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 toimagineanything 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 snubbedme—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 “Egalité 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 adétour,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 mydébutparty!”
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.
“Youtoldhim!”
“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 knowyou.”
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 ofmychildren?” 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 fiancée—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 havecarte blancheto 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 shewashappy 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 wouldonlygo 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 wouldhesay?”
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 youknowthat 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.