Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Now she was planted in a new home in a strange, great city, with a totally new business to learn, and to practice while she learned, and Morgan was not there. Of course he was there nights. He was there evenings except on rare occasions. But he was not there, with her, in her new business. He had his own business, it appeared — a thing which he had hardly mentioned before, which she had never seriously considered as an opponent or rival, yet which now seemed suddenly to swallow him up, and take him away from her.

  A whole group of new conditions confronted the girl, and she faced them as reasonably and courageously as any girl could. A boy of twenty, suddenly placed in new surroundings, cut off from every previous association, and given serious responsibilities, may face them with courage and reason, but he is only a boy. Of the girl it is expected that she shall adapt herself to new conditions, to her husband, to her business, and, in most cases, to the swift approach of the greatest responsibility of all — maternity, at an age in which we only say of her brother— “boys will be boys.”

  Stella did well. She was not too limited in money. If she ordered absurdly Morgan could afford to laugh at her. When she realized her deficiencies and wanted to take a course in household science up at Barnard, he could afford that, too. She learned a deal of chemistry and economics, something of the science of nutrition, and a little about cooking, and presently she put her own shoulder to the wheel — selected books, read, attended lectures and by the end of a year was forever exempt from the jokes about brides.

  That was easier than to get along without Morgan. When he went away in the morning, each inexorable morning, and the elevator closed on him — she could not watch him down the street except by craning from the window, and then he was only a strange dot with far-reaching legs — it was bad enough, but what really made her sense of utter loneliness complete was that he went into another world.

  In one of Charles Reade’s novels Stella had read of a noble heroine who, though “they were married forty years, had never once asked him what he would have for dinner,” and had then and there determined to be as noble should she marry. Proudly she made up her strong young mind that she would not unload on him the small cares and annoyances of her day. All her efforts and disappointments, her hopes and struggles in the housekeeping line, she kept to herself. Therefore her life, her daily occupation, was unknown land to him.

  On the other hand she found that her deep desire to be a refreshment and a comfort to him in his work and trouble met small encouragement. He was not in trouble, not in the least discouraged. He was a hardworking, ambitious, successful young businessman, and this work in which he lived with such enthusiasm was unknown land to her.

  In the evenings they were very happy together, as happy, that is, as two persons can be whose ground of union is that of small talk, and the discussion of books and pictures. Morgan admired his young wife, loved her tenderly, approved with many compliments of her evident progress as a manager, but his approval was that of the man who says: “Yes, you look fine!” and does not really know which gown you have on.

  Stella asked eager questions about his business for a while. She even “read up” on leather, as far as she could. But she found that leather was one thing and business was another. He tried to answer her, tried to explain, to some degree, at least; but the whole technic of the business world, its code of honor, its purposes and methods, were quite outside her range. It was not a question of knowledge, but of a totally different type of mind.

  Somewhat debarred here from her hoped-for usefulness, the young wife turned her efforts toward being charming. She took great pains with her costumes, which delighted him — when he noticed it. She deliberately read, visited, and went about to gather material for bright conversation. If she could not talk to him about her work, nor he to her about his work, they must needs talk about some other matters, of less concern to either.

  Before the year was out a new interest appeared, a most vital interest; they named it Morgan Challis Widfield.

  Again Stella faced new conditions, strange, important, without knowledge or experience. Again she found herself, for all practical purposes, alone. Morgan senior loved Morgan junior — they soon called him Junior for distinction — with both pride and devotion. He was willing, or would have been willing (had it been necessary) to walk the floor with him for uncomplaining hours. He was willing, and anxious, to buy him everything he could possibly need or want. Beyond that he made far-reaching plans for what the boy should do, in college, and after college. But for the daily work, the tremendous task of rearing that sturdy young body and aspiring soul, Morgan had nothing to offer except to back up his wife’s authority, or to urge “send for the doctor.”

  Stella loved her home because it was Morgan’s, loved her child largely for the same reason, and resented, in a faint blind way, the strange fact that both home and child seemed to come between them.

  In three years’ time there was a little Royal Livingstone Widfield, to play with Junior, to fill the young mother’s heart and hands and time.

  The proud possessor of two healthy children, of a husband who loved her, of a pleasant home, and of enough money to live on, ought to be perfectly happy. So, at least, it is generally assumed. Stella assumed it, too, and at times she was.

  The next few years, five or six of them, were filled with the efforts and perplexities, the lonely labors and joys of child care. Here, as in the housekeeping line, Stella used her brains. She read what she could find, and thought on what she read. She found, as Junior grew older, a good kindergartner and learned much from her. It was easier with little Roy; she had learned something from his brother.

  As these cares lightened, as the baby came triumphantly through the dreaded “second summer,” and grew on from kilts to knickerbockers, the young woman, his mother, began to look about her again, and most of all to look for her husband.

  Stella was now more beautiful than in her spare girlhood, stronger, too, and wiser. Her household gave her small trouble. Her children, now at school or kindergarten, were a joy. Then she began to realize this large, patent, unescapable fact — that eight from twenty-four leaves sixteen.

  Few of us sleep more than eight hours. Add the laziest undressing, the most elaborate morning toilet, it is not over nine and a half; two and a half hours for meals, and you have twelve. Twelve hours from twenty-four leaves twelve. A twelve-hour day is long. Take from this the evening for amusement, after dinner, eight to eleven — three hours more. There remain nine hours to every day to work in, or to play in, or to be bored in.

  Stella did not go at it in this arithmetical way. She was not analytical nor philosophic. She only realized that even housekeeping and motherhood, well-fulfilled, left her with two lacks: she was insufficiently occupied, and she was lonely.

  “You must get acquainted more, my dear,” said her husband heartily. “You’ve been shut up so long with these kids that you’ve forgotten how to visit. We must go out evenings, and surely you’ve got a lot of nice friends. Here’s Cousin Alicia right in the building — you like her, don’t you? And who’s that nice woman across the hall, Mrs. MacAvelly? I think she’s very pleasant.”

  Stella agreed. She stood watching her tall, handsome husband in the little dressing room between their chambers; she loved to help him with his studs.

  “Oh, yes, there are plenty of nice friends,” she agreed. “But it’s you that I want, Morgan.”

  He smiled at her over the towel, rosy, clean and genial.

  “Well, you’ve got me all right, my dear — got me for keeps! You’ll never get desertion as a cause! I can tell you that!”

  He went to look for the boys, a little visit before dinner, and she finished her toilet wondering why she was unsatisfied. Friends there were, new and old, in plenty, as she had said. But one old one, lately turned up, gave her small satisfaction.

  This was Malina Peckham, who made her a most unexpected call. Malina had grown thinner, sharper, harder. She was dressed in a way both t
ailorish and dashing, and proudly owned to being a reporter.

  “Yes, I’m on The Evening Lookover — got a pretty good job, too. I do society notes mostly and some space work — it’s great!”

  Stella asked for her mother.

  “Oh, Mother’s dead — lost my best friend — I know! And Father’s dead, too. We went west, you know. Poor old Father always thought he could do things and never made good. I’ve been on my own for five years now. I’ve worked on San Francisco papers, and Chicago, and now I’ve got to little old New York. Don’t you like it?”

  She chattered on cheerfully, her sharp eyes taking note of the pleasantly furnished apartment, the books on the shelves, the pictures on the wall, and every detail of her hostess’s costume.

  “I knew you’d see me,” she went on. “It’s not like you to turn down an old friend, even if she does work for her living. You were mighty good to me in the old days, Stella.”

  Stella did not like her any better now than she had as a child, but the appeal to magnanimity always held her, and Malina called when she saw fit.

  Alicia Cushing was a cousin of Morgan’s, a young widow. She was now living with her father-in-law, who seemed devoted to her, in an apartment above their own. Plump and pleasant, blond and rosy, soft of voice, of eye, of hand, with nice manners and engaging Southern accent, Cousin Alicia was really a very attractive person.

  And there were others, plenty of them.

  But Stella wanted Morgan, and somehow, as the years passed, he seemed farther and farther away.

  CHAPTER 3

  Three long rooms, opening into one another by wide archways discreetly closable with sliding doors as well as portieres, had Mrs. Widfield to promenade in.

  They were very pleasant rooms, arranged with that careful dovetailing of beauty and ease which comes of long usage, good taste and a sufficient income. The glassed bookcases tempted like a walled garden, and repaid as well. There were few pictures and little bric-a-brac, but much restful space and soft color, with a wallpaper which was as unnoticeably comforting as one’s mother.

  Up and down the three long rooms walked Mrs. Widfield, now slowly and meditatively, now swiftly and nervously. She stood at one rain-streaked window and watched the wet, shining street so far below, with its clanging yellow-roofed surface cars, and the black, gleaming tops of taxis and limousines scuttling along like darting beetles. She walked the length of the apartment and stood at another window watching the river, vague, foggy, mournful and loud in veiled hootings. She stood at the middle window — a wide one, slightly bayed, and looked up and down the clean quiet side street, showing only hurrying husbands with umbrellas.

  Mrs. Widfield was growing anxious.

  It was time for Morgan to be at home, three minutes — yes, five minutes late. She had telephoned the office earlier in the dismal afternoon, and been told he had left for the day. Then he might come any minute — and she had been waiting now for an hour.

  Morgan was always so thoughtful; he would surely have sent word if he were to be detained. There must be a block in the subway — perhaps an accident — her heart stood still.

  There was nothing she could do. He had left the office, he had not come home, and between home and office lay the black terrible miles of New York, where men, women and children die daily in the streets from a score of dangers. The surface cars, the motors with their swift attack and swifter flight, murderers worse than criminal in their callous carelessness, these were bad enough, and worse on wet days. But that undying worm which perforates the long city, that culture tube of all communicable diseases, that horizontal-and swift-moving Black Hole of Calcutta, in which courtesy and decency are lost, comfort unhoped for, and danger ever present — the subway was her real horror.

  They had been married fifteen years.

  Stella was a gracious woman of thirty-five, her gentle distinguished beauty increased by the softer outlines, the richer color of maturity. Her fine hair was as softly dark as ever, and as plentiful, her straight figure still slender, though more rounded.

  Both of the boys were at school now; they had just left home again for the autumn term, and their mother had been reckoning up the years of their coming absence. Three years more of school — four for the younger — and then four of college and then the medical school, or the law school, or the technical school — it would be ten years and more before they were “educated.”

  And then, she forced herself to recognize, they would not come home. They would never come home — they would promptly set up homes of their own. She had lost her boys, except for vacations. Even on vacations, they often went visiting — yes, they were gone.

  She had only Morgan.

  Again she looked at the clock. Fifteen minutes — and Morgan was never late! She pushed the swing door in the dark paneling of the dining room, and passed through the clean, light pantry to the white-tiled kitchen.

  Her efficient cook sat, rosy, by the window; everything was “on,” and it was not time to “take up” yet. The equally efficient waitress, white-capped and aproned, was upholding her religion against that of the cook, while she crocheted a cap for one of her rapidly accumulating blonde nieces. Hedda was a Lutheran, well versed in scripture, and Mrs. O’Mally a convinced Romanist.

  Mrs. Widfield brought them out some magazines, and rather wistfully ventured a hope that Mr. Widfield would not be late.

  “He will not, ma’am,” Mrs. O’Mally reassured her. “I’ve cooked here these siven years, and he was never late without sendin’ ye word.”

  “It’s a bad night,” said Hedda, rather gloomily.

  Then Stella went to her own room, turned up both lights at the dressing table and seated herself before the wide mirror. She loosened the waves of her hair a little, changed an ornament, tried the effect of a big velvet rose on her bosom, at the girdle, on one side and the other.

  She surveyed the back of her dress in the cheval glass, deriving some pleasure from its graceful lines, the delicate curves of the white neck above, and the clean-grown, fragrant hair. Then she heard the elevator and ran to open the door, before he could get his key out.

  “Oh, Morgan, dear, I’ve been so worried! Where have you been? I telephoned at four, and they said you’d gone for the day.”

  He kissed her affectionately, and hung his coat on the rack, set his umbrella in the tall blue jar, and turned toward his dressing room.

  “Why, I had to go over to Jersey City to see a man — and then I came home. Got here about as usual, didn’t I? I’d have sent you word if I’d been delayed, of course.”

  She looked reproachfully at the clock.

  “Oh, ’tis over time, isn’t it? Well, you see, I got to the house about as usual, but I had to see Alicia about those stocks of hers. I didn’t realize it would take more than a minute.”

  Stella’s face clouded a little but she only said, “Well, dear — dinner’s ready now.”

  “I’d have left it till after dinner,” he added, sensible of a faint reproof, “but Alicia does take so long about things, and I’d rather have my evening with you.” He kissed her again, a friendly indiscriminating kiss, and they went to the table.

  It was a good dinner, the kind of dinner he liked, and he ate heartily, pleasantly conscious of the rosy lights, the shining silver, the fresh-aired warmth, the satisfying food.

  Stella was not hungry. Her anxiety had been very real. As for Alicia, she knew her dawdling ways, and was really glad that Morgan had attended to his little business before dinner rather than afterward. She had nothing to blame him for, except not letting her know he was in the house, and she could easily see how natural that was. Yet for all her careful justice and her lack of jealousy, she was not happy.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked presently. “You’re not eating anything. It’s a bully dinner.”

  She smiled back at him.

  “Why, I was so worried, Morgan.”

  “Worried! What nonsense, Stella! You can’t lose me so easily. I b
elieve that is your only weakness — worrying about me.”

  “It’s not weakness, Morgan. You know very well that after you leave the office and before you get here you might be — killed — and I should never know it till I saw the morning papers.”

  “Oh, pshaw, my dear — that’s absurd. I carry a card case. You’d know soon enough. I’m particularly careful to let you know when I’m delayed.”

  There was a shade of annoyance in his tone. She met it with prompt admission of his constant thoughtfulness, blamed herself for worrying, and began regaling him with small happenings as had punctuated her day. There was a letter from Junior — the boys were both well but did not profess great happiness in lessons — not much of a letter. The electric heater was out of order; the gas bill seemed to be moderate; her dressmaker was a week behind again.

  When dessert arrived he absorbed it with evident pleasure, but she fell quiet, and sat with her white elbows on the table, making pale reflections in the smooth mahogany, her chin on the backs of her interlocked fingers, regarding him wistfully.

  They heard the doorbell. Hedda silently closed the doors, and presently announced “Miss Peckham.”

  Also they heard Miss Peckham’s penetrating voice: “Tell them not to hurry. I’ll make myself at home.”

  “I shan’t hurry, at any rate,” observed Mr. Widfield. “I’d like some more of that — whatever its Bible name may be. It’s mighty good.” Miss Peckham, left to herself, seemed well content. She loosened her coat, and pulled off her gloves, all the time stepping quickly and quietly about and making mental note of everything in the room.

  A large photograph, wasteful of heavy paper mounting, stood on the mantel. Malina took it down and read the signature. “Cousin Alicia — h’m,” said she softly. Another photograph stood on the piano. “Cousin Alicia again.” She turned to the center table and stood, nodding her head sagaciously. “And once more, Cousin Alicia! If I were Stella Widfield, I’d stick one of myself up somewhere. Cousin Alicia’s too much in evidence, I think — and too handsome.”