Part 6

Their silence, their gravity, startled the girl. She looked from one face to the other in quick scrutiny. What did this mean? For perhaps the first time in her life, it flashed through her mind that, after all, she knew nothing of the inner attitude of these two people, whom she greatly loved, toward the two facts which had made them all one household--her mother's divorce, namely, and her father's remarriage. The whole structure of three united, happy lives was built upon these cataclysmal facts--yet she had never asked what thought they held of them! Dignified, delicate, scrupulous, she {164} knew them both to be. Through what anguish and uncertainty might they not have passed before they clasped hands at last, making of their two hearts a shelter for her robbed, defenseless one?

Her manner changed on the instant.

"Dear family, you don't _want_ me to go? Surely--why--you _can't_ want me to go?"

"No," said Evelyn in a low voice, "dearest, no. Certainly we don't want you to go. Only--"

"But my work!" cried Marvel, passionately, answering their faces, not their words. "I want to do it so much! How can I possibly leave my work? And you, and my life here--everything!"

Her father turned his face farther toward the window, looking out blindly, but Marvel caught his expression--the {165} look of one who tastes again an ancient bitterness. She did not know its full meaning, but her sympathy leaped to meet it. Evelyn Charleroy, watching her, felt a sudden stirring of pride in the girl's swift response to another's need, her quick tenderness. It was thus that Evelyn saw the life of woman--as one long opportunity for the exercise of these qualities.

"Darlingest father, of course I'm not going to leave you. Still, if I were--what is mother like? What does she expect? What am I to do if I go to her?"

"She is a brilliant woman," answered Professor Charleroy. "In many ways you are not unlike her, Marvel, in mental alertness and all that. As for what she expects--God knows!"

The girl pursued her point. "It is n't an occupation--to be a brilliant {166} woman. I'm not quite sure, even, what she does. She lectures? She is philanthropic, or humanitarian, or something like that? Does she write?"

"No," answered the professor, choosing his words with evident and conscientious care. "That is not her gift. She has the endowment of convincing speech. She has used it admirably for many admirable causes-- and quite as ably for other causes that I esteem less. But that, you understand, is my personal point of view. Her chief interest, however, has been the so-called advancement of women, and you might describe her as one of the many inconspicuous promoters of that movement. Chiefly, at present, she is holding classes, giving parlor-talks, what-not, in which she paraphrases and popularizes the ideas of her leaders. Her personality, though winning, does not {167} carry far, and she is only effective before a handful of people. Her--her conversation is possibly more convincing because it is less susceptible of close examination than the written word. But I do not wish to be unjust."

"Then I take it mother is not scholarly?" asked the girl of academic training.

"She is not taken seriously--by the serious," the professor admitted. "You know, Marvel, there are women who are--who are dearly enthusiastic about the future of the race, who really are not in a position to do advanced thinking about it. Of course there are others of whom I would not venture to make such an assertion, but in my judgment your mother belongs to the former class. You will form your own opinion upon the subject. Do not go to her with any bias in your mind. She {168} is sincere. Her passion for humanity is doubtless real, but it seems to me that her erratic spirit has turned it into a channel where it is ineffective. In any case she is an attractive woman. A winter with her should be interesting."

His daughter eyed him gravely. There were depths of reserve in her face and voice. She had felt much, and said little, about this mother whom they were discussing thus dispassionately. Perhaps it gratified her young dignity that she was able to consider with apparent detachment the woman of whom she had thought long in secret with bitter, blinding tears.

"It is, as you say, a thing to consider," she observed gently. "I may be mistaken in deciding offhand that I will not go. I'll think it over, father dear."

{169}

Professor Charleroy rose, visibly pulling himself together. Crossing the room, he picked up the letter Marvel had dropped and handed it to her.

"I also may be mistaken," he said, "in my first feeling about the matter. Yet I think not. But we will not decide hastily."

When he left the room, Marvel partly closed the door and turned to her stepmother.

"Now, Evelyn, you darling, you know all this is perfectly ridiculous. Apparently I can't tell father so,--I could see I was hurting him,--but it simply is ridiculous!"

"I do not feel so, Marvel," Mrs. Charleroy answered steadily.

"What _right_ has she?" the girl stormed. "What right, I wish to know? To summon me like this! Didn't she throw us away, father and me, once {170} and for all? You can't recall a thing like that! Why should she think she could take me back any more than father? Influence me, indeed! She does n't know the A B C of influence! I am made--done--finished. Such as I am, she has had no hand in me. If the outcome is creditable, thanks are due to you and father and the Herr Gott. Oh, I know the things that have gone to my making! I don't talk about them much, perhaps, but I know!"

Mrs. Charleroy sat very still, regarding her stepdaughter anxiously. She was a woman of the most benignant of all the elder types: slight, but strong; her brown hair parted smoothly, and brought back from a high full forehead; she had a firm chin, with a tense, sweet mouth, and large, thoughtful, gray-blue eyes.

{171}

"Are you quite sure you are completely finished, dear? I would n't dare affirm that of myself."

"If there were no other reasons--why, even if I wanted to go," Marvel went on, "there is my work. I have accepted a position in the English department. They are depending upon me. I am ready, and there is no one to take my place."

"You are mistaken there. Miss Anderson would be glad to retain the position for a year. Something has happened to her arrangements for foreign study, and I heard it intimated the other day that she regretted resigning when she did. She would be delighted to stay on. You could, I think, come back to the position next year. I believe you could arrange with Professor Axtell."

"O Evelyn! Why do you wish to {172} make my going easy? Don't you see I can't bear it?"

"I don't know how to say what I wish," said the elder woman wistfully. "If I remind you that after all she is your mother, I am afraid it will not mean to you what it does to me."

"Certainly I think that, as between us two, the fact no longer carries obligation from me to her!" said Marvel steadily.

"O Marvel! You are hard!"

"No! I am just."

"Justice is never so simple as that," returned Evelyn Charleroy. "But even if it were, your father--I--would rather see you merciful. It would be more like you, Marvel!"

Marvel set the line of her red lips. "I do not wish to go, not even to live up to your idea of me!"

"Marvel, listen to me a moment. I {173} may not be able to make you understand--but I must try. This is the thing I must make you know. The reactions upon the spirit of the ties of the flesh are, simply, the most miraculous things in all this miraculous world. I am not preaching. I am just telling you what I know. This business of being a child, a parent, a husband, a wife,--no creature can escape that net of human relationships wholly. It is there, right there, that we are knotted fast to the whole unseen order of things. What we make of those ties determines what we substantially are. Oh, if you could see it as I see it! This is the real reason, the strongest one of all, for our wishing you to go. You must not throw away the chance it is--the chance of finding out what you are to each other. You must concede something for the sake of learning that!"

{174}

"It is n't the mother after the flesh, but the mother after the spirit, to whom are due the great concessions!" cried the girl, "and, Evelyn, _that_ is you!"

"Marvel--there is still another reason. It may appeal to you more."

Evelyn Charleroy's agitated face, the tumult of her eyes, startled her stepdaughter. She could not bear disturbance of that dear serenity.

"Child!--Do you suppose it was an easy thing for me to come into your father's life and take your mother's place while she still lived? There were months of doubt. There was hesitation that was agony to us both--but in the end--I came. Thus far the thing has seemed to justify itself. It has seemed to work for peace, for blessedness, to us all. I have felt no wrong, have been refused no inner sanction. {175} And yet, I tell you, I am still uncertain of my right to all that your mother threw away, and I do not, even yet, entirely defend my action in taking it! You have been our comfort, our greatest blessing, because it has seemed to be well for you. But, don't you see, if you fail us now; if we have made you selfish; if, through us, you have come to ignore that elemental tie; if you lose out of life whatever it may hold for you, we--we shall doubt our right--we shall be less sure--" The woman's voice fluttered and fell on silence suddenly.

"O Evelyn!" the girl cried out in sharp distress, "don't, don't look like that! Dearest, don't dare to feel like that! There is no need! I won't be horrid! I'll do anything on earth that you and father really wish!"

{176}

III

CHICAGO, _November fifth_.

PRECIOUS FATHER AND EVELYN:-- I know all my letters thus far have been rather no-account. They were just to let you know that I was well, and interested, and getting used to things. I loath the city so that I think I must be a country mouse. Every time I go down in the Elevated, past all the grimy, slimy, hideous back buildings, something in me turns over and revolts. I want to be within reach of red leaves, and wheat-stubble, and fat quail running in the roadside grass. Did the little red and yellow chrysanthemums do well this year? How about that marigold border I planted in the kitchen garden?

However, I am going to have a most instructive winter. It was crude of me {177} to think it, but because mother's friends are mostly different kinds of reformers, I expected to find them dubs and scrubs. It seems droll for people who can't live the normal human life successfully to set themselves up to say that therefore it's all wrong, and they will show us a better way to play the game. But only a few of these are that kind of reformers, and they're not dubby and scrubby at all! Some of them are just reformers from the teeth out. They're merely amusing themselves.

Mother is n't playing, however. She's tremendously in earnest. Being a reformer is n't fattening. She keeps back no pound of flesh. She is so thin and tense and nervous, so obsessed with her own ideas, that it worries me some times. I feel as if I lived perpetually in the room with an electric fan. I have {178} been to her classes several times. She has a certain eager eloquence, a real appeal, that will always gain her a hearing. I wish she could keep her neckties straight, but that is a trifle.

Do you remember old Mrs. Knowles saying that she loved to sit at the window and "see the people going pro and con in the street?" That is my present occupation! These people do a tremendous amount of "going pro and con" in the world of the mind. I have been hearing a vast deal of feminist discussion, owing to the appearance of some new books in that line. Can you see why, if nature has spent some thousands of years making women "anabolic, or conservers of energy," they should try to reverse the process in a decade and become even as men, who are "katabolic, or dispensers of energy," just because a stray thinker {179} supposes it would make them more interesting if they all had a business life and dispensed that energy downtown? It seems to me ill-advised to defy nature wholesale. I am willing to work for bread, or for the love of work--but not to oblige illogical theorists!

I'm glad I don't have to reconcile all the different views I hear! One person will argue that woman's work in the home is so complicated and taxing that it all ought to be done for her by specialists, while she goes downtown and becomes some other kind of specialist herself. This is the school of thought to which mother belongs. One or two of its leaders are terribly clever--and mother is rapturously sure that wisdom was born with them! She is so happy to be advocating and expounding their ideas! I find this discipleship pathetic. One does n't deny that they {180} have visions,--mother has them also,--but to me their visions are not divine or beautiful.

The next person will be a reactionary, and say that we are going straight to destruction because some women are thrown into industrial competition with men.

A third will be sure that, because modern life with all its industrial developments outside the home has drawn many women away from home life, therefore all women ought to be thrown out of their homes in a bunch and hustle for themselves in the market-place. There's no longer anything to do at home, and if they stay there they will get fat and lazy and parasitic. I argued about this half the evening with an apple-faced youth of twenty-five who is still supported by his mother. You would have supposed, to {181} hear him, that feminine hands and feet were going to atrophy and fall off from disuse, and that we should turn into some kind of chubby white grub with mouths perpetually demanding to be fed.

I don't deny that there are indolent women in the world, but I certainly never saw any parasites in the college set at Powelton. Somebody will have to "show me" before I can get up any heat of conviction on the subject!

No longer anything to do at home! It has kept me so busy putting one attenuated little reformer-lady's flat to rights and training a cook for her that I have n't had a minute, yet, to see about those courses I meant to take at the University! I shall get around to them presently, I hope.

Mother took the flat before I {182} arrived, and the packers brought her furniture from storage and unpacked it, and set it about according to their fancy, and cleaned up the mess and departed. We moved our trunks out the next morning. Mother went up and down and to and fro, as unsettled as the Cat that Walked. Finally she demanded of me, "Marvel, what ails this flat?" and I said, "Why, mother, the colors are all wrong and it is n't cozy."

She threw up her hands in despair. "Is coziness to be the end of our living?" she demanded; and I said, "It is."

You see, she can explain adorably about beauty in the home, but she had n't known any better than to leave the tinting to the kalsominer.--"Kalsomine is his business. He ought to know better than I," she said. She has such blind faith in specialists,--There {183} resulted a red dining-room, a terrible green living-room, and dark lavender bedrooms! No wonder poor little mother was miserable!

Getting it put right was messy, deplorable, and expensive beyond words; but it is all nice tans now, with charming chintz draperies and chair-covers. I did the upholstering myself, and it is n't half bad.

Mother does n't like ugly things, nor get them of her own free will, but she is obsessed to accept the advice of everybody who pretends to be a specialist, and they "do" her frightfully. It is one of the penalties of being a Superwoman.

Getting a cook required diplomacy. It is a point of honor with mother to take meals in restaurants or buy delicatessen stuff. She was in the hospital two months with inflammation of the liver last winter, and dyspepsia makes {184} half her days hideous. If people will live on indigestible ideas, instead of home cooking, I'm afraid it's what they must expect! I freely admit that I can't combat mother's ideas, as ideas,--I'm not clever enough,--but she does n't know how to be comfortable, which is to be efficient. She is rabidly against kitchens, but arithmetic demonstrates that here, in Chicago, this winter, it will cost less, and be more healthful to have a maid for the season instead of dragging ourselves out in the snow to eat thirty-cent breakfasts and fifty-cent luncheons and seventy-five cent dinners, and pay a woman for coming to clean. I argue that, so long as the Redeemed Form of Society has n't arrived, we are n't disloyal to it by doing this!

Myra Ann has learned to make Evelyn's beef-tea and mutton-broth. {185} Mother needs them badly. Then I discovered that eggs have always disagreed with her, but she went right on eating them because she thought them an "ideal food," and that if her stomach was n't sufficiently standardized to appreciate them, it ought to be! I call that heroic, if it is droll. Idiosyncrasy is something for which mother's creed makes no allowance. We now have an attractive set of eggless breakfasts.--Does all this sound like a model house keeper writing to a domestic journal? Evelyn knows I have a little right to throw bouquets at myself, for I was n't born a housekeeper--but housekeepers _can_ be made!

Seems to me, if you ought to standardize an individual's diet, as mother thinks, similar arguments apply to his clothes, his features, his body, his mind, his soul. There's no logical place to {186} stop. Yet we know that diversity, not similarity, is the end nature is always seeking in evolution. Of course, if you are going to buck all the natural laws, that's different!

My country brain gets tired in such a menagerie of ideas. In our own life at home, there is comfort, peace, sufficient stimulus, development; this life is exciting, but barren of something that I will call soil to grow in, because I don't know any better word. Of course it is great fun for me to come in contact with so many different kinds of minds and hear them emit their theories. Only, somehow, the theorists lack reality to me. Do I make myself clear?

I hope this will give you a notion of what I'm doing and thinking, and that you'll know I'm really having a beautiful time. I miss you both {187} horribly, though. I will tell about some of the people in my next letter. I'm acting as mother's secretary just now. She really needs one, and it's interesting work.

Ever and always, Your loving child, MARVEL.

IV

It was eleven o'clock on a mid-April morning--she never in after-life forgot the day or the hour--that Clarissa Charleroy saw to the depths of her daughter's mind.

Clarissa awoke that morning with a severe neuralgia. She had given two parlor-talks the day before, and was now paying the penalty of overexertion. To lie flat was sickening, yet to rise was impossible.

Marvel promptly took the case in {188} hand. The pillows were piled high; one hot-water bag was slipped under that aching spot at the back of her neck, and another placed at her chilly feet. Marvel knew that a hot bag must be covered with linen; Marvel knew that an alcohol rub changes even a neuralgic's outlook. Marvel was perfectly familiar with the latest non-depressant remedy for neuralgia, hunted up the empty box, telephoned the druggist, and had the prescription filled and ready to administer in half an hour; when she left the room it was only to reappear with a cretonne-and-mahogany tray, fresh toast, and weak tea, at the very psychological moment when the thought of food ceased to be a horror.

Under these ministrations, what had promised to be an all-day siege gave way so satisfactorily that by eleven {189} o'clock Clarissa, arrayed in Marvel's blue negligee, was temporarily reposing on the lounge in the living-room, while her own room was airing. She was in that delicious, drowsy, yet stimulated, state which follows the cessation of suffering.

For April, the day was unusually warm. The windows were open; the sun was pouring happily in, contending in gayety with a great jar of daffodils covering the low table at Clarissa's side. Marvel in a dull-blue house dress, white-braided, sat across the room darning a stocking, with an expression of severity. Mending was one of the domestic duties for which she had little taste. Owing to her constant activities as housekeeper and secretary for Clarissa, she had not yet begun to attend lectures at the University. Her mother, I fear, was {190} serenely blind to the implications of this fact.

Clarissa, lying high among pillows, in the peace that follows pain, regarded her daughter with a profound pleasure. There was something about her--was it the length of curling lashes veiling her eyes? or the tendrils of fair hair the warm wind lifted on her forehead? or the exquisite color that came and went in her cheeks? or the slender roundness of her erect young body?--there was a something, at all events, a dearness, an interest, a charm, unlike all other girls of twenty-three! Not for the first or the second, but for the hundreth time, that winter, Clarissa was conscious of an unutterable hunger for the years she had foregone. She seldom looked at Marvel's bloom without remembering that she had no mental picture of her girlish charm, {191} her maiden magic. How was it possible to grow old without such memories to feed her withering heart upon?

She must not think that the locust had eaten these years! The thought pierced her like a knife, and she put it away from her with all her might. Had she not chosen the better, though more barren, part? Had she not fought a good fight? And for this hour, at least, she was happy.

Leaving Marvel's face, her gaze traveled round the room. The actual alterations were not many, yet they had produced harmony. The apartment was restful now. The very walls seemed to encompass and caress her. Perhaps it was only just, Clarissa reflected, that a woman who had poured out her years and her strength in working and planning for an obdurate world, should have, when her energy {192} was spent, some such warm and tender shelter, some equable spot all flowers and sunshine, wherein she might be tended as Marvel was tending her, so that she might gather strength to go forth to other battles.

She turned her eyes again upon her daughter. Marvel, feeling the long look, glanced up.

"Are you comfy? Is there anything more you want, mother?" the girl inquired.

Clarissa shook her head. "No, nothing. Really, child, you are an excellent nurse. Quite a--quite a Marvel! Were you born so? Where did you get it? Not from Paul or me!"

Marvel smiled faintly to herself.

"Where did I get that name?" she parried. "I have often wondered about that. Father could n't, or would n't, tell me."

{193}

The slow, difficult color came to Clarissa's cheeks. How many years since she had recalled the naming of her daughter!

"There is no secret about it," she said. "When the nurse first laid you on my arm, I saw what seemed to me such a wonder-child that I said, Every baby in the world ought to be named Marvel. Mine shall be.-- That's all. It was just a fancy. Your father wanted to name you Clarissa Josephine. Where did those daffodils come from? Did the Herr Professor send them?"

Marvel nodded carelessly. This was so common a matter as to be undeserving of comment.