Part 5

"Yes, I know it is different," he said gloomily. "But it may be different again if I can place my text-book. When we married, Clarissa, I thought your own little income would be sufficient to protect you from such economies as I knew would be most distasteful to you--but, somehow, it--it does n't seem to do it."

"It goes," returned Clarissa. "I don't {133} know how it goes, but it does. I dare say I'm not a good manager. It is n't as if I dressed well, for I don't. But I would n't mind, if we could go to Chicago for a week of music and theatres in the spring. But we can't do anything but live--and _that_ is n't living! Something is wrong with the whole system of woman's work in the world. I don't know what it is, but I mean to find out. Somebody has got to do something about it."

She threw back her small blonde head as she spoke, and it was as if she gave the universe and all its powers warning that she did not purpose to live indefinitely under such an ill-arranged order of things as they were maintaining. Let the universe look to itself!

"I met Baumgarten of the Midwest Ice Company on the campus. He says {134} if this weather holds, he will start his ice-wagons to-morrow," suggested her husband anxiously. He had very definite reasons for wishing to divert Clarissa from consideration of all the things that are out of joint in the world.

"Ice is a detail. Sometimes details do help," admitted Clarissa, fanning her blazing cheeks.

"We will have Jacob come and wash the windows and put on the screens in the morning," he continued very gently. "And I will uncover the roses and rake the beds this afternoon. I should have done it last week, but no one could forsee this weather."

"I'm not ready for Jacob until I have been through the closets. They must be cleaned first.--I hate to clean closets! I hate to cook, to sew, to iron, to dust, to scrub! There are women who {135} like these occupations. Let such people assume them!"

"I can hear you, Clarissa, if you speak less oratorically. We are not in an audience-room," suggested her husband.

Clarissa was slender, fair, and dramatic. If she was in the room you looked at her. Her Norman nose was delicately cut, her manner fastidious, but her collars were carelessly put on, and her neckties had a vaguely one-sided effect. She just escaped being pretty and precise and reliable-looking by a narrow margin, but escape she did. She was, instead, disturbing, distracting, decidedly lovable, not a little pathetic. Her face was dreamy, yet acute--the face of an enthusiast. The line of her jaw was firmly and beautifully drawn; her intellectual activity was undeniable, but philistines {136} mistrusted her conclusions at sight--and justly.

"This is not a good day on which to hold an argument," she went on with dignity, ignoring her husband's sub-acid comment. "It is too easy to be uncivil when one is so uncomfortable. But I have been thinking about these matters for a long time. I have been forming my resolutions. They are not lightly taken. I was almost ready, in any event, to tell you that I had decided to renounce the domestic life."

"To--?"

"To renounce the domestic life," repeated Clarissa with emphasis. "Homes are an anachronism at the end of the nineteenth century, anyhow. It is time women had the courage of their convictions and sloughed off an anti-social form of habitat that dates from the Stone Age."

{137}

"Do you mean you would rather _board?_"

Clarissa stared. "What has boarding to do with it?" she inquired rather haughtily. "I am talking about the universal problem of woman's work. One's own individual makeshifts do not affect that. But if it is ever to be solved, some woman must solve it. Men never will. Sacrifices will have to be made for it, as for other causes. There are women who are ready to make them--and I have discovered that I am one of the women."

Professor Charleroy received this statement in absolute silence.

"As a temporary alleviation," Clarissa went on meditatively, "families might be associated upon some group-system. The operating expenses of the individual establishments would be greatly reduced, and the surplus {138} could be applied to developing the higher life of the members of the group. It would be quite practicable, even in our present crude civilization, to arrange such groups. But of course that would be a temporary expedient. In the redeemed form of social life, it will not be necessary."

"What ails you, Clarissa? Did that lecture you delivered before the Saturday Afternoon Club go to your head?"

Clarissa flushed. Her club paper on "After the Home--What?" was a sensitive subject. She already had been chaffed a good deal about it.

"Of course I know," she said with dignity, "that I am not a genius. I can't organize. I can't write. I'm not pretending to be in the class with Ibsen or Olive Schreiner or Sonia Kovalevsky! No, nor with the American women who are going to work {139} out their ideas. I don't believe I'd make a good social worker, either. I have n't enough patience and tenderness. But I _can_ talk. You know I can talk, Paul."

Yes, he knew it. To his cost, he knew it. She had the gift of fluent, winning speech, speech with an atmosphere, a charm. Uncouth theories acquired grace on her lips, and plausible theories seemed stronger than they were. She ironed shirt-waists badly, and the starch stuck to the irons, but she could make the worse appear the better reason with deftness and dispatch. Somewhere, somehow, a coal from the sacred fire had touched her lips. You might be indignant, outraged, at her theories, but you never refused to listen while she set them forth.

"I figure it this way," she continued. {140} "In all great causes, the people who can think and write need the help of the people who can talk, to disseminate their ideas, to popularize them, to get them brought home to the people who don't think and don't read, and yet have influence. That shall be my _metier_. I can do it. I can do it well. I will do it for a living wage and put my heart and soul into doing it. Without going outside a very narrow field,--say, that of parlor talks,--I can yet be a promoter of great causes. I will be a walking-delegate from the Union of the Elect! I will fight the good fight for Utopia! Why, Paul, I can make it glorious!"

Her face shone with a wonderful light. Her slender, delicately rounded figure vibrated with enthusiasm. She did not see the expression on her husband's face. When great thoughts were {141} astir in Clarissa s brain, her high imperturbability, her bright serenity, were maddening. To assail them, logic was as useless as passion. She was simply in another world from this.

Her husband sat down heavily. He felt an unacademic desire to box her ears. Perhaps, had he done so, there would have been no story, for like most women with erratic nerves Clarissa Charleroy had the elemental liking for a masterful man.

However, her husband's Huguenot blood and scholastic training did not help him to carry out such primitive impulses toward domestic discipline. He was a man of sturdy build, with a fine head and brown eyes of the gentle, faithful kind. Conscientious, persistent, upright, he perfectly fitted that old-fashioned description our fathers loved, "a scholar and a gentleman." It {142} cannot be denied that this type is out of place in our modern life; it is especially at a disadvantage when confronted with such a modern wife as his.

"Do you mean to--to _leave_ Marvel and me?" he inquired in a voice that was not as even as he could have wished.

His back was toward the window. His wife could not see that he had turned white, but she did notice that he looked steadily down into the palms of his hands.

She faced him with a fine composure.

"I don't see that I'm much good here and I, myself, am certainly very miserable," she said. "There is so much antagonism between you and me, Paul. We think alike about so few things!"

"Do you think the antagonism lies {143} between you and me--or between you and our circumstances?" inquired the professor. His voice was controlled now, but cutting. "Also, do you feel any special antagonism to Marvel? She is rather like yourself, you know."

Clarissa nodded brightly. He was stunned to see that she approved this.

"That's better! Do fight me, Paul! It clarifies my ideas, and I see more definitely what I want. I wish you were a good fighter. I like hard knocks!"

"Good Lord! little girl, you don't mean all this nonsense--you can't. Why, it's impossible. You're my wife. I've done my best. Some day I shall do better. We shall win to peace and comfort yet--if you stand by. My text-book--"

Clarissa waved a disdainful hand. Her blue eyes were liquid, wonderful.

{144}

"You don't seem to think of the cause, Paul! Don't you realize that _I can do good work for humanity?_ Everybody can't do that. Everybody is n't called to it. I am."

Paul Charleroy let this statement pass. It hung in the air between them, unchallenged, undenounced. Possibly it was true. But, the man was wondering dumbly, what became of other men to whom this thing really happened? Did it crush them all like _this_? How did they keep up hope, decency, honor? How did they preserve their interest in the game and make life worth living afterward? Already he felt heavy upon his heart a presentiment of airless days, of tortured nights. The loneliness of it! No tenderness anywhere in life for him? No love? Then, what use to live? Humanity? Wasn't he humanity?

{145}

Nevertheless, when he spoke, he only said, "And Marvel? Is Marvel called to be motherless?"

Clarissa's serene face clouded faintly. The question of Marvel did, indeed, puzzle even her facility. And yet she had light on that problem also.

"If I really prove to be any good,--and I think I shall be a helper in a movement that is going to revolutionize the earth,"--Clarissa said gravely, "there are others to consider besides Marvel. It--why, it _may_ be, Paul that my duty is to the race! I'm not an especially good mother for Marvel at her present age--the young-animal stage of her development. All a child under twelve years needs is to be properly fed, and clothed, and taught the elementary things. It has all been standardized, and is a matter for experts, anyhow. Your sister Josephine {146} would be a better mother for her for the next few years than I. Why should I do what others can do better? When Marvel begins to _think_, it will be different. Then she will need my influence. I should like to let you have her for the next few years, and have her come to me when she is fifteen or sixteen. How would that suit you, Paul?"

Her husband moved his shoulders imperceptibly, but said nothing. The thing had passed the point where rational speech, as he conceived it, was in place. If Clarissa did not see the shallowness, the sheer indecency, of discarding one's human relations as if they were old clothes, he could not make her see it. Was it only half an hour ago that he had come down the street in the spring sunshine, under the budding elms, bringing Clarissa a bunch of {147} daffodils and thinking of making a garden, and of all the dear, homely April tasks?

Clarissa assumed that his silence was one of acquiescence. Sooner or later people always acquiesced.

"It is really sweet of you to take it like this, Paul," she said warmly. "I never have understood why people should n't be thoroughly rational about these matters. There's no occasion for bitterness. I should like to have people say we had remained ideal friends. I shall always be as much interested in your welfare as in my own.--Yes, more. I should never dream of marrying again, myself, but in time I think it might be well for you to divorce me and do so." Her mobile face became introspective, absorbed. "Ruth Lawrence is rather too sentimental, not energetic enough for a professor's wife. And Nora Mills is heartless. I think {148} she would marry you for a home, but you must n't let her do it. There is Evelyn Ames. I think Evelyn would do. She is so gentle and reliable!"

She was actually absorbed in this problem, her husband perceived to his utter amazement. He shivered with distaste. This was too grotesque. It could not be true.

His wife looked at him for approval. She noted that the look of fear was gone from his dark eyes. Something unwonted, ironic, flashed there in its stead. It was neither mirth nor malice, yet approached both. He set his boyish-looking mouth firmly, and shook off his silence as one throws off a nightmare. He would meet her on her own ground, and be as indifferent as she.

"Really, Clarissa, _that_ is the first sensible thing you have said this {149} afternoon," he forced himself to say.--"Why, what's this?"

It was the small daughter of the house who chose this moment to emerge from under the table, clutching fast a jaded-looking doll and a handful of its belongings. Her round eyes were fear-struck and her quick glance curiously hostile, but she slipped silently from the room. Her presence there was soon forgotten by her parents--but children do not forget. Of all the incomprehensible words tossed to and fro above her head, Marvel remembered every one.

II

Marvel Charleroy found the letter in the box at the gate where the postman had left it. There was other mail; she glanced at the covers light-heartedly as she went toward the house. She was {150} not very familiar with her mother's handwriting and, for the moment, did not recognize it.

The house was low, gray-shingled, and inviting. It had a kindly, human aspect, and though it was a modern structure built at the time of Professor Charleroy's second marriage, eleven years before, there was about it some thing of that quiet dignity we associate with age. The branches of a wide-spreading old elm swept one of its chimneys; the lawn was broad, the lilacs and syringas tall; ranks of high hollyhocks in shades of rose and wine, rising against gray lattice, shut off the kitchen gardens at the rear. The beds that bordered the paths were planted to a tangle of old-fashioned flowers, gorgeous in the July sunshine. There was a subdued gayety about the whole aspect of the sheltered, sunny place, a {151} look of warmth and home and joy, that was especially dear to Marvel Charleroy. It satisfied in her some elemental need.

She preserved a vivid memory, of which she never spoke, of the box-like little house on Spring Street, her early home. She recalled that house as disorderly and uncomfortable during her mother's regime; as frigid and uncomfortable during the reign of her Aunt Josephine. She figured herself as always holding her breath, as always waiting for something, while she lived there. It was not until she was twelve (four years after Clarissa Charleroy left her husband), that Marvel, to her own childish apprehension, began to fill her lungs, began, indeed, to live.

It will be inferred that the catastrophe, so clearly outlined on that April afternoon fifteen years earlier, did, in {152} fact, occur. For various reasons, it did not take place immediately. For one thing, it required time for Clarissa to put herself into touch with causes that desired to be "promoted" by her silver tongue and wistful, winning ways. Then, too, there were moments when she wavered. So long as Paul could maintain that pose, achieved with great effort, of good-natured, sarcastic scoffing at their tragedy, Clarissa herself did not believe in it wholly. Sometimes they drew very near together. A debonair, indifferent Paul who jested about her "calling" attracted her. A Paul who could demand cheerfully as he took his second cup of coffee, "Well, Clarissa, am I the Tyrant Man this morning?" was not unlikely to elicit the answer, "No, not to-day, Paul. You're just own folks to-day." But a Paul who had heard the wolf howling at the door {153} of his heart, who looked at her with eyes in which she saw fear and the shadow of a broken life, repelled her utterly. Women are reputed to be soft-hearted. Paul Charleroy, musing upon his own predicament in those days, remembered this age-long superstition with wonder.

In spite of various respites, a catastrophe which is latent in a temperament will, some day, come to pass unless, of course, the owner of the temperament decides to be absolute master of himself. Nothing was further from Clarissa's thought than to recapture her married happiness by an assault on her own disposition.

It is not good to linger over this portion of their story. Clarissa did, finally, take over the task of reforming as much of humanity as she could persuade to see the need of it, and she laid {154} aside the business of looking after her husband and her child. Miss Josephine Charleroy, ten years her brother's senior, and competent rather than sympathetic, assumed these discarded responsibilities.

By slow degrees, Paul Charleroy's circumstances became less straitened. He did place his text-book well, and derived a considerable income therefrom; on the death of old Dr. Lettarby he succeeded to the full professorship, with the munificent salary of twenty-five hundred a year. Last of all, some time after Clarissa and he were made free of each other by legal means, he did actually marry Evelyn Ames.

Thus, it will be seen, Clarissa's forecasts were fulfilled. Her notions were absolutely practicable; they really, all of them, worked, and worked well. In the long run they even worked {155} beneficently, but one prefers to attribute this to the mercy of Providence rather than to the foresight of Clarissa.

Marvel Charleroy was twelve years old when her father married again, and life began for her. The little girl noted, dimly at first, then with growing wonder and appreciation, how interesting the commonplace things became under the new rule. Though her frocks were simple as ever, their adaptation to her self made it a pleasure to wear them; she seemed suddenly to have acquired a definite place in the family life, a position with duties and with compensating pleasures. Her friendships were considered, her friends noticed and welcomed. For the first time she felt herself an individual. Somebody was interested in what she did and said and thought. Her own shy young consciousness of personality was reflected {156} back to her, strengthened, and adorned. She perceived with something like awe that the girl named "Marvel" did not live only in her breast. Her father and his wife knew a Marvel whom they believed to be industrious and clever, loving and helpful. These qualities were multiplied tenfold by her perception that they were looked for from that Marvel whom the heads of the house seemed so happy to own and to cherish.

The child throve. She who had wondered vaguely at the stress laid by her books upon the satisfactions of home, now tasted thirstily of that delight. And she repaid the miracle of Evelyn's tenderness with the whole of an ardent heart.

To her elders, the years went fast. Suddenly, as it seemed, Marvel was a young woman with more than her fair {157} share of gifts and graces. She was exquisitely pretty, with an effective little style of her own; she made a brilliant record as a student; she had the rich endowment of easy popularity. Further, she seemed to possess, so far as slight experiments could demonstrate, that rare thing, the genuine teacher's gift. Something of her father's passion for scholarship, something of her mother's silver-lipped persuasiveness, met in the girl and mingled with certain deep convictions of her own.

The practical outcome of all this was the suggestion that her Alma Mater, Midwest, would be glad to attach her to its teaching force without insisting upon an additional degree. She had spent one year abroad since her graduation, part of which was occupied in study. But, like many young Americans, she found her own {158} reflections on the Old World more stimulating than any instruction offered her there.

Now she was at home, ready to begin work in September, enthusiastic, almost effervescent, with her satisfaction in the arrangement of her own little world.

Coming into the shaded house, out of the blaze of the July sunshine, she dropped her father's letters on the desk in his study, and ran upstairs to read her own. It was quite an hour before she heard him calling at the foot of the stair,--

"Marvel! Come down, daughter, I want you."

Something in his voice--she did not know what--gave her a thrill of apprehension. She had never heard just that tone from him before.

{159}

She found Professor and Mrs. Charleroy waiting for her in the living-room. Their faces were grave and troubled. Marvel's apprehensive pang mingled with a curious little resentment that her nearest and dearest could allow themselves to look thus, all on a summer morning, in this highly satisfactory world.

"Daughter, I have a letter here," her father began at once, "a letter from your mother. It concerns you more than any one. The question it involves is one for you to decide. I ought not to conceal from you my belief that you will need to consider the matter very carefully."

Marvel took the letter with gravity, hoping that this portentous seriousness was misplaced. This is what she read:--

MY DEAR PAUL,--You remember, of course, that when we separated, it {160} was with the understanding that Marvel was to come to me when she was fifteen or sixteen. But, as you urged, when I brought the matter up at that time, she was then just completing her preparation for college. Since she desired college training, it was certainly easier and simpler for her to have it at Midwest than elsewhere. I put aside my own preferences, because the arguments in favor of her remaining with you were weighty. But it does not seem to me just or right that I should be deprived of my daughter's society entirely, because I waived my preference as to her education. I feel that she has been deprived of my influence, and I of her companionship, already too long.

As I understand it, she graduated a year ago, and has since been abroad. It seems to me this winter will be an {161} excellent time for her to come to me. I shall have an apartment in Chicago, and she will find it easy to arrange for post-graduate work if she desires. I shall be less busy than usual, for my health has given way a little under the strain of my work, and the doctor has warned me to rest as much as possible. I am looking forward with pleasure to introducing her to my friends, my life, my ideas.

When will it be most convenient for her to come? I should say about the first of October.

As ever, my dear Paul, Your sincere friend, CLARISSA CHARLEROY.

"Well, really!"

Marvel dropped the letter on the floor and turned to face her family with more than a suggestion of belligerence. {162} Her cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes burning, and her head held high with a little air that reminded her auditors swiftly and inevitably of Clarissa Charleroy's self.

"Dear people, what do you look so frightened for?" she demanded. "I call it very cheeky of my mother to make such a demand of me. Does n't she realize that I'm a person with a career of my own--and that when I'm not busy with that, I have to keep my eye on you two! I have n't the slightest intention of leaving home--so you need n't look like _that!_"

Marvel's little harangues usually met with instant response from her family. They were wont to brighten and become argumentative, even when they disagreed. But neither of them answered this pronouncement.

Her father sat by an open window, {163} looking out upon the garden's gayety with unseeing eyes. His wife sat at an other window watching him wistfully, while Marvel faced them both from the hearth, offering her cheerful young defiance for their approval.