masterly skill. As for Claire, she had striven to match her moves,
plotting in the darkness against her, and fighting desperately with
such weak weapons as she possessed. It was characteristic that she
did not blame herself for her failure; it was the baseness of van
Tuiver, his inability to appreciate sincere devotion, his
unworthiness of her love. And this, just after she had been naively
telling me of her efforts to poison his mind against Sylvia while
pretending to admire her! But I made allowances for Claire at this
moment--realizing that the situation had been one to overstrain any
woman's altruism.
She had failed in her subtleties, and there had followed scenes of
bitter strife between the two. Sylvia, the cunning huntress, having
pretended to relent, van Tuiver had gone South to his wooing again,
while Claire had stayed at home and read a book about the poisoners
of the Italian renaissance. And then had come the announcement of
the engagement, after which the royal conqueror had come back in a
panic, and sent embassies of his male friends to plead with Claire,
alternately promising her wealth and threatening her with
destitution, appealing to her fear, her cupidity, and even to her
love. To all of which I listened, thinking of the wide-open,
innocent eyes of the picture, and shedding tears within my soul. So
must the gods feel as they look down upon the affairs of mortals,
seeing how they destroy themselves by ignorance and folly, seeing
how they walk into the future as a blind man into a yawning abyss.
I gave, of course, due weight to the sneers of Claire. Perhaps the
innocent one really had set a trap--had picked van Tuiver out and
married him for his money. But even so, I could hope that she had
not known what she was doing. Surely it had never occurred to her
that through all the days of her triumph she would have to eat and
sleep with the shade of another woman at her side!
Claire said to me, not once, but a dozen times, "He'll come back to
me. She'll never be able to make him happy." And so I pictured
Sylvia upon her honeymoon, followed by an invisible ghost whose
voice she would never hear, whose name she would never know. All
that van Tuiver had learned from Claire, the sensuality, the
_ennin_, the contempt for woman--it would rise to torment and
terrify his bride, and turn her life to bitterness. And then beyond
this, deeps upon deeps, to which my imagination did not go--and of
which the Frenchwoman, with all her freedom of tongue, gave me no
more than a hint which I could not comprehend.
5. Claire Lepage at this time was desperately lonely and unhappy.
Having made the discovery that my arms were sturdy, used to doing a
man's work, she clung to them. She begged me to go home with her, to
visit her--finally to come and live with her. Until recently an
elderly companion, had posed as her aunt, and kept her respectable
while she was upon van Tuiver's yacht, and at his castle in
Scotland. But this companion had died, and now Claire had no one
with whom to discuss her soul-states.
She occupied a beautiful house on the West Side, not far from
Riverside Drive; and in addition to the use of this she had an
income of eight thousand a year--which was not enough to make
possible a chauffeur, nor even to dress decently, but only enough to
keep in debt upon. Such as the income was, however, she was willing
to share it with me. So there opened before me a new profession--
and a new insight into the complications of parasitism.
I went to see her frequently at first, partly because I was
interested in her and her associates, and partly because I really
thought I could help her. But I soon came to realize that
influencing Claire was like moulding water; it flowed back round
your hands, even while you worked. I would argue with her about the
physiological effects of alcohol, and when I had convinced her, she
would promise caution; but soon I would discover that my arguments
had gone over her head. I was at this time feeling my way towards my
work in the East. I tried to interest her in such things as social
reform, but realized that they had no meaning for her. She was
living the life of the pleasure-seeking idlers of the great
metropolis, and every time I met her it seemed to me that her
character and her appearance had deteriorated.
Meantime I picked up scraps of information concerning the van
Tuivers. There were occasional items in the papers, their yacht, the
"Triton," had reached the Azores; it had run into a tender in the
harbour of Gibraltar; Mr. and Mrs. van Tuiver had received the
honour of presentation at the Vatican; they were spending the season
in London, and had been presented at court; they had been royal
guests at the German army-manoeuvres. The million wage-slaves of the
metropolis, packed morning and night into the roaring subways and
whirled to and from their tasks, read items such as these and were
thrilled by the triumphs of their fellow-countrymen.
At Claire's house I learned to be interested in "society" news. From
a weekly paper of gossip about the rich and great she would read
paragraphs, explaining subtle allusions and laying bare veiled
scandals. Some of the men she knew well, referring to them for my
benefit as Bertie and Reggie and Vivie and Algie. She also knew not
a little about the women of that super-world--information sometimes
of an intimate nature, which these ladies would have been startled
to hear was going the rounds.
This insight I got into Claire's world I found useful, needless to
say, in my occasional forays as a soap-box orator of Socialism. I
would go from the super-heated luxury of her home to visit
tenement-dens where little children made paper-flowers twelve and
fourteen hours a day for a trifle over one cent an hour. I would
spend the afternoon floating about in the park in the automobile of
one of her expensive friends, and then take the subway and visit one
of the settlements, to hear a discussion of conditions which doomed
a certain number of working-girls to be burned alive every year in
factory fires.
As time went on, I became savage concerning such contrasts, and the
speeches I was making for the party began to attract attention.
During the summer, I recollect, I had begun to feel hostile even
towards the lovely image of Sylvia, which I had framed in my room.
While she was being presented at St. James's, I was studying the
glass-factories in South Jersey, where I found little boys of ten
working in front of glowing furnaces until they dropped of
exhaustion and sometimes had their eyes burned out. While she and
her husband were guests of the German Emperor, I was playing the
part of a Polish working-woman, penetrating the carefully guarded
secrets of the sugar-trust's domain in Brooklyn, where human lives
are snuffed out almost every day in noxious fumes.
And then in the early fall Sylvia came home, her honeymoon over. She
came in one
of the costly suites in the newest of the _de luxe_
steamers; and the next morning I saw a new picture of her, and read
a few words her husband had condescended to say to a fellow
traveller about the courtesy of Europe to visiting Americans. Then
for a couple of months I heard no more of them. I was busy with my
child-labour work, and I doubt if a thought of Sylvia crossed my
mind, until that never-to-be-forgotten afternoon at Mrs. Allison's
when she came up to me and took my hand in hers.
6. Mrs. Roland Allison was one of the comfortable in body who had
begun to feel uncomfortable in mind. I had happened to meet her at
the settlement, and tell her what I had seen in the glass factories;
whereupon she made up her mind that everybody she knew must hear me
talk, and to that end gave a reception at her Madison Avenue home.
I don't remember much of what I said, but if I may take the evidence
of Sylvia, who remembered everything, I spoke effectively. I told
them, for one thing, the story of little Angelo Patri. Little Angelo
was of that indeterminate Italian age where he helped to support a
drunken father without regard to the child-labour laws of the State
of New Jersey. His people were tenants upon a fruit-farm a couple of
miles from the glass-factory, and little Angelo walked to and from
his work along the railroad-track. It is a peculiarity of the
glass-factory that it has to eat its children both by day and by
night; and after working six hours before midnight and six more
after midnight, little Angelo was tired. He had no eye for the birds
and flowers on a beautiful spring morning, but as he was walking
home, he dropped in his tracks and fell asleep. The driver of the
first morning train on that branch-line saw what he took to be an
old coat lying on the track ahead, and did not stop to investigate.
All this had been narrated to me by the child's mother, who had
worked as a packer of "beers," and who had loved little Angelo. As I
repeated her broken words about the little mangled body, I saw some
of my auditors wipe away a surreptitious tear.
After I had stopped, several women came up to talk with me at the
last, when most of the company was departing, there came one more,
who had waited her turn. The first thing I saw was her loveliness,
the thing about her that dazzled and stunned people, and then came
the strange sense of familiarity. Where had I met this girl before?
She said what everybody always says; she had been so much
interested, she had never dreamed that such conditions existed in
the world. I, applying the acid test, responded, "So many people
have said that to me that I have begun to believe it."
"It is so in my case," she replied, quickly. "You see, I have lived
all my life in the South, and we have no such conditions there."
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Our negroes at least can steal enough to eat," she said.
I smiled. Then--since one has but a moment or two to get in one's
work in these social affairs, and so has to learn to thrust quickly:
"You have timber-workers in Louisiana, steel-workers in Alabama. You
have tobacco-factories, canning-factories, cotton-mills--have you
been to any of them to see how the people live?"
All this I said automatically, it being the routine of the agitator.
But meantime in my mind was an excitement, spreading like a flame.
The loveliness of this young girl; the eagerness, the intensity of
feeling written upon her countenance; and above all, the strange
sense of familiarity! Surely, if I had met her before, I should
never have forgotten her; surely it could not be--not possibly--
My hostess came, and ended my bewilderment. "You ought to get Mrs.
van Tuiver on your child-labour committee," she said.
A kind of panic seized me. I wanted to say, "Oh, it is Sylvia
Castleman!" But then, how could I explain? I couldn't say, "I have
your picture in my room, cut out of a newspaper." Still less could I
say, "I know a friend of your husband."
Fortunately Sylvia did not heed my excitement. (She had learned by
this time to pretend not to notice.) "Please don't misunderstand
me," she was saying. "I really _don't_ know about these things. And
I would do something to help if I could." As she said this she
looked with the red-brown eyes straight into mine--a gaze so clear
and frank and honest, it was as if an angel had come suddenly to
earth, and learned of the horrible tangle into which we mortals have
got our affairs.
"Be careful what you're saying," put in our hostess, with a laugh.
"You're in dangerous hands."
But Sylvia would not be warned. "I want to know more about it," she
said. "You must tell me what I can do."
"Take her at her word," said Mrs. Allison, to me. "Strike while the
iron is hot!" I detected a note of triumph in her voice; if she
could say that she had got Mrs. van Tuiver to take up
child-labour--that indeed would be a feather to wear!
"I will tell you all I can," I said. "That's my work in the world."
"Take Mrs. Abbott away with you," said the energetic hostess, to
Sylvia; and before I quite understood what was happening, I had
received and accepted an invitation to drive in the park with Mrs.
Douglas van Tuiver. In her role of _dea ex machina_ the hostess
extricated me from the other guests, and soon I was established in a
big new motor, gliding up Madison Avenue as swiftly and silently as
a cloud-shadow over the fields. As I write the words there lies
upon my table a Socialist paper with one of Will Dyson's vivid
cartoons, representing two ladies of the great world at a reception.
Says the first, "These social movements are becoming _quite_ worth
while!" "Yes, indeed," says the other. "One meets such good
society!"
7. Sylvia's part in this adventure was a nobler one than mine,
Seated as I was in a regal motor-car, and in company with one
favoured of all the gods in the world, I must have had an intense
conviction of my own saintliness not to distrust my excitement. But
Sylvia, for her part, had nothing to get from me but pain. I talked
of the factory-fires and the horrors of the sugar-refineries, and I
saw shadow after shadow of suffering cross her face. You may say it
was cruel of me to tear the veil from those lovely eyes, but in such
a matter I felt myself the angel of the Lord and His vengeance.
"I didn't know about these things!" she cried again. And I found it
was true. It would have been hard for me to imagine anyone so
ignorant of the realities of modern life. The men and women she had
met she understood quite miraculously, but they were only two kinds,
the "best people" and their negro servants. There had been a whole
regiment of relatives on guard to keep her from knowing anybody
else, or anything else, and if by chance a dangerous fact broke into
the family stockade, they had formulas ready with which to kill it.
"But now," Sylvia went on, "I've got some money, and I can help, so
I dare not be ignorant any longer. Yo
u must show me the way, and my
husband too. I'm sure he doesn't know what can be done."
I said that I would do anything in my power. Her help would be
invaluable, not merely because of the money she might give, but
because of the influence of her name; the attention she could draw
to any cause she chose. I explained to her the aims and the methods
of our child-labour committee. We lobbied to get new legislation;
we watched officials to compel them to enforce the laws already
existing; above all, we worked for publicity, to make people realise
what it meant that the new generation was growing up without
education, and stunted by premature toil. And that was where she
could help us most--if she would go and see the conditions with her
own eyes, and then appear before the legislative committee this
winter, in favour of our new bill!
She turned her startled eyes upon me at this. Her ideas of doing
good in the world were the old-fashioned ones of visiting and
almsgiving; she had no more conception of modern remedies than she
had of modern diseases. "Oh, I couldn't possibly make a speech!" she
exclaimed.
"Why not?" I asked.
"I never thought of such a thing. I don't know enough."
"But you can learn."
"I know, but that kind of work ought to be done by men."
"We've given men a chance, and they have made the evils. Whose
business is it to protect the children if not the women's?"
She hesitated a moment, and then said: "I suppose you'll laugh at
me."
"No, no," I promised; then as I looked at her I guessed. "Are you
going to tell me that woman's place is the home?"
"That is what we think in Castleman County," she said, smiling in
spite of herself.
"The children have got out of the home," I replied. "If they are
ever to get back, we women must go and fetch them."
Suddenly she laughed--that merry laugh that was the April sunshine
of my life for many years. "Somebody made a Suffrage speech in our
State a couple of years ago, and I wish you could have seen the
horror of my people! My Aunt Nannie--she's Bishop Chilton's
wife--thought it was the most dreadful thing that had happened since
Jefferson Davis was put in irons. She talked about it for days, and
at last she went upstairs and shut herself in the attic. The younger
children came home from school, and wanted to know where mamma was.
Nobody knew. Bye and bye, the cook came. 'Marse Basil, what we gwine
have fo' dinner? I done been up to Mis' Nannie, an' she say g'way
an' not pester her--she busy.' Company came, and there was dreadful
confusion--nobody knew what to do about anything--and still Aunt
Nannie was locked in! At last came dinner-time, and everybody else
came. At last up went the butler, and came down with the message
that they were to eat whatever they had, and take care of the
company somehow, and go to prayer-meeting, and let her alone--she
was writing a letter to the Castleman County _Register_ on the
subject of 'The Duty of Woman as a Homemaker'!"
8. This was the beginning of my introduction to Castleman County. It
was a long time before I went there, but I learned to know its
inhabitants from Sylvia's stories of them. Funny stories, tragic
stories, wild and incredible stories out of a half-barbaric age! She
would tell them and we would laugh together; but then a wistful look
would come into her eyes, and a silence would fall. So very soon I
made the discovery that my Sylvia was homesick. In all the years
that I knew her she never ceased to speak of Castleman Hall as
"home". All her standards came from there, her new ideas were
referred there.
We talked of Suffrage for a while, and I spoke about the lives of
women on lonely farms--how they give their youth and health to their
husband's struggle, yet have no money partnership which they can
Sylvia's Marriage Page 2
