It was March now, the mild March of an early spring. There came new
days, zephyrous and sweet. All the world seemed to love a lover. But
other matters were afoot in the world, too, necessarily: afoot even in
the old coterie itself.
Charles Garrott, descending Miss Grace's steps on an afternoon that
looked like April and felt like May, thought not of young Romance. What
with the groom's absorption, and Mary Wing's unprecedented illness, the
old principal friend had, indeed, heard little or nothing of the happy
pair through these days. He had accepted the event, long since, once and
for all, with fatalistic philosophy; and though the nuptials were now
but six days distant, they were far from his mind in this moment, as,
his hated tutor's stint done, he turned his long stride hurriedly toward
Olive Street.
Charles, as we know, was not a caller. It was true that he had hardly
seen Mary Wing since the day when she, the heroine of his write-ups, had
so suddenly indicated herself as his larger heroine as well; true also
that, in the engrossed and very fruitful solitude of the Studio
succeeding, he had thought of her much, bookishly and otherwise. But
these facts had not changed the essential nature of Charles. Still he
was not a caller; still when he rang people's door-bells, it was morally
certain that he had definite matters to urge upon their notice.
And so it was to-day. Charles, in a word, had conceived a new plan for
helping Mary.
That she, the admirable, by way of reward for her smashing denial of the
Ego, should find herself fixed for life as a grammar-school teacher,
"demoted" and disgraced: this state of things had naturally seemed
unendurable to Mary's good friend. That Mary did not need his help, that
he recognized her now as competent, in the finest sense, to manage her
own affairs henceforward, seemed to have little or nothing to do with
the case. Hence, while she lay withdrawn from the battle of life with
bronchitis, the helper had been elaborately at work on new lines:
stalking School Board members for Mary, in fine, with great cunning. But
this plan, unluckily, his fourth and most troublesome, had lately
collapsed about his ears. It had cost the young man much valued time,
and not a little money for lunches; and the net practical result of it
had been to leave him angrily conscious of "influence," mysteriously
pervasive, and by no means possessed by him. A friendly disposition
toward Mary, personally, seemed to be everywhere joined to an unshakable
conviction that she could not hope to get back to the High School before
the fall, if then. Such was the fruit of five diplomatic conferences:
the sixth had stopped Charles short. Young Dr. Hazen, who was almost as
much Mary's representative on the School Board as Senff was Mysinger's,
informed him that Mary herself had already canvassed over the Board with
him, Hazen, and abandoned all hope in that quarter.
What, indeed, could he do for Mary Wing that she could not do better for
herself?
The fifth plan concerned Public Opinion again, and a new use of the gift
he had. It inspired less confidence in its author than any that had
preceded it. And it was to submit it, in advance, for Mary's discussion
and approval, that Charles now presented himself at the Wings' front
door.
However, he met with a disappointment. Mary was out. She had gone to the
Flowers' soon after luncheon--unexpectedly, it appeared--and, at
half-past four, was not yet back. That seemed more or less surprising.
Mrs. Wing, who had answered his ring, looked somewhat concerned, he
thought. However, as it was agreed that Mary could not remain with
Angela indefinitely, the caller decided, after brief hesitation,--for
the Studio allured in these days as never before,--to wait for her.
So he came again into the sitting-room, and Mrs. Wing sat to keep him
company. Naturally, there was but one subject for their conversation.
Charles liked Mrs. Wing. She always began every conversation with him by
asking: "And how did you find your dear mother on your last visit?"
Mary's mother had never seen his mother, and possibly never would, but
(being a frightful sentimentalist) she assumed that all mothers are
dear. It was next her habit to inquire whether Charles had written any
stories lately, and why they never saw anything of his in the magazines.
Such things tended to create a bond. And recently the tie had been
strengthened by an unusually intimate talk on the subject of Mary, whose
surrender of her great prize had, indeed, upset and distressed her
mother even more than Charles had predicted.
To-day, again, Mrs. Wing appeared somewhat unlike her usual calm self.
She omitted her inquiry about Charles's writing altogether (thus denying
him his chance to mention the recent rather gratifying acceptance of
Dionysius, no less), and the flattering things she kept saying of Angela
had, to his ear, a faintly tentative ring, requiring his confirmation.
But his first vague wonder, whether anything could have happened, was
soon lost in other reactions. Thus, he had to wince a little in
agreeing, once more, that Donald's future wife was a thoroughly "womanly
girl." Few authorities enjoy denying the ripe sum of their own best
thinking. But a later remark of Mrs. Wing's took a much deeper twist in
his mind.
"Really," she said, slowly and dubiously, following a pause, "I have but
one fault to find with Donald's choice, and that is--well, frankly,
Angela seemed to care so little for Paulie and Neddy Warder.... And
Donald was such a goose over them, dear boy."
As he did not see his way clear to replying to that, "I hope you're
mistaken, ma'am," Charles merely smiled vaguely, and said nothing. But
what he thought, on the delicate implication, was nothing about Angela
at all--only that Donald had been rather less of a goose over Paulie and
Neddy than Mary Wing had been....
Then the sitting-room clock ticked for a space, while Mrs. Wing communed
with herself. And Charles, gazing out into the park, waiting for his
friend, thought how it was that a young woman's work--even an
extraordinary young woman like Mary--always subtly lacked just that
ultimate touch of grim seriousness which justified the "fierce hackings
away" of a man. For, as an abstract truth, there was positively no such
thing as a Permanent Spinster: and women who were not spinsters, and
normally desired Paulies and Neddies of their own, could not possibly
fulfill their longings without serious complications to themselves, then
and thenceforward. It was no human or escapable "tyranny" that had made
Woman, to this degree, to her glory or her disaster, forever the victim
of her sex: and, by the same token, fixed the final responsibility for
the economic support of the family upon the shoulders of the predestined
and uncompromised provider, Man....
Yes, then and thenceforward ... Could you, for example, imagine Mary
Wing--who had had chances to marry before now, who might reasonably
marry at any time--could you picture Mary packing off her three little
darlings to a crèche every morning, that she might go and grow her soul
at a desk somewhere? Maybe so; but he wondered....
He was thinking whether he could contrive to discuss the crèche and
endowment arguments in his novel--for of course you could make a story
carry just a certain amount of "solid stuff," and only dreary prigs of
readers would lie still while you tried to feed them forcibly with a
spoon--when all at once Mrs. Wing, near by, was heard to strike her
hands together, with a little ejaculation.
"Oh, Mr. Garrott! I do believe Mary's at the High School all the time!"
That made the thoughtful visitor turn swiftly enough.
"At the _High School_?"
"It's so stupid of me!" she explained, with some relief, it seemed.
"I've just remembered. You know, she never cleared her papers and things
out of her office closet there, and it got on her mind when she was
sick. And to-day, when she came in from school, she told me she had
arranged with Mr. Geddie over the telephone--the man who has her office
now--to go and attend to it this afternoon. Yes, that's it--I'm sure!"
"Oh!" said Charles, not a little perplexed. "And then, you mean--she
decided to go to the Flowers' instead?"
"Well, to go there first--I suppose. Donald came in just as she finished
lunch--to talk with her about something. Then, when he had gone, Mary
told me she was going down to see Angela. It was all rather
unexpected--and somehow the High School went out of my mind completely."
"But I hope nothing's happened?" he said quickly.
"Well--I don't know that there has."
Perplexity passed at once into the certainty that something had
happened. The instant thought in the young man's mind was: What's Angela
done now? Having risen, he gazed with direct inquiry at his elderly
friend. But her eyes glanced away from him; and she put him off further
by repeating: "It was stupid of me to keep you."
Mrs. Wing added that Mary was certainly at the High School now. Charles,
turning disturbed away, remarked that perhaps he would still be in time
to help with the office cleaning, and she said that was very kind of
him.
"She'll be glad to see you, I know. Indeed, she has appreciated all
you've done for her--those beautiful articles, for example--more than
you quite realize, perhaps."
But the young man shook his head, and said with a kind of bitterness:
"I've never done anything for her in my life."
And then, as he took the lady's hand to say good-bye, he asked abruptly:
"But why shouldn't I know what's happened, Mrs. Wing?"
"Oh," said Mary's mother, and hesitated.
"Yes, why shouldn't you?" said she, and hesitated again.
"Well," she began again slowly, "it's nothing so serious, as I
said,--just a fresh disappointment for Mary,--that is really all it
amounts to with me. Very likely Donald has intimated to you that he was
not going to Wyoming?"
The caller stared at her dumbfounded.
"Not going to Wyoming! Why!--why not?"
"Well, he feels, in his new circumstances," said Mrs. Wing, uneasily,
"that it would be more suitable to accept the position in New York.
But--I really had little opportunity to discuss it with Mary. She
seemed--to be frank--much disturbed, she had so set her heart on this
work in the West--"
"More _suitable_!... How?"
"Well, for one thing--it doesn't seem fair to separate Angela so far
from her mother, as would have to be the case in Wyoming."
But into Charles's mind there had suddenly popped back a stray remark
let fall by Donald, in the only talk he had had with him for weeks: "I
tell you, Charlie, it's pretty rough on a girl to be dragged off to live
in a shack nine miles from nowhere!" A mere passing observation, that he
had paid no attention to at the time--but was that it? Was that the
reason why another of Mary Wing's most cherished plans must suddenly
cave in?
He stood utterly dismayed.
"So Mrs. Flower," he asked, with some want of composure, "is going to
live with them in New York?"
"Oh, no,--not for the present, I believe. She feels, and so do I, that
young couples should be left to themselves to make their start. But
they will be so near that they can visit back and forth--which would be
impossible if Donald--"
"But Mrs. Flower can't live here by herself?"
"Well, no," said Mrs. Wing, and fussed with books on the table. "That
has been the great problem, of course. Dr. Flower's death has
complicated the situation sadly. I believe the present plan is for
Wallace--the boy, you know--to come back and live with her--just for the
next few months, while Donald and Angela are finding themselves."
Charles stood without a word. But perhaps his look betrayed what he
felt, for Mrs. Wing threw out her hands with a helpless gesture, and
cried: "Well, he is the man of the family now!"
"However," she added, turning away, "perhaps Mary will be able to hit
upon some other arrangement. That is what she went there for--to talk
the whole situation over with Angela."
But Charles, who had always thought of Angela as "soft" and Mary as
"hard," seemed somehow quite certain that that talk had accomplished
nothing. With brief speech, he moved toward the door. Doubtless struck
with the fixed gravity of his look, Mary's mother, who had been an
old-fashioned girl herself once, said with an effort, and yet firmly
too:--
"It is life itself that is hard. Marriage means--readjustment. That is
the only comment to make."
It was precisely the point on which the silent young man did not agree
with her. To him, as to her, all the sharp force of this tidings was,
indeed, in Mary's new overthrow. And yet for the moment there seemed to
be room in him for nothing else but comments on the vast void in Mary's
so different cousin.
Angela was wanting in the responsible qualities of a full-grown human
being. Her fatal lack was in human worth. It was the sum of all he had
thought about her since the day he had called upon her poor father. It
was the cap and climax of all he meant to say about her in his New
Novel.
So Charles took his leave with an abstracted face.
In the drawer of the Studio table, there was growing now, night by
night, a fresh stack of manuscript, steady and firm upon a new Line.
Mary Wing had straightened out this Line for Charles: Mary who had
taught him once and for all that a woman could be finely independent,
and still uphold the interdependence which held the world together. Yet
Mary, the admirable, was after all but his "contrast" and his foil: it
was for the peculiarities of her opposite that he had finally whetted
his pencil. And, in the intense and retrospective thinking which went
along with the best writing he had ever yet done, the young man
considered that he had got to the bottom of Angela's case, and her
sisters', quite thoroughly explored the souls of the Waiting Women of
Romance.
But this news of her, these final touches as to the Nice Girl's brother
and her future husband, seemed to fling at him, as it were, a last
conclusive chapter for his "Notes on Women." That marriage meant
readjustments he, the authority, doubtless understood as well as
another. That this marriage might make it necessary for Wallie Flower to
be readjusted out of his education: even that was allowed as
conceivable. But that the very first act of Angela's new life should be
to influence her husband in the direction of his weakness, and, as it
seemed, of her own good comfort--what was this, indeed, but a brilliant
certification of all the grounds of his own attack?...
The author's face, the author's swift feet, were set toward the High
School. His errand--now--was to cheer up Mary Wing. "Make her look on
the bright side": so her mother had urged at parting. That necessity
remained as a soreness and dull anger through all the young man's
consciousness. And yet, in nearly a mile's walk, he hardly thought of
Mary once.
He was surveying, as if from a new peak, the unhappy situation of
Home-Makers with their Homes yet to seek: the considerable army of the
involuntary spinsters of leisure. And more than ever now, perhaps, he
saw these sisters as a Type, pathetically marked: the innocent
creatures, the helpless victims, of a dying ideal of themselves.
Here was poor little Angela, his Novel's case in point. She was born a
human being, she was born a being with sex. And in twenty-six years'
contact with the rich and human world, she had gathered nothing to her
sum beyond what tended to enhance her sex's attraction. So selecting,
she had permanently lost the fullness of her double birthright: all in
nice, unconscious and inevitable response to an environment which
continually assured her that being a woman was enough.
If life had been real and bright and turbulent around her, and she sat
within and polished her pink nails, it was because she was a woman. If
she was given no education beyond the demands of provincial parlor-talk,
no training for her hands, no occupation for her head, if no one ever
thought of her as a full-statured being who must pay her way in
substantial coin; this, again, was because she was a woman, and a woman
(if any one bothered with argument at all) some day might--or might
not--be the mother of children. Surely it had not been Angela's fault if
she was early apprised, though through a sweet mist, that she had but
one faculty of any value in the world's market; not her fault if, amid
general approval, she innocently spent her youth and idleness in
tricking out her value, and bringing it steadily to the attention of the
only beings who could have a use for it. Least of all was it her fault
if her peculiar business, and her odd specialized training, were
bounded, not by marriage, but only by a wedding-day. For the final
unnaturalness, the crowning wrong in her situation was exactly this:
that, being told that she must be a wife or nothing, she was
coincidently told that being a wife was a matter which a nice girl did
well to know nothing about....
The author, sharpening his phrases, walked in angry abstraction. He
passed old acquaintances as if he had never seen them before....
Oh, it was true (he conceded), a thousand times true, that many women of
this crude bringing-up did develop, when their time came, a splendid
competence over all their special field. But it was a little too much to
assume that every creature in the female form could be counted on to
perform such a feat of pure character. And Romance, which gallantly or
indifferently made these exact assumptions, defending and cherishing the
queer but comfortable orientalization with the cloak of false
"womanliness," scarcely pretended to believe its own agreeable fictions.
Here was Angela again, his little case in point. Angela was reasonably
good-looking, adopted a flattering attitude toward eligible young men,
knew her place, and kept no opinions on matters of interest to her
betters; hence she was called a "womanly" woman. Being womanly implied
the possession of certain home-making virtues, present and to come;
hence it was assumed, and she inevitably and naïvely assumed, that she
possessed these virtues. Odd as these deductions sounded, he himself, he
could not deny, had swallowed them once,--that night at the Redmantle
Club,--romantically accepting the appearance for the reality, willfully
investing the humdrum commonplace with the full beauties of the ideal.
But for him, at least, all obstinate optimisms concerning La Femme had
exploded with a bang in a party-call. You did not gather figs of
thistles. And now it was no longer conceivable to him that she who in
quarter of a century had developed no human interests, tastes, resources
at all, who seemed to lack even an average interest in Paulie and Neddy
Warder, should all at once blossom marvelously into the responsible and
"justified" matron. No, for him, Angela at forty, having "let herself
go" now that nothing more was expected of her, sat forever in a room
that she had not swept, plaintively reminding a fatigued Donald of the
priceless gift of her Self.
And Donald, though his interest in exploring the creature once so
elaborately mysteried was long since utterly exhausted, would probably
take that argument amiss no more than Dr. Flower had done. Romantic
males, with their poor opinion of the worth of a woman, might hope for
true domesticity, true maternity: but in their hearts they had thought
all along, with a wink, that "possession" was enough. It was "what a
woman was for."
But in that they were mistaken. Possession was not enough. Being a
female was not enough. Great heavens!--thought Charles Garrott, and
muttered as he strode.... What a shame, what a staggering waste of rich
human potentiality, to classify and file away one half the world as only
"_marital rights_!"
Wasn't it about time to stop all this? Wasn't it time for modern writers
to pull away the rosy veils and let the Angelas meet themselves--while
they could still do something about it? Didn't it lay up needless future
misery to go on deceiving helpless women into putting a preposterous
overvaluation upon the mere possession of their sex? Lastly, and above
all, wasn't it a colossal libel on all womanhood to accept the strut and
mannerism born of this deception as the true essentials of
"womanliness"?
_Womanly!..._ Why, womanliness was a prime human quality, integrally
necessary to the work of the world--a great positive quality, not a
little passive one, productive, not sterile, of the spirit, not of the
body. Womanliness was the mother and guardian of great social virtues:
of a finer and deeper emotion, of more sensitive perceptions, of a
subtler intuition of the sources of life, of an all-mothering sympathy,
a more embracing tenderness. Womanliness had no more to do with the
light bright plumage of the mating-season than a waxed mustache had to
do with being a soldier.
There was a time, he understood well, when the fact of womanhood had
implied substantialities: when being a wife meant also being a domestic
factory superintendent, not to mention being a continuous mother. That
time was gone forever. You might argue for the passing, you might argue
against it: meanwhile it had happened. Inexorable economics had dried
the heart from the old tradition; and in the sudden vacuum thus created
there moved and thrived anomalous little creatures who never knew that
they had lost all touch with reality. Untroubled by a rumor of change,
Angela held contentedly to the remnant, a low ideal of herself. But it
was not so with her finer sisters. For the passing of the old
womanliness of four walls and dependence had flung a window wide to a
nobler prospect and a vaster horizon. And already the woman of to-morrow
was rising in her lusty strength to prove her fundamental racial virtue,
her womanliness, upon nothing less than the world.
Well, hadn't he told Mary long ago that the object of all this was only
to make women more like themselves? In that, he would stake his life, he
had been exactly right.
* * * * *
A concrete High School smote across the vision of the seer, and the
cloud-stepper's feet trod but the hard sidewalk again.
Groping for truth upon his favorite subject, he had been briefly lost to
the issues of the practical: he had a power of concentration, as he
would have been the first to admit. But the flight of his rhetoric was,
after all, only an incident of his indignation and distress; which
sentiments, he knew all the time, yet had to be faced on their own
account. And now, as he rounded his last corner, and his destination
rose abruptly before him, Charles recalled for what he had been walking
so fast and far.
Or, no ... What was he coming for exactly?
It was all very fine and easy, as a writer, to polish up demolishing
phrases for poor little Angela. But what did he, as a man and a friend,
have to do for Mary Wing?
The helper crossed the street in the lingering vernal sunshine. Here was
the great building where Mary had once held an important place, where
she came to-day, by special permission only, to remove the last traces
of that association. Now that plan with which he had set out to-day
looked back at the young man with rather a small face, and wry. He had
never thought much of the plan: only to persuade Mary to let him make
public the facts about her rejected honor from the Education
League--legitimate news for the papers, fine peg for a new publicity
campaign, etc. But all at once he knew that he wasn't even going to
mention this to Mary now. With what words, then, did he rush to her in
her fresh disaster? Doubtless to say, "I'm awfully sorry." A stirring
exploit. Hadn't she shown him on that other day that she, the strong,
had no desire for his fruitless sympathies?
The truth was, and he had known it from the beginning, he rather shrank
from seeing Mary at all now, in the stress of this final defeat. Final,
yes: for while Angela was attaining success to the full limit of her
small conceptions, every aspiration that Mary had cherished, literally,
had one by one gone down. And if this last was not the worst, perhaps,
neither was it the easiest to bear. No, if anything on earth was
calculated to harden and embitter a woman who could not easily yield,
surely it must be her own so easy overthrow by pink cheeks and soft,
empty eyes.
And these white-stone steps Charles now ascended had for him a
reminiscent power, by no means comforting. The last time he had trod
these steps, he had sworn, in anger, that he, single-handed, would force
the School Board to bring Mary Wing back here, without delay. Mary would
have a right to smile, if she ever heard of that. She had been thrown
out of this building only because she was a woman: under all the
argument, that was positively the reason. And now three months had
passed, and he, her helper, came to say, "Well, I'm very sorry...."
Charles pushed through the tall bronze doors of the High School, where
he had seen Miss Trevenna one day, strode long-faced into the dim spaces
of the entrance hall. It was five o'clock: the whole building seemed
silent and empty. A rare sense of impotence within him, troubled also by
a secret shrinking, the young man went stalking across the corridor
toward the stairways. But just here he encountered a brief diversion.
A glazed door at his left, at which he happened to be looking, came
suddenly open. The door was marked, in neat gold letters, PRINCIPAL'S
OFFICE. And reasonably enough, the jaunty figure that came stepping out
proved to be none other than the principal himself.
Always a hard but uncomplaining worker, Mr. Mysinger was evidently just
leaving for the day. Light overcoat on his arm, stick and gloves in his
hand, he whistled blithely to himself, to the tune of labor done. But at
the sight of Charles Garrott here on his domain, he checked his gay air,
stood still in his official door.
Over half the corridor, the two men gazed at each other. And Mr.
Mysinger's specious face, after the first surprised stare, assumed the
smile of amity and pleasure.
"Ah, Garrott! Well met!"
Charles had halted, too, without premeditation. The chance meeting here
was natural enough. All that gave it the force of coincidence was that
he had in that instant been thinking, not for the first time, of Mary
Wing's old saying of this man: "If he let either Board know that he
wanted me back, it would be done to-morrow...."
"I've wanted to see you for some time," said Mr. Mysinger, smiling and
easy--"about a certain matter of common interest--"
On the great stairway the sound of descending feet was heard, those of a
belated teacher, doubtless. But neither man looked to see. And within
the sedentary Charles there was slowly spreading a vast iciness, akin to
a bodily nausea.
"Can't you step into the office half a minute?"
"Certainly."
Mary's former principal stood aside from his door, bowing, with
elaborate welcome. Charles, advancing, passed through it, passed through
the anteroom, stepped silent into an office large as a magnate's. Here
he stood, just inside the door. Mysinger, following with his faint
swagger, went by him toward his handsome flat desk.
"Have a cigar?"
"Thanks, no."
The good-looking principal leaned against his desk, facing his visitor
with the same air of too good-humored assurance.
"Garrott, let's be frank," said he. "You feel that I am hostile to one
of your friends, and stand in the way of her advancement in the schools.
You are really mistaken in that. So far as my personal opinions might
carry weight, I am anxious for her--for all the teachers--to go forward
just as fast as their abilities would justify. But as you know, Garrott,
the Board and the Superintendent settle all these matters, and I myself
am only one of the teachers under their direction."
He paused encouragingly. But the young man at the door only continued to
look at him with the same lidless fixedness.
"At the same time," said the principal, a rather more resolute note
tingeing his voice, "you appreciate as well as I that teachers
can't be picked up and moved about like chessmen. We must have
some--permanence--some constancy--to insure efficiency. And frankly, my
personal judgment--after fifteen years' experience, and considering the
brilliant work of Johnson Geddie--is that you could hardly hope to see
your friend promoted--well, immediately."
"So you would advise--?"
Mysinger's eyelid seemed to flutter a little: he really did have a
purpose, it seemed.
"I am told--ahem!--that your friend has recently received a most
flattering offer--from elsewhere?"