“Say away, my darling. I trust you perfectly.”
She flashed a grateful look at him. “It is this way, my dear. I have two, three, yes four, things to consider: — My own personal problem — my family’s — yours — and a social one.”
“My family’s?” he asked, with a faint shade of offence in his tone.
“No no dear — your own,” she explained.
“Better cut mine out, Little Girl,” he said. “I’ll consider that myself.”
“Well — I won’t talk about it if you don’t want me to. There are the other three.”
“I won’t question your second, nor your imposing third, but isn’t the first one — your own personal problem — a good deal answered?” he suggested, holding her close for a moment.
“Don’t!” she said. “I can’t talk straight when you put it that way.”
She rose hurriedly and took a step or two up and down. “I don’t suppose — in spite of your loving me, that I can make you see it as I do. But I’ll be just as clear as I can. There are some years before us before we can be together. In that time I intend to go away and undertake a business I am interested in. My purpose is to — develop the work, to earn money, to help my family, and to — well, not to hinder you.”
“I don’t understand, I confess,” he said. “Don’t you propose to tell me what this ‘work’ is?”
“Yes — I will — certainly. But not yet dear! Let me try to show you how I feel about it.”
“Wait,” said he. “One thing I want to be sure of. Are you doing this with any quixotic notion of helping me — in my business? Helping me to take care of my family? Helping me to—” he stood up now, looking very tall and rather forbidding, “No, I won’t say that to you.”
“Would there be anything wrong in my meaning exactly that?” she asked, holding her own head a little higher; “both what you said and what you didn’t?”
“It would be absolutely wrong, all of it,” he answered. “I cannot believe that the woman I love would — could take such a position.”
“Look here, Ross!” said the girl earnestly. “Suppose you knew where there was a gold mine — knew it — and by going away for a few years you could get a real fortune — wouldn’t you do it?”
“Naturally I should,” he agreed.
“Well, suppose it wasn’t a gold mine, but a business, a new system like those cigar stores — or — some patent amusement specialty — or anything — that you knew was better than what you’re doing — wouldn’t you have a right to try it?”
“Of course I should — but what has that to do with this case?”
“Why it’s the same thing! Don’t you see? I have plans that will be of real benefit to all of us, something worth while to do — and not only for us but for everybody — a real piece of progress — and I’m going to leave my people — and even you! — for a little while — to make us all happier later on.”
He smiled lovingly at her but shook his head slowly. “You dear, brave, foolish child!” he said. “I don’t for one moment doubt your noble purposes. But you don’t get the man’s point of view — naturally. What’s more you don’t seem to get the woman’s.”
“Can you see no other point of view than those?” she asked.
“There are no others,” he answered. “Come! come! my darling, don’t add this new difficulty to what we’ve got to carry! I know you have a hard time of it at home. Some day, please God, you shall have an easier one! And I’m having a hard time too — I don’t deny it. But you are the greatest joy and comfort I have, dear — you know that. If you go away — it will be harder and slower and longer — that’s all. I shall have you to worry about too. Let somebody else do the gold-mine, dear — you stay here and comfort your Mother as long as you can — and me. How can I get along without you?”
He tried to put his arm around her again, but she drew back. “Dear,” she said. “If I deliberately do what I think is right — against your wishes — what will you do?”
“Do?” The laughed bitterly. “What can I do? I’m tied by the leg here — I can’t go after you. I’ve nothing to pull you out of a scrape with if you get in one. I couldn’t do anything but — stand it.”
“And if I go ahead, and do what you don’t like — and make you — suffer — would you — would you rather be free?” Her voice was very low and shaken, but he heard her well enough.
“Free of you? Free of you?” He caught her and held her and kissed her over and over.
“You are mine!” he said. “You have given yourself to me! You cannot leave me. Neither of us is free — ever again.” But she struggled away from him.
“Both of us are free — to do what we think right, always Ross! I wouldn’t try to stop you if you thought it was your duty to go to the North Pole!” She held him a little way off. “Let me tell you, dear. Sit down — let me tell you all about it.” But he wouldn’t sit down.
“I don’t think I want to know the details,” he said. “It doesn’t much matter what you’re going to do — if you really go away. I can’t stop you — I see that. If you think this thing is your ‘duty’ you’ll do it if it kills us all — and you too! If you have to go — I shall do nothing — can do nothing — but wait till you come back to me! Whatever happens, darling — no matter how you fail — don’t ever be afraid to come back to me.”
He folded his arms now — did not attempt to hold her — gave her the freedom she asked and promised her the love she had almost feared to lose — and her whole carefully constructed plan seemed like a child’s sand castle for a moment; her heroic decision the wildest folly.
He was not even looking at her; she saw his strong, clean-cut profile dark against the moonlit house, a settled patience in its lines. Duty! Here was duty, surely, with tenderest happiness. She was leaning toward him — her hand was seeking his, when she heard through the fragrant silence a sound from her mother’s room — the faint creak of her light rocking chair. She could not sleep — she was sitting up with her trouble, bearing it quietly as she had so many others.
The quiet everyday tragedy of that distasteful life — the slow withering away of youth and hope and ambition into a gray waste of ineffectual submissive labor — not only of her life, but of thousands upon thousands like her — it all rose up like a flood in the girl’s hot young heart.
Ross had turned to her — was holding out his arms to her. “You won’t go, my darling!” he said.
“I am going Wednesday on the 7.10,” said Diantha.
CHAPTER IV. A CRYING NEED
“Lovest thou me?” said the Fair Ladye;
And the Lover he said, “Yea!”
“Then climb this tree — for my sake,” said she,
“And climb it every day!”
So from dawn till dark he abrazed the bark
And wore his clothes away;
Till, “What has this tree to do with thee?”
The Lover at last did say.
It was a poor dinner. Cold in the first place, because Isabel would wait to thoroughly wash her long artistic hands; and put on another dress. She hated the smell of cooking in her garments; hated it worse on her white fingers; and now to look at the graceful erect figure, the round throat with the silver necklace about it, the soft smooth hair, silver-filletted, the negative beauty of the dove-colored gown, specially designed for home evenings, one would never dream she had set the table so well — and cooked the steak so abominably.
Isabel was never a cook. In the many servantless gaps of domestic life in Orchardina, there was always a strained atmosphere in the Porne household.
“Dear,” said Mr. Porne, “might I petition to have the steak less cooked? I know you don’t like to do it, so why not shorten the process?”
“I’m sorry,” she answered, “I always forget about the steak from one time to the next.”
“Yet we’ve had it three times this week, my dear.”
“I thought you liked it better than anything,” she with
marked gentleness. “I’ll get you other things — oftener.”
“It’s a shame you should have this to do, Isabel. I never meant you should cook for me. Indeed I didn’t dream you cared so little about it.”
“And I never dreamed you cared so much about it,” she replied, still with repression. “I’m not complaining, am I? I’m only sorry you should be disappointed in me.”
“It’s not you, dear girl! You’re all right! It’s just this everlasting bother. Can’t you get anybody that will stay?”
“I can’t seem to get anybody on any terms, so far. I’m going again, to-morrow. Cheer up, dear — the baby keeps well — that’s the main thing.”
He sat on the rose-bowered porch and smoked while she cleared the table. At first he had tried to help her on these occasions, but their methods were dissimilar and she frankly told him she preferred to do it alone.
So she slipped off the silk and put on the gingham again, washed the dishes with the labored accuracy of a trained mind doing unfamiliar work, made the bread, redressed at last, and joined him about nine o’clock.
“It’s too late to go anywhere, I suppose?” he ventured.
“Yes — and I’m too tired. Besides — we can’t leave Eddie alone.”
“O yes — I forget. Of course we can’t.”
His hand stole out to take hers. “I am sorry, dear. It’s awfully rough on you women out here. How do they all stand it?”
“Most of them stand it much better than I do, Ned. You see they don’t want to be doing anything else.”
“Yes. That’s the mischief of it!” he agreed; and she looked at him in the clear moonlight, wondering exactly what he thought the mischief was.
“Shall we go in and read a bit?” he offered; but she thought not.
“I’m too tired, I’m afraid. And Eddie’ll wake up as soon as we begin.”
So they sat awhile enjoying the soft silence, and the rich flower scents about them, till Eddie did wake presently, and Isabel went upstairs.
She slept little that night, lying quite still, listening to her husband’s regular breathing so near her, and the lighter sound from the crib. “I am a very happy woman,” she told herself resolutely; but there was no outpouring sense of love and joy. She knew she was happy, but by no means felt it. So she stared at the moon shadows and thought it over.
She had planned the little house herself, with such love, such hope, such tender happy care! Not her first work, which won high praise in the school in Paris, not the prize-winning plan for the library, now gracing Orchardina’s prettiest square, was as dear to her as this most womanly task — the making of a home.
It was the library success which brought her here, fresh from her foreign studies, and Orchardina accepted with western cordiality the youth and beauty of the young architect, though a bit surprised at first that “I. H. Wright” was an Isabel. In her further work of overseeing the construction of that library, she had met Edgar Porne, one of the numerous eager young real estate men of that region, who showed a liberal enthusiasm for the general capacity of women in the professions, and a much warmer feeling for the personal attractions of this one.
Together they chose the lot on pepper-shaded Inez Avenue; together they watched the rising of the concrete walls and planned the garden walks and seats, and the tiny precious pool in the far corner. He was so sympathetic! so admiring! He took as much pride in the big “drawing room” on the third floor as she did herself. “Architecture is such fine work to do at home!” they had both agreed. “Here you have your north light — your big table — plenty of room for work! You will grow famouser and famouser,” he had lovingly insisted. And she had answered, “I fear I shall be too contented, dear, to want to be famous.”
That was only some year and a-half ago, — but Isabel, lying there by her sleeping husband and sleeping child, was stark awake and only by assertion happy. She was thinking, persistently, of dust. She loved a delicate cleanliness. Her art was a precise one, her studio a workshop of white paper and fine pointed hard pencils, her painting the mechanical perfection of an even wash of color. And she saw, through the floors and walls and the darkness, the dust in the little shaded parlor — two days’ dust at least, and Orchardina is very dusty! — dust in the dining-room gathered since yesterday — the dust in the kitchen — she would not count time there, and the dust — here she counted it inexorably — the dust of eight days in her great, light workroom upstairs. Eight days since she had found time to go up there.
Lying there, wide-eyed and motionless, she stood outside in thought and looked at the house — as she used to look at it with him, before they were married. Then, it had roused every blessed hope and dream of wedded joy — it seemed a casket of uncounted treasures. Now, in this dreary mood, it seemed not only a mere workshop, but one of alien tasks, continuous, impossible, like those set for the Imprisoned Princess by bad fairies in the old tales. In thought she entered the well-proportioned door — the Gate of Happiness — and a musty smell greeted her — she had forgotten to throw out those flowers! She turned to the parlor — no, the piano keys were gritty, one had to clean them twice a day to keep that room as she liked it.
From room to room she flitted, in her mind, trying to recall the exquisite things they meant to her when she had planned them; and each one now opened glaring and blank, as a place to work in — and the work undone.
“If I were an abler woman!” she breathed. And then her common sense and common honesty made her reply to herself: “I am able enough — in my own work! Nobody can do everything. I don’t believe Edgar’d do it any better than I do. — He don’t have to!” — and then such a wave of bitterness rushed over her that she was afraid, and reached out one hand to touch the crib — the other to her husband.
He awakened instantly. “What is it, Dear?” he asked. “Too tired to sleep, you poor darling? But you do love me a little, don’t you?”
“O yes!” she answered. “I do. Of course I do! I’m just tired, I guess. Goodnight, Sweetheart.”
She was late in getting to sleep and late in waking.
When he finally sat down to the hurriedly spread breakfast-table, Mr. Porne, long coffeeless, found it a bit difficult to keep his temper. Isabel was a little stiff, bringing in dishes and cups, and paying no attention to the sounds of wailing from above.
“Well if you won’t I will!” burst forth the father at last, and ran upstairs, returning presently with a fine boy of some eleven months, who ceased to bawl in these familiar arms, and contented himself, for the moment, with a teaspoon.
“Aren’t you going to feed him?” asked Mr. Porne, with forced patience.
“It isn’t time yet,” she announced wearily. “He has to have his bath first.”
“Well,” with a patience evidently forced farther, “isn’t it time to feed me?”
“I’m very sorry,” she said. “The oatmeal is burned again. You’ll have to eat cornflakes. And — the cream is sour — the ice didn’t come — or at least, perhaps I was out when it came — and then I forgot it..... I had to go to the employment agency in the morning!.... I’m sorry I’m so — so incompetent.”
“So am I,” he commented drily. “Are there any crackers for instance? And how about coffee?”
She brought the coffee, such as it was, and a can of condensed milk. Also crackers, and fruit. She took the baby and sat silent.
“Shall I come home to lunch?” he asked.
“Perhaps you’d better not,” she replied coldly.
“Is there to be any dinner?”
“Dinner will be ready at six-thirty, if I have to get it myself.”
“If you have to get it yourself I’ll allow for seven-thirty,” said he, trying to be cheerful, though she seemed little pleased by it. “Now don’t take it so hard, Ellie. You are a first-class architect, anyhow — one can’t be everything. We’ll get another girl in time. This is just the common lot out here. All the women have the same trouble.”
“Most w
omen seem better able to meet it!” she burst forth. “It’s not my trade! I’m willing to work, I like to work, but I can’t bear housework! I can’t seem to learn it at all! And the servants will not do it properly!”
“Perhaps they know your limitations, and take advantage of them! But cheer up, dear. It’s no killing matter. Order by phone, don’t forget the ice, and I’ll try to get home early and help. Don’t cry, dear girl, I love you, even if you aren’t a good cook! And you love me, don’t you?”
He kissed her till she had to smile back at him and give him a loving hug; but after he had gone, the gloom settled upon her spirits once more. She bathed the baby, fed him, put him to sleep; and came back to the table. The screen door had been left ajar and the house was buzzing with flies, hot, with a week’s accumulating disorder. The bread she made last night in fear and trembling, was hanging fatly over the pans; perhaps sour already. She clapped it into the oven and turned on the heat.
Then she stood, undetermined, looking about that messy kitchen while the big flies bumped and buzzed on the windows, settled on every dish, and swung in giddy circles in the middle of the room. Turning swiftly she shut the door on them. The dining-room was nearly as bad. She began to put the cups and plates together for removal; but set her tray down suddenly and went into the comparative coolness of the parlor, closing the dining-room door behind her.
She was quite tired enough to cry after several nights of broken rest and days of constant discomfort and irritation; but a sense of rising anger kept the tears back.
“Of course I love him!” she said to herself aloud but softly, remembering the baby, “And no doubt he loves me! I’m glad to be his wife! I’m glad to be a mother to his child! I’m glad I married him! But — this is not what he offered! And it’s not what I undertook! He hasn’t had to change his business!”
She marched up and down the scant space, and then stopped short and laughed drily, continuing her smothered soliloquy.
“‘Do you love me?’ they ask, and, ‘I will make you happy!’ they say; and you get married — and after that it’s Housework!”
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 5
