Cicily Hamilton, bride of a year, was seemingly as fortunate a young
woman as the city of New York could offer to an envious world. Her house
in the East Sixties, just off the Avenue, was a charming home, dainty,
luxurious, in the best of taste, with a certain individuality in its
arrangement and ornamentation that spoke agreeably of the personality of
its mistress. Her husband, Charles Hamilton, was a handsome man of
twenty-six, who adored his wife, although recently, in the months since
the waning of the honeymoon, he had been so absorbed in business cares
that he had rather neglected those acts of tenderness so vital to a
woman's happiness. Some difficulties that disturbed him downtown
rendered him often preoccupied when at home, and the effect on his wife
was unwholesome. Little by little, the girl-woman felt a certain
discontent growing within her, indeterminate in a great measure, but
none the less forceful in its influence on her moods day by day.
The statements that Cicily had made in her inaugural speech to the
Civitas Society exhibited, albeit crudely, some of the facts breeding
revolt in her. In very truth, she found herself without sufficient
occupation to hold her thoughts from fanciful flights that led to no
satisfactory result in action. An excellent housekeeper, who was far
wiser in matters of menage than she could ever be, held admirable sway
over the domestic machinery. The servants, thus directed, were as those
untroubling inventions of which she had complained. Since she was not
devoted to the distraction of social gaieties, Cicily found an appalling
amount, of unemployed time on her hands. She was blest with an excellent
education; but, with no great fondness for knowledge as such, she was
not inclined to prosecute any particular study with the ardor of the
scholar. To rid herself of the boredom induced by this state of affairs,
the young wife decided that she must develop a new interest in her
fellow creatures. She went farther, and resolved to establish herself on
a basis of equality with her husband, not merely in love, but in the
sterner world of business. Thus, she was brought to entertain a
convincing belief in equality for the sexes, in society and in the home.
She revealed something of her mind and heart to her aunt on the
afternoon of the day following the singular session of the Civitas
Society. The two women were together in Cicily's boudoir, a delightful
room, all paneled in rose silk, with furniture _Louis Quatorze_, and
Dresden ornaments.... It was an hour yet before time for the
dressing-bell. Cicily, in a negligee of white silk that fitted well with
the color scheme of the room and that only emphasized the purity of her
ivory skin, suddenly sat up erect in the chair where she had been
nestling in curving abandonment.
"Why, Aunt Emma," she exclaimed, with a new sparkle in the amber eyes,
"we forgot to set any date for another meeting of the club?"
But Mrs. Delancy did not seem impressed by the oversight.
"Do you think it makes any real difference, dear?" she questioned
placidly.
At this taunt, Cicily assumed an air of reproach that was hardly
calculated to deceive the astute old lady, who had known the girl for
twenty years.
"Don't you take our club seriously?" she questioned in her turn. Her
musical voice was touchingly plaintive.
"Oh, it's serious enough," was the retort. "It's either seriously
pitiful, or pitifully serious, whichever way you choose to look at it."
Cicily abandoned her disguise of concern, and laughed heartily before
she spoke again.
"I must admit that I think it's a joke, myself," she admitted: "more's
the pity." There was a note of genuine regret in her voice now. Then,
she smiled again, with much zest. "But it was so amusing--stirring them
up, and then calmly taking the presidency myself, because none of them
knew just how to stop me!"
"It was barefaced robbery!" Mrs. Delancy exclaimed reprovingly, although
she, too, was compelled to smile at the audacity of the achievement.
"But," she added meditatively, "I really don't see what it all amounts
to, anyhow?"
"I suspect that you didn't listen attentively to the president's
speech," Cicily railed.
"I listened," Mrs. Delancy declared, firmly. "In spite of that fact, my
dear, what does it all mean? Down deep, are you serious in some things
I have heard you say, lately?"
"Oh, yes, I'm serious enough," was the answer, spoken with a hint of
bitterness in the tone. "That is, I'm seriously bored--desperately
bored, for the matter of that. I tell you, Aunt Emma, a married woman
must have something to do. As for me, why, I have absolutely nothing to
do. Those other women, too, or at least most of them, have nothing to
do, and they are all desperately bored. Well, that's the cause of the
new club. Unfortunately, the club, too, has nothing to do--nothing at
all--and so, the club, too, is desperately bored.... Oh, if only I could
give that club an object--a real object!"
Mrs. Delancy murmured some remonstrance over the new enthusiasm that
sounded in her niece's voice while uttering the aspiration in behalf of
the Civitas Society; but the bride paid no heed.
"Yes," she mused, straightening the arches of her brows in a frown of
perplexity, "it could be made something, with an object. I myself could
be made something, with an object--something worth while to strive
for.... Heavens, how I wish I had something to do!"
This iconoclastic fashion of speech was not patiently endured by the
orthodox aunt, who listened to the plaint with marked displeasure.
"A bride with a young husband and a beautiful home," she remarked
tartly, "seeking something to do! In my day, a bride was about the
busiest and the happiest person in the community." Her voice took on a
tone of tender reminiscence, and a little color crept into the wrinkled
pallor of her cheeks, and she perked her head a bit coquettishly, in a
youthful manner not unbecoming, as she continued: "I remember how
happy--oh, how happy!--I was then!"
Cicily, however, displayed a rather shocking lack of sympathy for this
emotion on the part of her relative. She was, in fact, selfishly
absorbed in her own concerns, after the manner of human nature, whether
young or old.
"Yes," she said, almost spitefully, "I have noticed how always old
married ladies continually remember the happy time when they were
brides. A bride's happy time is as much advertised as a successful
soap.... But I--I--well, I'm not a bride any longer--that's all. I've
been married a whole year!"
"A whole year!" Mrs. Delancy spoke the word with the fine scorn of one
who was looking forward complacently to the celebration of a golden
wedding anniversary in the near future.
Cicily, however, was impervious to the sarcasm of the repetition.
"Yes," she repeated gloomily, "a whole year. Think of it.... And all the
women in my family live to be seventy. Mamma would have been alive if
she hadn't been drowned. A good many live to be eighty. Why, you're not
seventy yet. Poor dear! You may have ten or a dozen more years of it!"
Mrs. Delancy was actually horrified by her niece's commiseration.
"Cicily," she eluded, "you must not speak in that manner. I've been
happily married. You--"
The afflicted bride was not to be turned aside from her woe.
"I'm perfectly wretched," she announced, fiercely. "Auntie, Charles is a
bigamist!"
"Good Lord!" Mrs. Delancy ejaculated with pious fervor, and sank back
limply in her chair, too much overcome for further utterance. Then, in a
flash of memory, she beheld again the facts as she had known them as to
her niece's courtship and marriage. The girl and Charles Hamilton had
been sweethearts as children. The boy had developed into the man without
ever apparently wavering in his one allegiance. Cicily, too, had had
eyes for no other suitor, even when many flocked about her, drawn by the
fascination of her vivacious beauty and the little graces of her form
and the varied brilliance of her moods. It was because of the
steadfastness of the two lovers in their devotion that Mr. and Mrs.
Delancy had permitted themselves to be persuaded into granting consent
for an early marriage. It had seemed to them that the constancy of the
pair was sufficiently established. They believed that here was indeed
material for the making of an ideal union. Their belief seemed justified
by the facts in the outcome, for bride and groom showed all the
evidences of rapturous happiness in their union. It had only been
revealed during this present visit to the household by the aunt that,
somehow, things were not as they should be between these two erstwhile
so fond.... And now, at last, the truth was revealed in all its
revolting nudity. Mrs. Delancy recalled, with new understanding of its
fatal significance, the aloof manner recently worn by the young husband
in his home. So, this was the ghastly explanation of the change: The man
was a bigamist! The distraught woman had hardly ears for the words her
niece was speaking.
"Yes," Cicily said, after a long, mournful pause, "besides me, Charles
has married--" She paused, one foot in a dainty satin slipper beating
angrily on the white fur of the rug.
"What woman?" Mrs. Delancy demanded, with wrathful curiosity.
"Oh, a factory full of them!" The young wife spoke the accusation with a
world of bitterness in her voice.
"Good gracious, what an extraordinary man!" Mrs. Delancy, under the
stimulus of this outrageous guilt again sat erect in her chair. Once
more, the flush showed daintily in the withered cheeks; but, now, there
was no hint of tenderness in the rose--it was the red of anger. "I know
how you must feel, dear," she said, gently. "I was jealous once, of one
woman. But to be jealous of a factory full--oh, Lord!"
"Yes," Cicily declared, in tremulous tones, "all of them, and the men
besides!"
Mrs. Delancy bounced from her seat, then slowly subsided into the depths
of the easy chair, whence she fairly gaped at her former ward. When,
finally, she spoke, it was slowly, with full conviction.
"Cicily, you're crazy!"
"No," the girl protested, sadly; "only heartbroken. I am so miserable
that I wish I were dead!"
"But, my dear," Mrs. Delancy argued, "it can't be that you are
quite--er--sensible, you know."
"Of course, I'm not sensible," Cicily admitted, petulantly. "I said I
was jealous, didn't I? Naturally, I can't be sensible."
"But Charles can't be married to the men, too!" Mrs. Delancy asserted,
wonderingly.
At that, Cicily flared in a burst of genuine anger.
"Yes, he is, too," she stormed; "and to the women, too--to the
buildings, to the machinery, to the nasty ground, to the
fire-escapes--to every single thing about that horrid business of his!
Oh, I hate it! I hate it! I hate every one of them!... And he is a
bigamist, I tell you--yes, a bigamist! He's married to me and to his
business, too, and he cares more for his business!"
"Humph!" The exclamation came from Mrs. Delancy with much energy. It was
surcharged, with relief, for the tragedy was made clear to her at last.
Surely, there was room for trouble in the situation, but nothing like
that over which she had shuddered during the period of her
misapprehension. In the first minute of relief, she felt aroused to
indignation against her niece who had so needlessly shocked her. "I do
wish, Cicily," she remonstrated, "that you would endeavor to curb your
impetuosity. It leads you into such absurdities of speech and of action.
Your extravagant way of opening this subject caused me utterly to
mistake your meaning, and set me all a-tremble--for a tempest in a
teapot."
"I think I'll get a divorce," Cicily declared, defiantly. The bride was
not in an apologetic mood, inasmuch, as she regarded herself as the one
undeservedly suffering under great wrongs.
"Perhaps!" Mrs. Delancy retorted, sarcastically. Her usual good humor
was returning, after the first reaction from the stress she had
undergone by reason of the young wife's fantastic mode of speech. "I
suppose you will name Charles's business as the co-respondent."
"It takes more out of him than any woman could," was the spirited
retort. "Of course, I shall. Why not?"
Mrs. Delancy, now thoroughly amused, explained to her niece some details
concerning the grounds required by the statutes in the state of New York
for the granting of absolute divorce, of which hitherto the carefully
nurtured girl had been in total ignorance. Cicily was at first
astounded, and then dismayed. But, in the end, she regained her poise,
and reverted with earnestness to the need of reform in the courts where
such gross injustice could be. She surmised even that in this field she
might find ultimately some outlet of a satisfactory sort for her wasted
energies.
"Why, I and my club, and other clubs like it," she concluded, "find the
cause of our being in such things as this. We women haven't any
occupation, and we haven't any husbands, essentially speaking--and we're
determined to have both."
The bold declaration was offensive to the old lady's sense of
propriety.
"You can't interfere with your husband's business, Cicily," she said by
way of rebuke, somewhat stiffly.
The young wife, however, was emancipated from such admonitions. She did
not hesitate to express her dissent boldly.
"Yes," she exclaimed indignantly, "that's the idea that you old married
women have been putting up with, without ever whimpering. Why, you've
even been preaching it yourselves--preaching it until you've spoilt the
men utterly. So, now, thanks to your namby-pamby knuckling under always,
it's business first, last, and all the time--and marriage just nowhere.
I tell you, it's all wrong.... I know you're older," she went on
vehemently, as Mrs. Delancy's lips parted. "I guess that's why you're
wrong.... Anyhow, it isn't as it was intended. For the matter of that,
which was first, marriage or business? Did Adam have a business when he
married? Huh! There! No man could answer that!" Cicily paused in
triumph, and, in the elation wrought by developing a successful
argument, turned luminous eyes on her aunt, while her red lips bent
into the daintiest of smiles.
Mrs. Delancy was not to be beguiled from the fixed habits of thoughts
carried through scores of years by the winsome blandishments of her
whilom ward. She had no answering gentleness for the gladness in the
girl's face. When she spoke, it was with an emphasis of acute
disapproval:
"Do you mean that you are going to make your husband choose between you
and his business, Cicily?"
Something in the tone disturbed the young wife's serenity. The direct
question itself was sufficient to destroy the momentary equanimity
evolved out of a mental achievement such as the argument from Adam. She
realized, on the instant, that her desire must be defeated by the facts
of life.
"No," she admitted, after a brief period of hesitancy, "of course not.
Charles chooses business first--any man would."
The inexorable question followed:
"Well, what are you going to do?" Then, as no answer came: "I beg of
you, Cicily, not to be rash. Don't do anything that will cause you
regret after you have come into a calmer mood. Of course, once on a
time, marriage was first with men, and I think that it should be first
now--I know that it should. But it is the truth that business has now
come to be first in the lives of our American men. And, my dear, you
can't overcome conditions all by yourself. At heart, Charles loves you,
Cicily. I'm sure of that, even though he does seem, wrapt up in his
business affairs. Yet, he loves you, just the same. That's the one thing
we older women learn to cling to, to solace ourselves with: that, deep
down in their hearts, our husbands do love us, no matter how indifferent
they may seem. When a woman once loses faith in that, why, she just
can't go on, that's all. Oh, I beg you, Cicily, don't ever lose that
faith. It means shipwreck!"
The young wife shook her head slowly--doubtfully; then
quickly--determinedly.
"No, I won't put up with just that," she asserted, morosely, "I want
more. I'll have more, or--" She checked herself abruptly, and once again
the arch of her dark brows was straightened, as she mused somberly over
her future course.
There fell an interval of silence, in which the two reflected on the
mysteries that lie between man and woman in the way of love. It was
broken finally by Mrs. Delancy, who spoke meditatively, hardly conscious
that the words were uttered aloud.
"Of course, you're not really dependent on Charles. Your own fortune--"
The girl's interruption came in a passionate outburst that filled her
hearer with distress and surprise. It would seem that Cicily had been
thinking very tenderly, yet very unhappily, of those mysteries of love.
"But I am dependent on him--dependent on him for every ray of sunshine
in my heart, for every breath of happiness in my life; while he--" her
voice broke suddenly; it came muffled as she continued
quiveringly--"while he--he's not dependent on me at all!" After a little
interval, she went on, more firmly, but with the voice of despair.
"That's the pity of it. That's what makes us women nowadays turn to
something else--to some other man, or to some work, some fad, some
hobby, some folly, some madness--anything to fill the void in our hearts
that our husbands forget to fill, because their whole attention is
concentrated on business.... But I'm not going to be that wife, I give
you warning. I'm going to make my husband fill all my heart, and, too,
I'm going to make him dependent on me. I'll make him know that he can't
do without me!"
"Nonsense!" Mrs. Delancy objected, incredulously. "Why, as to that,
Charles is dependent on you now. You haven't really lost his love--not a
bit of it, my dear!"
There was infinite sadness in the young wife's gesture of negation.
"Aunt Emma," she said earnestly, "Charles and I haven't had an evening
together in weeks. We haven't had a real old talk in months.... Why,
I--I doubt if he even remembers what day this is!"
"You mean--?"
"Our first anniversary! Long ago, we planned to celebrate the day--just
the theater and a little supper after--only us two.... I wonder if he
will remember." The tremulous voice gave evidence that the tears were
very near.
"Oh, of course, he will," Mrs. Delancy declared briskly, with a manner
of cheerful certainty. Nevertheless, out of the years of experience in
the world of married folk, a great doubt lurked in her heart.
Cicily's head with the coronal of dark brown hair, usually poised so
proudly, now drooped dejectedly; there was no hopefulness in her tones
as she replied:
"I don't know--I am afraid. Why, since the tobacco trust bought out that
Carrington box factory five months ago, and began fighting Charles, he
talks tobacco boxes in his sleep."
"Don't take it so seriously," the aunt argued. "All men are that way. My
dear, your Uncle Jim mumbles woolens--even during Dog Days. No, you
mustn't take things so seriously, Cicily. You are not the only wife who
has to suffer in this way. You are not the only one who was ever
lonesome. Your case isn't unusual--more pity! It's the case of almost
every wife whose husband wins in this frightful battle with business.
Years ago, dear, I suffered as you are suffering. Your uncle never told
me anything. I've never known anything at all about more than half of
his life. He rebuffed me the few times at first, when I tried to share
those things with him. He said that a woman had no place in a man's
business affairs. So, after a little, I stopped trying. For a time, I
was lonesome--very lonesome--oh, so lonesome!... And, then, I began to
make a life for myself outside the home--as he had already by his
business. I tried in my humble way to do something for others. That's
the best way to down a heartache, my dear--try making someone else
happy."
The words arrested Cicily's heed. As their meaning seeped into her
consciousness, the expression of her face changed little by little.
"Making people happy!" She repeated the phrase as she had formulated the
idea again, very softly, with a persistence that would have surprised
Mrs. Delancy, could she have caught the inaudible murmur. Presently, the
faint rose in the pallor of her cheeks blossomed to a deeper red, and
the amber eyes grew radiant, as she lifted the long, curving lashes, and
fixed her gaze on her aunt. There was a new animation in her voice as
she spoke; there was a new determination in the resolute set of the
scarlet lips.
"Why, that's something to do!" she exclaimed, joyously. "It's something
to do, really, after all--isn't it?"
"Yes," her aunt agreed, sedately; "something big to do. For my part, I
joined church circles, and worked first for the heathen."
"Oh, bother the heathen!" Cicily ejaculated, rudely. "Charles is heathen
enough for me!" With her characteristic impulsiveness, she sprang to her
feet, as Mrs. Delancy quietly rose to go, ran to her aunt, and embraced
that astonished woman with great fervor.
"I honestly believe that you've given me the idea I was looking for,"
she declared enthusiastically. "You darling!... Making people happy! It
would be something for the club, too.... Yes," she concluded decisively,
"I'll do it!"
"Do what?" Mrs. Delancy questioned, bewildered by the swift succession
of moods in the girl she loved, yet could never quite understand.
"You just wait, Aunt Emma," was the baffling answer.
Mrs. Delancy turned at the door, and spoke grimly:
"My dear Cicily," she said, "you're getting to be quite as reticent as
your uncle and Charles."
But the girl disdained any retort to the gibe. Instead, she was saying
softly, over and over: "Making other people happy! Making other people
happy!"