HILDA’S HOME
A Story of Woman’s Emancipation
BY
ROSA GRAUL
❦
CHICAGO, U. S. A.
M. HARMAN & CO., 1394 WEST CONGRESS STREET
1899
PUBLISHER’S PREFACE.
In the order of nature the ideal precedes the actual. In back-woods
phrase, “The wind-work must precede the ground-work.” “The ascent of
life is the ascent of ideals.” Ascent means action, change, involving
effort, struggle, aspiration. Aspiration implies or pre-supposes
DISCONTENT.
The author of the story, “Hilda’s Home,” preaches the gospel of
discontent—dissatisfaction with the old, desire for the new. With Ella
Wheeler she says,
Be not content; contentment means inaction—
The growing soul aches on its upward quest.
Satiety is kin to satisfaction—
All great achievements spring from life’s unrest.
The tiny root, deep in the dark mould hiding,
Would never bless the earth with leaf and flower,
Were not an inborn restlessness abiding
In seed and germ to stir them with its power.
The author of “Hilda’s Home” preaches the gospel of Freedom—equal
freedom, the gospel of Liberty coupled with responsibility. With Spencer
she would say, “Every one has the right to do as he pleases so long as
he does not invade the equal right of others.” With Macaulay, Rosa Graul
would say “The cure for the evils of Liberty is more liberty.” Hence she
has no fears that under Freedom the Home and the Family would cease to
exist, or that woman will be less loving and lovable, or that man will
be less manly and honorable. On the contrary she maintains that only in
the soil and atmosphere of freedom is it possible for true womanhood and
manhood to live and flourish.
While devoting considerable space to the subject of industrial
reconstruction, the central aim of “Hilda’s Home” is the emancipation of
womanhood and motherhood from the domination of man in the sex relation.
“Self-ownership of woman” may be called the all-pervading thought of the
book now offered to the impartial and truth-loving reader. With Havelock
Ellis in his “Psychology of Sex,” Rosa Graul would say:
“I regard sex as the central problem of life. And now that the problem
of religion has practically been settled, and that the problem of labor
has at least been placed on a practical foundation, the question of
sex—with the social questions that rest on it—stands before the coming
generation as the chief problem for solution. Sex lies at the root of
life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to
understand sex—So, at least, it seems to me.”
A word of warning: Let no reader expect perfection in the following
pages, either in ideal or in its manner of presentation. The editor and
publisher offer this work to the reading public not for its literary
merits, not for the excellence of its plan nor for the originality of
its conception. The writer of “Hilda’s Home” is a poor, hard-working,
unlettered woman; one whose advantages in the way of preparation for
literary work have been almost nil. The great, the distinguishing merit
of Rosa Graul, as an author, is the simplicity, the naturalness with
which she tells of the varied experiences that educate and prepare the
various characters of her story for living in a co-operative home. For
the life history of these children of her brain she is indebted, so she
informs us, to the cold hard facts of her own experience and personal
observation. “Experience teaches a dear school but fools will learn in
no other,” saith the proverb. The trouble with us all is that we are so
slow to learn, even in the bitter school of experience. In no department
of life is this comment so universally applicable as in the sexual or
conjugal relations of women and men. Hence the necessity of plainness of
speech and honesty of thought, on this subject, no matter how
iconoclastic or revolutionary the thought may be.
Prominent among the criticisms made upon the economic ideal herein
presented is the absence of all reference to the “Labor Exchange,” and
the apparent acquiescence by the co-operators in the old monopolistic
financial system. In answer to this objection it may be said that our
story was written some years ago, and before the publication of books on
Labor Exchange and other modern economic reforms, and though an appendix
was prepared to supply this lack, the addition would have increased the
size of the book beyond its prescribed limits.
By others it is objected that an ideal home could and should be built
without the aid of the millionaire’s ill-gotten dollars. To this it may
be replied that the earth with all it holds, including the accumulations
called “capital,” belong to the living present, and not to the dead
past, and that if the legal heirs of past accumulations, the Owen
Hunters of today, can be induced to build model homes for the use of
those who may be ready to utilize them, there would seem to be no
rational objection to such attempts at rectification of past wrongs.
To close this brief preface, which must serve also as introduction and
appendix, let it be remembered that “Hilda’s Home” is offered not as a
final solution of all the problems of human life, but rather as a
suggester of thought upon some of the most important and most perplexing
of these problems. In all great reforms the public conscience must first
be aroused to see the necessity of such change. If this unpretentious
volume can be made the vehicle or means of helping to educate and
stimulate the public conscience to the point of putting into practice
the reforms advocated therein, the chief object of the author, as well
as of editor and publisher, will have been realized.
HILDA’S HOME.
CHAPTER I.
“And I may hope? You will not give me a decided no for answer?”
The time was a lovely June evening. The moon was at its full, wrapping
everything in a silvery haze, while the air was laden with the sweet
perfume of roses and of new-mown hay. The scene was the lawn of a
beautiful suburban home on the outskirts of the city of Harrisburg.
Under the swaying branches of the silver maples that lined the carriage
drive leading to the house could be seen a maiden and youth walking
slowly back and forth, his fair head bent slightly forward, anxiously
awaiting the answer from the trembling lips. The flash of the dark eye
and the heightened color of her usually pale face gave evidence of a
tempest within. Then slowly the dark eyes were raised to the blue ones
above them, and slowly came the answer,
“I do not know!”
“You do not know?” He repeated the words as slowly, surprise struggling
in the tone of his voice as he spoke.
“Imelda, surely you know if you love me, if you are able to grant my
heart’s desire?” Saying which, he caught her hand in his and drew her
out of the shadows into the bright light of the full moon.
“Look at me, Imelda, and tell me what you mean! Can it be that I have
been deceived in you? I believed you loved me. I thought I had often
read the proof of a tender emotion in your eyes; and now you tell me you
do not know.”
Deep feeling quivered in every cadence of his voice. He was terribly
excited, terribly in earnest; so much was easy to see.
The smile that for a moment played about her lips was a sad one. Softly
and clearly the words fell from them.
“You have not misunderstood me. I do love you, O, so much, but—” The
sentence remained unfinished. With a low, happy cry he gathered her in
his arms. His silken mustache swept her cheek, his lips closed firmly
over hers. For a moment all else was forgotten; their souls blended in
that kiss—a draught fraught with divinest love. It was bliss, ecstacy,
such as only those are able to enjoy who are possessed of a pure mind.
For a few moments the girl gave herself up to the enjoyment of blissful
consciousness. Then with a determined effort she freed herself from his
embrace, laid her soft hand upon his shoulder and, standing with her
head slightly thrown back, said: “But—I do not know if I can marry you.”
Surprise showed plainly in his every feature. “You love me, and do not
know if you can marry me! Imelda, you are an enigma. I cannot understand
you. What can you possibly mean?”
A sigh escaped the parted lips. “I mean, my Norman,”—laying a hand on
either of his cheeks—“I mean that I would fain keep my lover! I am
afraid of a husband. Husbands are not lovers.”
The surprised look upon his face intensified until it became perfectly
blank. “Husbands are not lovers? Child, who put such notions into your
head? As husband and wife, when we are such, then will be the time of
the perfect blending of our love—you mine and I thine. Imelda, now that
I know the sweet boon of your love is mine, I want to realize it in its
fullness. You must grant me the consummation of it.”
Again she was folded in his arms, pillowed upon his breast, while his
cheek rested against hers. She felt the increase of his passion in the
kisses he pressed upon her lips. His breath mingled with hers. She felt
and heard the mighty throbs of his heart, while his love for her seemed
almost to overpower him. She felt her blood in a feverish glow as it
pulsed through her veins; it was heaven, but—a shudder suddenly shook
her frame, she whispered, hurriedly, intensely: “No! No! No! I can not,
can not marry you. I am afraid!”
With a mighty effort conquering the tumult of his emotions, but still
holding her closely pressed, he could only articulate, “But why? Why
should you be afraid when I love you, oh, so dearly? I want you for my
own, my precious one—my very own, where never the breath of another man
can touch you; where you will be mine forever more.”
“And when the time comes that this feverish love-fire of yours shall
have burned itself out, when you begin to tire of me,—always me—what
then will I do with my intense love nature? a nature to which love is
life and without which I cannot live. What then, Norman, will become of
me?” She lay back in his arms and again holding his face between her
hands she asked the question with a fierce intensity that left her voice
a mere husky whisper,—“Norman, Norman, what then will become of me?”
Norman Carlton was more than surprised; he was fast becoming puzzled.
There was every evidence that the girl he was holding in his arms bore
him a deep-rooted love, but that she should, at the outset,—at the very
moment of the meeting and blending of these two intense natures, that at
such a time there should arise in her heart a fear of the future,—fear
that a time might come when his love for her might not be the same, did
not at all accord with the knowledge he, until now, possessed of the
feminine nature.
Woman, as he had found her, was only too willing to believe all the love
rhapsodies of man. If he but offered her marriage he was always held by
the gentler sex to be the soul of honor. And really, thought he, what
greater honor could man confer upon woman than marriage? To make her his
wife, to give her his name! Yet here was a woman who with the intensity
of a perfectly healthy and normal endowment, bore him a love which only
such an one could give, and yet—and yet withheld the trust that he,
until now, had found inseparable from the love of woman.
She seemed to be possessed of a doubt that his love would be a lasting
one, in the face of the fact of his having just made her an offer of
marriage,—using the argument, against all his passionate wooing, that
love would not last. He had heard, but had read little, of the doctrines
that were at this time being agitated in society, of marriage being a
failure; that there was no true happiness in domestic life, etc., etc.
Could it be possible that this girl, who had wound herself with the most
tender coils about his heart, had imbibed such heresies? He hoped not!
The love he bore her was a pure love, and a pure love only he must have
in return, and could a love that he had heard termed “free love,”—such
as he understood the term, be a pure one? She loved, and yet refused
marriage. She clung to the lover and repelled the idea of a husband.
What could it mean! It was beyond Norman Carlton’s conception of pure
womanhood.
He was indeed the soul of honor. He held all womankind in high esteem.
He revered his mother, and held his sister as one to look up to. His
highest conception of happiness was the mutual love of the sexes, the
consummation of which meant marriage. His idea of home, and of home life
was something exalted, while his ideal of a wife was a thing to be held
apart from all the world. She should be his to care for, to make smooth
the rough paths of her life, to protect and guard her. She should be the
mother of his children. He felt, he knew his love would be as lasting as
the hills. Why then should she fear? With conflicting emotions he gently
clasped her hands while he sought to read what was hidden within the
depths of those brown wells of light.
Gently, softly, he spoke: “Why should my girl doubt the strength, the
durability, of my love? Does not intuition tell her it will be safe to
trust me?”
“Aye, I do trust you, Norman. I would willingly place my hand in yours
and follow you to the end of the world. With your love to lean on I
would wander with you to some isolated spot where there was no one else
to see the whole year round, and be happy, O, so happy, and yet——”
“And yet what?”
“How do you know that this love will last? How is it possible to speak
for the future? How can you, or I, or anyone, control the fates that
have or may have, other affinities in store for us? How can we know—O,
Norman, how can we know? Believe me, I do not doubt your love. I know
its precious boon is mine, but the future is dark, and I fear to trust
myself to its unknown mysteries.” And sobbing she sank upon his breast.
Here was indeed an enigma. Would he be able to solve it? Willing to
enjoy the present but fearing to trust the future. This queer girl was
conjuring up dread, though often heard-of facts, but in his case utter
impossibilities. Trembling for the love that at present so surely was
hers, lest by some dread possibility in the future she might lose it,
yet dreading, fearing to enter that indissoluble marriage tie thereby
securing unto herself for life the object of her love. Long the lovers
wandered up and down the shady walk. That their love was mutual, that
there was a natural affinity between their souls, that both possessed
that in their make-up which was necessary for the completion of the
other, was apparent, yet while he longed and plead for that closer tie
called marriage, in order to perfect their relations, she shrank from it
as from some dread abyss.
“Let us be happy just as we are,” she pleaded. “We can walk and talk,
kiss and sing, and be unutterably happy when we are together. Please,
please do not let us speak of marriage. I almost hate the mere mention
of it. I have seen so much of the misery it contains. Of all the married
people I have known, after the first few months or perhaps the first
year, generally after the first babe has come, they have drifted
apart,—they do not miss one another when separated, and I know of but
very few cases indeed where happiness reigned queen in their homes. I
have known many happy lovers who found, after entering into the
matrimonial state, that they had made a sad, a very sad mistake. They
did not realize what they had expected. I do not want to think that such
would be our case, but I cannot conquer the fear of it. Let me be happy
in the knowledge that your perfect love is mine in the present hour. I
have no fear of losing you. I feel, I know, that I am as necessary to
you as you are to me.”
And with that he had to be content, for the time being at least. She was
his by all the bonds of affinity that nature had established between
them. He felt that she was pure and good, although he knew next to
nothing of her past life. The handsome home that lay just in front of
them, whose beautiful grounds, bathed in the silvery sheen of moonlight,
was but a temporary home, for this queenly girl. Her position in it was
only that of a menial. Its pretty sparkling mistress had brought her
home with her from a visit to that western metropolis, Chicago, “A
friend of my school days,” she had said. “An orphan in straitened
circumstances.” So she had entered its stately portals as a companion to
its mistress, a nursing governess to two pretty little girls of four and
six years.
As Alice Westcot was a favorite in society, and as her husband, Lawrence
Westcot, was a man of prominence, this obscure western beauty, although
appearing in a somewhat lowly position, was, with a certain hesitancy,
but withal rather graciously, received. To be sure, society was careful
not to make too much of her—that is, the lady portion of it. O, woman!
how cruel you can be to your sister woman. Dainty lips curled while fair
delicate hands drew more closely dainty skirts when this unknown queenly
girl drew nigh. It is only fair to say that she was not treated thus by
all women—society women. Now and then true worth was found under the
butterfly exterior. Women could say nothing against her, even if they
would say nothing for her. Men doffed their hats, while their admiring
eyes followed the fair form. But there was something in her bearing and
manner that commanded their respect. As yet no man had dared to address
her in anything but a respectful tone.
But little cared Imelda for the haughtiness of the one or the admiration
of the other. Pretty, lively Mrs. Westcot treated her more like a sister
and friend than a menial, and often in the seclusion of her chamber,
where she could lay aside the mask of conventionality, the bright little
woman had made a confidant of Imelda. Then all the life, all the smiles
and animation, would disappear. The blue eyes would fill with tears, and
the trembling lips confess such tales of woe as would blanch the roses
on the health-glowing cheeks of the horrified girl, while the lips of
the listener would answer: “Again! Again has marriage proven a failure!
Is it ever, oh! is it ever, anything else?” Her lips would quiver, the
dark eyes would fill with unshed tears as a fair face, a sunny smile,
and eyes which seemed pure wells of truth, arose before her mental
vision. Then she would question, “Are all men alike? Is it ever and
always the fate of woman to be the slave of men?”
Norman Carlton was a friend and visitor of the Westcots, and as Imelda
ever moved freely about the house, it was not long until they met. Both
frank and pure in heart and mind, both worshipers at nature’s shrine, it
was not strange they should be attracted. Indeed, it would have been
strange had it not so been. They loved. But Imelda’s past had been
freighted with so many dark experiences and observations of married
misery, of married woes, that she felt no desire to bring her sweet love
dream to a sudden end—to deal it a death blow by placing upon it the
seal of marriage.
“If you knew, you would understand,” she said in answer to his wondering
gaze.
“And may I not know?”
“Some time, Norman, some time, but not yet awhile, not yet. Tonight let
me be happy, boundlessly happy.”
So they walked up and down under the silver maples until the hours
waned. The moon had changed her position, and the brightly lighted
windows were fading into darkness. Thus reminded of the flight of time,
they parted—she to seek her snowy draped chamber and dream of what the
dark future might perchance have in store for her. Sunny, golden dreams
they were, to judge by the happy smile that lingered on the lips where
yet his kisses lay warm, while again a thought of those darker times
that lay hidden in the past, would break in upon the sweet present and
like a somber cloud overcast the heaven’s blue, so would she feel a
gloom cast over her young happiness. Shivering she disrobed and sought
her couch, that she might, in sweet slumber, forget the world and its
woes, and thus continue her waking dreams of him who constituted her
heaven.
And Norman? With his head bared to the cool air, he watched the graceful
form flit across the lawn and disappear within the house. Then,
murmuring, “You are a mystery, my sweet queen, but, for all that, my
pure love. Whatever it may be that makes you differ from other women I
know that none but pure emotions can stir that fair bosom. Good night,
my winsome love! Good night! Whatever the sad experience may have been
that has seemingly destroyed your faith in man, I mean to win it back. I
mean to prove to you clearly that at least one man is worthy the
unbounded trust of one pure woman.”
A little while longer he stood, until a light, flashing from one of the
upper windows, told him that Imelda had entered her room, and was
probably preparing to retire. Again his “Good night” was wafted upon the
air in a love-laden whisper, and then his firm tread could be heard
receding in the distance as he wended his way quickly under the
whispering silvery maples.