Why did we go to Brooklyn?
By the time Edna and I had been married six years I learned many things
about her inmost self. I was not at all analytic or critical as to
matters at home. I used my intelligence in my own business; I assumed
that my wife had intelligence and that she used it in her business--her
part of our joint business. I believed the reason her part of it went
badly was solely the natural conditions of life beyond her control. A
railroad, a factory could be run smoothly; a family and a household
were different matters. And I admired my wife as much as I loved her,
and regarded her as a wonderful woman, which, indeed, in certain
respects she was.
But I had discovered in her several weaknesses. Some of these I knew;
others I did not permit myself to know that I knew. For example, I
was perfectly aware that she was not so truthful as one might be. But
I did not let myself admit that she was not always unconscious of
her own deviations from the truth. I had gained enough experience of
life to learn that lying is practically a universal weakness. So I
did not especially mind it in her, often found it amusing. I had not
then waked up to the fact that, as a rule, women systematically lie to
their husbands about big things and little, and that those women who
profess to be too proud to lie, do their lying by indirections, such as
omissions, half truths, and misleading silences. I am not criticising.
Self-respect, real personal pride, I have discovered in spite of the
reading matter of all kinds about the past, is a modern development,
is still in embryo; and those of us who profess to be the proudest are
either the most ignorant of ourselves or the most hypocritical.
But back to my acquaintance with my wife’s character. When I told her
we should have to live nearer my work, my new work, than Passaic, she
promptly said:
“Let’s go to Brooklyn.”
“Why not to New York?” said I. “At least until I get thoroughly
trained, I want to be close to the office.”
“But there’s Margot,” said she. “Margot must have a place to play in.
And we couldn’t afford such a place in New York. I can’t let her run
about the streets or go to public schools. She’d pick up all sorts of
low, coarse associates and habits.”
“Then let’s go to some town opposite--across the Hudson. If we can’t
live on Manhattan Island, and I think you’re right about Margot, why,
let’s live where living is cheap. We ought to be saving some money.”
“I hate these Jersey towns,” said Edna petulantly. “I don’t think
Margot would get the right sort of social influences in them.”
As soon as she said “social influences” I should have understood the
whole business. The only person higher up on the social ladder with
whom Edna had been able to scrape intimate acquaintance in Passaic was
a dowdy, tawdry chatterbox of a woman--I forget her name--who talked
incessantly of the fashionable people she knew in Brooklyn--how she had
gone there a stranger, had joined St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, and had
at once become a social favorite, invited to “the very best houses,
my dear; such lovely homes,” and associated with “the most charming
cultured people,” and so on and on--you know the rest of the humbug.
Now, one of the discoveries about my wife which I but half understood
and made light of, had been that she was mad, literally mad, on the
subject of social climbing. That means she was possessed of the disease
imported into this country from England, where it has raged for upward
of half a century--the disease of being bent upon associating by hook
or by crook with people whose strongest desire seems to be not to
associate with you. This plague does not spare the male population--by
no means. But it rages in and ravages the female population almost to
a woman. Our women take incidental interest or no interest in their
homes, in their husbands, in their children. Their hearts are centered
upon social position, and, of course, the money-squandering necessary
to attaining or to keeping it. The women who are “in” spend all their
time, whatever they may seem to be about, in spitting upon and kicking
the faces of the women who are trying to get “in.” The women who are
trying to get “in” spend their whole time in smiling and cringing
and imploring and plotting and, when it seems expedient, threatening
and compelling. Probe to the bottom--if you have acuteness enough,
which you probably haven’t--probe to the bottom any of the present-day
activities of the American woman, I care not what it may be, and you
will discover the bacillus of social position biting merrily away
at her. If she goes to church or to a lecture or a concert--if she
goes calling or stays at home--if she joins a suffrage movement or a
tenement reform propaganda, or refuses to join--if she dresses noisily
or plainly--if she shuns society or seeks it, if she keeps house or
leaves housekeeping to servants, roaches, and mice--if she cares for or
neglects her children--if she pets her husband or displaces him with
another--no matter what she does, it is at the behest of the poison
flowing through brain and vein from the social-position bacillus. She
thinks by doing whatever she does she will somehow make her position
more brilliant or less insecure, or, having no position at all, will
gain one.
And the men? They pay the bills. Sometimes reluctantly, again eagerly;
sometimes ignorantly, again with full knowledge. The men--they pay the
bills.
Now you know better far than I knew at the time why our happy little
family went to Brooklyn, took the house in Bedford Avenue which we
could ill afford if we were to save any money, and joined St. Mary’s.
A couple of years after we were married my wife stopped me when I was
telling her what had happened at the office that day, as was my habit.
“You ought to leave all those things outside when you come home,” said
she.
She had read this in a book somewhere, I guess. It was a new idea to
me. “Why should I?” said I.
“Home is a place for happiness, with all the sordidness shut out,”
explained she. “Those sordid things ought not to touch our life
together.”
This sounded all right. “It seemed to me,” stammered I, apologetically,
“that my career, the way I was getting on, that our bread and butter--
Well, I thought we ought to kind of talk it over together.”
“Oh, I do sympathize with you,” said, or rather quoted, she. “But my
place is to soothe and smooth away the cares of business. You ought to
try not to think of them at home.”
“But what _would_ I think about?” cried I, much perplexed. “Why, my
business is all I’ve got. It’s the most important thing in the world to
us. It means our living. At least that’s the way the thing looks to me.”
“You ought to think at home about the higher side of life--the
intellectual side.”
“But my business _is_ my intellectual side,” I said. “And I can’t for
the life of me see why thinking about things that don’t advance us and
don’t pay the bills is better than thinking about things that do.” It
seemed to me that this looking on my business as something to be left
on the mud-scraper at the entrance indicated a false idea of it got
somewhere. So I added somewhat warmly: “There’s nothing low or bad
about my business.” And that was the truth at the time.
“I don’t know anything about it,” replied she with the gentle patience
of her superior refinement and education. “And I don’t want to know.
Those things don’t interest me. And I think, Godfrey”--very sweetly,
with her cheek against mine--“the reason husbands and wives often grow
apart is that the husband gives his whole mind to his business and
doesn’t develop the higher side of his nature--the side that appeals to
a woman and satisfies her.”
This touched my sense of humor mildly. “My father gives his mind to one
of those high sides,” said I, “and we nearly starved to death.”
“Your father!” exclaimed she in derisive disgust.
“My father,” said I cheerfully, “he does nothing but read, talk, and
think politics.”
“Politics! _That_ isn’t on the higher side. Women don’t care anything
about _that_.”
“Well, what do they care about?” I inquired.
“About music and literature--and those artistic things.”
“Oh, those things are all right,” said I. “But I don’t see that it
takes any more brains or any better brains to paint a picture or sing a
song or write a novel than it does to run a railroad--or to plan one.
If you’d try to understand business, dear,” I urged, “you might find
it as interesting and as intellectual as anything that doesn’t help us
make a living. Anyhow, I’ve simply got to give my brains to my work.
You go ahead and attend to the higher side for the family. I’ll stick
to the job that butters the bread and keeps the rain off.”
She was patient with me, but I saw she didn’t approve. However, as I
knew she’d approve still less if I failed to provide for her and the
two young ones--there were two at that time--I let the matter drop and
held to the common-sense course. I hadn’t the faintest notion of the
seriousness of that little talk of ours. And it was well I hadn’t, for
to have made her realize her folly I’d have had to start in and educate
her--uneducate her and then reëducate her. I don’t blame the women. I
feel sorry for them. When I hear them talk about the lack of sympathy
between themselves and American men, about the low ideals and the
sordid talk the men indulge in, how dull it is, how different from the
inspiring, cultured talk a woman hears among the aristocrats abroad,
said aristocrats being supported in helpless idleness throughout their
useless lives, often by hard-earned American dollars--when I hear this
pitiful balderdash from fair lips, I grow sad. The American woman
fancies she is growing away from the American man. The truth is that
while she is sitting still, playing with a lapful of the artificial
flowers of fake culture, like a poor doodle-wit, the American man is
growing away from her. She knows nothing of value; she can do nothing
of value. She has nothing to offer the American man but her physical
charms, for he has no time or taste for playing with artificial flowers
when the world’s important work is to be done. So the poor creature
grows more isolated, more neglected, less respected, and less sought,
except in a physical way. And all the while she hugs to her bosom the
delusion that she is the great soul high sorrowful. The world moves;
many are the penalties for the nation or the race or the sex that does
not move with it, or does not move quickly enough. I feel sorry for the
American woman--unless she has a father who will leave her rich or a
husband who will give her riches.
I feel some of my readers saying that I must have been most unfortunate
in the women I have known. Perhaps. But may it not be that those
commiserating readers have been rarely fortunate in their feminine
acquaintances?--or in lack of insight?
Now you probably not only know why we went to Brooklyn, but also
what we did after we got there. I have not forgotten my promise to
gentle reader. I shall not linger many moments in Brooklyn. True, it
is superior to Passaic, at least to the part of Passaic in which I
constrained gentle reader to tarry a minute or two. But it is still far
from the promised heights.
My wife owes a vast deal to Brooklyn. As she haughtily ignores the
debt, would deny it if publicly charged, I shall pay it for her.
Brooklyn was her finishing school. It made her what she is.
In the last year or so we spent in Passaic there had been, as I have
hinted, a marked outward change in all three of us. The least, or
rather the least abrupt, change had been in me. Associated in business
with a more prosperous and better-dressed and better-educated class of
men, I had gradually picked up the sort of knowledge a man needs to fit
himself for the inevitably changing social conditions accompanying a
steady advance in material prosperity. I was as quick to learn one kind
of useful thing as another. And just as I learned how to fill larger
and larger positions and how to make money out of the chances that
come to a man situated where money is to be made, so I learned how to
dress like a man of the better class, how to speak a less slangy and
a less ungrammatical English, how to use my mind in thinking and in
discussing a thousand subjects not directly related to my business.
If my wife had been interested in any of the important things of the
world, I could have been of the greatest assistance to her and she
to me. And we should have grown ever closer together in sympathetic
companionship. But although she had a good mind--a superior mind--she
cared about nothing but the things that interest foolish women and
still more foolish men--for a man who cares about splurge and show and
social position and such nonsense is less excusable, is more foolish,
than a woman of the same sort. Women have the excuse of lack of serious
occupation, but what excuse has a man? Still, she was not idle--not for
a minute. She was, on the contrary, in her way as busy as I. From time
to time she would say to me enigmatically: “You don’t appreciate it,
but I am preparing myself to help you fill the station your business
ability will win us a chance at.” It seemed to me that I was doing
that alone. For what was necessary to fill that station but higher and
higher skill as a man of affairs?
When we had made our entry in Brooklyn and had seated ourselves in
the state in Bedford Avenue which she had decided for, she showed
that she felt immensely proud of herself. We took the house furnished
throughout--nicely furnished in a substantial way, for it had been the
home of one of the old Brooklyn mercantile families.
“It’s good enough to start with,” said she, casting a critical glance
round the sober, homelike dining room. “I shan’t make any changes till
I look about me.”
“We couldn’t be better off,” said I. “Everything is perfectly
comfortable.” And in fact neither she nor I had ever before known what
comfort was. Looking at that house--merely looking at it and puzzling
out the uses of the various things to us theretofore unknown--was about
as important in the way of education as learning to read is to a child.
“It’s good enough for Brooklyn,” said she. She regarded me with her
patient, tender expression of the superior intelligence. “You haven’t
much imagination or ambition, Godfrey,” she went on. “But fortunately
_I_ have. And do be careful not to betray us before the servants I’m
engaging.”
The show part of the house continued to look about as it had when we
took possession. But the living part went to pieces rapidly. We had
many servants. We spent much money--so much that, if I had not been
speculating in various ways, we should have soon gone under. But the
results were miserably poor. My wife left everything to her servants
and devoted herself to her social career. The ex-Brooklyn society woman
at Passaic had not deceived her. No sooner had she joined St. Mary’s
than she began to have friends--friends of a far higher social rank
than she had ever even seen at close range before. They were elegant
people indeed--the wives of the heads of departments in big stores, the
families of bank officers and lawyers and doctors. There were even a
few rather rich people. My wife was in ecstasy for a year or two. And
she improved rapidly in looks, in dress, in manners, in speech, in all
ways except in disposition and character.
Except in disposition and character. As we grow older and rise in the
world, there is always a deterioration both in disposition and in
character. A man’s disposition grows sharper through dealing with,
and having to deal sharply with, incompetence. The character tends
to harden as he is forced to make the unpleasant and often not too
scrupulous moves necessary to getting himself forward toward success.
Also, the way everyone tries to use a successful man makes him more and
more acute in penetrating to the real motives of his fellow beings,
more and more inclined to take up men for what he can get out of them
and drop them when he has squeezed out all the advantage--in brief,
to treat them precisely as they treat him. But the whole object in
having a home, a wife, a family, is defeated if the man has not there
a something that checks the tendencies to cynicism and coldness which
active life not merely encourages but even compels.
There was no occasion for Edna’s becoming vixenish and hard. It was
altogether due to the idiotic and worthless social climbing. She had
a swarm of friends, yet not a single friend. She cultivated people
socially, and they cultivated her, not for the natural and kindly and
elevating reasons, but altogether for the detestable purposes of that
ghastly craze for social position. Edna was bitter against me for a
long time, never again became fully reconciled, because I soon flatly
refused to have anything to do with it.
“They will think there’s something wrong about you, and about me, if
you don’t come with me,” pleaded she.
“I need my strength for my business,” said I. “And what do I care
whether they think well or ill of me? They don’t give us any money.”
“You are _so_ sordid!” cried she. “Sometimes I’m almost tempted to give
up, and not try to be somebody and to make somebodies of Margot and
you.”
“I wish you would,” said I. “Why shouldn’t we live quietly and mind our
own business and be happy?”
“How fortunate it is for Margot that she has a mother with ambition and
pride!”
“Well--no matter. But please do get another cook. This one is, if
anything, worse than the last--except when we have company.”
We were forever changing cooks. The food that came on our table was
something atrocious. I heard the same complaint from all my married
associates at the office, even from the higher officials who were
rich men and lived in great state. They, too, had American wives. In
the markets and shops I saw as I passed along all sorts of attractive
things to eat, and of real quality. I wondered why we never had those
things on our table. Heaven knows we spent money enough. The time came
when I got a clew to the mystery.
One day Edna said: “I’ve been doing my housekeeping altogether by
telephone. I think I’ll stop it, except on rainy days and when I don’t
feel well.”
By telephone! I laughed to myself. No wonder we had poor stuff and
paid the highest prices for it. I thought a while, then to satisfy
my curiosity began to ask questions, very cautiously, for Edna was
extremely touchy, as we all are in matters where in our hearts we know
we are in the wrong. “Do you remember what kind of range we have in our
kitchen?” I asked.
“I?” exclaimed she disgustedly. “Certainly not. I haven’t been down to
the kitchen since we first moved into this house. I’ve something better
to do than to meddle with the servants.”
“Naturally,” said I soothingly. And I didn’t let her see how her
confession amused me. What if a man tried to run his business in that
fashion! And ordering by telephone! Why, it was an invitation to the
tradespeople to swindle us in every way. But I said nothing.
As usually either it was bad weather or Edna was not feeling well, or
was in a rush to keep some social engagement, the ordering for the
house continued to be done by telephone, when it was not left entirely
to the discretion of the servants. One morning it so happened that she
and I left the house at the same time. Said she:
“I’m on my way to do the marketing. It’s a terrible nuisance, and I
know so little about those things. But it’s coming to be regarded as
fashionable for a woman to do her own marketing. Some of the best
families--people with their own carriages and servants in livery--some
of the swellest ladies in Brooklyn do it now. It’s a fad from across
the river.”
“You must be careful not to overtax yourself,” said I.
And I said it quite seriously, for in those days of my innocence I was
worried about her, thought her a poor overworked angel, was glad I had
the money to relieve her from the worst tasks and to leave her free to
amuse herself and to take care of her health! I had not yet started in
the direction of ridding myself of the masculine delusion that woman
is a delicate creature by nature if she happens to be a lady--and of
course I knew my Edna was a lady through and through. It was many a
year before I learned the truth--why ladies are always ailing and why
they can do nothing but wear fine clothes and sit in parlors or in
carriages when they are not sitting at indigestible food, and amuse
themselves and pity themselves for being condemned to live with coarse,
uninteresting American men.
Yes, I was sincere in urging her to take care how she adopted so
laborious a fad as doing her own marketing. She went on:
“If I had a carriage it wouldn’t be so bad.”
She said this sweetly enough and with no suggestion of reproach. Just
the sigh of a lady’s soul at the hardness of life’s conditions. But
I, loving her, felt as if I were somehow to blame. “You shall have a
carriage before many years,” said I. “That’s one of the things I’ve
been working for.”
She gave me a look that made me feel proud I had her to live for. “I
hope I’ll be here to enjoy it,” sighed she.
I walked sad and silent by her side, profoundly impressed and depressed
by that hint as to her feeble health. I know now it was sheer pretense
with her, the more easily to manage me and to cover her shortcomings. I
ought to have realized it then. But what man does? She certainly did
not look ill, for she was not one of those who were always stuffing
themselves at teas and lunches, and talked of a walk of five blocks
as hard exercise! She had learned how to keep health and beauty. What
intelligence it shows, that she was able to grasp so difficult a
matter; and what splendid persistence that she was able to carry out a
mode of life so disagreeable to self-indulgence. If her intelligence
and her persistence could have been turned to use! Presently we were
at the butcher shop. I paused in the doorway while she engaged in her
arduous labor. Here is the conversation:
“Good morning, Mr. Toomey.” (Very gracious; the lady speaking to the
trades person.)
“Good morning, ma’am.” (Fat little butcher touching cracked and
broken-nailed hand to hat respectfully.)
“That lamb you sent yesterday was very tough.”
“Sorry, ma’am. But those kind of things will happen, you know.” (Most
flatteringly humble of manner.)
“Yes, I know. Do your best. I’m sure you try to please. Send me--let me
see--say, two chickens for broiling. You’ll pick out nice ones?”
“Yes, indeed, ma’am. I’ll attend to it myself.”
“And something for the servants. You know what they like.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll attend to it.”
“And you’ll not overcharge, will you?”
“I, ma’am? I’ve been dealing with ladies for twenty years, right here,
ma’am. I never have overcharged.”
“I know. All the ladies tell me you’re honest. I feel safe with you.
Let me see, there were some other things. But I’m in a hurry. The cook
will tell your boy when he takes what I’ve ordered. You’ll be sure to
give me the best?”
“I’d not dare send anything else to _you_, ma’am.” (Groveling.)
A gracious smile, a gracious nod, and Edna rejoined me. Innocent as
I was, and under the spell that blinds the American man where the
American woman is concerned, I could not but be upset by this example
of how our house was run--an example that all in an instant brought
to my mind and enabled me to understand a score, a hundred similar
examples. There was I, toiling away to make money, earning every dollar
by the hardest kind of mental labor, struggling to rise, to make our
fortune, and each day my wife was tossing carelessly out of the windows
into the street a large part of my earnings. I did not know what to do
about it.
Edna’s next stop was at the grocer’s. I had not the courage to halt
and listen. I knew it would be a repetition of the grotesque interview
with the butcher. And she undoubtedly a clever woman--alert, improving.
What a mystery! I went on to my office. That day, without giving my
acquaintances there an inkling of what was in my mind, I made inquiries
into how their wives spent the money that went for food--the most
important item in the spending of incomes under ten or twelve thousand
a year. In every case the wife or the mother did the marketing by
telephone. All the men except one took the ignorance and incompetence
of the management of the household expenses as a matter of course. One
man grumbled a little. I remember he said: “No wonder it’s hard for the
men to save anything. The women waste most of it on the table, paying
double prices for poor stuff. I tell you, Loring, the American woman
is responsible for the dishonesty of American commercial life. They
are always nagging at the man for more and more money to spend, and in
spending it they tempt the merchants, the clerks, their own servants,
everyone within range, to become swindlers and thieves.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said I. “You’re a pessimist. The American woman is all
right. Where’d you find her equal for intelligence and charm?”
“She may be intelligent,” said he. “She doesn’t use it on anything
worth while, except roping in some poor sucker to put up _for_ her and
to put up _with_ her. And she may have charm, but not for a man who has
cut his matrimonial eye teeth.”
I laughed at Van Dyck--that was my grumbling friend’s name. And I soon
dropped the subject from my mind. It has never been my habit to waste
time in thinking about things when the thinking could not possibly
lead anywhere. You may say I ought to have interfered, forced my wife
to come to her senses, compelled her to learn her business. Which
shows that you know little about the nature of the American woman.
If I had taken that course, she would have hated me, she would have
done no better, and she would have scorned me as a sordid haggler over
small sums of money who was trying to spoil with the vulgarities of
commercial life the beauties of the home. No, I instinctively knew
enough not to interfere.
* * * * *
But let us take a long leap forward to the day when I became president
of the railroad, having made myself a rich man by judicious gambling
with eight thousand dollars loaned me by father Wheatlands. He was a
rich man, and in the way to become very rich, and he had no heir but
Edna after the drowning of her two brothers under a sailboat in Newark
Bay. Margot was in a fashionable school over in New York. My wife and
I, still a young couple and she beautiful--my wife and I were as happy
as any married couple can be where they let each other alone and the
husband gives the wife all the money she wishes and leaves her free to
spend it as she pleases.
When I told her of my good fortune, and the sudden and large betterment
of our finances, she said with a curious lighting of the eyes, a
curious strengthening of the chin:
“Now--for New York!”
“New York?” said I. “What does that mean?”
“We are going to live in New York,” replied she.
“But we do live in New York. Brooklyn is part of New York.”
“Legally I suppose it is,” replied she. “But morally and æsthetically,
socially, and in every other civilized way, my dear Godfrey, it is part
of the backwoods. I can hardly wait to get away.”
“Why, I thought you were happy here!” exclaimed I, marveling, used
though I was to her keeping her own counsel strictly about the matters
that most interested her. “You’ve certainly acted as if you loved it.”
“I didn’t _mind_ it at first,” conceded she. “But for two or three
years I have _loathed_ it, and everybody that lives in it.”
I was amazed at this last sally. “Oh, come now, Edna,” cried I, “you’ve
got lots of friends here--lots and lots of them.”
I was thinking of the dozen or so women whom she called and who called
her by the first name, women she was with early and late. Women she was
daily playing bridge with-- Bridge! I have a friend who declares that
bridge is ruining the American home, and I see his point, but I think
he doesn’t look deep enough. If it weren’t bridge it would be something
else. Bridge is a striking example, but only a single example, of the
results of feminine folly and idleness that all flow from the same
cause. However, let us go back to my talk with Edna. She met my protest
in behalf of her friends with a contemptuous:
“I don’t know a soul who isn’t _frightfully_ common.”
“They’re the same sort of people we are.”
“Not the same sort that _I_ am,” declared she proudly. “And not the
sort Margot and you are going to be. You’ll see. You don’t know about
these things. But fortunately I do.”
“You don’t seriously mean that you want to leave this splendid old
house----”
“Splendid? It’s hardly fit to live in. Of course, we had to endure it
while we were poor and obscure. But now it won’t do at all.”
“And go away from all these people you’ve worked so hard to get in
with--all these friends--go away among strangers. _I_ don’t mind. But
what would _you_ do? How’d you pass the days?”
“These vulgar people bore me to death,” declared she. “I’ve been
advancing, if you have stood still. Thank God, _I’ve_ got ambition.”
“Heaven knows they’ve never been _my_ friends,” said I. “But I must say
they seem nice enough people, as people go. What’s the matter with ’em?”
“They’re common,” said she with the languor of one explaining when he
feels he will not be understood. “They’re tiresome.”
“I’ll admit they’re tiresome,” said I. “That’s why I’ve kept away from
them. But I doubt if they’re more tiresome than people generally. The
fact is, my dear, people are all tiresome. That’s why they can’t amuse
themselves or each other, but have to be amused--have to hire the
clever people of all sorts to entertain them. Instead of asking people
here to bore us and to be bored, why not send them seats at a theater
or orders for a first-class meal at a first-class restaurant?”
“I suppose you think that’s funny,” said my wife. She had no sense of
humor, and the suggestion of a jest irritated her.
“Yes, it does strike me as funny,” I admitted. “But there’s sense in
it, too.... I’m sure you don’t want to abandon your friends here.
Why make ourselves uncomfortable all over again?” I took a serious
persuasive tone. “Edna, we’re beginning to get used to the more stylish
way of living we took up when we left Passaic and came here to live. Is
it sensible to branch out again into the untried and the unknown? Will
we be any wiser or any happier? You can shine as the big star now in
this circle of friends. You like to run things socially. Here’s your
chance.”
“How could I get any pleasure out of running things socially in St.
Mary’s?” demanded she. “I’ve outgrown it. It seems vulgar and common to
me. It is vulgar and common.”
“What does that mean?” I asked innocently.
“If you don’t understand, I can’t tell you,” replied she tartly.
“Surely you must see that your wife and your daughter are superior to
these people round here.”
“I don’t compare my wife and daughter with other people,” said I. “To
me they’re superior to anybody and everybody else in the world. I often
wish we lived ’way off in the country somewhere. I’m sure we’d be
happier with only each other. We’re putting on too much style to suit
me, even now.”
“I see you living in the country,” laughed she. “You’d come down about
once a week or month.”
I couldn’t deny the truth in her accusation. I felt it ought to have
been that my wife and I were so sympathetic, so interested in the same
things, that we were absorbed in each other. But the facts were against
it. We really had almost nothing in common. I admired her beauty and
also her intelligence and energy, though I thought them misdirected.
She, I think, liked me in the primitive way of a woman with a man. And
she admired my ability to make money, though she thought it rather a
low form of intellectual excellence. However, as she found it extremely
useful, she admired me for it in a way. I have seen much of the
aristocratic temperament that despises money, but I have yet to see an
aristocrat who wasn’t greedier than the greediest money-grubber--and
I must say it is hard to conceive anything lower than the spirit
that grabs the gift and despises the giver. But then, some day, when
thinking is done more clearly, we shall all see that aristocracy and
its spirit is the lowest level of human nature, is simply a deep-seated
survival of barbarism. However, Edna and I appealed to and satisfied
each other in one way; beyond that our congeniality abruptly ended.
Looking back, I see now that talking _with_ her was never a pleasure,
nor was it a pleasure to her to talk _with_ me. I irritated her; she
bored me.
How rarely in our country do you find a woman who is an interesting
companion for a man, except as female and male pair or survey the
prospect of pairing? And it matters not what line of activity the man
is taking--business, politics, literature, art, philanthropy even. The
women are eternally talking about their superiority to the business
man; but do they get along any better with an artist--unless he is
cultivating the woman for the sake of an order for a picture? Is there
any line of serious endeavor in which an American woman is interesting
and helpful and companionable to a man? I can get along very well with
an artist. I have one friend who is a writer of novels, another who
is a writer of plays, a third who is a sculptor. They are interested
in my work, and I in theirs. We talk together on a basis of equal
interest, and we give each other ideas. Can any American woman say the
same? I don’t inquire anticipating a negative answer. I simply put the
question. But I suspect the answer would put a pin in the bubble of
the American woman’s pretense of superior culture. She is fooled by
her vanity, I fear, and by her sex attraction, and by the influence of
the money her despised father or husband gives her. There’s a reason
why America is notoriously the land of bachelor husbands--and that
reason is not the one the women and foreign fortune hunters assert.
The American man lets the case go by default against him, not because
he couldn’t answer, nor yet because he is polite, but _because he is
indifferent_.
But my wife was talking about her projected assault upon New York. “I
really must be an extraordinary woman,” said she. “How I have fought
all these years to raise myself, with you dragging at me to keep me
down.”
“I?” protested her unhappy husband. “Why, dear, I’ve never opposed you
in any way. And I’ve tried to do what I could to help you. You must
admit the money’s been useful.”
“Oh, you’ve never been mean about money,” conceded she. “But you don’t
sympathize with a single one of my ideals.”
“I want you to have whatever you want,” said I. “And anything I can do
to get it for you, or to help you get it, I stand ready to do.”
“Yes, I know, Godfrey, dear,” said she, giving me a long hug and a
kiss. “No woman ever had a more generous husband than I have.”
I naturally attached more importance to this burst of enthusiasm then
than I do now. And it is as well that I was thus simple-minded. How
little pleasure we would get, to be sure, if, when we are praised
or loved by anybody because we do that person a kindness, we paused
to analyze and saw the shallow selfishness of such praise or such
love. After all, it’s only human nature to like those who do as we
ask them and to dislike those who don’t; and I am not quarreling with
human nature--or with any other of the unchangeable conditions of the
universe. My own love for Edna--what was it but the natural result of
my getting what I wanted from her, all I wanted? I really troubled
myself little about her incompetence and extravagance and craze for
social position. No doubt to this day I should be-- But I am again
anticipating.
“Generous? Nonsense,” said I. “It isn’t generous to try to make you
happy. That’s my one chance of being happy myself. A busy man’s got to
have peace at home. If he hasn’t he’s like a soldier attacked rear and
front at the same time.”
“I know you don’t care where we live,” she went on. “And for Margot’s
sake we’ve simply got to move to New York.”
“Oh, you want her to stay at home of nights, instead of living at the
school. Why didn’t you speak of that first?”
“Not at all,” cried she. “How slow you are! No; for the present, even
if we do live in New York, I think it best for Margot to keep on
living at the school. She’s barely started there. I want her training
to be thorough. And while I’m learning as fast as I can, I am not
competent to teach her. I know, of course. But I haven’t had the chance
to practice. So I can’t teach her.”
“Teach her what?” I inquired.
“To be a lady--a practical, expert lady,” replied Edna. “That’s what
she’s going to Miss Ryper’s school for. And when she comes out she’ll
be the equal of girls who have generations of culture and breeding
behind them.”
“God bless me!” cried I, laughing. “This Ryper woman must be a wonder.”
“She is,” declared Edna. “It was a great favor, her letting Margot into
the school.”
“Oh, I remember,” said I. “She couldn’t do it until I got two of the
directors of the road to insist on it. But I guess that was merely a
bluff of hers to squeeze us for a few hundreds extra.”
“Not at all,” Edna assured me. “You are _so_ ignorant, Godfrey. Please
do be careful not to say those coarse things before people.”
“As you please,” said I, cheerfully, for I was used to this kind of
calling down. “All the same, the Ryper lady is hot for the dough.”
Edna shivered. She detested slang--continued to detest and avoid it
even after she learned that it was fashionable. “Miss Ryper guards
her list of pupils as their mothers guard their visiting lists,” said
she. “But now she likes Margot. The dear child has been elected to
the most exclusive fraternity. Every girl in it has to wear hand-made
underclothes and has to have had at least a father, a grandfather, and
a great grandfather.” Edna laughed with pride at her own cleverness
before she went on. “Margot came to me when she was proposed, and cried
as if her little heart would break. She said she didn’t know anything
about her grandfather and great grandfather. But I hadn’t forgotten to
arrange that. I think of everything.”
“Oh, that was easy enough,” said I. “Your grandfather was a tailor and
mine was in the grocery business like father.”
Edna looked round in terror. “Sh!” she exclaimed. “Servants always
listen.” She went to the door--we were in the small upstairs sitting
room--opened it suddenly, looked into the hall, closed the door,
and returned to a chair nearer the lounge on which I was stretched
comfortably smoking.
“What’s the matter?” said I.
“No one was there,” said she. “Haven’t I told you never to speak of--of
those horrible things?”
“But Margot----”
“Margot doesn’t know. She must _never_ know! Poor child, she is so
sensitive, it would make her ill.”
I lapsed into gloomy silence. I had not liked the way Edna had been
acting about her parents and mine ever since we came to Brooklyn. But I
had been busy, and was averse to meddling.
“I gave Margot for the benefit of the girls a genealogy I’ve gotten
up,” she went on. “You know all genealogies are more or less faked, and
I’ve no doubt hers is every bit as genuine as those of half the girls
over there. I fixed ours so that it would take a lot of inquiry to
expose it. And Margot got into the fraternity.”
“Are the hand-made underclothes fake too?” said I.
“Oh, no. _They_ had to be genuine. I’ve never let Margot wear any other
kind since I learned about those things. There’s nothing that gives a
child such a sense of ladylikeness and superiority as to feel she’s
dressed right from the skin out.”
“Well, school’s a different sort of a place from what it was in our
day,” said I. The picture my wife had drawn amused me, but I somehow
did not exactly like it. My mind was too little interested in the
direction of the things that absorbed Edna for me to be able to put
into any sort of shape the thoughts vaguely moving about in the
shadows. “I’ll bet,” I went on, “poor Margot doesn’t have as good a
time as we had.”
“She’d hate that kind of a time,” said Edna.
I laughed and laid my hand in her lap. Her hand stole into it. I
watched her lovely face--the sweet, dreamy expression. “What are you
thinking?” said I softly, hopeful of romance--what _I_ call romance.
“I was thinking how low and awful we used to be,” replied she, “and how
splendidly we are getting away from it.”
I laughed, for I was used to cold water on my romance. “All the same,”
insisted I, “Margot would envy us if she knew.”
“She’d hate it,” Edna repeated. “She’s going to be an improvement on
_us_.”
“Not on you,” I protested.
She looked at me with tender sparkling eyes, the same lovely
light-brown eyes that had fascinated me as a boy. Brown eyes for a
woman, always! But they must not be of the heavy commonplace shades of
brown like a deer’s or a cow’s. They must have light shades in them,
tints verging toward blue or green. Said Edna: “I’m doing my best to
fit myself. And before I get through, Godfrey, I think I’ll go far.”
“Sure you will,” said I, with no disposition to turn the cold douche
on _her_ kind of romance. What an idiot I was about her, to be sure! I
went on: “And I’ll see that you have the money to grease the toboggan
slide and make the going easy.”
She talked on happily and confidingly: “Yes, it’s best to leave Margot
another year as a boarder at Miss Ryper’s. By that time we’ll be
established over in New York, and we’ll have a proper place for her to
receive her friends. And perhaps we’ll have a few friends of our own.”
“Swell friends, eh?”
“Please don’t say swell, dear,” corrected she. “It’s such a common
word.”
“I’ve heard _you_ say it,” I protested.
“But I don’t any more. I’ve learned better. And now I’ve taught you
better.”
“Anything you like. Anybody you like,” said I. When Edna and I were
together, with our hands clasped, I was always completely under her
spell. She could do what she pleased with me, so long, of course, as
she didn’t interfere in my end of the firm. And I may add that she
never did; she hadn’t the faintest notion what I was about. They say
there are thousands of American women in the cities who know their
husbands’ places of business only as street and telephone numbers.
My wife was one of that kind. Oh, yes, from the standpoint of those
who insist that business and home should be separate, we were a model
couple.
“There’s another matter I want to talk over with you, Godfrey,” she
went on.
“That’s a lovely dress you’re wearing,” said I. “It goes so well with
your skin and your hair.”
She was delighted, and was moved to rise and look at herself in the
long mirror. She gave herself an approving glance, but not more
approving than what she saw merited. A long, slim beautiful figure;
a dress that set it off. A lovely young tip-tilted face, the face of
a girl with fresh, clear eyes and skin, the whitest, evenest sharp
teeth--and such hair!--such quantities of hair attractively arranged.
From herself she glanced at me. “No one’d ever think what we came from,
would they?” said she fondly and proudly. “Oh, Godfrey, it makes me
so happy that we _look_ the part. We belong where we’re going. The
good blood away back in the family is coming out. And Margot-- I’ve
always called her the little duchess--and she looks it and feels it.”
Dreamily, “Maybe she will be some day.”
“Why, she’s a baby,” cried I. For I didn’t like to see that my baby was
growing up.
“She’s nearly fourteen,” said Edna. She was looking at herself again.
“Would you ever think _I_ had a daughter fourteen years old?” said
she, making a laughing, saucy face at me.
I got up and kissed her. “You don’t look as old as you did when I
married you,” said I, and it was only a slight exaggeration.
When we sat again, she was snuggled into my lap with her head against
my shoulder. She was immensely fond of being petted. They say this is
no sign of a loving nature, that cats, the least loving of all pets,
are fondest of petting. I have no opinion on the subject.
“What was it you wanted to talk about?” said I. “Money?”
“No, indeed,” laughed she.
“I supposed so, as that’s the only matter in which I have any influence
in this family.”
“Come to think of it,” said she, “it _is_ money--in a way. It’s
about--our parents.” She gave a deep sigh. “Godfrey, they hang over me
like a nightmare!”
Her tragic seriousness amused me. “Oh, cheer up,” said I, kissing her.
“They certainly don’t fit in with our stylishness. But they’re away off
there in Passaic, and bother us as little as we bother them. The truth
is, Edna, we’ve not acted right. We’ve been selfish--spending all our
prosperity on ourselves. Of course, they’ve got everything they really
want, but--well----”
“That’s exactly it,” said she eagerly. “My conscience has been hurting
me. We ought to--to-- It wouldn’t cost much to make them perfectly
comfortable--so they’d not have to work--and could get away from the
grocery--and the--and the”--she hesitated before saying “father’s
business,” as if nerving herself to pronounce words of shame. And when
she did finally force out the evading “father’s business,” it was with
such an accent that I couldn’t help laughing outright.
“Undertaking’s a good-paying business,” said I. “We certainly ought to
be grateful to it. It supplied the eight thousand dollars that gave me
the chance to buy half the rolling mill. And you know the rolling mill
was the start of our fortune.”
“Do you think father could be induced to retire?” she asked.
“Never,” said I. “Your father’s a rich man, for Passaic. He’s got two
hundred thousand at least hived away in tenements that pay from twenty
to thirty-five per cent. And his business now brings in ten to fifteen
thousand a year straight along.”
“You can make _your_ father retire?”
I laughed. “Poor dad! I’ve been keeping him from being retired by the
sheriff. He’s squeezing out a bare living. He’d be delighted to stop
and have all his time for talking politics and religion.”
“You could buy them a nice place a little way out in the country, on
some quiet road. I’m sure your mother and your old maid sister would
love it.”
“Perhaps,” said I. “If it wasn’t _too_ quiet.”
“But it must be quiet. And we’ll induce my father and mother to buy a
place near by.”
“Your father’ll not give up the business.”
“I’ve thought it all out,” said Edna, whose mind was equal to whatever
task she gave it. “You must get some one to offer him a price he simply
can’t refuse, and make a condition that he shall not go into business
again. Aren’t those things done?”
I was somewhat surprised, but not much, at the knowledge of business
this displayed. “Why!--Why!” laughed I. “And you pretend to know
nothing about business!”
She was in a sensible, loving mood that day. So she said with a quiet
little laugh: “I make it a point to know anything that’s useful to me.
I don’t know much about business. Why should I bother with it? I’ve got
confidence in you.”
It was not the first time I had got a peep into her mind and had
seen how she looked on everyone, including me, as a wheel in her
machine, and never interfered unless the wheel didn’t work to suit
her. I laughed delightedly. There was something charmingly feminine,
thought I, about this point of view so upside down. “Yes, I guess your
father’ll jump for the bait you suggest,” said I. “But why disturb him?
He loves his undertaking.”
She shivered.
“And he’ll be miserable idling about.”
“Oh, I guess he’ll get along all right,” said she, with sarcasm and
with truth. “He’ll devote himself to suing his tenants and counting his
money.... Godfrey, you simply must get those people in Passaic out of
our way. I’ve been a little nervous over here, though I knew that none
of these dreadful people we associate with has anything better in the
way of family than us, and some have a lot worse. Oh, it’s _frightful_
to have parents one’s ashamed of!”
I think I blushed. I’m sure I looked away to avoid seeing her
expression. “It’s frightful to be ashamed of one’s parents,” said I.
“Now don’t be hypocritical,” cried she. “You know perfectly well you
are ashamed of your parents, as I am of mine.”
“I’ll admit,” said I, “that if they showed up at the office, I’d be
a bit upset and would feel apologetic. But I’m ashamed of myself for
feeling that way.”
“If you only realized about things,” said she, which was her phrase for
hitting at me as lacking in refined instincts, “you’d not be ashamed of
yourself, but would frankly suffer. They are a disgrace to us.”
“They’re honest people, well meaning, and as good as the best in every
essential way,” said I. “Believe me, Edna, the fault isn’t in them.
It’s in us. Suppose you found some day that Margot was ashamed of you
and me.”
“But she’ll not be,” retorted Edna. “I for one will see to it that she
has no cause to be anything but proud.”
I couldn’t but admit that there were two sides to the problem of our
parents. It was shameful to be ashamed of them. But it was also human.
I couldn’t--and can’t--utterly damn in Edna a fault, a vulgar weakness,
I myself had, and almost everyone I knew. No doubt, gentle reader,
you are scandalized and disgusted. But one of my objects in relating
this whole story is to scandalize and to disgust you. You have had too
much consideration at the hands of writers--you and your hypocritical
virtues and your hysterical nerves. If you are an American, you are
probably far in advance of your parents in worldly knowledge, in
education, in every way except perhaps manly and womanly self-respect.
For along with your progress has come an infection of snobbishness and
toadyism that seems in some mysterious way inseparable from higher
civilization. So be shocked and disgusted with Edna and me, and don’t
turn your hypocritical eyes inward on your own secret thoughts and
actions about your own humble parents. Above all, don’t learn from
this horrifying episode a decenter mode of thinking and feeling--_and_
acting.
“We must get them out of the way before we move to New York,” said
Edna. “Ever since Margot began at Mrs. Ryper’s I’ve been on pins and
needles. You don’t know how malicious fashionable people are. Why, some
of them who have nothing to do might at any time run out to Passaic and
see for themselves.”
Edna was sitting up in my lap, gazing at me with wide harassed-looking
eyes. I burst out laughing. “They might take a camera along, and get
some snapshots,” I suggested.
Edna’s face contracted with horror and her form grew limp and weak.
“My God!” she cried. “So they might. Godfrey, we must attend to it at
once.”