by kissing."
I thought to myself again: The horror of this superstition of
prudery! Can one think of anything more destructive to life than the
placing of a taboo upon such matters? Here is the whole of the
future at stake--the health, the sanity, the very existence of the
race. And what fiend has been able to contrive it that we feel like
criminals when we mention the subject?
23. Our intimacy progressed, and the time came when Sylvia told me
about her marriage. She had accepted Douglas van Tuiver because she
had lost Frank Shirley, and her heart was broken. She could never
imagine herself loving any other man; and not knowing exactly what
marriage meant, it had been easier for her to think of her family,
and to follow their guidance. They had told her that love would
come; Douglas had implored her to give him a chance to teach her to
love him. She had considered what she could do with his money--both
for her home-people and for those she spoke of vaguely as "the
poor." But now she was making the discovery that she could not do
very much for these "poor."
"It isn't that my husband is mean," she said. "On the contrary, the
slightest hint will bring me any worldly thing I want. I have homes
in half a dozen parts of America--I have _carte blanche_ to open
accounts in two hemispheres. If any of my people need money I can
get it; but if I want it for myself, he asks me what I'm doing with
it--and so I run into the stone-wall of his ideas."
At first the colliding with this wall had merely pained and
bewildered her. But now the combination of Veblen and myself had
helped her to realize what it meant. Douglas van Tuiver spent his
money upon a definite system: whatever went to the maintaining of
his social position, whatever added to the glory, prestige and power
of the van Tuiver name--that money was well-spent; while money spent
to any other end was money wasted--and this included all ideas and
"causes." And when the master of the house knew that his money was
being wasted, it troubled him.
"It wasn't until after I married him that I realized how idle his
life is," she remarked. "At home all the men have something to do,
running their plantations, or getting elected to some office. But
Douglas never does anything that I can possibly think is useful."
His fortune was invested in New York City real-estate, she went on
to explain. There was an office, with a small army of clerks and
agents to attend to it--a machine which had been built up and handed
on to him by his ancestors. It sufficed if he dropped in for an hour
or two once a week when he was in the city, and signed a batch of
documents now and then when he was away. His life was spent in the
company of people whom the social system had similarly deprived of
duties; and they had, by generations of experiment, built up for
themselves a new set of duties, a life which was wholly without
relationship to reality. Into this unreal existence Sylvia had
married, and it was like a current sweeping her in its course. So
long as she went with it, all was well; but let her try to catch
hold of something and stop, and it would tear her loose and almost
strangle her.
As time went on, she gave me strange glimpses into this world. Her
husband did not seem really to enjoy its life. As Sylvia put it, "He
takes it for granted that he has to do all the proper things that
the proper people do. He hates to be conspicuous, he says. I point
out to him that the proper things are nearly always conspicuous, but
he replies that to fail to do them would be even more conspicuous."
It took me a long time to get really acquainted with Sylvia, because
of the extent to which this world was clamouring for her. I used to
drop in when she 'phoned me she had half an hour. I would find her
dressing for something, and she would send her maid away, and we
would talk until she would be late for some function; and that might
be a serious matter, because somebody would feel slighted. She was
always "on pins and needles" over such questions of precedent; it
seemed as if everybody in her world must be watching everybody else.
There was a whole elaborate science of how to treat the people you
met, so that they would not feel slighted--or so that they would
feel slighted, according to circumstances.
To the enjoyment of such a life it was essential that the person
should believe in it. Douglas van Tuiver did believe in it; it was
his religion, the only one he had. (Churchman as he was, his church
was a part of the social routine.) He was proud of Sylvia, and
apparently satisfied when he could take her at his side; and Sylvia
went, because she was his wife, and that was what wives were for.
She had tried her best to be happy; she had told herself that she
_was_ happy yet all the time realizing that a woman who is really
happy does not have to tell herself.
Earlier in life she had quaffed and enjoyed the wine of applause. I
recollect vividly her telling me of the lure her beauty had been to
her--the most terrible temptation that could come to a woman. "I
walk into a brilliant room, and I feel the thrill of admiration that
goes through the crowd. I have a sudden sense of my own physical
perfection--a glow all over me! I draw a deep breath--I feel a surge
of exaltation. I say, 'I am victorious--I can command! I have this
supreme crown of womanly grace--I am all-powerful with it--the world
is mine!'"
As she spoke the rapture was in her voice, and I looked at her--and
yes, she was beautiful! The supreme crown was hers!
"I see other beautiful women," she went on--and swift anger came
into her voice. "I see what they are doing with this power!
Gratifying their vanity--turning men into slaves of their whim!
Squandering money upon empty pleasures--and with the dreadful plague
of poverty spreading in the world! I used to go to my father, 'Oh,
papa, why must there be so many poor people? Why should we have
servants--why should they have to wait on me, and I do nothing for
them?' He would try to explain to me that it was the way of Nature.
Mamma would tell me it was the will of the Lord--'The poor ye have
always with you'--'Servants, obey your masters'--and so on. But in
spite of the Bible texts, I felt guilty. And now I come to Douglas
with the same plea--and it only makes him angry! He has been to
college and has a lot of scientific phrases--he tells me it's 'the
struggle for existence,' 'the elimination of the unfit'--and so on.
I say to him, 'First we make people unfit, and then we have to
eliminate them.' He cannot see why I do not accept what learned
people tell me--why I persist in questioning and suffering."
She paused, and then added, "It's as if he were afraid I might find
out something he doesn't want me to! He's made me give him a promise
that I won't see Mrs. Frothingham again!" And she laughed. "I
haven't told him about you!"
I answered, needless to say, that I hoped she would keep th
e secret!
24. All this time I was busy with my child-labour work. We had an
important bill before the legislature that session, and I was doing
what I could to work up sentiment for it. I talked at every
gathering where I could get a hearing; I wrote letters to
newspapers; I sent literature to lists of names. I racked my mind
for new schemes, and naturally, at such times, I could not help
thinking of Sylvia. How much she could do, if only she would!
I spared no one, least of all myself, and so it was not easy to
spare her. The fact that I had met her was the gossip of the office,
and everybody was waiting for something to happen. "How about Mrs.
van Tuiver?" my "chief" would ask, at intervals. "If she would
_only_ go on our press committee" my stenographer would sigh.
The time came when our bill was in committee, a place of peril for
bills. I went to Albany to see what could be done. I met half a
hundred legislators, of whom perhaps half-a-dozen had some human
interest in my subject; the rest, well, it was discouraging. Where
was the force that would stir them, make them forget their own
particular little grafts, and serve the public welfare in defiance
to hostile interests?
Where was it? I came back to New York to look for it, and after a
blue luncheon with the members of our committee, I came away with my
mind made up--I would sacrifice my Sylvia to this desperate
emergency.
I knew just what I had to do. So far she had heard speeches about
social wrongs, or read books about them; she had never been face to
face with the reality of them. Now I persuaded her to take a morning
off, and see some of the sights of the underworld of toil. We
foreswore the royal car, and likewise the royal furs and velvets;
she garbed herself in plain appearing dark blue and went down town
in the Subway like common mortals, visiting paper-box factories and
flower factories, tenement homes where whole families sat pasting
toys and gimcracks for fourteen or sixteen hours a day, and still
could not buy enough food to make full-sized men and women of them.
She was Dante, and I was Virgil, our inferno was an endless
procession of tortured faces--faces of women, haggard and mournful,
faces of little children, starved and stunted, dulled and dumb.
Several times we stopped to talk with these people--one little
Jewess girl I knew whose three tiny sisters had been roasted alive
in a sweatshop fire. This child had jumped from a fourth-story
window, and been miraculously caught by a fireman. She said that
some man had started the fire, and been caught, but the police had
let him get away. So I had to explain to Sylvia that curious
bye-product (sic) of the profit system known as the "Arson Trust."
Authorities estimated that incendiarism was responsible for the
destruction of a quarter of a billion dollars worth of property in
America every year. So, of course, the business of starting fires
was a paying one, and the "fire-bug," like the "cadet" and the
dive-keeper, was a part of the "system." So it was quite a possible
thing that the man who had burned up this little girl's three
sisters might have been allowed to escape.
I happened to say this in the little girl's hearing, and I saw her
pitiful strained eyes fixed upon Sylvia. Perhaps this lovely,
soft-voiced lady was a fairy god-mother, come to free her sisters
from an evil spell and to punish the wicked criminal! I saw Sylvia
turn her head away, and search for her handkerchief; as we groped
our way down the dark stairs, she caught my hand, whispering: "Oh,
my God! my God!"
It had even more effect than I had intended; not only did she say
that she would do something--anything that would be of use--but she
told me as we rode back home that her mind was made up to stop the
squandering of her husband's money. He had been planning a costume
ball for a couple of months later, an event which would keep the van
Tuiver name in condition, and would mean that he and other people
would spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars. As we rode home
in the roaring Subway, Sylvia sat beside me, erect and tense, saying
that if the ball were given, it would be without the presence of the
hostess.
I struck while the iron was hot, and got her permission to put her
name upon our committee list. She said, moreover, that she would get
some free time, and be more than a mere name to us. What were the
duties of a member of our committee?
"First," I said, "to know the facts about child-labour, as you have
seen them to-day, and second, to help other people to know."
"And how is that to be done?"
"Well, for instance, there is that hearing before the legislative
committee. You remember I suggested that you appear."
"Yes," she said in a low voice. I could almost hear the words that
were in her mind: "What would _he_ say?"
25. Sylvia's name went upon our letter-heads and other literature,
and almost at once things began to happen. In a day or two there
came a reporter, saying he had noticed her name. Was it true that
she had become interested in our work? Would I please give him some
particulars, as the public would naturally want to know.
I admitted that Mrs. van Tuiver had joined the committee; she
approved of our work and desired to further it. That was all. He
asked: Would she give an interview? And I answered that I was sure
she would not. Then would I tell something about how she had come to
be interested in the work? It was a chance to assist our propaganda,
added the reporter, diplomatically.
I retired to another room, and got Sylvia upon the 'phone, "The time
has come for you to take the plunge," I said.
"Oh, but I don't want to be in the papers!" she cried "Surely, you
wouldn't advise it!"
"I don't see how you can avoid having something appear. Your name is
given out, and if the man can't get anything else, he'll take our
literature, and write up your doings out of his imagination."
"And they'll print my picture with it!" she exclaimed. I could not
help laughing. "It's quite possible."
"Oh, what will my husband do? He'll say 'I told you so!'"
It is a hard thing to have one's husband say that, as I knew by
bitter experience. But I did not think that reason enough for giving
up.
"Let me have time to think it over," said Sylvia. "Get him to wait
till to-morrow, and meantime I can see you."
So it was arranged. I think I told Sylvia the truth when I said that
I had never before heard of a committee member who was unwilling to
have his purposes discussed in the newspapers. To influence
newspapers was one of the main purposes of committees, and I did not
see how she could expect either editors or readers to take any other
view.
"Let me tell the man about your trip down town," I suggested, "then
I can go on to discuss the bill and how it bears on the evils you
saw. Such a statement can't possibly do you harm."
She consented, but with the understanding that she was not to be
quoted directly. "And don't let them make me picturesque!" she
exclaimed. "That's what my husband seems most to dread."
I wondered if he didn't think she was picturesque, when she sat in a
splendid, shining coach, and took part in a public parade through
Central Park. But I did not say this. I went off, and swore my
reporter to abstain from the "human touch," and he promised and kept
his word. There appeared next morning a dignified "write-up" of Mrs.
Douglas van Tuiver's interest in child-labour reform. Quoting me, it
described some of the places she had visited, and some of the sights
which had shocked her; it went on to tell about our committee and
its work, the status of our bill in the legislature, the need of
activity on the part of our friends if the measure was to be forced
through at this session. It was a splendid "boost" for our work, and
everyone in the office was in raptures over it. The social
revolution was at hand! thought my young stenographer.
But the trouble with this business of publicity is that, however
carefully you control your interviewer, you cannot control the
others who use his material. The "afternoon men" came round for more
details, and they made it clear that it was personal details they
wanted. And when I side-stepped their questions, they went off and
made up answers to suit themselves, and printed Sylvia's pictures,
together with photographs of child-workers taken from our pamphlets.
I called Sylvia up while she was dressing for dinner, to explain
that I was not responsible for any of this picturesqueness. "Oh,
perhaps I am to blame myself!" she exclaimed. "I think I interviewed
a reporter."
"How do you mean?"
"A woman sent up her card--she told the footman she was a friend of
mine. And I thought--I couldn't be sure if I'd met her--so I went
and saw her. She said she'd met me at Mrs. Harold Cliveden's, and
she began to talk to me about child-labour, and this and that plan
she had, and what did I think of them, and suddenly it flashed over
me: 'Maybe this is a reporter playing a trick on me!'"
I hurried out before breakfast next morning and got all the papers,
to see what this enterprising lady had done. There was nothing, so I
reflected that probably she had been a "Sunday" lady.
But then, when I reached my office, the 'phone rang, and I heard the
voice of Sylvia: "Mary, something perfectly dreadful has happened!"
"What?" I cried.
"I can't tell you over the 'phone, but a certain person is furiously
angry. Can I see you if I come down right away?"
26. Such terrors as these were unguessed by me in the days of my
obscurity. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, uneasy also,
lies the wife of that head, and the best friend of the wife. I
dismissed my stenographer, and spent ten or fifteen restless minutes
until Sylvia appeared.
Her story was quickly told. A couple of hours ago the acting-manager
of Mr. van Tuiver's office had telephoned to ask if he might call
upon a matter of importance. He had come. Naturally, he had the most
extreme reluctance to say anything which might seem to criticise the
activities of Mr. van Tuiver's wife, but there was something in the
account in the newspapers which should be brought to her husband's
attention. The articles gave the names and locations of a number of
firms in whose factories it was alleged that Mrs. van Tuiver had
found unsatisfactory conditions, and it happened that two of these
firms were located in premises which belonged to the van Tuiver
estates!
A story coming very close to melodrama, I perceived. I sat dismayed
at what I had done. "Of course, dear girl," I said, at last, "you
understand that I had no idea who owned these buildings."
"Oh, don't say that!" exclaimed Sylvia. "I am the one who should
Sylvia's Marriage Page 7