Milly went on her way about some errand, thinking that Marion was no

longer in the least pretty,--quite homely, in fact, she was so worn and

white. She had nice, regular features and a quaintly becoming way of

wearing her hair in simple Greek fashion, waving over her brows. If she

only dressed better and took more care of herself, she might be

attractive still. She had let herself fade. Milly wondered if Sam loved

her still, really loved her, as he seemed to in his rough way when they

were together that summer at Gossensass. How could he? That was the

cruelty in marriage for women. Men took the best they had to offer of

their youth and beauty, gave them the burdens of children, and then

wanted something else when they had become homely and unattractive. At

least Jack did not yet have that excuse with her.

Milly did not think that a man might love even a faded flower

like Marion Reddon, if she had kept the sweet savor of her spirit

alive.... So the Reddons were in New York, living far out in the

impossible _hinterland_ of the Bronx. When she told her husband at dinner

of meeting Marion Reddon and of their new move, Jack seemed neither

greatly surprised nor interested.

"We must try to see them," he remarked vaguely.

Perhaps, she thought, he did not care to recall those happier days in

Europe. The truth was that the New York struggle specialized men

intensely, removing to the vague background every one not directly in

the path. Bragdon's efforts were so supremely concentrated on rolling

his own small cart in the push, that he had little spirit to bestow

elsewhere, however well he might wish people like the Reddons and others

not in his immediate game.

"I thought you liked the Reddons," Milly said, half accusingly.

"I do--what makes you think I don't?" he asked, taking up a pipe

preparatory to work.

"You don't seem much interested in their being in New York."

"Oh," he said lightly, "every one comes to New York."

And he turned to his evening task. This habit of working evenings, which

Milly rather resented, served to prevent discussion--of all kinds. She

played a few bars on the piano, then settled herself comfortably with

Clive Reinhard's latest book. That was the way their evenings usually

went unless some one came in, which did not happen often, or Jack was

called out.

Even New York could be dull, Milly found.

II

"BUNKER'S"

Milly could not remember just when she first heard of _Bunker's

Magazine_,--certainly not before their return from Europe, but soon

thereafter, for its name was associated with her first experiences in

New York. Shortly after they landed, _Bunker's_ was added to the highly

colored piles on the news-stands among the other periodicals that

increased almost daily in number. During that first year of apartment

hunting and moving, the name of _Bunker's_ became a household word with

them. Some of the men Bragdon knew were interested in the new magazine,

and one of the first jobs he did was a cover design for an early number.

The magazine with his picture--a Brittany girl knee-deep in the dark

water helping to unload a fishing boat--lay on the centre table for

weeks. Clive Reinhard's new novel, for which Jack did the pictures, also

came out in _Bunker's_ this year. The novelist had been paid ten

thousand dollars for the serial rights, Jack told Milly, which seemed to

her a large price. Some forms of art, she concluded, were well paid.

_Bunker's_ was to be a magazine of a very special kind, of course,

altogether different from any other magazine,--literary and popular and

artistic all at once. Also it was to have an "uplift"--they were just

beginning to use that canting term and _Bunker's_ did much to popularize

it. The magazine was to be intensely American in spirit, optimistic and

enthusiastic in tone, and very chummy with its readers. Each month it

discussed confidentially with "our readers" the glorious success of the

previous issue and the astonishing triumphs in the way of amusement and

instruction that were to be expected in the future.... All this Milly

gathered from the editor's "talks" and also from the men who worked for

it or hoped to work for it, who were among their first friends in New

York. Its owner, who had boldly given to it his name, was a rich young

man, something of an amateur in life, but intensely ambitious of "making

himself felt." And this was his way of doing it, instead of buying a

newspaper, which would have been more expensive, or of running for

public office, which would have meant nothing at all to anybody. Jack

pointed him out to his wife one night at the theatre. He was in a box

with a party of men and women,--all very well dressed and quite

smart-looking. He had a regular, smooth-shaven face with a square jaw

like hundreds of other men in New York at that moment. Milly thought

Mrs. Bunker overdressed and "ordinary." She was a very blonde,

high-colored woman, of the kind a rich man might marry for her physical

charm.

All that first year _Bunker's_ came more and more to the fore in their

life. The wife of the Responsible Editor, Mrs. Montgomery Billman,

called on Milly in company with Mrs. Fredericks, the wife of the Fiction

Editor, and the two ladies, while critically examining Milly, talked of

"our magazine" and described the Howard Bunkers, who evidently played a

large rôle in their lives. Mrs. Billman, Milly decided, and so confided

to her husband, was hard and ambitious socially. Mrs. Fredericks she

"could not quite make out," and liked her better. Both the ladies seemed

to "go in for things" hard and meant to "count." They knew much more

about their husbands' affairs than Milly had ever cared to know about

Jack's. She decided that was the modern way, and that Jack ought to take

her more fully into his confidence. By the time she had returned these

visits and realized the importance felt by the editors' wives for their

husbands' work _Bunker's_ gained greatly in her eyes.

Then, unexpectedly, the magazine became of first importance to the

Bragdons. Jack was asked to become the Art Editor. He had been at

luncheon with Bunker himself and the Responsible Editor, who was a gaunt

and rather slouchy person from the other shore of the Mississippi. The

Responsible Editor, who had a way of looking through his spectacles as

if he were carrying heavy public burdens, unfolded to Bragdon the aims

and purposes of the magazine, while Bunker contented himself with

ordering the lunch and, at the close, making him the offer. Milly, when

she learned of the offer, was surprised that her husband did not show

more elation. She had a woman's respect for any institution, and Mrs.

Billman had made her feel that _Bunker's_ was a very important

institution.

"What will they give?" she asked.

"Six thousand."

It was more than she had ever dreamed an "artist" could make as an

assured income.

"Aren't you glad--all that!" she exclaimed.

"That's not much. Billman gets twelve thousand and Fredericks eight. But

I shall be able to make something 'on the side.'"

"I think it's wonderful!" Milly said.

But Jack exhibited slight enthusiasm.

"I'll have to see to getting illustrations for their idiotic stories and

half tones and colors--all that rubbish, you know."

There was nothing inspiring to him in "educating the people in the best

art," as the Responsible Editor had talked about the job.

"And they want me to contribute a series of articles on the new art

centres in the United States: Denver in Art, Pittsburgh in Art,

Milwaukee in Art--that sort of rot," he scoffed.

Milly saw nothing contemptible in this; all the magazines did the same

thing in one subject or another to arouse local enthusiasm for

themselves.

"You write so easily," she suggested, by way of encouragement,

remembering the newspaper paragraphs he used to contribute to the

_Star_.

"But I want to paint!" Bragdon growled, and dropped the subject.

In the intervals of pot boiling he had been working on several canvases

that he hoped to exhibit in the spring. Milly had lost confidence in

painting since she had come to New York and had heard about the lives of

young painters. Even if Jack could finish his pictures in time for the

exhibition, they might not be accepted, and if they were, would probably

be hung in some obscure corner of the crowded galleries for several

weeks, with a lot of other "good-enough" canvases, only to be returned

to the artist--a dead loss, the fate of most pictures, she had learned.

So Milly was for the Art Editorship. She took counsel with Big Brother,

who happened to call, and B. B., who regarded Milly as a sensible woman,

the right sort for an impracticable artist to have married, said: "Jack

would be crazy to let such a chance slip by him. I know Bunker--he's all

right." So when he saw Jack next, he went at him boisterously on the

subject, but the artist cut him short by remarking quietly,--"I've told

them I'd take it--the thing's settled."

When Milly heard this, she felt a little reaction. Would Marion Reddon

have done the same with Sam? But she put her doubts aside easily. "It'll

be a good start. Jack is still young, and he will have plenty of time to

paint--if he has it in him" (a reservation she would not have made two

years before), "and it will do him good to know more people."

Milly would like herself to know more people in this great city, which

was just beginning to interest her, and she was not at all inclined to

immure herself in a suburb or the depths of the country with a husband

who, after all, had not fully satisfied her heart. To know people, to

have a wide circle of acquaintance, seemed to her, as it did to most

people, of the highest importance, not merely for pleasure but for

business as well. How otherwise was one to get on in this life, except

through knowing people? Even an artist must make himself seen.... So she

considered that in urging her husband to become part of the Bunker

machine, she was acting wisely for both,--nay, for all three of the

family, for should not Virginia's future already be taken into account?

The wife of the Fiction Editor, with whom she had become intimate in her

rapid way, confirmed this view of things. Hazel Fredericks fascinated

Milly much more than the aggressive Mrs. Billman, perhaps because she

went out of her way to be nice to the artist's wife. Milly had not yet

convinced the wife of the Responsible Editor that she was important, and

she never wasted time over "negative" people. The dark little Hazel

Fredericks, with her muddy eyes and rather thick lips, was a more subtle

woman than Mrs. Billman and took the pains to cultivate "possibilities."

She had Milly at lunch one day and listened attentively to all her

dubitations about her husband's career. Then she pronounced:--

"Stanny was like that. He wanted to write stories. They are pretty good

stories, too, but you know there's not much sale for the merely good

thing. And unsuccessful art of any kind is hardly worth while, is

it?... When we were first married, he had an idea of going away somewhere

and living on nothing at all until he had made a name. But that is not

the way things are done, is it?"

She paused to laugh sympathetically and look at Milly, as if she must

understand what foolish creatures men often were and how wives like

Milly and herself had to save them from their follies.

"Of course," she continued, "if he had had Reinhard's luck, it would

have been another thing. Clive Reinhard's stuff is just rot, of course,

but people like it and he gets all kinds of prices."

She took a cigarette and throwing herself comfortably on a divan blew a

silvery wreath upwards. Meditatively she summed up the philosophy she

held,--

"It's better to stay with the game and make the most you can out of it,

don't you think so?"

Milly agreed.

"And _Bunker's_ is a very good game, if you haven't any money."

Milly admired her new friend's cleverness. She was the kind who knew how

to manage life,--her own life especially,--and get what she wanted out

of the game. Milly began to have great respect for that sort of women

and wished she were more like them. She felt that Hazel Fredericks never

did things waywardly: she always had a well-calculated purpose hidden in

her mind, just as she had a carefully conceived picture of herself that

she desired to leave upon the minds of others. If Mrs. Billman had put

her husband where he was in _Bunker's_ by force, as her rival hinted,

Mrs. Fredericks had also engineered "Stanny's" career with skilful

strategy.

* * * * *

Just at present she was involved in a project for a coöperative

apartment building, which some people she knew were to put up in a

desirable neighborhood. She quite fired Milly with the desire to buy

space in the building.

"It's really the only way you can live in New York, if you haven't

money," Mrs. Fredericks said convincingly, displaying the plan of their

tiny apartment. "Of course we can't have children--there's no room for

them--but Stanny is so delicate I shouldn't feel it was right to have

them, anyway."

She spoke as if it were a sacrifice she had deliberately made for her

husband....

Milly talked enthusiastically to Jack that night of the new coöperative

building and urged him to look into it. "I do so want a home of my own,"

she said with a touch of pathos. "Mrs. Fredericks still thinks there's

space to be had on one of the floors."

Bragdon looked into it, and reported that a good deal of space was to be

had. He was dubious of the wisdom of the scheme, even if by a

complicated arrangement of loans they could manage to buy a nominal

share. But Milly was persistent and proved to him with a sudden command

of figures that it would really reduce the cost of rent. She found out

more details, and she gained the support of Big Brother, who generously

offered to finance the undertaking for them. "It will make you feel

settled," he said, "to own your own home." Jack could not see that in

the end he should own much of anything unless by some surprising stroke

of luck a good many thousands of dollars fell into his lap. But he felt

that Milly should have a permanent place of her own, such as the slice

of the new ten-story building offered, and it would be better for the

child than to be wandering from rented apartment to apartment. So the

plans were drawn, the agreements practically made, when he had a final

misgiving.

The agreements lay on the table before him to be signed, and he had just

read them over carefully. They seemed to him like a chain that, once

signed, bound him to the city, to _Bunker's_ for an indefinite future.

His editorial chair had been specially galling that day, perhaps, or the

impulse to paint stronger than usual. He threw down the papers and

exclaimed,--

"Let's quit, Milly, before it's too late!"

"What do you mean?"

And he made his plea, for the last time seriously, to take their lives

in their hands and like brave people walk out of the city-maze to

freedom, to a simple, rational life without pretence.

"I want to cut out all this!" he cried with passion, waving his hand

carelessly over the huddle of city roofs, "get into some quiet spot and

paint, paint, paint! until I make 'em see that I have something to say.

It's the only way to do things!"

With passionate vividness he saw the years of his youth and desire

slipping away in the round of trivial "jobs" in the city; he saw the

slow decay of resolves under the ever increasing demands to "make good"

by earning money. And he shrank from it as from the pit.

"I don't see why you say that," Milly replied. "Most painters live in

the city part of the year. There's ---- and ----"

She argued the matter with him long into the night, obstinately refusing

to see the fatality of the choice they were making.

"We can get rid of the apartment any time, if we don't want it," she

said, and quoted Hazel Fredericks.

They came nearer to seeing into each other's souls that night than ever

before or ever again. They saw that their inmost interests were

antagonistic and must always remain so for all the active, creative

years of their lives, and the best they could do, for the sake of their

dead ideals, much more for the sake of the living child, was decently to

compromise between their respective egotisms and thus "live and let

live."

"If I had married a plain business man," Milly let fall in the heat of

the argument, revealing in that phrase the knowledge she had arrived at

of her mistake, "it would have been different."

Bragdon was not sure of that, but he was sure that in so far as he could

he must supply for her the things that "plain business man" could have

given her. Or they must part--they even looked into that gulf, from

which both shrank back. At the end Milly said:--

"If you don't think it's best, don't do it. You must do what you think

is best for your career."

Such was her present ideal of wifely submission to husband in all

matters that concerned his "career," but she let him plainly perceive

that in saying this she was merely putting the responsibility of their

lives wholly upon his shoulders, as he was the breadwinner.

With an impatient gesture, Bragdon drew the agreements towards him and

signed them.

"There!" he said, with a somewhat bitter laugh, "nothing in life is

worth so much talk."

Afterwards Milly reminded him that he had made this choice himself of

his own free will: he could not reproach her for their having bought a

slice in the East River Terrace Building.

III

MORE OF "BUNKER'S"

One of the notable incidents of this period was the visit they made to

the Bunker's place on Long Island. It was in the autumn after Bragdon

had been on the magazine staff for some months. Milly went out in the

train with Hazel Fredericks, who took this occasion to air her views of

the Bunkers and the Billmans more fully than she had before. She

described the magazine proprietor and his wife in a succinct sentence,--

"They're second-class New York: everything the others have but the right

crowd--you'll see."

Howard Bunker, she admitted, was likable,--a jolly, unpretentious,

shrewd business man, with a hearty American appetite for the bustle of

existence. As for the handsome Mrs. Bunker,--"She was from Waterbury,

Connecticut, you know," she said, assuming that Milly, who had heard of

the Connecticut town solely as a place where a popular cheap watch was

manufactured, would understand the depth of social inferiority Mrs.

Howard Bunker's origin implied. "She's too lazy to be really ambitious.

They have a box at the Opera, but that means nothing these days. She's

kind, if you don't put her to any trouble, and they have awfully good

food.... It's a bore coming out to their place, but you have to, once in

so often, you understand. You sit around and eat and look over the

stables and the garden and all that sort of thing."

She further explained that probably Grace Billman was motoring out with

their host. "She always manages that: she regards him as her property,

you know." It would be a "shop party," she expected. "That's all the

social imagination these people have: they get us together by

groups--we're the magazine group. Possibly she'll have Clive Reinhard.

He's different, though, because he's made a name for himself, so that

all sorts of people run after him."

Mrs. Bunker met the young women at the station, driving her own ponies.

Milly recognized the type at a glance, as much from her Chicago

experience as from Mrs. Fredericks' description. Mrs. Bunker was a

largish, violent blonde, with a plethora of everything about her,--hair

and blood and flesh. She was cordial in her greeting to the editors'

wives. She apparently regarded the magazine as one of her husband's

fads,--an incident of his wealth,--like a shooting-box or a racing

stable or a philanthropy. It gave prestige.

"I've got Clive Reinhard," she announced, as they started from the

station, a note of triumph in her languid voice. "My, but he's popular.

I've tried to get him for a month. This time I had him on the telephone,

and I said 'I won't let you go--simply won't ring off until you promise.

I'll tell Howard to turn down your next book.'"

She laughed at her own wit. Hazel Fredericks glanced at Milly with a

look of intelligence. Milly was much amused by the good lady and

listened appreciatively to her petty conversation....

It was all just as Mrs. Fredericks had predicted. Their host arrived

shortly in his car with Mrs. Montgomery Billman, who cast a scornful

glance at the "shop party," nodded condescendingly at Milly, kissed

Hazel on the tip of her nose, and retired to her room. The men came

along later, in time for dinner, all except the popular novelist, who

was motored over from another house party the next morning. Dinner was

long and dull. The Responsible Editress absorbed the host for the most

part. What little general talk there was turned on the magazine,

especially on the noise it was making with a series of "exposure"

articles on the "Crimes of Big Business." Milly could not understand how

Mr. Bunker, who seemed to have prospered under the rule of Big Business,

could permit such articles in his magazine. But Reinhard explained to

her the next day that Radicalism was the "new note." "You have to be

progressive and reform and all that to break into notice," he said.

After dinner there was a little music, some bridge, more talk; then the

women yawningly went to bed, while the men stayed up for another cigar

and further shop talk. The next day was also much as Hazel Fredericks

had said it would be. It was hot, and after the very late and copious

breakfast everybody was languid. Milly was much interested in being

shown over the place by her hostess. She admired the gardens, the

hothouses, the planting, the stables, and all the other appurtenances of

a modern country estate. Later she had a brief tête-à-tête with Bunker,

who had been prejudiced against her by Mrs. Billman and was bored by her

too evident flattery. She had also a talk with Clive Reinhard, with whom

she discussed his last story and his "ideas about women." For the rest

it was a torpid and sensual Sunday with much to eat and drink,--very

much like the Sunday of some thousands of rich Americans all over the

land. Most of the guests returned to the city on an evening train, bored

and unconsciously glad to get back into their respective ruts.

All but Milly! She had enjoyed herself quite genuinely, and with her

quick social perceptions had gathered a great deal from the visit, much

of which she imparted to her drowsing husband on the train. She mapped

out for his duller masculine apprehension the social hierarchy of

_Bunker's_. Mrs. Bunker patronized Mrs. Billman, invited her to her best

dinners and to her opera box, because she was striking in looks and had

made a place for herself in "interesting circles" in the great city and

was more or less talked about. "Hazel is jealous of her," Milly averred.

Nevertheless the junior editor's wife accepted Mrs. Billman's patronage

and invitations to Mrs. Bunker's opera box when it was given on off

nights or matinées to the chief editor's wife, and in turn she was

inclined to patronize Mrs. Bragdon by sending her tickets to improving

lectures and concerts.

Hazel Fredericks, in her quiet and self-effacing manner, had

aspirations, Milly suspected. She could not compete either with Mrs.

Howard Bunker or Mrs. Montgomery Billman, of course, but she aspired to

the Serious and the Distinguished, instead of the Rich or the merely

Artistic. She went in for "movements" of all sorts and was a member of

various leagues, and associations, and committees. Occasionally her name

got into public print. Just at present she was in the "woman movement,"

about which she talked to Milly a good deal. That promised to be the

most important of all her "movements."

Indeed, as Milly saw, all these women "went in" for something. They

tried to conduct their lives and their husbands' lives on lines of

definite accomplishment, and she was decidedly "old-fashioned" in living

hers from day to day for what it offered of amusement or ennui. She was

rather proud of the fact that she had never deliberately "gone in" for

anything in her life except Love.

Nevertheless, she found the flutter of women's ambitions exciting and

liked to observe the indirect working of their wills even in the man's

game....

"Mrs. Billman is too obvious, don't you think Jack?" she said to her

husband. But Jack had gone sound asleep.

IV

THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE

Before the winter they were established in their own home, in a corner

of the new East River Terrace Building, and thereafter their life

settled down on the lines it was to follow in New York. Their

acquaintance gradually widened from _Bunker's_ and the editorial set to

other circles, contiguous and remote, and the daily routine brought

husband and wife less often into contact, and they were thrown less and

less on each other's resources. As the artist no longer tried to work at

home, the large room designed for studio became the living-room of their

apartment. Bragdon went off immediately after his breakfast to the

magazine office, like a business man, and as Milly usually had her

coffee in bed they rarely met before dinner. Sometimes he came back from

the office early to play with Virgie before her supper time, but Milly

usually appeared about seven, just in time to dress for dinner.

If she ever stopped to think of it, this seemed the suitable, normal

relation of husband and wife. He had his business, and she had hers.

Sundays when he did not go to the office, he dawdled through the morning

at his club, talking with men or writing letters, and they often had

people to luncheon, which consumed the afternoons. On pleasant days he

might take the child to the Park or even into the distant country. He

was very devoted to his little girl and on the whole a considerate and

kindly husband. Milly thought she had forgiven him for breaking her

heart. As a matter of fact there is less forgiveness than forgetting in

this world. Milly felt that on the whole "they got on quite well" and

prided herself on her wise restraint and patience with her husband "at

that time."

The household ran smoothly. At first there were only two maids,--the

second one serving as nurse for Virginia and Milly's personal helper as

well,--a triumph of economic management, as Milly pointed out. For Hazel

Fredericks had two merely for household purposes and the Billman's house

boasted of four and a boy in buttons. They had to have the laundry done

outside and engage extra service when they entertained. By the end of

the first year Milly convinced herself it would be cheaper to have three

regular servants, and still they depended more or less on outside

help....

They saved nothing, of course. Few Americans of their class ever save.

They were young, and the future seemed large. Living in New York was

horribly expensive, as every one was saying, and it was worse the more

they got to know people and had their own little place to keep in the

world. It seemed to Milly hard that such perfectly nice people as they

were should be so cramped for the means to enjoy the opportunities that

came to them. The first year they spent only five thousand dollars and

paid something towards the huge loan on their apartment. The second year

it was seven thousand and they paid nothing, and the third year they

started at a rate of ten thousand dollars. The figures were really small

when one considered what the other people they knew were spending.

Bragdon began to suspect that here was the trouble--they didn't know any

poor people! Milly said they "barely lived," as it was. Of course there

were good people who got along on three or four thousand dollars a year

and even indulged occasionally in a child or two--professors and young

painters and that sort. Milly could not see how it was done,--probably

in ghastly apartments out in the _hinterland_, like the Reddons. The

newspapers advertised astonishing bargains in houses, but they were

always in fantastically named suburban places, "within commuting

distance." One had to live where one's friends could get to you, or go

without people, Milly observed.

Husband and wife discussed all this, as every one did. The cost of

living, the best way of meeting the problem, whether by city or suburb

or country, was the most frequent topic of conversation in all circles,

altogether crowding out the weather and scandal. At first Jack was

severe about the leaping scale of expenditure and inclined to hold his

wife accountable for it as "extravagance." He would even talk of giving

up their pretty home and going to some impossible suburb,--"and all that

nonsense," as Milly put it to her closest friend, Hazel Fredericks. But

Milly always proved to him that they could not do better and "get

anything out of life." So in the position of one who is sliding down

hill in a sandy soil, he saw that it was useless to stick his feet in

and hold on--he must instead learn to plunge and leap and thus make

progress. And he did what every one was doing,--tried to make more

money. It was easy, seemingly, in this tumultuous New York to make money

"on the side." There were many chances of what he cynically called

"artistic graft,"--editing, articles, and illustration. One had merely

to put out a hand and strip the fat branches of the laden tree. It was

killing to creative work, but it was much easier than sordid discussion

of budget with one's wife. For the American husband is ashamed to

confess poverty to the wife of his bosom.

Milly, perceiving this power of money-getting on her husband's part, did

not take very seriously his complaints of their expenditure. Even when

they were in debt, as they usually were, she was sure it would come out

right in the end. It always had. Jack had found a way to make the extra

sums needed to wipe out the accumulation of bills. Bragdon might feel

misgivings, but he was too busy these days in the gymnastic performance

of keeping his feet from the sliding sand to indulge in long reflection.

Perhaps, in a mood of depression, induced by grippe or the coming on of

languid spring days, he would say, "Milly, let's quit this game--it's no

good--you don't get anywhere!"

Milly, recognizing the symptoms, would bring him a cocktail, prepared by

her own skilful hand and murmur sweetly,--

"What would you like to do?"

This was her rôle of wife, submissive to the "head of the house."

* * * * *

That archaic phrase, which Milly used with a malicious pompousness when

she wished to "put something hard up" to her lord, was of course an

ironical misnomer in this modern household. In the first place there was

no house, which demanded the service and the protection of a strong

male,--merely a partitioned-off corner in a ten-story brick box, where

no man was necessary even to shake the furnace or lock the front door.

It was "house" only symbolically, and within its limited space the

minimum of necessary service was performed by hirelings (engaged by the

mistress and under her orders). Almost all the necessities for existence

were manufactured outside and paid for at the end of each month

(supposably) by the mistress with little colored slips of paper called

cheques. In the modern world the function of the honorable head of the

house had thus been reduced to providing the banking deposit necessary

for the little strips of colored paper. He had been gradually relieved

of all other duties, stripped of his honors, and become Bank Account.

The woman was the real head of the house because she controlled the

expenditures.

"I draw all the cheques," Hazel Fredericks explained to Milly, "even for

Stanny's club bills--at is so much easier."

That was the perfect thing, Milly thought, forgetting that she had once

tried this plan with disastrous results and had returned to the

allowance system with relief. Most men, she felt, were tyrannical and

arbitrary by nature, especially in money matters, or as she sometimes

called her husband,--"Turks." She often discussed the relation of the

sexes in marriage with Hazel Fredericks, who had "modern" views and

leant her books on the woman movement and suffrage. Although she

instinctively disliked "strong-minded women," she felt there was great

injustice in the present situation between men and women. "It is a

man's-world," became one of her favorite axioms. She could not deny that

her husband was kind,--she often boasted of his generosity to her

friends,--and she knew that he spent very little on his own pleasures:

whatever there was the family had it. But it always humiliated her to go

to him for money, when she was behind, and in his sterner moods try to

coax it from him. This was the way women had always been forced to do

with their masters, and it was, of course, all wrong: it classed the

wife with "horrid" women, who made men pay them for their complaisance.

Ideas on all these subjects were in the air: all the women Milly knew

talked of the "dawn of the woman era," the coming emancipation of the

sex from its world-old degradation. Milly vaguely believed it would mean

that every woman should have her own check-book and not be accountable

to any man for what she chose to spend. She amplified this point of view

to Reinhard, who liked "the little Bragdons" and often came to their new

home. Milly especially amused him in his rôle of student of the coming

sex. He liked to see her experiment with ideas and mischievously

encouraged her "revolt" as he called it. They had tea together, took

walks in the Park, and sometimes went to concerts. He was very kind to

them both, and Milly regarded him as their most influential friend. She

felt that the novelist would make a very good husband, understanding as

he did so thoroughly the woman's point of view.

"I'm not a 'new woman,' of course," Milly always concluded her

discourse.

"Of course you're not!" the novelist heartily concurred. "That's why you

are so interesting,--you represent an almost extinct species,--just

woman."

"I know I'm old-fashioned--Hazel always says so. I believe in men doing

the voting and all that. Women should not try to be like men--their

strength is their difference!"

"You want just to be Queen?" Reinhard suggested.

"Oh," Milly sighed, "I want what every woman wants--just to be loved."

She implied that with the perfect love, all these minor difficulties

would adjust themselves easily. But the woman without love must fight

for her "rights," whatever they were.

"Oh, of course," the novelist murmured sympathetically. In all his

varied experience with the sex he had found few women who would admit

that they were properly loved.

* * * * *

Milly's daily programme at this time will be illuminating, because it

was much like the lives of many thousands of young married women, in our

transition period. As there was no complicated house and only one child

to be looked after, the mere housekeeping duties were not burdensome,

especially as Milly never thought of going to market or store for

anything, merely telephoned for what the cook said they must have, or

left it to the servant altogether. She woke late, read the newspaper and

her mail over her coffee, played with Virgie and told her charming

stories; then, by ten o'clock, dressed, and her housekeeping arranged

for, she was ready to set forth. Usually she had some sort of shopping

that took her down town until luncheon, and more often than not lunched

out with a friend.

Occasionally on a fine day when she had nothing better to do, she took

Virginia into the Park for an hour after luncheon. Usually, however, the

child's promenade was left to Louise. Her afternoons were varied and

crowded. Sometimes she went to lectures or to see pictures, because this

was part of that "culture" essential for the modern woman. Old friends

from Chicago had to be called upon or taken to tea and entertained, and

there was the ever enlarging circle of new friends, chiefly women, who

made constant demands on her time. She finished her day, breathlessly,

just in time to dress for dinner. They went out more and more, because

people liked them, and when they stayed at home, they had people in

"quite informally" and talked until late hours. On the rare occasions

when they were alone Milly curled up on the divan before the fire and

dozed until she went to bed,--"dead tired."

There was scarcely a single productive moment in these busy days. Yet

Milly would have resented the accusation that she was an idle woman in

any sense. She had the feeling of being pressed, of striving to overtake

her engagements, which gave a pleasant touch of excitement to city

existence. That she should DO anything more than keep their

small home running smoothly and pleasantly--an attractive spot for

friends to come to--and keep herself personally as smart and youthful

and desirable as her circumstances permitted, she would never admit. A

woman's hold on the world, she was convinced, lay in her looks and her

charms, not in her character. And what man who had anything of a man in

him would expect more of his wife?... Her husband, at any rate, gave no

sign of expecting more from _his_ wife. All their friends considered

them a contented and delightful young couple....

It should be added that Milly was a member of the "Consumers' League,"

though she paid no attention to their rules, and had been put on a

"Woman's Immigration Bureau" at the instance of Hazel Fredericks, who

was active in that movement just then. She also had a number of poor

families to look after, to whom she was supposed to act as friend and

guide. She fulfilled this obligation by raising money for them from the

men she knew. "What most people need most is money," Milly

philosophized.... All told, her public activities occupied Milly a

little more than an hour a week.

* * * * *

As a whole, Milly looked back over her life in New York with

satisfaction. They had a pleasant if somewhat cramped home and a great

many warm friends who were very kind to them. They were both well, as a

rule, though usually tired, as every one was, and the child, though

delicate, was reasonably well. Jack was liked at _Bunker's_, and his

periods of depression and restlessness became less frequent. They were

settling down properly into their place in the scheme of things. But

sometimes Milly found life monotonous and a trifle gray, even in New

York.

"Love is the only thing in a woman's life that can compensate!" she

confided to Clive Reinhard.

And the novelist, trained confessor of women's souls, let her think that

he understood.

V

A SHOCK

Milly supposed their life would go on indefinitely like this. She lived

much in the slight fluctuations of the present, with its immediate

gratifications and tribulations. It seemed to her foolish to take long

views, as Jack did sometimes, and wonder what the years might bring

forth. Life had always been full enough of interesting change.

The most disturbing fact at present was the difficulty they had in

deciding where to go for the summers. The question came up every spring,

the first warm days of March, when Bragdon developed fag and headaches.

Then it was he would suggest "chucking the whole thing," but that

obviously, with their present way of living, they could not do. So it

resolved itself into a discussion of boarding-places. It had to be some

place near enough the city to permit of Bragdon's going to his office at

least three or four times a week. One summer they boarded at an inferior

hotel on Long Island. That had been unsatisfactory because of the food

and the people. Another summer they took a furnished cottage, in

Connecticut. That had been hot, and Milly found housekeeping throughout

the year burdensome--and it may be added expensive. As the third summer

approached, Bragdon talked of staying in the city until midsummer. Milly

and the child could go to the Maine coast with the Fredericks, and he

would join them for a few weeks in August. Milly accepted this

compromise as a happy solution and looked forward to a really cool and

restful summer.

While she was making her arrangements, there was a threatened upheaval

in their life. This time it was the magazine. There had been growing

friction in _Bunker's_ for some time. The magazine, having to maintain

its reputation, had become more and more radical, while the proprietor,

under the influence of prosperity and increasing years, had become more

conservative.

"You see," Hazel Fredericks explained, "the Bunkers find reform isn't

fashionable the farther up they get, and the magazine is committed to

reform and so is Billman. There must be a break some day."

She further hinted that if it had not been for Grace's strong hand, the

break would have already come.

"She's not ready for Montie to get out, yet," she said.

Milly was much interested in the intrigue, but she could learn little

from her husband, who always expressed a weary disgust with the topic.

One evening in early June, just before her departure, he told her that

_Bunker's_ had changed hands: a "syndicate" had bought it, and he

professed not to know whose money was in the syndicate. Hazel hinted

that Grace Billman knew....

Bragdon seemed more than usually fagged this spring, after his annual

attack of the grippe. He had not recovered quickly, and his face was

white and flabby, as the faces of city men commonly were in the spring.

Milly noticed the languor in his manner when he came to the train to see

her off for the summer.

"Do be careful of yourself, Jack," she counselled with genuine concern.

He did not reply, merely kissed the little girl, and smiled wearily.

"Try to get away early--in July," were her last words.

Jack nodded and turned back to the steaming city. Milly, reflecting with

a sigh that her husband was usually like this in the spring, sank back

into her chair and opened _Life_. For several weeks after that parting

she heard nothing from Jack, although she wrote with what for her was

great promptness. Then she received a brief letter that contained the

astonishing news of his having left the magazine. "There have been

changes in the new management," he wrote, "and it seemed best to get

out." But neither Billman nor Fredericks had felt obliged to leave the

magazine, she learned from Hazel.

She could not understand. She telegraphed for further details and urged

him to join her at once and take his vacation. He replied vaguely that

some work was detaining him in the city, and that he might come later.

"The city isn't bad," he said. And with that Milly had to content

herself.... The summer place filled rapidly, and she was occupied with

immediate interests. She said to Hazel,--"It's so foolish of Jack to

stay there in that hot city when he might be comfortably resting here

with us!" Hazel made no reply, and Milly vaguely wondered if she knew

more about the situation on the magazine than she would tell.

It was in August, in a sweltering heat which made itself felt even

beside the Maine sea, that a telegram came from Clive Reinhard, very

brief but none the less disturbing. "Your husband here ill--better

come." The telegram was dated from Caromneck,--Reinhard's place on the

Sound....

By the time Milly had made the long journey her husband was dead.

Reinhard met her at the station in his car. She always remembered

afterwards that gravelly patch before the station, with its rows of

motor-cars waiting for the men about to arrive from the city on the

afternoon trains, and Reinhard's dark little face, which did not smile

at her approach.

"He was sick when he came out," he explained brusquely; "don't believe

he ever got over that last attack of grippe.... It was pneumonia: the

doctor said his heart was too weak."

It was the commonplace story of the man working at high pressure, often

under stimulants, who has had the grippe to weaken him, so that when the

strain comes there is no resistance, no reserve. He snaps like a sapped

reed.... The tears rolled down Milly's face, and Reinhard looked away.

He said nothing, and for the first time Milly thought him hard and

unsympathetic. When the car drew up before his door, he helped her down

and silently led the way to the darkened room on the floor above, then

left her alone with her dead husband.

* * * * *

When a woman looks on the face of her dead comrade, it should not be

altogether sad. Something of the joy and the tenderness of their

intimacy should rise then to temper the sharpness of her grief. It was

not so with Milly. It was wholly horrible to plunge thus, as it were,

from the blinding light of the full summer day into the gloom of death.

Her husband's face seemed shrunken and pallid, but curiously youthful.

Into it had crept again something of that boyish confidence--the joyous

swagger of youth--which he had when they sat in the Chicago beer-garden.

It startled Milly, who had not recalled those days for a long time.

Underneath his mustache the upper lip was twisted as if in pain, and the

sunken eyes were mercifully closed. He had gone back to his youth, the

happy time of strength and hope when he had expected to be a painter....

Milly fell on her knees by his side and sobbed without restraint. Yet

her grief was less for him than for herself,--rather, perhaps, for them

both. Somehow they had missed the beautiful dream they had dreamed

together eight years before in the beer-garden. She realized bitterly

that their married life, which should have been so wonderful, had come

to the petty reality of these latter days. So she sobbed and sobbed, her

head buried on the pillow beside his still head--grieved for him, for

herself, for life. And the dead man lay there on the white bed, in the

dim light, with his closed eyes, that mirage of recovered youth haunting

his pale cheeks.

When she left him after a time, Reinhard met her in the hall. She was

not conscious of the swift, furtive glance he gave her, as if he would

discover in her that last intimacy with her husband. When he spoke, he

was very gentle with her. He was about to motor into the city to make

some arrangements and would not return until the morning, leaving to her

the silent house with her dead. She was conscious of all his kindness

and delicate forethought, and mumbled her thanks. He had already

notified Bragdon's older brother, who was coming from the Adirondacks

and would attend to all the necessary things for her. As he turned to

leave, Milly stopped him with a half question,--

"I didn't know Jack was visiting you."

The novelist hastened to reply:--

"You see he had promised to do another book for me, and came out to talk

it over. That was last Saturday."

"Oh!"

"He was not well then," he added, and then he went.

* * * * *

He never told her--she never knew--that he had run across Bragdon quite

by accident one day of awful heat, and stopped to exchange a few words

with an old friend he had not seen for some time. Bragdon had the limp

appearance of a man thoroughly done by the heat, and also to the

novelist's keen eye the mentally listless attitude of the man who has

been done by life before his time,--the look of one who knows he is not

"making good" in the fight. That was what had tortured the lip beneath

the mustache.

So on the spur of the moment he had suggested to the artist the new

book, though he knew that his publisher would demur. For his fame had

raised him altogether out of Bragdon's class. But it was the only

tangible way of putting out that helping hand the artist so obviously

needed just then. Bragdon had hesitated, as if he knew the motive

prompting the offer, then accepted, and the two had motored out of the

city together that evening. Even then the artist had a high fever....

* * * * *

That night Milly lived over like a vivid nightmare her married life down

to the least detail,--the time of golden hopes and aspirations, Paris

and Europe, her disillusionment, the futile scurry of their life in New

York, which she realized was a compromise without much result.... It

ended in a choke rather than a sob. There was so little left!

In the morning Reinhard reappeared with her brother-in-law. She

remembered little of what was done afterwards, in the usual, ordered

way, until after the brief service and the journey to the grave she was

left alone in their old home. She had wished to be alone. So Hazel

Fredericks took Virginia to the Reddons and left Milly for this night

and day to collect herself from her blow and decide with her

brother-in-law's help just what she should do.

VI

THE SECRET

The large "studio" room of the apartment had an unfamiliar air of

disorderliness about it. Bragdon's easel was there and his uncleaned

palette. Also a number of canvases were scattered about. These last

weeks, after he had left the magazine--voluntarily as Milly now

learned--he had got together all his painter's things and worked in the

empty apartment. When Milly began to pick up the odds and ends, she was

surprised at the number of canvases. A few of them she recognized as

pictures he had attempted in his brief vacations. Almost everything was

unfinished--merely an impression seized here and there and vigorously

dashed down in color, as if the artist were afraid of losing its

definite outline in the rush and interruption of his life. Nothing was

really finished she saw, as she turned the canvases back to the wall,

one by one. Tears started to her eyes again. The tragedy of life was

like the tragedy of death--the incomplete! The nearest thing to a

finished picture was the group done in Brittany of herself, Yvonne, and

the baby on the gleaming sands, which he had tried to get ready for the

New York exhibition on their return. That had the superficial finish of

mechanical work from which the creator's inspiration has already

departed. With a sigh she turned it to the wall with the others, and

somehow she recalled what Reinhard has said once about her husband.

"He had more of the artist in him than any of us when he was in

college--what has become of it?"

The remark stabbed her now. What had he done with his gift--what had

they made of it?...

She came to the last things,--the canvas he had been working on the day

his friend had found him. The touch of fever was in it,--a grotesque

head,--but it was as vivid as fresh paint. Yes, he had been one who

could see things! She had a sense of pride in the belief.

Another of Reinhard's sayings came back to her,--

"It's all accident from the very beginning in the womb what comes to any

of us, and most of all whether we catch on in the game of life, whether

we fit!"

The novelist himself, she knew, had not "caught on" at first. He had

confessed to her that he had almost starved in New York, writing stories

that nobody would read and few publishers could be induced to

print--then. They were the uttermost best he had in him, and some had

been successful since, but they didn't fit then. Suddenly he arrived by

accident. A slight thing he had done caught the fancy of an actress, who

had a play made out of it, in which she was a great success. A sort of

reflected glory came to the author of the story, and the actress with

unusual generosity paid him a good sum of money. From that first touch

of golden success he had become a different man. His new and popular

period set in when he wrote stories about rich and childish boys and

girls and their silly love affairs. Hazel Fredericks and her set

affected to despise them, but they were immensely popular.

If he had sold himself, as his critics said, he had made a sharp bargain

with the devil. He had become prosperous, well-known, envied, invited.

Milly had always admired his intelligence in grasping his chance when it

came.

She remembered now another story about the popular novelist. He had

never married, and the flippant explanation of the fact was that he was

under contract with his publishers not to marry until he was fifty in

order not to impair his popularity among his bonbon-eating clientèle,

who wrote him intimate, scented letters. But she knew the truth. She had

the story from the sister of the girl, whom she had met in Paris. The

girl was poor and trying to paint; they met in the garret-days when

Reinhard "was writing to please himself," as they say. The two were

obviously deeply in love, and only their common poverty, it was

supposed, prevented the marriage. It was still desperate love when the

fortunate accident befell Reinhard that led him out of obscurity to

fame. It was then that the affair had been broken off. The sister found

the poor girl in tears with a horrible resolve to throw herself away.

(Later she married a rich man, and was very happy with him, the sister

averred.) Milly had always felt that Reinhard must have been "hard" with

this poor girl,--he would not let his feeling for her stand in the way

of his career. Now she understood better why he would have none of her

sex except as buyers of his wares. She admired him and disliked him for

it all at once. That was what Jack should have done with her. But he was

too tender-hearted, too much the mere man.... Oh, well, these artists

with their needs and their temperaments!

Slowly Milly went over all the sketches, one by one. It was like a

fragmentary diary of the life she had lived beside and not looked at

closely while it was in being. She was surprised there were so many

recent ones--all unfinished. She could not recall when he had done them

or where. It proved that Bragdon had never really given up the idea of

painting. The desire had stung him all the time, and every now and then

he must have yielded to it, stealing away from the piffling duties of

the magazine office--spat on popular art, so to speak--and shut himself

away somewhere to forget and to do. Milly remembered certain unexplained

absences, which had mystified her at the time and aroused suspicions

that he "was having another affair." On his returns he had been morose

and dispirited. Evidently the mistress he had wooed in this intermittent

and casual fashion had not been kind. But the desire had never left

him,--the urge to paint, to create. And during these last desperate days

when, fevered, he was stumbling towards his end, he had seized the brush

and gone back to his real work....

At last she had reached the bottom of the pile--the Brittany sketches.

These she looked over as one might views of a past episode in life. The

memories of those foreign days rushed over her with a sad sort of joy.

There, they had been completely happy--at least she thought so

now--until that hateful woman had taken her husband from her. She had

almost forgotten the Russian baroness. Now with a start of fresh

interest she thought of the portrait and wondered where it was,--the

masterful picture of the one who had ruined her happiness. She looked

through the clutter again, thinking that it was probably with the

Russian wherever she was. But the portrait was there with the rest,

wrapped carefully in a piece of old silk.

With eager hands Milly undid the cover of the picture and dragged it

forward to the light. It was as if an old passion had burst from the

closet of the past. There she was, long, lean, cruel,--posed on her

haunches with upturned smiling face,--"The woman who would eat." She

lived there on the canvas, eternally young and strong. Milly could

admire the mastery of the painting even in the swell of her hatred for

the woman who had taken her lover-husband from her. He was young when he

had done that,--barely twenty-seven. A man who could paint like that at

twenty-seven ought to have gone far. Even Milly in the gloom of her

prejudiced soul felt something like awe for the power in him, which

seemingly justified the wrong he had done her. Even Milly perceived the

tragic laws stronger than herself, larger than her little world of

domestic moralities. And thus, gazing on her husband's masterpiece, she

realized that her hatred for the woman who she believed had done her the

greatest wrong one woman can do another was not real. It was not the

Baroness Saratoff who had cheated her: it was life itself! She no longer

felt eager to know whether they had been lovers,--as the saying is, had

"deceived" her. For this ghostly examination of her husband's work

convinced her that Jack did not belong to her, never had,--the stronger,

better part of him. She had lived for eight years, more or less happily,

with a stranger. She understood now that domestic intimacy, the petty

exchanges of daily life, even the habit of physical passion, cannot make

two souls one....

She turned at last from the picture with weariness, a heavy heart. It

had all been wrong, their marriage, and still more wrong their going on

with it "in the brave way." Well, _he_ was done with the mistake at

last, and he could not be sorry. She was almost glad for him.

* * * * *

Her brother-in-law had asked her to look through her husband's papers

for an insurance policy he thought Jack had taken on his advice. In the

old desk Bragdon had used there was a mass of letters and bills, a great

many unpaid bills, some of which she had given him months and months

before and had supposed were paid. There were two letters in an odd

foreign hand that she knew instantly must be the Russian woman's. The

first was dated from the _manoir_ at Klerac on the evening of their

sudden departure. Milly hesitated a moment as if she must respect the

secrets of the dead, then with a last trace of jealousy tore it open and

read the lines:--

... "So you have decided--you are going back. You will give up all

that you have won, all that might be yours,--and ours. I knew it

would be so. The puritan in you has won the day,--the weak side.

You will never be content with what you are doing, never. I have

seen far enough within your soul to know that.... I ask nothing for

myself--I have had enough,--no, not that,--but more than I could

hope. But for you, who have the great power in you, it is not

right. You cannot live like that.... Some day you will be glad as I

am that we were not little people, but drank life when it was at

our lips."

Milly dropped the letter and stared blankly at the dark wall opposite.

What it revealed did not come to her with shock, because she had always

felt sure that it had been so. What startled her was the realization for

the first time how much the experience had meant to both,--the

examination of the picture and the silence of death enabled her to

understand that. He had had the strength--or was it rather weakness?--to

do "the right thing," to renounce love and fulfilment and fame because

of her and their child. It came over her in a flash that she could not

have done as much. Give up love that was strong and creative--no, never,

not for all the right and convention on the earth. Any more than the

Russian woman would have given it up! Women were braver than men

sometimes.

She folded the letter and put it back in its envelope with a curious

feeling of relief, a sort of gladness that he had had even the little

there was--those few days of fulfilment, of the diviner other life which

with all the years between them they had failed to grasp.

It was the most generous, the most genuine, the most humiliating moment

of Milly's life. Yes, she was glad that in all the drab reality of their

life,--in spite of the bills, the worry, the defeat,--he had had his

great moments of art and love. They were not stolen from her: such

moments cannot be stolen from anybody. She wished that he might only

know how freely she was glad,--not forgave him, because forgiveness had

nothing to do with it. She understood, at last, and was glad. If he

should come back to life now by some miracle, she would have the courage

after this self-revelation to leave him, to send him back, if not to

her,--at least to his great work. Only that, too, might now be too

late--alas!

With a quiet dignity that was new, Milly opened the other letter. It was

dated only a few weeks before from some small place in Russia. Madame

Saratoff explained briefly that she was now living with her children on

her mother's estate in central Russia, and she described the life there

in its perfect monotony, like the flat country, with its half animal

people. "I live like one of those eastern people," she wrote, "dreaming

of what has been in my life." She had heard accidentally of the American

from some one who had met him in New York. He was no longer painting,

she understood, but engaged in other work. That was sad. It was a

mistake always not to do that which one could do with most joy. In the

whirlpool of this life there was so much waste matter, so little that

was complete and perfect, that no one with power had the right not to

exercise it.

She sent this letter with the picture he had made of her. It belonged

more to him than to her because he had created it--the man's part--while

she had merely offered the accidental cause,--the woman's share. And

further she wished to torture him always with this evidence of what once

had been in him; not with _her_ face,--that doubtless had already faded

from his mind. But no other one had he fixed eternally by his art as he

had hers. Of that she was sure. "Farewell."

It was cold; it was cruel. And it must have burned the artist like acid

on his wound. The letters should have gone with him to his grave....

With a sense of finality,--that this was the real end, the end of her

marriage,--Milly did up the letters carefully and folded the piece of

old silk about the portrait. They must be returned to the Baroness

Saratoff. And now for the first time since they had met and married,

everything seemed clear and settled between her and her husband. She was

left with her little girl "to face life," as the saying is.

And Milly bravely turned her face towards life.

VII

BEING A WIDOW

Many times during the ensuing months Milly had occasion to recall the

remark of a clever woman she had once heard. "There's no place in modern

society for the widow." She came to believe that the Suttee custom was a

frank and on the whole a merciful recognition of the situation. Every

one was kind to her,--unexpectedly, almost embarrassingly kind, as is

the way with humanity. But Milly knew well enough that no one can live

for any considerable period on sympathy and the kindness of friends. The

provoking cause for any emotion must be renewed constantly.

It would have been much easier, of course, if her husband had left her

and his child "comfortably off," or even with a tiny income. Instead,

there were the bills, which seemed to shower down like autumn leaves

from every quarter. The kindly brother-in-law, who undertook to

straighten out affairs, became impatient, then severe towards the end.

What had they done with their money? For Bragdon until the last weeks

had been earning a very fair income. Nothing seemed paid. On the

apartment only the first thousand dollars had been paid, and all the

rest was mortgage and loan from him. Even the housekeeping bills for the

year before had not been fully settled. (It seemed that one had merely

to live with a false appearance of prosperity to secure easy credit, in

a social system that compels only the very poor to pay on the nail.)

Milly could not explain the condition of their affairs. She had no idea

they were "so far behind." She was sure that she had given Jack most of

the bills and supposed that he had taken care of them. She protested

that she had always been economical, and she thought she had been,

because there were so many more things she wanted,--things that all

their friends seemed to have. When confronted by the figures showing

that they had spent seven, nine, eleven thousand dollars a year,--and

yet had many unpaid bills,--she could not believe them and

stammered,--"I know I'm not a good manager--not really. But all that!

You must be mistaken." Then the business man showed his irritation.

Figures did not lie: he wished every woman could be taught that axiom at

her mother's knee....

"We lived so simply," Milly protested. "Just two maids most of the

time,--three this winter, but," etc. In the end the brother-in-law

gathered up all the unsettled bills and promised to pay them. He would

not have his brother's name tarnished. And he arranged for an

advantageous lease of the apartment from the first of the next month, so

that after paying charges and interest there would be a little income

left over for Milly. Here he stopped and made it clear to Milly that

although he should do what he could for his brother's child, she must

see what she could do for herself, and what her own people offered her.

Big Business had been disturbed of late. He was obliged to cut his own

expenses. First and last he had done a good deal for Jack. His wife

called Milly "extravagant"--Milly had never found her congenial. In the

end Milly felt that her brother-in-law was "hard," and she resolved that

neither she nor her child should ever trouble him again.

She had already written her father of her bereavement, and received

promptly from Horatio a long, rambling letter, full of warm sympathy and

consolation of the religious sort. "We must remember, dear daughter,

that these earthly losses in our affections are laid upon us for our

spiritual good," etc. Milly smiled at the thoroughness with which her

volatile father had absorbed the style of the Reverend Herman Bowler of

the Second Presbyterian. To Milly's surprise, there was not a word of

practical help, beyond a vague invitation,--"I hope we shall see you

some day in our simple home in Elm Park. Josephine, I'm sure, will

welcome you and my granddaughter."

Milly very much doubted whether the hard-featured Josephine would

welcome her husband's widowed daughter. In fact she saw the fear of

Josephine in her father's restrained letter. She contemplated a return

to Chicago as a last resort, but it was sad to feel that she wasn't

wanted....

At this point Milly began to reproach her husband for failing to leave

her and his child with resources. "He ought to have made some sort of

provision for his family--every man should," she said to herself. There

was manifest injustice in this "man-made world," where a good wife could

be left penniless with a child to care for.

Milly always thought of herself as "a good wife," by which she meant

specifically that she had been a chaste and faithful wife. That was what

the phrase in its popular use meant, just as "a good woman" meant merely

"a pure woman." If any one had questioned Milly's virtue as a wife, she

would have felt outraged. If any one had said that she was a bad wife,

or at least an indifferent wife, she would have felt insulted. A girl

who gave herself to a man, lived with him for eight of her best years,

bore him a child and had been faithful to him in body, must be "a good

wife," and as such deserved a better fate of society than to be left

penniless. All her friends said it was a very hard situation.

* * * * *

These same friends were endeavoring to do their best for her, pricked by

sympathy with her evident need. If it had not been for a cheque for two

thousand dollars, which Clive Reinhard sent her, "in payment for your

husband's work on the new contract," Milly would soon have been without

a dollar in her purse. She took Reinhard's cheque thankfully, without

suspecting her right to it. Others might suspect. For there was no

contract, no illustrations made--nothing but the novelist's recognition

of a need. The cheque was merely one of the ways he took of squaring

himself with his world.

When Milly's women friends heard of it, they said with one

voice,--"Thank heaven! If Clive Reinhard would only marry Milly--he

ought to!"

Which merely meant that, as he was a rich bachelor who had amassed money

by exploiting the sentimental side of their sex, there would be a poetic

justice in his chivalrously stepping into the breach and looking after

his dead friend's helpless widow. It would make up for "the others,"

they said, and were enthusiastic over their sentimental plan.

"Milly would make a charming hostess in that big country place of

Clive's. It would give her a free hand. What Milly has always wanted is

a free hand--she has the ability. And Clive is getting pudgy and set. He

ought to marry--he's too dreadfully selfish and self-centred," etc.

Mrs. Montgomery Billman took the affair specially in charge. Of course a

decent time must elapse after poor Jack's death, but meanwhile there was

no harm in bringing the two together. The masterful wife of the

Responsible Editor conceived the scheme of having a private exhibition

and sale of Bragdon's work, and that took many interviews and much

discussion on Sunday evenings when the hostess tactfully left the two to

themselves before the fire, while she retired "to finish my letters."

When she returned, however, she found them dry-eyed and silent or

chatting about some irrelevant commonplace. The private exhibition came

off during the winter in the "Bunker's Barn," as they called the big

Riverside Drive house. A good many cards were scattered about in

literary and artistic and moneyed circles; tea was poured by the ladies

interested; Milly appeared in her widow's black, young and charming. A

number of people came and a few bought. Mrs. Billman contented herself

with the sketch of a magazine cover representing a handsome woman and a

young boy, which was said to resemble herself and her son. On the whole

the sale would have been a dreary failure if it had not been for

Bunker's liberal purchases and Reinhard's taking all that was unsold "to

dispose of privately among Jack's friends."

The hard truth was that Jack Bragdon had not shaken the New York

firmament, certainly had not knocked a gilt star from its zenith. At

thirty-two he was just a promising failure, one of the grist that the

large city eats annually. And his friends were not powerful enough to

make up for his lack of _réclame_. "He had a gift--slight though.

Nothing much done--charming fellow--died just as he was starting, poor

chap!" so the words went. If the portrait of the Russian had been there,

the tone might have been less patronizing; but Milly had already sent

this off on its long journey.

The practical result was fifteen hundred dollars, of which Bunker

contributed a thousand, and various convenient sums that dribbled in

opportunely from the novelist, "whenever he was able to make a sale." (A

good many of Jack Bragdon's things ultimately will come under the hammer

when the Reinhard house is broken up.)

And that romance which Milly's friends had staged came to nothing.

Reinhard called on her often, was very kind to her, and really

solicitous for her welfare; he also was charming to little Virginia, who

called him Uncle Clive; and he had both at his country place for long

visits,--abundantly chaperoned. Nothing could have been "nicer" than the

novelist's attitude to his friend's widow, all the women declared, and

it must have been _her_ fault--or else that "other affair" had gone

deeper with him than any one supposed.

Milly herself was not averse to entertaining a new "hope." Her

marriage seemed so utterly dead that she felt free to indulge in a

new sentiment. But the novelist looked at her out of his beady, black

eyes,--indulgently, kindly,--but through and through, as if he had known

her before she was born and knew the worth of every heart-beat in

her.... Gradually beneath that scalping gaze she grew to dislike him,

almost to hate him for his indifference. "He must be horrid with women,"

she said to Hazel, who admitted that "there have been stories--a man

living by himself, as he does!"

And so this solution came to naught.

* * * * *

Milly was "up against it again," as she said to herself. Her small

bank-account was fast melting away. (She had her own sheaf of bills that

she had not cared to present to her brother-in-law, and she found that a

penniless widow has poor credit.) Collectors came with a disagreeable

promptness and followed her with an unerring scent through her various

changes of residence. It became known among her friends that "Milly must

really do something."

The competent wife of the Responsible Editor thought it ought not to be

difficult to find something of "a social nature" for Milly to do. "Your

gift is people," she said flatteringly. "Let me think it over for a day

or two, and I'm sure the right idea will come to me."

She promptly turned the problem over to Mrs. Bunker, with whom she still

maintained amicable relations. That lady in due time wrote Milly a note

and asked her to call the next morning. Milly went with humbled pride,

but with a misgiving due to her previous experiences in the parasitic

field of woman's work. When after many preambles and explanations,

punctuated by "like that, you know," "all that sort of thing," "we'll

have to see," etc., the good lady got to her offer, it sounded like a

combination of lady-housekeeper and secretary. With considerable

decision Milly said that she did not feel qualified for the work, but

Mrs. Bunker was most kind; she would consider her offer and let her

know, and left. She had decided already. The memory of her work for

Eleanor Kemp,--the humiliation and the triviality of this form of

disguised charity,--had convinced her, and Eleanor Kemp was a lady and a

friend and a competent person, all of which Mrs. Howard Bunker was not.

"I'd scrub floors first," Milly said stoutly, and straightway despatched

a ladylike refusal of the proffered job.

("I thought you said she was in great need," Mrs. Bunker telephoned Mrs.

Billman in an injured tone of voice. "She is!" "Well, you wouldn't think

so," the Bunkeress flashed back. "It's so hard to help that sort. You

know, the kind that have been ladies!" "I know," the Editress rejoined,

without the glimmer of a smile.)

* * * * *

The only one of all Milly's friends beside the novelist who came

promptly to the rescue at this crisis was Marion Reddon,--the one Milly

had seen least of since she had been thoroughly launched in New York.

Marion with her puritan directness went to the point at once.

"What you want is a place to stay in while you look around. You and

Virginia come to us. The hang-out, as Sam calls it, isn't large, but

there's always room somehow."

Milly demurred at first, but later when Marion Reddon was obliged to

depart hurriedly for the south because one of the children was

threatened with tuberculosis, she gratefully accepted the offer of the

Reddons' apartment during their absence. She moved from the

boarding-house where she had been staying between visits to the top

floor of the flimsy building behind Grant's Tomb in which the Reddons

had perched themselves latterly. Virginia was obliged to leave her

school where "the very nicest children all went," which was a keen

regret to Milly, for she had already formed ambitions for her daughter.

The contrast of her own pretty apartment with the shabby, worn rooms of

the Reddon flat brought home to her, as nothing else had, her precarious

situation. And she set herself vigorously to meet it.

VIII

THE WOMAN'S WORLD

Milly's most intimate friend was Hazel Fredericks. That restless, keen

young woman, after experimenting variously in settlement work, hygiene

for the poor, and immigration, had concentrated her interests on the

woman movement then coming more and more into notice. The agitation for

the suffrage, it seemed to her, was the effective expression of all

advanced, radical ideas for which she had always worked. Her activity in

the movement had brought her into close relations with some of the local

leaders, among whom were a few women socially prominent, as everybody

knows. (In this way she had eclipsed her old rival, Mrs. Billman, who

had kept to Art and Society.) Hazel was on intimate terms with a very

rich young married woman, who lived apart from her husband, "for the

very best of reasons, my dear," and who spoke in private houses on the

Cause.

In those happier days when Milly still had her own little place in the

world, she had rather made fun of Hazel's views and imputed them to

social ambition. "She wants to be talked about," she said. But since the

experience of widowhood, Milly was changing her mind and listened much

more attentively to all that Hazel had to say about "the woman

movement,"--the "endowment of motherhood," the "necessity for the

vote,"--and read "What Forty Thousand Women Want," "Love and Marriage,"

and other handbooks of the Cause.

One of the theories with which Milly most heartily agreed was that the

labor of women in the home should be paid just as the labor of men.

Milly felt that she had a valid claim for a number of years' wages still

due her. This and other subjects she talked over with Hazel and became

fired with enthusiasm for the Cause. Now, in her need of work, she

asked,--

"Why shouldn't I do something for the movement?"

"I've been thinking of that," Hazel replied, with a shade of hesitation

in her voice.

"You said there were paid secretaries and organizers."

"Yes--there are some, and we need more."

She did not explain that there were hundreds of eager young women,

college graduates and social workers, younger and much better informed

and more modern than Milly,--in a word, trained women. She did not wish

to discourage Milly, and believed she had enough influence with Mrs.

Laverne (the pretty married worker) and with Mrs. Exeter, the social

leader most prominently identified with the Cause, to work Milly into

some paid place. So she said reflectively,--

"There's to be a most important meeting of the leaders in the movement

at Mrs. Exeter's, and I'll see what I can do."

With a laughing "Votes for Women" and "For a Woman's World," the two

friends kissed and parted. Shortly afterwards a card came to Milly from

a very grand person in the social world, a name that is quite familiar

wherever newspapers penetrate. The card invited Mrs. John Bragdon to

take part in a meeting of those interested in the Woman Forward Movement

on the evening of the twentieth, at which addresses would be made by

certain well-known people. The last name on the list of speakers was

that of Mrs. Stanfield Fredericks. Milly was much excited. She was eager

to go to the meeting, if for no better reason than from a natural

curiosity to see the famous house, so often the theme of newspaper

hyperbole. Also she was anxious to hear Hazel talk. But she doubted the

propriety of her going anywhere so early in her widowhood. While she was

debating this point with herself the telephone rang and Hazel Fredericks

asked if she had received the card.

"You're going, of course?"

There followed a long feminine discussion over the propriety of

accepting, the dress to be worn, etc. Hazel insisted that this occasion

was not really social, but business, and steadily bore down Milly's

scruples. "There'll be a great crush. It won't make any difference what

you wear--nobody'll know!"

Milly went. She had to bribe the raw Swedish servant to remain in that

evening with little Virginia, and she went to the expense of a cab in

order not to arrive at the grand house in a sloppy and tousled

condition. It was in many respects a thrilling experience. Once inside

the glassed vestibule on the marble steps, Milly felt that she would not

have missed it for a great deal. In the first place she enjoyed seeing

the solemn liveried men servants, one of whom proffered pamphlet

literature of the suffrage cause on a large silver tray. (The little

books were sold at a good price, and Milly dropped another dollar or two

in acquiring stuff that she could have had for nothing from Hazel

Fredericks, whose apartment ran over with this "literature.")

Having supplied herself with the ammunition of the Cause, she followed

the throng into the celebrated ball-room hung with beautiful old

tapestries and with a ceiling stolen bodily from a French château. For a

time the richness and the gayety of the scene sufficiently occupied

Milly's attention. After the sombre experiences through which she had

been and her present drab environment, it all seemed like fairyland. She

tried to guess who the important-looking people were. A few were already

known to her by sight, and others she recognized from their newspaper

portraits. There was a majority of elegantly dressed women, and a

minority of amused or bored-looking men.

At last the gathering was hushed by the voice of the hostess,--a plump

and plethoric person, who said wheezily that in assembling here to-night

there were two objects in view: first, to hear cheering words of wisdom

from the leaders of the Cause, and secondly, to show the world that the

cultivated and leisure classes were for the Emancipation of Woman. It

was a democratic movement, she observed, and the toiling sisters most in

need of the vote were not with them to-night. But all effective revolts,

she asserted, started from above, among the aristocrats. They must rouse

the womanhood of the nation, the common womanhood that now slumbered in

ignorant content, to a sense of their wrongs, their slavery. She

murmured _noblesse oblige_ and sat down. Thereat a little bespectacled

lady bobbed up at her side and began reading a poem in a low, intense

voice. There were interminable verses. The well-dressed, well-dined men

and women in the audience began to show signs of restlessness and

boredom, although they kept quiet in a well-bred way. One lone man with

a lean, humorous face, who was jammed into the corner beside Milly,

looked at her with a twinkle in his eye. She could not help smiling

back, but immediately recomposed her face to seriousness.

The verses ended after a time, as all things must end, and the speeches

followed,--the first by a very earnest, dignified woman,--a noted worker

among the poor,--who argued practically that this man-governed world was

a failure, from the point of view of the majority, the unprotected

workers, and therefore women should be permitted to do what they could

to better things. There was a slight murmur of appreciation--rather for

herself than for her argument--when she sat down. She was followed by a

pompous little man, who made a legal speech with lumbering attempts at

humor. Milly was much impressed by the long list of legal disabilities

he cited which women suffered in this "man-made world," and which she

had not hitherto suspected. The man by her side was yawning, and Milly

felt like reproving him.

After the pompous judge came the star of the performance,--the pretty

little woman who was separated from her husband. She was very becomingly

dressed, much excited apparently, and swayed to and fro as she talked.

Sometimes she closed her eye in a frenetic vision of women's wrongs,

then suddenly opened them wide upon her audience with flashing

indignation, as old-fashioned actresses once did. After the dull pleas

of the preceding speakers, based on general principles and equity, this

was an impassioned invective against the animal man. One felt that hers

was a personal experience. The low, degraded nature of the sex that had,

by physical force, usurped the rule of the universe was dramatically

exposed. Milly glowed with sympathy while she listened, though she could

not explain why, as her experience with men had not been with lechers,

drunkards, wife-beaters. The men she had known had been on the whole a

fairly clean, hard-working, kindly lot, yet she knew instinctively, as

she often said, that "All men are alike," by which she meant tyrannical

and corrupt in regard to women.... The audience listened closely to the

speaker. No doubt their interest was increased by the gossip every one

knew,--how her husband had struck her at a restaurant, how he had

dragged her by the hair, cut her with a bottle from her own

dressing-table, etc. Milly noticed that Hazel Fredericks and the

settlement worker kept their heads lowered disapprovingly. The man next

her twisted his quizzical face into a smile, and turning to Milly as the

speaker stopped, amid a burst of applause, said frankly and simply as to

an old friend,--

"Whew--what rot!"

Milly could not help smiling back at the engaging stranger, but she

protested stoutly,--

"I don't think so!"

Before they could extend their remarks, the next speaker, a rich widow

well-known for her large charities, was addressing the audience in low,

earnest tones. Her theme was taken from the poet's verses: she pleaded

for the full emancipation of Woman as man's equal comrade in the advance

of the race. It was a vague, poetic rhapsody, disconnected in thought,

and made slight impression on Milly. The last speaker was Hazel

Fredericks. Her subject was the intellectual equality of women with men

and their right to do their own thinking. Milly recognized many of the

pat phrases and all the ideas which were current in the magazine set

where she had lived,--woman's self-expression and self-development, etc.

It was the most carefully prepared of all the addresses and very well

delivered, and it made an excellent impression, though it contained

nothing original either in thought or in expression. Like Milly's famous

graduation essay on Plato it was a masterpiece of skilful quotation, but

in this case the theft was less obvious and the subject was certainly

fresher.

There was the usual movement of relieved humanity after it has been

talked to for two hours, and then the hostess rose again, and in her

languid drawl announced that all who felt interested in the Cause were

requested to sign the "Roster" and give their addresses, so that they

might be kept in touch with the movement. The "Roster" was a very

handsome gilt-edged, blue levatine-bound book, which was carried about

in the crowded room by a footman, another man carrying a gold inkstand

and pen.

The stranger beside Milly murmured in her ear,--

"So Society has taken up the Cause!"

"I'm afraid," Milly replied with an arch smile, "you don't take us quite

seriously."

"Don't think it for one moment!" he retorted. "I don't believe I have

ever taken anything so seriously in all my life as Women."

"In what way?"

"In every way."

He resumed in a moment, more seriously,--

"Frankly, I don't believe much is accomplished for your Cause by this

sort of thing!"

His gesture included comprehensively the gorgeous room, the gorgeous

assembly of socially elect, the speakers, and the liveried servants who

were now approaching their corner with the "Roster."

"But you have to start things somehow," Milly rejoined, remembering

Hazel's arguments. "Social prestige counts in everything."

"Is that what you need--social prestige?... I don't believe one of those

women who talked, including the poet, ever earned a dollar in her life!"

and with a glance about the room he added, "nor any woman in this room."

"Oh, yes--I have myself!" Milly replied promptly and proudly.

The man looked at her sharply.

"And that doesn't make any difference," she continued with a superior

air; "you men are always trying to bring things down to dollars and

cents."

"You'll admit it's a tangible basis of discussion."

"I've no doubt if they only had their rights many of them ought to be

paid a great deal for what they've done for you men."

"I mean that not one has ever done anything really productive in her

life--has added anything to the world's supply of necessities," he

continued with masculine arrogance.

"Oh?" Milly protested.

"Not even children!" he added triumphantly, and glanced at the names on

his programme. "I don't believe they could produce a child among 'em."

Milly knew that the women speakers of the evening happened all to be

childless women. One of them was not married, another was a widow, a

third separated from her husband, and of the others at least

one--Hazel--had deliberately evaded maternity.

"That may not be their fault!" Milly retorted with meaning.

"True," the man admitted. "But I'd like to hear something on the

question from Mothers."

"Having children isn't the only thing women are good for," Milly

suggested.

"It's one mighty fine thing, though!"

(Milly could never understand why men, as a rule, were so enthusiastic

over women who had children.)

"Aren't we getting away from the subject?" she suggested.

Their talk was interrupted by the presence of the solemn footman with

the book of irreproachable names. To Milly's surprise her unknown

companion grasped the pen and scrawled beneath her signature a name that

looked like "A. Vanniman," with the address of a well-known club. So he

was a single man!

"How could you do that?" Milly demanded accusingly.

"Why not? I want women to vote, just as soon and as often as they like.

Then they'll know how little there is in the vote and maybe get down to

brass tacks."

"You don't really believe in women," Milly remarked coquettishly.

"I don't believe in this sort of flummery, no.... I want to hear from

the waitresses, the clerks, the factory girls--the seven or eight

millions of women who are up against it every day of their lives to earn

a living. I want to hear what _they_ have to say about suffrage and the

rights of women--what _they_ want? Did you ever ask them?"

"No-o," Milly admitted, and then recalled another of Hazel's arguments.

"All those women need the vote, of course, to make laws to help them

earn their living. But they haven't the time to agitate and organize.

They are not educated--not expressive."

"Not expressive!" the man exclaimed. "I wish you and all these good

women here could listen to my stenographer for ten minutes on what women

need. She knows the game!"

Milly did not approve of her companion's sentiments: he clearly belonged

to the large class of prejudiced males whose indifference the Cause had

to combat. But he had an interesting face and was altogether an

attractive specimen of his species. She wondered who he might be. It

seemed to her that "Vanniman" had a familiar sound, and she believed he

was some man of importance in the city.

There was a general drift towards the supper room. But Milly hesitated.

She had promised Hazel to join her after the speaking and be introduced

to some of the leaders,--especially to the pretty young woman who had

denounced Man,--in the hope that a paid position could be found for her.

At first she could not find her friend, and then she saw Hazel

surrounded by a number of important-looking men and women, talking very

earnestly with them, and a sudden timidity came over her in the midst of

this distinguished gathering.

"We'd better get something to eat," her unknown acquaintance suggested.

He had waited for her, and she felt relieved to have some one to speak

to. "It makes one fearfully hungry to listen to a lot of talk, don't you

think?"

So Milly went out to supper with the agreeable stranger.

"No," he resumed, after presenting her with a comforting beaker of

champagne, "I've every sympathy with the woman with a job or with the

woman who wants a job. All this silly talk about the sexes makes me

tired. Man or woman, the job's the thing."

"Yes!" Milly assented with heartfelt emphasis.

"What every one needs is something to do, and women must be trained like

men for their jobs."

He began to talk more seriously and entertainingly on the economic

changes in modern society that had produced the present state of unrest

and readjustment. He sketched quite feelingly what he called the

old-fashioned woman, with her heavy duties and responsibilities in the

pioneer days. "The real pillar of Society--and often a domestic slave,

God bless her!" he said. "But her granddaughter has become either a

parasite, or another kind of slave,--an industrial slave. And the vote

isn't going to help her in either case."

Milly wondered in which class she fell. She didn't like the word

"parasite,"--it sounded like a disease,--and yet she was afraid that was

what she was.

"I think that I must be going," Milly said at last. She noticed that the

rooms were fast emptying after the food had been devoured, and she could

see Hazel nowhere. She would call her up in the morning and congratulate

her on her speech. And so with a nod to the stranger she went for her

wraps. But she found him again in the vestibule, and wondered if he had

waited for her to come down.

"What's the name?" he asked, as the servant came forward to call her

carriage.

"I haven't any cab," Milly replied bravely. It was her custom these days

Cinderella-like to dispense with a return cab.

"But it's raining," the man protested. "You must let me set you down at

your home."

A private hansom had drawn up to the curb before the awning. "Where?" he

insisted.

"It's an awful way out," Milly faltered; "just take me to the nearest

subway station."

Embarrassed by the gaze of the servant and by the waiting people behind,

she got into the hansom. The man gave some sort of order to his driver

and got in beside her. They trotted briskly around the corner on to the

Avenue, and as it was misting heavily the driver let down the glass

shield. It seemed cozy and pleasant to jog home from a party in a

private cab, with an agreeable man by one's side. Quite like old times,

Milly thought!

"You'd better let me take you all the way. Where shall I say?" and he

raised the top with his stick. For a moment Milly was about to yield.

She liked the sense of having a masterful man near her, overbearing her

doubts, but she still protested,--

"No, no--it's too far. Just put me down at Columbus Circle."

The man hesitated, looked at Milly curiously, then gave the driver the

direction. Milly wondered why he had not insisted as she had expected he

would or did not again suggest driving her out, when they had reached

the subway station. There was a time when men would not have taken no

for an answer. But he didn't--nor even ask her name. Instead he

courteously helped her to alight and raising his hat drove off.

* * * * *

She was depressed going up-town in the crowded, smelly, shrieking train.

The meeting had not been as thrilling as she had anticipated. Hazel

would probably scold her to-morrow for not coming forward and meeting

the leaders. But she felt that the Woman Forward movement had little to

offer her in her perplexities. Hers was part of that economic

maladjustment that the good-looking stranger had talked about, and even

with the suffrage it would take generations to do anything for women

like her.

What really depressed her most was the fact that her unknown

acquaintance had not considered it worth while to find out her name and

pave the way for further relations. She realized cynically that for the

present at any rate the woman question came down to just this: men could

do many pleasant and useful things for women when they were so inclined.

And a woman failed when she could not interest a man sufficiently to

move him to make the advance. Of course Milly knew that the "modern

woman" would fiercely desire to be independent of all such male

patronage. But as Milly climbed wearily the long flight of stairs to her

apartment, feeling tired and forlorn and very much alone in the world,

she knew that in the bottom of her heart she had no wish to be "modern."

And she was even sceptical as to how sincerely the other women, like

Hazel Fredericks, desired that "complete independence of the male" they

chattered so much about.

* * * * *

When Milly turned on the electric light in the little apartment, it was

forebodingly still. She glanced at once into the room where Virginia

slept and found it empty, with the bedclothes tumbled in a heap. She

rushed to the maid's room. That too was empty and the rear door was

locked on the outside. For a moment Milly's heart ceased beating, then

with a shriek,--"Virgie, Virgie--where are you!" she ran into the front

hall and plunged, still shrieking, down the stairs.

A door opened on the floor below, and the figure of a large woman in a

rose-pink negligee confronted Milly.

"Lookin' for yer little girl?" the stranger asked in a loud, friendly

voice. "Well, she's all right--just come in here!"

She held open the door and pointed to the front room, where under a

crocheted shawl little Virginia was curled up asleep on the divan. Milly

fell beside her with an hysterical sob. The child, partly awakened, put

out her thin arms and murmured sleepily, "The strange lady's very nice,

but she's queer. Take me home, mama, please."

The "strange lady," who was looking on interestedly, explained,--

"I heard the kid runnin' round up above and cryin'--oh, that was hours

ago when I first com' home--and as she kep it up cryin' as if she were

scared and callin', I went up there and brought her down to stay with me

till you got back.... Guess she woke up and was lonesome all by

herself."

"That brute Hilda," Milly gasped, "must have gone off and left her."

"They're all like that,--them Swedes," the woman of the rose-pink

negligee agreed. "Got no more heart than a brick."

She spoke as from a vast experience with the race.

"The little girl has been as nice as pie," the woman replied to Milly's

stammered thanks. "We've been real friendly. Good-by, girlie, I'll be up

to-morrer some time and tell you the last of that story.... Good-night!"

Milly gathered her precious bundle in her arms and with renewed thanks

staggered back to her own quarters.

"She's queer, mama, and something happened to her arm and leg, long ago,

but she's very kind," the small Virginia explained sleepily as her

mother dropped her on her own bed.

By "queer" Virginia merely meant that her good Samaritan was not of the

class she had been accustomed to, and did not use language precisely as

her mother and her mother's friends used it. To Virginia the janitor of

the building was "queer," and almost all of the many thousands of her

fellow-beings whom she saw daily on the streets of the great city.

So Milly thought no more about it.

IX

THE NEW WOMAN

But the "queer" woman in the rose-pink negligee who befriended Virginia

on the night when her mother had gone to the meeting of the Woman

Forward Movement in the very grand house and "the beast of a Swede"

Hilda had slipped out to meet her lover beside Grant's Tomb, has more to

do with Milly and the woman question itself than the suffrage meeting

and all the talk there. Ernestine Geyer, for such was the woman's name,

came into Milly's life rather late, but she will have much to do with it

hereafter and deserves a chapter to herself to begin with.

Incredible as it would seem to Milly, Ernestine's origin was not widely

separated from that of Milly Ridge. She might very well have been one of

the many little schoolmates, not exactly "nice," who sat beside Milly on

the benches of the St. Louis public school. Her ancestry, to be sure,

was more mongrel than Milly's; it would defy any genealogist to trace it

beyond father and mother or resolve it properly into its elements. The

name itself indicated that there must have been some German or Dutch

blood in the line. Neither would it be possible now to explain what

exigencies of the labor market compelled Ernestine's family to migrate

from St. Louis to New York.

All that Ernestine herself knew was that her father worked in breweries,

and that she with her five brothers and sisters lived in one of those

forbidding brick rookeries on the lower west side of New York. This was

when she was ten. When she reached fourteen--the legal age--she escaped

from the routine of school and joyfully went to work in a laundry. For

children of her class it was like coming of age,--to become wage-earners

with the accompanying independence and family respect.

The laundry where she found her first job was a small affair, of the

"domestic-hand laundry" type, situated in a low brick building that had

once served as a gentleman's private stable on one of the cross streets

near Gramercy Park. At that time Ernestine was a hearty, vigorous child,

strong for her age, or she never could have endured the long hours of

hard work on wet floors in a steaming room and with heavy bundles to

lift and carry. As a grown woman her squat figure, large and slightly

round-shouldered, betrayed these early years of stooping labor, and her

colorless complexion, not a sickly pallor but a neutral white beneath

the thick black hair, was the result of years spent in a dark, misty

atmosphere, through which even the gas-lights burned dimly. In those

early days when Ernestine scurried across the city in the procession of

working-girls, mornings at seven forty-five and evenings at six, she was

very much like all the others,--a not wholly unattractive young woman

with quick eyes. Perhaps she was a trifle quieter, less emotional than

her companions at the laundry--more reflective in disposition--but not

noticeably more intelligent than the many thousands in her class.

And if it had not been for an accident, which at the time seemed

frightful to her, Ernestine Geyer would probably have turned out, as

most of her kind turn out, either have become the wife of a workingman

with a brood of children to feed the labor hopper or gone to her end

more rapidly on the streets. But one day, owing to a defect in the

machinery that controlled the huge cauldron over which she was bending,

the thing tipped and scalded her with a flood of boiling water on her

right arm and leg. At the hospital it was thought she would have to lose

the arm; but she was too robustly made for that. A frightful red scar

from her hip to below the knee and a withered right hand and forearm

were the results. They took her back at the laundry when she left the

hospital out of pity and a sense of responsibility for her bad luck, and

gave her some light work sorting out clothes and checking pieces, which

she could do after a fashion with her left hand and the withered stump.

Ernestine quickly realized--and just here was the proof of her innate

superiority to the majority--that her only chance for existence was to

make herself so useful in the irregular labor she could perform that she

would not be discharged at the first opportunity. And she worked as she

had never before dreamed she could work! She counted, sorted, marked,

checked the huge piles of restaurant and office linen that the laundry

took. She had the sense to employ a younger brother to assist her with

his whole hands. She became, in a word, the order, the system, the

regulator of the small establishment, and hence indispensable to the

overworked proprietor. Her accident by depriving her of the ordinary

amusements of her fellows also made her more intelligent, because she

had nothing but her work to occupy her mind. The laundry became the one

thing she lived for: it had her every thought and emotion. She knew from

the first that no man would ever think of marrying her--she saw it in

the pitying glances that the girls gave her. No man would endure a woman

with a withered stump of a right hand, not to mention the ugly scar that

defaced her body. Thus the world of sex shut out with all its related

disturbances, she became by the process of intense specialization a most

efficient worker.

It is not necessary to recount all the steps of her progress upward.

When the small proprietor of the "hand laundry" acquired another

property farther up town she persuaded him to let her manage the old

business under his direction. (He was a widower now and no longer young;

he would have married her, perhaps. But she knew what that meant--a loss

of salary and double work; and she would have none of him as husband.)

She was twenty now, and earning more than she had ever expected to

make,--eighteen dollars a week. After that the years passed quickly

until she was twenty-five and getting thirty dollars a week. Her family

having broken up, she was living in a boarding-house not far from the

laundry....

Through the misty, dirty panes of the window in the rough office on the

upper floor of the old stable where Ernestine now had her desk, she

could look across the narrow street to the row of small brick houses

opposite. These houses had suffered various vicissitudes since Ernestine

had first come to work in the laundry. Then they had been shabby-genteel

boarding-houses like the one a block or two away where she herself now

lived. Gradually the character of the street had improved. Some young

couples, hunting for a spot in all this crowded, expensive city where

they might make their modest nests, had moved into the old-fashioned

houses and renovated them according to modern ideas. Number 232, almost

directly opposite Ernestine's loft, had been among the first thus to

renew its youth. The old iron balconies had been restored and little

green shutters with crescent-shaped peep-holes added, and also

flower-filled window-boxes.

Ernestine had taken a special interest in this house and often

speculated about the life going on within its sober brick walls, behind

the fresh muslin curtains of the upper windows. At first there was just

a man and his wife and a small child, whose young mother wheeled it out

each morning in a basket carriage, for the one maid was busy all day

long. Then another child had come and another. The first child went to

school with a maid--there were three maids in the house now. Ernestine

watched the orderly development of this family with all the interest of

a nature lover observing a nest of robins. At first when the shutters

were closed in the early hot days of June she was afraid lest other

hands might open them in the autumn, but after a time she knew her

family well enough to understand that they were not the kind that moves,

except for death or other cogent cause. She inferred that they were

becoming more prosperous, as was quite proper. There was an increasing

amount of coming and going at the old-fashioned door, and she got to

know the habitual visitors apart from the merely casual acquaintances.

In time she built up from her myriad glances across the street a

substantial family tree of uncles and aunts, cousins and brothers. What

interested her most were the occasional glimpses of the front rooms she

had when the maids opened wide the windows and pushed aside the

curtains. She was enabled thus to observe three layers of an orderly,

inviting domesticity: on the first floor she could see a large, soft

rug, an oil painting, a lovely silk hanging that shut off the inner

room, and a corner of a mahogany case with some foreign bric-a-brac. She

liked best the floor above, where the family mostly lived when they were

by themselves: here was one large recessed room where the crowded

book-shelves went to the ceiling, a real fire burned in a fireplace, and

real lamps lighted a large table, around which the members of the family

read or worked or played. Here the lady of the house--a vigorous little

body, with laughing eyes--sat and sewed, had tea with visitors, read to

her children, and wrote letters. Here in the winter twilight before the

day at the laundry was finished the man of the house entered with a

jerky little masterful step, crossed to the chair where his wife sat

reading, leaned over, kissed her, and having established himself with

back to the fire delivered himself, so Ernestine judged, of his daily

budget of news. How she would like to hear what he had to say!

It was all a little pantomime of domestic life,--a varied, yet orderly

pantomime, and it had continued with suitable variations for more than

seven years. Ernestine often thought about it, not so much during the

day when her mind was occupied with business wherever her eyes might be,

as at night when she returned to her forlorn boarding-house room. That

commonplace domestic interior of number 232 had more to do with

Ernestine Geyer's life than it would be easy to say. It was her dream,

her ideal of life as it should be--and almost never was.

Unconsciously it moved this solitary woman to listen favorably to the

advances of a man she met at her boarding place. He was not much of a

man--she knew that! A feeble body of a man, indeed, with a drooping,

sallow face, and as Ernestine shrewdly suspected, he was making less

money at the dry-goods shop where he worked than she made at the

laundry. But for a time they "went out together"--a better phrase than

became "engaged." Then Ernestine, with an unexpected keenness of vision

and readiness to recognize a fact, even if it hurt her pride, knew that

the man was marrying her to be taken care of. She had seen enough of

that sort of marriage and had no mind for it. If he had wanted her with

genuine passion, she would have lived with him--and gladly. But the

shame of it all was that he had no desire of any kind for her. And she

was not bad looking in spite of her deformity and her glasses. Her

large, regular face was full of intelligence, and her black hair was

thick and slightly curling. But no man wanted her, just for herself. She

looked the fact in the face--and moved to another boarding-house.

About that time another change took place in the laundry business. The

old proprietor sold out to two young men who knew little about the

business. They incorporated as the "Twentieth Century Domestic Laundry"

and left the management in Ernestine's competent hands. The old location

was bought for a loft building, and a new building to be wholly occupied

by the laundry business was put up farther north. Ernestine disliked

leaving her family, as she called "number 232," but she judged that even

they would not remain long after all their light had been cut off by the

loft building. Anyway she had no time for sentimental regrets, for the

business, with fresh blood and new capital, was growing past all belief.

"Everybody has to get washed some time," was one of Ernestine's sayings,

and it seemed as if a great many had to be washed by the Twentieth

Century Company. She was neck and neck with the expanding business, and

her salary went up rapidly until by the time she came into Milly's life

she was drawing five thousand dollars a year, and earning it all as the

responsible head of a business that netted twenty per cent on its

capital, with nearly a hundred operatives under her.

In trade circles Ernestine was known as the "Laundryman," a name in

which respect was mixed with chaff. Ernestine did not care. She knew

that she had "made good," and it was pleasant. She could afford now to

have a home of her own, and so she had installed herself in this

apartment, far out of the dirt and the noise in which she had lived her

life. She filled it with a strange assortment of furniture and

ornamental accessories that did not please her. Somehow after all her

years of longing, and all her efforts to make a home like other people,

she had failed lamentably, and she knew it.

"I guess it ain't in me!" she confessed to Milly.

Nevertheless, she kept the vision of it,--the vision she had had through

the swaying muslin curtains of "number 232."

Thus far Ernestine had come when she happened into Milly's life. Only

the merest outline of her strenuous, if monotonous, existence has been

given, and though Ernestine deserves much more,--deserves to be known in

her mind and her feelings, yes, and in her soul,--she must put up, as

she did in life, with getting less than her deserts, and let her rough

actions reveal her nature imperfectly.

X

MILLY'S NEW MARRIAGE

The next morning--it was Sunday--when Ernestine presented herself at the

Reddon flat to inquire in her heavy, grumbling voice for "the little

gurl," Milly had difficulty in recognizing the woman who had offered

Virginia an asylum the night before. Ernestine was now clothed in a

well-cut walking suit of dark blue broadcloth, which became her square

figure much better than the soft folds of the rose-pink negligee. Yet

Milly thought her "quite common," and had a momentary pang, realizing

how she and her daughter had come down in the world when they were

obliged to have such neighbors. But Ernestine Geyer was not "common,"

and Milly, with her quick instinct for personal values, realized it as

soon as she could recover from the shock of the harsh voice and the

ungrammatical idiom.

After the obvious remarks about the evening's episode and some

conversation with Virginia, for whom the stranger's withered hand had a

great fascination, there was a pause. It was time for Ernestine to

depart, and she knew it; but either her awkwardness kept her fixed in

her chair or she was too much fascinated by Milly to stir. This morning

Milly had put on a loose silk blouse, open at the neck, in which she

looked very pretty and girlish. Ernestine stared at her in frank

admiration. Milly could not understand that she embodied to this "queer"

woman all that her heart had secretly longed for,--all the feminism in

which she knew herself to be utterly lacking. She tried to take Virginia

in her lap to caress her, but that demure little lady, submitting

politely for a few moments, slipped off at the first chance and took

refuge in her mother's lap, where she snuggled with conscious pleasure.

Ernestine did not know how to hold a child.

"That's a nice picter," Ernestine grumbled, covering mother and daughter

with glowing eyes. "Wished I had one of 'em in my place!"

"Perhaps you will some day," Milly replied politely. But Ernestine shook

her head.

"Not unless I took one out of an asylum. I've thought of that, but I

guess it ain't the same thing."

"Are you all alone?" Virgie asked gravely.

Ernestine nodded and added in a burst of confidence to Milly,--

"And it _is_ lonely, I can tell you, coming home every night from your

work to find just a hired girl waitin' for you and your food on the

table!"

To which Milly made some commonplace rejoinder, and as another pause

threatened she remarked pleasantly,--

"Where do you suppose I was last night, when I should have been at home

looking after my little girl? At a suffrage meeting. Wasn't that like

the modern mother?"

"Were you at that swell Mrs. ----'s house with all those big-bugs?"

Ernestine questioned excitedly.

"Yes.... There were speeches about the suffrage,--the reasons why woman

should have the vote, you know."

"I read all about it in the paper this morning."

Milly recalled what the interesting stranger had said to her about the

point of view of actual women workers, and inquired,--

"What do you think about suffrage, Miss Geyer?"

Ernestine gave a hoarse laugh.

"I don't think much," she said succinctly.

Milly made some remarks on the subject, quoting freely from Hazel

Fredericks on the injustices to women in this man-made world. Ernestine

listened with a smile of sceptical amusement on her homely face, and

slowly shook her head.

"There ain't much in _that_," she pronounced dogmatically. "The trouble

ain't there. Any working-woman will tell you she ain't bothered much by

lack of political power. We've got all the political powers we can

use.... What does it amount to, anyhow? Things aren't done in this world

by voting about 'em."

She easily threw down the feeble structure of Milly's arguments, which

were largely borrowed from the talk she had heard the night before.

Ernestine spoke with the assurance of one who has had reason to know.

"What women want is money, ain't it? Same as the men?" she demanded

flatly.

"That's so!" Milly assented heartily.

"And they'll get it when they know how to do something somebody wants

done as well as a man can. They do get it now when they've got something

to give--that's truth!"

She gave Milly a brief account of her own struggles in the labor market,

which interested Milly deeply.

"Now how did I get where I am to-day?" she concluded dramatically,

drawing up her right sleeve and pointing to the withered arm. "Because

of that. It taught me a lesson when I was nothing but an empty-headed

girl. That and the burn on my leg made a man of me, because it took most

of the woman thing out of me. I learned to think like a man and to act

like a man. I learned my job, same as a man. Yes! And beat my boss at it

so he had to pay me a man's wages to keep me, and the company has to pay

me big money now--or I'd go out and get it somewheres else."

Milly was impressed. She said doubtfully,--

"But you had great ability to do all that."

Ernestine shook her head,--

"Not so much more'n most."

"And good health."

"Yes. My health don't trouble me--and that's partly because I've had no

chance to fool it away like most girls."

"So you think it all depends on the women," Milly said unconvinced.

"Women--oh, Lord!" Ernestine exclaimed irreverently, getting up and

walking about the room. She examined the books and the few sketches of

Jack's that Milly had kept and hung on the bare walls of the Reddons'

living-room.

"My husband did those," Milly explained.

"Widow?"

Milly nodded.

Examining a drawing, with her back to Milly, Ernestine continued her

remarks on the great question:--

"Women! I guess the trouble with 'em started 'way back--in the Garden of

Eden. They didn't like being put out, and they've never got reconciled

to it since. They're mostly looking for some soft snap,--working-women,

that is," she said deferentially for Milly's sake. "The ones I know at

any rate. When they're young they mostly expect to marry right

off--catch some feller who'll be nice to 'em and let 'em live off him.

But they'd oughter know there's nothin' in that sort of marriage. All

they have to do is to look at all the women the men get tired of and

desert. And the slaves the mothers are! I knew that!" she interpolated

with a woman's pride to prove to this other pretty woman that even she

was not single in the world because she had not had her chance. "I c'd

have married once, and came near making one great fool of myself like

the others. But I got wise in time. You see he weren't no good," she

explained frankly. "I expect, though, he's eatin' off some other woman

before this.... Girls always expect to draw the grand prize in the

lottery, where there's mostly blanks, and get a man who'll love 'em

more'n anythin' else in the world, and give 'em a good time all their

lives. Ain't that so?"

Milly agreed with reservations. Ernestine's observations had been

confined to a class of women with whom Milly was not familiar, but her

conclusions applied fairly well to the class Milly knew best,--the

so-called "educated" and well-to-do women.

"Well, that ain't life," Ernestine pronounced with clenching force.

"Women have hearts, you must remember," Milly sighed a little

sentimentally. "They'll always be foolish."

"Not that way--when they learn!"

"I wonder."

"And that's the reason I've been givin' yer why girls don't take to any

work seriously and make somethin' of it, same as a man has to. Oh, I've

seen lots of 'em--just lots!"

She waved a hand disgustedly.

Milly was now thoroughly interested in her new acquaintance, and they

went deeper into the complicated woman-question. Ernestine, she

perceived, had learned her lessons in the hard school of the man's world

of give and take, and learned them thoroughly. And she had the rare

ability to learn by experience. This with her good health and an innate

sense of orderliness and thrift, possibly due to the Teutonic strain in

her blood, had sufficed to put her ahead in the race. For she was even

less educated than Milly, and naturally less quick. But having touched

realities all her life, she had achieved an abiding sense of fact that

Milly was now totally incapable of acquiring. Her philosophy was simple,

but it embraced the woman question, suffrage, and the man-made world. To

live, she said, you must give something of yourself that is worth the

while of Somebody Else to take and pay for--pay as high as he can be

made to pay. To Milly it seemed a harsh philosophy. She wished to give

when and what she liked to whom she pleased and take whatever she

wanted. It was the failure of this system to work that had brought about

the present crisis in her affairs.

* * * * *

One o'clock arrived, and Milly, who was genuinely aroused by the

harsh-voiced working-woman, invited Ernestine to stay for the mid-day

meal, which on account of the child was dinner rather than lunch. The

light in Ernestine's black eyes and the pleased, humble tone in which

she exclaimed,--"Oh, may I!" touched Milly.

So the three presently sat down around the small table, which Milly had

served in the front room of the flat rather than in the dark pocket of a

dining-room. That seemed to Ernestine a very brilliant idea, and she was

also much impressed by the daintiness of the table and the little

details of the meal. Milly had a faculty of getting some results even

from such unpromising material as Marion Reddon's sullen Swede. She knew

very well how food should be cooked and served, how gentlefolk were in

the habit of taking their food as a delightful occasion as well as a

chance to appease hunger, and she always insisted upon some sort of

form. So the mid-day meal, which seemed to Milly poor and forlorn

compared with what she had known in her life, was a revelation to

Ernestine of social grace and daintiness. Her keen eyes followed Milly's

every motion, and she noted how each dish, and spoon, and fork was

placed. All this, she realized, was what she had been after and failed

to get. Milly apologized for the simple meal,--"Hilda isn't much of a

cook, and since we've been by ourselves, I have lost interest in doing

things."

"It ain't the food," Ernestine replied oracularly.

(When Virgie went to take her nap, she inquired of her mother why the

nice "queer" lady said "ain't" so often.)

* * * * *

It was raining in torrents, and the two women spent the long afternoon

in a series of intimate confidences. Milly's greatest gift was the

faculty of getting at all sorts of people. Now that she had become used

to the voice and the grammar of the street which Ernestine employed, and

also to the withered hand, she liked the working-woman more and more and

respected her fine quality. And Ernestine's simple, obvious admiration

for Milly and everything about her was flattering. In the plain woman's

eyes was the light of adoration that a man has for the thing most

opposite to his soul, most lacking in his experience.

In the course of this long talk Milly learned everything about Ernestine

Geyer's life contained in the previous chapter of this book and much

more that only a woman could confide in another woman,--intimate details

of her honorable struggle. Ernestine bared her hungry heart, her

loneliness in her new home, and her feeling of helplessness in not

getting, after all, what she wanted and what she had earned the money to

pay for.

"I guess I'm too much of a man," she said, after she had described her

solitary life in the apartment below. "There ain't enough of a woman

left in me to make a home!"

Milly tried to cheer her and encourage her, and promised to take dinner

with her some day and give her any suggestions she could.