many responsibilities,
and a woman who has known the terror of watching beside a sick child can
never be quite the same, I think. We ourselves grew and deepened
under such trials, and we wouldn't wish our daughters to be less than
ourselves; but, oh, how glad I should be to have Peggy spared some
things! How happy I should be to know that she was to have for her lot
only the trials we all must have! I do not want to see my Ada having to
bear the unhappiness of seeing Peggy unhappy. Even if Peggy puts up a
brave face, Ada will know--she will know just as I have known things in
my own children's lives; and I shall know, too. This young man has it in
his hands to trouble my old age.
No mother and daughter can live together as Ada and I have without what
affects one of us affecting the other. When her babies were born I was
with her; I helped her bring them up; as I have grown older, though
she comes to me less and less, wishing to spare me, I seem to need less
telling; for I know myself when anything ails her.
It amazed me to see how Ada took Peggy's engagement, and when young
Henry Goward came to visit, I made up my mind that he should not go
away again without our finding out a little, at any rate, of what his
surroundings had been, and what his own principles were. As we grow
older we see more and more that character is the main thing in life,
and I would rather have a child of mine marry a young man of sound
principles whom she respected than one of undisciplined character and
lax ideas whom she loved. When I said things like this to Ada, she
replied:
“I'm afraid you're prejudiced against that poor boy because he and Peggy
happened to meet at college.”
I answered: “I am not prejudiced at all, Ada, but I feel that all of us,
you especially, should keep our eyes and ears open. Wait! is all I say.”
I know my own faults, for I have always believed that one is never too
old for character-building, and I know that being prejudiced is not one
of them. I realize too keenly that as women advance in years they
are very apt to get set in their ways unless they take care, and I am
naturally too fair-minded to judge a man before I have seen him. Maria
and Alice were prejudiced, if you like. Maria, indeed, had so much to
say to Ada that I interfered, though it is contrary to my custom.
“I should think, Maria,” I said, “that however old you are, you would
realize that your father and mother are EVEN better able to judge than
you as to their children's affairs.” I cannot imagine where Maria gets
her dominant disposition. It is very unlike the women of our family.
When he came, however, Mr. Goward's manners and appearance impressed me
favorably. Neither Ada nor Cyrus, as far as I could see, tried in the
least to draw him out. I sat quiet for a while, but at last for Peggy's
sake I felt I would do what I could to find out his views on important
things. I was considerably relieved to hear that his mother was a Van
Horn, a very good Troy family and distant connection of mother's.
When I asked him what he was, “My PEOPLE are Episcopalians,” he replied.
“I suppose that means YOU are something else?” I asked him.
“I'm afraid it means I'm nothing else,” he answered; and while I was
glad he was so honest, I couldn't help feeling anxious at having Peggy
engaged to a man so unformed in his beliefs. I do not care so much
WHAT people believe, for I am not bigoted, as that they should believe
SOMETHING, and that with their whole hearts. There are a great many
young men like Henry Goward, to-day, who have no fixed beliefs and
no established principles beyond a vague desire to be what they call
“decent fellows.” One needs more than that in this world.
However, I found the boy likable, and everything went smoothly for a
time, when all at once I felt something had gone wrong--what, I didn't
know. Mr. Goward received a telegram and left suddenly. Ada, I could
see, was anxious; Peggy, tearful; and, as if this wasn't enough, Mrs.
Temple, our new neighbor, who had seemed a sensible body to me, had
some sort of a falling-out with Aunt Elizabeth, who pretended that Mrs.
Temple was jealous of her! After Mrs. Temple had gone home, Elizabeth
Talbert went around pleased as Punch and swore us all to solemn secrecy
never to tell any one about “Mrs. Temple's absurd jealousy.”
“You needn't worry about me, Aunt Elizabeth,” I said. “I'm not likely to
go around proclaiming that ANOTHER woman has made a fool of herself.”
Elizabeth Talbert is one of those women who live on a false basis. She
is a case of arrested development. She enjoys the same amusements that
she did fifteen years ago. She is like a young fruit that has been put
up in a preserving fluid and gives the illusion of youth; the preserving
fluid in her case is the disappointment she suffered as a girl. I like
useful women--women who, whether married or unmarried, bring things to
pass in this world, and Elizabeth does not. Still, I can't help feeling
sorry for her, poor thing; in the end our own shortcomings and vanities
hurt us more than they hurt any one else. I heartily wish she would get
married--I have known women older than Elizabeth, and worse-looking, to
find husbands--both for her own sake and for Ada's, for her comings
and goings complicate life for my daughter. She diffuses around her an
atmosphere of criticism--I do not think she ever returns from a visit to
the city without wishing that we should have dinner at night, and Alice
is beginning to prick up her ears and listen to her. She spends a great
deal of time over her dress, and, if she has grown no older, neither
have her clothes--not a particle. She dresses in gowns suitable for
Peggy, but which Maria, who is years younger than her aunt, would not
think of wearing. Elizabeth is the kind of woman who is a changed being
at the approach of a man; she is even different when Cyrus or Billy is
around; she brightens up and exerts herself to please them; but when
she is alone with Ada and me she is frankly bored and looks out of
the window in a sad, far-away manner. The presence of men has a most
rejuvenating effect on Aunt Elizabeth, although she pretends she has
never been interested in any man since her disappointment years ago.
When she got back and found Harry Goward here, instead of relapsing into
her lack-lustre ways, as she generally does, she kept on her interested
air.
I have always thought that houses have their atmosphere, like people,
and this house lately has seemed bewitched. After Mr. Goward left,
although every one tried to pretend things were as they should be, the
situation grew more and more uncomfortable. I felt it, though no one
told me a thing. I fancy that most older people have the same experience
often that I have had lately. All at once you are aware something is
wrong. You can't tell why you feel this; you only know that you are
living in the cold shadow of some invisible unhappiness. You see no
tears in the eyes of the people you love, but tears have been shed just
the same. Why? You don't know, and no one thinks of telling you. It
is like seeing life from so far off that you cannot make out what has
happened. I have sometimes leaned out of a window and have seen down the
street a crowd of gesticulating people, but I was too far off to know
whether some one was hurt or whether it was only people gathered around
a man selling something. When I see such things my heart beats, for I am
always afraid it is an accident, and so with the things I don't know in
my own household. I always fancy them worse than they are. There are
so many things one can imagine when one doesn't KNOW, and now I fancied
everything. Such things, I think, tell on older people more than on
younger ones, and at last I went to my room and kept there most of the
time, reading William James's Varieties of Religious Experience. It is
an excellent work in many ways. I am told it is given in sanitariums
for nervous people to read, for the purpose of getting their minds off
themselves. I found it useful to get my mind off others, for of late I
have gotten to an almost morbid alertness, and I know by the very way
Peggy ran up the stairs that something ailed her even before I caught a
glimpse of her face, which showed me that she was going straight to her
room to cry.
This sort of thing had happened too often, and I made up my mind I would
not live in this moral fog another moment. So I went to Ada.
“Ada,” I said, “I am your mother, and I think I have a right to ask you
a question. I want to know this: what has that young man been doing?”
“I suppose you mean Harry,” Ada answered. “He hasn't been doing
anything. Peggy's a little upset because he isn't a good correspondent.
You know how girls feel--”
“Don't tell ME, Ada,” said I. “I know better. There's more in it than
that. Peggy's a sensible girl. There's something wrong, and I want you
to tell me what it is.” Younger people don't realize how bad it can be
to be left to worry alone in the dark.
Ada sat down with a discouraged air such as I have seldom seen her with.
I went over to her and took her hand in mine.
“Tell mother what's worrying you, dear,” I said, gently.
“Why, it's all so absurd,” Ada answered. “I can't make head or tail of
it. Aunt Elizabeth came to me full of mystery soon after she came back,
and told me that Harry Goward had become infatuated with her when she
was off on one of her visits--”