Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Stella worked fast and hard. Strong emotion, well-restrained, is a good stimulant. In the back of her mind all these months was an aching desire for Morgan’s approval, for his appreciation of her work. She wanted him to like it, to enjoy it. It was pleasant to have other people pleased, her friends, her boisterously proud boys, who called her stories “bully,” and showed them to their much impressed schoolmates; she frankly enjoyed the praises of the editors, the visible effect on the general reader, and the cautious commendation of Mr. Tillotson was very precious to her. Even Smith’s grudging “not bad stuff — for a beginner” gave her pleasure. But the one thing she absolutely hungered for — almost as much as she had once hungered to be called “my little girl” — was to have Morgan really impressed by her work — and say so.

  She had found him once reading something of hers when he did not know she had come in, and had stepped back, watching, eagerly, delightedly. If he would pause, and read a bit of it over — if he would look back — if he would turn at the end and reread any of it! But when he laid the magazine down, it was with a little sigh of impatience, and he had instantly taken up the newspaper as if to take out the taste of her work.

  She had not asked him how he liked it.

  Besides this inner loneliness she felt now increasingly uneasy about Alicia. At first she had seen with joy how her own awakened interest had freshened her beauty again, given her life and sparkle, and had hoped before it was too late to regain the ground lost during those years of too much asking. But now doubts had overwhelmed her rising confidence, until she felt at last that her work was not a bridge to bring her husband back to her, but only a life preserver to keep her up, alone.

  All this was stirring uneasily within her, demanding recognition, but she refused it absolutely and focused all her growing power of thought on the work before her. The proofs were done, and well done, before dinner, and that lonely meal took very little time.

  “I can work better if I don’t eat,” she thought. “I’ll have something afterward.” And she took only a little soup and bread, and a cup of coffee, rigidly keeping her attention on the pages of her nearly finished manuscript instead of on Morgan’s chair.

  Then she settled determinedly back to the work and found herself able to cut off everything else, taking a certain grim pleasure in that power.

  “It’s no use my ‘feeling’ anything,” she told herself. “If he does not care for Alicia it would be all wasted. If he does — well, I shall need my work!” And she did it.

  It took much less time than she had allowed, to her surprise. “That’s saving the dinner hour,” she thought, as the two big envelopes went flying down the chute, and came back to find the soft-belled clock chiming only the half hour after eight.

  The little strain of forced effort was over. She felt tired and unstrung. Those denied thoughts and feelings were knocking very hard now. Half past eight — the whole evening before her to not think in. She was appalled.

  “Mr. Tillotson,” announced Hedda.

  Stella rose to meet him with such evident joy as brought a flash into his quiet eyes. She held out both hands to him and he held them a moment.

  “Oh, how good of you to come!” she said. “How did you know I wanted you?”

  “I have never dared to suppose so,” he answered, “ — before.” And the second’s pause made the word a shade impressive.

  But he sat down quietly with his usual dry smile and added, quite as caustically as ever: “Neither am I overflattered. It is painfully evident that you only wanted me because you had nobody else.”

  As this was exactly the fact, and seemed not only rude, but a betrayal of her inmost feelings, Stella flushed and turned away.

  “You mustn’t think that,” she said constrainedly. “It’s just that I got through some work — too soon.”

  He noted the little flush, the shade of constraint.

  “That is not exactly illuminating,” he urged.

  If ever in his life he had found a woman alone and lonely — it was this one. And if ever in his life he had longed to comfort a woman who was lonely — it was this one.

  But he neither looked nor said it.

  “Morgan still wearing out good leather in the pursuit of better?” he inquired.

  “Oh, no,” she answered with elaborate frankness. “He’s gone to the theater with Alicia, instead of me. Isn’t that cause for grief? You see I had a hurry call from two editors this afternoon, and just had to finish some stuff — and he had tickets for this evening. It was too bad — but of course we didn’t want to waste the tickets.”

  “Not in these days of managerial syndicates, assuredly. But how, then, do I find you on flowery beds of ease, as it were? Where is this work, my all-too-popular young author?”

  “It’s done — all done and gone down that glass hole in the hall.”

  “You must have developed the speed of a night editor. I am becoming more and more jealous,” he protested.

  But she explained hastily that it was not so much speed on her part as the saving of a whole hour of dinnertime — instantly regretting the admission.

  “No dinner! And did your husband stand for that?”

  Then she was forced to explain further, going almost beyond the limits of her rigid truthfulness, showing that it was a real advantage to her to have Morgan “off her hands” when she was driven like that.

  “Alicia’s such a dear,” she added with cheerful heartiness. “She and Morgan have been more like brother and sister than cousins, always. They grew up together, you see.”

  He made no comment, and she went on, flattering herself that her manner was absolutely disarming.

  “He likes the Colonel too, even with all his absurd pose about women. I think it shows Alicia’s sweetness that her father-in-law should be so fond of her, and she so content to make a home for him.”

  “I should think she would have made another for herself long since,” he suggested candidly. “She is certainly a very attractive woman. But quite aside from all these husbands and cousins and fathers-in-law, the fact most pressing on my mind is that you have had no dinner!”

  “I did eat some,” she protested.

  “Some what?”

  “Some soup — and a piece of bread — and some coffee. It doesn’t matter, really. What is one dinner?”

  “One dinner is a good deal to one Little Mary,” he insisted. “Now my suggestion is that you spend ten minutes putting on your bonnet and that you and I go forth to a wild exciting cabaret, and refresh ourselves with wine, woman and song.”

  “Haven’t you dined either?”

  “Oh yes, to a certain extent. But man is an insatiate animal and a restaurant meal more or less does not matter so much.”

  She regarded him with an appreciative smile.

  “How do you manage to conceal — from most people — the kindest heart in the world under that hypercritical manner of yours?”

  “That is an evasive answer,” he promptly replied. “You know the tale of how the Englishman asked the American, ‘Why do you Americans always answer one question with another?’ and our compatriot answered, ‘Do we?’ Your ten minutes are shrinking.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s better,” she said. “If you really have the remnants of an appetite — and as I plead guilty to the rudiments of one — we’ll have a chafing-dish supper all to ourselves.”

  “Admirable! But my suggestion is that you let your wholly excellent cook do the chafing.”

  “You rude thing! My wholly excellent cook and coldly superior maid have both had special leave of absence — it was a good opportunity for them, you see, with so few dinner dishes — so you’ll have to put up with my chafing.”

  He tried to persuade her that she’d much better come out with him, but Stella had vague objections to being taken out in that way by anyone but her husband. Also, though she did not frankly face the fact, she was unwilling to have the gentlemanly colored boy in the hall see Mr. Widfield going out with
his cousin and Mrs. Widfield promptly following suit with a friend.

  “You’ll have to take the risk here,” she insisted. “I don’t feel like going out.”

  “All right — I’ll take it!” He said it with a tone of defiance, and added in a half-earnest voice, “but you’ll be sorry if it doesn’t agree with me!”

  She was used to his quips and turns, his wide range of joking, from the biting wit of his work on The Day to his crackling brightness in common conversation. She used that phrase to him one day, meaning it as a sincere compliment, but he had answered: “See Ecclesiastes VII, sixth.” And when she had seen she apologized.

  “You’ll have to help,” she told him gaily. “Come on — we’ll see what is in the refrigerator. The French have their pot-au-feu, but we have our box-of-ice.”

  He bent his long legs and they both peered into the cool porcelain crypt.

  “Cold chicken — cream — and, I do believe — mushrooms!” She was quite triumphant. “And there’s lettuce if you want it.” Then a further survey of resources was made. “Here’s cake — good cake — and fruit, too. We’ll have a real good supper.”

  It was good, all the better for having to prepare it themselves. She begirt him with a large apron, gave him a tray to carry, showed him where things were. They set everything together on the dining room table, and she creamed the chicken, with grave intent eyes and chary tastings.

  For a man with all the hereditary instincts of the home, who had lived without a home ever since the unfortunate but mercifully brief marriage in his rather quixotic boyhood, the intimate domesticity of all this was more compellingly attractive than all that New York had shown him in twenty years.

  What is called the “brute in man” may be reached by physical beauty, or even, lacking beauty, by the “come hither in the eye.” On what is also popularly known as the “higher plane” he may be appealed to by grace, cleverness, wit, all manner of “accomplishments,” not to say virtues; but between these upper and nether fields is a range of domestic attractions with an appeal deepened by centuries of association.

  This was not the coolly graceful hostess of the drawing room, or candled dinner table, with her facile wit, her pleasant cordiality; it was not the fledgling author, of whose young flights he was in secret inordinately proud. This was a housewife whom he had never seen, setting the table, preparing the food, in gay intimacy — for him.

  Somehow, in this atmosphere he began to notice details of soft color, little tricks of the hand, a quaint severity of compressed lips as she stirred and waited till the precise moment to take off the steaming dish. The age-old “way to a man’s heart” is not merely gastric — it is along a blended network of little paths, all smoothly worn by long, long use.

  Whatever personal attraction might have stirred within him before had been rigidly defined as “friendship,” and “professional interest.” If ever he had told himself he was playing with fire, he had also rested in the security that he was the only one to get burnt — and the game was worth the candle. But tonight he had felt for the first time a hint of loneliness and appeal in her, and it beat about within him almost beyond his power of repression.

  In spite of which inner tumult he sat there by her — she had not given him Morgan’s seat, but one cosily near, with their picnic array spread in a convenient semicircle before them — and showed practical appreciation of her skill so far as he was able.

  “I withdraw my cruel remarks as to your cook,” he told her solemnly. “She is no longer wholly excellent to my mind, but a nice understudy, tolerated in order that you may have time for higher things — if indeed there be such!”

  She smiled on him without reserve.

  “I am so glad you came!” she told him. “If you hadn’t I should never have known enough to eat — should have just sat there and grizzled. Now you’ve made me feel all right again.”

  And this, as far as it went, was true. There was a region far within her heart where all was not right, but in his always pleasant companionship she had become able to get that door shut tight again.

  “No, indeed—” for he was now proposing to wash the dishes.

  “The Wholly Excellent will do that without a murmur. We’ll leave things right here — all but the soiled ones, and shut the curtain.”

  So they had further merry traffic with plates and dishes, and settled back at last in the big easy chairs, Stella looking forward with enjoyment to a “real good talk,” Hamp Tillotson facing with reckless delight an evening he knew he should be wiser to flee from.

  A preliminary pause, pleasant to both for its outer peace, and to him for its prickling inner hint of danger, was broken by the doorbell.

  “Dear me — who’s that?” she said with some annoyance. “And the girls out —— —”

  “Let ’em ring,” he suggested mischievously. “They’ll think you’re all out.” But she had gone already, spurred by a flicker of her old New York fear — that something had happened to Morgan.

  She was not wholly pleased to find Mrs. MacAvelly and Mr. Smith, but her feeling was an Arab hospitality compared to that of Mr. Tillotson.

  “So glad to find you,” Mrs. MacAvelly told her. “I wouldn’t have come in so late, Stella, but I saw Mr. Widfield on his way out, and thought it was a good chance for my friend here. Mr. Widfield is not much interested in drama in the making, we all know.”

  Neither was Mr. Tillotson that night. Nevertheless he grimly felt that he ought to be thankful — that by this interposition he had probably been saved two friends and had lost nothing but a dangerous opportunity. In which frame he took himself away as soon as he decently could, urging his ever-present work in extenuation.

  Mr. Smith, who had invited himself to dinner with Mrs. MacAvelly and had talked the two other guests out of the house before ten, was glad of three hearers for the scene he had brought with him. He rather resented Mr. Tillotson’s departure, but work, especially literary work, was fair excuse for any man. As for the time, ten o’ clock was but the dawn of the evening to him, and as for any possibility that Mrs. Widfield might have preferred her earlier company to his, he neither thought of it nor would have cared if he had.

  “You’ve upset this thing so many times already,” he told them both, “that I mean to get a sidelight on it before I go farther. May I smoke?”

  This was great progress in his study of the manners of the despised bourgeoisie, a concession which he made in a surly, protesting tone, and always accompanied by the lighting of his cigarette.

  “Certainly,” said Stella gravely, remembering how Morgan disliked his tobacco, and how he was sure to stay too long for her to air the room.

  “I have been obliged to put this away for some months,” he explained. “There has been miserable translating to do — with the publishers snapping at my heels.” To Mr. Smith any work which was not his own preferred writing was not only an evil but an insult. His attitude toward those who employed him was far from grateful or even patient. Yet there were not only his own meager wants to be met, but those of an old mother and a struggling family of sisters who had cheerfully starved themselves so that the brilliant boy might be educated. So he did work, hard and well, neglecting the real children of his brain as might some want-driven wet nurse.

  “You will remember the first act,” he said, and regardless of their assent he proceeded to review it at some length and then plunged into an introduction to his second.

  In this a young Russian, Oscar Panin, employed as secretary by Mr. Williams, a rich Chicagoan, had fallen in love with Mrs. Williams.

  “It is evening,” the author explained. “The husband was called by a telegram, but has ordered the secretary to wait. ‘I shall be back,’ he tells him, ‘at eleven.’ Panin is working at his typewriter. Then comes in the woman.” He read with gestures.

  “Elaine: ‘Is not my husband here?’

  “Panin: ‘He was here. He will be here again at eleven.’

  “E. (glancing at the cloc
k): ‘At eleven.’

  “P.: ‘Yes — and it is only nine now. We have two beautiful hours.’

  “E.: ‘You will have your beautiful hours all to yourself, Mr. Panin. I am going out.’

  “P. (rising): ‘No — you are not going out. You are going to stay here — with me!’

  “E.: ‘You seem very sure!’

  “P.: ‘I am sure. I know you are strong and proud, but love is stronger than your strength — even stronger than your pride.’ (He seizes her hands. She cannot resist him. She weakens, trembles.)

  “‘But my husband trusts me. He has never dreamed that I could care for anyone else.’

  “P.: ‘Let him dream on. You are awake at last — you know that you love me.’

  ‘I admit it. I love you.’ (She throws herself into his arms.)”

  At this point Mrs. Widfield interrupted, being quite used to the necessity with Mr. Smith. “Not so fast,” she said. “I remember Elaine Williams. You know I told you in the first act that you had made her too — tropical. This is an American woman.”

  “What of that?” he demanded. “An American woman is a woman, isn’t she?”

  “Some of our American critics seem to think not. But anyhow — you are showing the influence of this hot-blooded young foreigner, how he has been slowly breaking down the principles of an American wife, and I say she would not collapse like that — would she, Mrs. MacAvelly?”

  Mrs. MacAvelly agreed with her, and asked quietly if she would excuse her if she slipped away presently — that she was very tired. Stella hardly heard her, but nodded, for Smith was off again.

  “Women are women the world over, and when they love, they love! You must remember that these two have been long together — often alone together. This is the moment of culmination.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. That is all right. I admit that she loves him. I don’t see why she should — but she does. Therefore she would take thought for the morrow, and plan for a respectable divorce — and how to marry him!”