Perhaps the modern substitute for the coquetry of the old-fashioned
woman before marriage is the introduction of “problems” into her
love-making. The man still courts--a little more discreetly than he used
to but much after the same plan--but whereas the woman of a generation
ago was supposed to lead him a whimsical chase, now giving, now
withdrawing her favor, refusing to admit her feelings, the typical woman
of today is apt to admit her feelings readily enough, but she preludes
her submission to them by the introduction of a host of “problems.”
Sometimes it is the problem of whether she wants to have children or
not--sometimes the question of giving up a separate, wage-earning
existence, sometimes a theory against the inequality of marital
concessions, sometimes this, sometimes that. But questions of this sort
have become such common experience that one wonders sometimes if the
whole thing is not a development of the old feminine practice of playing
with a man from behind a feather-fringed fan. Not that these women of
today consciously concoct their problems to trouble their lovers or
excite further ardor in them--far be it from the thoughts of most of
them to so illegitimately fan a man’s flame, and perhaps the whole
suggestion is unworthy and unfair. Still, so many girls have these
preliminary problems before they marry--so many courtships are painful,
harassed affairs these days--so many moonlit nights are spent in putting
questions which do not read, “Will you love me always?” but “Will I be
able to maintain my individuality?” or in the bewildering phrase of poor
Lady Harmon, “my autonomy,” that this dwelling upon mating problems
among women surely looks like a modern group movement. And no reflection
either on the honesty or fervor of contemporary women. The same doubts
stirring in their minds have always stirred in the minds of courted
women--doubts as to whether such happiness, such devoted love as comes
in the first fragrant period of love-making can endure and what will
happen if it does not endure? Formerly women teased their lovers for
assurances of perpetual love. The woman now, more wise, more honest,
more skeptical too, about perpetual love, puts a different face on her
questions. She asks--“And if this love does not turn out well, what
then? Shall I be wrecked? Can I maintain enough of my independence, of
my beauty and strength, to play the game through? Will this man be
grasping and demanding? Is love an exhilaration worthy of the submission
of my body and spirit?”
The woman of today is not miserly. She has no idea--not nearly so much
as her old-fashioned sister of doling out her love. She is a marvelous
spender. But she is not a spendthrift and she has had enough teaching in
the economics of life to demand value received. If love is worth while
she is capable of giving everything magnificently. If it is not, she
grudges giving, having put permanently behind her the theory that
woman’s lot is pitiful and one of resignation. And yet sometimes she
does give everything, knowing it is a gamble, just as the girl of the
old game gave everything often enough, even when her lover’s “love you
always” rang false in her ears.
Horatia’s problem, of course, might have been one of a dozen. The
incident of Mrs. Hubbell was analyzed rightly enough by Jim as being
merely illustrative of a lack of faith in him. She had neither complete
faith in him nor complete faith in marriage and her lack of faith was
entirely in consonance with her time. Mrs. Hubbell loomed large in her
mind while she was in the midst of her argument with Jim. But she was
not in the country for a week before she thought of her problem in terms
which almost eliminated Rose.
In the first flush of her love for Jim she had yielded to her
temperamental love for romance and to emotional wonder at finding
herself beloved and suddenly more important than ever before. But with
the approach of the great question of marriage she had found that her
mind began to question many things. She soon saw that what she was
facing was not a minor point of whether Jim was to see Rose Hubbell or
not, but whether her need of Jim and his of her was great enough to
supersede all doubts, all fears, all worries about marriage. Little by
little she postponed a final consideration of these questions. Life in
the country was easy enough but none the less full of events. There was
a great deal of lazy intercourse with people, a great deal of exercise,
motoring--and Horatia found that she was able to give herself up quite
happily to the enjoyment of natural beauty--fresh morning air, sunsets
on the little lake and green afternoons in the woods. She was not
ashamed of that. The sensations of beauty and the elevation of spirit
that came with it were so far from trivial that they justified her for
feeling happy so soon after her break with Jim. She withdrew a little
from the memories of his love into contemplation of the fact of it.
At this distance it was peaceful to think of his love and in this calmer
mood she did not question the depth of feeling of either of them. The
questions of outcomes she laid aside for the present and she moved
through this setting of natural beauty with heart and head held high.
Some time she would move to a solution--not yet. Of course she did not
realize how dangerous to her love for Jim all these distractions were
nor how dangerous her friends meant them to be. She never thought of
Anthony as a lover. A false step from him or Maud would have driven her
away in those first days, but Anthony’s attitude was perfect. He was the
admirable friend and companion just as Horatia had wished and just as
she had asked him to be. He established her confidence in him again.
They walked and rode and swam together. No excursion was complete
without Anthony.
And they grew very close to one another. There was one silver night when
they rode for endless hours under the moonlight--a white road stretching
forward over the hill-tops and luring them always farther. The lights
went out in the little villages and they became black and mysteriously
still.
“Dead little houses,” said Anthony, “why are people so silly as to sleep
inside them?”
He was full of life that night. Horatia was close to
him--still--happy--his machine quivered and sped under his touch and he
had all that he loved most in the world around him. Horatia’s own youth
woke in answer to this appetite for life which showed in the man’s firm,
vigorous handling of his wheel and the joyous lift of his head.
“Are you happy, Horatia?”
“Quite happy.” She was sincere. There were no problems or worries in her
head, the moment was enough.
“We get along pretty well,” said Anthony happily.
“Don’t we.”
Horatia never thought that Anthony might be making love to her. Love to
her was already couched in different terms. She liked his phrasing and
she liked him. He was such a human companion and they were alone before
such vastnesses that she found herself responding to the touch of his
shoulder. They were leaning back in the roadster, shoulders touching
lightly.
“Life’s queer, Anthony. When we expect to be happy we aren’t and when
you don’t expect it, it comes.”
“We don’t know when to expect it,” answered Anthony sagely.
He talked well that night and from that night on as she thought of her
future Horatia began to compare and contrast Anthony’s plan of life. On
this ride he left out most of his vehement, laughable sociology, and
talked of business. He had been fascinated, startled by the vast
machinery of moving grain across the world. The great scale on which it
was done thrilled him. “Feeding the world,” he said, with no great
humanitarian feeling but as if the magnificence of the act had gripped
his imagination. He was going to take charge of part of the business
after he had seen the eastern end of it.
“I thought you wanted to travel before you began work.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I want to be a man--a mature man soon--and a
mature man must have a job.”
Self-absorbed Horatia, who did not guess from those words of what else
he was thinking! But she did not trouble about Anthony much. She
generalized Anthony.
“Yes--we--all men and women must work.”
“Not women always and not as hard as men.”
Horatia waived the point. It was a nice gallantry, she thought. She was
not ready to work anyway, just yet.
They passed a strange light half hidden in the bushes just then, and
whatever else Anthony had meant to say was quite forgotten for the
moment. He was suddenly alert. Without a word he went into reverse and
backed up to the roadside.
“Stay where you are, Horatia,” he said briefly and decisively.
She leaned forward. He was beside the light and suddenly she saw what
Anthony had seen at once. It was an overturned roadster--its tail light
gleaming in the marshy grass. She saw Anthony peering around, then
bending. With a leap she was beside him and he gave her a quick,
appraising glance.
“When I lift,--pull.”
Amazingly she was pulling, pulling and brushing aside obstacles that
felt like the overturned paraphernalia of the car. She was pulling a
woman--a girl awkwardly thrown prostrate and still. And then they found
the man. Anthony seemed to know exactly what to do. He was almost
professional.
“We’ll leave him--it’s no use,” he said. “And carry her. Hold her in
your lap and I’ll drive. We can’t waste a minute.”
The inert body of the girl hung heavily over the side of the car and
Horatia’s lap.
“How far must we go?”
“Five or six miles. I saw the man’s letters--he seems to come from
there--Winchester.”
At the Winchester hospital they found after an anxious hour that the
girl was only stunned and bruised. She would be all right. She was
easily identified--a girl about town.
The young man seemed to be a person of prominence. An odd stiffness of
local scandal hung over the necessary inquiries. Evidently the
association of the man and girl was not discussible. The police notified
the man’s father and a party set out for the wreck with Anthony as
guide.
Horatia had a glimpse of a white, stricken, elderly man bending over the
body and heard him groan in horrified pain. There was nothing left for
them to do. They turned towards home.
“Poor devil,” said Anthony, “he’s gone and there’s an awful gap
somewhere. Because he wanted to be a bounder. Nice-looking fellow he
was, too.”
“Let’s get home quickly,” begged Horatia.
Anthony turned to look at her.
“Sorry it happened,” he said briefly, “but you were game, Horatia. Lord,
but you were game.”
She tried to smile and only succeeded in turning very faint.
“I never saw a dead person before except my mother, and I can’t remember
that.”
“You never----” Anthony stopped the car and put a quick arm about her
shoulders. “What a damned shame! Just rest--just forget it.”
From that night they were closer comrades than ever before. And it was
during the weeks that followed that Horatia found herself writing less
and less to Jim. It was very hard to write. She couldn’t put all she
wanted to say in one letter and she didn’t know whether he would
understand all the things she was thinking unless she wrote him very
fully. That could all come later, she told herself--now she wanted
strength and calmness. Nothing, according to Marjorie Clapp, was so
worth while as strength and health. And more and more she found Marjorie
and Anthony establishing standards by which she measured life.
They were so sure, and yet not sure as Maud was sure--with
aggressiveness and assertiveness. They did not try to decide everything
for everyone and they were slow of condemnation in most respects and
rather open to new beliefs.
“Have you no imperfections?” wailed Horatia to Marjorie.
Marjorie stared at her. “What have I been assuming?” she asked in
horror. “What sort of prig----”
“It’s because you don’t assume. Because you are modern without bragging
of it and conservative when it is for the safety of things. Because you
are actually getting somewhere.”
“Well,” said Marjorie, “one of my imperfections is that I fairly soak in
such talk about myself. I’ve been through the mill, Horatia. I’ve
wondered and puzzled and hated being called a reactionary. There was a
time when bobbing my hair and taking a lover instead of a husband seemed
the brave thing to do. And then I decided that it wasn’t, after all.
That it was my fear of being called stupid and not my conviction of what
was progress that was holding me back from the commonplaces of being a
wife and mother. Inwardly I approved of lots of things and outwardly I
was afraid to give in to them for fear of being ordinary. But I’m sure
now. I’ve burned my bridges. I want to give my children the best of the
old régime. The new régime will unavoidably make advances to them and
they may accept a lot of them. That’s all right too--the old and the new
make a fine blend. And I try to keep in touch with things so nothing
will shock or frighten me. Why are you so worried?”
“I’m not really, just now. I’m as content as a cat. But I suppose I
ought to know where I stand and as a matter of fact I don’t. I ought to
know what people I want to run with. I’ve seen a lot of kinds. And I
don’t really fit in anywhere. Someone told me that I was only fit to do
lip service to modernism, the other day. That bothered me. I had taken
it for granted that I was a modern. It seemed indecent not to be.”
“But you are. Anyone who sees you knows that you are carrying on into
the future.”
“This person didn’t think so.” And for the second time, omitting her
personal connection, Horatia told Grace’s story.
“Poor Grace,” said Marjorie.
“That’s just it. I didn’t feel ‘poor Grace.’ I felt
‘plague-stricken--unclean Grace.’ And it began in me a lot of
uncertainties. If she was like that--if marriage was as wretched and
unreliable as she claimed--where can I turn for faith? You help restore
faith but what if you are a shining exception?”
Anthony came in and stood against the door looking tall and immensely
confident. Perhaps Marjorie felt he was the answer to Horatia’s appeal.
Anyway she went away and sent them iced tea and sandwiches.