Chapter 4

I was taken aback. Nobody, not even another woman, can tell what a woman really is. I thought I had estimated Ned Temple's wife correctly. I had taken her for a monotonous, orderly, dull sort of creature, quite incapable of extremes; but in reality she has in her rather large, flabby body the characteristics of a kitten, with the possibilities of a tigress. The tigress was uppermost when I entered the room. The woman was as irresponsible as a savage. I was disgusted and sorry and furious at the same time. I cannot imagine myself making such a spectacle over any mortal man. She was weeping frantically into a mussy little ball of handkerchief, and when she saw me she rushed at me and gripped me by the arm like a mad thing.

“If you can't get a husband for yourself,” said she, “you might at least let other women's husbands alone!”

She was vulgar, but she was so wild with jealousy that I suppose vulgarity ought to be forgiven her. I hardly know myself how I managed it, but, somehow, I got the poor thing out of the room and the house and into the cool night air, and then I talked to her, and fairly made her be quiet and listen. I told her that Ned Temple had made love to me when he was just out of petticoats and I was in short dresses. I stretched or shortened the truth a little, but it was a case of necessity. Then I intimated that I never would have married Ned Temple, anyway, and THAT worked beautifully. She turned upon me in such a delightfully inconsequent fashion and demanded to know what I expected, and declared her husband was good enough for any woman. Then I said I did not doubt that, and hinted that other women might have had their romances, even if they did not marry. That immediately interested her. She stared at me, and said, with the most innocent impertinence, that my brother's wife had intimated that I had had an unhappy love-affair when I was a girl. I did not think that Cyrus had told Ada, but I suppose a man HAS to tell his wife everything.

I hedged about the unhappy love-affair, but the first thing I knew the poor, distracted woman was sobbing on my shoulder as we stood in front of her gate, and saying that she was so sorry, but her whole life was bound up in her husband, and I was so beautiful and had so much style, and she knew what a dowdy she was, and she could not blame poor Ned if--But I hushed her.

“Your husband has no more idea of caring for another woman besides you than that moon has of travelling around another world,” said I; “and you are a fool if you think so; and if you are dowdy it is your own fault. If you have such a good husband you owe it to him not to be dowdy. I know you keep his house beautifully, but any man would rather have his wife look well than his house, if he is worth anything at all.”

Then she gasped out that she wished she knew how to do up her hair like mine. It was all highly ridiculous, but it actually ended in my going into the Temple house and showing Ned's wife how to do up her hair like mine. She looked like another woman when it was puffed softly over her forehead--she has quite pretty brown hair. Then I taught her how to put on her corset and pin her shirt-waist taut in front and her skirt behind. Ned was not to be home until late, and there was plenty of time. It ended in her fairly purring around me, and saying how sorry she was, and ashamed, that she had been so foolish, and all the time casting little covert, conceited glances at herself in the looking-glass. Finally I kissed her and she kissed me, and I went home. I don't really see what more a woman could have done for a rival who had supplanted her. But this revelation makes me more sorry than ever for poor Ned. I don't know, though; she may be more interesting than I thought. Anything is better than the dead level of small books on large ones, and meals on time. It cannot be exactly monotonous never to know whether you will find a sleek, purry cat, or an absurd kitten, or a tigress, when you come home. Luckily, she did not tell Ned of her jealousy, and I have cautioned all in my family to hold their tongues, and I think they will. I infer that they suspect that I must have been guilty of some unbecoming elderly prank to bring about such a state of affairs, unless, possibly, Maria's husband and Billy are exceptions. I find that Billy, when Alice lets him alone, is a boy who sees with his own eyes. He told me yesterday that I was handsomer in my pink dress than any girl in his school.

“Why, Billy Talbert!” I said, “talking that way to your old aunt!”

“I suppose you ARE awful old,” said Billy, bless him! “but you are enough-sight prettier than a girl. I hate girls. I hope I can get away from girls when I am a man.”

I wanted to tell the dear boy that was exactly the time when he would not get away from girls, but I thought I would not frighten him, but let him find it out for himself.

Well, now the deluge! It is a week since Harry Goward went away, and Peggy has not had a letter, although she has haunted the post-office, poor child! and this morning she brought home a letter for me from that crazy boy. She was white as chalk when she handed it to me.

“It's Harry's writing,” said she, and she could barely whisper. “I have not had a word from him since he went away, and now he has written to you instead of me. What has he written to you for, Aunt Elizabeth?”

She looked at me so piteously, poor, dear little girl! that if I could have gotten hold of Harry Goward that moment I would have shaken him. I tried to speak, soothingly. I said:

“My dear Peggy, I know no more than you do why he has written to me. Perhaps his uncle is dead and he thought I would break it to you.”

That was rank idiocy. Generally I can rise to the occasion with more success.

“What do I care about his old uncle?” cried poor Peggy. “I never even saw his uncle. I don't care if he is dead. Something has happened to Harry. Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, what is it?”

I was never in such a strait in my life. There was that poor child staring at the letter as if she could eat it, and then at me. I dared not open the letter before her. We were out on the porch. I said:

“Now, Peggy Talbert, you keep quiet, and don't make a little fool of yourself until you know you have some reason for it. I am going up to my own room, and you sit in that chair, and when I have read this letter I will come down and tell you about it.”

“I know he is dead!” gasped Peggy, but she sat down.

“Dead!” said I. “You just said yourself it was his handwriting. Do have a little sense, Peggy.” With that I was off with my letter, and I locked my door before I read it.

Of all the insane ravings! I put it on my hearth and struck a match, and the thing went up in flame and smoke. Then I went down to poor little Peggy and patched up a story. I have always been averse to lying, and I did not lie then, although I must admit that what I said was open to criticism when it comes to exact verity. I told Peggy that Harry thought that he had done something to make her angry (that was undeniably true) and did not dare write her. I refused utterly to tell her just what was in the letter, but I did succeed in quieting her and making her think that Harry had not broken faith with her, but was blaming himself for some unknown and imaginary wrong he had done her. Peggy rushed immediately up to her room to write reassuring pages to Harry, and her old-maid aunt had the horse put in the runabout and was driven over to Whitman, where nobody knows her--at least the telegraph operator does not. Then I sent a telegram to Mr. Harry Goward to the effect that if he did not keep his promise with regard to writing F. L. to P. her A. would never speak to him again; that A. was about to send L., but he must keep his promise with regard to P. by next M.

It looked like the most melodramatic Sunday personal ever invented. It might have meant burglary or murder or a snare for innocence, but I sent it. Now I have written. My letter went in the same mail as poor Peggy's, but what will be the outcome of it all I cannot say. Sometimes I catch Peggy looking at me with a curious awakened expression, and then I wonder if she has begun to suspect. I cannot tell how it will end.

III. THE GRANDMOTHER, by Mary Heaton Vorse

The position of an older woman in her daughter's house is often difficult. It makes no difference to me that Ada is a mother herself; she might be even a great-grandmother, and yet in my eyes she would still be Ada, my little girl. I feel the need of guiding her and protecting her just as much this minute as when she was a baby in the nursery; only now the task is much more difficult. That is why I say that the position of women placed as I am is often hard, harder than if I lived somewhere else, because although I am with Ada I can no longer protect her from anything--not even from myself, my illnesses and weaknesses. It sometimes seems to me, so eagerly do I follow the lights and shadows of my daughter's life, as if I were living a second existence together with my own. Only as I grow older I am less fitted physically to bear things, even though I take them philosophically.

When Ada and the rest of my children were little, I could guard against the menaces to their happiness; I could keep them out of danger; if their little friends didn't behave, I sent them home. When it was needed, I didn't hesitate to administer a good wholesome spanking to my children. There isn't one of these various things but needs doing now in Ada's house. I can't, however, very well spank Cyrus, nor can I send Elizabeth home. All I CAN do is to sit still and hold my tongue, though I don't know, I'm sure, what the end of it all is to be.

Life brings new lessons at every turn in the road, and one of the hardest of all is the one we older people have to learn--to sit still while our children hurt themselves, or, what is worse, to sit still while other people hurt our children. It is especially hard for me to bear, when life is made difficult for my Ada, for if ever any one deserved happiness my daughter does. I try to do justice to every one, and I hope I am not unfair when I say that the best of men, and Cyrus is one of them, are sometimes blind and obstinate. Of all my children, Ada gave me the least trouble, and was always the most loving and tender and considerate. Indeed, if Ada has a fault, it is being too considerate. I could, if she only would let me, help her a great deal more around the house; although Ada is a very good housekeeper, I am constantly seeing little things that need doing. I do my best to prevent the awful waste of soap that goes on, and there are a great many little ways Ada could let me save for her if she would. When I suggest this to her she laughs and says, “Wait till we need to save as badly as that, mother,” which doesn't seem to me good reasoning at all. “Waste not, want not,” say I, and when it comes to throwing out perfectly good glass jars, as the girls would do if I didn't see to it they saved them, why, I put my foot down. If Ada doesn't want them herself to put things up in, why, some poor woman will. I don't believe in throwing things away that may come in handy sometime. When I kept house nobody ever went lacking strings or a box of whatever size, to send things away in, or paper in which to do it up, and I can remember in mother's day there was never a time she hadn't pieces put by for a handsome quilt. Machinery has put a stop to many of our old occupations, and the result is a generation of nervous women who haven't a single thing in life to occupy themselves with but their own feelings, while girls like Peggy, who are active and useful, have nothing to do but to go to school and keep on going to school. If one wanted to dig into the remote cause of things, one might find the root of our present trouble in these changed conditions, for Cyrus's sister, Elizabeth, is one of these unoccupied women. Formerly in a family like ours there would have been so much to do that, whether she liked it or not, and whether she had married or not, Elizabeth would have had to be a useful woman--and now the less said the better.

It is hard, I say, to see the causes for unhappiness set in action and yet do nothing, or, if one speaks, to speak to deaf ears. Oh, it is very hard to do this, and this has been the portion of older women always. Our children sometimes won't even let us dry their tears for them, but cry by themselves, as I know Ada has been doing lately--though in the end she came to me, or rather I went to her, for, after all, I am living in the same world with the rest of them. I have not passed over to the other side yet, and while I stay I am not going to be treated as if I were a disembodied spirit. I have eyes of my own, and ears too, and I can see as well as the next man when things go wrong.

I have always known that no good would come of sending Peggy to a coeducational college. I urged Ada to set her foot down, for Ada didn't wish to send Peggy there, naturally enough, but she wouldn't.

“Well,” said I, “I'M not afraid to speak my mind to your husband.” Now I very seldom open my mouth to Cyrus, or to any one else in this house, for it is more than ever the fashion for people to disregard the advice of others, and the older I get the more I find it wise to save my breath to cool my porridge--there come times, however, when I feel it my duty to speak.

“Mark my words, Cyrus,” I said. “You'll be sorry you sent Peggy off to a boys' school. Girls at her age are impressionable, and if they aren't under their mothers' roofs, where they can be protected and sheltered, why, then send them to a seminary where they will see as few young men as possible.”

Cyrus only laughed and said:

“Well, mother, you can say 'I told you so' if anything bad comes of it.”

“It's all very well to laugh, Cyrus,” I answered, “but _I_ don't believe in putting difficulties into life that aren't there already, and that's what sending young men and young women off to the same college seems to ME!”

When Peggy came home engaged, after her last year, everybody was surprised.

“I'm sure I don't know what Cyrus expected,” I said to Ada. “You can't go out in the rain without getting wet. Let us pray that this young man will turn out to be all right, though we know so little about him.” For all we knew was what Peggy told us, and you know the kind of things young girls have to tell one about their sweethearts. Peggy didn't even know what church his people went to! I couldn't bear the thought of that dear child setting out on the long journey of marriage in such a fashion. I looked forward with fear to what Ada might have to go through if it didn't turn out all right. For one's daughter's sorrows are one's own; what she suffers one must suffer, too. It is hard for a mother to see a care-free, happy young girl turn into a woman before her eyes. Even if a woman is very happy, marriage brings many responsibilities, and a woman who has known the terror of watching beside a sick child can never be quite the same, I think. We ourselves grew and deepened under such trials, and we wouldn't wish our daughters to be less than ourselves; but, oh, how glad I should be to have Peggy spared some things! How happy I should be to know that she was to have for her lot only the trials we all must have! I do not want to see my Ada having to bear the unhappiness of seeing Peggy unhappy. Even if Peggy puts up a brave face, Ada will know--she will know just as I have known things in my own children's lives; and I shall know, too. This young man has it in his hands to trouble my old age.

No mother and daughter can live together as Ada and I have without what affects one of us affecting the other. When her babies were born I was with her; I helped her bring them up; as I have grown older, though she comes to me less and less, wishing to spare me, I seem to need less telling; for I know myself when anything ails her.

It amazed me to see how Ada took Peggy's engagement, and when young Henry Goward came to visit, I made up my mind that he should not go away again without our finding out a little, at any rate, of what his surroundings had been, and what his own principles were. As we grow older we see more and more that character is the main thing in life, and I would rather have a child of mine marry a young man of sound principles whom she respected than one of undisciplined character and lax ideas whom she loved. When I said things like this to Ada, she replied:

“I'm afraid you're prejudiced against that poor boy because he and Peggy happened to meet at college.”

I answered: “I am not prejudiced at all, Ada, but I feel that all of us, you especially, should keep our eyes and ears open. Wait! is all I say.”

I know my own faults, for I have always believed that one is never too old for character-building, and I know that being prejudiced is not one of them. I realize too keenly that as women advance in years they are very apt to get set in their ways unless they take care, and I am naturally too fair-minded to judge a man before I have seen him. Maria and Alice were prejudiced, if you like. Maria, indeed, had so much to say to Ada that I interfered, though it is contrary to my custom.

“I should think, Maria,” I said, “that however old you are, you would realize that your father and mother are EVEN better able to judge than you as to their children's affairs.” I cannot imagine where Maria gets her dominant disposition. It is very unlike the women of our family.

When he came, however, Mr. Goward's manners and appearance impressed me favorably. Neither Ada nor Cyrus, as far as I could see, tried in the least to draw him out. I sat quiet for a while, but at last for Peggy's sake I felt I would do what I could to find out his views on important things. I was considerably relieved to hear that his mother was a Van Horn, a very good Troy family and distant connection of mother's.

When I asked him what he was, “My PEOPLE are Episcopalians,” he replied.

“I suppose that means YOU are something else?” I asked him.

“I'm afraid it means I'm nothing else,” he answered; and while I was glad he was so honest, I couldn't help feeling anxious at having Peggy engaged to a man so unformed in his beliefs. I do not care so much WHAT people believe, for I am not bigoted, as that they should believe SOMETHING, and that with their whole hearts. There are a great many young men like Henry Goward, to-day, who have no fixed beliefs and no established principles beyond a vague desire to be what they call “decent fellows.” One needs more than that in this world.

However, I found the boy likable, and everything went smoothly for a time, when all at once I felt something had gone wrong--what, I didn't know. Mr. Goward received a telegram and left suddenly. Ada, I could see, was anxious; Peggy, tearful; and, as if this wasn't enough, Mrs. Temple, our new neighbor, who had seemed a sensible body to me, had some sort of a falling-out with Aunt Elizabeth, who pretended that Mrs. Temple was jealous of her! After Mrs. Temple had gone home, Elizabeth Talbert went around pleased as Punch and swore us all to solemn secrecy never to tell any one about “Mrs. Temple's absurd jealousy.”

“You needn't worry about me, Aunt Elizabeth,” I said. “I'm not likely to go around proclaiming that ANOTHER woman has made a fool of herself.”

Elizabeth Talbert is one of those women who live on a false basis. She is a case of arrested development. She enjoys the same amusements that she did fifteen years ago. She is like a young fruit that has been put up in a preserving fluid and gives the illusion of youth; the preserving fluid in her case is the disappointment she suffered as a girl. I like useful women--women who, whether married or unmarried, bring things to pass in this world, and Elizabeth does not. Still, I can't help feeling sorry for her, poor thing; in the end our own shortcomings and vanities hurt us more than they hurt any one else. I heartily wish she would get married--I have known women older than Elizabeth, and worse-looking, to find husbands--both for her own sake and for Ada's, for her comings and goings complicate life for my daughter. She diffuses around her an atmosphere of criticism--I do not think she ever returns from a visit to the city without wishing that we should have dinner at night, and Alice is beginning to prick up her ears and listen to her. She spends a great deal of time over her dress, and, if she has grown no older, neither have her clothes--not a particle. She dresses in gowns suitable for Peggy, but which Maria, who is years younger than her aunt, would not think of wearing. Elizabeth is the kind of woman who is a changed being at the approach of a man; she is even different when Cyrus or Billy is around; she brightens up and exerts herself to please them; but when she is alone with Ada and me she is frankly bored and looks out of the window in a sad, far-away manner. The presence of men has a most rejuvenating effect on Aunt Elizabeth, although she pretends she has never been interested in any man since her disappointment years ago. When she got back and found Harry Goward here, instead of relapsing into her lack-lustre ways, as she generally does, she kept on her interested air.

I have always thought that houses have their atmosphere, like people, and this house lately has seemed bewitched. After Mr. Goward left, although every one tried to pretend things were as they should be, the situation grew more and more uncomfortable. I felt it, though no one told me a thing. I fancy that most older people have the same experience often that I have had lately. All at once you are aware something is wrong. You can't tell why you feel this; you only know that you are living in the cold shadow of some invisible unhappiness. You see no tears in the eyes of the people you love, but tears have been shed just the same. Why? You don't know, and no one thinks of telling you. It is like seeing life from so far off that you cannot make out what has happened. I have sometimes leaned out of a window and have seen down the street a crowd of gesticulating people, but I was too far off to know whether some one was hurt or whether it was only people gathered around a man selling something. When I see such things my heart beats, for I am always afraid it is an accident, and so with the things I don't know in my own household. I always fancy them worse than they are. There are so many things one can imagine when one doesn't KNOW, and now I fancied everything. Such things, I think, tell on older people more than on younger ones, and at last I went to my room and kept there most of the time, reading William James's Varieties of Religious Experience. It is an excellent work in many ways. I am told it is given in sanitariums for nervous people to read, for the purpose of getting their minds off themselves. I found it useful to get my mind off others, for of late I have gotten to an almost morbid alertness, and I know by the very way Peggy ran up the stairs that something ailed her even before I caught a glimpse of her face, which showed me that she was going straight to her room to cry.

This sort of thing had happened too often, and I made up my mind I would not live in this moral fog another moment. So I went to Ada.

“Ada,” I said, “I am your mother, and I think I have a right to ask you a question. I want to know this: what has that young man been doing?”

“I suppose you mean Harry,” Ada answered. “He hasn't been doing anything. Peggy's a little upset because he isn't a good correspondent. You know how girls feel--”

“Don't tell ME, Ada,” said I. “I know better. There's more in it than that. Peggy's a sensible girl. There's something wrong, and I want you to tell me what it is.” Younger people don't realize how bad it can be to be left to worry alone in the dark.