One Woman's Life Part 31

All but Milly! She had enjoyed herself quite genuinely, and with her quick social perceptions had gathered a great deal from the visit, much of which she imparted to her drowsing husband on the train. She mapped out for his duller masculine apprehension the social hierarchy of _Bunker's_. Mrs. Bunker patronized Mrs. Billman, invited her to her best dinners and to her opera box, because she was striking in looks and had made a place for herself in "interesting circles" in the great city and was more or less talked about. "Hazel is jealous of her," Milly averred.

Nevertheless the junior editor's wife accepted Mrs. Billman's patronage and invitations to Mrs. Bunker's opera box when it was given on off nights or matinees to the chief editor's wife, and in turn she was inclined to patronize Mrs. Bragdon by sending her tickets to improving lectures and concerts.

Hazel Fredericks, in her quiet and self-effacing manner, had aspirations, Milly suspected. She could not compete either with Mrs.

Howard Bunker or Mrs. Montgomery Billman, of course, but she aspired to the Serious and the Distinguished, instead of the Rich or the merely Artistic. She went in for "movements" of all sorts and was a member of various leagues, and a.s.sociations, and committees. Occasionally her name got into public print. Just at present she was in the "woman movement,"

about which she talked to Milly a good deal. That promised to be the most important of all her "movements."

Indeed, as Milly saw, all these women "went in" for something. They tried to conduct their lives and their husbands' lives on lines of definite accomplishment, and she was decidedly "old-fas.h.i.+oned" in living hers from day to day for what it offered of amus.e.m.e.nt or ennui. She was rather proud of the fact that she had never deliberately "gone in" for anything in her life except Love.

Nevertheless, she found the flutter of women's ambitions exciting and liked to observe the indirect working of their wills even in the man's game....

"Mrs. Billman is too obvious, don't you think Jack?" she said to her husband. But Jack had gone sound asleep.

IV

THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE

Before the winter they were established in their own home, in a corner of the new East River Terrace Building, and thereafter their life settled down on the lines it was to follow in New York. Their acquaintance gradually widened from _Bunker's_ and the editorial set to other circles, contiguous and remote, and the daily routine brought husband and wife less often into contact, and they were thrown less and less on each other's resources. As the artist no longer tried to work at home, the large room designed for studio became the living-room of their apartment. Bragdon went off immediately after his breakfast to the magazine office, like a business man, and as Milly usually had her coffee in bed they rarely met before dinner. Sometimes he came back from the office early to play with Virgie before her supper time, but Milly usually appeared about seven, just in time to dress for dinner.

If she ever stopped to think of it, this seemed the suitable, normal relation of husband and wife. He had his business, and she had hers.

Sundays when he did not go to the office, he dawdled through the morning at his club, talking with men or writing letters, and they often had people to luncheon, which consumed the afternoons. On pleasant days he might take the child to the Park or even into the distant country. He was very devoted to his little girl and on the whole a considerate and kindly husband. Milly thought she had forgiven him for breaking her heart. As a matter of fact there is less forgiveness than forgetting in this world. Milly felt that on the whole "they got on quite well" and prided herself on her wise restraint and patience with her husband "at that time."

The household ran smoothly. At first there were only two maids,--the second one serving as nurse for Virginia and Milly's personal helper as well,--a triumph of economic management, as Milly pointed out. For Hazel Fredericks had two merely for household purposes and the Billman's house boasted of four and a boy in b.u.t.tons. They had to have the laundry done outside and engage extra service when they entertained. By the end of the first year Milly convinced herself it would be cheaper to have three regular servants, and still they depended more or less on outside help....

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

They were young, and the future seemed large. Living in New York was horribly expensive, as every one was saying, and it was worse the more they got to know people and had their own little place to keep in the world. It seemed to Milly hard that such perfectly nice people as they were should be so cramped for the means to enjoy the opportunities that came to them. The first year they spent only five thousand dollars and paid something towards the huge loan on their apartment. The second year it was seven thousand and they paid nothing, and the third year they started at a rate of ten thousand dollars. The figures were really small when one considered what the other people they knew were spending.

Bragdon began to suspect that here was the trouble--they didn't know any poor people! Milly said they "barely lived," as it was. Of course there were good people who got along on three or four thousand dollars a year and even indulged occasionally in a child or two--professors and young painters and that sort. Milly could not see how it was done,--probably in ghastly apartments out in the _hinterland_, like the Reddons. The newspapers advertised astonis.h.i.+ng bargains in houses, but they were always in fantastically named suburban places, "within commuting distance." One had to live where one's friends could get to you, or go without people, Milly observed.

Husband and wife discussed all this, as every one did. The cost of living, the best way of meeting the problem, whether by city or suburb or country, was the most frequent topic of conversation in all circles, altogether crowding out the weather and scandal. At first Jack was severe about the leaping scale of expenditure and inclined to hold his wife accountable for it as "extravagance." He would even talk of giving up their pretty home and going to some impossible suburb,--"and all that nonsense," as Milly put it to her closest friend, Hazel Fredericks. But Milly always proved to him that they could not do better and "get anything out of life." So in the position of one who is sliding down hill in a sandy soil, he saw that it was useless to stick his feet in and hold on--he must instead learn to plunge and leap and thus make progress. And he did what every one was doing,--tried to make more money. It was easy, seemingly, in this tumultuous New York to make money "on the side." There were many chances of what he cynically called "artistic graft,"--editing, articles, and ill.u.s.tration. One had merely to put out a hand and strip the fat branches of the laden tree. It was killing to creative work, but it was much easier than sordid discussion of budget with one's wife. For the American husband is ashamed to confess poverty to the wife of his bosom.

Milly, perceiving this power of money-getting on her husband's part, did not take very seriously his complaints of their expenditure. Even when they were in debt, as they usually were, she was sure it would come out right in the end. It always had. Jack had found a way to make the extra sums needed to wipe out the acc.u.mulation of bills. Bragdon might feel misgivings, but he was too busy these days in the gymnastic performance of keeping his feet from the sliding sand to indulge in long reflection.

Perhaps, in a mood of depression, induced by grippe or the coming on of languid spring days, he would say, "Milly, let's quit this game--it's no good--you don't get anywhere!"

Milly, recognizing the symptoms, would bring him a c.o.c.ktail, prepared by her own skilful hand and murmur sweetly,--

"What would you like to do?"

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

That archaic phrase, which Milly used with a malicious pompousness when she wished to "put something hard up" to her lord, was of course an ironical misnomer in this modern household. In the first place there was no house, which demanded the service and the protection of a strong male,--merely a part.i.tioned-off corner in a ten-story brick box, where no man was necessary even to shake the furnace or lock the front door.

It was "house" only symbolically, and within its limited s.p.a.ce the minimum of necessary service was performed by hirelings (engaged by the mistress and under her orders). Almost all the necessities for existence were manufactured outside and paid for at the end of each month (supposably) by the mistress with little colored slips of paper called cheques. In the modern world the function of the honorable head of the house had thus been reduced to providing the banking deposit necessary for the little strips of colored paper. He had been gradually relieved of all other duties, stripped of his honors, and become Bank Account.

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

"I draw all the cheques," Hazel Fredericks explained to Milly, "even for Stanny's club bills--at is so much easier."

That was the perfect thing, Milly thought, forgetting that she had once tried this plan with disastrous results and had returned to the allowance system with relief. Most men, she felt, were tyrannical and arbitrary by nature, especially in money matters, or as she sometimes called her husband,--"Turks." She often discussed the relation of the s.e.xes in marriage with Hazel Fredericks, who had "modern" views and leant her books on the woman movement and suffrage. Although she instinctively disliked "strong-minded women," she felt there was great injustice in the present situation between men and women. "It is a man's-world," became one of her favorite axioms. She could not deny that her husband was kind,--she often boasted of his generosity to her friends,--and she knew that he spent very little on his own pleasures: whatever there was the family had it. But it always humiliated her to go to him for money, when she was behind, and in his sterner moods try to coax it from him. This was the way women had always been forced to do with their masters, and it was, of course, all wrong: it cla.s.sed the wife with "horrid" women, who made men pay them for their complaisance.

Ideas on all these subjects were in the air: all the women Milly knew talked of the "dawn of the woman era," the coming emanc.i.p.ation of the s.e.x from its world-old degradation. Milly vaguely believed it would mean that every woman should have her own check-book and not be accountable to any man for what she chose to spend. She amplified this point of view to Reinhard, who liked "the little Bragdons" and often came to their new home. Milly especially amused him in his role of student of the coming s.e.x. He liked to see her experiment with ideas and mischievously encouraged her "revolt" as he called it. They had tea together, took walks in the Park, and sometimes went to concerts. He was very kind to them both, and Milly regarded him as their most influential friend. She felt that the novelist would make a very good husband, understanding as he did so thoroughly the woman's point of view.

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

"Of course you're not!" the novelist heartily concurred. "That's why you are so interesting,--you represent an almost extinct species,--just woman."

"I know I'm old-fas.h.i.+oned--Hazel always says so. I believe in men doing the voting and all that. Women should not try to be like men--their strength is their difference!"

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

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

She implied that with the perfect love, all these minor difficulties would adjust themselves easily. But the woman without love must fight for her "rights," whatever they were.

"Oh, of course," the novelist murmured sympathetically. In all his varied experience with the s.e.x he had found few women who would admit that they were properly loved.

Milly's daily programme at this time will be illuminating, because it was much like the lives of many thousands of young married women, in our transition period. As there was no complicated house and only one child to be looked after, the mere housekeeping duties were not burdensome, especially as Milly never thought of going to market or store for anything, merely telephoned for what the cook said they must have, or left it to the servant altogether. She woke late, read the newspaper and her mail over her coffee, played with Virgie and told her charming stories; then, by ten o'clock, dressed, and her housekeeping arranged for, she was ready to set forth. Usually she had some sort of shopping that took her down town until luncheon, and more often than not lunched out with a friend.

Occasionally on a fine day when she had nothing better to do, she took Virginia into the Park for an hour after luncheon. Usually, however, the child's promenade was left to Louise. Her afternoons were varied and crowded. Sometimes she went to lectures or to see pictures, because this was part of that "culture" essential for the modern woman. Old friends from Chicago had to be called upon or taken to tea and entertained, and there was the ever enlarging circle of new friends, chiefly women, who made constant demands on her time. She finished her day, breathlessly, just in time to dress for dinner. They went out more and more, because people liked them, and when they stayed at home, they had people in "quite informally" and talked until late hours. On the rare occasions when they were alone Milly curled up on the divan before the fire and dozed until she went to bed,--"dead tired."

There was scarcely a single productive moment in these busy days. Yet Milly would have resented the accusation that she was an idle woman in any sense. She had the feeling of being pressed, of striving to overtake her engagements, which gave a pleasant touch of excitement to city existence. That she should DO anything more than keep their small home running smoothly and pleasantly--an attractive spot for friends to come to--and keep herself personally as smart and youthful and desirable as her circ.u.mstances permitted, she would never admit. A woman's hold on the world, she was convinced, lay in her looks and her charms, not in her character. And what man who had anything of a man in him would expect more of his wife?... Her husband, at any rate, gave no sign of expecting more from _his_ wife. All their friends considered them a contented and delightful young couple....

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

though she paid no attention to their rules, and had been put on a "Woman's Immigration Bureau" at the instance of Hazel Fredericks, who was active in that movement just then. She also had a number of poor families to look after, to whom she was supposed to act as friend and guide. She fulfilled this obligation by raising money for them from the men she knew. "What most people need most is money," Milly philosophized.... All told, her public activities occupied Milly a little more than an hour a week.

As a whole, Milly looked back over her life in New York with satisfaction. They had a pleasant if somewhat cramped home and a great many warm friends who were very kind to them. They were both well, as a rule, though usually tired, as every one was, and the child, though delicate, was reasonably well. Jack was liked at _Bunker's_, and his periods of depression and restlessness became less frequent. They were settling down properly into their place in the scheme of things. But sometimes Milly found life monotonous and a trifle gray, even in New York.

"Love is the only thing in a woman's life that can compensate!" she confided to Clive Reinhard.

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

V

A SHOCK

Milly supposed their life would go on indefinitely like this. She lived much in the slight fluctuations of the present, with its immediate gratifications and tribulations. It seemed to her foolish to take long views, as Jack did sometimes, and wonder what the years might bring forth. Life had always been full enough of interesting change.

The most disturbing fact at present was the difficulty they had in deciding where to go for the summers. The question came up every spring, the first warm days of March, when Bragdon developed f.a.g and headaches.

Then it was he would suggest "chucking the whole thing," but that obviously, with their present way of living, they could not do. So it resolved itself into a discussion of boarding-places. It had to be some place near enough the city to permit of Bragdon's going to his office at least three or four times a week. One summer they boarded at an inferior hotel on Long Island. That had been unsatisfactory because of the food and the people. Another summer they took a furnished cottage, in Connecticut. That had been hot, and Milly found housekeeping throughout the year burdensome--and it may be added expensive. As the third summer approached, Bragdon talked of staying in the city until midsummer. Milly and the child could go to the Maine coast with the Fredericks, and he would join them for a few weeks in August. Milly accepted this compromise as a happy solution and looked forward to a really cool and restful summer.