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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sylvia's Marriage, by Upton Sinclair
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sylvia's Marriage
+
+Author: Upton Sinclair
+
+
+Release Date: June, 2004  [EBook #5807]
+This file was first posted on September 4, 2002
+Last updated: May 3, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE
+
+A NOVEL
+
+
+By Upton Sinclair
+
+Author Of "The Jungle," Etc., Etc.
+
+London
+
+
+
+
+SOME PRESS NOTICES
+
+"The importance of the theme cannot be doubted, and no one hitherto
+ignorant of the ravages of the evil and therefore, by implication, in
+need of being convinced can refuse general agreement with Mr. Sinclair
+upon the question as he argues it. The character that matters most is
+very much alive and most entertaining."--_The Times._
+
+"Very severe and courageous. It would, indeed, be difficult to deny
+or extenuate the appalling truth of Mr. Sinclair's indictment."-- _The
+Nation._
+
+"There is not a man nor a grown woman who would not be better for
+reading Sylvia's Marriage."--_The Globe_
+
+"Those who found Sylvia charming on her first appearance will find her
+as beautiful and fascinating as ever."--_The Pall Mall_.
+
+"A novel that frankly is devoted to the illustration of the dangers
+that society runs through the marriage of unsound men with unsuspecting
+women. The time has gone by when any objection was likely to be taken to
+a perfectly clean discussion of a nasty subject."--_T.P.'s Weekly._
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+BOOK I SYLVIA AS WIFE
+
+BOOK II SYLVIA AS MOTHER
+
+BOOK III SYLVIA AS REBEL
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I. SYLVIA AS WIFE
+
+
+1. I am telling the story of Sylvia Castleman. I should prefer to tell
+it without mention of myself; but it was written in the book of fate
+that I should be a decisive factor in her life, and so her story
+pre-supposes mine. I imagine the impatience of a reader, who is promised
+a heroine out of a romantic and picturesque "society" world, and
+finds himself beginning with the autobiography of a farmer's wife on a
+solitary homestead in Manitoba. But then I remember that Sylvia found
+me interesting. Putting myself in her place, remembering her eager
+questions and her exclamations, I am able to see myself as a heroine of
+fiction.
+
+I was to Sylvia a new and miraculous thing, a self-made woman. I must
+have been the first "common" person she had ever known intimately. She
+had seen us afar off, and wondered vaguely about us, consoling herself
+with the reflection that we probably did not know enough to be unhappy
+over our sad lot in life. But here I was, actually a soul like herself;
+and it happened that I knew more than she did, and of things she
+desperately needed to know. So all the luxury, power and prestige that
+had been given to Sylvia Castleman seemed as nothing beside Mary Abbott,
+with her modern attitude and her common-sense.
+
+My girlhood was spent upon a farm in Iowa. My father had eight children,
+and he drank. Sometimes he struck me; and so it came about that at
+the age of seventeen I ran away with a boy of twenty who worked upon
+a neighbour's farm. I wanted a home of my own, and Tom had some money
+saved up. We journeyed to Manitoba, and took out a homestead, where I
+spent the next twenty years of my life in a hand-to-hand struggle with
+Nature which seemed simply incredible to Sylvia when I told her of it.
+
+The man I married turned out to be a petty tyrant. In the first five
+years of our life he succeeded in killing the love I had for him; but
+meantime I had borne him three children, and there was nothing to do but
+make the best of my bargain. I became to outward view a beaten drudge;
+yet it was the truth that never for an hour did I give up. When I lost
+what would have been my fourth child, and the doctor told me that I
+could never have another, I took this for my charter of freedom, and
+made up my mind to my course; I would raise the children I had, and grow
+up with them, and move out into life when they did.
+
+This was when I was working eighteen hours a day, more than half of
+it by lamp-light, in the darkness of our Northern winters. When the
+accident came, I had been doing the cooking for half a dozen men, who
+were getting in the wheat upon which our future depended. I fell in my
+tracks, and lost my child; yet I sat still and white while the men ate
+supper, and afterwards I washed up the dishes. Such was my life in
+those days; and I can see before me the face of horror with which Sylvia
+listened to the story. But these things are common in the experience
+of women who live upon pioneer farms, and toil as the slave-woman has
+toiled since civilization began.
+
+We won out, and my husband made money. I centred my energies upon
+getting school-time for my children; and because I had resolved that
+they should not grow ahead of me, I sat up at night, and studied their
+books. When the oldest boy was ready for high-school, we moved to a
+town, where my husband had bought a granary business. By that time I
+had become a physical wreck, with a list of ailments too painful to
+describe. But I still had my craving for knowledge, and my illness was
+my salvation, in a way--it got me a hired girl, and time to patronize
+the free library.
+
+I had never had any sort of superstition or prejudice, and when I got
+into the world of books, I began quickly to find my way. I travelled
+into by-paths, of course; I got Christian Science badly, and New Thought
+in a mild attack. I still have in my mind what the sober reader would
+doubtless consider queer kinks; for instance, I still practice "mental
+healing," in a form, and I don't always tell my secret thoughts about
+Theosophy and Spiritualism. But almost at once I worked myself out of
+the religion I had been taught, and away from my husband's politics,
+and the drugs of my doctors. One of the first subjects I read about was
+health; I came upon a book on fasting, and went away upon a visit and
+tried it, and came back home a new woman, with a new life before me.
+
+In all of these matters my husband fought me at every step. He wished
+to rule, not merely my body, but my mind, and it seemed as if every new
+thing that I learned was an additional affront to him. I don't think
+I was rendered disagreeable by my culture; my only obstinacy was in
+maintaining the right of the children to do their own thinking. But
+during this time my husband was making money, and filling his life with
+that. He remained in his every idea the money-man, an active and bitter
+leader of the forces of greed in our community; and when my studies took
+me to the inevitable end, and I joined the local of the Socialist party
+in our town, it was to him like a blow in the face. He never got over
+it, and I think that if the children had not been on my side, he would
+have claimed the Englishman's privilege of beating me with a stick
+not thicker than his thumb. As it was, he retired into a sullen
+hypochondria, which was so pitiful that in the end I came to regard him
+as not responsible.
+
+I went to a college town with my three children, and when they were
+graduated, having meantime made sure that I could never do anything but
+torment my husband, I set about getting a divorce. I had helped to lay
+the foundation of his fortune, cementing it with my blood, I might say,
+and I could fairly have laid claim to half what he had brought from
+the farm; but my horror of the parasitic woman had come to be such that
+rather than even seem to be one, I gave up everything, and went out into
+the world at the age of forty-five to earn my own living. My children
+soon married, and I would not be a burden to them; so I came East for
+a while, and settled down quite unexpectedly into a place as a
+field-worker for a child-labour committee.
+
+You may think that a woman so situated would not have been apt to meet
+Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver, _nee_ Castleman, and to be chosen for her bosom
+friend; but that would only be because you do not know the modern world.
+We have managed to get upon the consciences of the rich, and they invite
+us to attend their tea-parties and disturb their peace of mind. And
+then, too, I had a peculiar hold upon Sylvia; when I met her I possessed
+the key to the great mystery of her life. How that had come about is a
+story in itself, the thing I have next to tell.
+
+2. It happened that my arrival in New York from the far West coincided
+with Sylvia's from the far South; and that both fell at a time when
+there were no wars or earthquakes or football games to compete for
+the front page of the newspapers. So everybody was talking about the
+prospective wedding. The fact that the Southern belle had caught
+the biggest prize among the city's young millionaires was enough to
+establish precedence with the city's subservient newspapers, which had
+proceeded to robe the grave and punctilious figure of the bridegroom in
+the garments of King Cophetua. The fact that the bride's father was
+the richest man in his own section did not interfere with this--for how
+could metropolitan editors be expected to have heard of the glories of
+Castleman Hall, or to imagine that there existed a section of America so
+self-absorbed that its local favourite would not feel herself exalted in
+becoming Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver?
+
+What the editors knew about Castleman Hall was that they wired for
+pictures, and a man was sent from the nearest city to "snap"
+this unknown beauty; whereupon her father chased the presumptuous
+photographer and smashed his camera with a cane. So, of course, when
+Sylvia stepped out of the train in New York, there was a whole battery
+of cameras awaiting her, and all the city beheld her image the next day.
+
+The beginning of my interest in this "belle" from far South was when I
+picked up the paper at my breakfast table, and found her gazing at me,
+with the wide-open, innocent eyes of a child; a child who had come from
+some fairer, more gracious world, and brought the memory of it with her,
+trailing her clouds of glory. She had stepped from the train into the
+confusion of the roaring city, and she stood, startled and frightened,
+yet, I thought, having no more real idea of its wickedness and horror
+than a babe in arms. I read her soul in that heavenly countenance, and
+sat looking at it, enraptured, dumb. There must have been thousands,
+even in that metropolis of Mammon, who loved her from that picture, and
+whispered a prayer for her happiness.
+
+I can hear her laugh as I write this. For she would have it that I was
+only one more of her infatuated lovers, and that her clouds of glory
+were purely stage illusion. She knew exactly what she was doing with
+those wide-open, innocent eyes! Had not old Lady Dee, most cynical
+of worldlings, taught her how to use them when she was a child in
+pig-tails? To be sure she had been scared when she stepped off the
+train, and strange men had shoved cameras under her nose. It was almost
+as bad as being assassinated! But as to her heavenly soul--alas, for the
+blindness of men, and of sentimental old women, who could believe in a
+modern "society" girl!
+
+I had supposed that I was an emancipated woman when I came to New York.
+But one who has renounced the world, the flesh and the devil, knowing
+them only from pictures in magazines and Sunday supplements; such a
+one may find that he has still some need of fasting and praying.
+The particular temptation which overcame me was this picture of the
+bride-to-be. I wanted to see her, and I went and stood for hours in a
+crowd of curious women, and saw the wedding party enter the great Fifth
+Avenue Church, and discovered that my Sylvia's hair was golden, and her
+eyes a strange and wonderful red-brown. And this was the moment that
+fate had chosen to throw Claire Lepage into my arms, and give me the key
+to the future of Sylvia's life.
+
+3. I am uncertain how much I should tell about Claire Lepage. It is a
+story which is popular in a certain sort of novel, but I have no wish
+for that easy success. Towards Claire herself I had no trace of the
+conventional attitude, whether of contempt or of curiosity. She was to
+me the product of a social system, of the great New Nineveh which I was
+investigating. And later on, when I knew her, she was a weak sister whom
+I tried to help.
+
+It happened that I knew much more about such matters than the average
+woman--owing to a tragedy in my life. When I was about twenty-five years
+old, my brother-in-law had moved his family to our part of the world,
+and one of his boys had become very dear to me. This boy later on
+had got into trouble, and rather than tell anyone about it, had shot
+himself. So my eyes had been opened to things that are usually hidden
+from my sex; for the sake of my own sons, I had set out to study the
+underground ways of the male creature. I developed the curious custom of
+digging out every man I met, and making him lay bare his inmost life to
+me; so you may understand that it was no ordinary pair of woman's arms
+into which Claire Lepage was thrown.
+
+At first I attributed her vices to her environment, but soon I realized
+that this was a mistake; the women of her world do not as a rule go to
+pieces. Many of them I met were free and independent women, one or two
+of them intellectual and worth knowing. For the most part such women
+marry well, in the worldly sense, and live as contented lives as the
+average lady who secures her life-contract at the outset. If you had met
+Claire at an earlier period of her career, and if she had been concerned
+to impress you, you might have thought her a charming hostess. She
+had come of good family, and been educated in a convent--much better
+educated than many society girls in America. She spoke English as well
+as she did French, and she had read some poetry, and could use the
+language of idealism whenever necessary. She had even a certain
+religious streak, and could voice the most generous sentiments, and
+really believe that she believed them. So it might have been some time
+before you discovered the springs of her weakness.
+
+In the beginning I blamed van Tuiver; but in the end I concluded that
+for most of her troubles she had herself to thank--or perhaps the
+ancestors who had begotten her. She could talk more nobly and act more
+abjectly than any other woman I have ever known. She wanted pleasant
+sensations, and she expected life to furnish them continuously.
+Instinctively she studied the psychology of the person she was dealing
+with, and chose a reason which would impress that person.
+
+At this time, you understand, I knew nothing about Sylvia Castleman
+or her fiance, except what the public knew. But now I got an inside
+view--and what a view! I had read some reference to Douglas van Tuiver's
+Harvard career: how he had met the peerless Southern beauty, and had
+given up college and pursued her to her home. I had pictured the
+wooing in the rosy lights of romance, with all the glamour of worldly
+greatness. But now, suddenly, what a glimpse into the soul of the
+princely lover! "He had a good scare, let me tell you," said Claire. "He
+never knew what I was going to do from one minute to the next."
+
+"Did he see you in the crowd before the church door?" I inquired.
+
+"No," she replied, "but he thought of me, I can promise you."
+
+"He knew you were coming?"
+
+She answered, "I told him I had got an admission card, just to make sure
+he'd keep me in mind!"
+
+4. I did not have to hear much more of Claire's story before making up
+my mind that the wealthiest and most fashionable of New York's young
+bachelors was a rather self-centred person. He had fallen desperately in
+love with the peerless Southern beauty, and when she had refused to
+have anything to do with him, he had come back to the other woman for
+consolation, and had compelled her to pretend to sympathize with his
+agonies of soul. And this when he knew that she loved him with the
+intensity of a jealous nature.
+
+Claire had her own view of Sylvia Castleman, a view for which I
+naturally made due reservations. Sylvia was a schemer, who had known
+from the first what she wanted, and had played her part with masterly
+skill. As for Claire, she had striven to match her moves, plotting
+in the darkness against her, and fighting desperately with such weak
+weapons as she possessed. It was characteristic that she did not
+blame herself for her failure; it was the baseness of van Tuiver, his
+inability to appreciate sincere devotion, his unworthiness of her love.
+And this, just after she had been naively telling me of her efforts to
+poison his mind against Sylvia while pretending to admire her! But I
+made allowances for Claire at this moment--realizing that the situation
+had been one to overstrain any woman's altruism.
+
+She had failed in her subtleties, and there had followed scenes of
+bitter strife between the two. Sylvia, the cunning huntress, having
+pretended to relent, van Tuiver had gone South to his wooing again,
+while Claire had stayed at home and read a book about the poisoners
+of the Italian renaissance. And then had come the announcement of the
+engagement, after which the royal conqueror had come back in a panic,
+and sent embassies of his male friends to plead with Claire, alternately
+promising her wealth and threatening her with destitution, appealing
+to her fear, her cupidity, and even to her love. To all of which I
+listened, thinking of the wide-open, innocent eyes of the picture, and
+shedding tears within my soul. So must the gods feel as they look down
+upon the affairs of mortals, seeing how they destroy themselves by
+ignorance and folly, seeing how they walk into the future as a blind man
+into a yawning abyss.
+
+I gave, of course, due weight to the sneers of Claire. Perhaps the
+innocent one really had set a trap--had picked van Tuiver out and
+married him for his money. But even so, I could hope that she had not
+known what she was doing. Surely it had never occurred to her that
+through all the days of her triumph she would have to eat and sleep with
+the shade of another woman at her side!
+
+Claire said to me, not once, but a dozen times, "He'll come back to me.
+She'll never be able to make him happy." And so I pictured Sylvia upon
+her honeymoon, followed by an invisible ghost whose voice she would
+never hear, whose name she would never know. All that van Tuiver had
+learned from Claire, the sensuality, the _ennin_, the contempt for
+woman--it would rise to torment and terrify his bride, and turn her
+life to bitterness. And then beyond this, deeps upon deeps, to which
+my imagination did not go--and of which the Frenchwoman, with all
+her freedom of tongue, gave me no more than a hint which I could not
+comprehend.
+
+5. Claire Lepage at this time was desperately lonely and unhappy. Having
+made the discovery that my arms were sturdy, used to doing a man's
+work, she clung to them. She begged me to go home with her, to visit
+her--finally to come and live with her. Until recently an elderly
+companion, had posed as her aunt, and kept her respectable while she
+was upon van Tuiver's yacht, and at his castle in Scotland. But this
+companion had died, and now Claire had no one with whom to discuss her
+soul-states.
+
+She occupied a beautiful house on the West Side, not far from Riverside
+Drive; and in addition to the use of this she had an income of eight
+thousand a year--which was not enough to make possible a chauffeur, nor
+even to dress decently, but only enough to keep in debt upon. Such as
+the income was, however, she was willing to share it with me. So
+there opened before me a new profession--and a new insight into the
+complications of parasitism.
+
+I went to see her frequently at first, partly because I was interested
+in her and her associates, and partly because I really thought I could
+help her. But I soon came to realize that influencing Claire was like
+moulding water; it flowed back round your hands, even while you worked.
+I would argue with her about the physiological effects of alcohol, and
+when I had convinced her, she would promise caution; but soon I would
+discover that my arguments had gone over her head. I was at this time
+feeling my way towards my work in the East. I tried to interest her in
+such things as social reform, but realized that they had no meaning for
+her. She was living the life of the pleasure-seeking idlers of the great
+metropolis, and every time I met her it seemed to me that her character
+and her appearance had deteriorated.
+
+Meantime I picked up scraps of information concerning the van Tuivers.
+There were occasional items in the papers, their yacht, the "Triton,"
+had reached the Azores; it had run into a tender in the harbour
+of Gibraltar; Mr. and Mrs. van Tuiver had received the honour of
+presentation at the Vatican; they were spending the season in London,
+and had been presented at court; they had been royal guests at the
+German army-manoeuvres. The million wage-slaves of the metropolis,
+packed morning and night into the roaring subways and whirled to and
+from their tasks, read items such as these and were thrilled by the
+triumphs of their fellow-countrymen.
+
+At Claire's house I learned to be interested in "society" news. From
+a weekly paper of gossip about the rich and great she would read
+paragraphs, explaining subtle allusions and laying bare veiled scandals.
+Some of the men she knew well, referring to them for my benefit as
+Bertie and Reggie and Vivie and Algie. She also knew not a little about
+the women of that super-world--information sometimes of an intimate
+nature, which these ladies would have been startled to hear was going
+the rounds.
+
+This insight I got into Claire's world I found useful, needless to say,
+in my occasional forays as a soap-box orator of Socialism. I would go
+from the super-heated luxury of her home to visit tenement-dens where
+little children made paper-flowers twelve and fourteen hours a day for a
+trifle over one cent an hour. I would spend the afternoon floating about
+in the park in the automobile of one of her expensive friends, and then
+take the subway and visit one of the settlements, to hear a discussion
+of conditions which doomed a certain number of working-girls to be
+burned alive every year in factory fires.
+
+As time went on, I became savage concerning such contrasts, and the
+speeches I was making for the party began to attract attention. During
+the summer, I recollect, I had begun to feel hostile even towards the
+lovely image of Sylvia, which I had framed in my room. While she was
+being presented at St. James's, I was studying the glass-factories
+in South Jersey, where I found little boys of ten working in front of
+glowing furnaces until they dropped of exhaustion and sometimes had
+their eyes burned out. While she and her husband were guests of the
+German Emperor, I was playing the part of a Polish working-woman,
+penetrating the carefully guarded secrets of the sugar-trust's domain in
+Brooklyn, where human lives are snuffed out almost every day in noxious
+fumes.
+
+And then in the early fall Sylvia came home, her honeymoon over.
+She came in one of the costly suites in the newest of the _de luxe_
+steamers; and the next morning I saw a new picture of her, and read
+a few words her husband had condescended to say to a fellow traveller
+about the courtesy of Europe to visiting Americans. Then for a couple
+of months I heard no more of them. I was busy with my child-labour
+work, and I doubt if a thought of Sylvia crossed my mind, until that
+never-to-be-forgotten afternoon at Mrs. Allison's when she came up to me
+and took my hand in hers.
+
+6. Mrs. Roland Allison was one of the comfortable in body who had
+begun to feel uncomfortable in mind. I had happened to meet her at
+the settlement, and tell her what I had seen in the glass factories;
+whereupon she made up her mind that everybody she knew must hear me
+talk, and to that end gave a reception at her Madison Avenue home.
+
+I don't remember much of what I said, but if I may take the evidence of
+Sylvia, who remembered everything, I spoke effectively. I told them, for
+one thing, the story of little Angelo Patri. Little Angelo was of that
+indeterminate Italian age where he helped to support a drunken father
+without regard to the child-labour laws of the State of New Jersey.
+His people were tenants upon a fruit-farm a couple of miles from the
+glass-factory, and little Angelo walked to and from his work along the
+railroad-track. It is a peculiarity of the glass-factory that it has to
+eat its children both by day and by night; and after working six hours
+before midnight and six more after midnight, little Angelo was tired. He
+had no eye for the birds and flowers on a beautiful spring morning, but
+as he was walking home, he dropped in his tracks and fell asleep. The
+driver of the first morning train on that branch-line saw what he
+took to be an old coat lying on the track ahead, and did not stop to
+investigate.
+
+All this had been narrated to me by the child's mother, who had worked
+as a packer of "beers," and who had loved little Angelo. As I repeated
+her broken words about the little mangled body, I saw some of my
+auditors wipe away a surreptitious tear.
+
+After I had stopped, several women came up to talk with me at the last,
+when most of the company was departing, there came one more, who had
+waited her turn. The first thing I saw was her loveliness, the thing
+about her that dazzled and stunned people, and then came the strange
+sense of familiarity. Where had I met this girl before?
+
+She said what everybody always says; she had been so much interested,
+she had never dreamed that such conditions existed in the world. I,
+applying the acid test, responded, "So many people have said that to me
+that I have begun to believe it."
+
+"It is so in my case," she replied, quickly. "You see, I have lived all
+my life in the South, and we have no such conditions there."
+
+"Are you sure?" I asked.
+
+"Our negroes at least can steal enough to eat," she said.
+
+I smiled. Then--since one has but a moment or two to get in one's work
+in these social affairs, and so has to learn to thrust quickly: "You
+have timber-workers in Louisiana, steel-workers in Alabama. You have
+tobacco-factories, canning-factories, cotton-mills--have you been to any
+of them to see how the people live?"
+
+All this I said automatically, it being the routine of the agitator.
+But meantime in my mind was an excitement, spreading like a flame. The
+loveliness of this young girl; the eagerness, the intensity of feeling
+written upon her countenance; and above all, the strange sense of
+familiarity! Surely, if I had met her before, I should never have
+forgotten her; surely it could not be--not possibly--
+
+My hostess came, and ended my bewilderment. "You ought to get Mrs. van
+Tuiver on your child-labour committee," she said.
+
+A kind of panic seized me. I wanted to say, "Oh, it is Sylvia
+Castleman!" But then, how could I explain? I couldn't say, "I have your
+picture in my room, cut out of a newspaper." Still less could I say, "I
+know a friend of your husband."
+
+Fortunately Sylvia did not heed my excitement. (She had learned by this
+time to pretend not to notice.) "Please don't misunderstand me," she
+was saying. "I really _don't_ know about these things. And I would do
+something to help if I could." As she said this she looked with the
+red-brown eyes straight into mine--a gaze so clear and frank and honest,
+it was as if an angel had come suddenly to earth, and learned of the
+horrible tangle into which we mortals have got our affairs.
+
+"Be careful what you're saying," put in our hostess, with a laugh.
+"You're in dangerous hands."
+
+But Sylvia would not be warned. "I want to know more about it," she
+said. "You must tell me what I can do."
+
+"Take her at her word," said Mrs. Allison, to me. "Strike while the iron
+is hot!" I detected a note of triumph in her voice; if she could say
+that she had got Mrs. van Tuiver to take up child-labour--that indeed
+would be a feather to wear!
+
+"I will tell you all I can," I said. "That's my work in the world."
+
+"Take Mrs. Abbott away with you," said the energetic hostess, to Sylvia;
+and before I quite understood what was happening, I had received and
+accepted an invitation to drive in the park with Mrs. Douglas van
+Tuiver. In her role of _dea ex machina_ the hostess extricated me from
+the other guests, and soon I was established in a big new motor, gliding
+up Madison Avenue as swiftly and silently as a cloud-shadow over the
+fields. As I write the words there lies upon my table a Socialist paper
+with one of Will Dyson's vivid cartoons, representing two ladies of the
+great world at a reception. Says the first, "These social movements are
+becoming _quite_ worth while!" "Yes, indeed," says the other. "One meets
+such good society!"
+
+7. Sylvia's part in this adventure was a nobler one than mine, Seated as
+I was in a regal motor-car, and in company with one favoured of all
+the gods in the world, I must have had an intense conviction of my own
+saintliness not to distrust my excitement. But Sylvia, for her part, had
+nothing to get from me but pain. I talked of the factory-fires and
+the horrors of the sugar-refineries, and I saw shadow after shadow of
+suffering cross her face. You may say it was cruel of me to tear the
+veil from those lovely eyes, but in such a matter I felt myself the
+angel of the Lord and His vengeance.
+
+"I didn't know about these things!" she cried again. And I found it was
+true. It would have been hard for me to imagine anyone so ignorant
+of the realities of modern life. The men and women she had met she
+understood quite miraculously, but they were only two kinds, the "best
+people" and their negro servants. There had been a whole regiment of
+relatives on guard to keep her from knowing anybody else, or anything
+else, and if by chance a dangerous fact broke into the family stockade,
+they had formulas ready with which to kill it.
+
+"But now," Sylvia went on, "I've got some money, and I can help, so
+I dare not be ignorant any longer. You must show me the way, and my
+husband too. I'm sure he doesn't know what can be done."
+
+I said that I would do anything in my power. Her help would be
+invaluable, not merely because of the money she might give, but because
+of the influence of her name; the attention she could draw to any
+cause she chose. I explained to her the aims and the methods of our
+child-labour committee. We lobbied to get new legislation; we watched
+officials to compel them to enforce the laws already existing; above
+all, we worked for publicity, to make people realise what it meant that
+the new generation was growing up without education, and stunted by
+premature toil. And that was where she could help us most--if she would
+go and see the conditions with her own eyes, and then appear before the
+legislative committee this winter, in favour of our new bill!
+
+She turned her startled eyes upon me at this. Her ideas of doing good
+in the world were the old-fashioned ones of visiting and almsgiving;
+she had no more conception of modern remedies than she had of modern
+diseases. "Oh, I couldn't possibly make a speech!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Why not?" I asked.
+
+"I never thought of such a thing. I don't know enough."
+
+"But you can learn."
+
+"I know, but that kind of work ought to be done by men."
+
+"We've given men a chance, and they have made the evils. Whose business
+is it to protect the children if not the women's?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, and then said: "I suppose you'll laugh at me."
+
+"No, no," I promised; then as I looked at her I guessed. "Are you going
+to tell me that woman's place is the home?"
+
+"That is what we think in Castleman County," she said, smiling in spite
+of herself.
+
+"The children have got out of the home," I replied. "If they are ever to
+get back, we women must go and fetch them."
+
+Suddenly she laughed--that merry laugh that was the April sunshine of
+my life for many years. "Somebody made a Suffrage speech in our State
+a couple of years ago, and I wish you could have seen the horror of my
+people! My Aunt Nannie--she's Bishop Chilton's wife--thought it was the
+most dreadful thing that had happened since Jefferson Davis was put in
+irons. She talked about it for days, and at last she went upstairs and
+shut herself in the attic. The younger children came home from school,
+and wanted to know where mamma was. Nobody knew. Bye and bye, the cook
+came. 'Marse Basil, what we gwine have fo' dinner? I done been up to
+Mis' Nannie, an' she say g'way an' not pester her--she busy.' Company
+came, and there was dreadful confusion--nobody knew what to do about
+anything--and still Aunt Nannie was locked in! At last came dinner-time,
+and everybody else came. At last up went the butler, and came down with
+the message that they were to eat whatever they had, and take care of
+the company somehow, and go to prayer-meeting, and let her alone--she
+was writing a letter to the Castleman County _Register_ on the subject
+of 'The Duty of Woman as a Homemaker'!"
+
+8. This was the beginning of my introduction to Castleman County. It was
+a long time before I went there, but I learned to know its inhabitants
+from Sylvia's stories of them. Funny stories, tragic stories, wild and
+incredible stories out of a half-barbaric age! She would tell them and
+we would laugh together; but then a wistful look would come into her
+eyes, and a silence would fall. So very soon I made the discovery that
+my Sylvia was homesick. In all the years that I knew her she never
+ceased to speak of Castleman Hall as "home". All her standards came from
+there, her new ideas were referred there.
+
+We talked of Suffrage for a while, and I spoke about the lives of women
+on lonely farms--how they give their youth and health to their husband's
+struggle, yet have no money partnership which they can enforce in
+case of necessity. "But surely," cried Sylvia, "you don't want to make
+divorce more easy!"
+
+"I want to make the conditions of it fair to women," I said.
+
+"But then more women will get it! And there are so many divorced women
+now! Papa says that divorce is a greater menace than Socialism!"
+
+She spoke of Suffrage in England, where women were just beginning to
+make public disturbances. Surely I did not approve of their leaving
+their homes for such purposes as that! As tactfully as I could, I
+suggested that conditions in England were peculiar. There was, for
+example, the quaint old law which permitted a husband to beat his wife
+subject to certain restrictions. Would an American woman submit to such
+a law? There was the law which made it impossible for a woman to divorce
+her husband for infidelity, unless accompanied by desertion or cruelty.
+Surely not even her father would consider that a decent arrangement! I
+mentioned a recent decision of the highest court in the land, that a man
+who brought his mistress to live in his home, and compelled his wife
+to wait upon her, was not committing cruelty within the meaning of the
+English law. I heard Sylvia's exclamation of horror, and met her stare
+of incredulity; and then suddenly I thought of Claire, and a little
+chill ran over me. It was a difficult hour, in more ways than one, that
+of my first talk with Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver!
+
+I soon made the discovery that, childish as her ignorance was, there was
+no prejudice in it. If you brought her a fact, she did not say that it
+was too terrible to be true, or that the Bible said otherwise, or that
+it was indecent to know about it. Nor, when you met her next, did you
+discover that she had forgotten it. On the contrary, you discovered that
+she had followed it to its remote consequences, and was ready with a
+score of questions as to these. I remember saying to myself, that first
+automobile ride: "If this girl goes on thinking, she will get into
+trouble! She will have to stop, for the sake of others!"
+
+"You must meet my husband some time," she said; and added, "I'll have to
+see my engagement-book. I have so much to do, I never know when I have a
+moment free."
+
+"You must find it interesting," I ventured.
+
+"I did, for a while; but I've begun to get tired of so much going about.
+For the most part I meet the same people, and I've found out what they
+have to say."
+
+I laughed. "You have caught the society complaint already--_ennui_!"
+
+"I had it years ago, at home. It's true I never would have gone out at
+all if it hadn't been for the sake of my family. That's why I envy a
+woman like you--"
+
+I could not help laughing. It was too funny, Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver
+envying me!
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked.
+
+"Just the irony of life. Do you know, I cut you out of the newspaper,
+and put you in a little frame on my bureau. I thought, here is the
+loveliest face I've ever seen, and here is the most-to-be-envied of
+women."
+
+She smiled, but quickly became serious. "I learned very early in life
+that I was beautiful; and I suppose if I were suddenly to cease being
+beautiful, I'd miss it; yet I often think it's a nuisance. It makes one
+dependent on externals. Most of the beautiful women I've known make a
+sort of profession of it--they live to shine and be looked at.
+
+"And you don't enjoy that?" I asked.
+
+"It restricts one's life. Men expect it of you, they resent your having
+any other interest."
+
+"So," I responded, gravely, "with all your beauty and wealth, you aren't
+perfectly happy?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" she cried--not having meant to confess so much. "I told
+myself I would be happy, because I would be able to do so much good in
+the world. There must be some way to do good with money! But now I'm
+not sure; there seem to be so many things in the way. Just when you have
+your mind made up that you have a way to help, someone comes and points
+out to you that you may be really doing harm."
+
+She hesitated again, and I said, "That means you have been looking into
+the matter of charity."
+
+She gave me a bright glance. "How you understand things!" she exclaimed.
+
+"It is possible," I replied, "to know modern society so well that when
+you meet certain causes you know what results to look for."
+
+"I wish you'd explain to me why charity doesn't do any good!"
+
+"It would mean a lecture on the competitive wage-system," I laughed--
+"too serious a matter for a drive!"
+
+This may have seemed shirking on my part. But here I was, wrapped in
+luxurious furs, rolling gloriously through the park at twilight on a
+brilliant autumn evening; and the confiscation of property seems so much
+more startling a proposition when you are in immediate contact with
+it! This principle, which explains the "opportunism" of Socialist
+cabinet-ministers and Labour M.P.s may be used to account for the sudden
+resolve which I had taken, that for this afternoon at least Mrs. Douglas
+van Tuiver should not discover that I was either a divorced woman, or a
+soap-box orator of the revolution.
+
+9. Sylvia, in that first conversation, told me much about herself that
+she did not know she was telling. I became fairly certain, for instance,
+that she had not married Mr. Douglas van Tuiver for love. The young girl
+who has so married does not suffer from ennui in the first year, nor
+does she find her happiness depending upon her ability to solve the
+problem of charity in connection with her husband's wealth.
+
+She would have ridden and talked longer, she said, but for a dinner
+engagement. She asked me to call on her, and I promised to come some
+morning, as soon as she set a day. When the car drew up before the
+door of her home, I thought of my first ride about the city in the
+"rubber-neck wagon," and how I had stared when the lecturer pointed out
+this mansion. We, the passengers, had thrilled as one soul, imagining
+the wonderful life which must go on behind those massive portals, the
+treasures outshining the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, which required
+those thick, bronze bars for their protection. And here was the mistress
+of all the splendour, inviting me to come and see it from within!
+
+She wanted to send me home in the car, but I would not have that, on
+account of the push-cart men and the babies in my street; I got out
+and walked--my heart beating fast, my blood leaping with exultation. I
+reached home, and there on the bureau was the picture--but behold, how
+changed! It was become a miracle of the art of colour-photography; its
+hair was golden, its eyes a wonderful red-brown, its cheeks aglow with
+the radiance of youth! And yet more amazing, the picture spoke! It spoke
+with the most delicious of Southern drawls--referring to the "repo't" of
+my child-labour committee, shivering at the cold and bidding me pull the
+"fu-uzz" up round me. And when I told funny stories about the Italians
+and the Hebrews of my tenement-neighbourhood, it broke into silvery
+laughter, and cried: "Oh, de-ah me! How que-ah!" Little had I dreamed,
+when I left that picture in the morning, what a miracle was to be
+wrought upon it.
+
+I knew, of course, what was the matter with me; the symptoms were
+unmistakable. After having made up my mind that I was an old woman, and
+that there was nothing more in life for me save labour--here the little
+archer had come, and with the sharpest of his golden arrows, had shot
+me through. I had all the thrills, the raptures and delicious agonies of
+first love; I lived no longer in myself, but in the thought of another
+person. Twenty times a day I looked at my picture, and cried aloud: "Oh,
+beautiful, beautiful!"
+
+I do not know how much of her I have been able to give. I have told of
+our first talk--but words are so cold and dead! I stop and ask: What
+there is, in all nature, that has given me the same feeling? I remember
+how I watched the dragon-fly emerging from its chrysalis. It is soft and
+green and tender; it clings to a branch and dries its wings in the sun,
+and when the miracle is completed, there for a brief space it poises,
+shimmering with a thousand hues, quivering with its new-born ecstasy.
+And just so was Sylvia; a creature from some other world than ours,
+as yet unsoiled by the dust and heat of reality. It came to me with
+a positive shock, as a terrifying thing, that there should be in this
+world of strife and wickedness any young thing that took life with
+such intensity, that was so palpitating with eagerness, with hope, with
+sympathy. Such was the impression that one got of her, even when her
+words most denied it. She might be saying world-weary and cynical
+things, out of the maxims of Lady Dee; but there was still the
+eagerness, the sympathy, surging beneath and lifting her words.
+
+The crown of her loveliness was her unconsciousness of self. Even though
+she might be talking of herself, frankly admitting her beauty, she was
+really thinking of other people, how she could get to them to help them.
+This I must emphasize, because, apart from jesting, I would not have it
+thought that I had fallen under the spell of a beautiful countenance,
+combined with a motor-car and a patrician name. There were things about
+Sylvia that were aristocratic, that could be nothing else; but she could
+be her same lovely self in a cottage--as I shall prove to you before I
+finish with the story of her life.
+
+I was in love. At that time I was teaching myself German, and I sat one
+day puzzling out two lines of Goethe:
+
+"Oden and Thor, these two thou knowest; Freya, the heavenly, knowest
+thou not."
+
+And I remember how I cried aloud in sudden delight: _"I know her!"_ For
+a long time that was one of my pet names--"Freya dis Himmlische!" I only
+heard of one other that I preferred--when in course of time she told me
+about Frank Shirley, and how she had loved him, and how their hopes had
+been wrecked. He had called her "Lady Sunshine"; he had been wont to
+call it over and over in his happiness, and as Sylvia repeated it to
+me--"Lady Sunshine! Lady Sunshine!" I could imagine that I caught an
+echo of the very tones of Frank Shirley's voice.
+
+10. For several days I waited upon the postman, and when the summons
+came I dodged a committee-meeting, and ascended the marble stairs with
+trepidation, and underwent the doubting scrutiny of an English lackey,
+sufficiently grave in deportment and habiliments to have waited upon a
+bishop in his own land. I have a vague memory of an entrance-hall with
+panelled paintings and a double-staircase with a snow-white carpet,
+about which I had read in the newspapers that it was woven in one piece,
+and had cost an incredible sum. One did not have to profane it with his
+feet, as there was an elevator provided.
+
+I was shown to Sylvia's morning-room, which had been "done" in pink and
+white and gold by some decorator who had known her colours. It was large
+enough to have held half-a-dozen of my own quarters, and the sun was
+allowed to flood it. Through a door at one side came Sylvia, holding out
+her hands to me.
+
+She was really glad to see me! She began to apologize at once for the
+time she had taken to write. It was because she had so much to do. She
+had married into a world that took itself seriously: the "idle rich,"
+who worked like slaves. "You know," she said, while we sat on a pink
+satin couch, and a footman brought us coffee: "you read that Mrs.
+So-and-so is a 'social queen,' and you think it's a newspaper phrase,
+but it isn't; she really feels that she's a queen, and other people
+feel it, and she goes through her ceremonies as solemnly as the Lord's
+anointed."
+
+She went on to tell me some of her adventures. She had a keen sense of
+fun, and was evidently suffering for an outlet for it. She saw through
+the follies and pretences of people in a flash, but they were all such
+august and important people that, out of regard for her husband, she
+dared not let them suspect her clairvoyant power.
+
+She referred to her experiences abroad. She had not liked Europe--being
+quite frankly a provincial person. To Castleman County a foreigner was
+a strange, dark person who mixed up his consonants, and was under
+suspicion of being a fiddler or an opera-singer. The people she had met
+under her husband's charge had been socially indubitable, but still,
+they were foreigners, and Sylvia could never really be sure what they
+meant.
+
+There was, for instance, the young son of a German steel-king, a person
+of amazing savoir faire, who had made bold to write books and exhibit
+pictures, and had travelled so widely that he had even heard of
+Castleman County. He had taken Sylvia to show her the sights of Berlin,
+and had rolled her down the "Sieges Allee," making outrageous fun of his
+Kaiser's taste in art, and coming at last to a great marble column, with
+a female figure representing Victory upon the top. "You will observe,"
+said the cultured young plutocrat, "that the Grecian lady stands a
+hundred meters in the air, and has no stairway. There is a popular
+saying about her which is delightful--that she is the only chaste woman
+in Berlin!"
+
+I had been through the culture-seeking stage, and knew my Henry James;
+so I could read between the lines of Sylvia's experiences. I figured
+her as a person walking on volcanic ground, not knowing her peril, but
+vaguely disquieted by a smell of sulphur in the air. And once in a while
+a crack would open in the ground! There was the Duke of Something in
+Rome, for example, a melancholy young man, with whom she had coquetted,
+as she did, in her merry fashion, with every man she met. Being married,
+she had taken it for granted that she might be as winsome as she chose;
+but the young Italian had misunderstood the game, and had whispered
+words of serious import, which had so horrified Sylvia that she flew
+to her husband and told him the story--begging him incidentally not to
+horse-whip the fellow. In reply it had to be explained to her she had
+laid herself liable to the misadventure. The ladies of the Italian
+aristocracy were severe and formal, and Sylvia had no right to expect an
+ardent young duke to understand her native wildness.
+
+11. Something of that sort was always happening--something in each
+country to bewilder her afresh, and to make it necessary for her husband
+to remind her of the proprieties. In France, a cousin of van Tuiver's
+had married a marquis, and they had visited the chateau. The family was
+Catholic, of the very oldest and strictest, and the brother-in-law, a
+prelate of high degree, had invited the guests to be shown through his
+cathedral. "Imagine my bewilderment!" said Sylvia. "I thought I was
+going to meet a church dignitary, grave and reverent; but here was a
+wit, a man of the world. Such speeches you never heard! I was ravished
+by the grandeur of the building, and I said: 'If I had seen this, I
+would have come to you to be married.' 'Madame is an American,'
+he replied. 'Come the next time!' When I objected that I was not a
+Catholic, he said: 'Your beauty is its own religion!' When I protested
+that he would be doing me too great an honour, 'Madame,' said he, 'the
+_honneur_ would be all to the church!' And because I was shocked at all
+this, I was considered to be a provincial person!"
+
+Then they had come to London, a dismal, damp city where you "never saw
+the sun, and when you did see it it looked like a poached egg"; where
+you had to learn to eat fish with the help of a knife, and where you
+might speak of bitches, but must never on any account speak of your
+stomach. They went for a week-end to "Hazelhurst," the home of the
+Dowager Duchess of Danbury, whose son van Tuiver, had entertained in
+America, and who, in the son's absence, claimed the right to repay the
+debt. The old lady sat at table with two fat poodle dogs in infants'
+chairs, one on each side of her, feeding out of golden trays. There
+was a visiting curate, a frightened little man at the other side of one
+poodle; in an effort to be at ease he offered the wheezing creature a
+bit of bread. "Don't feed my dogs!" snapped the old lady. "I don't allow
+anybody to feed my dogs!"
+
+And then there was the Honourable Reginald Annersley, the youngest son
+of the family, home from Eton on vacation. The Honourable Reginald was
+twelve years of age, undersized and ill-nourished. ("They feed them
+badly," his mother had explained, "an' the teachin's no good either,
+but it's a school for gentlemen.") "Honestly," said Sylvia, "he was the
+queerest little mannikin--like the tiny waiter's assistants you see in
+hotels on the Continent. He wore his Eton suit, you understand--grown-up
+evening clothes minus the coat-tails, and a top hat. He sat at tea and
+chatted with the mincing graces of a cotillion-leader; you expected to
+find some of his hair gone when he took off his hat! He spoke of his
+brother, the duke, who had gone off shooting seals somewhere. 'The jolly
+rotter has nothing to do but spend his money; but we younger sons have
+to work like dogs when we grow up!' I asked what he'd do, and he said 'I
+suppose there's nothin' but the church. It's a beastly bore, but you do
+get a livin' out of it.'
+
+"That was too much for me," said Sylvia. "I proceeded to tell the poor,
+blase infant about my childhood; how my sister Celeste and I had caught
+half-tamed horses and galloped about the pasture on them, when we were
+so small that our little fat legs stuck out horizontally; how we had
+given ourselves convulsions in the green apple orchard, and had to be
+spanked every day before we had our hair combed. I told how we heard
+a war-story about a 'train of gunpowder,' and proceeded to lay such a
+train about the attic of Castleman Hall, and set fire to it. I might
+have spent the afternoon teaching the future churchman how to be a boy,
+if I hadn't suddenly caught a glimpse of my husband's face!"
+
+12. I did not hear these stories all at once. I have put them together
+here because they make a little picture of her honeymoon, and also
+because they show how, without meaning it, she was giving me an account
+of her husband.
+
+There had been even fewer adventures in the life of young Douglas van
+Tuiver than in the life of the Honourable Reginald Annersley. When one
+heard the details of the up-bringing of this "millionaire baby," one was
+able to forgive him for being self-centred. He had grown into a man who
+lived to fulfil his social duties, and he had taken to wife a girl who
+was reckless, high-spirited, with a streak of almost savage pride in
+her.
+
+Sylvia's was the true aristocratic attitude towards the rest of the
+world. It could never have occurred to her to imagine that anywhere
+upon the whole earth there were people superior to the Castlemans of
+Castleman County. If you had been ignorant enough to suggest such an
+idea, you would have seen her eyes flash and her nostrils quiver; you
+would have been enveloped in a net of bewilderment and transfixed with
+a trident of mockery and scorn. That was what she had done in her
+husband-hunt. The trouble was that van Tuiver was not clever enough
+to realise this, and to trust her prowess against other beasts in the
+social jungle.
+
+Strange to me were such inside glimpses into the life of these two
+favourites of the gods! I never grew weary of speculating about them,
+and the mystery of their alliance. How had Sylvia come to make this
+marriage? She was not happy with him; keen psychologist that she was,
+she must have foreseen that she would not be happy with him. Had she
+deliberately sacrificed herself, because of the good she imagined she
+could do to her family?
+
+I was beginning to believe this. Irritated as she was by the solemn
+snobberies of van Tuiver's world, it was none the less true that she
+believed in money; she believed in it with a faith which appalled me as
+I came to realise it. Everybody had to have money; the social graces,
+the aristocratic virtues were impossible without it. The rich needed
+it--even the poor needed it! Could it be that the proud Castlemans of
+Castleman County had needed it also?
+
+If that guess at her inmost soul was correct, then what a drama was her
+meeting with me! A person who despised money, who had proven it by grim
+deeds--and this a person of her own money-worshipping sex! What was the
+meaning of this phenomenon--this new religion that was challenging the
+priesthood of Mammon? So some Roman consul's daughter might have sat in
+her father's palace, and questioned in wonder a Christian slave woman,
+destined ere long to face the lions in the arena.
+
+The exactness of this simile was not altered by the fact that in this
+case the slave woman was an agnostic, while the patrician girl had
+been brought up in the creed of Christ. Sylvia had long since begun to
+question the formulas of a church whose very pews were rented, and whose
+existence, she declared, had to be justified by charity to the poor. As
+we sat and talked, she knew this one thing quite definitely--that I had
+a religion, and she had none. That was the reason for the excitement
+which possessed her.
+
+Nor was that fact ever out of my own mind for a moment. As she sat there
+in her sun-flooded morning-room, clad in an exquisite embroidered robe
+of pink Japanese silk, she was such a lovely thing that I was ready to
+cry out for joy of her; and yet there was something within me, grim and
+relentless, that sat on guard, warning me that she was of a different
+faith from mine, and that between those two faiths there could be no
+compromise. Some day she must find out what I thought of her husband's
+wealth, and the work it was doing in the world! Some day she must hear
+my real opinion of the religion of motor-cars and hand-woven carpets!
+
+13. Nor was the day so very far off. She sat opposite me, leaning
+forward in her eagerness, declaring: "You must help to educate me. I
+shall never rest until I'm of some real use in the world."
+
+"What have you thought of doing?" I inquired.
+
+"I don't know yet. My husband has an aunt who's interested in a
+day-nursery for the children of working-women. I thought I might help
+this, but my husband says it does no good whatever--it only makes
+paupers of the poor. Do you think so?"
+
+"I think more than that," I replied. "It sets women free to compete with
+men, and beat down men's wages."
+
+"Oh, what a puzzle!" she exclaimed, and then: "Is there any way of
+helping the poor that wouldn't be open to the same objection?"
+
+That brought us once more to the subject I had put aside at our last
+meeting. She had not forgotten it, and asked again for an explanation.
+What did I mean by the competitive wage system?
+
+My purpose in this writing is to tell the story of Sylvia Castleman's
+life, to show, not merely what she was, but what she became. I have to
+make real to you a process of growth in her soul, and at this moment the
+important event is her discovery of the class-struggle and her reaction
+to it. You may say, perhaps, that you are not interested in the
+class-struggle, but you cannot alter the fact that you live in an age
+when millions of people are having the course of their lives changed by
+the discovery of it. Here, for instance, is a girl who has been taught
+to keep her promises, and has promised to love, honour and obey a man;
+she is to find the task more difficult, because she comes to understand
+the competitive wage-system while he does not understand it and does not
+wish to. If that seems to you strange material out of which to make a
+domestic drama, I can only tell you that you have missed some of the
+vital facts of your own time.
+
+I gave her a little lesson in elementary economics. I showed her how,
+when a capitalist needed labour, he bought it in the open market, like
+any other commodity. He did not think about the human side of it, he
+paid the market-price, which came to be what the labourer had to have
+in order to live. No labourer could get more, because others would take
+less.
+
+"If that be true," I continued, "one of the things that follows is the
+futility of charity. Whatever you do for the wage-worker on a general
+scale comes sooner or later out of his wages. If you take care of his
+children all day or part of the day, he can work for less; if he doesn't
+discover that someone else does, and underbids him and takes his place.
+If you feed his children at school, if you bury him free, if you insure
+his life, or even give him a dinner on Christmas Day, you simply enable
+his landlord to charge him more, or his employer to pay him less."
+
+Sylvia sat for a while in thought, and then asked: "What can be done
+about such a fact?"
+
+"The first thing to be done is to make sure that you understand it.
+Nine-tenths of the people who concern themselves with social questions
+don't, and so they waste their time in futilities. For instance, I read
+the other day an article by a benevolent old gentleman who believed that
+the social problem could be solved by teaching the poor to chew their
+food better, so that they would eat less. You may laugh at that, but
+it's not a bit more absurd than the idea of our men of affairs, that the
+thing to do is to increase the efficiency of the workers, and so produce
+more goods."
+
+"You mean the working-man doesn't get more, even when he produces more?"
+
+"Take the case of the glass factories. Men used to get eight dollars a
+day there, but someone invented a machine that did the work of a dozen
+men, and that machine is run by a boy for fifty cents a day."
+
+A little pucker of thought came between her eyes. "Might there not be a
+law forbidding the employer to reduce wages?"
+
+"A minimum wage law. But that would raise the cost of the product, and
+drive the trade to another state."
+
+She suggested a national law, and when I pointed out that the trade
+would go to other countries, she fell back on the tariff. I felt like an
+embryologist--watching the individual repeating the history of the race!
+
+"Protection and prosperity!" I said, with a smile. "Don't you see the
+increase in the cost of living? The working-man gets more money in his
+pay envelope, but he can't buy more with it because prices go up. And
+even supposing you could pass a minimum wage law, and stop competition
+in wages, you'd only change it to competition in efficiency--you'd throw
+the old and the feeble and the untrained into pauperism."
+
+"You make the world seem a hard place to live in," protested Sylvia.
+
+"I'm simply telling you the elementary facts of business. You can forbid
+the employer to pay less than a standard wage, but you can't compel him
+to employ people who aren't able to earn that wage. The business-man
+doesn't employ for fun, he does it for the profit there is in it."
+
+"If that is true," said Sylvia, quickly, "then the way of employing
+people is cruel."
+
+"But what other way could you have?"
+
+She considered. "They could be employed so that no one would make a
+profit. Then surely they could be paid enough to live decently!"
+
+"But whose interest would it be to employ them without profit?"
+
+"The State should do it, if no one else will."
+
+I had been playing a game with Sylvia, as no doubt you have perceived.
+"Surely," I said, "you wouldn't approve anything like that!"
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Because, it would be Socialism."
+
+She looked at me startled. "Is that Socialism?"
+
+"Of course it is. It's the essence of Socialism."
+
+"But then--what's the harm in it?"
+
+I laughed. "I thought you said that Socialism was a menace, like
+divorce!"
+
+I had my moment of triumph, but then I discovered how fond was the
+person who imagined that he could play with Sylvia. "I suspect you are
+something of a Socialist yourself," she remarked.
+
+She told me a long time afterwards what had been her emotions during
+these early talks. It was the first time in her life that she had ever
+listened to ideas that were hostile to her order, and she did so with
+tremblings and hesitations, combating at every step an impulse to flee
+to the shelter of conventionality. She was more shocked by my last
+revelation than she let me suspect. It counted for little that I
+had succeeded in trapping her in proposing for herself the economic
+programme of Socialism, for what terrifies her class is not our economic
+programme, it is our threat of slave-rebellion. I had been brought up
+in a part of the world where democracy is a tradition, a word to conjure
+with, and I supposed that this would be the case with any American--that
+I would only have to prove that Socialism was democracy applied to
+industry. How could I have imagined the kind of "democracy" which had
+been taught to Sylvia by her Uncle Mandeville, the politician of the
+family, who believed that America was soon to have a king, to keep the
+"foreign riff-raff" in its place!
+
+14. At this time I was living in a three-roomed apartment in one of the
+new "model tenements" on the East Side. I had a saying about the place,
+that it was "built for the proletariat and occupied by cranks." What an
+example for Sylvia of the futility of charity--the effort on the part
+of benevolent capitalists to civilise the poor by putting bath-tubs in
+their homes, and the discovery that the graceless creatures were using
+them for the storage of coals!
+
+Having heard these strange stories, Sylvia was anxious to visit me, and
+I was, of course, glad to invite her. I purchased a fancy brand of tea,
+and some implements for the serving of it, and she came, and went into
+raptures over my three rooms and bath, no one of which would have made
+more than a closet in her own apartments. I suspected that this was her
+Southern _noblesse oblige_, but I knew also that in my living room
+there were some rows of books, which would have meant more to Sylvia van
+Tuiver just then than the contents of several clothes-closets.
+
+I was pleased to discover that my efforts had not been wasted. She
+had been thinking, and she had even found time, in the midst of her
+distractions, to read part of a book. In the course of our talks I had
+mentioned Veblen, and she had been reading snatches of his work on the
+Leisure Class, and I was surprised, and not a little amused, to observe
+her reaction to it.
+
+When I talked about wages and hours of labour, I was dealing with things
+that were remote from her, and difficult to make real; but Veblen's
+theme, the idle rich, and the arts and graces whereby they demonstrate
+their power, was the stuff of which her life was made. The subtleties of
+social ostentation, the minute distinctions between the newly-rich
+and the anciently-rich, the solemn certainties of the latter and the
+quivering anxieties of the former--all those were things which Sylvia
+knew as a bird knows the way of the wind. To see the details of them
+analysed in learned, scientific fashion, explained with great mouthfuls
+of words which one had to look up in the dictionary--that was surely
+a new discovery in the book-world! "Conspicuous leisure!" "Vicarious
+consumption of goods!" "Oh, de-ah me, how que-ah!" exclaimed Sylvia.
+
+And what a flood of anecdotes it let loose! A flood that bore us
+straight back to Castleman Hall, and to all the scenes of her young
+ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how
+many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute
+for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt--the difference between the
+swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet
+her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. "Every girl
+should have a background," had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to
+have a special phaeton to drive, a special horse to ride, special roses
+which no one else was allowed to wear.
+
+"Conspicuous expenditure of time," wrote Veblen. It was curious, said
+Sylvia, but nobody was free from this kind of vanity. There was dear old
+Uncle Basil, a more godly bishop never lived, and yet he had a foible
+for carving! In his opinion the one certain test of a gentleman was the
+ease with which he found the joints of all kinds of meat, and he was in
+arms against the modern tendency to turn such accomplishments over to
+butlers. He would hold forth on the subject, illustrating his theories
+with an elegant knife, and Sylvia remembered how her father and the
+Chilton boys had wired up the joints of a duck for the bishop to work
+on. In the struggle the bishop had preserved his dignity, but lost the
+duck, and the bishop's wife, being also high-born, and with a long line
+of traditions behind her, had calmly continued the conversation, while
+the butler removed the smoking duck from her lap!
+
+Such was the way of things at Castleman Hall! The wild, care-free
+people--like half-grown children, romping their way through life! There
+was really nothing too crazy for them to do, if the whim struck them.
+Once a visiting cousin had ventured the remark that she saw no reason
+why people should not eat rats; a barn-rat was clean in its person,
+and far choicer in its food than a pig. Thereupon "Miss Margaret" had
+secretly ordered the yard-man to secure a barn-rat; she had had it
+broiled, and served in a dish of squirrels, and had sat by and watched
+the young lady enjoy it! And this, mind you, was Mrs. Castleman of
+Castleman Hall, mother of five children, and as stately a dame as ever
+led the grand march at the Governor's inaugural ball! "Major Castleman,"
+she would say to her husband, "you may take me into my bedroom, and when
+you have locked the door securely, you may spit upon me, if you wish;
+but don't you dare even to _imagine_ anything undignified about me in
+public!"
+
+15. In course of time Sylvia and I became very good friends. Proud as
+she was, she was lonely, and in need of some one to open her eager mind
+to. Who was there safer to trust than this plain Western woman, who
+lived so far, both in reality and in ideas, from the great world of
+fashion?
+
+Before we parted she considered it necessary to mention my relationship
+to this world. She had a most acute social conscience. She knew exactly
+what formalities she owed to everyone, just when she ought to call, and
+how long she ought to stay, and what she ought to ask the other person
+to do in return; she assumed that the other knew it all exactly as well,
+and would suffer if she failed in the slightest degree.
+
+So now she had to throw herself upon my mercy. "You see," she explained,
+"my husband wouldn't understand. I may be able to change him gradually,
+but if I shock him all at once--"
+
+"My dear Mrs. van Tuiver--" I smiled.
+
+"You can't really imagine!" she persisted. "You see, he takes his social
+position so seriously! And when you are conspicuous--when everybody's
+talking about what you do--when everything that's the least bit unusual
+is magnified--"
+
+"My dear girl!" I broke in again. "Stop a moment and let me talk!"
+
+"But I hate to have to think--"
+
+"Don't worry about my thoughts! They are most happy ones! You must
+understand that a Socialist cannot feel about such things as you do; we
+work out our economic interpretation of them, and after that they are
+simply so much data to us. I might meet one of your great friends, and
+she might snub me, but I would never think she had snubbed _me_--it
+would be my Western accent, and my forty-cent hat, and things like
+that which had put me in a class in her mind. My real self nobody can
+snub--certainly not until they've got at it."
+
+"Ah!" said Sylvia, with shining eyes. "You have your own kind of
+aristocracy, I see!"
+
+"What I want," I said, "is you. I'm an old hen whose chickens have grown
+up and left her, and I want something to mother. Your wonderful social
+world is just a bother to me, because it keeps me from gathering you
+into my arms as I'd like to. So what you do is to think of some role for
+me to play, so that I can come to see you; let me be advising you about
+your proposed day-nursery, or let me be a tutor of something, or a nice,
+respectable sewing-woman who darns the toes of your silk stockings!"
+
+She laughed. "If you suppose that I'm allowed to wear my stockings until
+they have holes in them, you don't understand the perquisites of maids."
+She thought a moment, and then added: "You might come to trim hats for
+me."
+
+By that I knew that we were really friends. If it does not seem to you
+a bold thing for Sylvia to have made a joke about my hat, it is
+only because you do not yet know her. I have referred to her
+money-consciousness and her social-consciousness; I would be idealizing
+her if I did not refer to another aspect of her which appalled me when I
+came to realise it--her clothes-consciousness. She knew every variety of
+fabric and every shade of colour and every style of design that ever
+had been delivered of the frenzied sartorial imagination. She had been
+trained in all the infinite minutiae which distinguished the right from
+the almost right; she would sweep a human being at one glance, and stick
+him in a pigeon hole of her mind for ever--because of his clothes. When
+later on she had come to be conscious of this clothes-consciousness,
+she told me that ninety-nine times out of a hundred she had found this
+method of appraisal adequate for the purposes of society life. What a
+curious comment upon our civilization--that all that people had to
+ask of one another, all they had to give to one another, should be
+expressible in terms of clothes!
+
+16. I had set out to educate Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver in the things I
+thought she needed to know. A part of my programme was to find some
+people of modern sympathies whom she might meet without offence to
+her old prejudices. The first person I thought of was Mrs. Jessie
+Frothingham, who was the head of a fashionable girls' school, just
+around the corner from Miss Abercrombie's where Sylvia herself had
+received the finishing touch. Mrs. Frothingham's was as exclusive and
+expensive a school as the most proper person could demand, and great was
+Sylvia's consternation when I told her that its principal was a member
+of the Socialist party, and made no bones about speaking in public for
+us.
+
+How in the world did she manage it? For one thing, I answered, she ran
+a good school--nobody had ever been heard to deny that. For another, she
+was an irresistibly serene and healthy person, who would look one of her
+millionaire "papas" in the eye and tell him what was what with so much
+decision; it would suddenly occur to the great man that if his daughter
+could be made into so capable a woman, he would not care what ticket she
+might vote.
+
+Then too, it was testimony to the headway we are making that we are
+ceasing to be dangerous, and getting to be picturesque. In these days of
+strenuous social competition, when mammas are almost at their wits' end
+for some new device, when it costs incredible sums to make no impression
+at all--here was offered a new and inexpensive way of being unique.
+There could be no question that men were getting to like serious women;
+the most amazing subjects were coming up at dinner-parties, and you
+might hear the best people speak disrespectfully of their own money,
+which means that the new Revolution will have not merely its "Egalite
+Orleans," but also some of the ladies of his family!
+
+I telephoned from Sylvia's house to Mrs. Frothingham, who answered:
+"Wouldn't you like Mrs. van Tuiver to hear a speech? I am to speak next
+week at the noon-day Wall Street meeting." I passed the question on, and
+Sylvia answered with an exclamation of delight: "Would a small boy like
+to attend a circus?"
+
+It was arranged that Sylvia was to take us in her car. You may picture
+me with my grand friends--an old speckled hen in the company of two
+golden pheasants. I kept very quiet and let them get acquainted, knowing
+that my cause was safe in the hands of one so perfectly tailored as Mrs.
+Frothingham.
+
+Sylvia expressed her delight at the idea of hearing a Socialist speech,
+and her amazement that the head of Mrs. Frothingham's should be so
+courageous, and meantime we threaded our way through the tangle of
+trucks and surface-cars on Broadway, and came to the corner of Wall
+Street. Here Mrs. Frothingham said she would get out and walk; it was
+quite likely that someone might recognise Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver, and
+she ought not to be seen arriving with the speaker. Sylvia, who
+would not willingly have committed a breach of etiquette towards a
+bomb-throwing anarchist, protested at this, but Mrs. Frothingham laughed
+good-naturedly, saying that it would be time enough for Mrs. van Tuiver
+to commit herself when she knew what she believed.
+
+The speaking was to be from the steps of the Sub-treasury. We made
+a _detour,_ and came up Broad Street, stopping a little way from the
+corner. These meetings had been held all through the summer and fall, so
+that people had learned to expect them; although it lacked some minutes
+of noon, there was already a crowd gathered. A group of men stood upon
+the broad steps, one with a red banner and several others with armfuls
+of pamphlets and books. With them was our friend, who looked at us and
+smiled, but gave no other sign of recognition.
+
+Sylvia pushed back the collar of her sable coat, and sat erect in her
+shining blue velvet, her eyes and her golden hair shining beneath
+the small brim of a soft velvet hat. As she gazed eagerly at the busy
+throngs of men hurrying about this busy corner, she whispered to me: "I
+haven't been so excited since my _debut_ party!"
+
+The crowd increased until it was difficult to get through Wall Street.
+The bell of Old Trinity was tolling the hour of noon, and the meeting
+was about to begin, when suddenly I heard an exclamation from Sylvia,
+and turning, saw a well-dressed man pushing his way from the office of
+Morgan and Company towards us. Sylvia clutched my hand where it lay on
+the seat of the car, and half gasped: "My husband!"
+
+17. Of course I had been anxious to see Douglas van Tuiver. I had heard
+Claire Lepage's account of him, and Sylvia's, also I had seen pictures
+of him in the newspapers, and had studied them with some care, trying
+to imagine what sort of personage he might be. I knew that he was
+twenty-four, but the man who came towards us I would have taken to be
+forty. His face was sombre, with large features and strongly marked
+lines about the mouth; he was tall and thin, and moved with decision,
+betraying no emotion even in this moment of surprise. "What are you
+doing here?" were his first words.
+
+For my part, I was badly "rattled"; I knew by the clutch of Sylvia's
+hand that she was too. But here I got a lesson in the nature of "social
+training." Some of the bright colour had faded from her face, but she
+spoke with the utmost coolness, the words coming naturally and simply:
+"We can't get through the crowd." And at the same time she looked about
+her, as much as to say: "You can see for yourself." (One of the maxims
+of Lady Dee had set forth that a lady never told a lie if she could
+avoid it.)
+
+Sylvia's husband looked about, saying: "Why don't you call an officer?"
+He started to follow his own suggestion, and I thought then that my
+friend would miss her meeting. But she had more nerve than I imagined.
+
+"No," she said. "Please don't."
+
+"Why not?" Still there was no emotion in the cold, grey eyes.
+
+"Because--I think there's something going on."
+
+"What of that?"
+
+"I'm not in a hurry, and I'd like to see."
+
+He stood for a moment looking at the crowd. Mrs. Frothingham had come
+forward, evidently intending to speak. "What is this, Ferris?" he
+demanded of the chauffeur.
+
+"I'm not sure, sir," said the man. "I think it's a Socialist meeting."
+(He was, of course, not missing the little comedy. I wondered what he
+thought!)
+
+"A Socialist meeting?" said van Tuiver; then, to his wife: "You don't
+want to stay for that!"
+
+Again Sylvia astonished me. "I'd like to very much," she answered
+simply.
+
+He made no reply. I saw him stare at her, and then I saw his glance
+take me in. I sat in a corner as inconspicuous as I could make myself.
+I wondered whether I was a sempstress or a tutor, and whether either
+of these functionaries were introduced, and whether they shook hands or
+not.
+
+Mrs. Frothingham had taken her stand at the base of Washington's statue.
+Had she by any chance identified the tall and immaculate gentleman who
+stood beside the automobile? Before she had said three sentences I made
+sure that she had done so, and I was appalled at her audacity.
+
+"Fellow citizens," she began--"fellow-buccaneers of Wall Street." And
+when the mild laughter had subsided: "What I have to say is going to
+be addressed to one individual among you--the American millionaire.
+I assume there is one present--if no actual millionaire, then surely
+several who are destined to be, and not less than a thousand who aspire
+to be. So hear me, Mr. Millionaire," this with a smile, which gave you
+a sense of a reserve fund of energy and good humour. She had the
+crowd with her from the start--all but one. I stole a glance at the
+millionaire, and saw that he was not smiling.
+
+"Won't you get in?" asked his wife, and he answered coldly: "No, I'll
+wait till you've had enough."
+
+"Last summer I had a curious experience," said the speaker. "I was
+a guest at a tennis match, played upon the grounds of a State
+insane-asylum, the players being the doctors of the institution. Here,
+on a beautiful sunshiny afternoon, were ladies and gentlemen clad in
+festive white, enjoying a holiday, while in the background stood a
+frowning building with iron-barred gates and windows, from which
+one heard now and then the howlings of the maniacs. Some of the less
+fortunate of these victims of fate had been let loose, and while we
+played tennis, they chased the balls. All afternoon, while I sipped tea
+and chatted and watched the games, I said to myself: 'Here is the most
+perfect simile of our civilization that has ever come to me. Some people
+wear white and play tennis all day, while other people chase the balls,
+or howl in dungeons in the background!' And that is the problem I wish
+to put before my American millionaire--the problem of what I will call
+our lunatic-asylum stage of civilization. Mind you, this condition
+is all very well so long as we can say that the lunatics are
+incurable--that there is nothing we can do but shut our ears to their
+howling, and go ahead with our tennis. But suppose the idea were to
+dawn upon us that it is only because we played tennis all day that the
+lunatic-asylum is crowded, then might not the howls grow unendurable to
+us, and the game lose its charm?"
+
+Stealing glances about me, I saw that several people were watching the
+forty-or-fifty-times-over millionaire; they had evidently recognised
+him, and were enjoying the joke. "Haven't you had enough of this?" he
+suddenly demanded of his wife, and she answered, guilelessly: "No, let's
+wait. I'm interested."
+
+"Now, listen to me, Mr. American Millionaire," the speaker was
+continuing. "You are the one who plays tennis, and we, who chase the
+balls for you--we are the lunatics. And my purpose to-day is to prove
+to you that it is only because you play tennis all day that we have
+to chase balls all the day, and to tell you that some time soon we are
+going to cease to be lunatics, and that then you will have to chase your
+own balls! And don't, in your amusement over this illustration, lose
+sight of the serious nature of what I am talking about--the horrible
+economic lunacy which is known as poverty, and which is responsible
+for most of the evils we have in this world to-day--for crime and
+prostitution, suicide, insanity and war. My purpose is to show you, not
+by any guess of mine, or any appeals to your faith, but by cold business
+facts which can be understood in Wall Street, that this economic lunacy
+is one which can be cured; that we have the remedy in our hands, and
+lack nothing but the intelligence to apply it."
+
+18. I do not want to bore you with a Socialist speech. I only want to
+give you an idea of the trap into which Mr. Douglas van Tuiver had
+been drawn. He stood there, rigidly aloof while the speaker went on
+to explain the basic facts of wealth-production in modern society. She
+quoted from Kropotkin: "'Fields, Factories and Work-shops,' on sale
+at this meeting for a quarter!"--showing how by modern intensive
+farming--no matter of theory, but methods which were in commercial
+use in hundreds of places--it would be possible to feed the entire
+population of the globe from the soil of the British Isles alone. She
+showed by the bulletins of the United States Government how the machine
+process had increased the productive power of the individual labourer
+ten, twenty, a hundred fold. So vast was man's power of producing wealth
+today, and yet the labourer lived in dire want just as in the days of
+crude hand-industry!
+
+So she came back to her millionaire, upon whom this evil rested. He was
+the master of the machine for whose profit the labourer had to produce.
+He could only employ the labourer to produce what could be sold at a
+profit; and so the stream of prosperity was choked at its source. "It
+is you, Mr. Millionaire, who are to blame for poverty; it is because
+so many millions of dollars must be paid to you in profits that so
+many millions of men must live in want. In other words, precisely as I
+declared at the outset, it is your playing tennis which is responsible
+for the lunatics chasing the balls!"
+
+I wish that I might give some sense of the speaker's mastery of this
+situation, the extent to which she had communicated her good-humour to
+the crowd. You heard ripple after ripple of laughter, you saw everywhere
+about you eager faces, following every turn of the argument. No
+one could resist the contagion of interest--save only the American
+millionaire! He stood impassive, never once smiling, never once
+betraying a trace of feeling. Venturing to watch him more closely,
+however, I could see the stern lines deepening about his mouth, and his
+long, lean face growing more set.
+
+The speaker had outlined the remedy--a change from the system of
+production for profit to one of production for use. She went on to
+explain how the change was coming; the lunatic classes were beginning
+to doubt the divine nature of the rules of the asylum, and they were
+preparing to mutiny, and take possession of the place. And here I saw
+that Sylvia's husband had reached his limit. He turned to her: "Haven't
+you had enough of this?"
+
+"Why, no," she began. "If you don't mind--"
+
+"I do mind very much," he said, abruptly. "I think you are committing
+a breach of taste to stay here, and I would be greatly obliged if you
+would leave."
+
+And without really waiting for Sylvia's reply, he directed, "Back out of
+here, Ferris."
+
+The chauffeur cranked up, and sounded his horn--which naturally had the
+effect of disturbing the meeting. People supposed we were going to try
+to get through the crowd ahead--and there was no place where anyone
+could move. But van Tuiver went to the rear of the car, saying, in a
+voice of quiet authority: "A little room here, please." And so, foot by
+foot, we backed away from the meeting, and when we had got clear of the
+throng, the master of the car stepped in, and we turned and made our way
+down Broad Street.
+
+And now I was to get a lesson in the aristocratic ideal. Of course van
+Tuiver was angry; I believe he even suspected his wife of having known
+of the meeting. I supposed he would ask some questions; I supposed that
+at least he would express his opinion of the speech, his disgust that
+a woman of education should make such a spectacle of herself. Such
+husbands as I had been familiar with had never hesitated to vent their
+feelings under such circumstances. But from Douglas van Tuiver there
+came--not a word! He sat, perfectly straight, staring before him, like
+a sphinx; and Sylvia, after one or two swift glances at him, began to
+gossip cheerfully about her plans for the day-nursery for working-women!
+
+So for a few blocks, until suddenly she leaned forward. "Stop here,
+Ferris." And then, turning to me, "Here is the American Trust Company."
+
+"The American Trust Company?" I echoed, in my dumb stupidity.
+
+"Yes--that is where the check is payable," said Sylvia, and gave me a
+pinch.
+
+And so I comprehended, and gathered up my belongings and got out. She
+shook my hand warmly, and her husband raised his hat in a very formal
+salute, after which the car sped on up the street. I stood staring after
+it, in somewhat the state of mind of any humble rustic who may have been
+present when Elijah was borne into the heavens by the chariot of fire!
+
+19. Sylvia had been something less than polite to me; and so I had not
+been home more than an hour before there came a messenger-boy with a
+note. By way of reassuring her, I promised to come to see her the next
+morning; and when I did, and saw her lovely face so full of concern, I
+forgot entirely her worldly greatness, and did what I had longed to do
+from the beginning--put my arms about her and kissed her.
+
+"My dear girl," I protested, "I don't want to be a burden in your
+life--I want to help you!'"
+
+"But," she exclaimed, "what must you have thought--"
+
+"I thought I had made a lucky escape!" I laughed.
+
+She was proud--proud as an Indian; it was hard for her to make
+admissions about her husband. But then--we were like two errant
+school-girls, who had been caught m an escapade! "I don't know what I'm
+going to do about him," she said, with a wry smile. "He really won't
+listen--I can't make any impression on him."
+
+"Did he guess that you'd come there on purpose?" I asked.
+
+"I told him," she answered.
+
+"You _told_ him!"
+
+"I'd meant to keep it secret--I wouldn't have minded telling him a fib
+about a little thing. But he made it so very serious!"
+
+I could understand that it must have been serious after the telling. I
+waited for her to add what news she chose.
+
+"It seems," she said, "that my husband has a cousin, a pupil of Mrs.
+Frothingham's. You can imagine!"
+
+"I can imagine Mrs. Frothingham may lose a pupil."
+
+"No; my husband says his Uncle Archibald always was a fool. But how can
+anyone be so narrow! He seemed to take Mrs. Frothingham as a personal
+affront."
+
+This was the most definite bit of vexation against her husband that she
+had ever let me see. I decided to turn it into a jest. "Mrs. Frothingham
+will be glad to know she was understood," I said.
+
+"But seriously, why can't men have open minds about politics and money?"
+She went on in a worried voice: "I knew he was like this when I met
+him at Harvard. He was living in his own house, aloof from the poorer
+men--the men who were most worth while, it seemed to me. And when I
+told him of the bad effect he was having on these men and on his own
+character as well, he said he would do whatever I asked--he even gave
+up his house and went to live in a dormitory. So I thought I had some
+influence on him. But now, here is the same thing again, only I find
+that one can't take a stand against one's husband. At least, he doesn't
+admit the right." She hesitated. "It doesn't seem loyal to talk about
+it."
+
+"My dear girl," I said with an impulse of candour, "there isn't much you
+can tell me about that problem. My own marriage went to pieces on that
+rock."
+
+I saw a look of surprise upon her face. "I haven't told you my story
+yet," I said. "Some day I will--when you feel you know me well enough
+for us to exchange confidences."
+
+There was more than a hint of invitation in this. After a silence, she
+said: "One's instinct is to hide one's troubles."
+
+"Sylvia," I answered, "let me tell you about us. You must realise that
+you've been a wonderful person to me; you belong to a world I never had
+anything to do with, and never expected to get a glimpse of. It's the
+wickedness of our class-civilization that human beings can't be just
+human beings to each other--a king can hardly have a friend. Even after
+I've overcome the impulse I have to be awed by your luxury and your
+grandness; I'm conscious of the fact that everybody else is awed by
+them. If I so much as mention that I've met you, I see people start and
+stare at me--instantly I become a personage. It makes me angry, because
+I want to know _you_."
+
+She was gazing at me, not saying a word. I went on: "I'd never have
+thought it possible for anyone to be in your position and be real and
+straight and human, but I realise that you have managed to work that
+miracle. So I want to love you and help you, in every way I know how.
+But you must understand, I can't ask for your confidence, as I could for
+any other woman's. There is too much vulgar curiosity about the rich and
+great, and I can't pretend to be unaware of that hatefulness; I can't
+help shrinking from it. So all I can say is--if you need me, if you ever
+need a real friend, why, here I am; you may be sure I understand, and
+won't tell your secrets to anyone else."
+
+With a little mist of tears in her eyes, Sylvia put out her hand and
+touched mine. And so we went into a chamber alone together, and shut the
+cold and suspicious world outside.
+
+20. We knew each other well enough now to discuss the topic which has
+been the favourite of women since we sat in the doorways of caves and
+pounded wild grain in stone mortars--the question of our lords, who had
+gone hunting, and who might be pleased to beat us on their return.
+I learned all that Sylvia had been taught on the subject of the male
+animal; I opened that amazing unwritten volume of woman traditions, the
+maxims of Lady Dee Lysle.
+
+Sylvia's maternal great-aunt had been a great lady out of a great
+age, and incidentally a grim and grizzled veteran of the sex-war. Her
+philosophy started from a recognition of the physical and economic
+inferiority of woman, as complete as any window-smashing suffragette
+could have formulated, but her remedy for it was a purely individualist
+one, the leisure-class woman's skill in trading upon her sex. Lady Dee
+did not use that word, of course--she would as soon have talked of her
+esophagus. Her formula was "charm," and she had taught Sylvia that the
+preservation of "charm" was the end of woman's existence, the thing by
+which she remained a lady, and without which she was more contemptible
+than the beasts.
+
+She had taught this, not merely by example and casual anecdote, but by
+precepts as solemnly expounded as bible-texts. "Remember, my dear, a
+woman with a husband is like a lion-tamer with a whip!" And the old lady
+would explain what a hard and dangerous life was lived by lion-tamers,
+how their safety depended upon life-long distrustfulness of the
+creatures over whom they ruled. She would tell stories of the rending
+and maiming of luckless ones, who had forgotten for a brief moment the
+nature of the male animal! "Yes, my dear," she would say, "believe
+in love; but let the man believe first!" Her maxims never sinned by
+verbosity.
+
+The end of all this was not merely food and shelter, a home and
+children, it was the supremacy of a sex, its ability to shape life to
+its whim. By means of this magic "charm"--a sort of perpetual individual
+sex-strike--a woman turned her handicaps into advantages and her chains
+into ornaments; she made herself a rare and wonderful creature, up to
+whom men gazed in awe. It was "romantic love," but preserved throughout
+life, instead of ceasing with courtship.
+
+All the Castleman women understood these arts, and employed them. There
+was Aunt Nannie, when she cracked her whip the dear old bishop-lion
+would jump as if he had been shot! Did not the whole State know the
+story of how once he had been called upon at a banquet and had risen and
+remarked: "Ladies and gentlemen, I had intended to make a speech to you
+this evening, but I see that my wife is present, so I must beg you to
+excuse me." The audience roared, and Aunt Nannie was furious, but poor
+dear Bishop Chilton had spoken but the literal truth, that he could not
+spread the wings of his eloquence in the presence of his "better half."
+
+And with Major Castleman, though it seemed different, it was really
+the same. Sylvia's mother had let herself get stout--which seemed a
+dangerous mark of confidence in the male animal. But the major was
+fifteen years older than his wife, and she had a weak heart with which
+to intimidate him. Now and then the wilfulness of Castleman Lysle would
+become unendurable in the house, and his father would seize him and turn
+him over his knee. His screams would bring "Miss Margaret" flying to the
+rescue: "Major Castleman, how dare you spank one of _my_ children?" And
+she would seize the boy and march off in terrible haughtiness, and lock
+herself and her child in her room, and for hours afterwards the poor
+major would wander about the house, suffering the lonelines of the
+guilty soul. You would hear him tapping gently at his lady's door.
+"Honey! Honey! Are you mad with me?" "Major Castleman," the stately
+answer would come, "will you oblige me by leaving one room in this house
+to which I may retire?"
+
+21. I would give you a wrong idea of Sylvia if I did not make clear that
+along with this sophistication as to the play-aspects of sex, there
+went the most incredible ignorance as to its practical realities. In my
+arguments I had thought to appeal to her by referring to that feature of
+wage-slavery which more than even child-labour stirs the moral sense of
+women, but to my utter consternation I discovered that here was a
+woman nearly a year married who did not know what prostitution was. A
+suspicion had begun to dawn upon her, and she asked me, timidly: Could
+it be possible that that intimacy which was given in marriage could
+become a thing of barter in the market-place? When I told her the truth,
+I found her horror so great that it was impossible to go on talking
+economics. How could I say that women were driven to such things by
+poverty? Surely a woman who was not bad at heart would starve, before
+she would sell her body to a man!
+
+Perhaps I should have been more patient with her, but I am bitter on
+these subjects. "My dear Mrs. van Tuiver," I said, "there is a lot of
+nonsense talked about this matter. There is very little sex-life for
+women without a money-price made clear in advance."
+
+"I don't understand," she said.
+
+"I don't know about your case," I replied, "but when I married, it was
+because I was unhappy and wanted a home of my own. And if the truth were
+told, that is why most women marry."
+
+"But what has THAT to do with it?" she cried. She really did not see!
+
+"What is the difference--except that such women stand out for a
+maintenance, while the prostitute takes cash?" I saw that I had shocked
+her, and I said: "You must be humble about these things, because you
+have never been poor, and you cannot judge those who have been. But
+surely you must have known worldly women who married rich men for their
+money. And surely you admit that that is prostitution?"
+
+She fell suddenly silent, and I saw what I had done, and, no doubt, you
+will say I should have been ashamed of myself. But when one has seen as
+much of misery and injustice as I have, one cannot be so patient with
+the fine artificial delicacies and sentimentalities of the idle rich. I
+went ahead to tell her some stories, showing her what poverty actually
+meant to women.
+
+Then, as she remained silent, I asked her how she had managed to remain
+so ignorant. Surely she must have met with the word "prostitution" in
+books; she must have heard allusions to the "demi-monde."
+
+"Of course," she said, "I used to see conspicuous-looking women at the
+race-track in New Orleans; I've sat near them in restaurants, I've known
+by my mother's looks and her agitation that they must be bad women. But
+you see, I didn't know what it meant--I had nothing but a vague feeling
+of something dreadful."
+
+I smiled. "Then Lady Dee did not tell you everything about the
+possibilities of her system of 'charm.'"
+
+"No," said Sylvia. "Evidently she didn't!" She sat staring at me, trying
+to get up the courage to go on with this plain speaking.
+
+And at last the courage came. "I think it is wrong," she exclaimed.
+"Girls ought not to be kept so ignorant! They ought to know what such
+things mean. Why, I didn't even know what marriage meant!"
+
+"Can that be true?" I asked.
+
+"All my life I had thought of marriage, in a way; I had been trained to
+think of it with every eligible man I met--but to me it meant a home, a
+place of my own to entertain people in. I pictured myself going driving
+with my husband, giving dinner-parties to his friends. I knew I'd have
+to let him kiss me, but beyond that--I had a vague idea of something,
+but I didn't think. I had been deliberately trained not to let myself
+think--to run away from every image that came to me. And I went on
+dreaming of what I'd wear, and how I'd greet my husband when he came
+home in the evening."
+
+"Didn't you think about children?"
+
+"Yes--but I thought of the CHILDREN. I thought what they'd look like,
+and how they'd talk, and how I'd love them. I don't know if many young
+girls shut their minds up like that."
+
+She was speaking with agitation, and I was gazing into her eyes, reading
+more than she knew I was reading. I was nearer to solving the problem
+that had been baffling me. And I wanted to take her hands in mine, and
+say: "You would never have married him if you'd understood!"
+
+22. Sylvia thought she ought to have been taught, but when she came to
+think of it she was unable to suggest who could have done the
+teaching. "Your mother?" I asked, and she had to laugh, in spite of the
+seriousness of her mood. "Poor dear mamma! When they sent me up here to
+boarding school, she took me off and tried to tell me not to listen to
+vulgar talk from the girls. She managed to make it clear that I mustn't
+listen to something, and I managed not to listen. I'm sure that even
+now she would rather have her tongue cut out than talk to me about such
+things."
+
+"I talked to my children," I assured her.
+
+"And you didn't feel embarrassed?"
+
+"I did in the beginning--I had the same shrinkings to overcome. But I
+had a tragedy behind me to push me on."
+
+I told her the story of my nephew, a shy and sensitive lad, who used to
+come to me for consolation, and became as dear to me as my own children.
+When he was seventeen he grew moody and despondent; he ran away from
+home for six months and more, and then returned and was forgiven--but
+that seemed to make no difference. One night he came to see me, and I
+tried hard to get him to tell me what was wrong. He wouldn't, but went
+away, and several hours later I found a letter he had shoved under the
+table-cloth. I read it, and rushed out and hitched up a horse and drove
+like mad to my brother-in-law's, but I got there too late, the poor boy
+had taken a shot-gun to his room, and put the muzzle into his mouth, and
+set off the trigger with his foot. In the letter he told me what was the
+matter--he had got into trouble with a woman of the town, and had caught
+syphilis. He had gone away and tried to get cured, but had fallen into
+the hands of a quack, who had taken all his money and left his health
+worse than ever, so in despair and shame the poor boy had shot his head
+off.
+
+I paused, uncertain if Sylvia would understand the story. "Do you know
+what syphilis is?" I asked.
+
+"I suppose--I have heard of what we call a 'bad disease'" she said.
+
+"It's a very bad disease. But if the words convey to you that it's a
+disease that bad people get, I should tell you that most men take the
+chance of getting it; yet they are cruel enough to despise those upon
+whom the ill-luck falls. My poor nephew had been utterly ignorant--I
+found out that from his father, too late. An instinct had awakened in
+him of which he knew absolutely nothing; his companions had taught him
+what it meant, and he had followed their lead. And then had come the
+horror and the shame--and some vile, ignorant wretch to trade upon it,
+and cast the boy off when he was penniless. So he had come home again,
+with his gnawing secret; I pictured him wandering about, trying to make
+up his mind to confide in me, wavering between that and the horrible
+deed he did."
+
+I stopped, because even to this day I cannot tell the story without
+tears. I cannot keep a picture of the boy in my room, because of the
+self-reproaches that haunt me. "You can understand," I said to Sylvia,
+"I never could forget such a lesson. I swore a vow over the poor lad's
+body, that I would never let a boy or girl that I could reach go out in
+ignorance into the world. I read up on the subject, and for a while I
+was a sort of fanatic--I made people talk, young people and old people.
+I broke down the taboos wherever I went, and while I shocked a good
+many, I knew that I helped a good many more."
+
+All that was, of course, inconceivable to Sylvia. How curious was the
+contrast of her one experience in the matter of venereal disease. She
+told me how she had been instrumental in making a match between her
+friend, Harriet Atkinson and a young scion of an ancient and haughty
+family of Charleston, and how after the marriage her friend's health had
+begun to give way, until now she was an utter wreck, living alone in a
+dilapidated antebellum mansion, seeing no one but negro servants, and
+praying for death to relieve her of her misery.
+
+"Of course, I don't really know," said Sylvia. "Perhaps it was
+this--this disease that you speak of. None of my people would tell me--I
+doubt if they really know themselves. It was just before my own wedding,
+so you can understand it had a painful effect upon me. It happened that
+I read something in a magazine, and I thought that--that possibly my
+fiancee--that someone ought to ask him, you understand--"
+
+She stopped, and the blood was crimson in her cheeks, with the memory
+of her old excitement, and some fresh excitement added to it. There are
+diseases of the mind as well as of the body, and one of them is called
+prudery.
+
+"I can understand," I said. "It was certainly your right to be reassured
+on such a point."
+
+"Well, I tried to talk to my Aunt Varina about it; then I wrote to Uncle
+Basil, and asked him to write to Douglas. At first he refused--he only
+consented to do it when I threatened to go to my father."
+
+"What came of it in the end?"
+
+"Why, my uncle wrote, and Douglas answered very kindly that he
+understood, and that it was all right--I had nothing to fear. I never
+expected to mention the incident to anyone again."
+
+"Lots of people have mentioned such things to me," I responded, to
+reassure her. Then after a pause: "Tell me, how was it, if you didn't
+know the meaning of marriage, how could you connect the disease with
+it?"
+
+She answered, gazing with the wide-open, innocent eyes: "I had no
+idea how people gave it to each other. I thought maybe they got it by
+kissing."
+
+I thought to myself again: The horror of this superstition of prudery!
+Can one think of anything more destructive to life than the placing of
+a taboo upon such matters? Here is the whole of the future at stake--the
+health, the sanity, the very existence of the race. And what fiend has
+been able to contrive it that we feel like criminals when we mention the
+subject?
+
+23. Our intimacy progressed, and the time came when Sylvia told me about
+her marriage. She had accepted Douglas van Tuiver because she had lost
+Frank Shirley, and her heart was broken. She could never imagine herself
+loving any other man; and not knowing exactly what marriage meant, it
+had been easier for her to think of her family, and to follow their
+guidance. They had told her that love would come; Douglas had implored
+her to give him a chance to teach her to love him. She had considered
+what she could do with his money--both for her home-people and for those
+she spoke of vaguely as "the poor." But now she was making the discovery
+that she could not do very much for these "poor."
+
+"It isn't that my husband is mean," she said. "On the contrary, the
+slightest hint will bring me any worldly thing I want. I have homes in
+half a dozen parts of America--I have _carte blanche_ to open accounts
+in two hemispheres. If any of my people need money I can get it; but if
+I want it for myself, he asks me what I'm doing with it--and so I run
+into the stone-wall of his ideas."
+
+At first the colliding with this wall had merely pained and bewildered
+her. But now the combination of Veblen and myself had helped her
+to realize what it meant. Douglas van Tuiver spent his money upon
+a definite system: whatever went to the maintaining of his social
+position, whatever added to the glory, prestige and power of the van
+Tuiver name--that money was well-spent; while money spent to any other
+end was money wasted--and this included all ideas and "causes." And
+when the master of the house knew that his money was being wasted, it
+troubled him.
+
+"It wasn't until after I married him that I realized how idle his life
+is," she remarked. "At home all the men have something to do, running
+their plantations, or getting elected to some office. But Douglas never
+does anything that I can possibly think is useful."
+
+His fortune was invested in New York City real-estate, she went on to
+explain. There was an office, with a small army of clerks and agents to
+attend to it--a machine which had been built up and handed on to him by
+his ancestors. It sufficed if he dropped in for an hour or two once a
+week when he was in the city, and signed a batch of documents now and
+then when he was away. His life was spent in the company of people whom
+the social system had similarly deprived of duties; and they had, by
+generations of experiment, built up for themselves a new set of duties,
+a life which was wholly without relationship to reality. Into this
+unreal existence Sylvia had married, and it was like a current sweeping
+her in its course. So long as she went with it, all was well; but let
+her try to catch hold of something and stop, and it would tear her loose
+and almost strangle her.
+
+As time went on, she gave me strange glimpses into this world. Her
+husband did not seem really to enjoy its life. As Sylvia put it, "He
+takes it for granted that he has to do all the proper things that the
+proper people do. He hates to be conspicuous, he says. I point out to
+him that the proper things are nearly always conspicuous, but he replies
+that to fail to do them would be even more conspicuous."
+
+It took me a long time to get really acquainted with Sylvia, because of
+the extent to which this world was clamouring for her. I used to drop in
+when she 'phoned me she had half an hour. I would find her dressing for
+something, and she would send her maid away, and we would talk until
+she would be late for some function; and that might be a serious matter,
+because somebody would feel slighted. She was always "on pins and
+needles" over such questions of precedent; it seemed as if everybody in
+her world must be watching everybody else. There was a whole elaborate
+science of how to treat the people you met, so that they would not
+feel slighted--or so that they would feel slighted, according to
+circumstances.
+
+To the enjoyment of such a life it was essential that the person
+should believe in it. Douglas van Tuiver did believe in it; it was his
+religion, the only one he had. (Churchman as he was, his church was
+a part of the social routine.) He was proud of Sylvia, and apparently
+satisfied when he could take her at his side; and Sylvia went, because
+she was his wife, and that was what wives were for. She had tried her
+best to be happy; she had told herself that she _was_ happy yet all the
+time realizing that a woman who is really happy does not have to tell
+herself.
+
+Earlier in life she had quaffed and enjoyed the wine of applause. I
+recollect vividly her telling me of the lure her beauty had been to
+her--the most terrible temptation that could come to a woman. "I walk
+into a brilliant room, and I feel the thrill of admiration that
+goes through the crowd. I have a sudden sense of my own physical
+perfection--a glow all over me! I draw a deep breath--I feel a surge of
+exaltation. I say, 'I am victorious--I can command! I have this supreme
+crown of womanly grace--I am all-powerful with it--the world is mine!'"
+
+As she spoke the rapture was in her voice, and I looked at her--and yes,
+she was beautiful! The supreme crown was hers!
+
+"I see other beautiful women," she went on--and swift anger came into
+her voice. "I see what they are doing with this power! Gratifying their
+vanity--turning men into slaves of their whim! Squandering money upon
+empty pleasures--and with the dreadful plague of poverty spreading in
+the world! I used to go to my father, 'Oh, papa, why must there be so
+many poor people? Why should we have servants--why should they have to
+wait on me, and I do nothing for them?' He would try to explain to me
+that it was the way of Nature. Mamma would tell me it was the will
+of the Lord--'The poor ye have always with you'--'Servants, obey your
+masters'--and so on. But in spite of the Bible texts, I felt guilty. And
+now I come to Douglas with the same plea--and it only makes him angry!
+He has been to college and has a lot of scientific phrases--he tells me
+it's 'the struggle for existence,' 'the elimination of the unfit'--and
+so on. I say to him, 'First we make people unfit, and then we have to
+eliminate them.' He cannot see why I do not accept what learned people
+tell me--why I persist in questioning and suffering."
+
+She paused, and then added, "It's as if he were afraid I might find out
+something he doesn't want me to! He's made me give him a promise that I
+won't see Mrs. Frothingham again!" And she laughed. "I haven't told him
+about you!"
+
+I answered, needless to say, that I hoped she would keep the secret!
+
+24. All this time I was busy with my child-labour work. We had an
+important bill before the legislature that session, and I was doing what
+I could to work up sentiment for it. I talked at every gathering where I
+could get a hearing; I wrote letters to newspapers; I sent literature to
+lists of names. I racked my mind for new schemes, and naturally, at such
+times, I could not help thinking of Sylvia. How much she could do, if
+only she would!
+
+I spared no one, least of all myself, and so it was not easy to spare
+her. The fact that I had met her was the gossip of the office, and
+everybody was waiting for something to happen. "How about Mrs. van
+Tuiver?" my "chief" would ask, at intervals. "If she would _only_ go on
+our press committee" my stenographer would sigh.
+
+The time came when our bill was in committee, a place of peril for
+bills. I went to Albany to see what could be done. I met half a hundred
+legislators, of whom perhaps half-a-dozen had some human interest in my
+subject; the rest, well, it was discouraging. Where was the force that
+would stir them, make them forget their own particular little grafts,
+and serve the public welfare in defiance to hostile interests?
+
+Where was it? I came back to New York to look for it, and after a blue
+luncheon with the members of our committee, I came away with my mind
+made up--I would sacrifice my Sylvia to this desperate emergency.
+
+I knew just what I had to do. So far she had heard speeches about social
+wrongs, or read books about them; she had never been face to face with
+the reality of them. Now I persuaded her to take a morning off, and see
+some of the sights of the underworld of toil. We foreswore the royal
+car, and likewise the royal furs and velvets; she garbed herself in
+plain appearing dark blue and went down town in the Subway like common
+mortals, visiting paper-box factories and flower factories, tenement
+homes where whole families sat pasting toys and gimcracks for fourteen
+or sixteen hours a day, and still could not buy enough food to make
+full-sized men and women of them.
+
+She was Dante, and I was Virgil, our inferno was an endless procession
+of tortured faces--faces of women, haggard and mournful, faces of little
+children, starved and stunted, dulled and dumb. Several times we stopped
+to talk with these people--one little Jewess girl I knew whose three
+tiny sisters had been roasted alive in a sweatshop fire. This child had
+jumped from a fourth-story window, and been miraculously caught by a
+fireman. She said that some man had started the fire, and been caught,
+but the police had let him get away. So I had to explain to Sylvia
+that curious bye-product (sic) of the profit system known as the "Arson
+Trust." Authorities estimated that incendiarism was responsible for
+the destruction of a quarter of a billion dollars worth of property in
+America every year. So, of course, the business of starting fires was
+a paying one, and the "fire-bug," like the "cadet" and the dive-keeper,
+was a part of the "system." So it was quite a possible thing that the
+man who had burned up this little girl's three sisters might have been
+allowed to escape.
+
+I happened to say this in the little girl's hearing, and I saw
+her pitiful strained eyes fixed upon Sylvia. Perhaps this lovely,
+soft-voiced lady was a fairy god-mother, come to free her sisters from
+an evil spell and to punish the wicked criminal! I saw Sylvia turn her
+head away, and search for her handkerchief; as we groped our way down
+the dark stairs, she caught my hand, whispering: "Oh, my God! my God!"
+
+It had even more effect than I had intended; not only did she say that
+she would do something--anything that would be of use--but she told me
+as we rode back home that her mind was made up to stop the squandering
+of her husband's money. He had been planning a costume ball for a
+couple of months later, an event which would keep the van Tuiver name
+in condition, and would mean that he and other people would spend many
+hundreds of thousands of dollars. As we rode home in the roaring Subway,
+Sylvia sat beside me, erect and tense, saying that if the ball were
+given, it would be without the presence of the hostess.
+
+I struck while the iron was hot, and got her permission to put her name
+upon our committee list. She said, moreover, that she would get some
+free time, and be more than a mere name to us. What were the duties of a
+member of our committee?
+
+"First," I said, "to know the facts about child-labour, as you have seen
+them to-day, and second, to help other people to know."
+
+"And how is that to be done?"
+
+"Well, for instance, there is that hearing before the legislative
+committee. You remember I suggested that you appear."
+
+"Yes," she said in a low voice. I could almost hear the words that were
+in her mind: "What would _he_ say?"
+
+25. Sylvia's name went upon our letter-heads and other literature, and
+almost at once things began to happen. In a day or two there came a
+reporter, saying he had noticed her name. Was it true that she had
+become interested in our work? Would I please give him some particulars,
+as the public would naturally want to know.
+
+I admitted that Mrs. van Tuiver had joined the committee; she approved
+of our work and desired to further it. That was all. He asked: Would she
+give an interview? And I answered that I was sure she would not. Then
+would I tell something about how she had come to be interested in the
+work? It was a chance to assist our propaganda, added the reporter,
+diplomatically.
+
+I retired to another room, and got Sylvia upon the 'phone, "The time has
+come for you to take the plunge," I said.
+
+"Oh, but I don't want to be in the papers!" she cried "Surely, you
+wouldn't advise it!"
+
+"I don't see how you can avoid having something appear. Your name
+is given out, and if the man can't get anything else, he'll take our
+literature, and write up your doings out of his imagination."
+
+"And they'll print my picture with it!" she exclaimed. I could not help
+laughing. "It's quite possible."
+
+"Oh, what will my husband do? He'll say 'I told you so!'"
+
+It is a hard thing to have one's husband say that, as I knew by bitter
+experience. But I did not think that reason enough for giving up.
+
+"Let me have time to think it over," said Sylvia. "Get him to wait till
+to-morrow, and meantime I can see you."
+
+So it was arranged. I think I told Sylvia the truth when I said that I
+had never before heard of a committee member who was unwilling to have
+his purposes discussed in the newspapers. To influence newspapers was
+one of the main purposes of committees, and I did not see how she could
+expect either editors or readers to take any other view.
+
+"Let me tell the man about your trip down town," I suggested, "then I
+can go on to discuss the bill and how it bears on the evils you saw.
+Such a statement can't possibly do you harm."
+
+She consented, but with the understanding that she was not to be quoted
+directly. "And don't let them make me picturesque!" she exclaimed.
+"That's what my husband seems most to dread."
+
+I wondered if he didn't think she was picturesque, when she sat in
+a splendid, shining coach, and took part in a public parade through
+Central Park. But I did not say this. I went off, and swore my reporter
+to abstain from the "human touch," and he promised and kept his word.
+There appeared next morning a dignified "write-up" of Mrs. Douglas van
+Tuiver's interest in child-labour reform. Quoting me, it described some
+of the places she had visited, and some of the sights which had shocked
+her; it went on to tell about our committee and its work, the status
+of our bill in the legislature, the need of activity on the part of our
+friends if the measure was to be forced through at this session. It
+was a splendid "boost" for our work, and everyone in the office was in
+raptures over it. The social revolution was at hand! thought my young
+stenographer.
+
+But the trouble with this business of publicity is that, however
+carefully you control your interviewer, you cannot control the others
+who use his material. The "afternoon men" came round for more details,
+and they made it clear that it was personal details they wanted. And
+when I side-stepped their questions, they went off and made up answers
+to suit themselves, and printed Sylvia's pictures, together with
+photographs of child-workers taken from our pamphlets.
+
+I called Sylvia up while she was dressing for dinner, to explain that I
+was not responsible for any of this picturesqueness. "Oh, perhaps I am
+to blame myself!" she exclaimed. "I think I interviewed a reporter."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"A woman sent up her card--she told the footman she was a friend of
+mine. And I thought--I couldn't be sure if I'd met her--so I went and
+saw her. She said she'd met me at Mrs. Harold Cliveden's, and she began
+to talk to me about child-labour, and this and that plan she had, and
+what did I think of them, and suddenly it flashed over me: 'Maybe this
+is a reporter playing a trick on me!'"
+
+I hurried out before breakfast next morning and got all the papers,
+to see what this enterprising lady had done. There was nothing, so I
+reflected that probably she had been a "Sunday" lady.
+
+But then, when I reached my office, the 'phone rang, and I heard the
+voice of Sylvia: "Mary, something perfectly dreadful has happened!"
+
+"What?" I cried.
+
+"I can't tell you over the 'phone, but a certain person is furiously
+angry. Can I see you if I come down right away?"
+
+26. Such terrors as these were unguessed by me in the days of my
+obscurity. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, uneasy also, lies
+the wife of that head, and the best friend of the wife. I dismissed my
+stenographer, and spent ten or fifteen restless minutes until Sylvia
+appeared.
+
+Her story was quickly told. A couple of hours ago the acting-manager of
+Mr. van Tuiver's office had telephoned to ask if he might call upon a
+matter of importance. He had come. Naturally, he had the most extreme
+reluctance to say anything which might seem to criticise the activities
+of Mr. van Tuiver's wife, but there was something in the account in
+the newspapers which should be brought to her husband's attention. The
+articles gave the names and locations of a number of firms in whose
+factories it was alleged that Mrs. van Tuiver had found unsatisfactory
+conditions, and it happened that two of these firms were located in
+premises which belonged to the van Tuiver estates!
+
+A story coming very close to melodrama, I perceived. I sat dismayed
+at what I had done. "Of course, dear girl," I said, at last, "you
+understand that I had no idea who owned these buildings."
+
+"Oh, don't say that!" exclaimed Sylvia. "I am the one who should have
+known!"
+
+Then for a long time I sat still and let her suffer. "Tenement
+sweat-shops! Little children in factories!" I heard her whisper.
+
+At last I put my hand on hers. "I tried to put it off for a while," I
+said. "But I knew it would have to come."
+
+"Think of me!" she exclaimed, "going about scolding other people for the
+way they make their money! When I thought of my own, I had visions of
+palatial hotels and office-buildings--everything splendid and clean!"
+
+"Well, my dear, you've learned now, and you will be able to do
+something--"
+
+She turned upon me suddenly, and for the first time I saw in her face
+the passions of tragedy. "Do you believe I will be able to do anything?
+No! Don't have any such idea!"
+
+I was struck dumb. She got up and began to pace the room. "Oh, don't
+make any mistake, I've paid for my great marriage in the last hour or
+two. To think that he cares about nothing save the possibility of being
+found out and made ridiculous! All his friends have been 'muckraked,' as
+he calls it, and he has sat aloft and smiled over their plight; he was
+the landed gentleman, the true aristrocrat, whom the worries of traders
+and money-changers didn't concern. Now perhaps he's caught, and his
+name is to be dragged in the mire, and it's my flightiness, my lack of
+commonsense that has done it!"
+
+"I shouldn't let that trouble me," I said. "You could not know--"
+
+"Oh, it's not that! It's that I hadn't a single courageous word to say
+to him--not a hint that he ought to refuse to wring blood-money from
+sweat-shops! I came away without having done it, because I couldn't face
+his anger, because it would have meant a quarrel!"
+
+"My dear," I said gently, "it is possible to survive a quarrel."
+
+"No, you don't understand! We should never make it up again, I know--I
+saw it in his words, in his face. He will never change to please me,
+no, not even a simple thing like the business-methods of the van Tuiver
+estates."
+
+I could not help smiling. "My dear Sylvia! A simple thing!"
+
+She came and sat beside me. "That's what I want to talk about. It is
+time I was growing up. It it time that I knew about these things. Tell
+me about them."
+
+"What, my dear?"
+
+"About the methods of the van Tuiver estates, that can't be changed to
+please me. I made out one thing, we had recently paid a fine for some
+infraction of the law in one of those buildings, and my husband said
+it was because we had refused to pay more money to a tenement-house
+inspector. I asked him: 'Why should we pay any money at all to a
+tenement-house inspector? Isn't it bribery?' He answered: 'It's a
+custom--the same as you give a tip to a hotel waiter.' Is that true?"
+
+I could not help smiling. "Your husband ought to know, my dear," I said.
+
+I saw her compress her lips. "What is the tip for?"
+
+"I suppose it is to keep out of trouble with him."
+
+"But why can't we keep out of trouble by obeying the law?"
+
+"My dear, sometimes the law is inconvenient, and sometimes it is
+complicated and obscure. It might be that you are violating it without
+knowing the fact. It might be uncertain whether you are violating it
+or not, so that to settle the question would mean a lot of expense and
+publicity. It might even be that the law is impossible to obey--that it
+was not intended to be obeyed."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean, maybe it was passed to put you at the mercy of the
+politicians."
+
+"But," she protested, "that would be blackmail."
+
+"The phrase," I replied, "is 'strike-legislation.'"
+
+"But at least, that wouldn't be our fault!"
+
+"No, not unless you had begun it. It generally happens that the landlord
+discovers it's a good thing to have politicians who will work with him.
+Maybe he wants his assessments lowered; maybe he wants to know where new
+car lines are to go, so that he can buy intelligently; maybe he wants
+the city to improve his neighbourhood; maybe he wants influence at court
+when he has some heavy damage suit."
+
+"So we bribe everyone!"
+
+"Not necessarily. You may simply wait until campaign-time, and then make
+your contribution to the machine. That is the basis of the 'System.'."
+
+"The 'System '?"
+
+"A semi-criminal police-force, and everything that pays tribute to it;
+the saloon and the dive, the gambling hell the white-slave market, and
+the Arson trust."
+
+I saw a wild look in her eyes. "Tell me, do you _know_ that all these
+things are true? Or are you only guessing about them?"
+
+"My dear Sylvia," I answered, "you said it was time you grew up. For the
+present I will tell you this: Several months before I met you, I made
+a speech in which I named some of the organised forces of evil in the
+city. One was Tammany Hall, and another was the Traction Trust, and
+another was the Trinity Church Corporation, and yet another was the van
+Tuiver estates."
+
+27. The following Sunday there appeared a "magazine story" of an
+interview with the infinitely beautiful young wife of the infinitely
+rich Mr. Douglas van Tuiver, in which the views of the wife on the
+subject of child-labour were liberally interlarded with descriptions
+of her reception-room and her morning-gown. But mere picturesqueness by
+that time had been pretty well discounted in our minds. So long as
+the article did not say anything about the ownership of child-labour
+tenements!
+
+I did not see Sylvia for several weeks after that. I took it for granted
+that she would want some time to get herself together and make up her
+mind about the future. I did not feel anxious; the seed had sprouted,
+and I felt sure it would continue to grow.
+
+Then one day she called me up, asking if I could come to see her. I
+suggested that afternoon, and she said she was having tea with some
+people at the Palace Hotel, and could I come there just after tea-time?
+I remember the place and the hour, because of the curious adventure into
+which I got myself. One hears the saying, when unexpected encounters
+take place, "How small the world is!" But I thought the world was
+growing really too small when I went into a hotel tea-room to wait for
+Sylvia, and found myself face to face with Claire Lepage!
+
+The place appointed had been the "orange-room"; I stood in the door-way,
+sweeping the place with my eyes, and I saw Mrs. van Tuiver at the same
+moment that she saw me. She was sitting at a table with several other
+people and she nodded, and I took a seat to wait. From my position I
+could watch her, in animated conversation; and she could send me a smile
+now and then. So I was decidedly startled when I heard a voice, "Why,
+how do you do?" and looked up and saw Claire holding out her hand to me.
+
+"Well, for heaven's sake!" I exclaimed.
+
+"You don't come to see me any more," she said.
+
+"Why, no--no, I've been busy of late." So much I managed to ejaculate,
+in spite of my confusion.
+
+"You seem surprised to see me," she remarked--observant as usual, and
+sensitive to other people's attitude to her.
+
+"Why, naturally," I said. And then, recollecting that it was not in the
+least natural--since she spent a good deal of her time in such places--I
+added, "I was looking for someone else."
+
+"May I do in the meantime?" she inquired, taking a seat beside me. "What
+are you so busy about?"
+
+"My child-labour work," I answered. Then, in an instant, I was sorry for
+the words, thinking she must have read about Sylvia's activities. I did
+not want her to know that I had met Sylvia, for it would mean a flood of
+questions, which I did not want to answer--nor yet to refuse to answer.
+
+But my fear was needless. "I've been out of town," she said.
+
+"Whereabouts?" I asked, making conversation.
+
+"A little trip to Bermuda."
+
+My mind was busy with the problem of getting rid of her. It would be
+intolerable to have Sylvia come up to us; it was intolerable to know
+that they were in sight of each other.
+
+Even as the thought came to me, however, I saw Claire start. "Look!" she
+exclaimed.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"That woman there--in the green velvet! The fourth table."
+
+"I see her."
+
+"Do you know who she is?"
+
+"Who?" (I remembered Lady Dee's maxim about lying!)
+
+"Sylvia Castleman!" whispered Claire. (She always referred to her
+thus--seeming to say, "I'm as much van Tuiver as she is!")
+
+"Are you sure?" I asked--in order to say something.
+
+"I've seen her a score of times. I seem to be always running into her.
+That's Freddie Atkins she's talking to."
+
+"Indeed!" said I.
+
+"I know most of the men I see her with. But I have to walk by as if I'd
+never seen them. A queer world we live in, isn't it?"
+
+I could assent cordially to that proposition. "Listen," I broke in,
+quickly. "Have you got anything to do? If not, come down to the Royalty
+and have tea with me."
+
+"Why not have it here?"
+
+"I've been waiting for someone from there, and I have to leave a
+message. Then I'll be free."
+
+She rose, to my vast relief, and we walked out. I could feel Sylvia's
+eyes following me; but I dared not try to send her a message--I would
+have to make up some explanation afterwards. "Who was your well-dressed
+friend?" I could imagine her asking; but my mind was more concerned with
+the vision of what would happen if, in full sight of her companion, Mr.
+Freddie Atkins, she were to rise and walk over to Claire and myself!
+
+28. Seated in the palm-room of the other hotel, I sipped a cup of
+tea which I felt I had earned, while Claire had a little glass of the
+fancy-coloured liquids which the ladies in these places affect. The room
+was an aviary, with tropical plants and splashing fountains--and birds
+of many gorgeous hues; I gazed from one to another of the splendid
+creatures, wondering how many of them were paying for their plumage
+in the same way as my present companion. It would have taken a more
+practiced eye than mine to say which, for if I had been asked, I
+would have taken Claire for a diplomat's wife. She had not less than a
+thousand dollars' worth of raiment upon her, and its style made clear to
+all the world the fact that it had not been saved over from a previous
+season of prosperity. She was a fine creature, who could carry any
+amount of sail; with her bold, black eyes she looked thoroughly
+competent, and it was hard to believe in the fundamental softness of her
+character.
+
+I sat, looking about me, annoyed at having missed Sylvia, and only half
+listening to Claire. But suddenly she brought me to attention. "Well,"
+she said, "I've met him."
+
+"Met whom?"
+
+"Douglas."
+
+I stared at her. "Douglas van Tuiver?"
+
+She nodded; and I suppressed a cry.
+
+"I told you he'd come back," she added, with a laugh.
+
+"You mean he came to see you?"
+
+I could not hide my concern. But there was no need to, for it
+flattered Claire's vanity. "No--not yet, but he will. I met him at Jack
+Taylor's--at a supper-party."
+
+"Did he know you were to be there?"
+
+"No. But he didn't leave when he saw me."
+
+There was a pause. I could not trust myself to say anything. But Claire
+had no intention of leaving me curious. "I don't think he's happy with
+her," she remarked.
+
+"What makes you say that?"
+
+"Oh, several things. I know him, you know. He wouldn't say he was."
+
+"Perhaps he didn't want to discuss it with you."
+
+"Oh, no--not that. He isn't reserved with me."
+
+"I should think it was dangerous to discuss one's wife under such
+circumstances," I laughed.
+
+Claire laughed also. "You should have heard what Jack had to say about
+his wife! She's down at Palm Beach."
+
+"She'd better come home," I ventured.
+
+"He was telling what a dance she leads him; she raises Cain if a woman
+looks at him--and she damns every woman he meets before the woman has a
+chance to look. Jack said marriage was hell--just hell. Reggie Channing
+thought it was like a pair of old slippers that you got used to." Jack
+laughed and answered, "You're at the stage where you think you can solve
+the marriage problem by deceiving your wife!"
+
+I made no comment. Claire sat for a while, busy with her thoughts; then
+she repeated, "He wouldn't say he was happy! And he misses me, too. When
+he was going, I held his hand, and said: 'Well, Douglas, how goes it?'"
+
+"And then?" I asked; but she would not say any more.
+
+I waited a while, and then began, "Claire, let him alone. Give them a
+chance to be happy."
+
+"Why should I?" she demanded, in a voice of hostility.
+
+"She never harmed you," I said. I knew I was being foolish, but I would
+do what I could.
+
+"She took him away from me, didn't she?" And Claire's eyes were suddenly
+alight with the hatred of her outcast class. "Why did she get him?
+Why is she Mrs. van Tuiver, and I nobody? Because her father was rich,
+because she had power and position, while I had to scratch for myself in
+the world. Is that true, or isn't it?"
+
+I could not deny that it might be part of the truth. "But they're
+married now," I said, "and he loves her."
+
+"He loves me, too. And I love him still, in spite of the way he's
+treated me. He's the only man I ever really loved. Do you think I'm
+going off and hide in a hole, while she spends his money and plays the
+princess up and down the Avenue? Not much!"
+
+I fell silent. Should I set out upon another effort at "moulding water"?
+Should I give Claire one more scolding--tell her, perhaps, how her very
+features were becoming hard and ugly, as a result of the feelings she
+was harbouring? Should I recall the pretences of generosity and dignity
+she had made when we first met? I might have attempted this--but
+something held me back. After all, the one person who could decide this
+issue was Douglas van Tuiver.
+
+I rose. "Well, I have to be going. But I'll drop round now and then, and
+see what success you have."
+
+She became suddenly important. "Maybe I won't tell!"
+
+To which I answered, indifferently, "All right, it's your secret." But I
+went off without much worry over that part of it. Claire must have some
+one to whom to recount her troubles--or her triumphs, as the case might
+be.
+
+29. I had my talk with Sylvia a day or two later, and made my excuse--a
+friend from the West who had been going out of town in a few hours
+later.
+
+The seed had been growing, I found. Ever since we had last met, her life
+had consisted of arguments over the costume-ball on which her husband
+had set his heart, and at which she had refused to play the hostess.
+
+"Of course, he's right about one thing," she remarked. "We can't stay in
+New York unless we give some big affair. Everyone expects it, and there
+is no explanation except one he could not offer."
+
+"I've made a big breach in your life, Sylvia," I said.
+
+"It wasn't all you. This unhappiness has been in me--it's been like a
+boil, and you've been the poultice." (She had four younger brothers and
+sisters, so these domestic similes came naturally.)
+
+"Boils," I remarked, "are disfiguring, when they come to a head."
+
+There was a pause. "How is your child-labour bill?" she asked, abruptly.
+
+"Why, it's all right."
+
+"Didn't I see a letter in the paper saying it had been referred to a
+sub-committee, some trick to suppress it for this session?"
+
+I could not answer. I had been hoping she had not seen that letter.
+
+"If I were to come forward now," she said, "I could possibly block that
+move, couldn't I?"
+
+Still I said nothing.
+
+"If I were to take a bold stand--I mean if I were to speak at a public
+meeting, and denounce the move."
+
+"I suppose you could," I had to admit.
+
+For a long time she sat with her head bowed. "The children will have to
+wait," she said, at last, half to herself.
+
+"My dear," I answered (What else was there to answer?) "the children
+have waited a long time."
+
+"I hate to turn back--to have you say I'm a coward--"
+
+"I won't say that, Sylvia."
+
+"You will be too kind, no doubt, but that will be the truth."
+
+I tried to reassure her. But the acids I had used--intended for tougher
+skins than hers--had burned into the very bone, and now it was not
+possible to stop their action. "I must make you understand," she said,
+"how serious a thing it seems to me for a wife to stand out against
+her husband. I've been brought up to feel that it was the most terrible
+thing a woman could do."
+
+She stopped, and when she went on again her face was set like one
+enduring pain. "So this is the decision to which I have come. If I do
+anything of a public nature now, I drive my husband from me; on
+the other hand, if I take a little time, I may be able to save the
+situation. I need to educate myself, and I'm hoping I may be able to
+educate him at the same time. If I can get him to read something--if
+it's only a few paragraphs everyday--I may gradually change his point of
+view, so that he will tolerate what I believe. At any rate, I ought to
+try; I am sure that is the wise and kind and fair thing to do."
+
+"What will you do about the ball?" I asked.
+
+"I am going to take him away, out of this rush and distraction, this
+dressing and undressing, hurrying about meeting people and chattering
+about nothing."
+
+"He is willing?"
+
+"Yes; in fact, he suggested it himself. He thinks my mind is turned,
+with all the things I've been reading, and with Mrs. Frothingham, and
+Mrs. Allison, and the rest. He hopes that if I go away, I may quiet
+down and come to my senses. We have a good excuse. I have to think of my
+health just now---"
+
+She stopped, and looked away from my eyes. I saw the colour spreading in
+a slow wave over her cheeks; it was like those tints of early dawn that
+are so ravishing to the souls of poets. "In four or five months from
+now---" And she stopped again.
+
+I put my big hand gently over her small one. "I have three children of
+my own," I said.
+
+"So," she went on, "it won't seem so unreasonable. Some people know, and
+the rest will guess, and there won't be any talk--I mean, such as
+there would be if it was rumoured that Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver had got
+interested in Socialism, and refused to spend her husband's money."
+
+"I understand," I replied. "It's quite the most sensible thing, and I'm
+glad you've found a way out. I shall miss you, of course, but we can
+write each other long letters. Where are you going?"
+
+"I'm not absolutely sure. Douglas suggests a cruise in the West Indies,
+but I think I should rather be settled in one place. He has a lovely
+house in the mountains of North Carolina, and wants me to go there; but
+it's a show-place, with rich homes all round, and I know I'd soon be in
+a social whirl. I thought of the camp in the Adirondacks. It would be
+glorious to see the real woods in winter; but I lose my nerve when I
+think of the cold--I was brought up in a warm place."
+
+"A 'camp' sounds rather primitive for one in your condition," I
+suggested.
+
+"That's because you haven't been there. In reality it's a big house,
+with twenty-five rooms, and steam-heat and electric lights, and half a
+dozen men to take care of it when it's empty--as it has been for several
+years."
+
+I smiled--for I could read her thought. "Are you going to be unhappy
+because you can't occupy all your husband's homes?"
+
+"There's one other I prefer," she continued, unwilling to be made to
+smile. "They call it a 'fishing lodge,' and it's down in the Florida
+Keys. They're putting a railroad through there, but meantime you can
+only get to it by a launch. From the pictures, it's the most heavenly
+spot imaginable. Fancy running about those wonderful green waters in a
+motor-boat!"
+
+"It sounds quite alluring," I replied. "But isn't it remote for you?"
+
+"We're not so very far from Key West; and my husband means to have a
+physician with us in any case. The advantage of being in a small place
+is that we couldn't entertain if we wanted to. I can have my Aunt Varina
+come to stay with me, a dear, sweet soul who loves me devotedly; and
+then if I find I have to have some new ideas, perhaps you can come---"
+
+"I don't think your husband would favour that," I said.
+
+She put her hand out to me in a quick gesture. "I don't mean to give up
+our friendship! I want you to understand, I intend to go on studying and
+growing. I am doing what he asked me--it's right that I should think of
+his wishes, and of the health of my child. But the child will be growing
+up, and sooner or later my husband must grant me the right to think,
+to have a life of my own. You must stand by me and help me, whatever
+happens."
+
+I gave her my hand on that, and so we parted--for some time, as it
+proved. I went up to Albany once more, in a last futile effort to save
+our precious bill; and while I was there I got a note from her, saying
+that she was leaving for the Florida Keys.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II. SYLVIA AS MOTHER
+
+
+For three months after this I had nothing but letters from Sylvia. She
+proved to be an excellent letter-writer, full of verve and colour.
+I would not say that she poured out her soul to me, but she gave me
+glimpses of her states of mind, and the progress of her domestic drama.
+
+First, she described the place to which she had come; a ravishing spot,
+where any woman ought to be happy. It was a little island, fringed with
+a border of cocoanut-palms, which rustled and whispered day and night in
+the breeze. It was covered with tropical foliage, and there was a long,
+rambling bungalow, with screened "galleries," and a beach of hard white
+sand in front. The water was blue, dazzling with sunshine, and dotted
+with distant green islands; all of it, air, water, and islands, were
+warm. "I don't realize till I get here," she said, "I am never really
+happy in the North. I wrap myself against the assaults of a cruel enemy.
+But here I am at home; I cast off my furs, I stretch out my arms, I
+bloom. I believe I shall quite cease to think for a while--I shall
+forget all storms and troubles, and bask on the sand like a lizard.
+
+"And the water! Mary, you cannot imagine such water; why should it be
+blue on top, and green when you look down into it? I have a little skiff
+of my own in which I drift, and I have been happy for hours, studying
+the bottom; you see every colour of the rainbow, and all as clear as in
+an aquarium. I have been fishing, too, and have caught a tarpon. That
+is supposed to be a great adventure, and it really is quite thrilling to
+feel the monstrous creature struggling with you--though, of course, my
+arms soon gave out, and I had to turn him over to my husband. This is
+one of the famous fishing-grounds of the world, and I am glad of that,
+because it will keep the men happy while I enjoy the sunshine.
+
+"I have discovered a fascinating diversion," she wrote, in a second
+letter. "I make them take me in the launch to one of the loneliest of
+the keys; they go off to fish, and I have the whole day to myself, and
+am as happy as a child on a picnic! I roam the beach, I take off my
+shoes and stockings--there are no newspaper reporters snapping pictures.
+I dare not go far in, for there are huge black creatures with dangerous
+stinging tails; they rush away in a cloud of sand when I approach, but
+the thought of stepping upon one by accident is terrifying. However,
+I let the little wavelets wash round my toes, and I try to grab little
+fish, and I pick up lovely shells; and then I go on, and I see a huge
+turtle waddling to the water, and I dash up, and would stop him if I
+dared, and then I find his eggs--such an adventure!
+
+"I am the prey of strange appetites and cravings. I have a delicious
+luncheon with me, but suddenly the one thing in the world I want to
+eat is turtle-eggs. I have no matches with me, and I do not know how to
+build a fire like the Indians, so I have to hide the eggs back in the
+sand until to-morrow. I hope the turtle does not move them--and that I
+have not lost my craving in the meantime!
+
+"Then I go exploring inland. These islands were once the haunts of
+pirates, so I may imagine all sorts of romantic things. What I find
+are lemon-trees. I do not know if they are wild, or if the key was once
+cultivated; the lemons are huge in size, and nearly all skin, but the
+flavour is delicious. Turtle-eggs with wild lemon-juice! And then I go
+on and come to a mangrove-swamp--dark and forbidding, a grisly place;
+you imagine the trees are in torment, with limbs and roots tangled like
+writhing serpents. I tiptoe in a little way, and then get frightened,
+and run back to the beach.
+
+"I see on the sand a mysterious little yellow creature, running like the
+wind; I make a dash, and get between him and his hole; and so he stands,
+crouching on guard, staring at me, and I at him. He is some sort of
+crab, but he stands on two legs like a caricature of a man; he has two
+big weapons upraised for battle, and staring black eyes stuck out on
+long tubes. He is an uncanny thing to look at; but then suddenly the
+idea comes, How do I seem to him? I realize that he is alive; a tiny
+mite of hunger for life, of fear and resolution. I think, How lonely he
+must be! And I want to tell him that I love him, and would not hurt him
+for the world; but I have no way to make him understand me, and all I
+can do is to go away and leave him. I go, thinking what a strange
+place the world is, with so many living things, each shut away apart by
+himself, unable to understand the others or make the others understand
+him. This is what is called philosophy, is it not? Tell me some books
+where these things are explained....
+
+"I am reading all you sent me. When I grew tired of exploring the key, I
+lay down in the shade of a palm-tree, and read--guess what? 'Number Five
+John Street'! So all this loveliness vanished, and I was back in the
+world's nightmare. An extraordinary book! I decided that it would be
+good for my husband, so I read him a few paragraphs; but I found that it
+only irritated him. He wants me to rest, he says--he can't see why I've
+come away to the Florida Keys to read about the slums of London.
+
+"My hope of gradually influencing his mind has led to a rather appalling
+discovery--that he has the same intention as regards me! He too has
+brought a selection of books, and reads to me a few pages every day, and
+explains what they mean. He calls _this_ resting! I am no match for
+him, of course--I never realized more keenly the worthlessness of my
+education. But I see in a general way where his arguments tend--that
+life is something that has grown, and is not in the power of men to
+change; but even if he could convince me of this, I should not find it a
+source of joy. I have a feeling always that if you were here, you would
+know something to answer.
+
+"The truth is that I am so pained by the conflict between us that I
+cannot argue at all. I find myself wondering what our marriage would
+have been like if we had discovered that we had the same ideas and
+interests. There are days and nights at a time when I tell myself that
+I ought to believe what my husband believes, that I ought never have
+allowed myself to think of anything else. But that really won't do as a
+life-programme; I tried it years ago with my dear mother and father. Did
+I ever tell you that my mother is firmly convinced in her heart that I
+am to suffer eternally in a real hell of fire because I do not believe
+certain things about the Bible? She still has visions of it--though not
+so bad since she turned me over to a husband!
+
+"Now it is my husband who is worried about my ideas. He is reading a
+book by Burke, a well-known old writer. The book deals with English
+history, which I don't know much about, but I see that it resents modern
+changes, and the whole spirit of change. And Mary, why can't I feel that
+way? I really ought to love those old and stately things, I ought to
+be reverent to the past; I was brought up that way. Sometimes I tremble
+when I realize how very flippant and cynical I am. I seem to see the
+wrong side of everything, so that I couldn't believe in it if I wanted
+to!"
+
+2. Her letters were full of the wonders of Nature about her. There was
+a snow-white egret who made his home upon her island; she watched his
+fishing operations, and meant to find his nest, so as to watch his
+young. The men made a trip into the Everglades, and brought back
+wonder-tales of flocks of flamingoes making scarlet clouds in the sky,
+huge colonies of birds' nests crowded like a city. They had brought home
+a young one, which screamed all day to be stuffed with fish.
+
+A cousin of Sylvia's, Harley Chilton, had come to visit her. He had
+taken van Tuiver on hunting-trips during the latter's courtship days,
+and now was a good fishing-companion. He was not allowed to discover the
+state of affairs between Sylvia and her husband, but he saw his cousin
+reading serious books, and his contribution to the problem was to tell
+her that she would get wrinkles in her face, and that even her feet
+would grow big, like those of the ladies in New England.
+
+Also, there was the young physician who kept watch over Sylvia's
+health; a dapper little man with pink and white complexion, and a brown
+moustache from which he could not keep his fingers. He had a bungalow
+to himself, but sometimes he went along on the launch-trips, and Sylvia
+thought she observed wrinkles of amusement round his eyes whenever she
+differed from her husband on the subject of Burke. She suspected
+this young man of not telling all his ideas to his multi-millionaire
+patients, and she was entertained by the prospect of probing him.
+
+Then came Mrs. Varina Tuis; who since the tragic cutting of her own
+domestic knot, had given her life to the service of the happier members
+of the Castleman line. She was now to be companion and counsellor to
+Sylvia; and on the very day of her arrival she discovered the chasm that
+was yawning in her niece's life.
+
+"It's wonderful," wrote Sylvia, "the intuition of the Castleman women.
+We were in the launch, passing one of the viaducts of the new railroad,
+and Aunt Varina exclaimed, 'What a wonderful piece of work!' 'Yes,' put
+in my husband, 'but don't let Sylvia hear you say it.' 'Why not?' she
+asked; and he replied, 'She'll tell you how many hours a day the poor
+Dagoes have to work.' That was all; but I saw Aunt Varina give a quick
+glance at me, and I saw that she was not fooled by my efforts to make
+conversation. It was rather horrid of Douglas, for he knows that I love
+these old people, and do not want them to know about my trouble. But it
+is characteristic of him--when he is annoyed he seldom tries to spare
+others.
+
+"As soon as we were alone, Aunt Varina began, 'Sylvia, my dear, what
+does it mean? What have you done to worry your husband?'
+
+"You would be entertained if I could remember the conversation. I tried
+to dodge the trouble by answering off-hand, 'Douglas had eaten too many
+turtle-eggs for luncheon '--this being a man-like thing, that any dear
+old lady would understand. But she was too shrewd. I had to explain
+to her that I was learning to think, and this sent her into a perfect
+panic.
+
+"'You actually mean, my child, that you are thinking about subjects to
+which your husband objects, and you refuse to stop when he asks you to?
+Surely you must know that he has some good reason for objecting.'
+
+"'I suppose so,' I said, 'but he has not made that reason clear to me;
+and certainly I have a right--'
+
+"She would not hear any more than that. 'Right, Sylvia? Right? Are you
+claiming the right to drive your husband from you?'
+
+"'But surely I can't regulate all my thinking by the fear of driving my
+husband from me!'
+
+"'Sylvia, you take my breath away. Where did you get such ideas?'
+
+"'But answer me, Aunt Varina--can I?'
+
+"'What thinking is as important to a woman as thinking how to please
+a good, kind husband? What would become of her family if she no longer
+tried to do this?'
+
+"So you see, we opened up a large subject. I know you consider me a
+backward person, and you may be interested to learn that there are some
+to whom I seem a terrifying rebel. Picture poor Aunt Varina, her old
+face full of concern, repeating over and over, 'My child, my child, I
+hope I have come in time! Don't scorn the advice of a woman who has paid
+bitterly for her mistakes. You have a good husband, a man who loves you
+devotedly; you are one of the most fortunate of women--now do not throw
+your happiness away!'
+
+"'Aunt Varina,' I said (I forget if I ever told you that her husband
+gambled and drank, and finally committed suicide) 'Aunt Varina, do you
+really believe that every man is so anxious to get away from his wife
+that it must take her whole stock of energy, her skill in diplomacy, to
+keep him?'
+
+"'Sylvia,' she answered, 'you put things so strangely, you use such
+horribly crude language, I don't know how to talk to you!' (That must be
+your fault, Mary. I never heard such a charge before.) 'I can only tell
+you this--that the wife who permits herself to think about other things
+than her duty to her husband and her children is taking a frightful
+risk. She is playing with fire, Sylvia--she will realize too late what
+it means to set aside the wisdom of her sex, the experience of other
+women for ages and ages!'
+
+"So there you are, Mary! I am studying another unwritten book, the
+Maxims of Aunt Varina!
+
+"She has found the remedy for my troubles, the cure for my disease of
+thought--I am to sew! I tell her that I have more clothes than I can
+wear in a dozen seasons, and she answers, in an awesome voice, 'There is
+the little stranger!' When I point out that the little stranger will
+be expected to have a 'layette' costing many thousands of dollars, she
+replies, 'They will surely permit him to wear some of the things
+his mother's hands have made.' So, behold me, seated on the gallery,
+learning fancy stitches--and with Kautsky on the Social Revolution
+hidden away in the bottom of my sewing-bag!"
+
+3. The weeks passed. The legislature at Albany adjourned, without regard
+to our wishes; and so, like the patient spider whose web is destroyed,
+we set to work upon a new one. So much money must be raised, so many
+articles must be written, so many speeches delivered, so many people
+seized upon and harried and wrought to a state of mind where they were
+dangerous to the future career of legislators. Such is the process of
+social reform under the private property regime; a process which the
+pure and simple reformers imagine we shall tolerate for ever--God save
+us!
+
+Sylvia asked me for the news, and I told it to her--how we had failed,
+and what we had to do next. So pretty soon there came by registered mail
+a little box, in which I found a diamond ring. "I cannot ask him for
+money just now," she explained, "but here is something that has been
+mine from girlhood. It cost about four hundred dollars--this for your
+guidance in selling it. Not a day passes that I do not see many times
+that much wasted; so take it for the cause." Queen Isabella and her
+jewels!
+
+In this letter she told me of a talk she had had with her husband on the
+"woman-problem." She had thought at first that it was going to prove a
+helpful talk--he had been in a fairer mood than she was usually able to
+induce. "He evaded some of my questions," she explained, "but I don't
+think it was deliberate; it is simply the evasive attitude of mind which
+the whole world takes. He says he does not think that women are inferior
+to men, only that they are different; the mistake is for them to try to
+become _like_ men. It is the old proposition of 'charm,' you see. I put
+that to him, and he admitted that he did like to be 'charmed.'
+
+"I said, 'You wouldn't, if you knew as much about the process as I do.'
+
+"'Why not?' he asked.
+
+"'Because, it's not an honest process. It's not a straight way for one
+sex to deal with the other.'
+
+"He asked what I meant by that; but then, remembering the cautions of
+my great-aunt, I laughed. 'If you are going to compel me to use the
+process, you can hardly expect me to tell you the secret of it.'
+
+"'Then there's no use trying to talk,' he said.
+
+"'Ah, but there is!' I exclaimed. 'You admit that I have 'charm'--dozens
+of other men admitted it. And so it ought to count for something if
+I declare that I know it's not an honest thing--that it depends upon
+trickery, and appeals to the worst qualities in a man. For instance, his
+vanity. "Flatter him," Lady Dee used to say. "He'll swallow it." And he
+will--I never knew a man to refuse a compliment in my life. His love of
+domination. "If you want anything, make him think that _he_ wants it!"
+His egotism. She had a bitter saying--I can hear the very tones of her
+voice: "When in doubt, talk about HIM." That is what is called "charm"!'
+
+"'I don't seem to feel it,' he said.
+
+"' No, because now you are behind the scenes. But when you were in
+front, you felt it, you can't deny. And you would feel it again, any
+time I chose to use it. But I want to know if there is not some honest
+way a woman can interest a man. The question really comes to this--Can a
+man love a woman for what she really is?'
+
+"'I should say,' he said, 'that it depends upon the woman.'
+
+"I admitted this was a plausible answer. 'But you loved me, when I made
+myself a mystery to you. But now that I am honest with you, you have
+made it clear that you don't like it, that you won't have it. And that
+is the problem that women have to face. It is a fact that the women
+of our family have always ruled the men; but they've done it by
+indirection--nobody ever thought seriously of "women's rights" in
+Castleman County. But you see, women _have_ rights; and somehow or other
+they will fool the men, or else the men must give up the idea that
+they are the superior sex, and have the right, or the ability, to rule
+women.'
+
+"Then I saw how little he had followed me. 'There has to be a head to
+the family,' he said.
+
+"I answered, 'There have been cases in history of a king and queen
+ruling together, and getting along very well. Why not the same thing in
+a family?'
+
+"'That's all right, so far as the things of the family are concerned.
+But such affairs as business and politics are in the sphere of men;
+and women cannot meddle in them without losing their best qualities as
+women.'
+
+"And so there we were. I won't repeat his arguments, for doubtless you
+have read enough anti-suffrage literature. The thing I noticed was that
+if I was very tactful and patient, I could apparently carry him along
+with me; but when the matter came up again, I would discover that he
+was back where he had been before. A woman must accept the guidance of
+a man; she must take the man's word for the things that he understands.
+'But suppose the man is _wrong?_' I said; and there we stopped--there we
+shall stop always, I begin to fear. I agree with him that woman should
+obey man--so long as man is right!"
+
+4. Her letters did not all deal with this problem. In spite of the
+sewing, she found time to read a number of books, and we argued about
+these. Then, too, she had been probing her young doctor, and had made
+interesting discoveries about him. For one thing, he was full of awe
+and admiration for her; and her awakening mind found material for
+speculation in this.
+
+"Here is this young man; he thinks he is a scientist, he rather prides
+himself upon being cold-blooded; yet a cunning woman could twist him
+round her finger. He had an unhappy love-affair when he was young, so he
+confided to me; and now, in his need and loneliness, a beautiful woman
+is transformed into something supernatural in his imagination--she is
+like a shimmering soap-bubble, that he blows with his own breath. I know
+that I could never get him to see the real truth about me; I might tell
+him that I have let myself be tied up in a golden net--but he would only
+marvel at my spirituality. Oh, the women I have seen trading upon the
+credulity of men! And when I think how I did this myself! If men
+were wise, they would give us the vote, and a share in the world's
+work--anything that would bring us out into the light of day, and break
+the spell of mystery that hangs round us!
+
+"By the way," she wrote in another letter, "there will be trouble if you
+come down here. I was telling Dr. Perrin about you, and your ideas about
+fasting, and mental healing, and the rest of your fads. He got very
+much excited. It seems that he takes his diploma seriously, and he's not
+willing to be taught by amateur experiments. He wanted me to take some
+pills, and I refused, and I think now he blames you for it. He has found
+a bond of sympathy with my husband, who proves his respect for authority
+by taking whatever he is told to take. Dr. Perrin got his medical
+training here in the South, and I imagine he's ten or twenty years
+behind the rest of the medical world. Douglas picked him out because
+he'd met him socially. It makes no difference to me--because I don't
+mean to have any doctoring done to me!"
+
+Then, on top of these things, would come a cry from her soul. "Mary,
+what will you do if some day you get a letter from me confessing that I
+am not happy? I dare not say a word to my own people. I am supposed to
+be at the apex of human triumph, and I have to play that role to keep
+from hurting them. I know that if my dear old father got an inkling of
+the truth, it would kill him. My one real solid consolation is that I
+have helped him, that I have lifted a money-burden from his life; I have
+done that, I tell myself, over and over; but then I wonder, have I done
+anything but put the reckoning off? I have given all his other children
+a new excuse for extravagance, an impulse towards worldliness which they
+did not need.
+
+"There is my sister Celeste, for example. I don't think I have told you
+about her. She made her _debut_ last fall, and was coming up to New York
+to stay with me this winter. She had it all arranged in her mind to make
+a rich marriage; I was to give her the _entree_--and now I have been
+selfish, and thought of my own desires, and gone away. Can I say to her,
+Be warned by me, I have made a great match, and it has not brought me
+happiness? She would not understand, she would say I was foolish. She
+would say, 'If I had your luck, _I_ would be happy.' And the worst of it
+is, it would be true.
+
+"You see the position I am in with the rest of the children. I cannot
+say, 'You are spending too much of papa's money, it is wrong for you to
+sign cheques and trust to his carelessness.' I have had my share of the
+money, I have lined my own nest. All I can do is to buy dresses and hats
+for Celeste; and know that she will use these to fill her girl-friends
+with envy, and make scores of other families live beyond their means."
+
+5. Sylvia's pregnancy was moving to its appointed end. She wrote me
+beautifully about it, much more frankly and simply than she could have
+brought herself to talk. She recalled to me my own raptures, and
+also, my own heartbreak. "Mary! Mary! I felt the child to-day! Such a
+sensation, I could not have credited it if anyone had told me. I almost
+fainted. There is something in me that wants to turn back, that is
+afraid to go on with such experiences. I do not wish to be seized in
+spite of myself, and made to feel things beyond my control. I wander off
+down the beach, and hide myself, and cry and cry. I think I could almost
+pray again."
+
+And then again, "I am in ecstasy, because I am to bear a child, a child
+of my own! Oh, wonderful, wonderful! But suddenly my ecstasy is shot
+through with terror, because the father of this child is a man I do not
+love. There is no use trying to deceive myself--nor you! I must have one
+human soul with whom I can talk about it as it really is. I do not love
+him, I never did love him, I never shall love him!
+
+"Oh, how could they have all been so mistaken? Here is Aunt Varina--one
+of those who helped to persuade me into this marriage. She told me that
+love would come; it seemed to be her idea--my mother had it too--that
+you had only to submit yourself to a man, to follow and obey him, and
+love would take possession of your heart. I tried credulously, and it
+did not happen as they promised. And now, I am to bear him a child; and
+that will bind us together for ever!
+
+"Oh, the despair of it--I do not love the father of my child! I say, The
+child will be partly his, perhaps more his than mine. It will be like
+him--it will have this quality and that, the very qualities, perhaps,
+that are a source of distress to me in the father. So I shall have these
+things before me day and night, all the rest of my life; I shall have to
+see them growing and hardening; it will be a perpetual crucifixion of
+my mother-love. I seek to comfort myself by saying, The child can be
+trained differently, so that he will not have these qualities. But then
+I think, No, you cannot train him as you wish. Your husband will have
+rights to the child, rights superior to your own. Then I foresee the
+most dreadful strife between us.
+
+"A shrewd girl-friend once told me that I ought to be better or worse; I
+ought not to see people's faults as I do, or else I ought to love people
+less. And I can see that I ought to have been too good to make this
+marriage, or else not too good to make the best of it. I know that
+I might be happy as Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver, if I could think of the
+worldly advantages, and the fact that my child will inherit them. But
+instead, I see them as a trap, in which not only ourselves but the child
+is caught, and from which I cannot save us. Oh, what a mistake a woman
+makes when she marries a man with the idea that she is going to change
+him! He will not change, he will not have the need of change suggested
+to him. He wants _peace_ in his home--which means that he wants to be
+what he is.
+
+"Sometimes I can study the situation quite coolly, and as if it didn't
+concern me at all. He has required me to subject my mind to his. But
+he will not be content with a general capitulation; he must have a
+surrender from each individual soldier, from every rebel hidden in the
+hills. He tracks them out (my poor, straggling, feeble ideas) and either
+they take the oath of allegiance, or they are buried where they lie. The
+process is like the spoiling of a child, I find; the more you give him,
+the more he wants. And if any little thing is refused, then you see him
+set out upon a regular campaign to break you down and get it."
+
+A month or more later she wrote: "Poor Douglas is getting restless. He
+has caught every kind of fish there is to catch, and hunted every kind
+of animal and bird, in and out of season. Harley has gone home, and so
+have our other guests; it would be embarrassing to me to have company
+now. So Douglas has no one but the doctor and myself and my poor aunt.
+He has spoken several times of our going away; but I do not want to go,
+and I think I ought to consider my own health at this critical time. It
+is hot here, but I simply thrive in it--I never felt in better health.
+So I asked him to go up to New York, or visit somewhere for a while,
+and let me stay here until my baby is born. Does that seem so very
+unreasonable? It does not to me, but poor Aunt Varina is in agony about
+it--I am letting my husband drift away from me!
+
+"I speculate about my lot as a woman; I see the bitterness and the
+sorrow of my sex through the ages. I have become physically misshapen,
+so that I am no longer attractive to him. I am no longer active and
+free, I can no longer go about with him; on the contrary, I am a burden,
+and he is a man who never tolerated a burden before. What this means is
+that I have lost the magic hold of sex.
+
+"As a woman it was my business to exert all my energies to maintain it.
+And I know how I could restore it now; there is young Dr. Perrin! _He_
+does not find me a burden, _he_ would tolerate any deficiencies! And
+I can see my husband on the alert in an instant, if I become too much
+absorbed in discussing your health-theories with my handsome young
+guardian!
+
+"This is one of the recognized methods of keeping your husband; I
+learned from Lady Dee all there is to know about it. But I would find
+the method impossible now, even if my happiness were dependent upon
+retaining my husband's love. I should think of the rights of my friend,
+the little doctor. That is one point to note for the 'new' woman, is it
+not? You may mention it in your next suffrage-speech!
+
+"There are other methods, of course. I have a mind, and I might turn its
+powers to entertaining him, instead of trying to solve the problems of
+the universe. But to do this, I should have to believe that it was the
+one thing in the world for me to do; and I have permitted a doubt of
+that to gain entrance to my brain! My poor aunt's exhortations inspire
+me to efforts to regain the faith of my mothers, but I simply cannot--I
+cannot! She sits by me with the terror of all the women of all the ages
+in her eyes. I am losing a man!
+
+"I don't know if you have ever set out to hold a man--deliberately,
+I mean. Probably you haven't. That bitter maxim of Lady Dee's is the
+literal truth of it--'When in doubt, talk about HIM!' If you will
+tactfully and shrewdly keep a man talking about himself, his tastes,
+his ideas, his work and the importance of it, there is never the least
+possibility of your boring him. You must not just tamely agree with him,
+of course; if you hint a difference now and then, and make him convince
+you, he will find that stimulating; or if you can manage not to be quite
+convinced, but sweetly open to conviction, he will surely call again.
+'Keep him busy every minute,' Lady Dee used to say. 'Run away with him
+now and then--like a spirited horse!' And she would add, 'But don't let
+him drop the reins!'
+
+"You can have no idea how many women there are in the world deliberately
+playing such parts. Some of them admit it; others just do the thing that
+is easiest, and would die of horror if they were told what it is. It
+is the whole of the life of a successful society woman, young or old.
+Pleasing a man! Waiting upon his moods, piquing him, flattering him,
+feeding his vanity--'charming' him! That is what Aunt Varina wants me to
+do now; if I am not too crude in my description of the process, she has
+no hesitation in admitting the truth. It is what she tried to do, it is
+what almost every woman has done who has held a family together and made
+a home. I was reading _Jane Eyre_ the other day. _There_ is your woman's
+ideal of an imperious and impetuous lover! Listen to him, when his mood
+is on him!--
+
+"I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night; and that
+is why I sent for you; the fire and the chandelier were not sufficient
+company for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none of these can talk.
+To-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss what importunes, and
+recall what pleases. It would please me now to draw you out--to learn
+more of you--therefore speak!"
+
+6. It was now May, and Sylvia's time was little more than a month off.
+She had been urging me to come and visit her, but I had refused, knowing
+that my presence must necessarily be disturbing to both her husband and
+her aunt. But now she wrote that her husband was going back to New
+York. "He was staying out of a sense of duty to me," she said. "But his
+discontent was so apparent that I had to point out to him that he was
+doing harm to me as well as to himself.
+
+"I doubt if you will want to come here now. The last of the winter
+visitors have left. It is really hot, so hot that you cannot get cool by
+going into the water. Yet I am revelling in it; I wear almost nothing,
+and that white; and even the suspicious Dr. Perrin cannot but admit that
+I am thriving; his references to pills are purely formal.
+
+"Lately I have not permitted myself to think much about the situation
+between my husband and myself. I cannot blame him, and I cannot blame
+myself, and I am trying to keep my peace of mind till my baby is born. I
+have found myself following half-instinctively the procedure you told
+me about; I talk to my own subconscious mind, and to the baby--I command
+them to be well. I whisper to them things that are not so very far from
+praying; but I don't think my poor dear mamma would recognize it in its
+new scientific dress!
+
+"But sometimes I can't help thinking of the child and its future,
+and then all of a sudden my heart is ready to break with pity for the
+child's father! I have the consciousness that I do not love him, and
+that he has always known it--and that makes me remorseful. But I told
+him the truth before we married--he promised to be patient with me till
+I had learned to love him! Now I want to burst into tears and cry aloud,
+'Oh, why did you do it? Why did I let myself be persuaded into this
+marriage?'
+
+"I tried to have a talk with him last night, after he had decided to go
+away. I was full of pity, and a desire to help. I said I wanted him
+to know that no matter how much we might disagree about some things,
+I meant to learn to live happily with him. We must find some sort of
+compromise, for the sake of the child, if not for ourselves; we must not
+let the child suffer. He answered coldly that there would be no need
+for the child to suffer, the child would have the best the world could
+afford. I suggested that there might arise some question as to just
+what the best was; but to that he said nothing. He went on to rebuke my
+discontent; had he not given me everything a woman could want? he asked.
+He was too polite to mention money; but he said that I had leisure and
+entire freedom from care. I was persisting in assuming cares, while he
+was doing all in his power to prevent it.
+
+"And that was as far as we got. I gave up the discussion, for we should
+only have gone the old round over again.
+
+"Douglas has taken up a saying that my cousin brought with him: 'What
+you don't know won't hurt you!' I think that before he left, Harley had
+begun to suspect that all was not well between my husband and myself,
+and he felt it necessary to give me a little friendly counsel. He was
+tactful, and politely vague, but I understood him--my worldly-wise young
+cousin. I think that saying of his sums up the philosophy that he would
+teach to all women--'What you don't know won't hurt you!'"
+
+7. A week or so later Sylvia wrote me that her husband was in New
+York. And I waited another week, for good measure, and then one morning
+dropped in for a call upon Claire Lepage.
+
+Why did I do it? you ask. I had no definite purpose--only a general
+opposition to the philosophy of Cousin Harley.
+
+I was ushered into Claire's boudoir, which was still littered with last
+evening's apparel. She sat in a dressing-gown with resplendent red roses
+on it, and brushed the hair out of her eyes, and apologized for not
+being ready for callers.
+
+"I've just had a talking to from Larry," she explained.
+
+"Larry?" said I, inquiringly; for Claire had always informed me
+elaborately that van Tuiver had been her one departure from propriety,
+and always would be.
+
+Apparently she had now reached a stage in her career where pretences
+were too much trouble. "I've come to the conclusion that I don't know
+how to manage men," she said. "I never can get along with one for any
+time."
+
+I remarked that I had had the same experience; though of course I had
+only tried it once. "Tell me," I said, "who's Larry?"
+
+"There's his picture." She reached into a drawer of her dresser.
+
+I saw a handsome blonde gentleman, who looked old enough to know better.
+"He doesn't seem especially forbidding," I said.
+
+"That's just the trouble--you can never tell about men!"
+
+I noted a date on the picture. "He seems to be an old friend. You never
+told me about him."
+
+"He doesn't like being told about. He has a troublesome wife."
+
+I winced inwardly, but all I said was, "I see."
+
+"He's a stock-broker; and he got 'squeezed,' so he says, and it's
+made him cross--and careful with his money, too. That's trying, in a
+stock-broker, you must admit." She laughed. "And still he's just as
+particular--wants to have his own way in everything, wants to say whom I
+shall know and where I shall go. I said, 'I have all the inconveniences
+of matrimony, and none of the advantages.'"
+
+I made some remark upon the subject of the emancipation of woman; and
+Claire, who was now leaning back in her chair, combing out her long
+black tresses, smiled at me out of half-closed eyelids. "Guess whom he's
+objecting to!" she said. And when I pronounced it impossible, she looked
+portentous. "There are bigger fish in the sea than Larry Edgewater!"
+
+"And you've hooked one?" I asked, innocently.
+
+"Well, I don't mean to give up all my friends."
+
+I went on casually to talk about my plans for the summer; and a few
+minutes later, after a lull--"By the way," remarked Claire, "Douglas van
+Tuiver is in town."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I've seen him."
+
+"Indeed! Where?"
+
+"I got Jack Taylor to invite me again. You see, when Douglas fell in
+love with his peerless southern beauty, Jack predicted he'd get over it
+even more quickly. Now he's interested in proving he was right."
+
+I waited a moment, and then asked, carelessly, "Is he having any
+success?"
+
+"I said, 'Douglas, why don't you come to see me?' He was in a playful
+mood. 'What do you want? A new automobile?' I answered, 'I haven't any
+automobile, new or old, and you know it. What I want is you. I always
+loved you--surely I proved that to you.' 'What you proved to me was that
+you were a sort of wild-cat. I'm afraid of you. And anyway, I'm tired of
+women. I'll never trust another one.'"
+
+"About the same conclusion as you've come to regarding men," I remarked.
+
+"'Douglas,' I said, 'come and see me, and we'll talk over old times.
+You may trust me, I swear I'll not tell a living soul.' 'You've been
+consoling yourself with someone else,' he said. But I knew he was only
+guessing. He was seeking for something that would worry me, and he said,
+'You're drinking too much. People that drink can't be trusted.' 'You
+know,' I replied, 'I didn't drink too much when I was with you. I'm not
+drinking as much as you are, right now.' He answered, 'I've been off on
+a desert island for God knows how many months, and I'm celebrating my
+escape.' 'Well,' I answered, 'let me help celebrate!'"
+
+"What did he say to that?"
+
+Claire resumed the combing of her silken hair, and smiled a slow smile
+at me. "'You may trust me, Douglas,' I said. 'I swear I'll not tell a
+living soul!'"
+
+"Of course," I remarked, appreciatively, "that means he said he'd come!"
+
+"_I_ haven't told you!" was the reply.
+
+8. I knew that I had only to wait for Claire to tell me the rest of the
+story. But her mind went off on another tack. "Sylvia's going to have a
+baby," she remarked, suddenly.
+
+"That ought to please her husband," I said.
+
+"You can see him beginning to swell with paternal pride!--so Jack said.
+He sent for a bottle of some famous kind of champagne that he has, to
+celebrate the new 'millionaire baby.' (They used to call Douglas that,
+once upon a time.) Before they got through, they had made it triplets.
+Jack says Douglas is the one man in New York who can afford them."
+
+"Your friend Jack seems to be what they call a wag," I commented.
+
+"It isn't everybody that Douglas will let carry on with him like that.
+He takes himself seriously, as a rule. And he expects to take the new
+baby seriously."
+
+"It generally binds a man tighter to his wife, don't you think?"
+
+I watched her closely, and saw her smile at my naivete. "No," she said,
+"I don't. It leaves them restless. It's a bore all round."
+
+I did not dispute her authority; she ought to know her husbands, I
+thought.
+
+She was facing the mirror, putting up her hair; and in the midst of the
+operation she laughed. "All that evening, while we were having a jolly
+time at Jack Taylor's, Larry was here waiting."
+
+"Then no wonder you had a row!" I said.
+
+"He hadn't told me he was coming. And was I to sit here all night alone?
+It's always the same--I never knew a man who really in his heart was
+willing for you to have any friends, or any sort of good time without
+him."
+
+"Perhaps," I replied, "he's afraid you mightn't be true to him." I
+meant this for a jest, of the sort that Claire and her friends would
+appreciate. Little did I foresee where it was to lead us!
+
+I remember how once on the farm my husband had a lot of dynamite,
+blasting out stumps; and my emotions when I discovered the children
+innocently playing with a stick of it. Something like these children I
+seem now to myself, looking back on this visit to Claire, and our talk.
+
+"You know," she observed, without smiling, "Larry's got a bee in his
+hat. I've seen men who were jealous, and kept watch over women, but
+never one that was obsessed like him."
+
+"What's it about?"
+
+"He's been reading a book about diseases, and he tells me tales about
+what may happen to me, and what may happen to him. When you've listened
+a while, you can see microbes crawling all over the walls of the room."
+
+"Well----" I began.
+
+"I was sick of his lecturing, so I said, 'Larry, you'll have to do like
+me--have everything there is, and get over it, and then you won't need
+to worry.'"
+
+I sat still, staring at her; I think I must have stopped breathing.
+At the end of an eternity, I said, "You've not really had any of these
+diseases, Claire?"
+
+"Who hasn't?" she countered.
+
+Again there was a pause. "You know," I observed, "some of them are
+dangerous----"
+
+"Oh, of course," she answered, lightly. "There's one that makes your
+nose fall in and your hair fall out--but you haven't seen anything like
+that happening to me!"
+
+"But there's another," I hinted--"one that's much more common." And when
+she did not take the hint, I continued, "Also it's more serious than
+people generally realize."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "What of it? Men bring you these things, and
+it's part of the game. So what's the use of bothering?"
+
+9. There was a long silence; I had to have time to decide what course to
+take. There was so much that I wanted to get from her, and so much that
+I wanted to hide from her!
+
+"I don't want to bore you, Claire," I began, finally, "but really this
+is a matter of importance to you. You see, I've been reading up on the
+subject as well as Larry. The doctors have been making new discoveries.
+They used to think this was just a local infection, like a cold, but now
+they find it's a blood disease, and has the gravest consequences. For
+one thing, it causes most of the surgical operations that have to be
+performed on women."
+
+"Maybe so," she said, still indifferent. "I've had two operations. But
+it's ancient history now."
+
+"You mayn't have reached the end yet," I persisted. "People suppose they
+are cured of gonorrhea, when really it's only suppressed, and is liable
+to break out again at any time."
+
+"Yes, I knew. That's some of the information Larry had been making love
+to me with."
+
+"It may get into the joints and cause rheumatism; it may cause
+neuralgia; it's been known to affect the heart. Also it causes
+two-thirds of all the blindness in infants----"
+
+And suddenly Claire laughed. "That's Sylvia Castleman's lookout it seems
+to me!"
+
+"Oh! OH!" I whispered, losing my self-control.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked, and I noticed that her voice had become
+sharp.
+
+"Do you really mean what you've just implied?"
+
+"That Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver may have to pay something for what she has
+done to me? Well, what of it?" And suddenly Claire flew into a passion,
+as she always did when our talk came to her rival. "Why shouldn't she
+take chances the same as the rest of us? Why should I have it and she
+get off?"
+
+I fought for my composure. After a pause, I said: "It's not a thing
+we want anybody to have, Claire. We don't want anybody to take such a
+chance. The girl ought to have been told."
+
+"Told? Do you imagine she would have given up her great catch?"
+
+"She might have, how can you be sure? Anyhow, she should have had the
+chance."
+
+There was a long silence. I was so shaken that it was hard for me to
+find words. "As a matter of fact," said Claire, grimly, "I thought of
+warning her myself. There'd have been some excitement at least! You
+remember--when they came out of church. You helped to stop me!"
+
+"It would have been too late then," I heard myself saying.
+
+"Well," she exclaimed, with fresh excitement, "it's Miss Sylvia's
+turn now! We'll see if she's such a grand lady that she can't get my
+diseases!"
+
+I could no longer contain myself. "Claire," I cried, "you are talking
+like a devil!"
+
+She picked up a powder-puff, and began to use it diligently. "I know,"
+she said--and I saw her burning eyes in the glass--"you can't fool me.
+You've tried to be kind, but you despise me in your heart. You think I'm
+as bad as any woman of the street. Very well then, I speak for my class,
+and I tell you, this is where we prove our humanity. They throw us out,
+but you see we get back in!"
+
+"My dear woman," I said, "you don't understand. You'd not feel as you
+do, If you knew that the person to pay the penalty might be an innocent
+little child."
+
+"_Their_ child! Yes, it's too bad if there has to be anything the matter
+with the little prince! But I might as well tell you the truth--I've had
+that in mind all along. I didn't know just what would happen, or how--I
+don't believe anybody does, the doctors who pretend to are just faking
+you. But I knew Douglas was rotten, and maybe his children would be
+rotten, and they'd all of them suffer. That was one of the things that
+kept me from interfering and smashing him up."
+
+I was speechless now, and Claire, watching me, laughed. "You look as if
+you'd had no idea of it. Don't you know that I told you at the time?"
+
+"You told me at the time!"
+
+"I suppose, you didn't understand. I'm apt to talk French when I'm
+excited. We have a saying: 'The wedding present which the mistress
+leaves in the basket of the bride.' That was pretty near telling, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes," I said, in a low voice.
+
+And the other, after watching me for a moment more, went on: "You think
+I'm revengeful, don't you? Well, I used to reproach myself with this,
+and I tried to fight it down; but the time comes when you want people to
+pay for what they take from you. Let me tell you something that I never
+told to anyone, that I never expected to tell. You see me drinking and
+going to the devil; you hear me talking the care-free talk of my world,
+but in the beginning I was really in love with Douglas van Tuiver, and
+I wanted his child. I wanted it so that it was an ache to me. And yet,
+what chance did I have? I'd have been the joke of his set for ever if
+I'd breathed it; I'd have been laughed out of the town. I even tried at
+one time to trap him--to get his child in spite of him, but I found that
+the surgeons had cut me up, and I could never have a child. So I have
+to make the best of it--I have to agree with my friends that it's a good
+thing, it saves me trouble! But _she_ comes along, and she has what
+I wanted, and all the world thinks it wonderful and sublime. She's a
+beautiful young mother! What's she ever done in her life that she has
+everything, and I go without? You may spend your time shedding tears
+over her and what may happen to her but for my part, I say this--let her
+take her chances! Let her take her chances with the other women in the
+world--the women she's too good and too pure to know anything about!"
+
+10. I came out of Claire's house, sick with horror. Not since the time
+when I had read my poor nephew's letter had I been so shaken. Why had
+I not thought long ago of questioning Claire about these matters. How
+could I have left Sylvia all this time exposed to peril?
+
+The greatest danger was to her child at the time of birth. I figured up,
+according to the last letter I had received; there was about ten days
+yet, and so I felt some relief. I thought first of sending a telegram,
+but reflected that it would be difficult, not merely to tell her what to
+do in a telegram, but to explain to her afterwards why I had chosen
+this extraordinary method. I recollected that in her last letter she had
+mentioned the name of the surgeon who was coming from New York to attend
+her during her confinement. Obviously the thing for me to do was to see
+this surgeon.
+
+"Well, madame?" he said, when I was seated in his inner office.
+
+He was a tall, elderly man, immaculately groomed, and formal and precise
+in his manner. "Dr. Overton," I began, "my friend, Mrs. Douglas van
+Tuiver writes me that you are going to Florida shortly."
+
+"That is correct," he said.
+
+"I have come to see you about a delicate matter. I presume I need hardly
+say that I am relying upon the seal of professional secrecy."
+
+I saw his gaze become suddenly fixed. "Certainly, madame," he said.
+
+"I am taking this course because Mrs. van Tuiver is a very dear friend
+of mine, and I am concerned about her welfare. It has recently come
+to my knowledge that she has become exposed to infection by a venereal
+disease."
+
+He would hardly have started more if I had struck him. "HEY?" he cried,
+forgetting his manners.
+
+"It would not help you any," I said, "if I were to go into details
+about this unfortunate matter. Suffice it to say that my information is
+positive and precise--that it could hardly be more so."
+
+There was a long silence. He sat with eyes rivetted upon me. "What is
+this disease?" he demanded, at last.
+
+I named it, and then again there was a pause. "How long has this--this
+possibility of infection existed?"
+
+"Ever since her marriage, nearly eighteen months ago."
+
+That told him a good part of the story. I felt his look boring me
+through. Was I a mad woman? Or some new kind of blackmailer? Or, was
+I, possibly, a Claire? I was grateful for my forty-cent bonnet and my
+forty-seven years.
+
+"Naturally," he said at length, "this information startles me."
+
+"When you have thought it over," I responded, "you will realise that no
+possible motive could bring me here but concern for the welfare of my
+friend."
+
+He took a few moments to consider. "That may be true, madame, but let me
+add that when you say you KNOW this----"
+
+He stopped. "I MEAN that I know it," I said, and stopped in turn.
+
+"Has Mrs. van Tuiver herself any idea of this situation?"
+
+"None whatever. On the contrary, she was assured before her marriage
+that no such possibility existed."
+
+Again I felt him looking through me, but I left him to make what he
+could of my information. "Doctor," I continued, "I presume there is
+no need to point out to a man in your position the seriousness of this
+matter, both to the mother and to the child."
+
+"Certainly there is not."
+
+"I assume that you are familiar with the precautions that have to be
+taken with regard to the eyes of the child?"
+
+"Certainly, madame." This with just a touch of HAUTEUR, and then,
+suddenly: "Are you by any chance a nurse?"
+
+"No," I replied, "but many years ago I was forced by tragedy in my
+own family to realise the seriousness of the venereal peril. So when I
+learned this fact about my friend, my first thought was that you should
+be informed of it. I trust that you will appreciate my position."
+
+"Certainly, madame, certainly," he made haste to say. "You are quite
+right, and you may rest assured that everything will be done that our
+best knowledge directs. I only regret that the information did not come
+to me sooner."
+
+"It only came to me about an hour ago," I said, as I rose to leave. "The
+blame, therefore, must rest upon another person."
+
+I needed to say no more. He bowed me politely out, and I walked down
+the street, and realised that I was restless and wretched. I wandered
+at random for a while, trying to think what else I could do, for my own
+peace of mind, if not for Sylvia's welfare. I found myself inventing one
+worry after another. Dr. Overton had not said just when he was going,
+and suppose she were to need someone at once? Or suppose something were
+to happen to him--if he were to be killed upon the long train-journey? I
+was like a mother who has had a terrible dream about her child--she must
+rush and fling her arms about the child. I realised that I wanted to see
+Sylvia!
+
+She had begged me to come; and I was worn out and had been urged by the
+office to take a rest. Suddenly I bolted into a store, and telephoned
+the railroad station about trains to Southern Florida. I hailed a
+taxi-cab, rode to my home post-haste, and flung a few of my belongings
+into a bag and the waiting cab sped with me to the ferry. In little
+more than two hours after Claire had told me the dreadful tidings, I was
+speeding on my way to Sylvia.
+
+11. From a train-window I had once beheld a cross-section of America
+from West to East; now I beheld another from North to South. In the
+afternoon were the farms and country-homes of New Jersey; and then in
+the morning endless wastes of wilderness, and straggling fields of
+young corn and tobacco; turpentine forests, with half-stripped negroes
+working, and a procession of "depots," with lanky men chewing tobacco,
+and negroes basking in the blazing sun. Then another night, and there
+was the pageant of Florida: palmettos, and other trees of which one had
+seen pictures in the geography books; stretches of vine-tangled swamps,
+where one looked for alligators; orange-groves in blossom, and gardens
+full of flowers beyond imagining. Every hour, of course, it got hotter;
+I was not, like Sylvia, used to it, and whenever the train stopped I sat
+by the open window, mopping the perspiration from my face.
+
+We were due at Miami in the afternoon; but there was a freight-train
+off the track ahead of us, and so for three hours I sat chafing with
+impatience, worrying the conductor with futile questions. I had to make
+connections at Miami with a train which ran to the last point on the
+mainland, where the construction-work over the keys was going forward.
+And if I missed that last train, I would have to wait in Miami till
+morning. I had better wait there, anyhow, the conductor argued; but I
+insisted that my friends, to whom I had telegraphed two days before,
+would meet me with a launch and take me to their place that night.
+
+We got in half an hour late for the other train; but this was the South,
+I discovered, and they had waited for us. I shifted my bag and myself
+across the platform, and we moved on. But then another problem arose; we
+were running into a storm. It came with great suddenness; one minute
+all was still, with a golden sunset, and the next it was so dark that I
+could barely see the palm-trees, bent over, swaying madly--like people
+with arms stretched out, crying in distress. I could hear the roaring
+of the wind above that of the train, and I asked the conductor in
+consternation if this could be a hurricane. It was not the season for
+hurricanes, he replied; but it was "some storm, all right," and I would
+not find any boat to take me to the keys until it was over.
+
+It was absurd of me to be nervous, I kept telling myself; but there was
+something in me that cried out to be there, to be there! I got out
+of the train, facing what I refrain from calling a hurricane out of
+deference to local authority. It was all I could do to keep from being
+blown across the station-platform, and I was drenched with the spray
+and bewildered by the roaring of the waves that beat against the pier
+beyond. Inside the station, I questioned the agent. The launch of the
+van Tuivers had not been in that day; if it had been on the way, it must
+have sought shelter somewhere. My telegram to Mrs. van Tuiver had been
+received two days before, and delivered by a boatman whom they employed
+for that purpose. Presumably, therefore, I would be met. I asked how
+long this gale was apt to last; the answer was from one to three days.
+
+Then I asked about shelter for the night. This was a "jumping-off"
+place, said the agent, with barracks and shanties for a
+construction-gang; there were saloons, and what was called a hotel, but
+it wouldn't do for a lady. I pleaded that I was not fastidious--being
+anxious to nullify the effect which the name van Tuiver had produced.
+But the agent would have it that the place was unfit for even a Western
+farmer's wife; and as I was not anxious to take the chance of being
+blown overboard in the darkness, I spent the night on one of the benches
+in the station. I lay, listening to the incredible clamour of wind and
+waves, feeling the building quiver, and wondering if each gust might not
+blow it away.
+
+I was out at dawn, the force of the wind having abated somewhat by that
+time. I saw before me a waste of angry foam-strewn water, with no sign
+of any craft upon it. Late in the morning came the big steamer which
+ran to Key West, in connection with the railroad; it made a difficult
+landing, and I interviewed the captain, with the idea of bribing him to
+take me to my destination. But he had his schedule, which neither storms
+nor the name of van Tuiver could alter. Besides, he pointed out, he
+could not land me at their place, as his vessel drew too much water to
+get anywhere near; and if he landed me elsewhere, I should be no better
+off, "If your friends are expecting you, they'll come here," he said,
+"and their launch can travel when nothing else can."
+
+To pass the time I went to inspect the viaduct of the railway-to-be. The
+first stretch was completed, a long series of concrete arches, running
+out, apparently, into the open sea. It was one of the engineering
+wonders of the world, but I fear I did not appreciate it. Towards
+mid-afternoon I made out a speck of a boat over the water, and my
+friend, the station-agent, remarked, "There's your launch."
+
+I expressed my amazement that they should have ventured out in such
+weather. I had had in mind the kind of tiny open craft that one hears
+making day and night hideous at summer-resorts; but when the "Merman"
+drew near, I realized afresh what it was to be the guest of a
+multi-millionaire. She was about fifty feet long, a vision of polished
+brass and shining, new-varnished cedar. She rammed her shoulder into the
+waves and flung them contemptuously to one side; her cabin was tight,
+dry as the saloon of a liner.
+
+Three men emerged on deck to assist in the difficult process of making a
+landing. One of them sprang to the dock, and confronting me, inquired
+if I was Mrs. Abbott. He explained that they had set out to meet me the
+previous afternoon, but had had to take refuge behind one of the keys.
+
+"How is Mrs. van Tuiver?" I asked, quickly.
+
+"She is well."
+
+"I don't suppose--the baby----" I hinted.
+
+"No, ma'am, not yet," said the man; and after that I felt interested in
+what he had to say about the storm and its effects. We could return at
+once, it seemed, if I did not mind being pitched about.
+
+"How long does it take?" I asked.
+
+"Three hours, in weather like this. It's about fifty miles."
+
+"But then it will be dark," I objected.
+
+"That won't matter, ma'am--we have plenty of light of our own. We shan't
+have trouble, unless the wind rises, and there's a chain of keys all the
+way, where we can get shelter if it does. The worst you have to fear is
+spending a night on board."
+
+I reflected that I could not well be more uncomfortable than I had been
+the previous night, so I voted for a start. There was mail and some
+supplies to be put on board; then I made a spring for the deck, as
+it surged up towards me on a rising wave, and in a moment more the
+cabin-door had shut behind me, and I was safe and snug, in the midst
+of leather and mahogany and electric-lighted magnificence. Through the
+heavy double windows I saw the dock swing round behind us, and saw the
+torrents of green spray sweep over us and past. I grasped at the seat to
+keep myself from being thrown forward, and then grasped behind, to keep
+from going in that direction. I had a series of sensations as of
+an elevator stopping suddenly--and then I draw the curtains of the
+"Merman's" cabin, and invite the reader to pass by. This is Sylvia's
+story, and not mine, and it is of no interest what happened to me during
+that trip. I will only remind the reader that I had lived my life in the
+far West, and there were some things I could not have foreseen.
+
+12. "We are there, ma'am," I heard one of the boatmen say, and I
+realised vaguely that the pitching had ceased. He helped me to sit up,
+and I saw the search-light of the craft sweeping the shore of an island.
+"It passes off 'most as quick as it comes, ma'am," added my supporter,
+and for this I murmured feeble thanks.
+
+We came to a little bay, where the power was shut off, and we glided
+towards the shore. There was a boat-house, a sort of miniature dry-dock,
+with a gate which closed behind us. I had visions of Sylvia waiting to
+meet me, but apparently our arrival had not been noted, and for this I
+was grateful. There were seats in the boat-house, and I sank into one,
+and asked the man to wait a few minutes while I recovered myself. When I
+got up and went to the house, what I found made me quickly forget that I
+had such a thing as a body.
+
+There was a bright moon, I remember, and I could see the long, low
+bungalow, with windows gleaming through the palm-trees. A woman's figure
+emerged from the house and came down the white shell-path to meet me. My
+heart leaped. My beloved!
+
+But then I saw it was the English maid, whom I had come to know in New
+York; I saw, too, that her face was alight with excitement. "Oh, my
+lady!" she cried. "The baby's come!"
+
+It was like a blow in the face. "_What?_" I gasped.
+
+"Came early this morning. A girl."
+
+"But--I thought it wasn't till next week!"
+
+"I know, but it's here. In that terrible storm, when we thought the
+house was going to be washed away! Oh, my lady, it's the loveliest
+baby!"
+
+I had presence of mind enough to try to hide my dismay. The
+semi-darkness was a fortunate thing for me. "How is the mother?" I
+asked.
+
+"Splendid. She's asleep now."
+
+"And the child?"
+
+"Oh! Such a dear you never saw!"
+
+"And it's all right?"
+
+"It's just the living image of its mother! You shall see!"
+
+We moved towards the house, slowly, while I got my thoughts together.
+"Dr. Perrin is here?" I asked.
+
+"Yes. He's gone to his place to sleep."
+
+"And the nurse?"
+
+"She's with the child. Come this way."
+
+We went softly up the steps of the veranda. All the rooms opened upon
+it, and we entered one of them, and by the dim-shaded light I saw a
+white-clad woman bending over a crib. "Miss Lyman, this is Mrs. Abbott,"
+said the maid.
+
+The nurse straightened up. "Oh! so you got here! And just at the right
+time!"
+
+"God grant it may be so!" I thought to myself. "So this is the child!" I
+said, and bent over the crib. The nurse turned up the light for me.
+
+It is the form in which the miracle of life becomes most apparent to us,
+and dull indeed must be he who can encounter it without being stirred
+to the depths. To see, not merely new life come into the world, but life
+which has been made by ourselves, or by those we love--life that is a
+mirror and copy of something dear to us! To see this tiny mite of warm
+and living flesh, and to see that it was Sylvia! To trace each beloved
+lineament, so much alike, and yet so different--half a portrait and
+half a caricature, half sublime and half ludicrous! The comical
+little imitation of her nose, with each dear little curve, with even
+a remainder of the tiny groove underneath the tip, and the tiny
+corresponding dimple underneath the chin! The soft silken fuzz which
+was some day to be Sylvia's golden glory! The delicate, sensitive lips,
+which were some day to quiver with feeling! I gazed at them and saw them
+moving, I saw the breast moving--and a wave of emotion swept over me,
+and the tears half-blinded me as I knelt.
+
+But I could not forget the reason for my coming. It meant little that
+the child was alive and seemingly well; I was not dealing with a disease
+which, like syphilis, starves and deforms in the very womb. The little
+one was asleep, but I moved the light so as to examine its eyelids. Then
+I turned to the nurse and asked: "Miss Lyman, doesn't it seem to you the
+eyelids are a trifle inflamed?"
+
+"Why, I hadn't noticed it," she answered.
+
+"Were the eyes washed?" I inquired.
+
+"I washed the baby, of course--"
+
+"I mean the eyes especially. The doctor didn't drop anything into them?"
+
+"I don't think he considered it necessary."
+
+"It's an important precaution," I replied; "there are always
+possibilities of infection."
+
+"Possibly," said the other. "But you know, we did not expect this. Dr.
+Overton was to be here in three or four days."
+
+"Dr. Perrin is asleep?" I asked.
+
+"Yes. He was up all last night."
+
+"I think I will have to ask you to waken him," I said.
+
+"Is it as serious as that?" she inquired, anxiously, having sensed some
+of the emotion I was trying to conceal.
+
+"It might be very serious," I said. "I really ought to have a talk with
+the doctor."
+
+13. The nurse went out, and I drew up a chair and sat by the crib,
+watching the infant go back to sleep. I was glad to be alone, to have a
+chance to get myself together. But suddenly I heard a rustle of skirts
+in the doorway behind me, and turned and saw a white-clad figure; an
+elderly gentlewoman, slender and fragile, grey-haired and rather pale,
+wearing a soft dressing-gown. Aunt Varina!
+
+I rose. "This must be Mrs. Abbott," she said. Oh, these soft, caressing
+Southern voices, that cling to each syllable as a lover to a hand at
+parting.
+
+She was a very prim and stately little lady, and I think she did not
+intend to shake hands; but I felt pretty certain that under her coating
+of formality, she was eager for a chance to rhapsodize. "Oh, what a
+lovely child!" I cried; and instantly she melted.
+
+"You have seen our babe!" she exclaimed; and I could not help smiling. A
+few months ago, "the little stranger," and now "our babe"!
+
+She bent over the cradle, with her dear old sentimental, romantic soul
+in her eyes. For a minute or two she quite forgot me; then, looking up,
+she murmured, "It is as wonderful to me as if it were my own!"
+
+"All of us who love Sylvia feel that," I responded.
+
+She rose, and suddenly remembering hospitality, asked me as to my
+present needs. Then she said, "I must go and see to sending some
+telegrams."
+
+"Telegrams?" I inquired.
+
+"Yes. Think what this news will mean to dear Douglas! And to Major
+Castleman!"
+
+"You haven't informed them?"
+
+"We couldn't send any smaller boat on account of the storm. We must
+telegraph Dr. Overton also, you understand."
+
+"To tell him not to come?" I ventured. "But don't you think, Mrs. Tuis,
+that he may wish to come anyhow?"
+
+"Why should he wish that?"
+
+"I'm not sure, but--I think he might." How I longed for a little of
+Sylvia's skill in social lying! "Every newly-born infant ought to be
+examined by a specialist, you know; there may be a particular _regime,_
+a diet for the mother--one cannot say."
+
+"Dr. Perrin didn't consider it necessary."
+
+"I am going to have a talk with Dr. Perrin at once," I said.
+
+I saw a troubled look in her eyes. "You don't mean you think there's
+anything the matter?"
+
+"No--no," I lied. "But I'm sure you ought to wait before you have the
+launch go. Please do."
+
+"If you insist," she said. I read bewilderment in her manner, and just
+a touch of resentment. Was it not presumptuous of me, a stranger, and
+one--well, possibly not altogether a lady? She groped for words; and the
+ones that came were: "Dear Douglas must not be kept waiting."
+
+I was too polite to offer the suggestion that "dear Douglas" might be
+finding ways to amuse himself. The next moment I heard steps approaching
+on the veranda, and turned to meet the nurse with the doctor.
+
+14. "How do you do, Mrs. Abbott?" said Dr. Perrin. He was in his
+dressing-gown, and had a newly-awakened look. I started to apologize,
+but he replied, "It's pleasant to see a new face in our solitude. Two
+new faces!"
+
+That was behaving well, I thought, for a man who had been routed out of
+sleep. I tried to meet his mood. "Dr. Perrin, Mrs. van Tuiver tells
+me that you object to amateur physicians. But perhaps you won't mind
+regarding me as a midwife. I have three children of my own, and I've had
+to help bring others into the world."
+
+"All right," he smiled. "We'll consider you qualified. What is the
+matter?"
+
+"I wanted to ask you about the child's eyes. It is a wise precaution
+to drop some nitrate of silver into them, to provide against possible
+infection."
+
+I waited for my answer. "There have been no signs of any sort of
+infection in this case," he said, at last.
+
+"Perhaps not. But it is not necessary to wait, in such a matter. You
+have not taken the precaution?"
+
+"No, madam."
+
+"You have some of the drug, of course?"
+
+Again there was a pause. "No, madam, I fear that I have not."
+
+I winced, involuntarily. I could not hide my distress. "Dr. Perrin," I
+exclaimed, "you came to attend a confinement case, and you omitted to
+provide something so essential!"
+
+There was nothing left of the little man's affability now. "In the first
+place," he said, "I must remind you that I did not come to attend a
+confinement case. I came to look after Mrs. van Tuiver's condition up
+_to_ the time of confinement."
+
+"But you knew there would always be the possibility of an accident!"
+
+"Yes, to be sure."
+
+"And you didn't have any nitrate of silver!"
+
+"Madam," he said, stiffly, "there is no use for this drug except in one
+contingency."
+
+"I know," I cried, "but it is an important precaution. It is the
+practice to use it in all maternity hospitals."
+
+"Madam, I have visited hospitals, and I think I know something of what
+the practice is."
+
+So there we were, at a deadlock. There was silence for a space.
+
+"Would you mind sending for the drug?" I asked, at last.
+
+"I presume," he said, with _hauteur,_ "it will do no harm to have it on
+hand."
+
+I was aware of an elderly lady watching us, with consternation written
+upon every sentimental feature. "Dr. Perrin," I said, "if Mrs. Tuis will
+pardon me, I think I ought to speak with you alone." The nurse hastily
+withdrew; and I saw the elderly lady draw herself up with terrible
+dignity--and then suddenly quail, and turn and follow the nurse.
+
+I told the little man what I knew. After he had had time to get over
+his consternation, he said that fortunately there did not seem to be any
+sign of trouble.
+
+"There does seem so to me," I replied. "It may be only my imagination,
+but I think the eyelids are inflamed."
+
+I held the baby for him, while he made an examination. He admitted that
+there seemed to be ground for uneasiness. His professional dignity was
+now gone, and he was only too glad to be human.
+
+"Dr. Perrin," I said, "there is only one thing we can do--to get some
+nitrate of silver at the earliest possible moment. Fortunately, the
+launch is here."
+
+"I will have it start at once," he said. "It will have to go to Key
+West."
+
+"And how long will that take?"
+
+"It depends upon the sea. In good weather it takes us eight hours to go
+and return." I could not repress a shudder. The child might be blind in
+eight hours!
+
+But there was no time to be wasted in foreboding. "About Dr. Overton,"
+I said. "Don't you think he had better come?" But I ventured to add the
+hint that Mr. van Tuiver would hardly wish expense to be considered in
+such an emergency; and in the end, I persuaded the doctor not merely
+to telegraph for the great surgeon, but to ask a hospital in Atlanta to
+send the nearest eye-specialist by the first train.
+
+We called back Mrs. Tuis, and I apologized abjectly for my presumption,
+and Dr. Perrin announced that he thought he ought to see Dr. Overton,
+and another doctor as well. I saw fear leap into Aunt Varina's eyes.
+"Oh, what is it?" she cried. "What is the matter with our babe?"
+
+I helped the doctor to answer polite nothings to all her questions. "Oh,
+the poor, dear lady!" I thought to myself. The poor, dear lady! What a
+tearing away of veils and sentimental bandages was written in her book
+of fate for that night!
+
+15. I find myself lingering over these preliminaries, dreading the
+plunge into the rest of my story. We spent our time hovering over the
+child's crib, and in two or three hours the little eyelids had become so
+inflamed that there could no longer be any doubt what was happening. We
+applied alternate hot and cold cloths; we washed the eyes in a solution
+of boric acid, and later, in our desperation, with bluestone. But we
+were dealing with the virulent gonococcus, and we neither expected nor
+obtained much result from these measures. In a couple of hours more the
+eyes were beginning to exude pus, and the poor infant was wailing in
+torment.
+
+"Oh, what can it be? Tell me what is the matter?" cried Mrs. Tuis. She
+sought to catch the child in her arms, and when I quickly prevented her,
+she turned upon me in anger. "What do you mean?"
+
+"The child must be quiet," I said.
+
+"But I wish to comfort it!" And when I still insisted, she burst out
+wildly: "What _right_ have you?"
+
+"Mrs. Tuis," I said, gently, "it is possible the infant may have a very
+serious infection. If so, you would be apt to catch it."
+
+She answered with a hysterical cry: "My precious innocent! Do you think
+that I would be afraid of anything it could have?"
+
+"You may not be afraid, but we are. We should have to take care of you,
+and one case is more than enough."
+
+Suddenly she clutched me by the arm. "Tell me what this awful thing is!
+I demand to know!"
+
+"Mrs. Tuis," said the doctor, interfering, "we are not yet sure what the
+trouble is, we only wish to take precautions. It is really imperative
+that you should not handle this child or even go near it. There is
+nothing you can possibly do."
+
+She was willing to take orders from him; he spoke the same dialect
+as herself, and with the same quaint stateliness. A charming little
+Southern gentleman--I could realise how Douglas van Tuiver had "picked
+him out for his social qualities." In the old-fashioned Southern medical
+college where he had got his training, I suppose they had taught him the
+old-fashioned idea of gonorrhea. Now he was acquiring our extravagant
+modern notions in the grim school of experience!
+
+It was necessary to put the nurse on her guard as to the risks we were
+running. We should have had concave glasses to protect our eyes, and we
+spent part of our time washing our hands in bichloride solution.
+
+"Mrs. Abbott, what is it?" whispered the woman.
+
+"It has a long name," I replied--"_opthalmia neonatorum._"
+
+"And what has caused it?"
+
+"The original cause," I responded, "is a man." I was not sure if that
+was according to the ethics of the situation, but the words came.
+
+Before long the infected eye-sockets were two red and yellow masses of
+inflammation, and the infant was screaming like one of the damned. We
+had to bind up its eyes; I was tempted to ask the doctor to give it an
+opiate for fear lest it should scream itself into convulsions. Then
+as poor Mrs. Tuis was pacing the floor, wringing her hands and sobbing
+hysterically, Dr. Perrin took me to one side and said: "I think she will
+have to be told."
+
+The poor, poor lady!
+
+"She might as well understand now as later," he continued. "She will
+have to help keep the situation from the mother."
+
+"Yes," I said, faintly; and then, "Who shall tell her?"
+
+"I think," suggested the doctor, "she might prefer to be told by a
+woman."
+
+So I shut my lips together and took the distracted lady gently by
+the arm and led her to the door. We stole like two criminals down the
+veranda, and along the path to the beach, and near the boathouse we
+stopped, and I began.
+
+"Mrs. Tuis, you may remember a circumstance which your niece mentioned
+to me--that just before her marriage she urged you to have certain
+inquiries made as to Mr. van Tuiver's health, his fitness for marriage?"
+
+Never shall I forget her face at that moment. "Sylvia told you that!"
+
+"The inquiries were made," I went on, "but not carefully enough, it
+seems. Now you behold the consequence of this negligence."
+
+I saw her blank stare. I added: "The one to pay for it is the child."
+
+"You--you mean--" she stammered, her voice hardly a whisper. "Oh--it is
+impossible!" Then, with a flare of indignation: "Do you realise what you
+are implying--that Mr. van Tuiver--"
+
+"There is no question of implying," I said, quietly. "It is the facts we
+have to face now, and you will have to help us to face them."
+
+She cowered and swayed before me, hiding her face in her hands. I heard
+her sobbing and murmuring incoherent cries to her god. I took the poor
+lady's hand, and bore with her as long as I could, until, being at the
+end of my patience with prudery and purity and chivalry, and all the
+rest of the highfalutin romanticism of the South, I said: "Mrs Tuis, it
+is necessary that you should get yourself together. You have a serious
+duty before you--that you owe both to Sylvia and her child."
+
+"What is it?" she whispered. The word "duty" had motive power for her.
+
+"At all hazards, Sylvia must be kept in ignorance of the calamity for
+the present. If she were to learn of it it would quite possibly throw
+her into a fever, and cost her life or the child's. You must not make
+any sound that she can hear, and you must not go near her until you have
+completely mastered your emotions."
+
+"Very well," she murmured. She was really a brave little body, but I,
+not knowing her, and thinking only of the peril, was cruel in hammering
+things into her consciousness. Finally, I left her, seated upon the
+steps of the deserted boat-house, rocking back and forth and sobbing
+softly to herself--one of the most pitiful figures it has ever been my
+fortune to encounter in my pilgrimage through a world of sentimentality
+and incompetence.
+
+16. I went back to the house, and because we feared the sounds of the
+infant's crying might carry, we hung blankets before the doors and
+windows of the room, and sat in the hot enclosure, shuddering, silent,
+grey with fear. After an hour or two, Mrs. Tuis rejoined us, stealing in
+and seating herself at one side of the room, staring from one to another
+of us with wide eyes of fright.
+
+By the time the first signs of dawn appeared, the infant had cried
+itself into a state of exhaustion. The faint light that got into the
+room revealed the three of us, listening to the pitiful whimpering. I
+was faint with weakness, but I had to make an effort and face the worst
+ordeal of all. There came a tapping at the door--the maid, to say that
+Sylvia was awake and had heard of my arrival and wished to see me. I
+might have put off our meeting for a while, on the plea of exhaustion,
+but I preferred to have it over with, and braced myself and went slowly
+to her room.
+
+In the doorway I paused for an instant to gaze at her. She was
+exquisite, lying there with the flush of sleep still upon her, and the
+ecstasy of her great achievement in her face. I fled to her, and we
+caught each other in our arms. "Oh, Mary, Mary! I'm so glad you've
+come!" And then: "Oh, Mary, isn't it the loveliest baby!"
+
+"Perfectly glorious!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, I'm so happy--so happy as I never dreamed! I've no words to tell
+you about it."
+
+"You don't need any words--I've been through it," I said.
+
+"Oh, but she's so _beautiful!_ Tell me, honestly, isn't that really so?"
+
+"My dear," I said, "she is like you."
+
+"Mary," she went on, half whispering, "I think it solves all my
+problems--all that I wrote you about. I don't believe I shall ever
+be unhappy again. I can't believe that such a thing has really
+happened--that I've been given such a treasure. And she's my own! I can
+watch her little body grow and help to make it strong and beautiful! I
+can help mould her little mind--see it opening up, one chamber of wonder
+after another! I can teach her all the things I have had to grope so to
+get!"
+
+"Yes," I said, trying to speak with conviction. I added, hastily: "I'm
+glad you don't find motherhood disappointing."
+
+"Oh, it's a miracle!" she exclaimed. "A woman who could be dissatisfied
+with anything afterwards would be an ingrate!" She paused, then added:
+"Mary, now she's here in flesh, I feel she'll be a bond between Douglas
+and me. He must see her rights, her claim upon life, as he couldn't see
+mine."
+
+I assented gravely. So that was the thing she was thinking most about--a
+bond between her husband and herself! A moment later the nurse appeared
+in the doorway, and Sylvia set up a cry: "My baby! Where's my baby? I
+want to see my baby!"
+
+"Sylvia, dear," I said, "there's something about the baby that has to be
+explained."
+
+Instantly she was alert. "What is the matter?"
+
+I laughed. "Nothing, dear, that amounts to anything. But the little
+one's eyes are inflamed--that is to say, the lids. It's something that
+happens to newly-born infants."
+
+"Well, then?" she said.
+
+"Nothing, only the doctor's had to put some salve on them, and they
+don't look very pretty."
+
+"I don't mind that, if it's all right."
+
+"But we've had to put a bandage over them, and it looks forbidding. Also
+the child is apt to cry."
+
+"I must see her at once!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Just now she's asleep, so don't make us disturb her."
+
+"But how long will this last?"
+
+"Not very long. Meantime you must be sensible and not mind. It's
+something I made the doctor do, and you mustn't blame me, or I'll be
+sorry I came to you."
+
+"You dear thing," she said, and put her hand in mine. And then,
+suddenly: "Why did you take it into your head to come, all of a sudden?"
+
+"Don't ask me," I smiled. "I have no excuse. I just got homesick and had
+to see you."
+
+"It's perfectly wonderful that you should be here now," she declared.
+"But you look badly. Are you tired?"
+
+"Yes, dear," I said. (Such a difficult person to deceive!) "To tell the
+truth, I'm pretty nearly done up. You see, I was caught in the storm,
+and I was desperately sea-sick."
+
+"Why, you poor dear! Why didn't you go to sleep?"
+
+"I didn't want to sleep. I was too much excited by everything. I came to
+see one Sylvia and I found two!"
+
+"Isn't it absurd," she cried, "how she looks like me? Oh, I want to see
+her again. How long will it be before I can have her?"
+
+"My dear," I said, "you mustn't worry--"
+
+"Oh, don't mind me, I'm just playing. I'm so happy, I want to squeeze
+her in my arms all the time. Just think, Mary, they won't let me nurse
+her, yet--a whole day now! Can that be right?"
+
+"Nature will take care of that," I said.
+
+"Yes, but how can you be sure what Nature means? Maybe it's what the
+child is crying about, and it's the crying that makes its eyes red."
+
+I felt a sudden spasm grip my heart. "No, dear, no," I said, hastily.
+"You must let Dr. Perrin attend to these things, for I've just had
+to interfere with his arrangements, and he'll be getting cross pretty
+soon."
+
+"Oh," she cried with laughter in her eyes, "you've had a scene with him?
+I knew you would! He's so quaint and old-fashioned!"
+
+"Yes," I said, "and he talks exactly like your aunt."
+
+"Oh! You've met her too! I'm missing all the fun!"
+
+I had a sudden inspiration--one that I was proud of. "My dear girl," I
+said, "maybe _you_ call it fun!" And I looked really agitated.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" she cried.
+
+"What could you expect?" I asked. "I fear, my dear Sylvia, I've shocked
+your aunt beyond all hope."
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"I've talked about things I'd no business to--I've bossed the learned
+doctor--and I'm sure Aunt Varina has guessed I'm not a lady."
+
+"Oh, tell me about it!" cried Sylvia, full of delight.
+
+But I could not keep up the game any longer. "Not now, dear," I said.
+"It's a long story, and I really am exhausted. I must go and get some
+rest."
+
+I rose, and she caught my hand, whispering: "I shall be happy, Mary! I
+shall be really happy now!" And then I turned and fled, and when I was
+out of sight of the doorway, I literally ran. At the other end of the
+veranda I sank down upon the steps, and wept softly to myself.
+
+17. The launch arrived, bringing the nitrate of silver. A solution was
+dropped into the baby's eyes, and then we could do nothing but wait. I
+might have lain down and really tried to rest; but the maid came again,
+with the announcement that Sylvia was asking for her aunt. Excuses would
+have tended to excite her suspicions; so poor Mrs. Tuis had to take her
+turn at facing the ordeal, and I had to drill and coach her for it.
+I had a vision of the poor lady going in to her niece, and suddenly
+collapsing. Then there would begin a cross-examination, and Sylvia would
+worm out the truth, and we might have a case of puerperal fever on our
+hands.
+
+This I explained afresh to Mrs. Tuis, having taken her into her own room
+and closed the door for that purpose. She clutched me with her shaking
+hands and whispered, "Oh, Mrs. Abbott, you will _never_ let Sylvia find
+out what caused this trouble?"
+
+I drew on my reserve supply of patience, and answered, "What I shall
+let her find out in the end, I don't know. We shall be guided by
+circumstances, and this is no time to discuss the matter. The point is
+now to make sure that you can go in and stay with her, and not let her
+get an idea there's anything wrong."
+
+"Oh, but you know how Sylvia reads people!" she cried, in sudden dismay.
+
+"I've fixed it for you," I said. "I've provided something you can be
+agitated about."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"It's _me._" Then, seeing her look of bewilderment, "You must tell
+her that I've affronted you, Mrs. Tuis; I've outraged your sense of
+propriety. You're indignant with me and you don't see how you can remain
+in the house with me--"
+
+"Why, Mrs. Abbott!" she exclaimed, in horror.
+
+"You know it's truth to some extent," I said.
+
+The good lady drew herself up. "Mrs. Abbott, don't tell me that I have
+been so rude--"
+
+"Dear Mrs. Tuis," I laughed, "don't stop to apologize just now. You have
+not been lacking in courtesy, but I know how I must seem to you. I am
+a Socialist. I have a raw, Western accent, and my hands are big--I've
+lived on a farm all my life, and done my own work, and even plowed
+sometimes. I have no idea of the charms and graces of life that are
+everything to you. What is more than that, I am forward, and thrust my
+opinions upon other people--"
+
+She simply could not hear me. She was a-tremble with a new excitement.
+Worse even than _opthalmia neonatorum_ was plain speaking to a guest!
+"Mrs. Abbott, you humiliate me!"
+
+Then I spoke harshly, seeing that I would actually have to shock her.
+"I assure you, Mrs. Tuis, that if you don't feel that way about me, it's
+simply because you don't know the truth. It is not possible that you
+would consider me a proper person to visit Sylvia. I don't believe in
+your religion; I don't believe in anything that you would call religion,
+and I argue about it at the least provocation. I deliver violent
+harangues on street-corners, and have been arrested during a strike.
+I believe in woman's suffrage, I even argue in approval of
+window-smashing. I believe that women ought to earn their own living,
+and be independent and free from any man's control. I am a divorced
+woman--I left my husband because I wasn't happy with him, what's more,
+I believe that any woman has a right to do the same--I'm liable to teach
+such ideas to Sylvia, and to urge her to follow them."
+
+The poor lady's eyes were wide and large. "So you see," I exclaimed,
+"you really couldn't approve of me! Tell her all this; she knows it
+already, but she will be horrified, because I have let you and the
+doctor find it out!"
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Tuis started to ascend the pedestal of her dignity. "Mrs.
+Abbott, this may be your idea of a jest----"
+
+"Now come," I cried, "let me help you fix your hair, and put on just a
+wee bit of powder--not enough to be noticed, you understand----"
+
+I took her to the wash-stand, and poured out some cold water for her,
+and saw her bathe her eyes and face, and dry them, and braid her thin
+grey hair. While with a powder puff I was trying deftly to conceal the
+ravages of the night's crying, the dear lady turned to me, and whispered
+in a trembling voice, "Mrs. Abbott, you really don't mean that dreadful
+thing you said just now?"
+
+"Which dreadful thing, Mrs. Tuis?"
+
+"That you would tell Sylvia it could possibly be right for her to leave
+her husband?"
+
+18. In the course of the day we received word that Dr. Gibson, the
+specialist for whom we had telegraphed, was on his way. The boat which
+brought his message took back a letter from Dr. Perrin to Douglas van
+Tuiver, acquainting him with the calamity which had befallen. We
+had talked it over and agreed that there was nothing to be gained by
+telegraphing the information. We did not wish any hint of the child's
+illness to leak into the newspapers.
+
+I did not envy the great man the hour when he read that letter; although
+I knew that the doctor had not failed to assure him that the victim of
+his misdeeds should be kept in ignorance. Already the little man
+had begun to drop hints to me on this subject. Unfortunate accidents
+happened, which were not always to be blamed upon the husband, nor was
+it a thing to contemplate lightly, the breaking up of a family. I gave
+a non-committal answer, and changed the subject by asking the doctor
+not to mention my presence in the household. If by any chance van Tuiver
+were to carry his sorrows to Claire, I did not want my name brought up.
+
+We managed to prevent Sylvia's seeing the child that day and night, and
+the next morning came the specialist. He held out no hope of saving any
+remnant of the sight, but the child might be so fortunate as to escape
+disfigurement--it did not appear that the eyeballs were destroyed, as
+happens generally in these cases. This bit of consolation I still have:
+that little Elaine, who sits by me as I write, has left in her pupils a
+faint trace of the soft red-brown--just enough to remind us of what we
+have lost, and keep fresh in our minds the memory of these sorrows. If
+I wish to see what her eyes might have been, I look above my head to the
+portrait of Sylvia's noble ancestress, a copy made by a "tramp artist"
+in Castleman County, and left with me by Sylvia.
+
+There was the question of the care of the mother--the efforts to stay
+the ravages of the germ in the tissues broken and weakened by the strain
+of child-birth. We had to invent excuses for the presence of the new
+doctor--and yet others for the presence of Dr. Overton, who came a day
+later. And then the problem of the nourishing of the child. It would
+be a calamity to have to put it upon the bottle, but on the other
+hand, there were many precautions necessary to keep the infection from
+spreading.
+
+I remember vividly the first time that the infant was fed: all of us
+gathered round, with matter-of-course professional air, as if these
+elaborate hygienic ceremonies were the universal custom when newly-born
+infants first taste their mothers' milk. Standing in the background, I
+saw Sylvia start with dismay, as she noted how pale and thin the poor
+little one had become. It was hunger that caused the whimpering, so the
+nurse declared, busying herself in the meantime to keep the tiny
+hands from the mother's face. The latter sank back and closed her
+eyes--nothing, it seemed, could prevail over the ecstasy of that first
+marvellous sensation, but afterwards she asked that I might stay with
+her, and as soon as the others were gone, she unmasked the batteries
+of her suspicion upon me. "Mary! What in the world has happened to my
+baby?"
+
+So began a new stage in the campaign of lying. "It's nothing, nothing.
+Just some infection. It happens frequently."
+
+"But what is the cause of it?"
+
+"We can't tell. It may be a dozen things. There are so many possible
+sources of infection about a birth. It's not a very sanitary thing, you
+know."
+
+"Mary! Look me in the face!"
+
+"Yes, dear?"
+
+"You're not deceiving me?"
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"I mean--it's not really something serious? All these doctors--this
+mystery--this vagueness!"
+
+"It was your husband, my dear Sylvia, who sent the doctors--it was
+his stupid man's way of being attentive." (This at Aunt Varina's
+suggestion--the very subtle lady!).
+
+"Mary, I'm worried. My baby looks so badly, and I feel something is
+wrong."
+
+"My dear Sylvia," I chided, "if you worry about it you will simply be
+harming the child. Your milk may go wrong."
+
+"Oh, that's just it! That's why you would not tell me the truth!"
+
+We persuade ourselves that there are certain circumstances under which
+lying is necessary, but always when we come to the lies we find them
+an insult to the soul. Each day I perceived that I was getting in
+deeper--and each day I watched Aunt Varina and the doctor busied to push
+me deeper yet.
+
+There had come a telegram from Douglas van Tuiver to Dr. Perrin,
+revealing the matter which stood first in that gentleman's mind.
+"I expect no failure in your supply of the necessary tact." By this
+vagueness we perceived that he too was trusting no secrets to telegraph
+operators. Yet for us it was explicit and illuminative. It recalled the
+tone of quiet authority I had noted in his dealings with his chauffeur,
+and it sent me off by myself for a while to shake my fist at all
+husbands.
+
+19. Mrs. Tuis, of course, had no need of any warning from the head
+of the house. The voice of her ancestors guided her in all such
+emergencies. The dear lady had got to know me quite well, at the more or
+less continuous dramatic rehearsals we conducted; and now and then her
+trembling hands would seek to fasten me in the chains of decency. "Mrs.
+Abbott, think what a scandal there would be if Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver
+were to break with her husband!"
+
+"Yes, my dear Mrs. Tuis-but on the other hand, think what might happen
+if she were kept in ignorance in this matter. She might bear another
+child."
+
+I got a new realization of the chasms that lay between us. "Who are we,"
+she whispered, "to interfere in these sacred matters? It is of souls,
+Mrs. Abbot, and not bodies, that the Kingdom of Heaven is made."
+
+I took a minute or so to get my breath, and then I said, "What generally
+happens in these cases is that God afflicts the woman with permanent
+barrenness."
+
+The old lady bowed her head, and I saw the tears falling into her lap.
+"My poor Sylvia!" she moaned, only half aloud.
+
+There was a silence; I too almost wept. And finally, Aunt Varina
+looked up at me, her faded eyes full of pleading. "It is hard for me to
+understand such ideas as yours. You must tell me-can you really believe
+that it would help Sylvia to know this-this dreadful secret?"
+
+"It would help her in many ways," I said. "She will be more careful of
+her health-she will follow the doctor's orders---"
+
+How quickly came the reply! "I will stay with her, and see that she does
+that! I will be with her day and night."
+
+"But are you going to keep the secret from those who attend her? Her
+maid--the child's nurses--everyone who might by any chance use the same
+towel, or a wash-basin, or a drinking-glass?"
+
+"Surely you exaggerate the danger! If that were true, more people would
+meet with these accidents!"
+
+"The doctors," I said, "estimate that about ten per cent. of cases of
+this disease are innocently acquired."
+
+"Oh, these modern doctors!" she cried. "I never heard of such ideas!"
+
+I could not help smiling. "My dear Mrs. Tuis, what do you imagine you
+know about the prevalence of gonorrhea? Consider just one fact--that I
+heard a college professor state publicly that in his opinion eighty-five
+per cent. of the men students at his university were infected with some
+venereal disease. And that is the pick of our young manhood--the sons of
+our aristocracy!"
+
+"Oh, that can't be!" she exclaimed. "People would know of it!
+
+"Who are 'people'? The boys in your family know of it--if you could get
+them to tell you. My two sons studied at a State university, and they
+would bring me home what they heard--the gossip, the slang, the
+horrible obscenity. Fourteen fellows in one dormitory using the same
+bathroom--and on the wall you saw a row of fourteen syringes! And they
+told that on themselves, it was the joke of the campus. They call the
+disease a 'dose'; and a man's not supposed to be worthy the respect
+of his fellows until he's had his 'dose'--the sensible thing is to get
+several, till he can't get any more. They think it's 'no worse than a
+bad cold'; that's the idea they get from the 'clap-doctors,' and the
+women of the street who educate our sons in sex matters."
+
+"Oh, spare me, spare me!" cried Mrs. Tuis. "I beg you not to force these
+horrible details upon me!"
+
+"That is what is going on among our boys," I said. "The Castleman boys,
+the Chilton boys! It's going on in every fraternity house, every 'prep
+school' dormitory in America. And the parents refuse to know, just as
+you do!"
+
+"But what could I possibly do, Mrs. Abbott?"
+
+"I don't know, Mrs. Tuis. What _I_ am going to do is to teach the young
+girls."
+
+She whispered, aghast, "You would rob the young girls of their
+innocence. Why, with their souls full of these ideas their faces would
+soon be as hard--oh, you horrify me!"
+
+"My daughter's face is not hard," I said. "And I taught her. Stop and
+think, Mrs. Tuis--ten thousand blind children every year! A hundred
+thousand women under the surgeon's knife! Millions of women going to
+pieces with slowly creeping diseases of which they never hear the names!
+I say, let us cry this from the housetops, until every woman knows--and
+until every man knows that she knows, and that unless he can prove that
+he is clean he will lose her! That is the remedy, Mrs. Tuis!"
+
+Poor dear lady! I got up and went away, leaving her there, with clenched
+hands and trembling lips. I suppose I seemed to her like the mad women
+who were just then rising up to horrify the respectability of England--a
+phenomenon of Nature too portentous to be comprehended, or even to be
+contemplated, by a gentlewoman of the South!
+
+20. There came in due course a couple of letters from Douglas van
+Tuiver. The one to Aunt Varina, which was shown to me, was vague and
+cautious--as if the writer were uncertain how much this worthy lady
+knew. He merely mentioned that Sylvia was to be spared every particle
+of "painful knowledge." He would wait in great anxiety, but he would not
+come, because any change in his plans might set her to questioning.
+
+The letter to Dr. Perrin was not shown to me; but I judged that it must
+have contained more strenuous injunctions. Or had Aunt Varina by any
+chance got up the courage to warn the young doctor against me? His
+hints, at any rate, became more pointed. He desired me to realize how
+awkward it would be for him, if Sylvia were to learn the truth; it would
+be impossible to convince Mr. van Tuiver that this knowledge had not
+come from the physician in charge.
+
+"But, Dr. Perrin," I objected, "it was I who brought the information to
+you! And Mr. van Tuiver knows that I am a radical woman; he would not
+expect me to be ignorant of such matters."
+
+"Mrs. Abbott," was the response, "it is a grave matter to destroy the
+possibility of happiness of a young married couple."
+
+However I might dispute his theories, in practice I was doing what he
+asked. But each day I was finding the task more difficult; each day it
+became more apparent that Sylvia was ceasing to believe me. I realized
+at last, with a sickening kind of fright, that she knew I was hiding
+something from her. Because she knew me, and knew that I would not do
+such a thing lightly, she was terrified. She would lie there, gazing
+at me, with a dumb fear in her eyes--and I would go on asseverating
+blindly, like an unsuccessful actor before a jeering audience.
+
+A dozen times she made an effort to break through the barricade of
+falsehood; and a dozen times I drove her back, all but crying to her,
+"No, No! Don't ask me!" Until at last, late one night, she caught my
+hand and clung to it in a grip I could not break. "Mary! Mary! You must
+tell me the _truth!_"
+
+"Dear girl--" I began.
+
+"Listen!" she cried. "I know you are deceiving me! I know why--because
+I'll make myself ill. But it won't do any longer; it's preying on me,
+Mary--I've taken to imagining things. So you must tell me the truth!"
+
+I sat, avoiding her eyes, beaten; and in the pause I could feel her
+hands shaking. "Mary, what is it? Is my baby going to die?"
+
+"No, dear, indeed no!" I cried.
+
+"Then what?"
+
+"Sylvia," I began, as quietly as I could, "the truth is not as bad as
+you imagine--"
+
+"Tell me what it is!"
+
+"But it is bad, Sylvia. And you must be brave. You must be, for your
+baby's sake."
+
+"Make haste!" she cried.
+
+"The baby," I said, "may be blind."
+
+"Blind!" There we sat, gazing into each other's eyes, like two statues
+of women. But the grasp of her hand tightened, until even my big fist
+was hurt. "Blind!" she whispered again.
+
+"Sylvia," I rushed on, "it isn't so bad as it might be! Think--if you
+had lost her altogether!"
+
+"_Blind!_"
+
+"You will have her always; and you can do things for her--take care of
+her. They do wonders for the blind nowadays--and you have the means; to
+do everything. Really, you know, blind children are not unhappy--some of
+them are happier than other children, I think. They haven't so much to
+miss. Think--"
+
+"Wait, wait," she whispered; and again there was silence, and I clung to
+her cold hands.
+
+"Sylvia," I said, at last, "you have a newly-born infant to nurse, and
+its very life depends upon your health now. You cannot let yourself
+grieve."
+
+"No," she responded. "No. But, Mary, what caused this?"
+
+So there was the end of my spell of truth-telling. "I don't know, dear.
+Nobody knows. There might be a thousand things--"
+
+"Was it born blind?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then was it the doctor's fault?"
+
+"No, it was nobody's fault. Think of the thousands and tens of thousands
+of babies that become blind! It's a dreadful accident that happens." So
+I went on--possessed with a dread that had been with me for days, that
+had kept me awake for hours in the night: Had I, in any of my talks with
+Sylvia about venereal disease, mentioned blindness in infants as one
+of the consequences? I could not rememher; but now was the time I would
+find out!
+
+She lay there, immovable, like a woman who had died in grief; until at
+last I flung my arms about her and whispered, "Sylvia! Sylvia! Please
+cry!"
+
+"I can't cry!" she whispered, and her voice sounded hard.
+
+So, after a space, I said, "Then, dear, I think I will have to make you
+laugh."
+
+"Laugh, Mary?"
+
+"Yes-I will tell you about the quarrel between Aunt Varina and myself.
+You know what times we've been having-how I shocked the poor lady?"
+
+She was looking at me, but her eyes were not seeing me. "Yes, Mary," she
+said, in the same dead tone.
+
+"Well, that was a game we made for you. It was very funny!"
+
+"Funny?"
+
+"Yes! Because I really did shock her-though we started out just to give
+you something else to think about!"
+
+And then suddenly I saw the healing tears begin to come. She could not
+weep for her own grief-but she could weep because of what she knew we
+two had had to suffer for her!
+
+21. I went out and told the others what I had done; and Mrs. Tuis
+rushed in to her niece and they wept in each other's arms, and Mrs. Tuis
+explained all the mysteries of life by her formula, "the will of the
+Lord."
+
+Later on came Dr. Perrin, and it was touching to see how Sylvia treated
+him. She had, it appeared, conceived the idea that the calamity must be
+due to some blunder on his part, and then she had reflected that he was
+young, and that chance had thrown upon him a responsibility for which he
+had not bargained. He must be reproaching himself bitterly, so she had
+to persuade him that it was really not so bad as we were making it-that
+a blind child was a great joy to a mother's soul-in some ways even a
+greater joy than a perfectly sound child, because it appealed so to
+her protective instinct! I had called Sylvia a shameless payer of
+compliments, and now I went away by myself and wept.
+
+Yet it was true in a way. When the infant was brought in to be nursed
+again, how she clung to it, a very picture of the sheltering and
+protecting instinct of motherhood! She knew the worst now--her mind was
+free, and she could partake of what happiness was allowed her. The child
+was hers to love and care for, and she would find ways to atone to it
+for the harshness of fate.
+
+So little by little we got our existence upon a working basis. We lived
+a peaceful, routine life, to the music of cocoanut-palms rustling in the
+warm breezes which blew incessantly off the Mexican Gulf. Aunt Varina
+had, for the time, her undisputed way with the family; her niece
+reclined upon the veranda in true Southern lady fashion, and was read
+aloud to from books of indisputable respectability. I remember Aunt
+Varina selected the "Idylls of the King," and they two were in a mood
+to shed tears over these solemn, sorrowful tales. So it came that the
+little one got her name, after a pale and unhappy heroine.
+
+I remember the long discussions of this point, the family-lore which
+Aunt Varina brought forth. It did not seem to her quite the thing to
+call a blind child after a member of one's family. Something strange,
+romantic, wistful--yes, Elaine was the name! Mrs. Tuis, it transpired,
+had already baptised the infant, in the midst of the agonies and alarms
+of its illness. She had called it "Sylvia," and now she was tremulously
+uncertain whether this counted--whether perhaps the higher powers might
+object to having to alter their records. But in the end a clergyman
+came out from Key West and heard Aunt Varina's confession, and gravely
+concluded that the error might be corrected by a formal ceremony. How
+strange it all seemed to me--being carried back two or three hundred
+years in the world's history! But I gave no sign of what was going on in
+my rebellious mind.
+
+22. Dr. Overton on his return to New York, sent a special nurse to take
+charge of Sylvia's case. There was also an infant's nurse, and both had
+been taken into the doctor's confidence. So now there was an elaborate
+conspiracy--no less than five women and two men, all occupied in keeping
+a secret from Sylvia. It was a thing so contrary to my convictions that
+I was never free from the burden of it for a moment. Was it my duty to
+tell her?
+
+Dr. Perrin no longer referred to the matter--I realised that both he and
+Dr. Gibson considered the matter settled. Was it conceivable that anyone
+of sound mind could set out, deliberately and in cold blood, to betray
+such a secret? But I had maintained all my life the right of woman to
+know the truth, and was I to back down now, at the first test of my
+convictions?
+
+When the news reached Douglas van Tuiver that his wife had been informed
+of the infant's blindness, there came a telegram saying that he was
+coming. There was much excitement, of course, and Aunt Varina came to
+me, in an attempt to secure a definite pledge of silence. When I refused
+it, Dr. Perrin came again, and we fought the matter over for the better
+part of a day and night.
+
+He was a polite little gentleman, and he did not tell me that my views
+were those of a fanatic, but he said that no woman could see things in
+their true proportion, because of her necessary ignorance concerning the
+nature of men, and the temptations to which they were exposed. I replied
+that I believed I understood these matters thoroughly, and I went on,
+quite simply and honestly, to make clear to him that this was so. In
+the end my pathetically chivalrous little Southern gentleman admitted
+everything I asked. Yes, it was true that these evils were ghastly, and
+that they were increasing, and that women were the worst sufferers from
+men. There might even be something in my idea that the older women
+of the community should devote themselves to this service, making
+themselves race-mothers, and helping, not merely in their homes, but in
+the schools and churches, to protect and save the future generations.
+But all that was in the future, he argued, while here was a case which
+had gone so far that "letting in the light" could only blast the life
+of two people, making it impossible for a young mother ever again to
+tolerate the father of her child. I argued that Sylvia was not of the
+hysterical type, but I could not make him agree that it was possible to
+predict what the attitude of any woman would be. His ideas were based on
+one peculiar experience he had had--a woman patient who had said to him:
+"Doctor, I know what is the matter with me, but for God's sake don't
+let my husband find out that I know, because then I should feel that my
+self-respect required me to leave him!"
+
+23. The Master-of-the-House was coming! You could feel the quiver of
+excitement in the air of the place. The boatmen were polishing the
+brasses of the launch; the yard-man was raking up the dry strips of palm
+from beneath the cocoanut trees; Aunt Varina was ordering new supplies,
+and entering into conspiracies with the cook. The nurses asked me
+timidly, what was He like, and even Dr. Gibson, a testy old gentleman
+who had clashed violently with me on the subject of woman's suffrage,
+and had avoided me ever since as a suspicious character, now came and
+confided his troubles. He had sent home for a trunk, and the graceless
+express companies had sent it astray. Now he was wondering if it was
+necessary for him to journey to Key West and have a suit of dinner
+clothes made over night. I told him that I had not sent for any
+party-dresses, and that I expected to meet Mr. Douglas van Tuiver at
+his dinner-table in plain white linen. His surprise was so great that I
+suspected the old gentleman of having wondered whether I meant to retire
+to a "second-table" when the Master-of-the-House arrived.
+
+I went away by myself, seething with wrath. Who was this great one whom
+we honoured? Was he an inspired poet, a maker of laws, a discoverer
+of truth? He was the owner of an indefinite number of millions of
+dollars--that was all, and yet I was expected, because of my awe of him,
+to abandon the cherished convictions of my lifetime. The situation
+was one that challenged my fighting blood. This was the hour to prove
+whether I really meant the things I talked.
+
+On the morning of the day that van Tuiver was expected, I went early to
+Aunt Varina's room. She was going in the launch, and was in a state of
+flustration, occupied in putting on her best false hair. "Mrs. Tuis," I
+said, "I want you to let me go to meet Mr. van Tuiver instead of you."
+
+I will not stop to report the good lady's outcries. I did not care,
+I said, whether it was proper, nor did I care whether, as she finally
+hinted, it might not be agreeable to Mr. van Tuiver. I was sorry to have
+to thrust myself upon him, but I was determined to go, and would let
+nothing prevent me. And all at once she yielded, rather surprising me
+by the suddenness of it. I suppose she concluded that van Tuiver was the
+man to handle me, and the quicker he got at it the better.
+
+It is a trying thing to deal with the rich and great. If you treat them
+as the rest of the world does, you are a tuft-hunter; if you treat them
+as the rest of the world pretends to, you are a hypocrite; whereas, if
+you deal with them truly, it is hard not to seem, even to yourself, a
+bumptious person. I remember trying to tell myself on the launch-trip
+that I was not in the least excited; and then, standing on the platform
+of the railroad station, saying: "How can you expect not to be excited,
+when even the railroad is excited?"
+
+"Will Mr. van Tuiver's train be on time?" I asked, of the agent.
+
+"'Specials' are not often delayed," he replied, "at least, not Mr. van
+Tuiver's."
+
+The engine and its two cars drew up, and the traveller stepped out upon
+the platform, followed by his secretary and his valet. I went forward to
+meet him. "Good morning, Mr. van Tuiver."
+
+I saw at once that he did not remember me. "Mrs. Abbott," I prompted. "I
+came to meet you."
+
+"Ah," he said. He had never got clear whether I was a sewing-woman, or
+a tutor, or what, and whenever he erred in such matters, it was on the
+side of caution.
+
+"Your wife is doing well," I said, "and the child as well as could be
+expected."
+
+"Thank you," he said. "Did no one else come?"
+
+"Mrs. Tuis was not able," I said, diplomatically, and we moved towards
+the launch.
+
+24. He did not offer to help me into the vessel, but I, crude
+Western woman, did not miss the attention. We seated ourselves in the
+upholstered leather seats in the stern, and when the "luggage" had been
+stowed aboard, the little vessel swung away from the pier. Then I said:
+"If you will pardon me, Mr. van Tuiver, I should like to talk with you
+privately."
+
+He looked at me for a moment, and then answered, abruptly: "Yes, madam."
+The secretary rose and went forward.
+
+The whirr of the machinery and the strong breeze made by the boat's
+motion, made it certain that no one could hear us, and so I began my
+attack: "Mr. van Tuiver, I am a friend of your wife's. I came here to
+help her in this crisis, and I came to-day to meet you because it was
+necessary for someone to talk to you frankly about the situation.
+You will understand, I presume, that Mrs. Tuis is not--not very well
+informed about the matters in question."
+
+His gaze was fixed intently upon me, but he said not a word. After
+waiting, I continued: "Perhaps you will wonder why your wife's
+physicians could not have handled the matter. The reason is, there is
+a woman's side to such questions and often it is difficult for men to
+understand it. If Sylvia knew the truth, she could speak for herself;
+so long as she does not know it, I shall have to take the liberty of
+speaking for her."
+
+Again there was a pause. He did nothing more than watch me, yet I could
+feel his affronted maleness rising up for battle. I waited on purpose to
+compel him to speak.
+
+"May I ask," he inquired, at last, "what you mean by the 'truth' that
+you refer to?"
+
+"I mean," I said, "the cause of the infant's affliction."
+
+His composure was a thing to wonder at. He did not show by the flicker
+of an eyelash any sign of uneasiness.
+
+"Let me explain one thing," I continued. "I owe it to Dr. Perrin to make
+clear that he had nothing whatever to do with my coming into possession
+of the secret. In fact, as he will no doubt tell you, I knew it before
+he did; it is possible that you owe it to me that the infant is not
+disfigured as well as blind."
+
+I paused again. "If that be true," he said, with unshaken formality, "I
+am obliged to you." What a man!
+
+I continued: "My one desire and purpose is to protect my friend. So far,
+the secret has been kept from her. I consented to this, because her very
+life was at stake, it seemed to us all. But now she is well enough to
+know, and the question is SHALL she know. I need hardly tell you
+that Dr. Perrin thinks she should not, and that he has been using his
+influence to persuade me to agree with him; so also has Mrs. Tuis----"
+
+Then I saw the first trace of uncertainty in his eyes. "There was a
+critical time," I explained, "when Mrs. Tuis had to be told. You may be
+sure, however, that no hint of the truth will be given by her. I am the
+only person who is troubled with the problem of Sylvia's rights."
+
+I waited. "May I suggest, Mrs.--Mrs. Abbott--that the protection of
+Mrs. van Tuiver's rights can be safely left to her physicians and her
+husband?"
+
+"One would wish so, Mr. van Tuiver, but the medical books are full of
+evidence that women's rights frequently need other protection."
+
+I perceived that he was nearing the end of his patience now. "You make
+it difficult for me to talk to you," he said. "I am not accustomed to
+having my affairs taken out of my hands by strangers."
+
+"Mr. van Tuiver," I replied, "in this most critical matter it is
+necessary to speak without evasion. Before her marriage Sylvia made an
+attempt to safeguard herself in this very matter, and she was not dealt
+with fairly."
+
+At last I had made a hole in the mask! His face was crimson as
+he replied: "Madam, your knowledge of my private affairs is most
+astonishing. May I inquire how you learned these things?"
+
+I did not reply at once, and he repeated the question. I perceived that
+this was to him the most important matter--his wife's lack of reserve!
+
+"The problem that concerns us here," I said, "is whether you are willing
+to repair the error you made. Will you go frankly to your wife and admit
+your responsibility----"
+
+He broke in, angrily: "Madam, the assumption you are making is one I see
+no reason for permitting."
+
+"Mr. van Tuiver," said I, "I hoped that you would not take that line of
+argument. I perceive that I have been _naive._"
+
+"Really, madam!" he replied, with cruel intent, "you have not impressed
+me so!"
+
+I continued unshaken: "In this conversation it will be necessary to
+assume that you are responsible for the presence of the disease."
+
+"In that case," he replied, haughtily, "I can have no further part in
+the conversation, and I will ask you to drop it at once."
+
+I might have taken him at his word and waited, confident that in the
+end he would have to come and ask for terms. But that would have seemed
+childish to me, with the grave matters we had to settle. After a minute
+or two, I said, quietly: "Mr. van Tuiver, you wish me to believe that
+previous to your marriage you had always lived a chaste life?"
+
+He was equal to the effort it cost to control himself. He sat examining
+me with his cold grey eyes. I suppose I must have been as new and
+monstrous a phenomenon to him as he was to me.
+
+At last, seeing that he would not reply, I said, coldly: "It will help
+us to get forward if you will give up the idea that it is possible for
+you to put me off, or to escape this situation."
+
+"Madam," he cried, suddenly, "come to the point! What is it that you
+want? Money?"
+
+I had thought I was prepared for everything; but this was an aspect of
+his world which I could hardly have been expected to allow for. I stared
+at him and then turned from the sight of him. "And to think that Sylvia
+is married to such a man!" I whispered, half to myself.
+
+"Mrs. Abbott," he exclaimed, "how can anyone understand what you are
+driving at?"
+
+But I turned away without answering, and for a long time sat gazing over
+the water. What was the use of pleading with such a man? What was the
+use of pouring out one's soul to him? I would tell Sylvia the truth at
+once, and leave him to her!
+
+25. I heard him again, at last; he was talking to my back, his tone
+a trifle less aloof. "Mrs. Abbott, do you realize that I know nothing
+whatever about you--your character, your purpose, the nature of your
+hold upon my wife? So what means have I of judging? You threaten me with
+something that seems to me entirely insane--and what can I make of it?
+If you wish me to understand you, tell me in plain words what you want."
+
+I reflected that I was in the world, and must take it as I found it. "I
+have told you what I want," I said; "but I will tell you again, if it is
+necessary. I hoped to persuade you that it was your duty to go to your
+wife and tell her the truth."
+
+He took a few moments to make sure of his self-possession. "And would
+you explain what good you imagine that could do?"
+
+"Your wife," I said, "must be put in position to protect herself in
+future. There is no means of making sure in such a matter, except to
+tell her the truth. You love her--and you are a man who has never been
+accustomed to do without what he wants."
+
+"Great God, woman!" he cried. "Don't you suppose one blind child is
+enough?"
+
+It was the first human word that he had spoken, and I was grateful for
+it. "I have already covered that point," I said, in a low voice. "The
+medical books are full of painful evidence that several blind children
+are often not enough. There can be no escaping the necessity--Sylvia
+must _know._ The only question is, who shall tell her? You must realize
+that in urging you to be the person, I am thinking of your good as well
+as hers. I will, of course, not mention that I have had anything to
+do with persuading you, and so it will seem to her that you have some
+realization of the wrong you have done her, some desire to atone for it,
+and to be honourable and fair in your future dealings with her. When she
+has once been made to realize that you are no more guilty than other men
+of your class--hat you have done no worse than all of them----
+
+"You imagine she could be made to believe that?" he broke in,
+impatiently.
+
+"I will undertake to see that she believes it," I replied.
+
+"You seem to have great confidence in your ability to manage my wife!"
+
+"If you continue to resent my existence," I answered, gravely, "you will
+make it impossible for me to help you."
+
+"Pardon me," he said--but he did not say it cordially.
+
+I went on: "There is much that can be said in your behalf. I realize it
+is quite possible that you were not wholly to blame when you wrote to
+Bishop Chilton that you were fit to marry; I know that you may have
+believed it--that you might even have found physicians to tell you so.
+There is wide-spread ignorance on the subject of this disease. Men have
+the idea that the chronic forms of it cannot be communicated to women,
+and it is difficult to make them realize what modern investigations have
+proven. You can explain that to Sylvia, and I will back you up in it.
+You were in love with her, you wanted her. Go to her now, and admit to
+her honestly that you have wronged her. Beg her to forgive you, and to
+let you help make the best of the cruel situation that has arisen."
+
+So I went on, pouring out my soul. And when I had finished, he said,
+"Mrs. Abbott, I have listened patiently to your most remarkable
+proposition. My answer is that I must ask you to withdraw from this
+intimate matter, which concerns only my wife and myself."
+
+He was back where we started! Trying to sweep aside these grim and
+terrible realities with the wave of a conventional hand! Was this the
+way he met Sylvia's arguments? I felt moved to tell him what I thought
+of him.
+
+"You are a proud man, Mr. van Tuiver--an obstinate man, I fear. It is
+hard for you to humble yourself to your wife--to admit a crime and beg
+forgiveness. Tell me--is that why you hesitate? Is it because you fear
+you will have to take second place in your family from now on--that you
+will no longer be able to dominate Sylvia? Are you afraid of putting
+into her hands a weapon of self-defence?"
+
+He made no response.
+
+"Very well," I said, at last. "Let me tell you, then--I will not help
+any man to hold such a position in a woman's life. Women have to bear
+half the burdens of marriage, they pay half, or more than half, the
+penalties; and so it is necessary that they have a voice in its affairs.
+Until they know the truth, they can never have a voice."
+
+Of course my little lecture on Feminism might as well have been
+delivered to a sphinx. "How stupid you are!" I cried. "Don't you know
+that some day Sylvia must find out the truth for herself?"
+
+This was before the days when newspapers and magazines began to discuss
+such matters frankly; but still there were hints to be picked up. I had
+a newspaper-item in my bag--the board of health in a certain city had
+issued a circular giving instructions for the prevention of blindness
+in newly-born infants, and discussing the causes thereof; and the United
+States post office authorities had barred the circular from the mails. I
+said, "Suppose that item had come under Sylvia's eyes; might it not have
+put her on the track. It was in her newspaper the day before yesterday;
+and it was only by accident that I got hold of it first. Do you suppose
+that can go on forever?"
+
+"Now that I am here," he replied, "I will be glad to relieve you of such
+responsibilities."
+
+Which naturally made me cross. I drew from my quiver an arrow that I
+thought would penetrate his skin. "Mr. van Tuiver," I said, "a man in
+your position must always be an object of gossip and scandal. Suppose
+some enemy were to send your wife an anonymous letter? Or suppose there
+were some woman who thought that you had wronged her?"
+
+I stopped. He gave me one keen look--and then again the impenetrable
+mask! "My wife will have to do as other women in her position do--pay no
+attention to scandal-mongers of any sort."
+
+I paused, and then went on: "I believe in marriage. I consider it a
+sacred thing; I would do anything in my power to protect and preserve a
+marriage. But I hold that it must be an equal partnership. I would fight
+to make it that; and wherever I found that it could not be that, I would
+say it was not marriage, but slavery, and I would fight just as hard to
+break it. Can you not understand that attitude upon a woman's part?"
+
+He gave no sign that he could understand. But still I would not give up
+my battle. "Mr. van Tuiver," I pleaded, "I am a much older person than
+you. I have seen a great deal of life--I have seen suffering even worse
+than yours. And I am trying most earnestly to help you. Can you not
+bring yourself to talk to me frankly? Perhaps you have never talked with
+a woman about such matters--I mean, with a good woman. But I assure
+you that other men have found it possible, and never regretted the
+confidence they placed in me."
+
+I went on to tell him about my own sons, and what I had done for them;
+I told him of a score of other boys in their class who had come to me,
+making me a sort of mother-confessor. I do not think that I was entirely
+deceived by my own eloquence--there was, I am sure, a minute or two
+when he actually wavered. But then the habits of a precocious life-time
+reasserted themselves, and he set his lips and told himself that he was
+Douglas van Tuiver. Such things might happen in raw Western colleges,
+but they were not according to the Harvard manner, nor the tradition of
+life in Fifth Avenue clubs.
+
+He could not be a boy! He had never had any boyhood, any childhood--he
+had been a state personage ever since he had known that he was anything.
+I found myself thinking suddenly of the thin-lipped old family lawyer,
+who had had much to do with shaping his character, and whom Sylvia
+described to me, sitting at her dinner-table and bewailing the folly
+of people who "admitted things." That was what made trouble for family
+lawyers--not what people did, but what they admitted. How easy it was
+to ignore impertinent questions! And how few people had the wit to do
+it!-it seemed as if the shade of the thin-lipped old family lawyer were
+standing by Douglas van Tuiver's side.
+
+In a last desperate effort, I cried, "Even suppose that I grant your
+request, even suppose I agree not to tell Sylvia the truth--still the
+day will come when you will hear from her the point-blank question: 'Is
+my child blind because of this disease?' And what will you answer?"
+
+He said, in his cold, measured tones, "I will answer that there are a
+thousand ways in which the disease can be innocently acquired."
+
+For a long time there was silence between us. At last he spoke again,
+and his voice was as emotionless as if we had just met: "Do I understand
+you, madam, that if I reject your advice and refuse to tell my wife what
+you call the truth, it is your intention to tell her yourself?"
+
+"You understand me correctly," I replied.
+
+"And may I ask when you intend to carry out this threat?"
+
+"I will wait," I said, "I will give you every chance to think it
+over--to consult with the doctors, in case you wish to. I will not take
+the step without giving you fair notice."
+
+"For that I am obliged to you," he said, with a touch of irony; and that
+was our last word.
+
+26. Our island was visible in the distance and I was impatient for the
+time when I should be free from this man's presence. But as we drew
+nearer, I noticed a boat coming out; it proved to be one of the smaller
+launches heading directly for us. Neither van Tuiver nor I spoke, but
+both of us watched it, and he must have been wondering, as I was, what
+its purpose could be. When it was near enough, I made out that its
+passengers were Dr. Perrin and Dr. Gibson.
+
+We slowed up, and the other boat did the same, and they lay within a few
+feet of each other. Dr. Perrin greeted van Tuiver, and after introducing
+the other man, he said: "We came out to have a talk with you. Would you
+be so good as to step into this boat?"
+
+"Certainly," was the reply. The two launches were drawn side by side,
+and the transfer made; the man who was running the smaller launch
+stepped into ours--evidently having been instructed in advance.
+
+"You will excuse us please?" said the little doctor to me. The man who
+had stepped into our launch spoke to the captain of it, and the power
+was then put on, and we moved away a sufficient distance to be out of
+hearing. I thought this a strange procedure, but I conjectured that the
+doctors had become nervous as to what I might have told van Tuiver. So
+I dismissed the matter from my mind, and spent my time reviewing the
+exciting adventure I had just passed through.
+
+How much impression had I made? It was hard for me to judge such a man.
+He would pretend to be less concerned than he actually was. But surely
+he must see that he was in my power, and would have to give way in the
+end!
+
+There came a hail from the little vessel, and we moved alongside again.
+"Would you kindly step in here with us, Mrs. Abbott?" said Dr. Perrin,
+and when I had done so, he ordered the boatman to move away once more.
+Van Tuiver said not a word, but I noted a strained look upon his face,
+and I thought the others seemed agitated also.
+
+As soon as the other vessel was out of hearing, Dr. Perrin turned to me
+and said: "Mrs. Abbott, we came out to see Mr. van Tuiver, to warn him
+of a distressing accident which has just happened. Mrs. van Tuiver was
+asleep in her room, and Miss Lyman and another of the nurses were in the
+next room. They indiscreetly made some remarks on the subject which we
+have all been discussing--how much a wife should be told about these
+matters, and suddenly they discovered Mrs. van Tuiver standing in the
+doorway of the room."
+
+My gaze had turned to Douglas van Tuiver. "So she _knows!_" I cried.
+
+"We don't think that she knows, but she has a suspicion and is trying to
+find out. She asked to see you."
+
+"Ah, yes!" I said.
+
+"She declared that she wished to see you as soon as you returned--that
+she would not see anyone else, not even Mr. van Tuiver. You will
+understand that this portends trouble for all of us. We judged it
+necessary to have a consultation about the matter."
+
+I bowed in assent.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Abbot," began the little doctor, solemnly, "there is no
+longer a question of abstract ideas, but of an immediate emergency. We
+feel that we, as the physicians in charge of the case, have the right to
+take control of the matter. We do not see----"
+
+"Dr. Perrin," I said, "let us come to the point. You want me to spin a
+new web of deception?"
+
+"We are of the opinion, Mrs. Abbott, that in such matters the physicians
+in charge----"
+
+"Excuse me," I said, quickly, "we have been over all this before, and we
+know that we disagree. Has Mr. van Tuiver told you of the proposition I
+have just made?"
+
+"You mean for him to go to his wife----"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He has told us of this, and has offered to do it. We are of the opinion
+that it would be a grave mistake."
+
+"It has been three weeks since the birth of the baby," I said. "Surely
+all danger of fever is past. I will grant you that if it were a question
+of telling her deliberately, it might be better to put it off for a
+while. I would have been willing to wait for months, but for the fact
+that I dreaded something like the present situation. Now that it has
+happened, surely it is best to use our opportunity while all of us
+are here and can persuade her to take the kindest attitude towards her
+husband."
+
+"Madam!" broke in Dr. Gibson. (He was having difficulty in controlling
+his excitement.) "You are asking us to overstep the bounds of our
+professional duty. It is not for the physician to decide upon the
+attitude a wife should take toward her husband."
+
+"Dr. Gibson," I replied, "that is what you propose to do, only you wish
+to conceal the fact. You would force Mrs. van Tuiver to accept your
+opinion of what a wife's duty is."
+
+Dr. Perrin took command once more. "Our patient has asked for you, and
+she looks to you for guidance. You must put aside your own convictions
+and think of her health. You are the only person who can calm her, and
+surely it is your duty to do so!"
+
+"I know that I might go in and lie again to my friend, but she knows
+too much to be deceived for very long. You know what a mind she has--a
+lawyer's mind! How can I persuade her that the nurses--why, I do not
+even know what she heard the nurses say!"
+
+"We have that all written down for you," put in Dr. Perrin, quickly.
+
+"You have their recollection of it, no doubt--but suppose they have
+forgotten some of it? Sylvia has not forgotten, you may be sure--every
+word is burned with fire into her brain. She has put with this
+everything she ever heard on the subject--the experience of her
+friend, Harriet Atkinson-all that I've told her in the past about such
+things----"
+
+"Ah!" growled Dr. Gibson. "That's it! If you had not meddled in the
+beginning----"
+
+"Now, now!" said the other, soothingly. "You ask me to relieve you of
+the embarrassment of this matter. I quite agree with Mrs. Abbott that
+there is too much ignorance about these things, but she must recognise,
+I am sure, that this is not the proper moment for enlightening Mrs. van
+Tuiver."
+
+"I do not recognise it at all," I said. "If her husband will go to her
+and tell her humbly and truthfully----"
+
+"You are talking madness!" cried the old man, breaking loose again. "She
+would be hysterical--she would regard him as something loathsome--some
+kind of criminal----"
+
+"Of course she would be shocked," I said, "but she has the coolest head
+of anyone I know--I do not think of any man I would trust so fully
+to take a rational attitude in the end. We can explain to her what
+extenuating circumstances there are, and she will have to recognise
+them. She will see that we are considering her rights----"
+
+"Her _rights!_" The old man fairly snorted the words.
+
+"Now, now, Dr. Gibson!" interposed the other. "You asked me----"
+
+"I know! I know! But as the older of the physicians in charge of this
+case----"
+
+Dr. Perrin managed to frown him down, and went on trying to placate
+me. But through the argument I could hear the old man muttering in
+his collar a kind of double bass _pizzicato_: "Suffragettes! Fanatics!
+Hysteria! Woman's Rights!"
+
+27. The breeze was feeble, and the sun was blazing hot, but nevertheless
+I made myself listen patiently for a while. They had said it all to
+me, over and over again; but it seemed that Dr. Perrin could not be
+satisfied until it had been said in Douglas van Tuiver's presence.
+
+"Dr. Perrin," I exclaimed, "even supposing we make the attempt to
+deceive her, we have not one plausible statement to make----"
+
+"You are mistaken, Mrs. Abbott," said he. "We have the perfectly
+well-known fact that this disease is often contracted in ways which
+involve no moral blame. And in this case I believe I am in position to
+state how the accident happened."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I don't know whether you heard that just before Mrs. van Tuiver's
+confinement, I was called away to one of the other keys to attend a
+negro-woman. And since this calamity has befallen us, I have realized
+that I was possibly not as careful in sterilizing my instruments as I
+might have been. It is of course a dreadful thing for any physician to
+have to believe----"
+
+He stopped, and there was a long silence. I gazed from one to another of
+the men. Two of them met my gaze; one did not. "He is going to let you
+say that?" I whispered, at last.
+
+"Honour and fairness compel me to say it, Mrs. Abbott. I believe----"
+
+But I interrupted him. "Listen to me, Dr. Perrin. You are a chivalrous
+gentleman, and you think you are helping a man in desperate need. But
+I say that anyone who would permit you to tell such a tale is a
+contemptible coward!"
+
+"Madam," cried Dr. Gibson, furiously, "there is a limit even to a
+woman's rights!"
+
+A silence followed. At last I resumed, in a low voice, "You gentlemen
+have your code: you protect the husband--you protect him at all hazards.
+I could understand this, if he were innocent of the offence in question;
+I could understand it if there were any possibility of his being
+innocent. But how can you protect him, when you know that he is guilty?"
+
+"There can be no question of such knowledge!" cried the old doctor.
+
+"I have no idea," I said, "how much he has admitted to you; but let me
+remind you of one circumstance, which is known to Dr. Perrin--that I
+came to this place with the definite information that symptoms of the
+disease were to be anticipated. Dr. Perrin knows that I told that to Dr.
+Overton in New York. Has he informed you of it?"
+
+There was an awkward interval. I glanced at van Tuiver, and I saw that
+he was leaning forward, staring at me. I thought he was about to speak,
+when Dr. Gibson broke in, excitedly, "All this is beside the mark! We
+have a serious emergency to face, and we are not getting anywhere. As
+the older of the physicians in charge of this case----"
+
+And he went on to give me a lecture on the subject of authority. He
+talked for five minutes, ten minutes--I lost all track of the time. I
+had suddenly begun to picture how I would act and what I would say when
+I went into Sylvia's room. What a state must Sylvia be in, while we sat
+out here in the blazing mid-day sun, discussing her right to freedom and
+knowledge!
+
+28. "I have always been positive," Dr. Gibson was saying, "but the
+present discussion has made me more positive than ever. As the older of
+the physicians in charge of this case, I say most emphatically that the
+patient shall not be told!"
+
+I could not stand him any longer. "I am going to tell the patient," I
+said.
+
+"You shall _not_ tell her!"
+
+"But how will you prevent me?"
+
+"You shall not _see_ her!"
+
+"But she is determined to see _me!_"
+
+"She will be told that you are not there."
+
+"And how long do you imagine that that will satisfy her?"
+
+There was a pause. They looked at van Tuiver, expecting him to speak.
+And so I heard once more his cold, deliberate voice. "We have done
+all we can. There can no longer be any question as to the course to be
+taken. Mrs. Abbott will not return to my home."
+
+"What?" I cried. I stared at him, aghast. "What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean what I say--that you will not be taken back to the island."
+
+"But where will I be taken?"
+
+"You will be taken to the mainland."
+
+I stared at the others. No one gave a sign. At last I whispered, "You
+would _dare?_"
+
+"You leave us no other alternative," replied the master.
+
+"You--you will practically kidnap me!" My voice must have been rather
+wild at that moment.
+
+"You left my home of your own free will. I think I need hardly point out
+to you that I am not compelled to invite you back to it."
+
+"And what will Sylvia----" I stopped; appalled at the vista the words
+opened up.
+
+"My wife," said van Tuiver, "will ultimately choose between her husband
+and her most remarkable acquaintance."
+
+"And you gentlemen?" I turned to the others. "You would give your
+sanction to this outrageous action?"
+
+"As the older of the physicians in charge of this case----" began Dr.
+Gibson.
+
+I turned to van Tuiver again. "When your wife finds out what you have
+done to me--what will you answer?"
+
+"We will deal with that situation when we come to it."
+
+"Of course," I said, "you understand that sooner or later I shall get
+word to her!"
+
+He answered, "We shall assume from now on that you are a mad woman, and
+shall take our precautions accordingly."
+
+Again there was a silence.
+
+"The launch will return to the mainland," said van Tuiver at last. "It
+will remain there until Mrs. Abbott sees fit to go ashore. May I ask if
+she has sufficient money in her purse to take her to New York?"
+
+I could not help laughing. The thing was so wild--and yet I could see
+that from their point of view it was the only thing to do. "Mrs. Abbott
+is not certain that she is going back to New York," I replied. "If she
+does go, it will not be with Mr. van Tuiver's money."
+
+"One thing more," said Dr. Perrin. It was the first time he had spoken
+since van Tuiver's incredible announcement. "I trust, Mrs. Abbott, that
+this unfortunate situation may at all costs be concealed from servants,
+and from the world in general."
+
+From which I realized how badly I had them frightened. They actually saw
+me making physical resistance!
+
+"Dr. Perrin," I replied, "I am acting in this matter for my friend.
+I will add this: that I believe that you are letting yourself be
+overborne, and that you will regret it some day."
+
+He made no answer. Douglas van Tuiver put an end to the discussion by
+rising and signalling the other launch. When it had come alongside, he
+said to the captain, "Mrs. Abbott is going back to the railroad. You
+will take her at once."
+
+Then he waited; I was malicious enough to give him an anxious moment
+before I rose. Dr. Perrin offered me his hand; and Dr. Gibson said, with
+a smile, "Good-bye, Mrs. Abbott. I'm sorry you can't stay with us any
+longer."
+
+I think it was something to my credit that I was able to play out the
+game before the boatmen. "I am sorry, too," I countered. "I am hoping I
+shall be able to return."
+
+And then came the real ordeal. "Good-bye, Mrs. Abbott," said Douglas van
+Tuiver, with his stateliest bow; and I managed to answer him!
+
+As I took my seat, he beckoned his secretary. There was a whispered
+consultation for a minute or two, and then the master returned to the
+smaller launch with the doctors. He gave the word, and the two vessels
+set out--one to the key, and the other to the railroad. The secretary
+went in the one with me!
+
+29. And here ends a certain stage of my story. I have described Sylvia
+as I met her and judged her; and if there be any reader who has been
+irked by this method, who thinks of me as a crude and pushing person,
+disposed to meddle in the affairs of others, here is where that reader
+will have his satisfaction and revenge. For if ever a troublesome puppet
+was jerked suddenly off the stage--if ever a long-winded orator was
+effectively snuffed out--I was that puppet and that orator. I stop and
+think--shall I describe how I paced up and down the pier, respectfully
+but emphatically watched by the secretary? And all the melodramatic
+plots I conceived, the muffled oars and the midnight visits to my
+Sylvia? My sense of humour forbids it. For a while now I shall take
+the hint and stay in the background of this story. I shall tell the
+experiences of Sylvia as Sylvia herself told them to me long afterwards;
+saying no more about my own fate--save that I swallowed my humiliation
+and took the next train to New York, a far sadder and wiser
+social-reformer!
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III. SYLVIA AS REBEL
+
+
+1. Long afterwards Sylvia told me about what happened between her
+husband and herself; how desperately she tried to avoid discussing the
+issue with him--out of her very sense of fairness to him. But he came to
+her room, in spite of her protest, and by his implacable persistence
+he made her hear what he had to say. When he had made up his mind to a
+certain course of action, he was no more to be resisted than a glacier.
+
+"Sylvia," he said, "I know that you are upset by what has happened. I
+make every allowance for your condition; but there are some statements
+that I must be permitted to make, and there are simply no two ways about
+it--you must get yourself together and hear me."
+
+"Let me see Mary Abbott!" she insisted, again and again. "It may not be
+what you want--but I demand to see her."
+
+So at last he said, "You cannot see Mrs. Abbott. She has gone back to
+New York." And then, at her look of consternation: "That is one of the
+things I have to talk to you about."
+
+"Why has she gone back?" cried Sylvia.
+
+"Because I was unwilling to have her here."
+
+"You mean you sent her away?"
+
+"I mean that she understood she was no longer welcome."
+
+Sylvia drew a quick breath and turned away to the window.
+
+He took advantage of the opportunity to come near, and draw up a chair
+for her. "Will you not pleased to be seated," he said. And at last she
+turned, rigidly, and seated herself.
+
+"The time has come," he declared, "when we have to settle this question
+of Mrs. Abbott, and her influence upon your life. I have argued with you
+about such matters, but now what has happened makes further discussion
+impossible. You were brought up among people of refinement, and it has
+been incredible to me that you should be willing to admit to your home
+such a woman as this--not merely of the commonest birth, but without a
+trace of the refinement to which you have been accustomed. And now
+you see the consequences of your having brought such a person into our
+life!"
+
+He paused. She made no sound, and her gaze was riveted upon the
+window-curtain.
+
+"She happens to be here," he went on, "at a time when a dreadful
+calamity befalls us--when we are in need of the utmost sympathy and
+consideration. Here is an obscure and terrible affliction, which has
+baffled the best physicians in the country; but this ignorant farmer's
+wife considers that she knows all about it. She proceeds to discuss it
+with every one--sending your poor aunt almost into hysterics, setting
+the nurses to gossiping--God knows what else she has done, or what she
+will do, before she gets through. I don't pretend to know her ultimate
+purpose--blackmail, possibly----"
+
+"Oh, how can you!" she broke out, involuntarily. "How can you say such a
+thing about a friend of mine?"
+
+"I might answer with another question--how can you have such a friend?
+A woman who has cast off every restraint, every consideration of
+decency--and yet is able to persuade a daughter of the Castlemans to
+make her an intimate! Possibly she is an honest fanatic. Dr. Perrin
+tells me she was the wife of a brutal farmer, who mistreated her. No
+doubt that has embittered her against men, and accounts for her mania.
+You see that her mind leaped at once to the most obscene and hideous
+explanation of this misfortune of ours--an explanation which pleased her
+because it blackened the honour of a man."
+
+He stopped again. Sylvia's eyes had moved back to the window-curtain.
+
+"I am not going to insult your ears," he said, "with discussions of her
+ideas. The proper person to settle such matters is a physician, and if
+you wish Dr. Perrin to do so, he will tell you what he knows about the
+case. But I wish you to realize somehow what this thing has meant to
+me. I have managed to control myself----" He saw her shut her lips more
+tightly. "The doctors tell me that I must not excite you. But picture
+the situation. I come to my home, bowed down with grief for you and for
+my child. And this mad woman thrusts herself forward, shoves aside your
+aunt and your physicians, and comes in the launch to meet me at the
+station. And then she accuses me of being criminally guilty of the
+blindness of my child--of having wilfully deceived my wife! Think of
+it--that is my welcome to my home!"
+
+"Douglas," she cried, wildly, "Mary Abbott would not have done such a
+thing without reason----"
+
+"I do not purpose to defend myself," he said, coldly. "If you are bent
+upon filling your mind with such matters, go to Dr. Perrin. He will
+tell you that he, as a physician, knows that the charge against me is
+preposterous. He will tell you that even granting that the cause of
+the blindness is what Mrs. Abbott guesses, there are a thousand ways in
+which such an infection can be contracted, which are perfectly innocent,
+involving no guilt on the part of anyone. Every doctor knows that
+drinking-cups, wash-basins, towels, even food, can be contaminated. He
+knows that any person can bring the affliction into a home--servants,
+nurses, even the doctors themselves. Has your mad woman friend told you
+any of that?"
+
+"She has told me nothing. You know that I have had no opportunity to
+talk with her. I only know what the nurses believe----"
+
+"They believe what Mrs. Abbott told them. That is absolutely all the
+reason they have for believing anything!"
+
+She did not take that quite as he expected. "So Mary Abbott _did_ tell
+them!" she cried.
+
+He hurried on: "The poisonous idea of a vulgar Socialist woman--this is
+the thing upon which you base your suspicions of your husband!"
+
+"Oh!" she whispered, half to herself. "Mary Abbott _did_ say it!"
+
+"What if she did?"
+
+"Oh, Douglas, Mary would never have said such a thing to a nurse unless
+she had been certain of it!"
+
+"Certain?" he broke out. "What certainty could she imagine she had?
+She is a bitter, frantic woman--a divorced woman--who jumped to the
+conclusion that pleased her, because it involved the humiliation of a
+rich man."
+
+He went on, his voice trembling with suppressed passion: "When you know
+the real truth, the thing becomes a nightmare. You, a delicate woman,
+lying here helpless--the victim of a cruel misfortune, and with the
+life of an afflicted infant depending upon your peace of mind. Your
+physicians planning day and night to keep you quiet, to keep the
+dreadful, unbearable truth from you----"
+
+"Oh, what truth? That's the terrifying thing--to know that people are
+keeping things from me! What _was_ it they were keeping?"
+
+"First of all, the fact that the baby was blind; and then the cause of
+it----"
+
+"Then they _do_ know the cause?"
+
+"They don't know positively--no one can know positively. But poor
+Dr. Perrin had a dreadful idea, that he had to hide from you because
+otherwise he could not bear to continue in your house----"
+
+"Why, Douglas! What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that a few days before your confinement, he was called away to
+the case of a negro-woman--you knew that, did you not?"
+
+"Go on."
+
+"He had the torturing suspicion that possibly he was not careful enough
+in sterilizing his instruments, and that he, your friend and protector,
+may be the man who is to blame."
+
+"Oh! Oh!" Her voice was a whisper of horror.
+
+"That is one of the secrets your doctors have been trying to hide."
+
+There was silence, while her eyes searched his face. Suddenly she
+stretched out her hands to him, crying desperately: "Oh, is this true?"
+
+He did not take the outstretched hands. "Since I am upon the
+witness-stand, I have to be careful of my replies. It is what Dr. Perrin
+tells me. Whether the explanation he gives is the true one--whether
+he himself, or the nurse he recommended, may have brought the
+infection----"
+
+"It couldn't have been the nurse," she said quickly. "She was so
+careful----"
+
+He did not allow her to finish. "You seem determined," he said, coldly,
+"to spare everyone but your husband."
+
+"No!" she protested, "I have tried hard to be fair--to be fair to both
+you and my friend. Of course, if Mary Abbott was mistaken, I have done
+you a great injustice--"
+
+He saw that she was softening, and that it was safe for him to be a
+man. "It has been with some difficulty that I have controlled myself
+throughout this experience," he said, rising to his feet. "If you do not
+mind, I think I will not carry the discussion any further, as I don't
+feel that I can trust myself to listen to a defence of that woman from
+your lips. I will only tell you my decision in the matter. I have never
+before used my authority as a husband; I hoped I should never have to
+use it. But the time has come when you will have to choose between
+Mary Abbott and your husband. I will positively not tolerate your
+corresponding with her, or having anything further to do with her.
+I take my stand upon that, and nothing will move me. I will not even
+permit of any discussion of the subject. And now I hope you will excuse
+me. Dr. Perrin wishes me to tell you that either he or Dr. Gibson are
+ready at any time to advise you about these matters, which have been
+forced upon your mind against their judgment and protests."
+
+2. You can see that it was no easy matter for Sylvia to get at the
+truth. The nurses, already terrified because of their indiscretion, had
+been first professionally thrashed, and then carefully drilled as to the
+answers they were to make. But as a matter of fact they did not have
+to make any answers at all, because Sylvia was unwilling to reveal to
+anyone her distrust of her husband.
+
+One of two things was certain: either she had been horribly wronged by
+her husband, or now she was horribly wronging him. Which was the truth?
+Was it conceivable that I, Mary Abbott, would leap to a false conclusion
+about such a matter? She knew that I felt intensely, almost fanatically,
+on the subject, and also that I had been under great emotional stress.
+Was it possible that I would have voiced mere suspicions to the nurses?
+Sylvia could not be sure, for my standards were as strange to her as
+my Western accent. She knew that I talked freely to everyone about such
+matters--and would be as apt to select the nurses as the ladies of
+the house. On the other hand, how was it conceivable that I could know
+positively? To recognize a disease might be easy; but to specify from
+what source it had come--that was surely not in my power!
+
+They did not leave her alone for long. Mrs. Tuis came in, with her
+feminine terrors. "Sylvia, you must know that you are treating your
+husband dreadfully! He has gone away down the beach by himself, and has
+not even seen his baby!"
+
+"Aunt Varina--" she began, "won't you please go away?"
+
+But the other rushed on: "Your husband comes here, broken with grief
+because of this affliction; and you overwhelm him with the most cruel
+and wicked reproaches with charges you have no way in the world of
+proving----" And the old lady caught her niece by the hand. "My child!
+Come, do your duty!"
+
+"My duty?"
+
+"Make yourself fit, and take your husband to see his baby."
+
+"Oh, I can't!" cried Sylvia. "I don't want to be there when he sees her!
+If I loved him--" Then, seeing her aunt's face of horror, she was seized
+with a sudden impulse of pity, and caught the poor old lady in her arms.
+"Aunt Varina," she said, "I am making you suffer, I know--I am making
+everyone suffer! But if you only knew how I am suffering myself! How can
+I know what to do."
+
+Mrs. Tuis was weeping; but quickly she got herself together, and
+answered in a firm voice, "Your old auntie can tell you what to do. You
+must come to your senses, my child--you must let your reason prevail.
+Get your face washed, make yourself presentable, and come and take your
+husband to see your baby. Women have to suffer, dear; we must not shirk
+our share of life's burdens."
+
+"There is no danger of my shirking," said Sylvia, bitterly.
+
+"Come, dear, come," pleaded Mrs. Tuis. She was trying to lead the girl
+to the mirror. If only she could be made to see how distraught and
+disorderly she looked! "Let me help you to dress, dear--you know how
+much better it always makes you feel."
+
+Sylvia laughed, a trifle wildly--but Mrs. Tuis had dealt with hysteria
+before. "What would you like to wear?" she demanded. And then, without
+waiting for an answer, "Let me choose something. One of your pretty
+frocks."
+
+"A pretty frock, and a seething volcano underneath! That is your idea of
+a woman's life!"
+
+The other responded very gravely, "A pretty frock, my dear, and a
+smile--instead of a vulgar scene, and ruin and desolation afterwards."
+
+Sylvia made no reply. Yes, that was the life of woman--her old aunt
+knew! And her old aunt knew also the psychology of her sex. She did not
+go on talking about pretty frocks in the abstract; she turned at once to
+the clothes-closet, and began laying pretty frocks upon the bed!
+
+3. Sylvia emerged upon the "gallery," clad in dainty pink muslin, her
+beautiful shiny hair arranged under a semi-invalid's cap of pink maline.
+Her face was pale, and the big red-brown eyes were hollow; but she was
+quiet, and apparently mistress of herself again. She even humoured Aunt
+Varina by leaning slightly upon her feeble arm, while the maid hastened
+to place her chair in a shaded spot.
+
+Her husband came, and the doctors; the tea-things were brought, and
+Aunt Varina poured tea, a-flutter with excitement. They talked about
+the comparative temperatures of New York and the Florida Keys, and about
+hedges of jasmine to shade the gallery from the evening sun. And after
+a while, Aunt Varina arose, explaining that she would prepare Elaine for
+her father's visit. In the doorway she stood for a moment, smiling upon
+the pretty picture; it was all settled now--the outward forms had been
+observed, and the matter would end, as such matters should end between
+husband and wife--a few tears, a few reproaches, and then a few kisses.
+
+The baby was made ready, with a new dress, and a fresh silk bandage
+to cover the pitiful, lifeless eyes. Aunt Varina had found pleasure in
+making these bandages; she made them soft and pretty--less hygienic,
+perhaps, but avoiding the suggestion of the hospital.
+
+When Sylvia and her husband came into the room, the faces of both of
+them were white. Sylvia stopped near the door-way; and poor Aunt Varina
+fluttered about, in agony of soul. When van Tuiver went to the cradle,
+she hurried to his side, and sought to awaken the little one with gentle
+nudges. Quite unexpectedly to her, van Tuiver sought to pick up the
+infant; she helped him, and he stood, holding it awkwardly, as if afraid
+it might go to pieces in his arms.
+
+So any man might appear, with his first infant; but to Sylvia it seemed
+the most tragic sight she had ever seen in her life. She gave a low
+cry, "Douglas!" and he turned, and she saw his face was working with the
+feeling he was ashamed for anyone to see. "Oh, Douglas," she whispered,
+"I'm so _sorry_ for you!" At which Aunt Varina decided that it was time
+for her to make her escape.
+
+4. But the trouble between these two were not such as could be settled
+by any burst of emotion. The next day they were again in a dispute, for
+he had come to ask her word of honour that she would never see me again,
+and would give him my letters to be returned unopened. This last was
+what she had let her father do in the case of Frank Shirley; and she had
+become certain in her own mind that she had done wrong.
+
+But he was insistent in his demand; declaring that it should be obvious
+to her there could be no peace of mind for him so long as my influence
+continued in her life.
+
+"But surely," protested Sylvia, "to hear Mary Abbott's explanation----"
+
+"There can be no explanation that is not an insult to your husband, and
+to those who are caring for you. I am speaking in this matter not merely
+for myself, but for your physicians, who know this woman, heard her
+menaces and her vulgarity. It is their judgment that you should be
+protected at all hazards from further contact with her."
+
+"Douglas," she argued, "you must realize that I am in distress of mind
+about this matter----"
+
+"I certainly realize that."
+
+"And if you are thinking of my welfare, you should choose a course that
+would set my mind at rest. But when you come to me and ask me that I
+should not even read a letter from my friend--don't you realize what you
+suggest to me, that there is something you are afraid for me to know?"
+
+"I do not attempt to deny my fear of this woman. I have seen how she has
+been able to poison your mind with suspicions----"
+
+"Yes, Douglas--but now that has been done. What else is there to fear
+from her?"
+
+"I have no idea what. She is a bitter, jealous woman, with a mind full
+of hatred; and you are an innocent girl, who cannot judge about these
+matters. What idea have you of the world in which you live, of the
+slanders to which a man in your husband's position is exposed?"
+
+"I am not quite such a child as that----"
+
+"You have simply no idea, I tell you. I remember your consternation
+when we first met, and I told you about the woman who had written me
+a begging letter, and got an interview with me, and then started
+screaming, and refused to leave the house till I had paid her a lot of
+money. You had never heard such stories, had you? Yet it is the kind of
+thing that is happening to rich men continually; it was one of the first
+rules I was taught, never to let myself be alone with a strange woman,
+no matter of what age, or under what circumstances."
+
+"But, I assure you, I would not listen to such people----"
+
+"You are asking right now to listen! And you would be influenced by
+her--you could not help it, any more than you can help being distressed
+about what she has already said. She intimated to Dr. Perrin that she
+believed that I had been a man of depraved life, and that my wife and
+child were now paying the penalty. How can I tell what vile stories
+concerning me she may not have heard? How could I have any peace of mind
+while I knew that she was free to pour them into your ear?"
+
+Sylvia sat dumb with questions she would not utter, hovering on the tip
+of her tongue.
+
+He took her silence for acquiesence, and went on, quickly, "Let me give
+you an illustration. A friend of mine whom you know well--I might as
+well tell you his name, it was Freddie Atkins--was at supper with some
+theatrical women; and one of them, not having any idea that Freddie knew
+me, proceeded to talk about me, and how she had met me, and where we had
+been together--about my yacht, and my castle in Scotland, and I don't
+know what all else. It seems that this woman had been my mistress for
+several years; she told quite glibly about me and my habits. Freddie got
+the woman's picture, on some pretext or other, and brought it to me; I
+had never laid eyes on her in my life. He could hardly believe it, and
+to prove it to him I offered to meet the woman, under another name.
+We sat in a restaurant, and she told the tale to Freddie and myself
+together--until finally he burst out laughing, and told her who I was."
+
+He paused, to let this sink in. "Now, suppose your friend, Mary Abbott,
+had met that woman! I don't imagine she is particularly careful whom
+she associates with; and suppose she had come and told you that she knew
+such a woman--what would you have said? Can you deny that the tale would
+have made an impression on you? Yet, I've not the least doubt there are
+scores of women who made such tales about me a part of their stock in
+trade; there are thousands of women whose fortunes would be made for
+life if they could cause such a tale to be believed. And imagine how
+well-informed they would be, if anyone were to ask them concerning
+my habits, and the reason why our baby is blind! I tell you, when the
+rumour concerning our child has begun to spread, there will be ten
+thousand people in New York city who will know of first-hand, personal
+knowledge exactly how it happened, and how you took it, and everything
+that I said to you about it. There will be sneers in the society-papers,
+from New York to San Francisco; and smooth-tongued gentlemen calling,
+to give us hints that we can stop these sneers by purchasing a de-luxe
+edition of a history of our ancestors for six thousand dollars. There
+will be well-meaning and beautiful-souled people who will try to get
+you to confide in them, and then use their knowledge of your domestic
+unhappiness to blackmail you; there will be threats of law-suits from
+people who will claim that they have contracted a disease from you
+or your child--your laundress, perhaps, or your maid, or one of these
+nurses----"
+
+"Oh, stop! stop!" she cried.
+
+"I am quite aware," he said, quietly, "that these things are not
+calculated to preserve the peace of mind of a young mother. You are
+horrified when I tell you of them--yet you clamour for the right to have
+Mrs. Abbott tell you of them! I warn you, Sylvia--you have married a
+rich man, who is exposed to the attacks of cunning and unscrupulous
+enemies. You, as his wife, are exactly as much exposed--possibly even
+more so. Therefore when I see you entering into what I know to be a
+dangerous intimacy, I must have the right to say to you, This shall
+stop, and I tell you, there can never be any safety or peace of mind for
+either of us, so long as you attempt to deny me that right."
+
+5. Dr. Gibson took his departure three or four days later; and before
+he went, he came to give her his final blessing; talking to her, as he
+phrased it, "like a Dutch uncle." "You must understand," he said, "I am
+almost old enough to be your grandfather. I have four sons, anyone of
+whom might have married you, if they had had the good fortune to be in
+Castleman County at the critical time. So you must let me be frank with
+you."
+
+Sylvia indicated that she was willing.
+
+"We don't generally talk to women about these matters; because they've
+no standard by which to judge, and they almost always fly off and have
+hysterics. Their case seems to them exceptional and horrible, their
+husbands the blackest criminals in the whole tribe."
+
+He paused for a moment. "Now, Mrs. van Tuiver, the disease which has
+made your baby blind is probably what we call gonorrhea. When it gets
+into the eyes, it has very terrible results. But it doesn't often get
+into the eyes, and for the most part it's a trifling affair, that we
+don't worry about. I know there are a lot of new-fangled notions, but
+I'm an old man, with experience of my own, and I have to have things
+proven to me. I know that with as much of this disease as we doctors
+see, if it was a deadly disease, there'd be nobody left alive in the
+world. As I say, I don't like to discuss it with women; but it was not I
+who forced the matter upon your attention----"
+
+"Pray go on, Dr. Gibson," she said. "I really wish to know all that you
+will tell me."
+
+"The question has come up, how was this disease brought to your child?
+Dr. Perrin suggested that possibly he--you understand his fear; and
+possibly he is correct. But it seems to me an illustration of the
+unwisdom of a physician's departing from his proper duty, which is to
+cure people. If you wish to find out who brought a disease, what you
+need is a detective. I know, of course, that there are people who can
+combine the duties of physician and detective--and that without any
+previous preparation or study of either profession."
+
+He waited for this irony to sink in; and Sylvia also waited, patiently.
+
+At last he resumed, "The idea has been planted in your mind that your
+husband brought the trouble; and that idea is sure to stay there and
+fester. So it becomes necessary for someone to talk to you straight. Let
+me tell you that eight men out of ten have had this disease at some time
+in their lives; also that very few of them were cured of it when they
+thought they were. You have a cold: and then next month, you say
+the cold is gone. So it is, for practical purposes. But if I take a
+microscope, I find the germs of the cold still in your membranes, and I
+know that you can give a cold, and a bad cold, to some one else who is
+sensitive. It is true that you may go through all the rest of your life
+without ever being entirely rid of that cold. You understand me?"
+
+"Yes," said Sylvia, in a low voice.
+
+"I say eight out of ten. Estimates would differ. Some doctors would say
+seven out of ten--and some actual investigations have shown nine out of
+ten. And understand me, I don't mean bar-room loafers and roustabouts.
+I mean your brothers, if you have any, your cousins, your best friends,
+the men who came to make love to you, and whom you thought of marrying.
+If you had found it out about any one of them, of course you'd have cut
+the acquaintance; yet you'd have been doing an injustice--for if you
+had done that to all who'd ever had the disease, you might as well have
+retired to a nunnery at once."
+
+The old gentleman paused again; then frowning at her under his bushy
+eye-brows, he exclaimed, "I tell you, Mrs. van Tuiver, you're doing your
+husband a wrong. Your husband loves you, and he's a good man--I've
+had some talks with him, and I know he's not got nearly so much on his
+conscience as the average husband. I'm a Southern man, and I know these
+gay young bloods you've danced and flirted with all your young life. Do
+you think if you went probing into their secret affairs, you'd have
+had much pleasure in their company afterwards? I tell you again, you're
+doing your husband a wrong! You're doing something that very few men
+would stand, as patiently as he has stood it so far."
+
+All this time Sylvia had given no sign. So the old gentleman began to
+feel a trifle uneasy. "Mind you," he said, "I'm not saying that men
+ought to be like that. They deserve a good hiding, most of them--they're
+very few of them fit to associate with a good woman. I've always said
+that no man is really good enough for a good woman. But my point is that
+when you select one to punish, you select not the guiltiest one, but
+simply the one who's had the misfortune to fall under suspicion. And he
+knows that's not fair; he'd have to be more than human if deep in his
+soul he did not bitterly resent it. You understand me?"
+
+"I understand," she replied, in the same repressed voice.
+
+And the doctor rose and laid his hand on her shoulder. "I'm going home,"
+he said--"very probably we'll never meet each other again. I see you
+making a great mistake, laying up unhappiness for yourself in the
+future; and I wish to prevent it if I can. I wish to persuade you to
+face the facts of the world in which we live. So I am going to tell you
+something that I never expected I should tell to a lady."
+
+He was looking her straight in the eye. "You see me--I'm an old man, and
+I seem fairly respectable to you. You've laughed at me some, but even
+so, you've found it possible to get along with me without too great
+repugnance. Well, I've had this disease; I've had it, and nevertheless
+I've raised six fine, sturdy children. More than that--I'm not free to
+name anybody else, but I happen to know positively that among the men
+your husband employs on this island there are two who have the disease
+right now. And the next charming and well-bred gentleman you are
+introduced to, just reflect that there are at least eight chances in ten
+that he has had the disease, and perhaps three or four in ten that he
+has it at the minute he's shaking hands with you. And now you think that
+over, and stop tormenting your poor husband!"
+
+6. One of the first things I did when I reached New York was to send a
+little love-letter to Sylvia. I said nothing that would distress her; I
+merely assured her that she was in my thoughts, and that I should look
+to see her in New York, when we could have a good talk. I put this in
+a plain envelope, with a typewritten address, and registered it in the
+name of my stenographer. The receipt came back, signed by an unknown
+hand, probably the secretary's. I found out later that the letter never
+got to Sylvia.
+
+No doubt it was the occasion of renewed efforts upon her husband's part
+to obtain from her the promise he desired. He would not be put off with
+excuses; and at last he got her answer, in the shape of a letter which
+she told him she intended to mail to me. In this letter she announced
+her decision that she owed it to her baby to avoid all excitement and
+nervous strain during the time that she was nursing it. Her husband had
+sent for the yacht, and they were going to Scotland, and in the winter
+to the Mediterranean and the Nile. Meantime she would not correspond
+with me; but she wished me to know that there was to be no break in our
+friendship, and that she would see me upon her return to New York.
+
+"There is much that has happened that I do not understand," she added.
+"For the present, however, I shall try to dismiss it from my mind. I am
+sure you will agree that it is right for me to give a year to being
+a mother; as I wish you to feel perfectly at peace in the meantime, I
+mention that it is my intention to be a mother only, and not a wife. I
+am showing this letter to my husband before I mail it, so that he may
+know exactly what I am doing, and what I have decided to do in the
+future."
+
+"Of course," he said, after reading this, "you may send the letter,
+if you insist--but you must realize that you are only putting off the
+issue."
+
+She made no reply; and at last he asked, "You mean you intend to defy me
+in this matter?"
+
+"I mean," she replied, quietly, "that for the sake of my baby I intend
+to put off all discussion for a year."
+
+7. I figured that I should hear from Claire Lepage about two days after
+I reached New York; and sure enough, she called me on the 'phone.
+"I want to see you at once," she declared; and her voice showed the
+excitement under which she was labouring.
+
+"Very well," I said, "come down."
+
+She entered my little living-room. It was the first time she had ever
+visited me, but she did not stop for a glance about her; she did not
+even stop to sit down. "Why didn't you tell me that you knew Sylvia
+Castleman?" she cried.
+
+"My dear woman," I replied, "I was not under the least obligation to
+tell you."
+
+"You have betrayed me!" she exclaimed, wildly.
+
+"Come, Claire," I said, after I had looked her in the eye a bit to calm
+her. "You know quite well that I was under no bond of secrecy. And,
+besides, I haven't done you any harm."
+
+"Why did you do it?" I regret to add that she swore.
+
+"I never once mentioned your name, Claire."
+
+"How much good do you imagine that does me? They have managed to find
+out everything. They caught me in a trap."
+
+I reminded myself that it would not do to show any pity for her. "Sit
+down, Claire," I said. "Tell me about it."
+
+She cried, in a last burst of anger, "I don't want to talk to you!"
+
+"All right," I answered. "But then, why did you come?"
+
+There was no reply to that. She sat down. "They were too much for me!"
+she lamented. "If I'd had the least hint, I might have held my own. As
+it was--I let them make a fool of me."
+
+"You are talking hieroglyphics to me. Who are 'they'?"
+
+"Douglas, and that old fox, Rossiter Torrance."
+
+"Rossiter Torrance?" I repeated the name, and then suddenly remembered.
+The thin-lipped old family lawyer!
+
+"He sent up his card, and said he'd been sent to see me by Mary Abbot.
+Of course, I had no suspicion--I fell right into the trap. We talked
+about you for a while--he even got me to tell him where you lived; and
+then at last he told me that he hadn't come from you at all, but had
+merely wanted to find out if I knew you, and how intimate we were. He
+had been sent by Douglas; and he wanted to know right away how much I
+had told you about Douglas, and why I had done it. Of course, I denied
+that I had told anything. Heavens, what a time he gave me!"
+
+Claire paused. "Mary, how could you have played such a trick upon me?"
+
+"I had no thought of doing you any harm," I replied. "I was simply
+trying to help Sylvia."
+
+"To help her at any expense!"
+
+"Tell me, what will come of it? Are you afraid they'll cut off your
+allowance?"
+
+"That's the threat."
+
+"But will they carry it out?"
+
+She sat, gazing at me resentfully. "I don't know whether I ought to
+trust you any more," she said.
+
+"Do what you please about that," I replied. "I don't want to urge you."
+
+She hesitated a bit longer, and then decided to throw herself upon my
+mercy. They would not dare to carry out their threat, so long as Sylvia
+had not found out the whole truth. So now she had come to beg me to tell
+no more than I had already told. She was utterly abject about it. I had
+pretended to be her friend, I had won her confidence and listened to her
+confessions; how did I wish to ruin her utterly, to have her cast out on
+the street?
+
+Poor Claire! I said in the early part of my story that she understood
+the language of idealism; but I wonder what I have told about her that
+justifies this. The truth is, she was going down so fast that already
+she seemed a different person; and she had been frightened by the
+thin-lipped old family lawyer, so that she was incapable of even a
+decent pretence.
+
+"Claire," I said, "there is no need for you to go on like this. I
+have not the slightest intention of telling Sylvia about you. I cannot
+imagine the circumstances that would make me want to tell her. Even if I
+should do it, I would tell her in confidence, so that her husband would
+never have any idea----"
+
+She went almost wild at this. To imagine that a woman would keep such a
+confidence! As if she would not throw it at her husband's head the first
+time they quarreled! Besides, if Sylvia knew this truth, she might leave
+him; and if she left him, Claire's hold on his money would be gone.
+
+Over this money we had a long and lachrymose interview. And at the end
+of it, there she sat gazing into space, baffled and bewildered. What
+kind of a woman was I? How had I got to be the friend of Sylvia van
+Tuiver? What had she seen in me, and what did I expect to get out of
+her? I answered briefly; and suddenly Claire was overwhelmed by a rush
+of curiosity--plain human curiosity. What was Sylvia like? Was she as
+clever as they said? What was the baby like, and how was Sylvia taking
+the misfortune? Could it really be true that I had been visiting the van
+Tuivers in Florida, as old Rossiter Torrance had implied?
+
+Needless to say, I did not answer these questions freely. And I really
+think my visitor was more pained by my uncommunicativeness than she
+was by my betrayal of her. It was interesting also to notice a subtle
+difference in her treatment of me. Gone was the slight touch of
+condescension, gone was most of the familiarity! I had become a
+personage, a treasurer of high state secrets, an intimate of the great
+ones! There must be something more to me than Claire had realized
+before!
+
+Poor Claire! She passes here from this story. For years thereafter I
+used to catch a glimpse of her now and then, in the haunts of the birds
+of gorgeous plumage; but I never got a chance to speak to her, nor did
+she ever call on me again. So I do not know if Douglas van Tuiver still
+continues her eight thousand a year. All I can say is that when I saw
+her, her plumage was as gorgeous as ever, and its style duly certified
+to the world that it had not been held over from a previous season of
+prosperity. Twice I thought she had been drinking too much; but then--so
+had many of the other ladies with the little glasses of bright-coloured
+liquids before them.
+
+8. For the rest of that year I knew nothing about Sylvia except what I
+read in the "society" column of my newspaper--that she was spending the
+late summer in her husband's castle in Scotland. I myself was suffering
+from the strain of what I had been through, and had to take a vacation.
+I went West; and when I came back in the fall, to plunge again into my
+work, I read that the van Tuivers, in their yacht, the "Triton," were in
+the Mediterranean, and were planning to spend the winter in Japan.
+
+And then one day in January, like a bolt from the blue, came a cablegram
+from Sylvia, dated Cairo: "Sailing for New York, Steamship 'Atlantic,'
+are you there, answer."
+
+Of course I answered. And I consulted the sailing-lists, and waited,
+wild with impatience. She sent me a wireless, two days out, and so I was
+at the pier when the great vessel docked. Yes, there she was, waving her
+handkerchief to me; and there by her side stood her husband.
+
+It was a long, cold ordeal, while the ship was warped in. We could only
+gaze at each other across the distance, and stamp our feet and beat our
+hands. There were other friends waiting for the van Tuivers, I saw,
+and so I held myself in the background, full of a thousand wild
+speculations. How incredible that Sylvia, arriving with her husband,
+should have summoned me to meet her!
+
+At last the gangway was let down, and the stream of passengers began
+to flow. In time came the van Tuivers, and their friends gathered
+to welcome them. I waited; and at last Sylvia came to me--outwardly
+calm--but with her emotions in the pressure of her two hands. "Oh, Mary,
+Mary!" she murmured. "I'm so glad to see you! I'm so glad to see you!"
+
+"What has happened?" I asked.
+
+Her voice went to a whisper. "I am leaving my husband."
+
+"Leaving your husband!" I stood, dumbfounded.
+
+"Leaving him for ever, Mary."
+
+"But--but----" I could not finish the sentence. My eyes moved to where
+he stood, calmly chatting with his friends.
+
+"He insisted on coming back with me, to preserve appearances. He is
+terrified of the gossip. He is going all the way home, and then leave
+me."
+
+"Sylvia! What does it mean?" I whispered.
+
+"I can't tell you here. I want to come and see you. Are you living at
+the same place?"
+
+I answered in the affirmative.
+
+"It's a long story," she added. "I must apologise for asking you to come
+here, where we can't talk. But I did it for an important reason. I can't
+make my husband really believe that I mean what I say; and you are my
+Declaration of Independence!" And she laughed, but a trifle wildly, and
+looking at her suddenly, I realized that she was keyed almost to the
+breaking point.
+
+"You poor dear!" I murmured.
+
+"I wanted to show him that I meant what I said. I wanted him to see us
+meet. You see, he's going home, thinking that with the help of my people
+he can make me change my mind."
+
+"But why do you go home? Why not stay here with me? There's an apartment
+vacant next to mine."
+
+"And with a baby?"
+
+"There are lots of babies in our tenement," I said. But to tell the
+truth, I had almost forgotten the baby in the excitement of the moment.
+"How is she," I asked.
+
+"Come and see," said Sylvia; and when I glanced enquiringly at the tall
+gentleman who was chatting with his friends, she added, "She's _my_
+baby, and I have a right to show her."
+
+The nurse, a rosy-cheeked English girl in a blue dress and a bonnet with
+long streamers, stood apart, holding an armful of white silk and lace.
+Sylvia turned back the coverings; and again I beheld the vision which
+had so thrilled me--the comical little miniature of herself--her nose,
+her lips, her golden hair. But oh, the pitiful little eyes, that did not
+move! I looked at my friend, uncertain what I should say; I was startled
+to see her whole being aglow with mother-pride. "Isn't she a dear?" she
+whispered. "And, Mary, she's learning so fast, and growing--you couldn't
+believe it!" Oh, the marvel of mother-love, I thought--that is blinder
+than any child it ever bore!
+
+We turned away; and Sylvia said, "I'll come to you as soon as I've got
+the baby settled. Our train starts for the South to-night, so I shan't
+waste any time."
+
+"God bless you, dear," I whispered; and she gave my hand a squeeze, and
+turned away. I stood for a few moments watching, and saw her approach
+her husband, and exchange a few smiling words with him in the presence
+of their friends. I, knowing the agony that was in the hearts of that
+desperate young couple, marvelled anew at the discipline of caste.
+
+9. She sat in my big arm-chair; and how proud I was of her, and
+how thrilled by her courage. Above all, however, I was devoured by
+curiosity. "Tell me!" I exclaimed.
+
+"There's so much," she said.
+
+"Tell me why you are leaving him."
+
+"Mary, because I don't love him. That's the one reason. I have thought
+it out--I have thought of little else for the last year. I have come to
+see that it is wrong for a woman to live with a man she does not love.
+It is the supreme crime a woman can commit."
+
+"Ah, yes!" I said. "If you have got that far!"
+
+"I have got that far. Other things have contributed, but they are not
+the real things--they might have been forgiven. The fact that he had
+this disease, and made my child blind----"
+
+"Oh! You found out that?"
+
+"Yes, I found it out."
+
+"How?"
+
+"It came to me little by little. In the end, he grew tired of
+pretending, I think." She paused for a moment, then went on, "The
+trouble was over the question of my obligations as a wife. You see, I
+had told him at the outset that I was going to live for my baby, and for
+her alone. That was the ground upon which he had persuaded me not to see
+you or read any of your letters. I was to ask no questions, and be nice
+and bovine--and I agreed. But then, a few months ago, my husband came to
+me with the story of his needs. He said that the doctors had given their
+sanction to our reunion. Of course, I was stunned. I knew that he had
+understood me before we left Florida."
+
+She stopped. "Yes, dear," I said, gently.
+
+"Well, he said now the doctors were agreed there was no danger to either
+of us. We could take precautions and not have children. I could only
+plead that the whole subject was distressing to me. He had asked me to
+put off my problems till my baby was weaned; now I asked him to put off
+his. But that would not do, it seemed. He took to arguing with me. It
+was an unnatural way to live, and he could not endure it. I was a woman,
+and I couldn't understand this. It seemed utterly impossible to make him
+realize what I felt. I suppose he has always had what he wanted, and he
+simply does not know what it is to be denied. It wasn't only a physical
+thing, I think; it was an affront to his pride, a denial of his
+authority." She stopped, and I saw her shudder.
+
+"I have been through it all," I said.
+
+"He wanted to know how long I expected to withhold myself. I said,
+'Until I have got this disease out of my mind, as well as out of my
+body; until I know that there is no possibility of either of us having
+it, to give to the other.' But then, after I had taken a little more
+time to think it over, I said, 'Douglas, I must be honest with you. I
+shall never be able to live with you again. It is no longer a question
+of your wishes or mine--it is a question of right or wrong. I do not
+love you. I know now that it can never under any circumstances be right
+for a woman to give herself in the intimacy of the sex-relation without
+love. When she does it, she is violating the deepest instinct of her
+nature, the very voice of God in her soul.'
+
+"His reply was, 'Why didn't you know that before you married?'
+
+"I answered, 'I did not know what marriage meant; and I let myself be
+persuaded by others.'
+
+"'By your own mother!' he declared.
+
+"I said, 'A mother who permits her daughter to commit such an offence is
+either a slave-dealer, or else a slave.' Of course, he thought I was
+out of my mind at that. He argued about the duties of marriage, the
+preserving of the home, wives submitting themselves to their husbands,
+and so on. He would not give me any peace----"
+
+And suddenly she started up. I saw in her eyes the light of old battles.
+"Oh, it was a horror!" she cried, beginning to pace the floor. "It
+seemed to me that I was living the agony of all the loveless marriages
+of the world. I felt myself pursued, not merely by the importunate
+desires of one man--I suffered with all the millions of women who give
+themselves night after night without love! He came to seem like some
+monster to me; I could not meet him unexpectedly without starting. I
+forbade him to mention the subject to me again, and for a long time he
+obeyed. But several weeks ago he brought it up afresh, and I lost my
+self-control completely. 'Douglas,' I said, 'I can stand it no longer!
+It is not only the tragedy of my blind child--it's that you have driven
+me to hate you. You have crushed all the life and joy and youth out of
+me! You've been to me like a terrible black cloud, constantly pressing
+down on me, smothering me. You stalk around me like a grim, sepulchral
+figure, closing me up in the circle of your narrow ideas. But now I can
+endure it no longer. I was a proud, high-spirited girl, you've made
+of me a colourless social automaton, a slave of your stupid worldly
+traditions. I'm turning into a feeble, complaining, discontented wife!
+And I refuse to be it. I'm going home--where at least there's some human
+spontaneity left in people; I'm going back to my father!'--And I went
+and looked up the next steamer!"
+
+She stopped. She stood before me, with the fire of her wild Southern
+blood shining in her cheeks and in her eyes.
+
+I sat waiting, and finally she went on, "I won't repeat all his
+protests. When he found that I was really going, he offered to take me
+in the yacht, but I wouldn't go in the yacht. I had got to be really
+afraid of him--sometimes, you know, his obstinacy seems to be abnormal,
+almost insane. So then he decided he would have to go in the steamer
+with me to preserve appearances. I had a letter saying that papa was
+not well, and he said that would serve for an excuse. He is going to
+Castleman County, and after he has stayed a week or so, he is going off
+on a hunting-trip, and not return."
+
+"And will he do it?"
+
+"I don't think he expects to do it at present. I feel sure he has the
+idea of starting mamma to quoting the Bible to me, and dragging me down
+with her tears. But I have done all I can to make clear to him that
+it will make no difference. I told him I would not say a word about my
+intentions at home until he had gone away, and that I expected the same
+silence from him. But, of course--" She stopped abruptly, and after a
+moment she asked: "What do you think of it, Mary?"
+
+I leaned forward and took her two hands in mine. "Only," I said, "that
+I'm glad you fought it out alone! I knew it had to come--and I didn't
+want to have to help you to decide!"
+
+10. She sat for a while absorbed in her own thoughts. Knowing her as I
+did, I understood what intense emotions were seething within her, what a
+terrific struggle her decision must have represented.
+
+"Dear Friend," she said, suddenly, "don't think I haven't seen his side
+of the case. I try to tell myself that I dealt with him frankly from
+the beginning. But then I ask was there ever a man I dealt with frankly?
+There was coquetry in the very clothes I wore! And now that we are so
+entangled, now that he loves me, what is my duty? I find I can't respect
+his love for me. A part of it is because my beauty fascinates him, but
+more of it seems to me just wounded vanity. I was the only woman who
+ever flouted him, and he has a kind of snobbery that made him think I
+must be something remarkable because of it. I talked that all out with
+him--yes, I've dragged him through all that humiliation. I wanted to
+make him see that he didn't really love me, that he only wanted to
+conquer me, to force me to admire him and submit to him. I want to
+be myself, and he wants to be himself--that has always been the issue
+between us."
+
+"That is the issue in many unhappy marriages," I said.
+
+"I've done a lot of thinking in the last year," she resumed--"about
+things generally, I mean. We American women think we are so free. That
+is because our husbands indulge us, give us money, and let us run
+about. But when it comes to real freedom--freedom of intellect and of
+character, English women are simply another kind of being from us. I met
+a cabinet minister's wife--he's a Conservative in everything, and she's
+an ardent suffragist; she not merely gives money, she makes speeches and
+has a public name. Yet they are friends, and have a happy home-life. Do
+you suppose my husband would consider such an arrangement?"
+
+"I thought he admired English ways," I said.
+
+"There was the Honorable Betty Annersley--the sister of a chum of his.
+She was friendly with the militants, and I wanted to talk to her to
+understand what such women thought. Yet my husband tried to stop me from
+going to see her. And it's the same way with everything I try to do,
+that threatens to take me out of his power. He wanted me to accept
+the authority of the doctors as to any possible danger from venereal
+disease. When I got the books, and showed him what the doctors admitted
+about the question--the narrow margin of safety they allowed, the
+terrible chances they took--he was angry again."
+
+She stopped, seeing a question in my eyes. "I've been reading up on the
+subject," she explained. "I know it all now--the things I should have
+known before I married."
+
+"How did you manage that?"
+
+"I tried to get two of the doctors to give me something to read, but
+they wouldn't hear of it. I'd set myself crazy imagining things, it was
+no sort of stuff for a woman's mind. So in the end I took the bit in my
+teeth. I found a medical book store, and I went in and said: 'I am
+an American physician, and I want to see the latest works on venereal
+disease.' So the clerk took me to the shelves, and I picked out a couple
+of volumes."
+
+"You poor child!" I exclaimed.
+
+"When Douglas found that I was reading these books he threatened to
+burn them. I told him 'There are more copies in the store, and I am
+determined to be educated on this subject.'"
+
+She paused. "How much like my own experience!" I thought.
+
+"There were chapters on the subject of wives, how much they were not
+told, and why this was. So very quickly I began to see around my own
+experience. Douglas must have figured out that this would be so, for the
+end of the matter was an admission."
+
+"You don't mean he confessed to you!"
+
+She smiled bitterly. "No," she said. "He brought Dr. Perrin to London to
+do it for him. Dr. Perrin said he had concluded I had best know that my
+husband had had some symptoms of the disease. He, the doctor, wished to
+tell me who was to blame for the attempt to deceive me. Douglas had been
+willing to admit the truth, but all the doctors had forbidden it. I must
+realise the fearful problem they had, and not blame them, and, above all
+I must not blame my husband, who had been in their hands in the matter."
+
+"How stupid men are! As if that would excuse him!"
+
+"I'm afraid I showed the little man how poor an impression he had
+made--both for himself and for his patron. But I had suffered all there
+was to suffer, and I was tired of pretending. I told him it would
+have been far better for them if they had told me the truth at the
+beginning."
+
+"Ah, yes!" I said. "That is what I tried to make them see; but all I got
+for it was a sentence of deportation!"
+
+11. When Sylvia's train arrived at the station of her home town, the
+whole family was waiting upon the platform for her, and a good part of
+the town besides. The news that she had arrived in New York, and was
+coming home on account of her father's illness, had, of course, been
+reproduced in all the local papers, with the result that the worthy
+major had been deluged with telegrams and letters concerning his health.
+Notwithstanding, he had insisted upon coming to the train to meet his
+daughter. He was not going to be shut up in a sickroom to please all the
+gossips of two hemispheres. In his best black broad-cloth, his broad,
+black hat newly brushed, and his old-fashioned, square-toed shoes newly
+shined, he paced up and down the station platform for half an hour, and
+it was to his arms that Sylvia flew when she alighted from the train.
+
+There was "Miss Margaret," who had squeezed her large person and
+fluttering draperies out of the family automobile, and was waiting to
+shed tears over her favourite daughter; there was Celeste, radiant with
+a wonderful piece of news which she alone was to impart to her sister;
+there were Peggy and Maria, shot up suddenly into two amazingly-gawky
+girls; there was Master Castleman Lysle, the only son of the house, with
+his black-eyed and bad-tempered French governess. And finally there was
+Aunt Varina, palpitating with various agitations, not daring to whisper
+to anyone else the fears which this sudden home-coming inspired in her.
+Bishop Chilton and his wife were away, but a delegation of cousins had
+come; also Uncle Mandeville Castleman had sent a huge bunch of roses,
+which were in the family automobile, and Uncle Barry Chilton had sent a
+pair of wild turkeys, which were soon to be in the family.
+
+Behind Sylvia stalked her cold and haughty husband, and behind him
+tripped the wonderful nursemaid, with her wonderful blue streamers, and
+her wonderful bundle of ruffles and lace. All the huge family had to
+fall upon Sylvia and kiss and embrace her rapturously, and shake the
+hand of the cold and haughty husband, and peer into the wonderful
+bundle, and go into ecstasies over its contents. Rarely, indeed, did the
+great ones of this earth condescend to spread so much of their emotional
+life before the public gaze; and was it any wonder that the town crowded
+about, and the proprieties were temporarily repealed?
+
+It had never been published, but it was generally known throughout the
+State that Sylvia's child was blind, and it was whispered that this
+portended something strange and awful. So there hung about the young
+mother and the precious bundle an atmosphere of mystery and melancholy.
+How had she taken her misfortune? How had she taken all the great events
+that had befallen her--her progress through the courts and camps of
+Europe? Would she still condescend to know her fellow-townsmen? Many
+were the hearts that beat high as she bestowed her largess of smiles
+and friendly words. There were even humble old negroes who went off
+enraptured to tell the town that "Mi' Sylvia" had actually shaken hands
+with them. There was almost a cheer from the crowd as the string of
+automobiles set out for Castleman Hall.
+
+12. There was a grand banquet that evening, at which the turkeys entered
+the family. Not in years had there been so many people crowded into the
+big dining-room, nor so many servants treading upon each other's toes in
+the kitchen.
+
+Such a din of chatter and laughter! Sylvia was her old radiant self, and
+her husband was quite evidently charmed by the patriarchal scene. He
+was affable, really genial, and won the hearts of everybody; he told
+the good major, amid a hush which almost turned his words into a speech,
+that he was able to understand how they of the South loved their
+own section so passionately; there was about the life an intangible
+something--a spell, an elevation of spirit, which set it quite apart
+by itself. And since this was the thing which they of the South most
+delighted to believe concerning themselves, they listened enraptured,
+and set the speaker apart as a rare and discerning spirit.
+
+Afterwards came the voice of Sylvia: "You must beware of Douglas, Papa;
+he is an inveterate flatterer." She laughed as she said it; and of those
+present it was Aunt Varina alone who caught the ominous note, and saw
+the bitter curl of her lips as she spoke. Aunt Varina and her niece
+were the only persons there who knew Douglas van Tuiver well enough to
+appreciate the irony of the term "inveterate flatterer."
+
+Sylvia realized at once that her husband was setting out upon a campaign
+to win her family to his side. He rode about the major's plantations,
+absorbing information about the bollweevil. He rode back to the house,
+and exchanged cigars, and listened to stories of the major's boyhood
+during the war. He went to call upon Bishop Chilton, and sat in his
+study, with its walls of faded black volumes on theology. Van Tuiver
+himself had had a Church of England tutor, and was a punctilious high
+churchman; but he listened respectfully to arguments for a simpler
+form of church organization, and took away a voluminous _expose_ of
+the fallacies of "Apostolic Succession." And then came Aunt Nannie,
+ambitious and alert as when she had helped the young millionaire to find
+a wife; and the young millionaire made the suggestion that Aunt Nannie's
+third daughter should not fail to visit Sylvia at Newport.
+
+There was no limit, apparently, to what he would do. He took Master
+Castleman Lysle upon his knee, and let him drop a valuable watch upon
+the floor. He got up early in the morning and went horse-back riding
+with Peggy and Maria. He took Celeste automobiling, and helped by his
+attentions to impress the cocksure young man with whom Celeste was in
+love. He won "Miss Margaret" by these attentions to all her children,
+and the patience with which he listened to accounts of the ailments
+which had afflicted the precious ones at various periods of their lives.
+To Sylvia, watching all these proceedings, it was as if he were binding
+himself to her with so many knots.
+
+She had come home with a longing to be quiet, to avoid seeing anyone.
+But this could not be, she discovered. There was gossip about the
+child's blindness, and the significance thereof; and to have gone into
+hiding would have meant an admission of the worst. The ladies of the
+family had prepared a grand "reception," at which all Castleman County
+was to come and gaze upon the happy mother. And then there was the
+monthly dance at the Country Club, where everybody would come, in the
+hope of seeing the royal pair. To Sylvia it was as if her mother and
+aunts were behind her every minute of the day, pushing her out into the
+world. "Go on, go on! Show yourself! Do not let people begin to talk!"
+
+13. She bore it for a couple of weeks; then she went to her cousin,
+Harley Chilton. "Harley," she said, "my husband is anxious to go on a
+hunting-trip. Will you go with him?"
+
+"When?" asked the boy.
+
+"Right away; to-morrow or the next day."
+
+"I'm game," said Harley.
+
+After which she went to her husband. "Douglas, it is time for you to
+go."
+
+He sat studying her face. "You still have that idea?" he said, at last.
+
+"I still have it."
+
+"I was hoping that here, among your home-people, your sanity would
+partially return."
+
+"I know what you have been hoping, Douglas. And I am sorry--but I am
+quite unchanged."
+
+"Have we not been getting along happily here?" he demanded.
+
+"No, I have not--I have been wretched. And I cannot have any peace until
+you no longer haunt me. I am sorry for you, but I must be alone--and so
+long as you are here the entertainments will continue."
+
+"We could make it clear that we did not care for entertainments. We
+could find some quiet place near your people, where we could live in
+peace."
+
+"Douglas," she said, "I have spoken to Cousin Harley. He is ready to
+go hunting with you. Please call him up and make arrangements to start
+to-morrow. If you are still here the following day, I shall leave for
+one of Uncle Mandeville's plantations."
+
+There was a long silence. "Sylvia," he said, at last, "how long do you
+imagine this behaviour of yours can continue?"
+
+"It will continue forever. My mind is made up. It is necessary that you
+make up yours."
+
+Again he waited, while he made sure of his self-control. "You propose to
+keep the baby with you?" he asked, at last.
+
+"For the present, yes. The baby cannot get along without me."
+
+"And for the future?"
+
+"We will make a fair arrangement as to that. Give me a little time to
+get myself together, and then I will come and live somewhere near you in
+New York, and I will arrange it so that you can see the child as often
+as you please. I have no desire to take her from you--I only want to
+take myself from you."
+
+"Sylvia," he said, "have you realized all the unhappiness this course of
+yours is going to bring to your people?"
+
+"Oh, don't begin that now!" she pleaded.
+
+"I know," he said, "how determined you are to punish me. But I should
+think you would try to find some way to spare them."
+
+"Douglas," she replied, "I know exactly what you have been doing. I have
+watched your change of character since you came here. You may be able
+to make my people so unhappy that I must be unhappy also. You see how
+deeply I love them, how I yield everything for love of them. But let me
+make it clear, I will not yield this. It was for their sake I went into
+this marriage, but I have come to see that it was wrong, and no power on
+earth can induce me to stay in it. My mind is made up--I will not live
+with a man I do not love. I will not even pretend to do it. Now do you
+understand me, Douglas?"
+
+There was a silence, while she waited for some word from him. When none
+came, she asked, "You will arrange to go to-morrow?"
+
+He answered calmly, "I see no reason why I, your husband, should permit
+you to pursue this insane course. You propose to leave me; and the
+reason you give is one that would, if it were valid, break up two-thirds
+of the homes in the country. Your own family will stand by me in my
+effort to prevent your ruin."
+
+"What do you expect to do?" she asked in a suppressed voice.
+
+"I have to assume that my wife is insane; and I shall look after her
+till she comes to her senses."
+
+She sat watching him for a few moments, wondering at him. Then she said,
+"You are willing to stay on here, day after day, pursuing me in the only
+refuge I have. Well then, I shall not consider your feelings. I have a
+work to do here--and I think that when I begin it, you will want to be
+far away."
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked--and he looked at her as if she were really
+a maniac.
+
+"You see my sister Celeste is about to marry. That was the wonderful
+news she had to tell me at the depot. It happens that I have known Roger
+Peyton all my life, and know he has the reputation of being one of the
+'fastest' boys in the town."
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+"Just this, Douglas--I do not intend to leave my sister unprotected as
+I was. I am going to tell her about Elaine. I am going to tell her
+all that she needs to know. It is bound to mean arguments with the old
+people, and in the end the whole family will be discussing the subject.
+I feel sure you will not care to be here under such circumstances."
+
+"And may I ask when this begins?" he inquired, with intense bitterness
+in his tone.
+
+"Right away," she said. "I have merely been waiting until you should
+go."
+
+He said not a word, but she knew by the expression on his face that she
+had carried her point at last. He turned and left the room; and that
+was the last word she had with him, save for their formal parting in the
+presence of the family.
+
+14. Roger Peyton was the son and heir of one of the oldest families
+in Castleman County. I had heard of this family before--in a wonderful
+story that Sylvia told of the burning of "Rose Briar," their stately
+mansion, some years previously: how the neighbours had turned out to
+extinguish the flames, and failing, had danced a last whirl in the
+ball-room, while the fire roared in the stories overhead. The house had
+since been rebuilt, more splendid than ever, and the prestige of
+the family stood undiminished. One of the sons was an old "flame" of
+Sylvia's, and another was married to one of the Chilton girls. As for
+Celeste, she had been angling for Roger the past year or two, and she
+stood now at the apex of happiness.
+
+Sylvia went to her father, to talk with him about the difficult subject
+of venereal disease. The poor major had never expected to live to hear
+such a discourse from a daughter of his; however, with the blind child
+under his roof, he could not find words to stop her. "But, Sylvia,"
+he protested, "what reason have you to suspect such a thing of Roger
+Peyton?"
+
+"I have the reason of his life. You know that he has the reputation of
+being 'fast'; you know that he drinks, you know that I once refused to
+speak to him because he danced with me when he was drunk."
+
+"My child, all the men you know have sowed their wild oats."
+
+"Papa, you must not take advantage of me in such a discussion. I don't
+claim to know what sins may be included in the phrase 'wild oats.' Let
+us speak frankly--can you say that you think it unlikely that Roger
+Peyton has been unchaste?"
+
+The major hesitated and coughed; finally he said: "The boy drinks,
+Sylvia; further than that I have no knowledge."
+
+"The medical books tell me that the use of alcohol tends to break down
+self-control, and to make continence impossible. And if that be true,
+you must admit that we have a right to ask assurances. What do you
+suppose that Roger and his crowd are doing when they go roistering about
+the streets at night? What do they do when they go off to Mardi Gras?
+Or at college--you know that Cousin Clive had to get him out of trouble
+several times. Go and ask Clive if Roger has ever been exposed to the
+possibility of these diseases."
+
+"My child," said the major, "Clive would not feel he had the right to
+tell me such things about his friend."
+
+"Not even when the friend wants to marry his cousin?"
+
+"But such questions are not asked, my daughter."
+
+"Papa, I have thought this matter out carefully, and I hava something
+definite to propose to you. I have no idea of stopping with what Clive
+Chilton may or may not see fit to tell about his chum. I want _you_ to
+go to Roger."
+
+Major Castleman's face wore a blank stare.
+
+"If he's going to marry your daughter, you have the right to ask about
+his past. What I want you to tell him is that you will get the name of a
+reputable specialist in these diseases, and that before he can have your
+daughter he must present you with a letter from this man, to the effect
+that he is fit to marry."
+
+The poor major was all but speechless. "My child, who ever heard of such
+a proposition?"
+
+"I don't know that any one ever did, papa. But it seems to me time they
+should begin to hear of it; and I don't see who can have a better right
+to take the first step than you and I, who have paid such a dreadful
+price for our neglect."
+
+Sylvia had been prepared for opposition--the instinctive opposition
+which men manifest to having this embarrassing subject dragged out into
+the light of day. Even men who have been chaste themselves--good fathers
+of families like the major--cannot be unaware of the complications
+incidental to frightening their women-folk, and setting up an impossibly
+high standard in sons-in-law. But Sylvia stood by her guns; at last she
+brought her father to his knees by the threat that if he could not bring
+himself to talk with Roger Peyton, she, Sylvia Castleman, would do it.
+
+15. The young suitor came by appointment the next day, and had a session
+with the Major in his office. After he had gone, Sylvia went to her
+father and found him pacing the floor, with an extinct cigar between his
+lips, and several other ruined cigars lying on the hearth.
+
+"You asked him, papa?"
+
+"I did, Sylvia."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"Why, daughter----" The major flung his cigar from him with desperate
+energy. "It was most embarrassing!" he exclaimed--"most painful!" His
+pale old face was crimson with blushes.
+
+"Go on, papa," said Sylvia, gentle but firm.
+
+"The poor boy--naturally, Sylvia, he could not but feel hurt that I
+should think it necessary to ask such questions. Such things are not
+done, my child. It seemed to him that I must look upon him as--well, as
+much worse than other young fellows----"
+
+The old man stopped, and began to walk restlessly up and down. "Yes,
+papa," said Sylvia. "What else?"
+
+"Well, he said it seemed to him that such a matter might have been left
+to the honour of a man whom I was willing to think of as a son-in-law.
+And you see, my child, what an embarrassing position I was in; I could
+not give him any hint as to my reason for being anxious about these
+matters--anything, you understand, that might be to the discredit of
+your husband."
+
+"Go on, papa."
+
+"Well, I gave him a fatherly talking to about his way of life."
+
+"Did you ask him the definite question as to his health?"
+
+"No, Sylvia."
+
+"Did he tell you anything definite?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then you didn't do what you had set out to do!"
+
+"Yes, I did. I told him that he must see a doctor."
+
+"You made quite clear to him what you wanted?"
+
+"Yes, I did--really, I did."
+
+"And what did he say?" She went to him and took his arm and led him to a
+couch. "Come, papa, let us get to the facts. You must tell me." They sat
+down, and the major sighed, lit a fresh cigar, rolled it about in his
+fingers until it was ruined, and then flung it away.
+
+"Boys don't talk freely to older men," he said. "They really never do.
+You may doubt this----"
+
+"What did he _say,_ papa?"
+
+"Why, he didn't know what to say. He didn't really say anything." And
+here the major came to a complete halt.
+
+His daughter, after studying his face for a minute, remarked, "In plain
+words, papa, you think he has something to hide, and he may not be able
+to give you the evidence you asked?"
+
+The other was silent.
+
+"You fear that is the situation, but you are trying not to believe it."
+As he still said nothing, Sylvia whispered, "Poor Celeste!"
+
+Suddenly she put her hands upon his shoulders, and looked into his eye.
+"Papa, can't you see what that means--that Celeste ought to have been
+told these things long ago?"
+
+"What good would that have done?" he asked, in bewilderment.
+
+"She could have known what kind of man she was choosing; and she might
+be spared the dreadful unhappiness that is before her now."
+
+"Sylvia! Sylvia!" protested the other. "Surely such things cannot be
+discussed with innocent young girls!"
+
+"So long as we refuse to do it, we are simply entering into a conspiracy
+with the man of loose life, so that he may escape the worst penalty of
+his evil-doing. Take the boys in our own set--why is it they feel safe
+in running off to the big cities and 'sowing their wild oats'--even
+sowing them in the obscure parts of their own town? Is it not because
+they know that their sisters and girl friends are ignorant and
+helpless; so that when they are ready to pick a wife, they will be at no
+disadvantage? Here is Celeste; she knows that Roger has been 'wild,' but
+no one has hinted to her what that means; she thinks of things that
+are picturesque--that he's high-spirited, and brave, and free with his
+money."
+
+"But, my daughter," protested the major, "such knowledge would have a
+terrible effect upon young girls!" He rose and began to pace the floor
+again. "Daughter, you are letting yourself run wild! The sweetness, the
+virginal innocence of young and pure women--if you take that from
+them, there'd be nothing left to keep men from falling to the level of
+brutes!"
+
+"Papa," said Sylvia, "all that sounds well, but it has no meaning. I
+have been robbed of my 'innocence,' and I know that it has not debased
+me. It has only fitted me to deal with the realities of life. And it
+will do the same for any girl who is taught by earnest and reverent
+people. Now, as it is, we have to tell Celeste, but we tell her too
+late."
+
+"But we _won't_ have to tell her!" cried the major.
+
+"Dear papa, please explain how we can avoid telling her."
+
+"I will inform her that she must give the young man up. She is a good
+and dutiful daughter----"
+
+"Yes," replied Sylvia, "but suppose on this one occasion she were to
+fail to be good and dutiful? Suppose the next day you learn that she had
+run away and married Roger--what would you do about it then?"
+
+16. That evening Roger was to take his _fiancee_ to one of the young
+people's dances. And there was Celeste, in a flaming red dress, with
+a great bunch of flaming roses; she could wear these colours, with her
+brilliant black hair and gorgeous complexion. Roger was fair, with a
+frank, boyish face, and they made a pretty couple; but that evening
+Roger did not come. Sylvia helped to dress her sister, and then watched
+her wandering restlessly about the hall, while the hour came and went.
+Later in the evening Major Castleman called up the Peyton home. The boy
+was not there, and no one seemed to know where he was.
+
+Nor the next day did there come any explanation. At the Peytons it was
+still declared that no one had heard from Roger, and for another day
+the mystery continued, to Celeste's distress and mortification. At
+last, from Clive Chilton, Sylvia managed to extract the truth. Roger
+was drunk--crazy drunk, and had been taken off by some of the boys to be
+straightened out.
+
+Of course this rumour soon got to the rest of the family and they had
+to tell Celeste, because she was frantic with anxiety. There were grave
+consultations among the Castleman ladies. It was a wanton affront to his
+_fiancee_ that the boy had committed, and something must be done about
+it quickly. Then came the news that Roger had escaped from his warders,
+and got drunker than ever; he had been out at night, smashing the street
+lamps, and it had required extreme self-control on the part of the town
+police force to avoid complications.
+
+"Miss Margaret" went to her young daughter, and in a tear-flooded
+scene informed her of the opinion of the family, that her self-respect
+required the breaking of the engagement. Celeste went into hysterics.
+She would _not_ have her happiness ruined for life! Roger was "wild,"
+but so were all the other boys--and he would atone for his recklessness.
+She had the idea that if only she could get hold of him, she could
+recall him to his senses; the more her mother was scandalised by this
+proposal, the more frantically Celeste wept. She shut herself up in
+her room, refusing to appear at meals, and spending her time pacing the
+floor and wringing her hands.
+
+The family had been through all this with their eldest daughter several
+years before, but they had not learned to handle it any better. The
+whole household was in a state of distraction, and the conditions grew
+worse day by day, as bulletins came in concerning the young man. He
+seemed to have gone actually insane. He was not to be restrained even by
+his own father, and if the unfortunate policemen could be believed, he
+had violently attacked them. Apparently he was trying to break down the
+unwritten law that the sons of the "best families" are not arrested.
+
+Poor Celeste, with pale, tear-drenched face, sent for her elder sister,
+to make one last appeal. Could Sylvia not somehow get hold of Roger and
+bring him to his senses? Could she not interview some of the other boys,
+and find out what he meant by his conduct?
+
+So Sylvia went to her cousin Clive, and had a talk with him--assuredly
+the most remarkable talk that that young man had ever had in his life.
+She told him that she wanted to know the truth about Roger Peyton,
+and after a cross-examination that would have made the reputation of a
+criminal lawyer, she got what she wanted. All the young men in town, it
+seemed, knew the true state of affairs, and were in a panic concerning
+it; that Major Castleman had sent for Roger and informed him that
+he could not marry his daughter, until he produced a certain kind of
+medical certificate. No, he couldn't produce it! Was there a fellow in
+town who could produce it? What was there for him to do but to get drunk
+and stay drunk, until Celeste had cast him off?
+
+It was Clive's turn then to do some plain speaking. "Look here, Sylvia,"
+he said, "since you have made me talk about this----"
+
+"Yes, Clive?"
+
+"Do you know what people are saying--I mean the reason the Major made
+this proposition to Roger?"
+
+She answered, in a quiet voice: "I suppose, Clive, it has something to
+do with Elaine."
+
+"Yes, exactly!" exclaimed Clive. "They say--" But then he stopped. He
+could not repeat it. "Surely you don't want that kind of talk, Sylvia?"
+
+"Naturally, Clive, I'd prefer to escape that kind of talk, but my fear
+of it will not make me neglect the protection of my sister."
+
+"But Sylvia," cried the boy, "you don't understand about this! A woman
+_can't_ understand about these things----"
+
+"You are mistaken, my dear cousin," said Sylvia--and her voice was firm
+and decisive. "I _do_ understand."
+
+"All right!" cried Clive, with sudden exasperation. "But let me tell
+you this--Celeste is going to have a hard time getting any other man to
+propose to her!"
+
+"You mean, Clive, because so many of them are----?"
+
+"Yes, if you must put it that way," he said.
+
+There was a pause, then Sylvia went on: "Let us discuss the practical
+problem, Clive. Don't you think it would have been better if Roger,
+instead of going off and getting drunk, had set about getting himself
+cured?"
+
+The other looked at her, with evident surprise. "You mean in that case
+Celeste might marry him?"
+
+"You say the boys are all alike, Clive; and we can't turn our girls into
+nuns. Why didn't some of you fellows point that out to Roger?"
+
+"The truth is," said Clive, "we tried to." There was a little more
+cordiality in his manner, since Sylvia had shown such a unexpected
+amount of intelligence.
+
+"Well?" she asked. "What then?"
+
+"Why, he wouldn't listen to anything."
+
+"You mean--because he was drunk?"
+
+"No, we had him nearly sober. But you see--" And Clive paused for
+a moment, painfully embarrassed. "The truth is, Roger had been to a
+doctor, and been told it might take him a year or two to get cured."
+
+"Clive!" she cried. "Clive! And you mean that in the face of that, he
+proposed to go on and marry?"
+
+"Well, Sylvia, you see--" And the young man hesitated still longer. He
+was crimson with embarrassment, and suddenly he blurted out: "The truth
+is, the doctor told him to marry. That was the only way he'd ever get
+cured."
+
+Sylvia was almost speechless. "Oh! Oh!" she cried, "I can't believe
+you!"
+
+"That's what the doctors tell you, Sylvia. You don't understand--it's
+just as I told you, a woman can't understand. It's a question of a man's
+nature----"
+
+"But Clive--what about the wife and her health? Has the wife no rights
+whatever?"
+
+"The truth is, Sylvia, people don't take this disease with such
+desperate seriousness. You understand, it isn't the one that everybody
+knows is dangerous. It doesn't do any real harm----"
+
+"Look at Elaine! Don't you call that real harm?"
+
+"Yes, but that doesn't happen often, and they say there are ways it can
+be prevented. Anyway, fellows just can't help it! God knows we'd help it
+if we could."
+
+Sylvia thought for a moment, and then came back to the immediate
+question. "It's evident what Roger could do in this case. He is young,
+and Celeste is still younger. They might wait a couple of years and
+Roger might take care of himself, and in time it might be properly
+arranged."
+
+But Clive did not seem too warm to the proposition, and Sylvia, who knew
+Roger Peyton, was not long in making out the reason. "You mean you don't
+think he has character enough to keep straight for a year or two?"
+
+"To tell you the honest truth, we talked it out with him, and he
+wouldn't make any promises."
+
+To which Sylvia answered: "Very well, Clive--that settles it. You can
+help me find some man for Celeste who loves her a little more than
+that!"
+
+17. That afternoon came Aunt Nannie, the Bishop's wife, in shining
+chestnut-coloured silk to match a pair of shining chestnut-coloured
+horses. Other people, it appeared, had been making inquiries into Roger
+Peyton's story, and other people besides Clive Chilton had been telling
+the truth. Aunt Nannie gathered the ladies of the family in a hurried
+conference, and Sylvia was summoned to appear before it--quite as in the
+days of her affair with Frank Shirley.
+
+"Miss Margaret" and Aunt Varina were solemn and frightened, as of old;
+and, as of old, Aunt Nannie did the talking. "Sylvia, do you know what
+people are saying about you?"
+
+"Yes, Aunt Nannie" said Sylvia.
+
+"Oh, you do know?"
+
+"Yes, of course. And I knew in advance that they would say it."
+
+Something about the seraphic face of Sylvia, chastened by terrible
+suffering, must have suggested to Mrs. Chilton the idea of caution.
+"Have you thought of the humiliation this must inflict upon your
+relatives?"
+
+"I have found, Aunt Nannie," said Sylvia, "that there are worse
+afflictions than being talked about."
+
+"I am not sure," declared the other, "that anything could be worse than
+to be the object of the kind of gossip that is now seething around
+our family. It has been the tradition of our people to bear their
+afflictions in silence."
+
+"In this case, Aunt Nannie, it is obvious that silence would have meant
+more afflictions, many more. I have thought of my sister--and of all the
+other girls in our family, who may be led to sacrifice by the ambitions
+of their relatives." Sylvia paused a moment, so that her words might
+have effect.
+
+Said the bishop's wife: "Sylvia, we cannot undertake to save the world
+from the results of its sins. God has his own ways of punishing men."
+
+"Perhaps so, but surely God does not wish the punishment to fall upon
+innocent young girls. For instance, Aunt Nannie, think of your own
+daughters----"
+
+"My daughters!" broke out Mrs. Chilton. And then, mastering her
+excitement: "At least, you will permit me to look after my own
+children."
+
+"I noticed, my dear aunt, that Lucy May turned colour when Tom Aldrich
+came into the room last night. Have you noticed anything?"
+
+"Yes--what of it?"
+
+"It means that Lucy May is falling in love with Tom."
+
+"Why should she not? I certainly consider him an eligible man."
+
+"And yet you know, Aunt Nannie, that he is one of Roger Peyton's set.
+You know that he goes about town getting drunk with the gayest of them,
+and you let Lucy May go on and fall in love with him! You have taken no
+steps to find out about him--you have not warned your daughter--"
+
+Mrs. Chilton was crimson with agitation. "Warned my daughter! Who ever
+heard of such a thing?"
+
+Said Sylvia, quietly: "I can believe that you never heard of it--but you
+will hear soon. The other day I had a talk with Lucy May--"
+
+"Sylvia Castleman!" And then it seemed Mrs. Chilton reminded herself
+that she was dealing with a dangerous lunatic. "Sylvia," she said, in a
+suppressed voice, "you mean to tell me that you have been poisoning my
+young daughter's mind--"
+
+"You have brought her up well," said Sylvia, as her aunt stopped for
+lack of words. "She did not want to listen to me. She said that young
+girls ought not to know about such matters. But I pointed out Elaine,
+and then she changed her mind--just as you will have to change yours in
+the end, Aunt Nannie."
+
+Mrs. Chilton sat glaring at her niece, her bosom heaving. Then suddenly
+she turned her indignant eyes upon Mrs. Castleman. "Margaret, cannot you
+stop this shocking business? I demand that the tongues of gossip shall
+no longer clatter around the family of which I am a member! My husband
+is the bishop of this diocese, and if our ancient and untarnished name
+is of no importance to Sylvia van Tuiver, then, perhaps the dignity and
+authority of the church may have some weight----"
+
+"Aunt Nannie," interrupted Sylvia, "it will do no good to drag Uncle
+Basil into this matter. I fear you will have to face the fact that from
+this time on your authority in our family is to be diminished. You had
+more to do than any other person with driving me into the marriage that
+has wrecked my life, and now you want to go on and do the same thing for
+my sister and for your own daughters--to marry them with no thought of
+anything save the social position of the man. And in the same way you
+are saving up your sons to find rich girls. You know that you kept
+Clive from marrying a poor girl in this town a couple of years ago--and
+meantime it seems to be nothing to you that he's going with men like
+Roger Peyton and Tom Aldrich, learning all the vices the women in the
+brothels have to teach him----"
+
+Poor "Miss Margaret" had several times made futile efforts to check
+her daughter's outburst. Now she and Aunt Varina started up at the same
+time. "Sylvia! Sylvia! You must not talk like that to your aunt!"
+
+And Sylvia turned and gazed at them with her sad eyes. "From now on,"
+she said, "that is the way I am going to talk. You are a lot of ignorant
+children. I was one too, but now I know. And I say to you: Look at
+Elaine! Look at my little one, and see what the worship of Mammon has
+done to one of the daughters of your family!"
+
+18. After this, Sylvia had her people reduced to a state of terror. She
+was an avenging angel, sent by the Lord to punish them for their sins.
+How could one rebuke the unconventionality of an avenging angel? On the
+other hand, of course, one could not help being in agony, and letting
+the angel see it in one's face. Outside, there were the tongues of
+gossip clattering, as Aunt Nannie had said; quite literally everyone
+in Castleman County was talking about the blindness of Mrs. Douglas van
+Tuiver's baby, and how, because of it, the mother was setting out on
+a campaign to destroy the modesty of the State. The excitement, the
+curiosity, the obscene delight of the world came rolling back into
+Castleman Hall in great waves, that picked up the unfortunate inmates
+and buffeted them about.
+
+Family consultations were restricted, because it was impossible for
+the ladies of the family to talk to the gentlemen about these horrible
+things; but the ladies talked to the ladies, and the gentlemen talked to
+the gentlemen, and each came separately to Sylvia with their distress.
+Poor, helpless "Miss Margaret" would come wringing her hands, and
+looking as if she had buried all her children. "Sylvia! Sylvia! Do you
+realise that you are being DISCUSSED?" That was the worst calamity
+that could befal a woman in Castleman County--it summed up all
+possible calamities that could befal her--to be "discussed." "They were
+discussing you once when you wanted to marry Frank Shirley! And now--oh,
+now they will never stop discussing you!"
+
+Then would come the dear major. He loved his eldest daughter as he loved
+nothing else in the world, and he was a just man at heart. He could not
+meet her arguments--yes, she was right, she was right. But then he would
+go away, and the waves of scandal and shame would come rolling.
+
+"My child," he pleaded, "have you thought what this thing is doing to
+your husband? Do you realise that while you talk about protecting
+other people, you are putting upon Douglas a brand that will follow him
+through life?"
+
+Uncle Mandeville came up from New Orleans to see his favourite niece;
+and the wave smote him as he alighted from the train, and he became so
+much excited that he went to the club and got drunk, and then could not
+see his niece, but had to be carried off upstairs and given forcible
+hypodermics. Cousin Clive told Sylvia about it afterwards--how Uncle
+Mandeville refused to believe the truth, and swore that he would shoot
+some of these fellows if they didn't stop talking about his niece. Said
+Clive, with a grim laugh: "I told him: 'If Sylvia had her way, you'd
+shoot a good part of the men in the town.'" He answered: "Well, by God,
+I'll do it--it would serve the scoundrels right!" And he tried to get
+out of bed and get his pants and his pistols--so that in the end it was
+necessary to telephone for the major, and then for Barry Chilton and two
+of his gigantic sons from their plantation.
+
+Sylvia had her way, and talked things out with the agonised Celeste.
+And the next day came Aunt Varina, hardly able to contain herself.
+"Oh, Sylvia, such a horrible thing! To hear such words coming from your
+little sister's lips--like the toads and snakes in the fairy story! To
+think of these ideas festering in a young girl's brain!" And then again:
+"Sylvia, your sister declares she will never go to a party again!
+You are teaching her to hate men! You will make her a STRONG-MINDED
+woman!"--that was another phrase they had summing up a whole universe
+of horrors. Sylvia could not recall a time when she had not heard that
+warning. "Be careful, dear, when you express an opinion, always end
+it with a question: 'Don't you think so?' or something like that,
+otherwise, men may get the idea that you are 'STRONG-MINDED'!"
+
+Sylvia, in her girlhood, had heard vague hints and rumours which now she
+was able to interpret in the light of her experience. In her courtship
+days she had met a man who always wore gloves, even in the hottest
+weather, and she had heard that this was because of some affliction
+of the skin. Now, talking with the young matrons of her own set, she
+learned that this man had married, and had since had to take to a
+wheel-chair, while his wife had borne a child with a monstrous deformed
+head, and had died of the ordeal and the shock.
+
+Oh, the stories that one uncovered--right in one's own town, among one's
+own set--like foul sewers underneath the pavements! The succession of
+deceased generations, of imbeciles, epileptics, paralytics! The innocent
+children born to a life-time of torment; the women hiding their secret
+agonies from the world! Sometimes women went all through life without
+knowing the truth about themselves. There was poor Mrs. Valens, for
+example, who reclined all day upon the gallery of one of the most
+beautiful homes in the county, and showed her friends the palms of her
+hands, all covered with callouses and scales, exclaiming: "What in
+the world do you suppose can be the matter with me?" She had been a
+beautiful woman, a "belle" of "Miss Margaret's" day; she had married a
+man who was rich and handsome and witty--and a rake. Now he was drunk
+all the time, and two of his children had died in hospital, and another
+had arms that came out of joint, and had to be put in plaster of Paris
+for months at a time. His wife, the one-time darling of society, would
+lie on her couch and read the Book of Job until she knew it by heart.
+
+And could you believe it, when Sylvia came home, ablaze with excitement
+over the story, she found that the only thing that her relatives
+were able to see in it was the Book of Job! Under the burden of her
+afflictions the woman had become devout; and how could anyone fail to
+see in this the deep purposes of Providence revealed? "Verily," said
+"Miss Margaret," "'whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.' We are told in
+the Lord's Word that 'the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon
+the children, even unto the third and fourth generations,' and do you
+suppose the Lord would have told us that, if He had not known there
+would be such children?"
+
+19. I cannot pass over this part of my story without bringing forward
+Mrs. Armistead, the town cynic, who constituted herself one of Sylvia's
+sources of information in the crisis. Mrs. Sallie Ann Armistead was
+the mother of two boys with whom Sylvia, as a child, had insisted upon
+playing, in spite of the protests of the family. "Wha' fo' you go wi'
+dem Armistead chillun, Mi' Sylvia?" would cry Aunt Mandy, the cook.
+"Doan' you know they granddaddy done pick cottin in de fiel' 'long o'
+me?" But while her father was picking cotton, Sallie Ann had looked
+after her complexion and her figure, and had married a rising young
+merchant. Now he was the wealthy proprietor of a chain of "nigger
+stores," and his wife was the possessor of the most dreaded tongue in
+Castleman County.
+
+She was a person who, if she had been born a duchess, would have made
+a reputation in history; the one woman in the county who had a mind
+and was not afraid to have it known. She used all the tricks of a
+duchess--lorgnettes, for example, with which she stared people into
+a state of fright. She did not dare try anything like that on the
+Castlemans, of course, but woe to the little people who crossed her
+path! She had an eye that sought out every human weakness, and such a
+wit that even her victims were fascinated. One of the legends about her
+told how her dearest foe, a dashing young matron, had died, and all the
+friends had gathered with their floral tributes. Sallie Ann went in to
+review the remains, and when she came out a sentimental voice inquired:
+"And how does our poor Ruth look?"
+
+"Oh," was the answer, "as old and grey as ever!"
+
+Now Mrs. Armistead stopped Sylvia in the street: "My dear, how goes the
+eugenics campaign?"
+
+And while Sylvia gazed, dumbfounded, the other went on as if she were
+chatting about the weather: "You can't realise what a stir you are
+making in our little frog pond. Come, see me, and let me tell you the
+gossip! Do you know you've enriched our vocabulary?"
+
+"I have made someone look up the meaning of eugenics, at least,"
+answered Sylvia--having got herself together in haste.
+
+"Oh, not only that, my dear. You have made a new medical term--the 'van
+Tuiver disease.' Isn't that interesting?"
+
+For a moment Sylvia shrivelled before this flame from hell. But then,
+being the only person who had ever been able to chain this devil, she
+said: "Indeed? I hope that with so fashionable a name the disease does
+not become an epidemic!"
+
+Mrs. Armistead gazed at her, and then, in a burst of enthusiasm, she
+exclaimed: "Sylvia Castleman, I have always insisted that one of the
+most interesting women in the world was spoiled by the taint of goodness
+in you."
+
+She took Sylvia to her bosom, as it were. "Let us sit on the fence and
+enjoy this spectacle! My dear, you can have no idea what an uproar you
+are making! The young married women gather in their boudoirs and whisper
+ghastly secrets to each other; some of them are sure they have it, and
+some of them say they can trust their husbands--as if any man could be
+trusted as far as you can throw a bull by the horns! Did you hear
+about poor Mrs. Pattie Peyton, she has the measles, but she sent for a
+specialist, and vowed she had something else--she had read about it, and
+knew all the symptoms, and insisted on having elaborate blood-tests! And
+little Mrs. Stanley Pendleton has left her husband, and everybody says
+that's the reason. The men are simply shivering in their boots--they
+steal into the doctor's offices by the back-doors, and a whole car-load
+of the boys have been shipped off to Hot Springs to be boiled--" And
+so on, while Mrs. Armistead revelled in the sensation of strolling down
+Main Street with Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver!
+
+Then Sylvia would go home, and get the newest reactions of the family
+to these horrors. Aunt Nannie, it seemed, made the discovery that Basil,
+junr., her fifth son, was carrying on an intrigue with a mulatto girl
+in the town; and she forbade him to go to Castleman Hall, for fear lest
+Sylvia should worm the secret out of him; also she shipped Lucy May off
+to visit a friend, and came and tried to persuade Mrs. Chilton to do
+the same with Peggy and Maria, lest Sylvia should somehow corrupt these
+children.
+
+The bishop came, having been ordered to preach religion to his wayward
+niece. Poor dear Uncle Basil--he had tried preaching religion to Sylvia
+many years ago, and never could do it because he loved her so well that
+with all his Seventeenth Century theology he could not deny her chance
+of salvation. Now the first sight that met his eyes when he came to
+see her was his little blind grand-niece. And also he had in his secret
+heart the knowledge that he, a rich and gay young planter before he
+became converted to Methodism, had played with the fire of vice, and
+been badly burned. So Sylvia did not find him at all the Voice of
+Authority, but just a poor, hen-pecked, unhappy husband of a tyrannous
+Castleman woman.
+
+The next thing was that "Miss Margaret" took up the notion that a time
+such as this was not one for Sylvia's husband to be away from her.
+What if people were to say that they had separated? There were family
+consultations, and in the midst of them there came word that van Tuiver
+was called North upon business. When the family delegations came to
+Sylvia, to insist that she go with him, the answer they got was that
+if they could not let her stay quietly at home without asking her any
+questions, she would go off to New York and live with a divorced woman
+Socialist!
+
+"Of course, they gave up," she wrote me. "And half an hour ago poor dear
+mamma came to my room and said: 'Sylvia, dear, we will let you do what
+you want, but won't you please do one small favour for me?' I got ready
+for trouble, and asked what she wanted. Her answer was: 'Won't you go
+with Celeste to the Young Matrons' Cotillion tomorrow night, so that
+people won't think there's anything the matter?'"
+
+20. Roger Peyton had gone off to Hot Springs, and Douglas van Tuiver was
+in New York; so little by little the storms about Castleman Hall began
+to abate in violence. Sylvia was absorbed with her baby, and beginning
+to fit her life into that of her people. She found many ways in which
+she could serve them--entertaining Uncle Mandeville to keep him sober;
+checking the extravagrance of Celeste; nursing Castleman Lysle through
+green apple convulsions. That was to be her life for the future, she
+told herself, and she was making herself really happy in it--when
+suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, came an event that swept her poor
+little plans into chaos.
+
+It was an afternoon in March, the sun was shining brightly and the
+Southern springtime was in full tide, and Sylvia had had the old family
+carriage made ready, with two of the oldest and gentlest family horses,
+and took the girls upon a shopping expedition to town. In the front seat
+sat Celeste, driving, with two of her friends, and in the rear seat was
+Sylvia, with Peggy and Maria. When an assemblage of allurements such as
+this stopped on the streets of the town, the young men would come out
+of the banks and the offices and gather round to chat. There would be
+a halt before an ice-cream parlour, and a big tray of ices would be
+brought out, and the girls would sit in the carriage and eat, and the
+boys would stand on the curb and eat--undismayed by the fact that
+they had welcomed half a dozen such parties during the afternoon. The
+statistics proved that this was a thriving town, with rapidly increasing
+business, but there was never so much business as to interfere with
+gallantries like these.
+
+Sylvia enjoyed the scene; it took her back to happy days, before black
+care had taken his seat behind her. She sat in a kind of dream, only
+half hearing the merriment of the young people, and only half tasting
+her ice. How she loved this old town, with its streets deep in black
+spring mud, its mud-plastered "buck-boards" and saddle horses hitched
+at every telegraph pole! Its banks and stores and law offices seemed
+shabbier after one had made the "grand tour," but they were none the
+less dear to her for that. She would spend the rest of her days in
+Castleman County, and the sunshine and peace would gradually enfold her.
+
+Such were her thoughts when the unforeseen event befel. A man on
+horse-back rode down a side-street, crossing Main Street a little way in
+front of her; a man dressed in khaki, with a khaki riding hat pulled low
+over his face. He rode rapidly--appearing and vanishing, so that Sylvia
+scarcely saw him--really did not see him with her conscious mind at all.
+Her thoughts were still busy with dreams, and the clatter of boys and
+girls; but deep within her had begun a tumult--a trembling, a pounding
+of the heart, a clamouring under the floors of her consciousness.
+
+And slowly this excitement mounted. What was the matter, what had
+happened? A man had ridden by, but why should a man--. Surely it could
+not have been--no. There were hundreds of men in Castleman County who
+wore khaki and rode horse-back, and had sturdy, thick-set figures! But
+then, how could she make a mistake? How could her instinct have betrayed
+her so? It was that same view of him as he sat on a horse that had first
+thrilled her during the hunting party years ago!
+
+He had gone West, and had said that he would never return. He had not
+been heard from in years. What an amazing thing, that a mere glimpse of
+a man who looked and dressed and rode like him should be able to set her
+whole being into such a panic! How futile became her dreams of peace!
+
+She heard the sound of a vehicle close beside her carriage, and turned
+and found herself looking into the sharp eyes of Mrs. Armistead. It
+happened that Sylvia was on the side away from the curb, and there was
+no one talking to her; so Mrs. Armistead ran her electric alongside, and
+had the stirring occasion to herself. Sylvia looked into her face, so
+full of malice, and knew two things in a flash: First, it really had
+been Frank Shirley riding by; and second, Mrs. Armistead had seen him!
+
+"Another candidate for your eugenics class!" said the lady.
+
+Sylvia glanced at the young people and made sure they were paying no
+attention. She might have made some remark that would have brought
+them into the conversation, and delivered her from the torments of this
+devil. But no, she had never quailed from Mrs. Armistead in her life,
+and she would not now give her the satisfaction of driving off to tell
+the town that Sylvia van Tuiver had seen Frank Shirley, and had been
+overcome by it, and had taken refuge behind the skirts of her little
+sisters!
+
+"You can see I have my carriage full of pupils" she said, smilingly.
+
+"How happy it must make you, Sylvia--coming home and meeting all your
+old friends! It must set you trembling with ecstasy--angels singing in
+the sky above you--little golden bells ringing all over you!"
+
+Sylvia recognised these phrases. They were part of an effort she had
+made to describe the raptures of young love to her bosom friend, Harriet
+Atkinson. And so Harriet had passed them on to the town! And they had
+been cherished all these years.
+
+She could not afford to recognise these illegitimate children of
+romance. "Mrs. Armistead," she said, "I had no idea you had so much
+poetry in you!"
+
+"I am simply improvising, my dear--upon the colour in your cheeks at
+present!"
+
+There was no way save to be bold. "You couldn't expect me not to be
+excited, Mrs. Armistead. You see, I had no idea he had come back from
+the West."
+
+"They say he left a wife there." remarked the lady, innocently.
+
+"Ah!" said Sylvia. "Then he will not be staying long, presumably."
+
+There was a pause; all at once Mrs. Armistead's voice became gentle
+and sympathetic. "Sylvia," she said, "don't imagine that I fail to
+appreciate what is going on in your heart. I know a true romance when I
+see one. If only you could have known in those days what you know now,
+there might have been one beautiful love story that did not end as a
+tragedy."
+
+You would have thought the lady's better self had suddenly been touched.
+But Sylvia knew her; too many times she had seen this huntress trying to
+lure a victim out of his refuge.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Armistead," she said, gently. "But I have the consolation at
+least of being a martyr to science."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Have you forgotten the new medical term that I have given to the
+world?"
+
+And Mrs. Armistead looked at her for a moment aghast. "My God, Sylvia!"
+she whispered; and then--an honest tribute: "You certainly can take care
+of yourself!"
+
+"Yes," said Sylvia. "Tell that to my other friends in town." And so, at
+last, Mrs. Armistead started her machine, and this battle of hell-cats
+came to an end.
+
+21. Sylvia rode home in a daze, answering without hearing the prattle of
+the children. She was appalled at the emotions that possessed her--that
+the sight of Frank Shirley riding down the street could have affected
+her so! She forgot Mrs. Armistead, she forgot the whole world, in her
+dismay over her own state of mind. Having dismissed Frank from her life
+and her thoughts forever, it seemed to her preposterous that she should
+be at the mercy of such an excitement.
+
+She found herself wondering about her family. Did they know that Frank
+Shirley had returned? Would they have failed to mention it to her? For
+a moment she told herself it would not have occurred to them she could
+have any interest in the subject. But no--they were not so _naive_--the
+Castleman women--as their sense of propriety made them pretend to be!
+But how stupid of them not to give her warning! Suppose she had happened
+to meet Frank face to face, and in the presence of others! She must
+certainly have betrayed her excitement; and just at this time, when the
+world had the Castleman family under the microscope!
+
+She told herself that she would avoid such difficulty in future; she
+would stay at home until Frank had gone away. If he had a wife in
+the West, presumably he had merely come for a visit to his mother and
+sisters. And then Sylvia found herself in an argument with herself. What
+possible difference could it make that Frank Shirley had a wife? So long
+as she, Sylvia, had a husband, what else mattered? Yet she could not
+deny it--it brought her a separate and additional pang that Frank
+Shirley should have married. What sort of wife could he have found--he,
+a stranger in the far West? And why had he not brought his wife home to
+his people?
+
+When she stepped out of the carriage, it was with her mind made up that
+she would stay at home until all danger was past. But the next afternoon
+a neighbour called up to ask Sylvia and Celeste to come and play cards
+in the evening. It was not a party, Mrs. Witherspoon explained to "Miss
+Margaret," who answered the 'phone; just a few friends and a good time,
+and she did so hope that Sylvia was not going to refuse. The mere
+hint of the fear that Sylvia might refuse was enough to excite Mrs.
+Castleman. Why should Sylvia refuse? So she accepted the invitation, and
+then came to plead with her daughter--for Celeste's sake, and for the
+sake of all her family, so that the world might see that she was not
+crushed by misfortune!
+
+There were reasons why the invitation was a difficult one to decline.
+Mrs. Virginia Witherspoon was the daughter of a Confederate general
+whose name you read in every history-book; and she had a famous old
+home in the country which was falling about her ears--her husband being
+seldom sober enough to know what was happening. She had also three
+blossoming daughters, whom she must manage to get out of the home before
+the plastering of the drawing-room fell upon the heads of their suitors;
+so that the ardour of her husband-hunting was one of the jokes of the
+State. Naturally, under such circumstances, the Witherspoons had to
+be treated with consideration by the Castlemans. One might snub rich
+Yankees, and chasten the suddenly-prosperous; but a family with an
+ancient house in ruins, and with faded uniforms and battle-scarred
+sabres in the cedar-chests in its attic--such a family can with
+difficulty overdraw its social bank account.
+
+Dolly Witherspoon, the oldest daughter, had been Sylvia's rival for
+the palm as the most beautiful girl in Castleman County. And Sylvia
+had triumphed, and Dolly had failed. So, in her secret heart she
+hated Sylvia, and the mother hated her; and yet--such was the social
+game--they had to invite Sylvia and her sister to their card-parties,
+and Sylvia and her sister had to go. They had to go and be the most
+striking figures there: Celeste, slim and pale from sorrow, virginal, in
+clinging white chiffon; and Sylvia, regal and splendid, shimmering like
+a mermaid in a gown of emerald green.
+
+The mermaid imagined that she noticed a slight agitation underneath
+the cordiality of her hostess. The next person to greet her was Mrs.
+Armistead; and Sylvia was sure that she did not imagine the suppressed
+excitement in that lady's manner. But even while she was speculating
+and suspecting, she was led toward the drawing-room. It was late, her
+hostess explained; the other guests were waiting, so if they did not
+mind, the play would start at once. Celeste was to sit at that table
+over there, with Mr. Witherspoon's crippled brother, and old Mr.
+Perkins, who was deaf; and Sylvia was to come this way--the table in the
+corner. Sylvia moved toward it, and Dolly Witherspoon and her sister,
+Emma, greeted her cordially, and then stepped out of the way to let her
+to her seat; and Sylvia gave one glance--and found herself face to face
+with Frank Shirley!
+
+22. Frank's face was scarlet; and Sylvia had a moment of blind terror,
+when she wanted to turn and fly. But there about her was the circle
+of her enemies; a whole roomful of people, breathless with curiosity,
+drinking in with eyes and ears every hint of distress that she might
+give. And the next morning the whole town would, in imagination, attend
+the scene!
+
+"Good-evening, Julia," said Sylvia, to Mrs. Witherspoon's youngest
+daughter, the other lady at the table. "Good-evening, Malcolm"--to
+Malcolm McCallum, an old "beau" of hers. And then, taking the seat which
+Malcolm sprang to move out for her, "How do you do, Frank?"
+
+Frank's eyes had fallen to his lap. "How do you do?" he murmured. The
+sound of his voice, low and trembling, full of pain, was like the
+sound of some old funeral bell to Sylvia; it sent the blood leaping in
+torrents to her forehead. Oh, horrible, horrible!
+
+For a moment her eyes fell like his, and she shuddered, and was beaten.
+But there was the roomful of people, watching; there was Mrs. Armistead,
+there were the Witherspoon women gloating. She forced a tortured smile
+to her lips, and asked, "What are we playing?"
+
+"Oh, didn't you know that?" said Julia. "Progressive whist."
+
+"Thank-you," said Sylvia. "When do we begin?" And she looked
+about--anywhere but at Frank Shirley, with his face grown so old in four
+years.
+
+No one said anything, no one made a move. Was everybody in the room
+conspiring to break her down? "I thought we were late," she said,
+desperately; and then, with another effort--"Shall I cut?" she asked, of
+Julia.
+
+"If you please," said the girl; but she did not make a motion to pass
+the cards. Her manner seemed to say, You may cut all night, but it won't
+help you to rob me of this satisfaction.
+
+Sylvia made a still more determined effort. If the game was to be
+postponed indefinitely, so that people might watch her and Frank--well,
+she would have to find something to talk about.
+
+"It is a surprise to see you again, Frank Shirley!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," he said. His voice was a mumble, and he did not lift his eyes.
+
+"You have been in the West, I understand?"
+
+"Yes," again; but still he did not lift his eyes.
+
+Sylvia managed to lift hers as far as his cravat; and she saw in it
+an old piece of imitation jewelry which she had picked up once on the
+street, and had handed to him in jest. He had worn it all these years!
+He had not thrown it away--not even when she had thrown him away!
+
+Again came a surge of emotion; and out of the mist she looked about her
+and saw the faces of tormenting demons, leering. "Well," she demanded,
+"are we going to play?"
+
+"We were waiting for you to cut," said Julia, graciously; and Sylvia's
+fury helped to restore her self-posession. She cut the cards; and fate
+was kind, sparing both her and Frank the task of dealing.
+
+But then a new difficulty arose. Julia dealt, and thirteen cards lay
+in front of Frank Shirley; but he did not seem to know that he ought
+to pick them up. And when the opposing lady called him to time, in
+what seemed an unnecessarily penetrating voice, he found that he was
+physically unable to get the cards from the table. And when with his
+fumbling efforts he got them into a bunch, he could not straighten them
+out--to say nothing of the labour of sorting them according to suit,
+which all whist-players know to be an indispensable preliminary to the
+game. When the opposing lady prodded him again, Frank's face changed
+from vivid scarlet to a dark and alarming purple.
+
+Miss Julia led the tray of clubs; and Frank, whose turn came next,
+spilled three cards upon the table, and finally selected from them the
+king of hearts to play--hearts being trumps. "But you have a club there,
+Mr. Shirley," said his opponent; something that was pardonable, inasmuch
+as the nine of clubs lay face up where he had shoved it aside.
+
+"Oh--I beg pardon," he stammered, and took back his king, and reached
+into his hand and pulled out the six of clubs, and a diamond with it.
+
+It was evident that this could not go on. Sylvia might be equal to the
+emergency, but Frank was not. He was too much of a human being and too
+little of a social automaton. Something must be done.
+
+"Don't they play whist out West, Mr. Shirley," asked Julia, still
+smiling benevolently.
+
+And Sylvia lowered her cards. "Surely, my dear, you must understand,"
+she said, gently. "Mr. Shirley is too much embarrassed to think about
+cards."
+
+"Oh!" said the other, taken aback. (_L'audace, touljours l'audace!_ runs
+the formula!)
+
+"You see," continued Sylvia, "this is the first time that Frank has seen
+me in more than three years. And when two people have been as much in
+love as he and I were, they are naturally disturbed when they meet, and
+cannot put their minds upon a game of cards."
+
+Julia was speechless. And Sylvia let her glance wander casually about
+the room. She saw her hostess and her daughters standing watching; and
+near the wall at the other side of the room stood the head-devil, who
+had planned this torment.
+
+"Mrs. Armistead," Sylvia called, "aren't you going to play to-night?" Of
+course everybody in the room heard this; and after it, anyone could have
+heard a pin drop.
+
+"I'm to keep score," said Mrs. Armistead.
+
+"But it doesn't need four to keep score," objected Sylvia--and looked at
+the three Witherspoon ladies.
+
+"Dolly and Emma are staying out," said Mrs. Witherspoon. "Two of our
+guests did not come."
+
+"Well," Sylvia exclaimed, "that just makes it right! Please let them
+take the place of Mr. Shirley and myself. You see, we haven't seen each
+other for three or four years, and it's hard for us to get interested
+into a game of cards."
+
+The whole room caught its breath at once; and here and there one heard
+a little squeak of hysteria, cut short by some one who was not sure
+whether it was a joke or a scandal. "Why--Sylvia!" stammered Mrs.
+Witherspoon, completely staggered.
+
+Then Sylvia perceived that she was mistress of the scene. There came the
+old rapture of conquest, that made her social genius. "We have so much
+that we want to talk about," she said, in her most winning voice. "Let
+Dolly and Emma take our places, and we will sit on the sofa in the other
+room and chat. You and Mrs. Armistead come and chaperone us. Won't you
+do that, please?"
+
+"Why--why----" gasped the bewildered lady.
+
+"I'm sure that you will both be interested to hear what we have to say
+to each other; and you can tell everybody about it afterwards--and that
+will be so much better than having the card-game delayed any more."
+
+And with this side-swipe Sylvia arose. She stood and waited, to make
+sure that her ex-fiance was not too paralysed to follow. She led him out
+through the tangle of card-tables; and in the door-way she stopped and
+waited for Mrs. Armistead and Mrs. Witherspoon, and literally forced
+these two ladies to come with her out of the room.
+
+23. Do you care to hear the details of the punishment which Sylvia
+administered to the two conspirators? She took them to the sofa, and
+made Frank draw up chairs for them, and when she had got comfortably
+seated, she proceeded to talk to Frank just as gently and sincerely and
+touchingly as she would have talked if there had been nobody present.
+She asked about all that had befallen him, and when she discovered that
+he was still not able to chat, she told him about herself, about her
+baby, who was beautiful and dear, even if she was blind, and about all
+the interesting things she had seen in Europe. When presently the old
+ladies showed signs of growing restless, she put hand cuffs on them and
+chained them to their chairs.
+
+"You see," she said, "it would never do for Mr. Shirley and myself to
+talk without a chaperon. You got me into this situation, you know, and
+papa and mamma would never forgive you."
+
+"You are mistaken, Sylvia!" cried Mrs. Witherspoon. "Mr. Shirley so
+seldom goes out, and he had said he didn't think he would come!"
+
+"I am willing to accept that explanation," said Sylvia, politely, "but
+you must help me out now that the embarrassing accident has happened."
+
+Nor did it avail Mrs. Witherspoon to plead her guests and their score.
+"You may be sure they don't care about the score," said Sylvia. "They'd
+much prefer you stayed here, so that you can tell them how Frank and I
+behaved."
+
+And then, while Mrs. Witherspoon was getting herself together, Sylvia
+turned upon the other conspirator. "We will now hold one of my eugenics
+classes," she said, and added, to Frank, "Mrs. Armistead told me that
+you wanted to join my class."
+
+"I don't understand," replied Frank, at a loss.
+
+"I will explain," said Sylvia. "It is not a very refined joke they have
+in the town. Mrs. Armistead meant to say that she credits a disgraceful
+story that was circulated about you when we were engaged, and which my
+people made use of to make me break our engagement. I am glad to have
+a chance to tell you that I have investigated and satisfied myself
+that the story was not true. I want to apologise to you for ever having
+believed it; and I am sure that Mrs. Armistead may be glad of this
+opportunity to apologise for having said that she believed it."
+
+"I never said that I believed it!" cried Sallie Ann.
+
+"No, you didn't, Mrs. Armistead--you would not be so crude as to say
+it directly. You merely dropped a hint, which would lead everybody to
+understand that you believed it."
+
+Sylvia paused, just long enough to let the wicked lady suffer, but not
+long enough to let her find a reply. "When you tell your friends about
+this scene," she continued, "please make clear that I did not drop hints
+about anything, but said exactly what I meant--that the story is false,
+so far as it implies any evil done by Mr. Shirley, and that I am deeply
+ashamed of myself for having ever believed it. It is all in the past
+now, of course--we are both of us married, and we shall probably never
+meet again. But it will be a help to us in future to have had this
+little talk--will it not, Frank?"
+
+There was a pause, while Sallie Ann Armistead recovered from her
+dismay, and got back a little of her fighting power. Suddenly she rose:
+"Virginia," she said, firmly, "you are neglecting your guests."
+
+"I don't think you ought to go until Frank has got himself together,"
+said Sylvia. "Frank, can you sort your cards now?"
+
+"Virginia!" commanded Sallie Ann, imperiously. "Come!"
+
+Mrs. Witherspoon rose, and so did Sylvia. "We can't stay here alone,"
+said she. "Frank, will you take Mrs. Witherspoon in?" And she gently
+but firmly took Mrs. Armistead's arm, and so they marched back into the
+drawing-room.
+
+Dolly and Emma had progressed to separate tables, it developed, so that
+the ordeal of Frank and Sylvia was over. Through the remainder of the
+evening Sylvia chatted and played, and later partook of refreshments
+with Malcolm McCallum, and mildly teased that inconsolable bachelor,
+quite as in the old days. Now and then she stole a glance at Frank
+Shirley, and saw that he was holding up his end; but he kept away from
+her, and she never even caught his eye.
+
+At last the company broke up, and Sylvia thanked her hostess for a most
+enjoyable evening. She stepped into the motor with Celeste, and sat with
+compressed lips, answering in monosyllables her "little sister's" flood
+of excited questions--"Oh, Sylvia, didn't you feel perfectly _terrible?_
+Oh, sister, I felt _thrills_ running up and down my back! Sister, what
+_did_ you say to him? Sister, do you know old Mr. Perkins kept leaning
+over me and asking what was happening; and how could I shout into his
+deaf ear that everybody was stopping to hear what you were saying to
+Frank Shirley?"
+
+At the end of the ride, there was Aunt Varina waiting up as usual--to
+renew her own youth in the story of the evening, what this person had
+worn and what that person had said. But Sylvia left her sister to tell
+the story, and fled to her room and locked the door, and flung herself
+upon the bed and gave way to a torrent of weeping.
+
+Half an hour later Celeste went up, and finding that the door between
+her room and Sylvia's was unlocked, opened it softly, and stood
+listening. Finally she stole to her sister's side and put her arm about
+her. "Never mind, sister dear," she whispered, solemnly, "I know how it
+is! We women all have to suffer!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sylvia's Marriage, by Upton Sinclair
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