S.

December 2.

Dear Judy:

Do you remember in college, when you and I used to plan our favorite

futures, how we were forever turning our faces southward? And now to

think it has really come true, and you are there, coasting around those

tropical isles! Did you ever have such a thrill in the whole of your

life, barring one or two connected with Jervis, as when you came up on

deck in the early dawn and found yourself riding at anchor in the harbor

of Kingston, with the water so blue and the palms so green and the beach

so white?

I remember when I first woke in that harbor. I felt like a heroine of

grand opera surrounded by untruly beautiful painted scenery. Nothing

in my four trips to Europe ever thrilled me like the queer sights and

tastes and smells of those three warm weeks seven years ago. And ever

since, I've panted to get back. When I stop to think about it, I can

hardly bring myself to swallow our unexciting meals; I wish to be dining

on curries and tamales and mangos. Isn't it funny? You'd think I must

have a dash of Creole or Spanish or some warm blood in me somewhere,

but I'm nothing on earth but a chilly mixture of English and Irish and

Scotch. Perhaps that is why I hear the South calling. "The palm dreams

of the pine, and the pine of the palm."

After seeing you off, I turned back to New York with an awful

wander-thirst gnawing at my vitals. I, too, wanted to be starting off

on my travels in a new blue hat and a new blue suit with a big bunch

of violets in my hand. For five minutes I would cheerfully have said

good-by forever to poor dear Gordon in return for the wide world

to wander in. I suppose you are thinking they are not entirely

incompatible--Gordon and the wide world--but I don't seem able to get

your point of view about husbands. I see marriage as a man must, a good,

sensible workaday institution; but awfully curbing to one's liberty.

Somehow, after you're married forever, life has lost its feeling of

adventure. There aren't any romantic possibilities waiting to surprise

you around each corner.

The disgraceful truth is that one man doesn't seem quite enough for me.

I like the variety of sensation that you get only from a variety of men.

I'm afraid I've spent too flirtatious a youth, and it isn't easy for me

to settle.

I seem to have a very wandering pen. To return: I saw you off, and took

the ferry back to New York with a horribly empty feeling. After our

intimate, gossipy three months together, it seems a terrible task to

tell you my troubles in tones that will reach to the bottom of the

continent. My ferry slid right under the nose of your steamer, and

I could see you and Jervis plainly leaning on the rail. I waved

frantically, but you never blinked an eyelash. Your gaze was fixed in

homesick contemplation upon the top of the Woolworth Building.

Back in New York, I took myself to a department store to accomplish

a few trifles in the way of shopping. As I was entering through their

revolving doors, who should be revolving in the other direction but

Helen Brooks! We had a terrible time meeting, as I tried to go back out,

and she tried to come back in; I thought we should revolve eternally.

But we finally got together and shook hands, and she obligingly helped

me choose fifteen dozen pairs of stockings and fifty caps and sweaters

and two hundred union suits, and then we gossiped all the way up to

Fifty-second Street, where we had luncheon at the Women's University

Club.

I always liked Helen. She's not spectacular, but steady and dependable.

Will you ever forget the way she took hold of that senior pageant

committee and whipped it into shape after Mildred had made such a mess

of it? How would she do here as a successor to me? I am filled with

jealousy at the thought of a successor, but I suppose I must face it.

"When did you last see Judy Abbott?" was Helen's first question.

"Fifteen minutes ago," said I. "She has just set sail for the Spanish

main with a husband and daughter and nurse and maid and valet and dog."

"Has she a nice husband?"

"None better."

"And does she still like him?"

"Never saw a happier marriage."

It struck me that Helen looked a trifle bleak, and I suddenly remembered

all that gossip that Marty Keene told us last summer; so I hastily

changed the conversation to a perfectly safe subject like orphans.

But later she told me the whole story herself in as detached and

impersonal a way as though she were discussing the characters in a book.

She has been living alone in the city, hardly seeing any one, and she

seemed low in spirits and glad to talk. Poor Helen appears to have made

an awful mess of her life. I don't know any one who has covered so much

ground in such a short space of time. Since her graduation she has been

married, has had a baby and lost him, divorced her husband, quarreled

with her family, and come to the city to earn her own living. She is

reading manuscript for a publishing house.

There seems to have been no reason for her divorce from the ordinary

point of view; the marriage just simply didn't work. They weren't

friends. If he had been a woman, she wouldn't have wasted half an hour

talking with him. If she had been a man, he would have said: "Glad

to see you. How are you?" and gone on. And yet they MARRIED. Isn't it

dreadful how blind this sex business can make people?

She was brought up on the theory that a woman's only legitimate

profession is homemaking. When she finished college, she was naturally

eager to start on her career, and Henry presented himself. Her family

scanned him closely, and found him perfect in every respect--good

family, good morals, good financial position, good looking. Helen was in

love with him. She had a big wedding and lots of new clothes and dozens

of embroidered towels. Everything looked propitious.

But as they began to get acquainted, they didn't like the same books

or jokes or people or amusements. He was expansive and social and

hilarious, and she wasn't. First they bored, and then they irritated,

each other. Her orderliness made him impatient, and his disorderliness

drove her wild. She would spend a day getting closets and bureau drawers

in order, and in five minutes he would stir them into chaos. He would

leave his clothes about for her to pick up, and his towels in a messy

heap on the bathroom floor, and he never scrubbed out the tub. And she,

on her side, was awfully unresponsive and irritating,--she realized it

fully,--she got to the point where she wouldn't laugh at his jokes.

I suppose most old-fashioned, orthodox people would think it awful to

break up a marriage on such innocent grounds. It seemed so to me at

first; but as she went on piling up detail on detail each trivial in

itself, but making a mountainous total, I agreed with Helen that it was

awful to keep it going. It wasn't really a marriage; it was a mistake.

So one morning at breakfast, when the subject of what they should do for

the summer came up, she said quite casually that she thought she would

go West and get a residence in some State where you could get a divorce

for a respectable cause; and for the first time in months he agreed with

her.

You can imagine the outraged feelings of her Victorian family. In all

the seven generations of their sojourn in America they have never had

anything like this to record in the family Bible. It all comes from

sending her to college and letting her read such dreadful modern people

as Ellen Key and Bernard Shaw.

"If he had only got drunk and dragged me about by the hair," Helen

wailed, "it would have been legitimate; but because we didn't actually

throw things at each other, no one could see any reason for a divorce."

The pathetic part of the whole business is that both she and Henry were

admirably fitted to make some one else happy. They just simply didn't

match each other; and when two people don't match, all the ceremonies in

the world can't marry them.

Saturday morning.

I meant to get this letter off two days ago; and here I am with volumes

written, but nothing mailed.

We've just had one of those miserable deceiving nights--cold and frosty

when you go to bed, and warm and lifeless when you wake in the dark,

smothered under a mountain of blankets. By the time I had removed my own

extra covers and plumped up my pillow and settled comfortably, I thought

of those fourteen bundled-up babies in the fresh-air nursery. Their

so-called night nurse sleeps like a top the whole night through. (Her

name is next on the list to be expunged.) So I roused myself again, and

made a little blanket removing tour, and by the time I had finished I

was forever awake. It is not often that I pass a NUIT BLANCHE; but when

I do, I settle world problems. Isn't it funny how much keener your mind

is when you are lying awake in the dark?

I began thinking about Helen Brooks, and I planned her whole life over

again. I don't know why her miserable story has taken such a hold over

me. It's a disheartening subject for an engaged girl to contemplate.

I keep saying to myself, what if Gordon and I, when we really get

acquainted, should change our minds about liking each other? The fear

grips my heart and wrings it dry. But I am marrying him for no reason in

the world except affection. I'm not particularly ambitious. Neither his

position nor his money ever tempted me in the least. And certainly I am

not doing it to find my life work, for in order to marry I am having

to give up the work that I love. I really do love this work. I go about

planning and planning their baby futures, feeling that I'm constructing

the nation. Whatever becomes of me in after life, I am sure I'll be

the more capable for having had this tremendous experience. And it IS a

tremendous experience, the nearness to humanity that an asylum brings.

I am learning so many new things every day that when each Saturday night

comes I look back on the Sallie of last Saturday night, amazed at her

ignorance.

You know I am developing a funny old characteristic; I am getting to

hate change. I don't like the prospect of having my life disrupted. I

used to love the excitement of volcanoes, but now a high level plateau

is my choice in landscape. I am very comfortable where I am. My desk

and closet and bureau drawers are organized to suit me; and, oh, I dread

unspeakably the thought of the upheaval that is going to happen to me

next year! Please don't imagine that I don't care for Gordon quite as

much as any man has a right to be cared for. It isn't that I like him

any the less, but I am getting to like orphans the more.

I just met our medical adviser a few minutes ago as he was emerging

from the nursery--Allegra is the only person in the institution who is

favored by his austere social attentions. He paused in passing to make a

polite comment upon the sudden change in the weather, and to express the

hope that I would remember him to Mrs. Pendleton when I wrote.

This is a miserable letter to send off on its travels, with scarcely

a word of the kind of news that you like to hear. But our bare little

orphan asylum up in the hills must seem awfully far away from the palms

and orange groves and lizards and tarantulas that you are enjoying.