BACHELOR GIRLS.
IN September Emily, convinced that she could not afford to stay away
from her own country longer, got herself transferred to the New York
staff and crossed with the Waylands. In the crowd on the White Star
pier she saw Joan, now a successful playright or “plagiarist” as she
called herself, because the most of her work was translating and
adapting. And presently Joan and she were journeying in a four-wheeler
piled high with trunks, toward the San Remo where Joan was living.
“Made in Paris,” said Joan, her arm about Emily and her eyes delighting
in Emily’s stylish French travelling costume. “You even speak with a
Paris accent. How you have changed!”
“But not so much as you. You are not so thin. And you’ve lost that
stern, anxious expression. And you have the air--what is it?--the air
that comes to people when their merits have been publicly admitted.”
Joan did indeed look a person who is in the habit of being taken into
account. She had always been good-looking, if somewhat severe and
business-like. Now she was handsome. She was not of the type of woman
with whom a man falls ardently in love--she showed too plainly that she
dealt with all the facts of life on a purely intellectual basis.
“I’ve been expecting news that you were marrying,” said Emily.
“I?” Joan smiled cynically. “I feel as you do about
marriage--except----”
She paused and reddened as Emily began to laugh. “No--not that,” she
went on. “I’m not the least in love. But I’ve made up my mind to marry
the first intelligent, endurable, self-supporting man that asks me. I’m
thirty-two years old and--I want children.”
“Children! You--children?”
“Yes--I. I’ve changed my mind now that I can afford to think of such
things. I like them for themselves and--they’re the only hope one has
of getting a real object in life. Working for oneself is hollow. I once
thought I’d be happy if I got where I am now--mistress of my time and
sure of an income. But I find that I can’t hope to be contented going
on alone. And that means children.”
“You don’t know how you surprise me.” Emily looked thoughtful rather
than surprised. “You set me to thinking along a new line. I wonder if I
shall ever feel that way?”
“Why, of course. Old age without ties in the new generation is a dismal
farce for woman or man. We human beings live looking to the future if
we live at all. And unless we have children, we are certain to be
alone and facing the past in old age. You’ll change your mind, as I
have. Some day you’ll begin to feel the longing for children. It may be
irrational, but it’ll be irresistible.”
“Well, I think I’ll wait on your experiment. How I love the trolley
cars and the tall buildings--they make one feel what a strong, bold
race we are, don’t they? And I’m simply wild to get to the office.”
Emily was assigned to the staff of the Sunday supplements--to
read papers and magazines, foreign and domestic, and suggest and
occasionally execute features. She liked the work and it left her
evenings free; but it was sedentary. This she corrected by walking the
three miles from the office to her flat and by swimming at a school in
Forty-fourth street three times a week.
She gave much time and thought to her appearance because she was proud
of her looks, because they were part of her capital, and because she
knew that only by the greatest care could she keep her youth. Joan’s
interest in personal appearance, so far as she herself was concerned,
ended with seeing to cleanliness and to clothing near enough to the
fashion to make her a well-dressed woman. It did not disturb her that
her hair was slightly thinner than it used to be, or that there were
a few small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. But she was not
contemptuous of Emily’s far-sighted precautions. On the contrary,
she looked upon them as sensible and would have been worried by any
sign of relaxing vigilance. She delighted in Emily’s gowns and in the
multitude of trifles--collarettes, pins of different styles, stockings
of striking and even startling patterns, shoes and boots of many kinds,
ribbons, gloves, etc. etc.--wherewith she made her studied simplicity
of dress perfect.
“It’s wonderful,” she said, as she watched Emily unpack. “I don’t see
how you ever accumulated so much.”
“Instinct probably,” replied Emily. “I make it a rule never to buy
anything I don’t need, and never to need anything I don’t have money to
buy.”
They took a flat in Central Park West, near Sixty-sixth street, and
Joan insisted upon paying two-thirds of the expenses. Emily yielded,
because Joan’s arguments were unanswerable--she did use the flat more,
as she not only worked there and received business callers, but also
did much entertaining; and she could well afford to bear the larger
part of the expense, as her income was about eight thousand a year,
and Emily had only three thousand. Joan wished to draw Emily into
play-writing, but soon gave it up. She had to admit to herself that
Emily was right in thinking she had not the necessary imagination--that
her mind was appreciative rather than constructive.
“Don’t think I’m so dreadfully depressed over it,” Emily went on. “It
is painful to have limitations as narrow as mine, when one appreciates
as keenly as I do. But we can’t all have genius or great talent.
Besides, the highest pleasures don’t come through great achievement or
great ability.”
“Indeed, they do not.”
Emily’s eyes danced, and Joan grew red and smiled foolishly. The
meaning back of it was Professor Reed of Columbia. He had been
calling on Joan of late frequently, and with significant regularity.
He was short and sallow, with a narrow, student’s face, and brown
eyes, that seemed large and dreamy through his glasses, as eyes
behind glasses usually do. He was stiff in manner, because he had had
little acquaintance with women. He was in love with Joan in a solemn,
old-fashioned way. He was so shy and respectful that if Emily had not
been most considerate of other people’s privacy, she would have teased
Joan by asking her when she was going to propose to him that he propose
to her.
He was rigid in his ideas of what constituted propriety for himself,
but not in the least disposed to insist upon his standards in others.
He felt that in wandering so near to Bohemia as Joan and Emily he
was trenching upon the extreme of permissible self-indulgence. If he
had been able to suspect Joan of “a past,” he would probably have
been secretly delighted. He did not believe that she had, when he got
beyond the surface of her life--the atmosphere of the playhouse and the
newspaper office--and saw how matter-of-fact everything was. But he
still clung to vague imaginings of unconventionality, so alluring to
those who are conventional in thought and action.
Emily’s one objection to him was that he sometimes tried to be witty or
humorous. Then he became hysterical and not far from silly. But as she
knew him better she forgave this. Had she disliked him she would have
been able to see nothing else.
“Do you admire strength in a man?” she once asked Joan.
“Yes--I suppose so. I like him to be--well, a man.”
“I like a man to be distinctly masculine--strong, mentally and
physically. I don’t like him to domineer, but I like to feel that he
would domineer me if he dared--and could domineer every one except me.”
“No, I don’t like that. I have my own ideas of what I wish to do. And I
wish the man who is anything to me to be willing to help me to do them.”
“You want a man-servant, then?”
“No, indeed. But I don’t want a master.” Joan shut her lips together,
and a stern, pained expression came into her face. Emily saw that
her book of memory had flung open at an unpleasant page. “No,” she
continued in a resolute tone, “I want no master. My centre of gravity
must remain within myself.”
After that conversation Emily understood why Joan liked her
intelligent, adoring, timid professor. “Joan will make him make her
happy,” she said to herself, amused at, yet admiring, Joan’s practical,
sensible planning.
* * * * *
Soon after her return, the Sunday editor called her into his
office--her desk was across the room, immediately opposite his door.
“We want a series of articles on what is doing in New York for the
poor--especially the foreign poor of the slums. Now, here’s the address
of a man who can tell you about his own work and also what others are
doing--where to send in order to see how it’s done, whom it’s done for,
and so on.”
Emily took the slip. It read “Dr. Stanhope,--Grand Street.” She set out
at once, left the Bowery car at Grand street and walked east through
its crowded dinginess. She passed the great towering Church of the
Redeemer at the corner of ---- street. The next house was the one she
was seeking. A maid answered the door. A sickly looking curate, his
shovel-hat standing out ludicrously over a pair of thin, projecting
ears, passed her with a “professional” smile that made his tiny,
dimpled chin look its weakest. The maid took her card and presently
returned to conduct her through several handsome rooms, up heavily
carpeted stairs, under an arch, into a connecting house that was
furnished with cold and cheap simplicity. The maid pushed open a door
and Emily entered a large, high-ceilinged library, that looked as if
were the workshop of a toiler of ascetic tastes. At the farther end at
a table-desk sat a man, writing. His back was toward her--a big back,
a long, broad, powerful back. He was seated upon a strong, revolving
office-chair, yet it seemed too small and too feeble for him.
“Well, my good girl, what can I do for you?” he called over his
shoulder, without ceasing to write.
Emily started. She recognised the voice, then the head, neck,
shoulders, back. It was the man she had “confessed” in Paris. She
was so astonished that she could make no reply, and hardly noted the
abstracted patronising tone, the supercilious words and the uncourteous
manner. He dropped his pen, laid his great hands on the arms of his
chair and swung himself round. His expression changed so swiftly and
so tragically that Emily forgot her own surprise and with difficulty
restrained her amusement.
He leaped from his chair and strode toward her--bore down upon her. His
brilliant, dark eyes expressed amazement, doubt of his sanity. There
was a deep flush in his pallid skin just beneath the surface.
“I have come to ask”--began Emily.
“Is it you?” he said, eagerly. “Is it _you_?”
“I beg your pardon.” Emily’s face showed no recognition and she stood
before him, formal and business-like.
“Don’t you remember me?” He made an impatient gesture, as if to sweep
aside a barrier some one had thrust in front of him. “Did I not meet
you in Paris?”
“I don’t think--I’m sure--that I have not had the pleasure of meeting
you. The _Democrat_ sent me here to see Doctor Stanhope--”
Again he made the sweeping gesture with his powerful arm. “I am Doctor
Stanhope,” he said impatiently. Then with earnest directness: “Your
manner is an evasion. It is useless, unlike--unexpected in the sort of
woman you--you look.”
“You cannot ask me to be bound by your conclusions or wishes when they
do not agree with my own,” said Emily, her tone and look taking the
edge from her words, as she did not wish to offend him.
“As you will.” He made a gesture of resignation and bowed toward a
chair at the corner of his desk. When they were seated, he said, “I am
at your service, Miss Bromfield.”
He gave her the information she was seeking, suggested the phases
of poverty and relief of poverty that would be best for description
and illustration. He called in his secretary and dictated notes of
instruction to several men who could help her. He requested them to
“give Miss Bromfield all possible facilities, as an especial favour to
me. I am deeply interested in the articles she is preparing for the
_Democrat_.”
When the secretary withdrew to write out the letters, he leaned back
in his chair and looked at her appealingly. “Shall we be friends?” he
asked.
While Emily had been sitting there, so near him, hearing his clear,
resolute voice, noting his fascinating mannerisms of strength,
gentleness and simplicity, she felt again the charm of power and
persuasion that had conquered her when first she saw him. “He makes me
feel that he is important, and at the same time that I am important in
his eyes,” she thought, analysing her vanity as she yielded to it.
“Friends?” she said aloud with a smile. “That means better
opportunities for petty treachery, and the chance to assassinate in a
crisis. It’s a serious matter--friendship, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” he replied, humour in his eyes. “And again it may mean an
offensive and defensive alliance against the world.”
“In dreams,” she answered, “but not in women’s dreams of men or in
men’s dreams of women.”
Just then a voice called from the hall, “Arthur!”--a shrill, shrewish
voice with a note of habitual ill-temper in it, yet a ladylike voice.
There was a rustling of skirts and into the room hurried a small, fair
woman, thin, and nervous in face, thin and nervous in body, with a
sudden bulge of breadth and stoutness at the hips. She was in a tailor
gown, expensive and unbecoming. Her hair was light brown, tightly drawn
up, with a small knot at the crown of her head. There was a wide, bald
expanse behind each ear. She had cold-blue, sensual eyes, the iris
looking as if it were a thin button pasted to the ball. Yet she was not
unattractive, making up in fire what she lacked in beauty.
“As you see, I am engaged,” Stanhope said, tranquilly.
“Pardon me for interrupting.” There was a covert sting of sarcasm in
her voice. “But I must see you.”
He rose. “You’ll excuse me a moment?” he said to Emily.
He followed his wife into the hall and soon returned to his desk.
“Everything begins badly with me,” he resumed abruptly. “Since
I was a boy at school, the butt of the other boys because I was
clumsy and supersensitive, it has been one long fight.” His tone was
matter-of-fact, but something it suggested rather than uttered made
Emily feel as if tears were welling up toward her eyes. “But,” he
continued, “I go straight on. I sometimes stumble, sometimes crawl, but
always straight on.”
“What a simple, direct man he is,” she thought, “and how strong! In
another that would have seemed a boast. From him it seems the literal
truth.”
“What are you thinking?” he interrupted.
“Just then? I was beginning to think how peculiar you are, and
how--how--” her eyes danced--“indiscreet.”
“Because of what I did and said in Paris? Because of what I am saying
to you now?” He looked at her friendlily. “Oh, no--there you mistake
me. I cannot tell why I feel as I do toward you. But I know that I
must be truthful and honest with you, that you have a right to demand
it of me, as had no one else I ever knew. I must let you know me as I
am.”
“You seem delightfully sure that I wish to know.”
“I do not think of that at all. Much as I have thought of you, I have
never thought ‘what does she think of me?’ Probably you dismissed me
from your mind when you turned away from me in Paris. Probably you will
again forget me when you have written your article and passed to other
work. But I cannot resist the instinct that impels me on to look upon
you as the most important human being in the world for me.”
“I believe that you are honest. I don’t wish to misunderstand your
frankness. I’m too impatient of conventions myself to insist upon them
in others--that is, in those who respect the real barriers that hedge
every human being until he or she chooses to let them down. But”--Emily
hesitated and looked apologetically at this “giant with the heart of a
boy,” as he seemed to her--“you ought not to forget that everything in
your circumstances makes it wrong for you to talk to me thus.”
“It seems so, doesn’t it?” He looked at her gravely. “It looks as if I
were a scoundrel. Yet I don’t feel in the least as if I were trying to
wrong you in any way. You seem to me far stronger than I. I feel that I
am appealing to you for strength.”
The secretary entered, laid the letters before him and went away. He
signed them mechanically, folded them and put them in the addressed
envelopes. As she rose he rose also and handed them to her.
“After I saw you in Paris,” he said, looking down at her as she stood
before him, “I thought it all over. I asked myself whether I had been
deceived by your beauty, or whether it was the peculiar circumstances
of our meeting, of each of us yielding to an impulse; or whether it
was my weariness of all that I am familiar with, my desire for the
unfamiliar, the new, the adventurous. And it may be all of these, but
there is more beyond them all.”
He paused, then went on in a voice which so thrilled her that she
hardly heard his words: “Yes, a great deal more. I wish something, some
one, some _person_ to believe in. It is vital to me. I doubt everything
and everybody--God, His creatures, myself most of all. And when my
eyes fell upon you in Paris, there was that in your face which made me
believe in you. I said, ‘She is brave, she is honest, she is strong.
She could not be petty or false, or cruel.’ And--I do believe in you.
That is all.”
“If you knew,” she said, trying to shake off the spell of his voice and
his personality, “you would find me a very ordinary kind of sinner. And
then, you would of course proceed to denounce me as if I were a fraud,
instead of the innocent cause of your deliberate self-deception.”
“I don’t know what you have done--what particular courses you have
taken at life’s university. But I am not so--so deceived in you that
I do not note and understand the signs of experience, of--yes, of
suffering. I know there must be a cause when at your age a woman can
look a man through and through, when she can talk to him sexlessly,
when she laughs rarely and smiles reluctantly.”
“I am hardly a tragedy,” interrupted Emily. “Please don’t make me out
one of those comical creatures who go through life fancying themselves
heroines of melodrama.”
“I don’t. You are supremely natural and sensible. But--I neither know
nor try to guess nor care how you came to be the woman you are. But
I do know that you are one of those to whom all experience is a help
toward becoming wiser and stronger and better.”
It seemed to her as if, in spite of her struggles, she was being drawn
toward him irresistibly, toward a fate which at once fascinated and
frightened her. “You are dangerously interesting,” she said. “But I am
staying too long.” And with a few words of thanks for his assistance to
her work, she went away.
In the street she rapidly recovered herself and her point of view.
“A minister!” she thought. “And a married man! And sentimental and
mystical!” But in defiance of self-mockery and self-warnings her mind
persisted in coming back to him, persisted in revolving ideas about him
which her judgment condemned.