So Mr. Widfield excused himself courteously but firmly, covering his retreat with the technical defense of some business he must attend to.
“Men are so mean! They’ll always stand up for one another, and never tell a woman anything! How are you, Stella? You don’t look yourself.”
If Mrs. Widfield was not her usual gentle courteous self, she felt there was reason good. It was always a little difficult for her to be patient with Miss Peckham. She had tried to be helpful and loyal, sometimes had been of very needful service; and the more obligation she laid on Malina, the less she felt able to be cold to her, lest she seem to remind her of it.
“I am well as usual,” she answered. “But I really cannot tell you anything about this Van Tromp affair.”
“I thought they were friends of yours.”
“They are. That is why I cannot discuss them.”
“Oh! I see. Well — I wish I could afford a sense of honor like that! I’d have to tell tales on my own mother if the old man sent me. Never mind. It’s good to look at you, anyhow. I’ve always admired you, Stella, since we were kids. And you’ve been mighty good to me! You’re not one to go back on a friend, just because she has to work for a living.”
“I have a great respect for the women who work,” Mrs. Widfield answered her. “I wish I could.”
“You could, easy enough. You always were clever. Why, those things you did in school were gems, Stella, absolute gems. Why don’t you write? But then, why should you? You don’t have to. Nobody need talk to me about the dignity of labor. I’m quite willing to be ‘supported.’”
“But you haven’t a good opinion of men, you know.”
“Indeed I haven’t! You just work in an office — a woman alone, and you learn what men are! I hate ‘em.”
“Yet you’d marry one?”
“I can’t marry anything else, can I? And when I do marry — if I do — I’m not going to be the downtrodden one I can tell you. I’ll do some down-treading myself!”
She sat leaning forward, elbows on knees, swinging her stout worn gloves, her keen eye on her hostess.
Mrs. Widfield thought she heard Morgan go out of the hall door — and showed it.
Miss Peckham spoke out sharply.
“Stella Widfield — you know you’re unhappy!”
“Unhappy? I?” Mrs. Widfield turned a quiet noncommittal face toward her friend.
“Yes, you. You may not know it — or you may not want me to know it — but it sticks out all over you. I know men. They’re mighty mean to women!”
Her hostess laughed lightly. “You are entirely mistaken, Malina. I thank you for your concern, but there is no occasion for it. Tell me — how are you getting on with this paper? Do you like it as well as the other?”
“Yes, thanks. Better, if anything. But that red herring isn’t strong enough. Look here! Haven’t you got any friend to stand up for you? Isn’t there anybody to see how thin you are — and how worried looking? Your boys are all right, aren’t they? You have money enough. Your conscience is clear — and you’re not sick. You’re just unhappy — miserably unhappy. And eliminating all other causes, it’s got to be your husband! I know.”
Mrs. Widfield looked at her with an expression of cordial amusement. “What a champion you are, Malina! But you are quite too sympathetic — and too prejudiced against men.”
“Maybe I am — but I think not. I remember poor Mother’s life — and lots of her friends. And since I’ve been at work, I tell you I’ve seen things.” She idly buttoned one glove to the other, watching her hostess. “You haven’t by any chance a photograph of one of those Van Tromps, have you?”
Stella stiffened a little. “No — I think not. I seldom keep photographs.”
“Except Cousin Alicia’s.”
Mrs. Widfield could not help flushing, more at the suddenness of the attack than anything else; but she answered calmly enough. “Oh — Cousin Alicia, of course, she is so handsome.”
Malina laughed, shortly. “Are you a bat, Stella? Can’t you see what’s happening to you — right under your nose? You didn’t ask for all those photos and stick ’em up everywhere, I warrant.”
Stella rose quietly. “That is precisely what I did do, as it happens. You mean kindly, I don’t doubt, Malina, but I cannot let you talk to me like this. I think I must ask you to excuse me. I’m tired tonight.”
“All right — I’ll go. Sorry if I’ve made you feel bad. I do care about you, Stella. You’ve certainly been white to me.”
She took herself off, and Stella, left alone, raised a window and cooled her hot cheeks in the wet air. A spatter of rain struck on her white throat and she closed the sash again. Malina was gone, but the room reeked of her insinuation. Stella longed to forbid her the house, but felt unable. There was the old acquaintance — a goodwill she had no occasion to doubt — and the weight of obligation on the wrong side.
She shrugged her lace-covered shoulders, and went to look for Morgan. Yes — he had gone out, probably to Alicia’s — why not? Perhaps to Mrs. MacAvelly’s. With a strange feeling of complicated unrest she tried in vain to settle to books or music, and presently rang for Hedda.
“If Miss Peckham calls again, you may tell her that I am not at home. And, Hedda, when Mr. Widfield comes in, say I am at Mrs. MacAvelly’s — and will he please come for me.” She pushed the ivory button of the door across the hall.
Morgan was not there, but Mrs. MacAvelly was, and unaffectedly glad to see her. In that warm, fresh, restful room Stella’s sense of confused distress slipped from her. She took a low seat near her hostess, with a little sigh of relief.
“You always make me feel rested,” she said. “I’m hoodooed tonight. Everything goes wrong. And you somehow take out the puckers.”
“Have you been ‘interviewed’ against your will?”
“Oh, no, not so bad as that. But you know some people don’t rest one.”
“No, they certainly do not,” her friend agreed. “Now you just pretend I’m your grandmother, lay that smooth, nice head of yours on my knee — and ‘just set’ a while.”
“That’s good. I’ve done the ‘setting and thinking’ too long I guess — or not long enough.”
They were silent for a little. Mrs. MacAvelly’s fire was of coal. It glowed red and steady among the soft-hued tiles. Stella’s eyes wandered about the room. She noted anew the variety in chairs, and studied it a little.
“You’ve got chairs for the Big Bear and the Middle-sized Bear and the Wee-Wee Bear, haven’t you?”
“Well — people’s legs are happily constructed to reach from their bodies to the ground, but not always from their chairs to the ground. I have one friend now — a dear little woman, who is short anyway, and what height she has is all in the body part. She says that thing you’re on is the most comfortable seat she knows. And I have another friend — I always feel that he had a narrow escape from acra — aero — what is that giant disease?”
“Acromegaly?” her friend suggested.
“But his head’s far too good for a giant. Anyway he’s mostly legs, and he says that brown chair over there is the most comfortable seat he knows. I’m quite vain of my chairs.”
They chatted on in little pleasant spurts, and remained silent for long intervals, while occasional dashes of the driving rain outside made that red fire a precious thing.
Stella turned her wedding ring slowly on her finger — turned it around and moved it a little this way and that, as if it hurt her.
“I had a pleasant call on Mrs. Cushing, this afternoon,” said Mrs. MacAvelly. “We were speaking of the work they’re doing for the city babies now. Your cousin was quite interested.”
“She would be, of course. Alicia’s very kindhearted. And very pretty. Don’t you think so?”
“Extremely pretty. Fortunately some men like other types better.”
“Not many, I’m afraid,” said Stella, a faint note of sadness in the tone she tried to carry lightly. “Alicia’s very attr
active.”
Her friend touched her fine hair with light appreciative fingers. “I’m glad you are one of the sensible women,” she said. “Some I know would be foolishly jealous.”
“Jealous!” She spoke the word with gay scorn as if it was quite unthinkable.
“Yes, jealous — very foolishly. But you have no occasion to be, and sense enough to know it. I’ve known you two a good while, my dear, and if ever a husband really appreciated his wife, it’s yours.”
Stella’s eyes lit up. “Do you think so?” she asked quietly.
Mrs. MacAvelly laughed. “I know so. Little things he lets fall — the way he looks at you — his admiration for your intellect.”
“Oh — my intellect!” Stella spoke as if her intellect were a last year’s gown.
“Now don’t run down your intellect. A woman with brains wears better than any amount of mere beauty.”
“Wears a man out, I’m afraid.”
“It wears a woman out if she doesn’t use it. Now my dear Mrs. Widfield, I’ve a proposition to make. I really want you to be interested in a young protege of mine. It will do you good.”
“Another working girl fleeing from temptation?”
“No, it’s a man this time, with a touch of genius.”
“What kind, musical?”
“No. Literary. He’s writing a play.”
“Oh dear!” Stella was momentarily amused in spite of her preoccupation. “That’s no mark of genius, surely.”
They were quiet again for a few little moments, Stella dreaming, her sad eyes on the fire, till her friend said, “You don’t look happy, Mrs. Widfield.”
Then she rose to her feet swiftly, and looked down at the other woman, with new determination.
“If you’ll let me, I’ll talk. I’ll talk it out. There’s nobody else I could talk to — but you somehow make me feel safe, and vaguely comforted, like a big tree.”
Mrs. MacAvelly smiled. “You’ll be saying my bark is worse than my bite next! By all means talk it out. I’m a quiet person and truly interested.”
Stella hardly knew why she trusted this friend so completely. They had lived near each other for three years, which is a long time for New York neighbors. They had been friends, quietly intimate, for most of that time, and never had Stella known her to repeat any talk of others, any gossip, any personality. But she was not thinking of this now, only of the troubles in her heart, and the sense of some possible comfort here.
So she unburdened herself, more fully even than she at first intended, going back to her girlhood, touching on those vague young aspirations, those half-formed ambitions to do something, somehow in the world.
“I suppose other girls feel so — I don’t know. And I suppose it all goes away and turns to loving when that really comes. One grows to love a person so, so very much, when they are good, as Morgan is. After the babies came, I just loved him more. And now that they are gone — you see they are gone, Mrs. MacAvelly — gone for good, practically — why, there’s just nobody in the world but Morgan!”
“Well, there he is, isn’t he? He has nothing in the world but you, too.”
Stella laughed, a little bitter laugh.
“Oh, he has everything else, you see, men do; he has his business and his politics and his friends and all his clubs and — and everything. I know you’ll say I have my friends and clubs and things, too — and I have, of course — but I don’t care about them. I only care about Morgan.”
“Well?”
“Well! He doesn’t care about me as he used to! I’m losing him! I can feel it — see it — clearer all the time! Of course I’m not young anymore. I suppose that must make some difference, to a man.... He’s good to me. I don’t want you to think for a moment that he isn’t just as kind as a husband can be — but there’s a sort of strain. I can feel it. I believe he’s tired of me — and just doing his duty now!”
Her face was set and tragic. A strong, sweet, earnest face, with this deep gloom upon it as if life were over for good and all.
Mrs. MacAvelly watched her, silent, sympathetic, far too wise to set up hasty superficial denials against such real grief as this.
“You feel as if he did not ‘want’ you as he used to — as if it were a relief to him when you were not there? Just a weariness, a growing away? You don’t think it is anything else?” she asked.
“No, I don’t, not really. Of course there’s Alicia Cushing. She’s always in and out, and he does drop in there pretty often. She’s his cousin you know, and she’s always asking his advice about business matters in spite of her father-in-law being a lawyer. But I don’t honestly think he cares much for her — yet.”
“I wish I could help,” said Mrs. MacAvelly, gently.
“You can’t, nobody can. I’ve just got to keep on living. There’ll be the boys now and then — till they grow up, and the little outside things — but I want — Morgan!”
Her head was down on the other woman’s knees, now, and she cried quietly, with little shaking sobs now and then; cried herself into a more peaceful mood at last, and rose to go home.
“You have done me good,” she said. “I just had to have somebody to cry on — for once. I won’t do it again. Good night and thank you.”
After she had gone, Mrs. MacAvelly returned to her chair and sat quite still a while. Her quiet face showed no signs of concentration, except for the eyes, in which there grew and deepened a look of steady power.
They were clear, frank eyes, of a grayish hazel, eyes which faced you squarely and showed no reserve. Yet as one looked into their still depths, the soft-blended hues that made one think of a brook, a mountain brook, running level long enough to be still and show the color of its bed, there was an indefinable sense that the water might be deeper than it looked — it was so clear.
She was running over in her mind the position Mrs. Widfield had revealed to her, quite unnecessarily as it happened.
“I had to let her talk it out,” she mused. “That is always a relief. But bless me, it was no news. No — I don’t think it’s Alicia. That would be easy enough.” She smiled her gentle, tolerant smile. “Alicia’s a nice girl, too — lovely heroine for Locke or Bennett! But what is Stella going to do?”
She reached for the telephone on the table beside her. “Beverly 4268 — yes, please,” and soon got her friend, Miss Woodstone, of the Clam Street Settlement.
“Good evening, Mary — glad to hear your voice. Tell me — is that young Smith about the place tonight? Yes — I’ll wait.”
In a moment or two, a deeper voice answered her.
“Oh, Mr. Smith — could you come up here some night of this week — and bring your play?... Yes, I want you to read it, some of it at least — to a friend of mine — rather an influential man, and a woman, too. I think one or both of them could be of advantage to you.... I can’t say certainly — will let you know again.... You see I wanted to make sure of you before I asked them.... Oh no, not at all. Thank you. Good-bye.”
Then she got Stella on the phone — with apologies for her stupidity in not remembering to settle the date for that young playwright when she was there, and arranged it tentatively. “I want to make sure of Hamp Tillotson,” she explained.
Then with her best notepaper and a long-nosed stub pen she wrote an irresistible note inviting to dinner one of the most caustic critics of The New York Day.
CHAPTER 5
Mrs. Alicia Cushing was still slowly sipping her after-dinner coffee when Morgan Widfield entered. Her father-in-law, Colonel Charles R. Cushing, of the State Militia, had finished his long since, and was reading the evening paper, partly to himself and partly aloud.
“Have you followed this discussion, Alicia, about those crazy English women?” he had just asked, and Alicia, smiling sweetly both at him and at her cousin, replied, “I read some of it, Papa, and I saw you had a letter to the editor, yourself. Do read it to us. I’m sure Morgan will enjoy it. Coffee, Morgan?”
“No, thank you. Do g
o on, Colonel Cushing. I’ll smoke — if I may, Alicia?”
“By all means — you know where things are.”
Stella would have made a dozen errands, to open the humidor, to select a cigar, to bring the ashtray, the matches, the little tabouret at his side to put them on. Alicia never stirred. She was cozily curled among a heap of cushions. One silken foot was tucked under her, one hung daintily in its high-heeled shining slipper, one of those exquisite creations which are undeniably beautiful so long as you do not associate them with any attempt to stand or walk; further than that, imagination could not go, so far as running, for instance. Perhaps one ground for admiring these objects is precisely that they so preclude activity, suggesting peace — and helplessness. But as the arbitrary vaselike curves follow out and supplement the curves of a graceful foot, such a slipper is undeniably pleasant to look at, and Morgan looked at it.
Colonel Cushing was delighted to have his audience increased. He was extremely fond of Alicia, and Alicia’s views, in so far as she had any, fairly reflected his own; but Morgan was a man, a fellow being. He would undoubtedly feel the weight, the cogency of these arguments of his.
He cleared his throat. “It is only a little thing, just a few words. But one simply has to say something. With your permission—”
He read, with evident relish, some third of a column of well-rounded sentences, each and all of which sounded like a wilted echo of the similar but more violently expressed ideas of the past century.
Alicia evidently did not listen, but sat playing with the soft ears of the little dog who was trying to sleep on the sofa beside her. Still she was ready with an appreciative smile when he had finished.
“It’s good, Papa. What you say is so wise, and so — well, so reasonable — don’t you think so, Morgan?”
Now Morgan knew that the arguments of his host were palpably weak and unconvincing, but he agreed with the spirit of the effusion, and said so.
“What a memory you have for proverbs and old sayings,” he added. “I often wonder where you find them all.”
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 73
