“But I ought to keep this.”
“Why? Is there a clause in your lease that you’ve got to use it?”
When Betty gets me against the wall this way I become frightened. Timid
animals, thus cornered, are seized with the courage of despair and fly
at their assailant. Timid human beings show much less spirit--I always
think animals behave with more dignity than people--they tell lies.
“But--but--I like it,” I stammered.
“Oh,” said Betty with a falling note, “if that’s the case--” She
stopped and rose to her feet, too polite to say what she thought. “Put
on your things and come out with me. I’m shopping, and afterward we’ll
lunch somewhere.”
I went out with Betty in the car, a limousine with two men and a chow
dog. We went to shops where obsequious salesladies listened to Mrs.
Ferguson’s needs and sought to satisfy them. They had a conciliating
way of turning to me and asking my opinion which, such is the poverty
of my spirit, pleased me greatly. I get a faint reflex feeling of what
it is to be the wife of one of New York’s rising men. Then we lunched
richly and clambered back into the limousine, each dropping languidly
into her corner while the footman tucked us in.
We were rolling luxuriously down Fifth Avenue when Betty rallied
sufficiently from the torpor of digestion to murmur.
“To-morrow morning, after breakfast, I’ll walk three times round the
reservoir.”
Roger came at eight. It was the first cold night of the season and the
furnace was not broken in. In spite of lamps the room was chilly. It
was good to see him again--in my parlor, in my Morris chair. He isn’t
handsome, a long thin man, with a long thin face, smooth shaven and
lined, and thick, sleek, iron-gray hair. Some one has said all that
a man should have in the way of beauty is good teeth. Roger has that
necessary asset and another one, well-shaped, gentlemanly hands, very
supple and a trifle dry to the touch. And, yes, he has a charming smile.
He is forty-two and hasn’t changed a particle in the last fifteen
years. Why can’t a woman manage that? When I was dressing to-night I
looked in the glass and tried to reconstruct my face as it was fifteen
years ago. I promised to be a pretty girl then, but it was just the
fleeting beauty that nature gives us in our mating time, lends us for
her own purposes. Now I see a pale mild person with flat-lying brown
hair and that beaten expression peculiar to females whom life conquers.
I don’t know whether it’s the mouth or the eyes, but I see it often in
faces I pass on the street.
It was a funny evening--conversation varied by chamber music. We began
it sitting in the middle of the room on either side of the table like
the family lawyer and the heroine in the opening scene of a play. Then,
as the temperature dropped, we slowly gravitated toward the register,
till we finally brought up against it. A faint warm breath came through
the iron grill and we leaned forward and basked in it. We were talking
about women. We often do, it’s one of our subjects. Of course Roger is
of the old school. He’s got an early Victorian point of view; I know he
would value me more highly if I swooned now and then. He doesn’t call
women “the weaker vessel,” but he thinks of them that way.
“I don’t see why you can’t be content with things as they are,” he
said, spreading his hands to the register’s meager warmth. “Why should
you want to go into politics and have professions? Why aren’t you
willing to leave all that to us and stay where you belong?”
“But we may not have anything to do where we belong. Roger, if you move
nearer the corner you’ll get a little more heat.”
Roger moved.
“Every woman has work in her own sphere,” he said, while moving.
“I haven’t.”
“You, dear Evie,” he looked at me with a fond indulgent smile. “You
have plenty of work and it’s always well done--to bring romance and
sweetness into life.”
There is something quite maddening about Roger when he talks this
way. I could find it in me to call him an ass. All the superiority of
countless generations of men who have ordered women’s lives lies behind
it. And he is impregnable, shut up with his idea. It is built round him
and cemented with a thousand years of prejudice and tradition.
“I don’t _want_ to bring romance and sweetness into life,” I said
crossly, “I want to get something out of it.”
“You can’t help it. It’s what you were put in the world for. We men
don’t want you in the struggle. That’s for us. It’s our business to go
down into the arena and fight for you, make a place for you, keep you
out of it all.”-- He moved his foot across the register and turned it
off.
“You’ve turned off the heat,” I cried.
He turned it on.
--“Keep you out of it all. Sheltered from the noise and glare of the
world by our own firesides.”
“Some of us would rather have a little more noise and glare by our own
register.”
“All wrong, Evie, all wrong. You’re in a niche up there with a lamp
burning before it. If you come down from your niche you’re going to
lose the thing that’s made you worshipful--your femininity, your charm.”
“What does our charm matter to us? What good is our femininity to us?”
He looked surprised.
“What good?”
“Look here, Roger, I feel certain that Shem, Ham and Japheth talked
this way to their wives on those rainy days in the Ark. It’s not only
a pre-glacial point of view, but it’s the most colossally selfish
one. All you men are worried about is that we’re not going to be so
attractive to make love to. The chase is going to lose its zest--”
I stopped short, cut off by a flood of sound that suddenly burst upon
us from the register.
It was a woman’s voice singing Musetta’s song, and by its clearness and
volume seemed to be the breath of the register become vocal. We started
back simultaneously and looked about the room, while Musetta’s song
poured over us, a rich jubilant torrent of melody.
“What is it?” said Roger, rising as if to defend me.
“Miss Harris,” I answered, jumping up.
“Who’s Miss Harris?”
“A singer. She lives here.”
“Does she live in there?” He pointed to the register.
“No, on the top floor, but it connects with her room.”
We stood still and listened, and as the song rose to its brilliant
climax, Roger looked at me smiling, and nodded approvingly. In his
heart he thinks he is something of a musician, has season seats at the
opera and goes dutifully to the Symphony. I don’t think he is any
more musical than I am. I don’t think literary people ever are. They
like it with their imaginations, feel its sensuous appeal, but as to
experiencing those esoteric raptures that the initiated know--it’s a
joy denied.
The song came to an end.
“Not a bad voice,” said Roger. “Who is she?”
“A lady who is studying to be a professional.” And then I added
spitefully: “Do you think she ought to give up her singing to be
sheltered by somebody’s fireside?”
Roger had turned to get his coat. He stopped and looked at me over his
shoulder, smiling--he really has a delightful smile.
“I except ladies with voices.”
“Because they add to the pleasure of gentlemen with musical tastes?”
He picked up his coat.
“Evie, one of the things that strengthens me in my belief is that when
you get on that subject you become absolutely acid.”