Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  “Not so indelicate as you think, Father,” I said calmly, “when her sister is with her. We have to see our friends somewhere, and you don’t like them in the house.”

  Then he turned on me, of course; called me a meddler and a go-between and all manner of things, and then freed his mind to Ned most vigorously.

  Ned wasn’t a bit afraid of him. He was a big fellow, and I think he liked the excitement.

  “I don’t wish to make more trouble for your daughters,” he said, “or I would give you a man’s opinion of you as a domestic tyrant, but for their sakes I’ll wish you a good evening.”

  He vaulted the fence and was off in no time, and we had to take it all the rest of the evening.

  Peggy cried dreadfully in my arms that night. She was greatly touched by my saving her, as she called it.

  “I don’t wonder you feel so badly,” I said. “I sometimes think it’s enough to make a girl run away from home. Now if Ned only cared that way...”

  “He does!” Peggy said. “He does!” And she sat right up in bed. “Now, look here, Ben. I didn’t mean to tell you, but you’ve been so brave and stood between me and Father, and you can see now just how impossible it is to bear it any longer. I am going to run away. Ned does love me, and he says a girl has a right to leave a father like that, that he wonders I’ve stood it as long as I have. He told me to keep it an absolute secret, even from you — but he didn’t think you were sympathetic, that’s all. He won’t care.”

  “Of course I’m sympathetic,” I protested, and I was. I was awfully sorry for Peggy, but I didn’t think Ned was the right man for her.

  “Didn’t you think I cared, Peggy?” I said. “Why, I’ve been noticing how thin you were, and nervous. I thought sometimes lately you couldn’t stand it much longer.”

  “I’m not going to!” said Peggy. “Listen, Ben — hush!” We were whispering, of course. “I’m going away — with Ned — Tuesday night. Next Tuesday night!” This was Thursday.

  “Won’t Father catch you?” I suggested.

  “No, indeed. Ned is too smart for that! We are to go to New York and take a steamer. He’s got the tickets, and we’ll be gone before Father knows. We’re going to Europe! Think of it! And see Venice and Florence and Rome — and Paris! Oh, Ben, I wish you were going too!” (I knew she didn’t really love him.)

  “Oh, that’s great!” I said. “But when do you get married?”

  “On the steamer. Ned has a friend who sails on the same boat — a minister, a college friend of his. He’s young, but that’s no matter. We take the night train from here and go to a hotel in New York, as brother and sister, you know, and then take the steamer in the morning. See? Here’s my engagement ring!” She had it on a ribbon around her neck. The ring was genuine, at any rate.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” I asked.

  “No — not much. I was at first and was very careful. But Ned was very nice about it. He said I was quite right to take every precaution, but he was willing to meet all my doubts. He told me all about the minister and showed me his name in the list of ‘about to sail,’ and he’s shown me our tickets.”

  “Did you ask him about the license?” I inquired.

  “License? What license? No, I didn’t. What do you mean, Ben?”

  “Oh, perhaps it’s different on steamers,” I answered, “but mostly you have to have a license to be married.”

  Peggy had read a good many books, too, but although people read enough, they never seem to profit by it. I’d read books enough about runaway marriages, and I knew the difference between a real wild, desperate, honest lover and a Designing Wretch. This seemed to me to be the wretch kind, but I knew I mustn’t make any mistakes now.

  “How about Mother?” I asked.

  Then Peggy said how it broke her heart to leave Mother, but Mother didn’t need her. That is, she couldn’t do her any good as she was, but that he’d said when they came back she’d be a married woman of independent position (Peggy held her head quite high at that), and that she could offer her mother a home to rest in. If I hadn’t been so sorry for Peggy — and so fond of her — I should have been pretty angry with her. To be so easy! To believe everything this man said to her — everything — and never use her brains.

  “Have you said goodbye to Jimmie Cushman, Peggy?”

  She tossed that pretty head a little and set her lips closer. “No, nor do I intend to. He... he wouldn’t come and see me any more just because Father told him not to. He doesn’t care anything for me — nor I for him. I guess he’ll see that when I’m gone!”

  Mr. Cushman was a theological student and very devoted to Peggy. I had thought at one time that she cared more for him than for anyone, and I wasn’t wholly sure to the contrary now.

  “Do you... love Ned Wallace, Peggy?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said promptly. “Do you think I’d marry him if I didn’t? He’s handsome and rich and of a good family, and we have a full understanding. He says I shall have some money settled on me to do as I like with, and have my own way in everything.”

  Now I knew my sister pretty well, and she never was sordid. If she loved anybody it didn’t matter how poor they were.

  Her best friend was the poorest girl in school, couldn’t dress even as well as we did — and we never had much but made-overs.

  Now here was a foe worthy of my steel. To think of having a romance like that going on right in the family! I didn’t intend to let it go far, of course, but it was fun to have it started.

  I felt just as sure as could be that he was planning a mock marriage, and then he would desert Peggy in a foreign land, maybe, and he might say she had died over there. He might even kill her! But I felt that was letting my imagination go too far. Ned Wallace did not look as if he would ever kill anybody. As I thought of his good-natured, handsome face, I was willing to admit that perhaps after all he did mean to marry her, but even at that I was determined to interfere.

  I knew I mustn’t tell Mother, of course. She had quite enough to worry her, and as to Father, if he knew, he might even turn dear Peggy out of doors — renounce her — the way they do. He couldn’t disinherit her, because he had nothing for her to inherit, but he might say: “You are no longer a child of mine!”

  That always puzzled my logical mind. You can’t alter a fact by just saying so, surely. Of course if it’s a spouse, you can divorce them, and they are no longer a husband or wife of yours, but your child is your child whether you like it or not. I suppose that it is a mere figure of speech. If it could be a fact I shouldn’t mind having Father say it to me.

  I dare say, if people ever discover this, and read it, they will think I am an Unnatural Daughter — to be so enraged with my own father. He may be a good citizen and all that, but all I know of him is what I see at home, and that is bad — much worse than I have been able to express. He’s so... hateful, Father is. He seems to like to make you feel uncomfortable. If you do anything you shouldn’t, or make a mistake, he never lets you forget it. Peggy was so good as a child, he never could find fault with her much, but now that the boys were around her so he treated her as if she were bad, absolutely.

  I didn’t mind him so much, personally. He rather approved of my efficiency, and I took care not to thwart him — except in necessary things, like that visit to Grandpa’s. That was sort of covered up by Mother’s illness, and anyhow it was accomplished. It was a sort of triumph, not an error, so he never referred to it much.

  But what I could not bear was his treatment of Mother. She got paler and thinner and more silent; she was irritable, too — used to provoke him even — quite unnecessarily — and then say just the wrong thing. And he’d rasp and rasp with that caustic tongue of his. It was just awful.

  And now here was my only sister on the verge of a fatal elopement, with only me to stop her, and that without telling. She mustn’t go, that’s all. If she so much as started, it would get about, and people would say things. They’d be seen on the cars together, of cour
se.

  How could I work it? If I could only change her mind so that she’d give it up. I tried this, tried it all sorts of ways, and I was perfectly astonished to see how determined Peggy was. All these years Father had thwarted her and repressed her and forbidden her, and now she had simply focused all her energies on getting away. Nothing I could say altered her determination.

  Ned kept in touch with her — throwing notes in at her window at night. I saw that much. The dear girl even showed me some of his letters, and I didn’t blame her for liking them. Such compliments! Such tender consideration! Such perfectly beautiful plans for what they’d do in Europe.

  I never did such planning in my life, and the time was short, too. I didn’t want anybody to know that my sister was so foolish.

  In the novels one way they thwart a Villain like Ned is to bring up a Former Victim and that quite convinces the Future Victim, and she casts him off with scorn. But I didn’t know any of Ned’s former victims, and if I had — well it didn’t seem exactly nice, somehow.

  Then I thought of appealing to his better nature. Sometimes in the books they do that. But then suppose he really meant to marry her. He was of age, and Peggy was, too, as far as marrying goes — just eighteen. I should think if a young woman knew enough to marry she knew enough to take care of money, and vice versa, but that’s the way it is. They were both free agents. Besides I wasn’t at all sure that Ned had any better nature. No use telling — no use appealing — no victims in sight. And the time they had set for eloping was coming nearer and nearer.

  He used to come, very late indeed, prowling along that alley, and get close to the house, and she’d show a very faint light in her window, and he’d throw in his notes. Then she’d slip out and meet him in the arbor down there. I know because I watched. I was so deadly afraid he’d carry her off prematurely.

  Finally I devised this plan. Peggy and I don’t look alike a bit, but we’re about the same size, and our voices are not very different. I began to poison her mind a little, very cautiously, about his habits. Of course she knew his reputation, only she wouldn’t believe it. I don’t think Peggy knew what being “fast” meant. Of course she loved to talk about him, and I would turn the conversation on the possibilities of his having done this and that, in a sort of extenuating way, and quote from stories and poems. She defended him, of course, enjoyed doing it. She said he told her that he had led a wild life, that he had been horribly lonely and that no one had ever understood his real nature until he met her, that now he knew he had never loved before, and so on. It seemed very convincing to her, and if I even hinted that he had done anything very bad she would flush up and be angry — as angry as you can when you mustn’t speak louder than a whisper.

  But I had read that if people are even a little in love they are jealous, or that you can make them jealous, and I went to work in the most insidious way. Not like that horrid Iago, but more delicately, until I got her to show real feeling and say, “Nonsense! Of course when a man really loves a woman he would never look at another one. If he did, why that would end it.” She insisted that Ned never would, now.

  Then I determined to make a sacrifice for my sister’s sake.

  I suggested to her that ours was not the only garden on that lane, or the only summerhouse, that Lou Masters’ arbor was as shady as ours, and that I was quite sure I had seen a young woman in it more than once the very nights that Ned came. (I had. I went in and out of it three times, to be accurate.)

  Of course I don’t know, but I think she said something to him, for she told me that he had laughed at her for being jealous, and vowed that there absolutely were no others — for him.

  Then when the time was almost up I found that she’d sent him word to meet her at eleven-thirty. It was a very dark night, fortunately. I went to bed early. She came up and kissed me and tucked me in, said I had been such a comfort to her, and how she hated to leave me, and that she hoped I would get to know Ned by and by and see how good he was. I was very sober. I held her tight and said that even if things went wrong she would always have me to come back to, that if he was just true to her, that was the main thing.

  She started downstairs in good season, so as not to creak, and before she had reached the back door I had dropped down the knotted rope I’d hung from my window, with a long coat and slippers on, and a scarf over my head the way she wore it, and flew down to the alley. Ned was coming along very softly, but before he got to our place I called him softly from the Masters’ arbor — called him the name I’d heard Peggy use.

  “Come in here,” I said, “it’s safer.” It was a safer arbor — ours was very rickety.

  He came, of course. It was close to our place, and made no difference to him.

  By the time Peggy got down there he had his arms around me, and I was snuggling up to him. It was very disagreeable, and a good deal dangerous, but I had made up my mind to it.

  When I saw Peggy standing there, looking petrified and watching us like a hawk, I said quite softly: “Oh, Ned, are you sure? Sure that there isn’t anybody else? I heard you were attentive — to Maud Beverly.” I had. He was keeping right on being attentive to lots of others, and told Peggy that it was a “blind.”

  “You foolish girl,” he said. (I will say this for Ned Wallace, he has a lovely voice — he’s a sort of Siren, I guess — a he-Siren.) “I don’t care a bit for her. You are the only woman in the world that I love.”

  That was enough for Peggy. She just turned away, as still as a mouse, and was gone. So was I, in another minute. I said I had to, and just ducked and ran. How I did run. Poor Peggy was crying too hard to go fast. I was snug in bed before she got upstairs.

  She came straight to me. Poor dear, she was feeling terribly.

  “Oh, Ben! You were right!” she said. “He’s down there with Lou Masters. I saw him with my own eyes!”

  She was too angry to cry now; the more she thought of it the angrier she got. What he threw into her window that night didn’t count; she thought he was fooling her, and the next day she sent back everything he’d ever sent her and refused to see him again.

  Of course in time they might have come to an understanding, but other things happened before that.

  They didn’t elope anyhow.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I drew a long breath after receiving Peggy that night, but I knew well enough it was only a question of time before she would do something just as foolish — maybe worse.

  That very night while I hugged her and comforted her I was thinking, thinking hard. After she sobbed herself to sleep I lay there staring at the white places on the ceiling the street lights made, all frescoed with moving leaf shadows, and planning earnestly.

  I fell asleep myself before getting anything worth calling an idea, but next day I simply gave my mind to it. Something had to be done.

  Here was Peggy, likely to have her whole life ruined for lack of pleasant home conditions. Here was Mother. Dear, patient little Mother, who hadn’t a fault unless it was lack of judgment. And, yes, she was a little tiresome sometimes, but who could wonder, worn out as she was. Here was Mother being killed by inches — anybody could see that. And here was Father getting more unbearable every day, in his temper, in his habits, in his looks and manners and everything. Anybody could see that too.

  And nobody to do anything but me.

  If it had been merely a question of putting up with Father, I could have done that readily enough. One poor parent is not unusual. Some children have two. But it was a question of which I preferred to keep, because Mother was giving out completely.

  Now between a good mother and a poor father it is not hard to choose; both preference and duty were clear, and I decided promptly.

  Before that, when I was younger, I had tried to reform him, as I think I’ve written before, but I guess I wasn’t old enough — or he was too old. Anyway it didn’t seem to work; and things just went from bad to worse. Mother’s health was thoroughly broken down, and after the long illness she
had that summer and the way he behaved to her then, I finally came to a decision. Father must go.

  I thought it out clearly over and over. There were the two of them, one dying by inches before my eyes, the other killing her by inches — and nobody doing anything. Of course some of Mother’s friends suspected a good deal of it, but I’ve noticed there are two little conventions which protect a man in a case like this. In the first place, as to the insiders, the wife must never complain of her husband — that is disloyal — as if he were a king and she were a subject. That shuts her up. In the second place, as to the outsiders, you mustn’t interfere between a husband and wife — goodness knows why! Personally I think that if people said, “Mrs. Green, you are driving your husband to drink with that tongue of yours,” or “Mr. Brown, you are wearing your wife into the grave by your disagreeableness,” it might do some good. But most people seem to swear by those conventions, and nobody does anything.

  So I drew a long breath and set my teeth hard. Father Must Go! I said it over until I felt like Cato about Carthage.

  It would take time and care to accomplish this, but it was not beyond the bounds of possibility — few things are if you really give your mind to them, and there seemed to be no other way to save Mother.

  It has taken me a long time to get a fair estimate of Father, and see how hopeless things were. But as I grew older and Mother grew weaker, she told me more. Not to complain of him — she never would do that — but I could see where the problem lay easily enough.

  She told me about her girlhood in a quiet Pennsylvania town. They had always been comfortable and happy. She was scarcely older than Peggy when Father first appeared there, full of some invention that was going to revolutionize the coal industry, I think it was. Mother fell desperately in love with him, girl-fashion, and would marry him, though Grandpa was much displeased. Father was something of an inventor and something of a promoter, but never anything that succeeded. He had a thousand plans for making money, and merely managed to spend it. He spent all he earned, which never was much, and what Mother had, which wasn’t much either. Grandpa Chesterton helped him a while, but nothing ever came of it, and finally he grew angry and would not let him have any more. He was willing we should all live with him, for Mother and our sakes. But Father acted so that it became impossible.