Two things he did not long for, though they seemed more endurable as he neared them — his store and the cramped quarters of his home. He wondered if she had sold it, and where they should live.
She met him at the station with a neat electric brougham. ‘Ours!’ she said. In its seclusion they sat close and held one another so tightly that it hurt.
‘Oh, my dear, my dear!’ she breathed occasionally. And then he would kiss her again.
How young she looked! How pretty she looked! How cheery and how — smooth! She seemed some way sweeter, less peremptory.
‘I’ve got a surprise for you, John — a big one!’
‘I’m not surprised at anything you do, my darling,’ he protested. But he was.
The wide grounds, the curving driveway, the tall trees, the glowing banks of flowers, they all surprised him. Then the widewinged, handsome house, its hospitable hall with the open fire, the big parlors, the dining-room all rich with panelled wood, the pantry and kitchen and laundry — all on one side.
She took him across the hall again, and through a little passage, double-doored. ‘The library,’ she said. Back of its shelf-lined calm a smaller room. ‘Your study, dear!’ A little iron stair ran upward. She led him to the floor above. ‘Your bedroom, darling.’ A roomy bathroom and big closets, with another little passage. ‘And this is mine.’
He looked about and caught his breath a little.
‘You’ve done all this,’ he said, ‘while I was just playing!’
‘While you were beginning your real work, dear heart — the work you’re going to carry on. While you were making the whole town proud of you — yes, the whole country, if they knew enough. And your wife! Why, John!’ she held him off and looked at him with wet, shining eyes, ‘John, darling, I never appreciated you before. To think of the man you are burying yourself in that old store — just for our sakes! You built the business, John, honest and strong; I’ve followed your steps. Now you shall really work at what you love — and so will I!
‘Surely it’s a woman’s business to make the home! We ought to have thirty years yet to love each other in!
‘This is Our House, John!’
HER BEAUTY
AMARYLLIS was her name.
She used bitterly to reflect, chin on hands, eyes staring gloomily into the ill-natured little mirror — a dull, green-tinted, worse than truthful mirror — that her name was the only beautiful thing about her.
Amaryllis Delong! Some remote Huguenot refugee ancestor put that ‘de’ into this American family; and an immediate one, her mother, in fact, had insisted on calling her Amaryllis, in the face of the whole town.
A dull face that town had, green-tinted like the old looking-glass, brown and gray of fence and house, though prosperous enough, and contented enough, for the most part.
Not so Amaryllis. She was ‘congenitally discontented’ her school teacher said — the one that came from Wellesley. She was ‘rebellious against Providence’ her minister said. She was ‘a hard child to bring up’ her mother said. She was the most miserable girl alive, she said to herself, lowering into her little glass, which lowered back at her.
It was no use. She had tried every arrangement of that mirror, every angle, every sort of light, from the pink dawn to the pale moon radiance, with two candles and a kerosene lamp as special experiment. She had arranged her hair in every way she knew how; she had tried every costume and combination of costumes she possessed, and as much lack of costume as her conscience permitted — and it was no use. Never once could she bring into that mirror the thing she longed for — beauty.
‘Amaryllis is dreadful fond of pretty things,’ her mother said discerningly. ‘It’s a pity she’s so plain!’
It was a pity. It grieved her childhood, darkened her girlhood, and now it had crushed and ruined her womanhood.
Because her name was Amaryllis, probably, she had attracted the attention of Weldon Thomas for a little while — the only time of soul-stirring happiness she had ever known. He had asked to be introduced to Miss Amaryllis Delong on the wide foot-worn steps of the First Church after prayer meeting; had talked with her there a moment; had walked home with her; had asked if he might call.
That was all in an evening, a summer evening, when lights were soft and flickering among leaf shadows, and the young face flushing and smiling under the wide hat, had at least the charm of mystery. She must have pleased him then, for he had come to see her once or twice, and the close-blinded parlor, the shaded lamp, the girl’s bright, wistful pleasure and happy talk still seemed to hold. Then he asked her to a picnic, and there, alas, she met not only the full daylight, but competition. Among other girls, girls who were round and rosy, soft, alluring and dressed with prompt submission to the prevailing style, Amaryllis was never seen to advantage.
After that he went away on some visit or vacation. After that he only bowed or spoke briefly as they met. After that again he went with Bessy Sharpless and Myra Hall — and now it was all over. He had married Myra.
Myra was undeniably handsome. No one denied it, least of all beauty-worshipping Amaryllis. Myra was smooth and plump; Myra had bright hair that fluffed and curled and blew about her face bewitchingly; Myra had white, regular, shiny teeth, and a round little chin, dimpled hands, small feet in smaller shoes whose high heels captivated the eye — most eyes, that is. And Weldon, who loved beauty almost as well as Amaryllis, who even wrote verses about it, which were printed in The Plainville Watchman, was carried off his feet with a rush. Besides, Myra had practically all the unattached men of the little town at those dapper little feet of hers, and rivalry has charms.
The hope of love died in the heart of Amaryllis, died and was buried under a heavy weight of reticence, a quiet but effective monument of dumb pride.
But the love of beauty did not die. She decided, away out there in middle-western Plainville, to search for beauty and to find it. The only avenues then open to her were books, the books in the little public library, in the minister’s library, in the traveling libraries of the Woman’s Club. But ‘love will find out a way,’ more than one kind of love; a girl of eighteen, with a strong character and a heavy disappointment, can do a great deal.
With all the resignation of a nun, she abandoned the thought of happiness, and determined on a life of devotion to her heart’s idol, beauty. For right appreciation of this education was required. She determined to go to college. She went to college forthwith, her father rather approving.
‘She’ll have to teach, I expect,’ he said. ‘Her face is not her fortune, sure.’ And he worked hard to help her.
The girl was proud, and intended to help herself. She took a summer course in dressmaking and worked her way through the last years by helping the girls with their wardrobes.
Teaching was no part of her ambition. When college was over she took a position in a good dressmaking establishment and gained experience if not money. Then she got up a co-operative affair with three other girls, gained more experience, and more money.
In ten years’ time Amaryllis was recognized by all Plainville, when they saw her, as an old maid. Even her parents admitted it.
‘She’s doin’ real well, Amaryllis is,’ her mother boasted. ‘She’s sent back to her father all it cost him to start her in college, and pretty nearly clothes me, let alone supportin’ herself.’
The clothes of Mrs Delong had indeed waxed in elegance and beauty till her best friends, in the confidence of private friendship, whispered that she was ‘a little too dressy.’
In Plainville only young girls, on special occasions, were admired for being ‘dressy.’ For other persons and seasons any noticeable beauty of apparel was condemned as inappropriate, also as ‘conspicuous.’ Yet these same people would gladly surround their homes with Canna Indicus and Golden Glow; yes, and with Poinsettias if they would have grown there.
On an ocean steamer a keen young face looked out from hood and rugs and watched the flying, interminable waves with eager eyes. A
maryllis had ‘done’ better than her parents knew. The dressmaking business, rightly handled, is a gold mine. With garments well made and effective, with a ten per cent, discount for cash and prepayment for all materials required, she had lost no sleep nor cash income from unpaid bills, and her bank account had grown with her reputation. Now she could leave her forewoman, as a sort of partner, in charge of the business, and go to represent the Parisian end.
She knew the language; she had been there often on buying and observing trips, but this time she was to live there, and, at last, to study art. There was no misguided ambition to be a painter. She was no painter, no daughtsman, no artist really, except in the negative sense of appreciation and delight; one may study music without being a musician, surely.
Her trained eye, her business experience, enabled her to send to the home shop its share of Parisian novelties and triumphs, and this required small part of Amaryllis’ time. Her real purpose was like that of some rapt ‘Bather,’ the laying aside of unneeded cumbering things, the stepping into a wide, warm, shimmering sea.
From year to year her business steadied and grew, not a great business, but a small, solid, well-established one, with its full time, its regular patrons, and its waiting list of transient customers. She was able to travel, to study to her heart’s content, to meet people, to hear lectures, to read books, to see pictures, to attend plays, to feed her soul with knowledge, and to enjoy as far as it exists in the modem world, the beauty she desired.
On one of her ocean voyages she saw at the captain’s table a face that seemed familiar. A woman’s face it was, large, overblown, like a La France rose a day too old; a woman’s form, strenuously conventionalized by the last violence of corsets. It was Myra Hall — that was; Myra Thomas now, of course, and Amaryllis watched her with a strange sinking of the heart. Where was Weldon? Was he — could he be — no, Myra was not in black.
She spoke to her, and the stout matron was unfeignedly glad to see her.
‘Why, Amaryllis! How stylish you do look! I’ve heard you were doing wonders, and now I believe it. Did you make that? Will you make me one? How much would it cost — between friends, you know!’
She smiled archly. The round little chin was rounder, larger, manifold; it was, in fact, two chins, and might have been more but for the uncompromising pressure of an ear-lifting lace stock, with ‘stiffeners’ full four inches long. The small white teeth were much the worse for wear. Her hands were dimpled still, conspicuously so, as the soft tissues expanded; her small feet not so small, however.
‘Can’t wear my old sizes now, I tell you,’ she cheerfully agreed. ‘Had a bad case of dropped arch — have to wear these awful things now — doctor’s orders!’ And she exhibited a pair of those fearsome shoes with which modem science seeks to improve on nature and force reluctant toes to curve and straddle as they never intended.
The bright flying hair was mostly gone, but in its place had come seven other devils worse than the first; a swelling mattress effect, puffs suggestive of upholstery — abundance certainly, but never again the golden shine.
Again Amaryllis’ heart sank for Weldon, but not for his life. Myra assured her that he was well, and working hard. ‘He’s a newspaper man, you see. They can’t leave, ever. Yes, Weldon works hard. But he likes it. What? Poetry?’ she laughed. ‘I guess not. Weldon outgrew that long ago. Guess I laughed him out of it a good deal.’
Amaryllis bade farewell to Myra, who was taking a vacation, she said, and returned to her work in Paris. The cable about her mother’s illness brought her home in time only to say good-bye. Her father seemed helpless and lonely after that. In a year’s time Amaryllis was alone again, with the old place on her hands. Quite a sum of money awaited her, too; they had had no interest in life but saving, for these last few years.
To her own surprise she felt a deep resurgence of love for the home of her childhood. With eyes trained now in larger views, she saw that the weary ugliness of the town was superficial and transient, while the beauty of the countryside was strong and pure beneath it all. Their own house stood near the road; dust defaced it, noise affronted it, only a few whitened trees and stiff, narrow flowerbeds between their windows and the fence. At the back of the long yard were trees, large trees and old, elms, a walnut, water maples, and beyond the maples flowed a wide, quiet river.
A flame kindled in her eyes. She walked the big place over from corner to corner, from end to end, studying, thinking, looking, with her eyes half shut, her head thrown back as she tried this view and the other.
The island was theirs, too, and the river pasture across. Far over the swale meadow, the low-rolling hills, the sun set even more gloriously than she remembered.
Amaryllis consulted the old lawyer who had been her father’s friend; she reckoned up her inheritance, consulted her bank account, and sent for two friends from Boston to come and visit her. One was an architect of growing fame.
Weldon Thomas at forty was frankly considered a failure by his brothers of the press. Newspaper men, however, are not invariably right. He had lost his job on one big daily after another. ‘He hasn’t snap enough.’
‘Lacks ginger.’
‘Does good work, but too slow.’
‘Trouble with Thomas is he’s too old.’
He was, in fact, forty-two. An expensive wife and a residence in New York are not conducive of thrift. The severest economy of one member of the family cannot counterbalance many pleasant indulgences by the party of the second part. Weldon’s twenty years in New York left him barely enough to buy a controlling interest in The Plainville Watchman. His city friends thought it a miserable comedown. ‘Too bad about old Thomas. He’s had to give up work and go down to the country. Bought a rube sheet, I believe. It’s a shame.’
He did not feel wholly of that mind as he took up his new duties in the old place. The quiet streets rested him. The arching trees rested him. The cool silence of the nights unutterably rested him. He renewed his acquaintance gradually, more with the place than with the people.
Walking one golden afternoon along the outskirts of the little town he came to a new wall, new to the place he was sure, but softly old to the eye. Above it blossoming boughs curved richly; the gateway gave full view of a deep lawn, far back on which a low, wide house, serene in outline, beautifully white, waited invitingly.
He remembered. ‘That Delong girl,’ they had told him, had ‘fixed up the old place so’t you wouldn’t know it; tore down the old house and built the queerest thing you ever saw. She must have earned a lot of money, dressmakin’.’
He remembered Amaryllis and what he had heard of her work — he would drop in and see her.
The path curved a little, enough to rest the eye, not enough to annoy the feet. It was only a hundred yards or so, but he stopped more than once to admire the softly changing picture about him, and at the doorstep turned back for a good look. How a mere ‘front yard,’ however large, could have changed to such a pleasance he could not understand, but the effect had an uplifting sweetness to which his city-starved soul responded with grateful joy.
The house itself was so quiet in its gentle beauty, so restrained and calm, that he made no attempts at analysis, just smiled at the white facade of it, and rang the bell. A soft-voiced colored maid opened the door to him, motioned him to a seat in the broad, hospitable hall, and took his card. Presently she returned to say that he was to come in, and opened a door.
He stopped in the entrance, a quick sigh of pleasure escaping him. A long room, a wide room, a room of just proportions, gracious spaces, blending colors, that were like warmth and flowers and wine, and opposite him a window that was a mighty picture, deep-framed by the broad cushioned seat, the dark casings, the rich hangings. In that picture the river lived before him, veiled here and there by trees; beyond the river beautiful farmland, curving hills, dark woods, the softening splendor of the sun.
A little laugh of pleasure greeted him:
‘You like my window.’
He turned to her with a start of pleased surprise. Her kind, clear-cut face glowed with hospitable warmth, perhaps with something more. She reached white hands to him, delicate but strong. Her soft robe swept down from the straight shoulders full of a gentle womanly grace and a discerning color sense; it suited not only her, but the room. She spoke harmony in every tint and line, in the grace of her movements, the stately repose of her quiet beauty, the well-modulated tones of her voice.
The tired man stood and gazed at her, as one drinking thirstily. His soul was stirred and comforted first by that broad stretch of garden ground, then by the gracious house, then by this satisfying restful room, with its windows into heaven, and now he felt in her something like all of them, and something better still.
‘Why Amaryllis! How beautiful you are!’
She laughed merrily.
‘You always were a poet, Weldon — and good at pretty speeches. Sit down, won’t you!’
He would not let go her hand.
‘I feel as if I’d been on a horrible long journey,’ he told her, ‘and this—’ he hesitated, and glanced about him with the same satisfaction, concluding:
‘I’d just like to sit and look at you for hours!’
‘And what would Myra say to that!’ she asked him, smiling. ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said. ‘I lost her a year ago. May I look at you now?’
MRS HINES’S MONEY
MRS HINES lay quietly on her back, looking sideways out of the window. She was quite conscious of the dull ache in the splinted arms, the bandaged head, but with a strange, unusual sense of peace. Physically she was far from comfortable, but in her mind, in spite of some confusion and regret, was that queer increasing feeling that somehow things were going to be different now — and better.
They had broken it to her, gently and after due delay, that her husband had not survived the accident. She shut her eyes then, turned her head stiffly on the pillow, and they could see the slow salt tears forcing themselves from beneath closed lids, and the close-held lips quivering. Mrs Hines had never complained of her husband. It was quite natural that she should cry. She ‘bore up’ splendidly, they said. But they did not know why she cried nor what it was she bore up against.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 158
