Part 18

The old lady smiled. Fred’s wife had eloped with another man. Fanny’s husband had “gone out West” and never returned. This would give them something to think about.

“I don’t know that I think her husband ought to stand for her going places with other men,” said Fanny. “It don’t sound right to me. When Helen came down here to visit, when she was seventeen, she was fresh then.”

The old lady looked at her.

“Yes. I guess Helen did seem fresh in Graniteville,” she agreed. “But Chicago’s different. And as most of the folks they go with are millionaires, each owning two or three cars and having boxes at the opera and making a fuss over Helen all the time, I guess her ways are all right up there. I don’t blame men wanting to take her places. She’s just sweet to every one.”

She went on with the letter:

“I don’t know what to write that would interest you. We saw Mrs. Blanchard, Mrs. Crowell’s mother, at the theatre on Tuesday, and she wanted to be remembered to you. She looked very well.... I have a new mink wrap, good-looking. Jim thought it was a Christmas present, but it came the week after so I’m not counting it. It’s the only really splurgy thing I’ve had all winter.”

The old lady didn’t have to comment. Fanny was wearing her old coat. She’d been begging her brothers and her father for a coat all winter, but they complained about “hard times,” as they always did, so she had to make her old seal, bare in spots, do for another year.

“I went to a charity fête last week,” the old lady’s quavering voice continued, “and wore green chiffon and was symbolic of something or other, but had a good time anyhow. We made nearly eight thousand dollars for the Children’s Home.”

The old lady knew the church society entertainments in Graniteville. Fanny and Minnie were never important enough, socially, to take part in them, but had to sell tickets as their share.

“I’m enclosing a birthday remembrance. Buy a warm negligée or something else you want. I didn’t know what you needed. Let me know if there is anything I can send you. Jim sends a big kiss and a lot of birthday wishes. With love from Helen.”

“How much did she send you?” asked Minnie.

The old lady, who was served last, had been handed her plate of food.

“Twenty-five dollars,” she answered.

She took the cheque from Helen and the one from Morris, folded them together, made a last gesture.

“Here, you take these, Fanny,” she said, “and buy a dress with them. You’ll have to have something to wear if you get a chance to go to the Ladies’ Aid Ball. With all the things I got and my birthday presents and all, I don’t need anything. Anyhow, Helen said to let her know if I did.”

It was said so simply that, if the family suspected the old lady, they were silent. Fanny gasped, reached out her hand. She did want a new dress.

“Thanks, Gramma,” she said.

IV

The old lady smiled as she ate her dinner. She looked around at the faces. She felt beautifully superior. She knew that, for a moment, their conceit, their satisfaction had been pierced—they had felt something—

The birthday cake was cut and the old lady passed the box of chocolates.

The boys left for a game of pool at the club. Georgina Watson came to get Fanny to go to the movies. Mr. and Mrs. Potter went across the street to play bridge with the Morrises. The old lady promised to go upstairs and look at Elbert who might have caught cold during the afternoon—he had sneezed a couple of times.

The old lady finished the dishes. She read the evening paper. Then she found herself dozing, woke up, dozed again, woke up, put out the living-room light, left one light in the hall, went upstairs. She stopped in Fanny’s room to glance at Elbert in his crib. His mouth was slightly open, as always, and he looked pale, but the old lady saw that his condition was not unusual. She went to her room and undressed for bed.

In her high-necked flannel night-gown she stood at her dresser preparatory to putting out the light. She looked at her birthday presents, the cheap violet water, the unwearable camisole and cap, the thoughtless gifts of indifferent people. She looked at her pictures—she and Grandpa when they were first married, Elbert—Helen. Helen—she knew how to write a letter. Why, she couldn’t have written a better one if the old lady had told her what to write. The beaux—the car—the mink coat—the charity fête—the attentive husband—

Her birthday was over. She was eighty-two. Long days ahead—housework—sewing—little quarrels—

She thought of Helen’s letter again and chuckled. For just a moment Fanny, Minnie, all of them had looked envious, bitter. Nothing she could ever have done or said could have made them as angry as that letter—and none of them dared say what they thought about it. That letter had opened vistas to them that they could never approach. It had lasted only a minute—but even so....

“A pretty good birthday,” the old lady said to herself as she put out the light, opened the window, and got into bed.

CORINNA AND HER MAN

I

Corinna had always objected to her mother’s attitude toward her father—to the attitude of other women she knew toward their husbands. She spoke frequently to her mother about it, even when she was a young girl.

“Ma,” she had said, “I don’t see why you slave so over Pa. Your whole life is made up of worrying over him and about him. He doesn’t pay any attention except to sort of expect it and take it for granted. You spend hours getting dinner and having it on the table hot, the minute he gets home. He never notices, unless something goes wrong. He just eats. You’re always picking out things he likes or that are good for him, and having those instead of what _you_ like. First thing in the morning you scurry around the kitchen and make me help, getting breakfast, and you hurry home afternoons to get dinner. You don’t dare ask people to the house evenings, like Miss Herron, if he doesn’t like them. You treat him so carefully, always trying not to worry him or annoy him—always telling me ‘your Pa won’t like that,’ when I do things. I wouldn’t live like you, you bet.”

Mrs. Ferguson was a nervous, round little woman, full of quick, meaningless little movements. She had a large, rather flat face, full of small but not disfiguring wrinkles. She had always smiled patiently, at Corinna.

“You don’t know your Pa,” she’d say, “or men. Men have got to be waited on, got to be treated right. Wait until you’re grown up and married—you’ll find out. Men have got to have their meals on time and got to have the house the way they want it, neat if they are neat, full of people if they like things lively. You don’t know men.”

“Huh,” Corinna had sneered, “you bet I’ll never make a slave of myself for any man. If I ever marry, the man’ll do what _I_ want. I shan’t be always worrying for fear I’m doing the wrong thing.”

Yet, looking among her mother’s acquaintances and at the parents of her own friends, she noticed the existence of this same state of affairs that so annoyed her in her own family. The man was always being catered to. When he was at home, if at no other time, the house had to move along with an outward smoothness. Little unpleasant things were hidden away. All of the plans of the household were for amusing, entertaining, the man. If he liked to play cards, the cards were brought out immediately after dinner and one game followed another. The man could quarrel with the plays of the others, if he wanted to, grumble at his own ill-luck, at the playing of his partners—it was all accepted with an assumed merriment as part of life. If the man liked to read, his chair, the most comfortable in the house, was drawn up before the best light, and the children, when there were children, had to talk quietly so as not to disturb him.

“The man, the man, always the man,” thought Corinna. “Just because he brings home the money. The women pretend to joke about being home on time, about slaving for him, but they do it just the same. You bet when I’m married things won’t be like that. This is a newer generation. It’s about time to quit worshipping the man, making such a fuss over him, slaving for him.”

Corinna, who was, in her way, thoughtful, somewhat of a philosopher, worried a little over it. She didn’t like to think that, in each household, one person—the male head of the house—should govern things so thoroughly, blindly. She didn’t believe especially in woman’s suffrage, she wasn’t interested in voting, she knew women couldn’t invent things—at least she knew _she_ couldn’t; she wasn’t interested in science or art, things like that. She just didn’t like the idea of being subservient to—cowed by—a man. Why—she knew men.

In spite of her mother, she realized that men weren’t superior people, after all. They were rather more stupid than women, on the whole, a bit heavy, with a thick sense of humour. Men were ashamed to show emotions, easy victims to flattery. Of course they were all right to marry. A girl ought to marry. An old maid sort of admits that she can’t get a man. Being married gives one a sense of being somebody. Marriage was all right—only married women ought to learn—oughtn’t to be such fools, making themselves servants and slaves and an admiring audience, all in one. She wouldn’t.

II

Because Corinna’s parents were poor, when she finished high school at eighteen, she knew she had to do something to support herself until such time as marriage should relieve her of the necessity of buying her own clothes and helping at home. She felt that school-teaching required too much training—would be tiresome—and, besides, most teachers became old maids in the end. She didn’t want to go into a store. She had no special talent or ambition. So she went to a business college and, after eight months—she was not very clever or quick in learning word-signs—she was able to take a business letter with fair rapidity and transcribe it with some degree of accuracy on the typewriter.

She liked the profession of stenographer. It was decent, dressy. She even looked ahead to becoming some one’s private secretary, wearing good clothes and sweeping in, half an hour later than the other stenographers, to an office marked “private,” being consulted on numerous business problems—saving the firm money by her wisdom—and maybe marrying the boss in the end.

Her first position lasted two months, her next three. Then she got with a wholesale hardware concern and took dictation a bit more rapidly from the stove buyer, a married man who had four children and who was always worrying about catching cold. She settled down, fairly comfortably, making enough money to wear nice clothes, arriving at the office always a bit late in the morning, always anxious to leave a little before five at night, wasting too much time at noon or in the cloak-room gossiping with the other girls, but, on the whole, as good as the firm expected of her.

Corinna’s evenings were spent at dances or the theatre or going to bed at seven to make up for lost sleep. She accepted invitations from any one who asked her—men she met at the office or through girls, old school acquaintances. She didn’t care particularly for any of them, but wanted to be with men, especially those who wore good clothes and knew how to treat a girl. She was lively and vivacious, rather a pretty girl in a light, indistinct way, with a nice mouth and a pretty little nose.

This smoothness of days at the office, and of evenings having a good time, continued until Corinna was twenty. Then she fell in love.

She had been waiting, poised, to fall in love for a long time. She had been eagerly looking for love, watching every man she met with a kind of painful eagerness, ready to yield affection at the first opportunity. She met the fellow at a semi-public dance, where she was taken by a boy she had met at business college. The man she fell in love with was named Rodney Cantwell and her escort had known him and had introduced them.

All night, after that first meeting, the name “Rodney, Rodney,” went through her mind. Rodney Cantwell! He was quite wonderful, all that a man one loved ought to be. He was tall, with light, rather rough hair, which he brushed back from his forehead in an uneven sweep. His eyes seemed a mysterious blue-grey. He held them half-closed, squinting when he laughed. He danced better than any one Corinna had ever danced with. He asked her to go to a dance with him the following week.

All week Corinna lived in a sort of delirium. She borrowed money from her mother and bought a new evening dress of flimsy pink silk, with no wearing qualities—Corinna usually was rather careful to get durable things. She thought of nothing but Rodney, to the detriment of her dictation and the stove-buyer’s temper.

On Saturday night, when Rodney called, she met him with a delicious lump of expectancy in her throat. She learned, suddenly, without experience, a new coquetry. Before this, she had been, with the boys and young men she knew, more or less natural, as natural, that is, as girls ever are with men. There had been a sort of decent companionship. Suddenly, this was changed.

On the way to the dance she found herself talking with a new piquancy, hinting at adventures she had never had, admirers she had never known, a life that was non-existent. She tried to make herself valuable, desirable. She became playful, indifferent. At the dance the music seemed especially fascinating. She hardly spoke to the few people she knew there, preferring to dance every dance with Rodney, letting herself lie, hardly conscious, in his arms as she danced.

At the door of her apartment, as he took her home, he put his arms around her and kissed her. Other men had kissed her, but only after much playful fencing, long acquaintanceship. Now, she yielded to Rodney’s kisses in a way she had never done. After he had left her, she lay awake most of the night and spent the rest of it and all of Sunday morning, dreaming of him.

III

Married to Rodney! That would be life! Not the slavery of her mother. Married to Rodney, life would have, constantly, a new meaning. She could coquette with life, play with life—living became suddenly sparkling, many coloured.

Before this, she had not asked for romance. She had never dreamed of even this much romance. She had just asked that she become not like her mother, a slave to a man who cared nothing for her, for whom she cared nothing. Her mother did not love her father. Other women she knew did not love their husbands. She saw that, now. They tolerated them, because they were being supported. They slaved for them because men wanted slaves. Married to Rodney—love, a full flowering of love—

Rodney did not telephone her for two weeks. She thought of him every day, more than she had ever thought of one person—one thing—in all of her life before. Rodney—she saw his light, thick, rather rough hair, felt his cheek against hers. She thought of him every night after she had got into bed, picturing him in the dark, imagining herself kissing him and being kissed over and over again.

Then, just as she was bewilderingly accepting the fact that perhaps, after all, he did not care for her, Rodney telephoned her and asked her to go to another dance with him—no excuse, no discussion of his two weeks of silence. She accepted him eagerly—and bought another new dress, a thin white one, this time. She must look charming.

The second dance was like the first. Her heart sang when she was with him. She was astonished at herself, at her emotions. She had not thought herself capable of such things. She sneered at her mother even as she felt sorry for her. What did her mother—the other women she knew—know about such feelings—about men like Rodney? They had never even met men like Rodney.

For three weeks, then, Rodney took her to a dance every Saturday night. On a Wednesday he took her to the theatre. And, after each outing there were kisses in the front hall of the apartment. Finally he asked her something—but it was not to marry him.

Corinna was surprised. Then she was furious at Rodney for misunderstanding her, at herself for not being able to yield to him. She went over all of the old platitudes of respectability—what kind of a girl did he think she was? had she led him to think, by word or action, that she would dream of such a thing—how dared he talk to her—even think of her like that?

And Rodney, with a stubborn sort of persistency went over his list of platitudes, too. After all—what harm was there? He liked her all right—would take care of her—she knew that—he would marry her if he could—surely she knew—had known from the first—that he wasn’t the marrying kind. She had kissed him, hadn’t she—encouraged him—led him on? Other girls....

Corinna did not see Rodney any more. He never telephoned her again. She knew where she could reach him, knew where he was employed. But what was there to say to him? She was properly bound with all of the virtues of her class. Kisses were all right. Coquetries were all right. Why, she had even definitely decided to marry Rodney. Of course, her low-cut evening dresses, her little tricks—pressing against him with her bare shoulder, of kissing him, of touching his face with her fingers—these were proper as long as they were baits to matrimony. They were decent then, legitimate. But Rodney had “insulted” her. He had misunderstood her.

As time passed, she definitely decided that she had been mistaken in him, that Rodney had, from the first, been unprincipled, unworthy of her company, that he had led her on—tried to get the best of her, but that, at the first hint of his true feelings toward her, she had sent him from her in great and righteous wrath. She had had a lucky escape.

For months, then, she longed to see Rodney, but she knew what seeing him would mean. She wanted only matrimony. It was respectable, decent, the right thing—to be married.... But now it was unthinkable that she should even consider Rodney.

Life became dull-coloured, tinted only by the thought of what she had been through, of her escape—a fascinating, secret thing. She went to dances with the men she had known before, tried to look especially nice, in case Rodney should see her. She carried with her, though, from that time, some of the coquetry that being in love with Rodney had given her. She found that, even though it was artificial now, it added to her popularity.

IV

A year later she fell in love again, a faint echo of what she had felt for Rodney. He was blond, too, but in a faded way, just as her love for him was faded. There were some visits to the theatre—Fred didn’t care for dancing—a few parties, his salary was small. Then she found that Fred, too, had definite ideas against matrimony—would not marry until his income was almost twice its present size.

Corinna knew the type—you go with them and go with them for years and years, and become middle-aged; finally, after every one you know is settled, you either separate and remain single or lapse almost unconsciously into matrimony. Not if she knew herself.

Of course she wouldn’t be Fred’s slave if she married him. She knew that. But—waiting years and years and then maybe his changing his mind or his salary never growing after all—It was not what you’d call a real opportunity. Corinna’s pale love for Fred faded out altogether. She broke an engagement or two, failed to keep a telephone appointment—was surprised to find how little she missed him.

Matrimonial chances did not come in great numbers to Corinna. In fact, during the next two years she did not have a single proposal of marriage nor any chance that might have been twisted into a proposal. Men took her to the theatre or to dances—she was an excellent dancer—told her their troubles, allowed her to be pleasantly entertaining. She coquetted and flirted and giggled—talked to the girls she knew about what a wonderful time she was having and how popular she was. One at a time the other girls she knew married and went to housekeeping in little apartments. She was twenty-four. It worried her, definitely, now, not being married.

Then Arthur Slossen came to work at the woollen factory where Corinna was now employed—she had left the hardware concern several years before and took dictation now from a grandfatherly old fellow who suffered with asthma. Arthur Slossen was not handsome. Corinna had no illusions about that. He was insignificant-looking, rather retiring and had a slight accent, showing unmistakably that he was foreign-born, a stigma in the set in which Corinna moved.

But, because he was a man and new, Corinna smiled at him and coquetted. She was not surprised when he asked her, three weeks after he entered the office, to go to the theatre with him. He was as unattractive as any man Corinna had ever known. He lacked, alike, all vices and virtues that would have made for interest. He was gentle, even gentlemanly. He was fairly well educated, but, outside of reading the newspapers morning and evening, he had no interest in the printed world. From his evening newspaper he cut out the sermons written by a well-known minister and read from them aloud occasionally. He was kindly and meant well by every one. Altogether, Corinna found him as boring as possible.

But, because he was a man and an escort, Corinna smiled at him, made eyes at him, went through her whole repertoire of tricks. Almost mechanically, she led him on, as she had tried to lead on other men before him.

One night, after she had “gone with” him for about six months, he asked her to marry him. The proposal came almost as a surprise to Corinna. Of course she had definitely played for a proposal—yet she had always played for proposals and had never received them. And here was Arthur Slossen—less of a catch than any man she had ever known—and he had asked her to marry him. To be sure there was really nothing definitely the matter with him. He was fairly nice-looking. He was a little stoop-shouldered, a little indefinite. He had a foreign accent and rather an embarrassed, humble way. But he was really quite all right. As attractive as her father must have been, or her Uncle Will. After all—a husband.... She could stop work in the office—she had never become a real private secretary, after all, and her bosses were always married and paid no attention to her. If she hadn’t any chances until now, she wasn’t likely to have any after twenty-five—twenty-five is getting on—her complexion wasn’t as good as it used to be, her face was becoming broader, flatter, like her mother’s.

V

Corinna and Arthur were married in June, and Corinna’s friends spoke sentimentally about “the month of brides” and gave her a kitchen shower. The couple went to housekeeping in a four-room apartment and Corinna started in to learn how to cook—she’d never paid much attention to kitchen arts before, being in school, first, and later busy all day in the office.

Corinna now had more time to notice Arthur. And when she looked at him—and looked at the husbands of the other girls she knew—he seemed as desirable as any of them. He had a foreign accent and round shoulders and no sparkle of style—but what were those others? They had other faults just as glaring. But Corinna was glad that at least her generation did not become slaves of their husbands. And, as she rejoiced in this, she presently made a new discovery; she found that she actually despised Arthur. And, despising him, she watched her girl friends, talked with them, and found that all of the other young married women she knew despised their husbands, too.