Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Miss Yale shook her head. “No, it isn’t. You pile up all this misery — I don’t say it isn’t there, dear — though we’ve got it pretty much out of sight now — and then you feel as if you were responsible for all the child has lost. Besides —— —” She stopped in her walk and looked at Margaret steadily. “I don’t see but you can give all those things to Dolly now — if you want to — a real mother — a real father — a real home.”

  The girl met her look with honest eyes. “Yes — I could.”

  There was a silence. Miss Yale mended the fire, patted the sofa cushions, straightened the pile of magazines on the table. “It might be better — for her,” she said at length.

  “Yes, I — have thought of that,” Margaret responded. “But she hates him.”

  “Hates him? I knew she wasn’t particularly fond of him, but — are you sure?”

  “Yes. He’s always trying in a jocose sort of way to make friends with her. But he doesn’t go about it in the right way. He does not respect her. Dorothy has a good deal of character, but he doesn’t see it. No — she has a real antipathy to him. Besides, do you think he is the kind of man to have authority in the bringing up of a young girl? She is my child now — even if I can’t own her.”

  “Yes, she’s your child, dear. I didn’t legally adopt her, you know. When her mother wants to claim her she may — you’re safe there, and as you say — he’s not really what I should choose for that child’s manager. Well, well, my dear, you certainly are in a hole!”

  “You don’t know how much of a hole I’m in,” the girl replied sadly. “Nor how bottomless deep it is. It is not only for the child, dear. I’m a selfish woman — my heart is breaking, too!”

  “I know, my dear, I know.”

  “Oh Mother dear — you know? That’s the utter hopeless misery of it. Don’t you see? It’s not only the past, but the future! I cannot be like other women. I cannot be honestly loved and married as they are. I have this dreadful thing behind me.”

  Miss Yale came swiftly to her side. “Now look here, child — don’t take that position. Keep it behind you! Don’t ever refer to it! Why, my dear, you’re better worth marrying than thousands of fool girls. A man never tells what he’s done — why should you? Keep it to yourself, and take your happiness if it comes to you.”

  “And deceive a good man who trusted me? No. There is no happiness coming to me, Mother.”

  “I can’t blame you, but I do think you are a bit morbid tonight. Can’t you see it more reasonably? You are a strong, beautiful young woman. You are no worse than a widow — a widow of ten years’ widowhood. You’ll make a better wife rather than a worse.”

  Margaret smiled a little at that. “As they used to say, ‘A reformed rake makes the best husband.’ He might not see it that way.”

  “You shan’t slander yourself,” cried the other hotly. “Why, you poor deceived child — you never as much as wished to do anything wrong. You were just bamboozled as so many girls are. You shall not compare yourself to a man who makes a business of being bad.”

  “Well — I withdraw the comparison — to please you. But all the same no such woman as I am is a fit wife for — a good man.”

  “Why not?” demanded her friend sharply. “Suppose, for the sake of argument, that he never knew it — then what difference would it make to him?”

  “He would know it,” said the girl stubbornly. “I should tell him.”

  “Now, look here! I don’t care how badly you feel — it needn’t obstruct your reasoning faculties. Please meet my question fairly. If he never knew it, what harm would it do him?”

  “It would do him the harm of having a miserably double-faced, guilty wife who never could meet his trust — or deserve it.”

  Miss Yale was deeply chagrined. She had striven for all these years to strengthen and develop the character, widen the outlook, increase the knowledge, of this beloved daughter; but this particular point had arisen between them. If she had thought of it at all, she had assumed that the girl’s strong reasonableness would see it as she did. What she had not allowed for, with all her wisdom, was that strong reasonableness is a scant dependence when the reasoner is in love. She looked at Margaret and shook her head sadly.

  “Dear,” she said, “please don’t do anything rash. Please wait — and think of it some more.”

  “I’ve no opportunity to do anything,” the girl replied with an attempt to smile. “So far I am quite safe, you see. I surely do not have to tell things to — a friend.”

  A firm, swift foot ran up the steps. The doorbell rang. They listened, startled, and heard the voice.

  “Oh please,” said Margaret, “do see him for a little while.”

  “Excuse yourself, my dear — don’t come down at all. I’ll tell him you’re engaged.”

  “Bless your heart, dear! No, I’ll come down. I think he wants an answer — and I think it’s time he had it.”

  Dr. Armstrong entered and swept the room with a swift, determined glance. He had come with exactly that purpose, and resented her absence.

  “Good evening, Miss Yale,” he said. “Is the lady Margaret not in?”

  “Yes, Dr. Yale is in, and will be down presently. How you do hate to give her her professional title!”

  “Frankly, I do. Professional titles do not belong to women,” he said, drawing his gloves through his half-closed hand.

  “No? And why not?” she asked easily. There was not the slightest pretense of friendliness between these two, but of politeness, abundance. He had never liked her. Single women, to men of his type, are to be pitied, if their estate is involuntary, and to be blamed, if it is held by choice. For women over forty he had no place in his mind, except that of mothers and grandmothers to real men and women. “Manhood,” to him, was a permanent condition, lasting from twenty to eighty or so; but womanhood he measured on strictly physiological grounds, and its brief span was between fifteen and forty. After that these petticoated persons were officially nonexistent, and ought to act as if they knew it.

  Miss Yale’s large, continuously happy and useful life had always annoyed him; that she should piece out her childlessness with other people’s children seemed almost dishonest. He never talked with her if he could help it. But she was Margaret’s nearest friend and he must bear with her — for the present.

  “It is no use arguing with me,” he said. “Men look at these things differently.”

  “Fortunately all men do not look at them from the same point of view.”

  “No man — that is a man — would be willing that his wife should have a profession.”

  “Some men will go without wives then.”

  “Not in Massachusetts,” he replied significantly.

  “Oh, if any woman will do — perhaps not. But if it is one particular woman—”

  “No true woman would hesitate for an instant between a profession — and Love,” he stated dogmatically.

  “Why should she?” inquired Miss Yale, with an enigmatic smile.

  “Why, indeed?” he remarked, in profound distaste, and strolled to the piano. “Do you mind if I sing?” he inquired.

  “By all means, do.” She would always rather hear him sing than talk.

  So Margaret, returning, saw his broad back, and heard in that rich voice:

  “From the desert I come to thee on a stallion shod with fire,

  And the winds are left behind me in the speed of my desire!”

  13. Answers

  She stood between the curtains of the back parlor, her eyes dry and clear now, her color high, her mouth quite firm. Miss Yale smiled approvingly, rose without disturbance and went out under cover of that rolling melody. It ought to stir any woman’s heart — that profession of love and faith.

  “Till the sun is cold,

  And the stars grow old,

  And the leaves of the judgment book unfold.”

  He turned, sprang to his feet, and approached her eagerly.

  “Good evening, Dr. Ar
mstrong! What a beautiful song that is!” She seated herself and motioned him to a chair.

  “It gives you pleasure?”

  “Yes, it always does. I had a friend in Paris who sang it — overwhelmingly.”

  Now this was not at all to the taste of Dr. Armstrong. The amount of wooing which seemed to have surrounded this lady, and her friendly acceptance of it as a matter of course, appeared to discount his own. Perhaps his skill had deteriorated by association with the wholly inexperienced, or with those who had known perhaps the admiration and attentions of honest Americans only.

  Here was a woman who was as frank and friendly as any other American girl, yet who seemed to sit on some inner height from which she mentally compared the ardent expressions of many nationalities. He wished to show her only his own real feeling, and he was constantly hampered by a facility in expression too often used. One can imagine something of the same hindrance and contradiction if true love came to the heart of a woman of the town.

  He looked at her, sitting there so serenely, in her richly quiet evening gown, a big soft feather fan to serve as a fire screen, waiting for him to speak when it pleased him.

  “Yet you were not — overwhelmed?” he suggested.

  “No, but I enjoyed it. You sing it very well yourself,” she added politely.

  “I ought to — I feel it.” He wanted to say much more, yet whatever occurred to him to say seemed wrong.

  “One has to feel a thing to express it well, I suppose. Yet some actors say not — that the part should be conceived intellectually — that they should not feel it themselves, but make the audience feel it.”

  “I wish I could make my audience feel it!” said Armstrong huskily. “Make you feel it! By heaven, I will!” He started toward her with an odd mixture of pleading and violence in his expression.

  She met him with smiling, steady eyes, and clapped her hands softly, murmuring, “Excellent! Excellent!”

  He stopped short, his hands falling to his sides. “Have you had so much experience torturing men who love you that you have learned to do it with such grace?”

  She answered serenely: “I have learned not to misinterpret the too tempestuous gallantry of Europeans.”

  “I am not a European. I am a plain American man — and I love you. Will you marry me?”

  It was out. It was said. The question was asked, and not at all — oh, not in the least — as he had meant to have it. It was his settled theory that a man should make a woman love him first, and then he had but to claim his own. Now he had told this woman that he loved her; he had asked her to marry him, and she was only looking at the fire.

  “Are you quite sure that you love me, Dr. Armstrong?” she said at length, adding gently— “Enough?”

  “Enough!” he burst out. “Listen! You shall listen at last!”

  She was listening, but he poured forth his tumbling words as if to force a hearing.

  “I am a man of thirty-eight, strong, vigorous, in full health — or I was until I met you. I have lost twenty pounds. I cannot do my work — I see your face day and night — I hear your voice — I dream of you when I sleep — and your lovely, mocking, cold smile drives me mad — mad!”

  She wore it still — a sort of man-to-man professional little smile. “You must pardon me if I suggest that you have doubtless suffered all these symptoms before.”

  He walked about uneasily, stopped and faced her again.

  “I have no wish to deceive you. You are not the first woman I have been in love with. But by all that is Holy—” his hands trembled as he held them out to her, “you are the first woman I have loved!”

  “I begin to believe you,” said Margaret.

  “Oh, you shall believe me! You must! I love you from that rich soft hair down to your feet — every inch of you. I love your soft, white hands, your glorious eyes, your proud, red mouth. I would give my life this minute for one long kiss.” He took a step nearer. “Will you marry me?”

  But she merely asked: “Does not my profession stand in your way, Dr. Armstrong?”

  “Surely not!” he replied. “If you love me — I can make you love me — you will throw it aside as gladly as I would throw aside life for you!”

  “You are mistaken,” she calmly replied. “Even if I loved you as genuinely as I begin to think you love me, I should never give up my work. I am a physician — and a physician I remain — married or single.”

  He stood still, took an uncertain step or two, trying to find words to reach her.

  “But think — consider — if there were children—”

  She met him frankly: “I could take care of them better for being a physician, surely. At any rate, that is final I keep my profession.”

  If an overmastering love is any virtue Richard Armstrong was ennobled by his. It was the strongest feeling he had ever known, not the pleasure of a part of his nature, but the master of the whole of it. He felt the whole mass of long-established conviction pull at its moorings, break loose, and drift before the tide.

  “Very well,” he said at last, his voice quivering with earnestness. “You may make what terms you please. Keep your profession — I can bear anything — to hold you in my arms!”

  Again he came to her, but she rose and stepped back.

  “Wait!” she said. “There is something more. You know, doubtless, that I was adopted by Miss Yale in Paris when I was sixteen years old?”

  “I know,” he said. “I do not care where you came from, whose child you are. You are you — and I love you!”

  “You also know, perhaps — you certainly should know,” she continued ruthlessly, “that there are certain rumors passed about — reflecting on my good name. What do you make of them?”

  He snapped his fingers triumphantly. “I make that of them.” At last he had a chance to prove his feeling. “Only be my wife — and no one shall ever breathe a word against you.”

  Again he came to her with arms outstretched, but she stepped back and said with level eyes: “What if these rumors are true?”

  He stopped, stared, a cold horror seizing him.

  “They are true,” she continued quietly. “I am the mother of a child.”

  He struggled blindly with the horror, held it back, beat it off feebly: “I did not know — that you had been — married.”

  “I have not been married.”

  He swayed a little on his feet and stepped back, groping, to a chair, dropped heavily to the seat, and sat there, his face buried in his hand. To have one’s idol own to being clay — one’s queen descend. His first mad impulse was to rush out — away — anywhere — to escape; then came the thought of losing her, forever; then a wild rush of feeling that now at least he could secure her, damaged and soiled, but what remained, his at last; and then some little touch of the ennobling affection which strove to force its way upward through a nature ill-tuned for nobility.

  She sat, in almost breathless calm, and waited.

  He rose, white and trembling, and came toward her once more, throwing wide his arms, with “Even that I can forgive! You will marry me now — won’t you?”

  Now Margaret sat so that behind her head the big yellow globe of the piano lamp lit the soft halo of her hair to vivid red. As he threw out his hands he chanced to knock the cover from the white box on the table, and the fire-warmed fragrance of the balsam fir rose around him. The shining hair — that odor — and the very words she had used to him when they last met — and he remembered.

  “My God!” he cried. “Mag!”

  “Yes — Mag — good-bye, Dr. Armstrong.”

  She stood to dismiss him, but he did not go. His world swung around within him, till time and space and all things else seemed jumbled beyond recognition; but through it all his desperate desire for her held like a chain, and he strove to bring the right ideas to bear, to find new reasons for his wishes.

  “Why, the — why, it’s all right!” he cried, a confused sense of victory growing through all the contradictions. “Then
there is nothing between us after all! You will be mine — you are mine! I can make it all right — why, it’s little Dolly!”

  He was getting it straight now, and a great burst of hope came to him.

  “I can give her a name — a home — ah — for the child’s sake, you will — you must!”

  Then Margaret rose and seemed to tower before him as if she had gained in bodily height.

  “Shall I shelter my child by living in shame? By marrying a man I do not love — nor even respect? I am not yours. The child is not yours — she is mine — all mine, by the very laws you men have made to shield yourselves! You shall not have her — and she shall not wear your name.” She paused a moment, continuing more calmly: “I will not marry you, Dr. Armstrong, because I do not love you. What is more the child does not love you. She dislikes you — she is afraid of you. Do you think a man can live as you have lived and win the heart of a child? For her sake I could have sacrificed my life — perhaps — if she had even liked you.”

  Armstrong listened, stunned, bewildered, not grasping Margaret’s points at all clearly.

  “But her name — her reputation — yours—” he urged.

  “You should have thought of that ten years ago,” she answered, with a cold gentleness worse than her first outburst. “As for my name — Miss Yale has given me hers; for reputation — I have built my own. And the child is mine.” As she thought of her baby she felt a touch, almost of tenderness, for the man before her. “For her,” she said, “I can even thank you — but I hope never to see you again — go!”

  He turned and went without another word. She heard him fumble at the door, heard it slam behind him. She stood there, glowing with a sort of cold fire, triumphant, yet shaken more than she knew.

  Then the doorbell rang again. She started, listened; a sudden weakness seized her and she hesitatingly dropped into a chair instead of leaving the room as she had intended.

  Henry Newcome entered.