MADAM BOWKER'S BLESSING
"If you like I'll go up and tell your grandmother," said Craig, breaking
the silence as they neared the hotel. But Margaret's brain had resumed
its normal function, was making up for the time it had lost. With the
shaking off of the daze had come amazement at finding herself married.
In the same circumstances a man would have been incapacitated for
action; Craig, who had been so reckless, so headlong a few minutes
before, was now timid, irresolute, prey to alarms. But women, beneath
the pose which man's resolute apotheosis of woman as the embodiment of
unreasoning imagination has enforced upon them, are rarely so
imaginative that the practical is wholly obscured. Margaret was
accepting the situation, was planning soberly to turn it to the best
advantage. Obviously, much hung upon this unconventional, this
vulgarly-sensational marriage being diplomatically announced to the
person from whom she expected to get an income of her own. "No," said
she to Joshua, in response to his nervously-made offer. "You must wait
down in the office while I tell her. At the proper time I'll send for
you."
She spoke friendlily enough, with an inviting suggestion of their common
interests. But Craig found it uncomfortable even to look at her. Now
that the crisis was over his weaknesses were returning; he could not
believe he had dared bear off this "delicate, refined creature," this
woman whom "any one can see at a glance is a patrician of patricians."
That kind of nervousness as quickly spreads through every part, moral,
mental and physical, of a man not sure of himself as a fire through a
haystack. He could not conceal his awe of her. She saw that something
was wrong with him; being herself in no "patrician" mood, but, on the
contrary, in a mood that was most humanly plebeian, she quite missed the
cause of his clumsy embarrassment and constraint; she suspected a sudden
physical ailment. "It'll be some time, I expect," said she. "Don't
bother to hang around. I'll send a note to the desk, and you can
inquire--say, in half an hour or so."
"Half an hour!" he cried in dismay. Whatever should he do with himself,
alone with these returned terrors, and with no Margaret there to make
him ashamed not to give braver battle to them.
"An hour, then."
She nodded, shook hands with a blush and a smile, not without its gleam
of appreciation of the queerness of the situation. He lifted his hat,
made a nervous, formal bow and turned away, though no car was there. As
the elevator was starting up with her he came hurrying back.
"One moment," he said. "I quite forgot."
She joined him and they stood aside, in the shelter of a great
wrap-rack. "You can tell your grandmother--it may help to smooth things
over--that my appointment as Attorney-General will be announced day
after to-morrow."
"Oh!" exclaimed she, her eyes lighting up.
He went on to explain. "As you know, the President didn't want to give
it to me. But I succeeded in drawing him into a position where he either
had to give it to me or seem to be retiring me because I had so
vigorously attacked the big rascals he's suspected of being privately
more than half in sympathy with."
"She'll be delighted!" exclaimed Margaret.
"And you?" he asked with awkward wistfulness.
"I?" said she blushing and dropping her glance. "Is it necessary for you
to ask?"
She went back to the elevator still more out of humor with herself. She
had begun their married life with what was very nearly a--well, it
certainly was an evasion; for she cared nothing about his political
career, so soon to end. However, she was glad of the appointment,
because the news of it would be useful in calming and reconciling her
grandmother. Just as her spirits began to rise it flashed into her mind:
"Why, that's how it happens I'm married! If he hadn't been successful in
getting the office he wouldn't have come.... He maneuvered the President
into a position where he had to give him what he wanted. Then he came
here and maneuvered me into a position where _I_ had to give him what he
wanted. Always his 'game!' No sincerity or directness anywhere in him,
and very little real courage." Here she stopped short in the full swing
of pharisaism, smiled at herself in dismal self-mockery. "And what am
_I_ doing? Playing MY 'game.' I'm on my way now to maneuver my
grandmother. We are well suited--he and I. In another walk of life we
might have been a pair of swindlers, playing into each other's hands....
And yet I don't believe we're worse than most people. Why, most people
do these things without a thought of their being--unprincipled. And,
after all, I'm not harming anybody, am I? That is, anybody but myself."
She had her campaign carefully laid out; she had mapped it in the cab
between the parsonage and the hotel. "Grandmother," she began as the old
lady looked up with a frown because of her long, unexpected absence, "I
must tell you that just before we left Washington Craig broke the
engagement."
Madam Bowker half-started from her chair. "Broke the engagement!" she
cried in dismay.
"Abruptly and, apparently, finally. I--I didn't dare tell you before."
She so longed for sympathy that she half-hoped the old lady would show
signs of being touched by the plight which that situation meant. But no
sign came. Instead, Madam Bowker pierced her with wrathful eyes and said
in a furious voice: "This is frightful! And you have done nothing?" She
struck the floor violently with her staff. "He must be brought to a
sense of honor--of decency! He must! Do you hear? It was your fault, I
am sure. If he does not marry you are ruined!"
"He came over this morning," pursued Margaret. "He wanted to marry me at
once."
"You should have given him no chance to change his mind again," cried
Madam Bowker. "What a trifler you are! No seriousness! Your intelligence
all in the abstract; only folly and fritter for your own affairs. You
should have given him no chance to change!"
Margaret closed in and struck home. "I didn't," said she tersely. "I
married him."
The old lady stared. Then, as she realized how cleverly Margaret had
trapped her, she smiled a grim smile of appreciation and forgiveness.
"Come and kiss me," said she. "You will do something, now that you have
a chance. No woman has a chance--no LADY--until she is a Mrs. It's the
struggle to round that point that wrecks so many of them."
Margaret kissed her. "And," she went on, "he has been made
Attorney-General."
Never, never had Margaret seen such unconcealed satisfaction in her
grandmother's face. The stern, piercing eyes softened and beamed
affection upon the girl; all the affection she had deemed it wise to
show theretofore always was tempered with sternness. "What a pity he
hasn't money," said she. "Still, it can be managed, after a fashion."
"We MUST have money," pursued the girl. "Life with him, without it,
would be intolerable. Poor people are thrown so closely together. He is
too much for my nerves--often."
"He's your property now," Madam Bowker reminded her. "You must not
disparage your own property. Always remember that your husband is your
property. Then your silly nerves will soon quiet down."
"We must have money," repeated Margaret. "A great deal of money."
"You know I can't give you a great deal," said the old lady
apologetically. "I'll do my best.... Would you like to live with me?"
There was something so fantastic in the idea of Joshua Craig and Madam
Bowker living under the same roof, and herself trying to live with them,
that Margaret burst out laughing. The old lady frowned; then,
appreciating the joke, she joined in. "You'll have to make up your mind
to live very quietly. Politics doesn't pay well--not Craig's branch of
it, except in honor. He will be very famous."
"Where?" retorted Margaret disdainfully. "Why, with a lot of people who
aren't worth considering. No, I am going to take Joshua out of
politics."
The old lady looked interest and inquiry.
"He has had several flattering offers to be counsel to big corporations.
The things he has done against them have made them respect and want him.
I'm going to get him to leave politics and practice law in New York.
Lawyers there--the shrewd ones, like him--make fortunes. He can still
speak occasionally and get all the applause he wants. Joshua loves
applause."
The old lady was watching her narrowly.
"Don't you think I'm right, Grandma? I'm telling you because I want your
opinion."
"Will he do it?"
Margaret laughed easily. "He's afraid of me. If I manage him well he'll
do whatever I wish. I can make him realize he has no right to deprive
myself and him of the advantages of my station."
"Um--um," said the old lady, half to herself. "Yes--yes--perhaps.
Um--um--"
"He will be much more content once he's settled in the new line.
Politics as an end is silly--what becomes of the men who stick to it?
But politics as a means is sensible, and Joshua has got out of it about
all he can get--about all he needs."
"He hopes to be President."
"So do thousands of other men. And even if he should get it how would we
live--how would _I_ live--while we were waiting--and after it was over?
I detest politics--all those vulgar people." Margaret made a disdainful
mouth. "It isn't for our sort of people--except, perhaps, the diplomatic
posts, and they, of course, go by 'pull' or purchase. I like the life
I've led--the life you've led. You've made me luxurious and lazy,
Grandma.... Rather than President I'd prefer him to be ambassador to
England, after a while, when we could afford it. We could have a great
social career."
"You think you can manage him?" repeated Madam Bowker.
She had been simply listening, her thoughts not showing at the surface.
Her tone was neither discouraging nor encouraging, merely interrogative.
But Margaret scented a doubt. "Don't you think so?" she said a little
less confidently.
"I don't know.... I don't know.... It will do no harm to try."
Margaret's expression was suddenly like a real face from which a mask
has dropped. "I must do it, Grandma. If I don't I shall--I shall HATE
him! I will not be his servant! When I think of the humiliations he has
put upon me I--I almost hate him now!"
Madam Bowker was alarmed, but was too wise to show it. She laughed. "How
seriously you take yourself, child," said she. "All that is very young
and very theatrical. What do birth and breeding mean if not that one has
the high courage to bear what is, after all, the lot of most women, and
the high intelligence to use one's circumstances, whatever they may be,
to accomplish one's ambitions? A lady cannot afford to despise her
husband. A lady is, first of all, serene. You talk like a Craig rather
than like a Severance. If he can taint you this soon how long will it be
before you are at his level? How can you hope to bring him up to yours?"
Margaret's head was hanging.
"Never again let me hear you speak disrespectfully of your husband, my
child," the old lady went on impressively. "And if you are wise you will
no more permit yourself to harbor a disrespectful thought of him than
you would permit yourself to wear unclean underclothes."
Margaret dropped down at her grandmother's knee, buried her face in her
lap. "I don't believe I can ever love him," she murmured.
"So long as you believe that, you never can," said Madam Bowker; "and
your married life will be a failure--as great a failure as mine was--as
your mother's was. If I had only known what I know now--what I am
telling you--" Madam Bowker paused, and there was a long silence in the
room. "Your married life, my dear," she went on, "will be what you
choose to make of it. You have a husband. Never let yourself indulge in
silly repinings or ruinous longings. Make the best of what you have.
Study your husband, not ungenerously and superciliously, but with eyes
determined to see the virtues that can be developed, the faults that can
be cured, and with eyes that will not linger on the faults that can't be
cured. Make him your constant thought and care. Never forget that you
belong to the superior sex."
"I don't feel that I do," said Margaret. "I can't help feeling women are
inferior and wishing I'd been a man."
"That is because you do not think," replied Madam Bowker indulgently.
"Children are the center of life--its purpose, its fulfillment. All
normal men and women want children above everything else. Our only title
to be here is as ancestors--to replace ourselves with wiser and better
than we. That makes woman the superior of man; she alone has the power
to give birth. Man instinctively knows this, and it is his fear of
subjection to woman that makes him sneer at and fight against every
effort to develop her intelligence and her independence. If you are a
true woman, worthy of your race and of your breeding, you will never
forget your superiority--or the duties it imposes on you--what you owe
to your husband and to your children. You are a married woman now.
Therefore you are free. Show that you deserve freedom and know how to
use it."
Margaret listened to the old woman with a new respect for her--and for
herself. "I'll try, Grandmother," she said soberly. "But--it won't be
easy." A reflective silence, and she repeated, "No, not easy."
"Easier than to resist and repine and rage and hunt another man who, on
close acquaintance, would prove even less satisfactory," replied her
grandmother. "Easy--if you honestly try." She looked down at the girl
with the sympathy that goes out to inexperience from those who have
lived long and thoughtfully and have seen many a vast and fearful bogy
loom and, on nearer view, fade into a mist of fancy. "Above all, child,
don't waste your strength on imaginary griefs and woes--you'll have none
left for the real trials."
Margaret had listened attentively; she would remember what the old lady
had said--indeed, it would have been hard to forget words so direct and
so impressively uttered. But at the moment they made small impression
upon her. She thought her grandmother kindly but cold. In fact, the old
lady was giving her as deep commiseration as her broader experience
permitted in the circumstances, some such commiseration as one gives a
child who sees measureless calamity in a rainy sky on a long-anticipated
picnic morning.