Behind her newspaper she let her consciousness, that odd mingled consciousness, rove from pocket to pocket, realizing the armored assurance of having all those things at hand, instantly get-at-able, ready to meet emergencies. The cigar case gave her a warm feeling of comfort — it was full; the firmly held fountain-pen, safe unless she stood on her head; the keys, pencils, letters, documents, notebook, checkbook, bill folder — all at once, with a deep rushing sense of power and pride, she felt what she had never felt before in all her life — the possession of money, of her own earned money — hers to give or to withhold; not to beg for, tease for, wheedle for — hers.
That bill — why if it had come to her — to him, that is, he would have paid it as a matter of course, and never mentioned it — to her.
Then, being he, sitting there so easily and firmly with his money in his pockets, she wakened to his life-long consciousness about money. Boyhood — its desires and dreams, ambitions. Young manhood — working tremendously for the wherewithal to make a home — for her. The present years with all their net of cares and hopes and dangers; the present moment, when he needed every cent for special plans of great importance, and this bill, long overdue and demanding payment, meant an amount of inconvenience wholly unnecessary if it had been given him when it first came; also, the man’s keen dislike of that ‘account rendered.’
‘Women have no business sense!’ she found herself saying, ‘and all that money just for hats — idiotic, useless, ugly things!’
With that she began to see the hats of the women in the car as she had never seen hats before. The men’s seemed normal, dignified, becoming, with enough variety for personal taste, and with distinction in style and in age, such as she had never noticed before. But the women’s —
With the eyes of a man and the brain of a man; with the memory of a whole lifetime of free action wherein the hat, close-fitting on cropped hair, had been no handicap; she now perceived the hats of women.
Their massed fluffed hair was at once attractive and foolish, and on that hair, at every angle, in all colors, tipped, twisted, tortured into every crooked shape, made of any substance chance might offer, perched these formless objects. Then, on their formlessness the trimmings — these squirts of stiff feathers, these violent outstanding bows of glistening ribbon, these swaying, projecting masses of plumage which tormented the faces of bystanders.
Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid for it, like the decorations of an insane monkey.
And yet, when there came into the car a little woman, as foolish as any, but pretty and sweet-looking, up rose Gerald Mathewson and gave her his seat; and, later, when there came in a handsome red-cheeked girl, whose hat was wilder, more violent in color and eccentric in shape than any other; when she stood near by and her soft curling plumes swept his cheek once and again, he felt a sense of sudden pleasure at the intimate tickling touch — and she, deep down within, felt such a wave of shame as might well drown a thousand hats forever.
When he took his train, his seat in the smoking car, she had a new surprise. All about him were the other men, commuters too, and many of them friends of his.
To her, they would have been distinguished as ‘Mary Wade’s husband’— ‘the man Belle Grant is engaged to’— ‘that rich Mr Shopworth’ — or ‘that pleasant Mr Beale.’ And they would all have lifted their hats to her, bowed, made polite conversation if near enough — especially Mr Beale.
Now came the feeling of open-eyed acquaintance, of knowing men — as they were. The mere amount of this knowledge was a surprise to her; the whole background of talk from boyhood up, the gossip of barber-shop and club, the conversation of morning and evening hours on trains, the knowledge of political affiliation, of business standing and prospects, of character — in a light she had never known before.
They came and talked to Gerald, one and another. He seemed quite popular. And as they talked, with this new memory and new understanding, an understanding which seemed to include all these men’s minds, there poured in on the submerged consciousness beneath a new, a startling knowledge — what men really think of women.
Good average American men were there; married men for the most part, and happy — as happiness goes in general. In the minds of each and all there seemed to be a two-story department, quite apart from the rest of their ideas, a separate place where they kept their thoughts and feelings about women.
In the upper half were the tenderest emotions, the most exquisite ideals, the sweetest memories, all lovely sentiments as to ‘home’ and ‘mother,’ all delicate admiring adjectives, a sort of sanctuary, where a veiled statue, blindly adored, shared place with beloved yet commonplace experiences.
In the lower half — here that buried consciousness woke to keen distress — they kept quite another assortment of ideas. Here, even in this clean-minded husband of hers, was the memory of stories told at men’s dinners, of worse ones overheard in street or car, of base traditions, coarse epithets, gross experiences — known, though not shared.
And all these in the department ‘woman,’ while in the rest of the mind — here was new knowledge indeed.
The world opened before her. Not the world she had been reared in; where Home had covered all the map, almost, and the rest had been ‘foreign,’ or ‘unexplored country;’ but the world as it was, man’s world, as made, lived in, and seen, by men.
It was dizzying. To see the houses that fled so fast across the car window, in terms of builders’ bills, or of some technical insight into materials and methods; to see a passing village with lamentable knowledge of who ‘owned it’ — and of how its Boss was rapidly aspiring to State power, or of how that kind of paving was a failure; to see shops, not as mere exhibitions of desirable objects, but as business ventures, many mere sinking ships, some promising a profitable voyage — this new world bewildered her.
She — as Gerald — had already forgotten about that bill, over which she — as Mollie — was still crying at home. Gerald was ‘talking business’ with this man, ‘talking politics’ with that; and now sympathizing with the carefully withheld troubles of a neighbor.
Mollie had always sympathized with the neighbor’s wife before.
She began to struggle violently, with this large dominant masculine consciousness. She remembered with sudden clearness things she had read — lectures she had heard; and resented with increasing intensity this serene masculine preoccupation with the male point of view.
Mr Miles, the little fussy man who lived on the other side of the street, was talking now. He had a large complacent wife; Mollie had never liked her much, but had always thought him rather nice — he was so punctilious in small courtesies.
And here he was talking to Gerald — such talk!
‘Had to come in here,’ he said. ‘Gave my seat to a dame who was bound to have it. There’s nothing they won’t get when they make up their minds to it — eh?’
‘No fear!’ said the big man in the next seat, ‘they haven’t much mind to make up, you know — and if they do, they’ll change it.’
‘The real danger,’ began the Revd Alfred Smythe, the new Episcopal clergyman, a thin, nervous, tall man, with a face several centuries behind the times, ‘is that they will overstep the limits of their God-appointed sphere.’
‘Their natural limits ought to hold ‘em, I think,’ said cheerful Dr Jones. ‘You can’t get around physiology, I tell you.’
‘I’ve never seen any limits, myself, not to what they want, anyhow;’ said Mr Miles, ‘merely a rich husband and a fine house and no end of bonnets and dresses, and the latest thing in motors, and a few diamonds — and so on. Keeps us pretty busy.’ There was a tired gray man across the aisle. He had a very nice wife, always beautifully dressed, and three unmarried daughters, also beautifully dressed — Mollie knew them. She knew he worked hard too, and looked at him now a little anxiously.
But he smiled cheerfully.
‘Do you good, Mi
les,’ he said. ‘What else would a man work for? A good woman is about the best thing on earth.’
‘And a bad one’s the worst, that’s sure,’ responded Miles. ‘She’s a pretty weak sister, viewed professionally,’ Dr Jones averred with solemnity, and the Revd Alfred Smythe added: ‘She brought evil into the world.’
Gerald Mathewson sat up straight. Something was stirring in him which he did not recognize — yet could not resist.
‘Seems to me we all talk like Noah,’ he suggested drily. ‘Or the ancient Hindu scriptures. Women have their limitations, but so do we, God knows. Haven’t we known girls in school and college just as smart as we were?’
‘They cannot play our games,’ coldly replied the clergyman. Gerald measured his meager proportions with a practiced eye. ‘I never was particularly good at football myself,’ he modestly admitted, ‘but I’ve known women who could outlast a man in allround endurance. Besides — life isn’t spent in athletics!’
This was sadly true. They all looked down the aisle where a heavy ill-dressed man with a bad complexion sat alone. He had held the top of the columns once, with headlines and photographs. Now he earned less than any of them.
‘It’s time we woke up,’ pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. ‘Women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools — but who’s to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and, what’s more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common sense clothes — and shoes — which of us wants to dance with her?
‘Yes, we blame them for grafting on us, but are we willing to let our wives work? We are not. It hurts our pride, that’s all. We are always criticizing them for making mercenary marriages, but what do we call a girl who marries a chump with no money? Just a poor fool, that’s all. And they know it.
‘As for those physical limitations, Dr Jones, I guess our side of the house has some responsibility there, too — eh?
‘And for Mother Eve — I wasn’t there and can’t deny the story, but I will say this, if she brought evil into the world we men have had the lion’s share of keeping it going ever since — how about that?’
They drew into the city, and all day long in his business, Gerald was vaguely conscious of new views, strange feelings, and the submerged Mollie learned and learned.
MR PEEBLES’S HEART
HE was lying on the sofa in the homely, bare little sitting room; an uncomfortable stiff sofa, too short, too sharply upcurved at the end, but still a sofa, whereon one could, at a pinch, sleep.
Thereon Mr Peebles slept, this hot still afternoon; slept uneasily, snoring a little, and twitching now and then, as one in some obscure distress.
Mrs Peebles had creaked down the front stairs and gone off on some superior errands of her own; with a good palm-leaf fan for a weapon, a silk umbrella for a defense.
‘Why don’t you come too, Joan?’ she had urged her sister, as she dressed herself for departure.
‘Why should I, Emma? It’s much more comfortable at home. I’ll keep Arthur company when he wakes up.’
‘Oh, Arthur! He’ll go back to the store as soon as he’s had his nap. And I’m sure Mrs Older’s paper’ll be real interesting. If you’re going to live here you ought to take an interest in the club, seems to me.’
‘I’m going to live here as a doctor — not as a lady of leisure, Em. You go on — I’m contented.’
So Mrs Emma Peebles sat in the circle of the Ellsworth Ladies’ Home Club, and improved her mind, while Dr J. R. Bascom softly descended to the sitting room in search of a book she had been reading.
There was Mr Peebles, still uneasily asleep. She sat down quietly in a cane-seated rocker by the window and watched him awhile; first professionally, then with a deeper human interest.
Baldish, grayish, stoutish, with a face that wore a friendly smile for customers, and showed grave, set lines that deepened about the corners of his mouth when there was no one to serve; very ordinary in dress, in carriage, in appearance was Arthur Peebles at fifty. He was not ‘the slave of love’ of the Arab tale, but the slave of duty.
If ever a man had done his duty — as he saw it — he had done his, always.
His duty — as he saw it — was carrying women. First his mother, a comfortable competent person, who had run the farm after her husband’s death, and added to their income by Summer boarders until Arthur was old enough to ‘support her.’ Then she sold the old place and moved into the village to ‘make a home for Arthur,’ who incidentally provided a hired girl to perform the manual labor of that process.
He worked in the store. She sat on the piazza and chatted with her neighbors.
He took care of his mother until he was nearly thirty, when she left him finally; and then he installed another woman to make a home for him — also with the help of the hired girl. A pretty, careless, clinging little person he married, who had long made mute appeal to his strength and carefulness, and she had continued to cling uninterruptedly to this day.
Incidentally a sister had clung until she married, another until she died; and his children — two daughters, had clung also. Both the daughters were married in due time, with sturdy young husbands to cling to in their turn; and now there remained only his wife to carry, a lighter load than he had ever known — at least numerically.
But either he was tired, very tired, or Mrs Peebles’ tendrils had grown tougher, tighter, more tenacious, with age. He did not complain of it. Never had it occurred to him in all these years that there was any other thing for a man to do than to carry whatsoever women came within range of lawful relationship.
Had Dr Joan been — shall we say — carriageable — he would have cheerfully added her to the list, for he liked her extremely. She was different from any woman he had ever known, different from her sister as day from night, and, in lesser degree, from all the female inhabitants of Ellsworth.
She had left home at an early age, against her mother’s will, absolutely ran away; but when the whole countryside rocked with gossip and sought for the guilty man — it appeared that she had merely gone to college. She worked her way through, learning more, far more, than was taught in the curriculum; became a trained nurse, studied medicine, and had long since made good in her profession. There were even rumors that she must be ‘pretty well fixed’ and about to ‘retire’; but others held that she must have failed, really or she never would have come back home to settle.
Whatever the reason, she was there, a welcome visitor; a source of real pride to her sister, and of indefinable satisfaction to her brother-in-law. In her friendly atmosphere he felt a stirring of long unused powers; he remembered funny stories, and how to tell them; he felt a revival of interests he had thought quite outlived, early interests in the big world’s movements.
‘Of all unimpressive, unattractive, good little men—’ she was thinking, as she watched, when one of his arms dropped off the slippery side of the sofa, the hand thumped on the floor, and he awoke and sat up hastily with an air of one caught off duty.
‘Don’t sit up as suddenly as that, Arthur, it’s bad for your heart.’
‘Nothing the matter with my heart, is there?’ he asked with his ready smile.
‘I don’t know — haven’t examined it. Now — sit still — you know there’s nobody in the store this afternoon — and if there is, Jake can attend to ‘em.’
‘Where’s Emma?’
‘Oh, Emma’s gone to her “club” or something — wanted me to go, but I’d rather talk with you.’
He looked pleased but incredulous, having a high opinion of that club, and a low one of himself.
‘Look here,’ she pursued suddenly, after he had made himself comfortable with a drink from the swinging ice-pitcher, and another big cane rocker, ‘what would you like to do if you could?’
‘Travel!’ said Mr Peebles, with equal suddenness. He saw her astonishment. ‘Yes, travel! I’ve always wanted to — since I was a kid. No use! We
never could, you see. And now — even if we could — Emma hates it.’ He sighed resignedly ‘Do you like to keep store?’ she asked sharply.
‘Like it?’ He smiled at her cheerfully, bravely, but with a queer blank hopeless background underneath. He shook his head gravely. ‘No, I do not, Joan. Not a little bit. But what of that?’
They were still for a little, and then she put another question. ‘What would you have chosen — for a profession — if you had been free to choose?’
His answer amazed her threefold; from its character, its sharp promptness, its deep feeling. It was in one word— ‘Music!’
‘Music!’ she repeated. ‘Music! Why I didn’t know you played — or cared about it.’
‘When I was a youngster,’ he told her, his eyes looking far off through the vine-shaded window, ‘father brought home a guitar — and said it was for the one that learned to play it first. He meant the girls of course. As a matter of fact I learned it first — but I didn’t get it. That’s all the music I ever had,’ he added. ‘And there’s not much to listen to here, unless you count what’s in church. I’d have a Victrola — but—’ he laughed a little shamefacedly, ‘Emma says if I bring one into the house she’ll smash it. She says they’re worse than cats. Tastes differ you know, Joan.’ Again he smiled at her, a droll smile, a little pinched at the corners. ‘Well — I must be getting back to business.’
She let him go, and turned her attention to her own business, with some seriousness.
‘Emma,’ she proposed, a day or two later. ‘How would you like it if I should board here — live here, I mean, right along.’
‘I should hope you would,’ her sister replied. ‘It would look nice to have you practising in this town and not live with me — all the sister I’ve got.’
‘Do you think Arthur would like it?’
‘Of course he would! Besides — even if he didn’t — you’re my sister — and this is my house. He put it in my name, long ago.’
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 164
