Sylvia's Marriage Part 5

"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 cla.s.s-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 s.e.x-war. Her philosophy started from a recognition of the physical and economic inferiority of woman, as complete as any window-smas.h.i.+ng suffragette could have formulated, but her remedy for it was a purely individualist one, the leisure-cla.s.s woman's skill in trading upon her s.e.x. 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 s.e.x, its ability to shape life to its whim. By means of this magic "charm"--a sort of perpetual individual s.e.x-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 courts.h.i.+p.

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 s.e.x, 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 prost.i.tution 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 s.e.x-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 prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tution?"

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 "prost.i.tution" 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 a.s.sured her.

"And you didn't feel embarra.s.sed?"

"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.