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and I, II, III etc. in chapter headers. These have been retained.
* * * * *
THE
LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID
BY
LILIAN BELL
"_Some ships reach happy ports that are not steered_"
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1893, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated very fondly to my beloved family, who, in their
anxiety to render me material assistance, have offered me such diverse
opinions as to its merit that their criticisms radiate from me in as many
directions as there are spokes to a wheel.
This leaves the distraught hub with no opinion of its own, and with
flaring, ragged edges.
Nevertheless, thus must it appear before the public, whose opinion will be
the tire which shall enable my wheel to revolve. If it be favorable, one
may look for smooth riding; if unfavorable, one must expect jolts.
PREFACE
It is a pity that there is no prettier term to bestow upon a girl bachelor
of any age than Old Maid. "Spinster" is equally uncomfortable, suggesting,
as it does, corkscrew curls and immoderate attenuation of frame; while
"maiden lady," which the ultra-punctilious substitute, is entirely too
mincing for sensible, whole-souled people to countenance.
I dare say that more women would have the courage to remain unmarried were
there so euphonious a title awaiting them as that of "bachelor," which,
when shorn of its accompanying adjective "old," simply means unmarried.
The word "bachelor," too, has somewhat of a jaunty sound, implying to the
sensitive ear that its owner could have been married--oh, several times
over--if he had wished. But both "spinster" and "old maid" have narrow,
restricted attributes, which, to say the least, imply doubt as to past
opportunity.
Names are covertly responsible for many overt acts. Carlyle, when he said,
"The name is the earliest garment you wrap around the earth-visiting me.
Names? Not only all common speech, but Science, Poetry itself, if thou
consider it, is no other than a right naming," sounded a wonderful note in
Moral Philosophy, which rings false many a time in real life, when to ring
true would change the whole face of affairs.
Thus I boldly affirm, that were there a proper sounding title to cover the
class of unmarried women, many a marriage which now takes place, with
either moderate success or distinct failure, would remain in pleasing
embryo.
Of the three evils among names for my book, therefore, I leave you to
determine whether I have chosen the greatest or least. The writing of it
came about in this way.
In a conversation concerning modern marriage, the unwisdom people display
in choice, and the complicated affair it has come to be from a pastoral
beginning, I said lightly, "I shall write a book upon this subject some
fine day, and I shall call it 'The Love Affairs of an Old Maid,' because
popular prejudice decrees that the love affairs of an old maid necessarily
are those of other people."
No sooner had the name suggested in broad jest taken form in my mind than
straightway every thought I possessed crystallized around it, and I found
myself impelled by a malevolent Fate to begin it.
It became a fixed intention on a Sunday morning in church during a most
excellent sermon, the text and substance of which I have forgotten.
Doubtless more of real worth and benefit to mankind was pent up in that
sermon than four books of my own writing could accomplish. But, with the
delightful candor of John Kendrick Bangs, I explain my lapse of memory
thus--
"I dote on Milton and on Robert Burns;
I love old Marryat--his tales of pelf;
I live on Byron; but my heart most yearns
Towards those sweet things that I've penned myself."
So the book has been written. The existence of the Old Maid often has been
a precarious one; she has been surrounded by danger, once narrowly
escaping cremation. But my humanity towards dumb brutes saved her. I might
have sacrificed a woman, but I could not kill a cat. So she lives,
unconsciously owing her life to her cat.
Thus she comes to you, bearing her friends in her heart. I should scarcely
dare ask you to welcome her, did I not suspect that her friends are yours.
You have your Flossy and your Charlie Hardy without doubt. Pray Heaven you
have a Rachel to outweigh them.
CHICAGO, _March, 1893_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
1. I INTRODUCE ME TO MYSELF 1
2. I COME INTO MY KINGDOM 8
3. MATRIMONY IN HARNESS 18
4. WOMEN AS LOVERS 30
5. THE HEART OF A COQUETTE 51
6. THE LONELY CHILDHOOD OF A CLEVER CHILD 65
7. A STUDY IN HUMAN GEESE 78
8. A GAME OF HEARTS 91
9. THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 120
10. THE PATHOS OF FAITH 137
11. THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 156
12. IN WHICH I WILLINGLY TURN MY FACE WESTWARD 174
THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF ON OLD MAID
* * *
I
I INTRODUCE ME TO MYSELF
"There is a luxury in self-dispraise;
And inward self-disparagement affords
To meditative spleen a grateful feast."
To-morrow I shall be an Old Maid. What a trying thing to have to say even
to one's self, and how vexed I should be if anybody else said it to me!
Nevertheless, it is a comfort to be brutally honest once in a while to
myself. I do not dare, I do not care, to be so to everybody. But with my
own self, I can feel that it is strictly a family affair. If I hurt my
feelings, I can grieve over it until I apologize. If I flatter myself, I
am only doing what every other woman in the world is doing in her
innermost consciousness, and flattery as honest as flattery from one's
own self naturally would be could not fail to please me. Besides, it would
have the unique value of being believed by both sides--a situation in the
flattery line which I fancy has no rival.
It is well to become acquainted with one's self at all hazards, and as I
am going to be my own partner in the rubber of life, I can do nothing
better than to study my own hand. So, to harrow up my feelings as only I
dare to do, I write down that it is really true of me that I passed the
first corner five years ago, and to-morrow I shall be 30.
What a disagreeable figure a 3 is; I never noticed it before. It looks so
self-satisfied. And as to that fat, hollow 0 which follows it--I always
did detest round numbers.
30; there it goes again. I must accustom myself to it privately, so I
write it down once more, and it laughs in my face and mocks me. Then I
laugh back at it and say aloud that it is true, and for the time being I
have cowed it and become its master. What boots it if the laughter is a
trifle hollow? There is no harm in deceiving two miserable little figures.
Let me revel in my youth while I may. To-night I am a gay young thing of
twenty-nine. To-morrow I shall be an Old Maid. I have very little time
left in which to make myself ridiculous and have it excused on account of
my youth. But somehow I do not feel very gay. I have a curious feeling
about my heart, as if I were at a burial--one where I was burying
something that I had always loved very dearly, but secretly, and which
would always be a sweet and tender memory with me. I feel nervous, too,
quite as if I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. I remember that
Alice Asbury said she was hysterical just before she was married. I wonder
if a woman's feelings on the eve of being an Old Maid are unlike those of
one about to become a bride.
My cat sits eying me with sleepy approval. I always liked cats. And tea.
Why have I never thought of it before? It is not my fault that I am an Old
Maid. I was cut out for one. All my tendencies point that way. Please
don't blame me, good people. Come here, Tabby. You and Missis will grow
old together.
After all, it is a sad thing when one realizes for the first time that
one's youth is slipping away. But why? Why do women of great intelligence,
of intellect even, blush with pleasure at the implication of youth?
There are fashions in thought as well as in dress, and the best of us
follow both, as sheep follow their leader. We will sometimes follow our
neighbor's line of insular prejudice, when worlds could not bribe us to
copy her grammar or her gowns. Dull people admire youth. They excuse its
follies; they adore its prettiness. That it is only a period of education,
and that real life begins with maturity, does not enter into their minds.
The odor of bread and butter does not nauseate them. Dull people, I
say--and God pity us, most of us are dull--admire youth. Men love it.
Therefore we all want to be young. We strive to be young, nay, we _will_
be young.
I am no better than my neighbors. I, too, am young when I am with people.
But there are times when I am alone when the strain of being young
relaxes, and I luxuriate in being old, old, old, when I cease being
contemporary, and look back fondly to the time when the world and I
were in embryo.
And yet I wonder if extreme age is as repulsive to everybody as it is
to me. Forty seems a long way off. I fancy people at forty become very
uninteresting to the oncoming generation. Fifty is grandmotherly and
suitable for little else. Sixty, seventy, and beyond seem to me one
horrible jumble of wrinkles and wheezes and false beauty and general
unpleasantness. Oh, I hope, if I should live to be over fifty, that I may
be a pleasant old person. I hope my teeth will fit me, and the parting to
my wave be always in the middle. I hope my fingers will always come fully
to the ends of my gloves, and that I never shall wear my spectacles on top
of my head. But I hope more than all that it isn't wicked to wish to die
before I come to these things.
Before I entirely lose my youth--in other words, before I become an Old
Maid, let me see what I must give up. Lovers, of course. That goes
without saying. And if I give them up, it will not do to have their
photographs standing around. They must be--oh! and their letters--must
they too be destroyed? Dear me, no! I'll just fold them all together and
lay them away, like a wedding-dress which never has been worn. And I'll
put girls' pictures or missionaries' or martyrs' into the empty frames.
Martyrs' would be most appropriate.
Now for a box to put them in. A pretty box, so that one who runs may read?
Not so, you sentimental Elderly Person. Take this tin box with a lock on
it. There you are, done up in a japanned box and padlocked. I would say
that it looks like a little coffin if I wasn't afraid of what my Alter Ego
would say. She seems cross to-night. I wonder what is the matter with her.
She must be getting old. I should like to hang the key around my neck on a
blue ribbon, but I am afraid. "What if you should be run over and killed,"
she says, "or should faint away in church? Remember that you are an Old
Maid." How disagreeable old maids can be! And I've got to live with this
one always. I'll put the key in my purse. Nice, sensible, prosaic place,
a purse.
How late it grows! I have only a little time left. I believe that clock
is fast. Dear, dear! Do I want to just sit still and watch myself turn?
I meant to have old age overtake me in my sleep. I think I'll stop that
clock and let my youth fade from me unawares.
II
I COME INTO MY KINGDOM
"There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief
relation of her life has been no more than a mistake. She has lost
her crown. The deepest secret of human blessedness has half
whispered itself to her and then forever passed her by."
I have become an Old Maid, and really it is a relief. I feel as if I had
left myself behind me, and that now I have a right to the interests of
other people when they are freely offered. My friends always have confided
in me. I suppose it is because I am receptive. Men tell me their old love
affairs. Girls tell me the whole story of their engagements--how they came
to take this man, and why they did not take that one. And even the most
ordinary are vitally interesting. Before I know it, I am rent with the
same despair which agitates the lover confiding in me; or I am wreathed
in the smiles of the engaged girl who is getting her absorbing secret
comfortably off her mind. It seems to comfort them to air their emotion,
and sometimes I am convinced that they leave the most of it with me.
Now I can feel at liberty to enjoy and sympathize as I will. Well, the
love affairs of other people are the rightful inheritance of old maids.
In sharing them I am only coming into my kingdom.
Alice Asbury has made shipwreck of hers. The girl is actively miserable
and her husband is indifferently uncomfortable, which is the habit this
married couple have of experiencing the same emotion.
Alice is a mass of contradictions to those who do not understand her--now
in the clouds, now in the depths. Bad weather depresses her; so does a sad
story, the death of a kitten, solemn music. She is correspondingly
volatile in the opposite direction and often laughs at real calamities
with wonderful courage. She has a fund of romance in her nature which has
led her to the pass she now is in. She is clever, too, at introspection
and analysis--of herself chiefly. She studies her own sensations and
dissects her moods. Her selfishness is of the peculiar sort which should
have kept her from marrying until she found the hundredth man who could
appreciate her genius and bend it into nobler channels. Unfortunately she
married one of the ninety-nine. She is not, perhaps, more selfish than
many another woman, but her selfishness is different. She is mentally
cross-eyed from turning her eyes inward so constantly.
She became engaged to Brandt--a man in every way worthy of her--and they
loved each other devotedly. Then during a quarrel she broke the
engagement, and he, being piqued by her withdrawal, immediately married
May Lawrence, who had been patiently in love with him for five years, and
who was only waiting for some such turn as this to deliver him into her
hands. A poetic justice visits him with misery, for he still cares for
Alice. May, however, is not conscious of this fact as yet.
Alice, being doubly stung by his defection, was just in the mood to do
something desperate, when she began to see a great deal of Asbury, fresh
from being jilted by Sallie Cox. Asbury was moody, and confided in Alice.
Alice was foolish, and confided in him. They both decided that their
hearts were ashes, love burned out, and life a howling wilderness, and
then proceeded to exchange these empty hearts of theirs, and to go through
the howling wilderness together.
Alice came to tell me about it. They had no love to give each other, she
said sadly, but they were going to be married. I would have laughed at her
if she had not been so tragic. But there is something about Alice, in
spite of her romantic folly, (which she has adapted from the French to
suit her American needs,) which forbids ridicule. Nevertheless I felt,
with one of those sudden flashes of intuition, that this choice of hers
was a hideous mistake. The situation repelled me. But the very strangeness
of it seemed to attract the morbid Alice. And it was this one curious
strain of unexplained foolishness marring her otherwise strong and in many
ways beautiful character which prevented my loving her completely and
safely. Nevertheless, I cared for her enough to enter my feeble and futile
protest; but it was waved aside with the superb effrontery of a woman who
feels that she controls the situation with her head, and whose heart is
not at liberty to make uncomfortable complications. I would rather argue
with a woman who is desperately in love, to prevent her marrying the man
of her choice, than to try to dissuade a woman from marrying a man she has
set her head upon. You feel sympathy with the former, and you have human
nature and the whole glorious love-making Past at your back, to give you
confidence and eloquence. But with the latter you are cowed and beaten
beforehand, and tongue-tied during the contest.
So she became Alice Asbury, and these two blighted beings took a flat.
Before they had been at home from their honeymoon a week she came down to
see me, and told me that she hated Asbury.
Imagine a bride whose bouquet, only a month before, you had held at the
altar, and heard her promise to love, honor, and obey a man until death
did them part, coming to you with a confession like that. Still, if but
one half she tells me of him is true, I do not wonder that she hates him.
With her revolutionary, anarchistic completeness, she has renounced the
idea of compromise or adaptability as finally as if she had seen and
passed the end of the world. There is no more pliability in her with
regard to Asbury than there is in a steel rod. How different she used to
be with Brandt! How she consulted his wishes and accommodated herself to
him!
When a woman born to be ruled by love only passes by her master spirit,
she becomes an anomaly in woman--she makes complications over which the
psychologist wastes midnight oil, and if he never discovers the solution,
it is because of its very simplicity.
All the sweetness seems to have left Alice's nature. She keeps somebody
with her every moment. That one guest chamber in her flat has been
occupied by all the girls that she can persuade to visit her. Asbury
dislikes company, but she says she does not care. She cannot keep
visitors long, because as soon as they discover that they are unwelcome
to Asbury, naturally they go home.
Fortunately, Asbury does not care for Sallie Cox any more. When his vanity
was wounded, his love died instantly. I think he is more in love with
himself than he ever was with any woman. There are men, you know, whose
one grand passion in life is for themselves. But Alice knows that Brandt
still cares for her, and she feeds her romantic fancy on this fact, and
has her introspective miseries to her heart's content. She is far too
cool-headed a woman to do anything rash. Sometimes I think her morbid
nature obtains more real satisfaction out of her joyless situation than
positive happiness would compensate her for. She appears to take a certain
negative pleasure in it. Their marriage is the product of a false
civilization, and I pity them--at a distance--from the bottom of my heart.
I am sorry for Brandt, too, for he honestly loved Alice and might have
proved the hundredth man--who knows?
I do not quite know whether to be sorry for May Brandt or not, for she
made complications and made them purposely. She made them so promptly,
too, that she precluded the possibility of a reconciliation between Alice
and Brandt. If Brandt had remained single, I doubt whether Alice would
have had the courage to form an engagement with any other man. She loved
him too truly to take the first step towards an eternal separation. Women
seldom dare make that first move, except as a decoy. They are naturally
superstitious, and even when curiously free from this trait in everything
else, they cling to a little in love, and dare not tempt Fate too
insolently.
A woman who has quarrelled with her lover, in her secret heart expects him
back daily and hourly, no matter what the cause of the estrangement, until
he becomes involved with another woman. Then she lays all the blame of his
defection at the door of the alien, where, in the opinion of an Old Maid,
it generally belongs.
If other women would let men alone, constancy would be less of a hollow
mockery. (Query, but is it constancy where there is no temptation to be
fickle?) Nevertheless, let "another woman" sympathize with an estranged
lover, and place a little delicate blame upon his sweetheart and flatter
him a great deal, and _presto!_ you have one of those criss-cross
engagements which turns life to a dull gray for the aching heart which
is left out.
If, too, when this honestly loving woman appears to take the first step,
her actions and mental processes could be analyzed and timed, it
frequently would prove that, with her quicker calculations, she foresaw
the fatal effect of the "other-woman" element, and, desirous of protecting
her vanity, reached blindly out to the nearest man at her command, and
married him with magnificent effrontery, just to circumvent humiliation
and to take a little wind out of the other woman's sails. But could you
make her lover believe that? Never.
And so May Lawrence played the "other woman" in the Asbury tragedy. I
wonder if she is satisfied with her rôle. A girl who wilfully catches a
man's heart on the rebound, does the thing which involves more risk than
anything else malevolent fate could devise.
On the whole, I think I am sorry for her, for she has apples of Sodom in
her hand, although as yet to her delighted gaze they appear the fairest
of summer fruit.
III
MATRIMONY IN HARNESS
"What eagles are we still
In matters that belong to other men;
What beetles in our own!"
The more I know of horses, the more natural I think men and women are in
the unequalness of their marriages. I never yet saw a pair of horses so
well matched that they pulled evenly all the time. The more skilful the
driver, the less he lets the discrepancy become apparent. Going up hill,
one horse generally does the greater share of work. If they pull equally
up hill, sometimes they see-saw and pull in jerks on a level road. And I
never saw a marriage in which both persons pulled evenly all the time, and
the worst of it is, I suppose this unevenness is only what is always
expected.
Having no marriage of my own to worry over, it is gratuitous when I worry
over other people's. Old maids, you know, like to air their views on
matrimony and bringing up children. Their theories on these subjects have
this advantage--that they always hold good because they never are tried.
There never was such an unequal yoking together as the Herricks'. Nobody
has told me. This is one of the affairs which has not been confided to me.
Only, I knew them both so well before they were married. I knew Bronson
Herrick best, however, because I never used to see any more of Flossy than
was necessary.
To begin with, I never liked her name. I have an idea that names show
character. Could anybody under heaven be noble with such a name as Flossy?
I believe names handicap people. I believe children are sometimes tortured
by hideous and unmeaning names. But give them strong, ugly names in
preference to Ina and Bessie and Flossy and such pretty-pretty names, with
no meaning and no character to them. Take my own name, Ruth. If I wanted
to be noble or heroic I could be; my name would not be an anomalous
nightmare to attract attention to the incongruity. We cannot be too
thankful to our mothers who named us Mary and Dorothy and Constance. What
an inspiration to be "faithful over a few things" such a name as Constance
must be!
But Flossy's mother named her--not Florence, but Flossy. I suppose she was
one of those fluffy, curly, silky babies. She grew to be that kind of a
girl--a Flossy girl. It speaks for itself. I suppose with that name she
never had any incentive to outgrow her nature.
It came out on her wedding cards:
"Mr. and Mrs. CHARLES FAY CARLETON
request you to be present at the
marriage of their daughter
FLOSSY
to
Mr. BRONSON STURGIS HERRICK."
The contrast between the two names, hers so nonsensical and his so
dignified and strong, was no greater than that between the two people.
In truth, their names were symbolic of their natures. It looked really
pitiful to me.
I wondered if anybody besides Rachel English and me looked into their
future with apprehension. Our misgivings, I must admit, were all for
Bronson.
Ah, well-a-day! It is so easy to feel sympathy for a man you admire,
especially if he is strong and loyal, and does not ask or desire it of
you.
Flossy was one of those cuddling girls. She appealed to you with her eyes,
and you found yourself petting her and sympathizing with her, when, if you
stopped to think, you would see that she had more of everything than you
had. She possessed a rich father, a beautiful house, and perfect health.
Nevertheless, you found yourself asking after "poor Flossy," and your
voice commiserated her if your words did not. She invariably had some
trifling ill to tell you of. She had hurt her arm, or scratched her hand,
or the snow made her eyes ache, or she was tired. She never seemed at
liberty to enjoy herself, although she went everywhere, and seemed to do
so successfully in spite of her imaginary ills, if you let her enjoy
herself by telling you of them.
Everybody helped Flossy to live. Everybody protected and looked after her.
There was some one on his knees continually, removing invisible brambles
from her rose-leaf path. She didn't know how to do anything for herself.
She never buttoned her own boots. When her maid was not with her, other
people put her jacket on for her, and carried her umbrella and buttoned
her gloves. Men always buttoned her gloves, and her gloves always had more
buttons, and more unruly buttons, than any other gloves I ever saw. But
then I am elderly.
I never knew Flossy to do anything for anybody. She never gave things
away, but on Christmas and her birthdays she received remembrances from
everybody. I used to make her presents without knowing why or even
thinking of it. Flossy's name was on all the Christmas lists, and she used
to shed tears over the kindness of her friends, and write the prettiest
notes to them, so plaintive and self-deprecatory. Then they took her to
drive, or did something more for her. Flossy read poetry and cried over
it. She wrote poetry too, and other people cried over that.
When Bronson Herrick told me he was going to marry her, I wanted to say,
"No, you are not." But I didn't. I did not even seem to be surprised, for
he is so proud he would have resented any surprise on my part. He told me
about it of course, knowing that I could not fail to be pleased. (His
photograph is in that japanned box of mine. This smile on my face, Tabby,
is rather sardonic. Why is it that men expect an old sweetheart to take an
active interest in their bride-elect, and are so deadly sure that they
will like each other?)
"She is the most sympathetic little thing," he said enthusiastically. "She
reminds me of you in so many ways. You are very much alike."
"Oh, thank you, Bronson Sturgis Herrick! I assure you I would cheerfully
drown myself if I thought you were right about that," I exclaimed
mentally.
He repeated over and over that she was "so sympathetic." He meant, of
course, that she had wept over him. Flossy's tears flow like rain if you
crook your finger at her, and tears wring the heart of a man like Bronson.
To think he was going to marry her! I just looked at him, I remember, as
he stood so straight and tall before me, and said to myself, "Well, you
dear, honest, loyal, clever man! You are just the kind of a man that women
fool most unmercifully. But it's nature, and you can't help it. Go and
marry this Flossy girl, and commit mental suicide if you must."
"Sympathetic!"
So he married her five years ago, and became her man-servant.
When they had been married about a year, people said that Bronson was
working himself to death. I, being an Old Maid, and liking to meddle with
other people's business, told him that I thought he ought to take a
vacation. He said he couldn't afford it. I was honestly surprised at that,
because, while he was not rich, he was extremely well-to-do, with a
rapidly increasing law practice. And then Flossy's father had been very
generous when she married him. He was considerate enough to reply to my
look.
"You know I married a rich girl. Flossy's money is her own. She has saved
it--I wished her to save it, I _wished_ it--and I am doing my level best
to support her as nearly as possible in the way in which she has been
accustomed to live. She ought to have an easier time, poor child."
So he did not take a vacation, and the summer was very hot, and when
Flossy came home from Rye she found him wretchedly ill, and discovered
that he had had a trained nurse for two weeks before he let her know
anything about it. Then people pitied Flossy for having her summer
interrupted, and Flossy felt that it was a shame; but she very willingly
sat and fanned Bronson for as much as an hour every day and answered
questions languidly and was pale, and people sent her flowers and were
extremely sorry for her.
When Bronson became well enough to go away, as his doctors ordered, for a
complete rest, Rachel English happened to go on the same train with them,
and the next day I received a letter, or rather an envelope, from her,
with this single sentence enclosed: "And if she didn't make him hold her
in his arms in broad daylight every step of the way, because the train
jarred her back!"
(Tabby, there is no use in talking. I must stop and pull your ears. Come
here and let Missis be really rough with you for a minute.)
There are some women who prefer a valet to a husband; who think that the
more menial are his services in public, the more apparent is his devotion.
It is a Roman-chariot-wheel idea, which degrades both the man and the
woman in the eyes of the spectators. I wrote to Rachel, and said in the
letter, "One horse in the span always does most of the pulling, you know,
especially uphill." And Rachel wrote back, "Wouldn't I just like to drive
this pair, though!"
Bronson had his ideals before he was married, as most men have, concerning
the kind of a home he hoped for. He always said that it was not so much
what your home was, as how it was. He believed that a home consisted more
in the feelings and aims of its inmates than in rugs and jardinières. He
said to me once, "The oneness of two people could make a home in Sahara."
He was ambitious, too, feeling within himself that power which makes
orators and statesmen, but needing the approval and encouragement of some
one who also realized his capabilities, to enable him to do his best. He
himself was the one who was sympathetic, if he had only known it. His
nature responded with the utmost readiness to whatever appealed to him
from the side of right or justice.
He had noble hopes in many directions, hopes which inspired me to believe
in his truth and goodness, aside from his capabilities for achieving
greatness. His eagle sight, which read through other men's shams and
pretences; his moral sense, which bade him shun even the appearance of
evil, not only permitted, but urged him, seemingly, into this marriage
with Flossy, by which he effectually cut himself off from his dearest
aspirations. One by one I have seen him relinquish them, holding to them
lovingly to the last. The hours at home, which he intended to give to
study and research, have been sacrificed to the petting and nursing of a
perfectly well woman, who demanded it of him. His home life, where he had
dreamed of a congenial atmosphere, where the centripetal force should be
the love of wife and children, merged into frequent journeys for
Flossy--who would have been happy if she never had been obliged to stay in
one place over a week--and a shifting of their one child Rachel into the
care of nurses, because Flossy fretted at the care of her and demanded all
of Bronson's time for herself.
Thus was Bronson's life being twisted and bent from its natural course.
Was it a weakness in him? To be sure he might have shown his strength by
breaking loose from family ties, and, hardening his heart to his wife's
plaints, have carried out his ambitions with some degree of success. He
did attempt this, nor did he fail in his career. He was called a fairly
successful man. I dare say the majority of people never knew that he was
created for grander things. But something was sapping his energy at the
fountain-head. Was he realizing that he had helped to shatter his ideals
with his own hand?
I never am so well satisfied with my lot of single-blessedness as when I
contemplate the sort of wife Flossy makes. That may sound arrogant, but
this is a secret session of human nature, when arrogance and all
native-born sins are permissible.
Flossy is perfectly unconscious of the spectacle she presents to the
world. Ah, me! I know it is said, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." I
might have made him just such a wife, I suppose. O heavens! no, I
shouldn't. Tabby, that is making humility go a little too far.
IV
WOMEN AS LOVERS
"In every clime and country
There lives a Man of Pain,
Whose nerves, like chords of lightning,
Bring fire into his brain:
To him a whisper is a wound,
A look or sneer, a blow;
More pangs he feels in years or months
Than dunce-throng'd ages know."
I have had such a curious experience. I have been confided in, twice in
one day. Two more bits out of other lives have been given to me, and it is
astonishing to see how well they piece into mine.
To begin with, Rachel English came in early. There is something
particularly auspicious about Rachel. She fits me like a glove. She never
jars nor grates. When she is here, I am comfortable; when she is gone, I
miss something. If I see a fine painting, or hear magnificent music, I
think of Rachel before any other thought comes into my mind. One
involuntarily associates her with anything wonderfully fine in art or
literature, with the perfect assurance that she will be sympathetic and
appreciative. She understands the deep, inarticulate emotions in the
kindred way you have a right to expect of your lover, and which you are
oftenest disappointed in, if you do expect it of him. If I were a man, I
should be in love with Rachel.
Her sensitiveness through every available channel makes her of no use to
general society. Blundering people tread on her; malicious ones tear her
to pieces. Rachel ought to be caged, and only approached by clever people
who have brains enough to appreciate her. I should like to be her keeper.
But her organization is too closely allied to that of genius to be happy,
unless with certain environments which it is too good to believe will ever
surround her. She is so clever that she is perfectly helpless. If you knew
her, this would not be a paradox. Possibly it isn't anyway.
I do not say that Rachel is perfect. She would be desperately
uncomfortable as a friend if she were. Her failings are those belonging to
a frank, impulsive, generous nature, which I myself find it easy to
forgive. Her gravest fault is a witty tongue. That which many people would
give years of their lives to possess is what she has shed the most tears
over and which she most liberally detests in herself. She calls it her
private demon, and says she knows that one of the devils, in the woman who
was possessed of seven, was the devil of wit.
Wit is a weapon of defence, and was no more intended to be an attribute of
woman than is a knowledge of fire-arms or a fondness for mice. A witty
woman is an anomaly, fit only for literary circles and to be admired at a
distance.
It is of no use to advise Rachel to curb her tongue. So tender-hearted
that the sight of an animal in pain makes her faint; so humble-minded that
she cannot bear to receive an apology, but, no matter what has been the
offence, cuts it off short and hastens to accept it before it is uttered,
with the generous assurance that she, too, has been to blame; yet she
wounds cruelly, but unconsciously, with her tongue, which cleaves like a
knife, and holds up your dearest, most private foibles on stilettos of wit
for the public to mock at. Not that she is personal in her allusions, but
her thorough knowledge of the philosophy of human nature and the deep,
secret springs of human action lead her to witty, satirical
generalizations, which are so painfully true that each one of her hearers
goes home hugging a personal affront, while poor Rachel never dreams of
lacerated feelings until she meets averted faces or hears a whisper of
her heinous sin. This grieves her wofully, but leaves her with no mode of
redress, for who dare offer balm to wounded vanity? I believe her when she
says she "never wilfully planted a thorn in any human breast."
She scarcely had entered before I saw that she had something on her mind.
And it was not long before she began to confide, but in an impersonal way.
There is something which makes you hold your breath before you enter the
inner nature of some one who has extraordinary depth. You feel as if you
were going to find something different and interesting, and possibly
difficult or explosive. It is dark, too, yet you feel impelled to enter.
It is like going into a cave.
Most people are afraid of Rachel. Sometimes I am. But it is the alluring,
hysterical fear which makes a child say, "Scare me again."
Imagine such a girl in love. Rachel is in love. She would not say with
whom--naturally. At least, naturally for Rachel. I felt rather helpless,
but as I knew that all she wanted was an intelligent sympathizer, not
verbal assistance, I was willing to blunder a little. I knew she would
speedily set me right.
"You are too clever to marry," I said at a hazard.
"That is one of the most popular of fallacies," she answered me
crushingly. "Why can't clever women marry, and make just as good wives as
the others? Why can't a woman bend her cleverness to see that her house is
in order, and her dinners well cooked, and buttons sewed on, as well as
to discuss new books and keep pace with her husband intellectually? Do you
suppose because I know Greek that I cannot be in love? Do you suppose
because I went through higher mathematics that I never pressed a flower he
gave me? Do you imagine that Biology kills blushing in a woman? Do you
think that Philosophy keeps me from crying myself to sleep when I think he
doesn't care for me, or growing idiotically glad when he tells me he does?
What rubbish people write upon this subject! Even Pope proved that he was
only a man when he said,
"'Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.'
"Did you ever read such foolishness?"
"Often, my dear, often. But console yourself. A wiser than Pope says, 'The
learned eye is still the loving one.'"
"Browning, of course. I ought not to be surprised that the prince of poets
should be clever enough to know that. It is from his own experience. 'Who
writes to himself, writes to an eternal public.' You see, Ruth, men can't
help looking at the question from the other side, because they form the
other side. You might cram a woman's head with all the wisdom of the ages,
and while it would frighten every man who came near her into hysterics, it
wouldn't keep her from going down abjectly before some man who had sense
enough to know that higher education does not rob a woman of her
womanliness. Depend upon it, Ruth, when it does, she would have been
unwomanly and masculine if she hadn't been able to read. And it is the man
who marries a woman of brains who is going to get the most out of this
life."
"Men don't want clever wives," I said feebly.
"Clever men don't. Why is it that all the brightest men we know have
selected girls who looked pretty and have coddled them? Look at Bronson
and Flossy. That man is lonesome, I tell you, Ruth. He actually hungers
and thirsts for his intellectual and moral affinity, and yet even he did
not have the sense--the astuteness--to select a wife who would have stood
at his side, instead of one who lay in a wad at his feet. Oh, the
bungling marriages that we see! I believe one reason is that like seldom
marries like. For my part I do not believe in the marriage of opposites.
Look at Robert Browning and his wife. That is my ideal marriage. Their art
and brains were married, as well as their hands and hearts. It is pure
music to think of it. And, to me, the most pathetic poem in the English
language is Browning's 'Andrea del Sarto.'"
"Isn't it strange to see the kind of men who love clever women like you?
You never could have brought yourself to marry any of them, expecting to
find them congenial. They would have admired you in dumb silence, until
they grew tired of feeling your superiority; after that--what?"
"The deluge, I suppose. Ruth, I don't see how a woman with any
self-respect can marry until she meets her master. That is high treason,
isn't it? But it is one of those sentient bits of truth which we never
mention in society. The man I marry must have a stronger will and a
greater brain than I have, or I should rule him. I'll never marry until I
find a man who knows more than I do. Yet, as to these other men who have
loved me--you know what a tender place a woman has in her heart for the
men who have wanted to marry her. My intellect repudiated, but my heart
cherishes them still. Odd things, hearts. Sometimes I wish we didn't have
any when they ache so. I feel like disagreeing with all the poets to-day,
because they will not say what I believe. Do you remember this, from
Beaumont and Fletcher,
"'Of all the paths that lead to woman's love
Pity's the straightest'?
"Men are fond of saying that, I notice, but I don't think we women bear
out the truth. I couldn't love a man I pitied. I could love one I was
proud of, or afraid of, but one I pitied? Never. It is more true to say
it of men. I believe plenty of girls obtain husbands by virtue of their
weakness, their loneliness, their helplessness, their--anything which
makes a man pity them. Pleasant thought, isn't it, for a woman who loves
her own sex and wishes it held its head up better! You may say that it is
this sort who receive more of the attentions that women love, chivalry
and tenderness and devotion. But if all or any of these were inspired by
pity, I'd rather not have them. I would rather a man would be rough and
brusque with me, if he loved me heroically, than to see him fling his coat
in the mud for me to step on, because he pitied my weakness. Do you know,
Ruth, I think men are a good deal more human than women. You can work them
out by algebra (for they never have more than one unknown quantity, and in
the woman problem there would be more _x_'s than anything else), and you
can go by rules and get the answer. But nothing ever calculated or evolved
can get the final answer to one woman--though they do say she is fond of
the last word! We understand ourselves intuitively, and we understand men
by study, yet we are made the receivers, not the givers; the chosen, not
the choosers. It really is an absurd dispensation when you view it apart
from sentiment, yet I, for one, would not have it changed. I should not
mind being Cupid for a while, though, and giving him a few ideas in the
mating line.
"I think women are often misjudged. Men seem to think that all we want is
to be loved. Now, it isn't all that I want. If I had to choose between
being loved by a man--_the_ man, let us say--and not loving him at all,
or loving him very dearly and not being loved by him, I would choose the
latter, for I think that more happiness comes from loving than from being
loved."
"Why _don't_ you marry somebody?" I asked in an agony of entreaty, for
fear all of this would be wasted on me, an Old Maid, rather than upon some
man. She shook her head.
"It needs a compelling, not a persuasive, power to win a woman. No man who
takes me like this," closing her thumb and forefinger as if holding a
butterfly, "can have me. The one who dares to take me like this,"
clenching her hand, "will get me. But he will not come."
Then I walked with her to the door, and she bent over me, and whispered
something about my being a "blessed comfort" to her, and went away. Ah,
Tabby, my dear, it is worth while being an Old Maid to be a blessed
comfort to anybody. But I would just like to ask you, as a cat of
intelligence, what in the world I did for her!
Imagine some man making that girl care for him so much. For, of course,
it is somebody. A girl does not say such things about the abstract man.
I was in an uplifted state of mind all day, as I am always after a talk
with Rachel, and when Percival came in the evening, I felt that I could
deluge him with my gathered sentiment, and he would be receptive. Besides,
Percival has a positive genius for understanding. I did not know it,
however, this morning. I seldom know as much in the morning as I do at
night.
Percival approves of sentiment. He said once that a life which had
principle and sentiment needed little else, for principle was to stand
upon, and sentiment was to beautify with. He said this after I had told
him rather apologetically that I wished there was more sentiment in the
world, because I liked it. Is it strange that I like Percival? You can't
help admiring people who approve of you.
Percival is a genius. People in general do not recognize this fact. He is
an inarticulate genius. Men feel that he is in some occult way different
from them, yet they do not know just how. Nor will they ever take the
trouble to study out a problem in human nature, either in man or woman,
unless they are philosophers.
Women care for Percival in proportion to their intuitions. You must
comprehend him synthetically. You cannot dissect him. With generous
appreciation and sympathetic encouragement, Percival's genius would become
articulate. To discover it he must needs marry--but he must wait for the
hundredth woman. This, of course, he will not do. If he can find a Flossy,
he will go down on his knees to her, when she ought to be on hers to him;
metaphorical knees, in this case.
I am very much afraid he has found her. He is in love. You can always tell
when a man is in love, Tabby, especially if he is not the lovering kind
and has never been troubled in that way before. The best kind of love has
to be so intuitive that it often is grandly, heroically awkward. Depend
upon it, Tabby, a man who is dainty and pretty and unspeakably smooth when
he makes love to you, has had altogether too much practice.
Percival knows that he is in love--that is one great step in the right
direction. But he is in that first partly alarmed, partly curious frame of
mind that a man would be in who touched his broken arm for the first time
to see how much it hurt. Whoever she is, he loves her deeply and thinks
she never can care for him. He did not tell me this. If he thought that I
knew it, he would wonder how in the world I found it out. Women are born
lovers. They have to do the bulk of the loving all through the world. I
told Percival so. At first he seemed surprised; then he said that it was
true. I believe some men could go through life without loving anybody on
earth. But the woman never lived who could do it. A woman must love
something--even if she hasn't anything better to love than a pug-dog or
herself.
"Why aren't women the choosers?" said Percival seriously. The same
question twice in one day, Tabby. "Whenever I think of understanding the
question of love, I wish for a woman's intuitions. Women know so much
about it. They absorb the whole question at a glance. But, with so many
different kinds of women, how is a man to know anything?"
I always liked Percival, but a woman never likes a man so well as when
he acknowledges his helplessness in her particular line of knowledge, and
throws himself on her mercy. Mentally, I at once began to feel motherly
towards Percival, and clucked around him like an old hen. He went on to
say that men often are not so blind that they cannot see the prejudices
and complexities of a woman's nature, but they are not constituted to
understand them by intuition as women understand men. "The masculine
mind," he said, "is but ill-attuned to the subtle harmonies of the
feminine heart."
I was secretly very much pleased at this remark, but I made myself answer
as became an Old Maid, just to make him continue without
self-consciousness. If I had blushed and thanked him, he would have gone
home.
"They set these things down to the natural curiousness and contrariness
of women, and often despise what they cannot comprehend."
He answered me with the heightened consciousness and slight irritation of
a man who has been in that fault, but has seen and mended it.
"All men do not. Still, how can they help it at times?"
Then, Tabby, I went a-sailing. I launched out on my favorite theme.
"Men must needs study women. Often the terror with which some men regard
these--to us--perfectly transparent complexities, could be avoided if they
would analyze the cause with but half the patience they display in the
case of an ailing trotter. But no; either they edge carefully away from
such dangers as they previously have experienced, or, if they blunder into
new ones, they give the woman a sealskin and trust to time to heal the
breach."
I thought of the Asburys when I said that. But Percival ruminated upon it,
as if it touched his own case. A very good thing about Percival is that
he does not think he knows everything. It encourages me to believe in his
genius. To rouse him from a brown-study over this Flossy girl, I said
rather recklessly,