"Come and see," said Sylvia; and when I glanced enquiringly at the tall gentleman who was chatting with his friends, she added, "She"s _my_ baby, and I have a right to show her."
The nurse, a rosy-cheeked English girl in a blue dress and a bonnet with long streamers, stood apart, holding an armful of white silk and lace.
Sylvia turned back the coverings; and again I beheld the vision which had so thrilled me--the comical little miniature of herself--her nose, her lips, her golden hair. But oh, the pitiful little eyes, that did not move! I looked at my friend, uncertain what I should say; I was startled to see her whole being aglow with mother-pride. "Isn"t she a dear?" she whispered. "And, Mary, she"s learning so fast, and growing--you couldn"t believe it!" Oh, the marvel of mother-love, I thought--that is blinder than any child it ever bore!
We turned away; and Sylvia said, "I"ll come to you as soon as I"ve got the baby settled. Our train starts for the South to-night, so I shan"t waste any time."
"G.o.d bless you, dear," I whispered; and she gave my hand a squeeze, and turned away. I stood for a few moments watching, and saw her approach her husband, and exchange a few smiling words with him in the presence of their friends. I, knowing the agony that was in the hearts of that desperate young couple, marvelled anew at the discipline of caste.
9. She sat in my big arm-chair; and how proud I was of her, and how thrilled by her courage. Above all, however, I was devoured by curiosity. "Tell me!" I exclaimed.
"There"s so much," she said.
"Tell me why you are leaving him."
"Mary, because I don"t love him. That"s the one reason. I have thought it out--I have thought of little else for the last year. I have come to see that it is wrong for a woman to live with a man she does not love.
It is the supreme crime a woman can commit."
"Ah, yes!" I said. "If you have got that far!"
"I have got that far. Other things have contributed, but they are not the real things--they might have been forgiven. The fact that he had this disease, and made my child blind----"
"Oh! You found out that?"
"Yes, I found it out."
"How?"
"It came to me little by little. In the end, he grew tired of pretending, I think." She paused for a moment, then went on, "The trouble was over the question of my obligations as a wife. You see, I had told him at the outset that I was going to live for my baby, and for her alone. That was the ground upon which he had persuaded me not to see you or read any of your letters. I was to ask no questions, and be nice and bovine--and I agreed. But then, a few months ago, my husband came to me with the story of his needs. He said that the doctors had given their sanction to our reunion. Of course, I was stunned. I knew that he had understood me before we left Florida."
She stopped. "Yes, dear," I said, gently.
"Well, he said now the doctors were agreed there was no danger to either of us. We could take precautions and not have children. I could only plead that the whole subject was distressing to me. He had asked me to put off my problems till my baby was weaned; now I asked him to put off his. But that would not do, it seemed. He took to arguing with me. It was an unnatural way to live, and he could not endure it. I was a woman, and I couldn"t understand this. It seemed utterly impossible to make him realize what I felt. I suppose he has always had what he wanted, and he simply does not know what it is to be denied. It wasn"t only a physical thing, I think; it was an affront to his pride, a denial of his authority." She stopped, and I saw her shudder.
"I have been through it all," I said.
"He wanted to know how long I expected to withhold myself. I said, "Until I have got this disease out of my mind, as well as out of my body; until I know that there is no possibility of either of us having it, to give to the other." But then, after I had taken a little more time to think it over, I said, "Douglas, I must be honest with you. I shall never be able to live with you again. It is no longer a question of your wishes or mine--it is a question of right or wrong. I do not love you. I know now that it can never under any circ.u.mstances be right for a woman to give herself in the intimacy of the s.e.x-relation without love. When she does it, she is violating the deepest instinct of her nature, the very voice of G.o.d in her soul."
"His reply was, "Why didn"t you know that before you married?"
"I answered, "I did not know what marriage meant; and I let myself be persuaded by others."
""By your own mother!" he declared.
"I said, "A mother who permits her daughter to commit such an offence is either a slave-dealer, or else a slave." Of course, he thought I was out of my mind at that. He argued about the duties of marriage, the preserving of the home, wives submitting themselves to their husbands, and so on. He would not give me any peace----"
And suddenly she started up. I saw in her eyes the light of old battles.
"Oh, it was a horror!" she cried, beginning to pace the floor. "It seemed to me that I was living the agony of all the loveless marriages of the world. I felt myself pursued, not merely by the importunate desires of one man--I suffered with all the millions of women who give themselves night after night without love! He came to seem like some monster to me; I could not meet him unexpectedly without starting. I forbade him to mention the subject to me again, and for a long time he obeyed. But several weeks ago he brought it up afresh, and I lost my self-control completely. "Douglas," I said, "I can stand it no longer!
It is not only the tragedy of my blind child--it"s that you have driven me to hate you. You have crushed all the life and joy and youth out of me! You"ve been to me like a terrible black cloud, constantly pressing down on me, smothering me. You stalk around me like a grim, sepulchral figure, closing me up in the circle of your narrow ideas. But now I can endure it no longer. I was a proud, high-spirited girl, you"ve made of me a colourless social automaton, a slave of your stupid worldly traditions. I"m turning into a feeble, complaining, discontented wife!
And I refuse to be it. I"m going home--where at least there"s some human spontaneity left in people; I"m going back to my father!"--And I went and looked up the next steamer!"
She stopped. She stood before me, with the fire of her wild Southern blood shining in her cheeks and in her eyes.
I sat waiting, and finally she went on, "I won"t repeat all his protests. When he found that I was really going, he offered to take me in the yacht, but I wouldn"t go in the yacht. I had got to be really afraid of him--sometimes, you know, his obstinacy seems to be abnormal, almost insane. So then he decided he would have to go in the steamer with me to preserve appearances. I had a letter saying that papa was not well, and he said that would serve for an excuse. He is going to Castleman County, and after he has stayed a week or so, he is going off on a hunting-trip, and not return."
"And will he do it?"
"I don"t think he expects to do it at present. I feel sure he has the idea of starting mamma to quoting the Bible to me, and dragging me down with her tears. But I have done all I can to make clear to him that it will make no difference. I told him I would not say a word about my intentions at home until he had gone away, and that I expected the same silence from him. But, of course--" She stopped abruptly, and after a moment she asked: "What do you think of it, Mary?"
I leaned forward and took her two hands in mine. "Only," I said, "that I"m glad you fought it out alone! I knew it had to come--and I didn"t want to have to help you to decide!"
10. She sat for a while absorbed in her own thoughts. Knowing her as I did, I understood what intense emotions were seething within her, what a terrific struggle her decision must have represented.
"Dear Friend," she said, suddenly, "don"t think I haven"t seen his side of the case. I try to tell myself that I dealt with him frankly from the beginning. But then I ask was there ever a man I dealt with frankly?
There was coquetry in the very clothes I wore! And now that we are so entangled, now that he loves me, what is my duty? I find I can"t respect his love for me. A part of it is because my beauty fascinates him, but more of it seems to me just wounded vanity. I was the only woman who ever flouted him, and he has a kind of sn.o.bbery that made him think I must be something remarkable because of it. I talked that all out with him--yes, I"ve dragged him through all that humiliation. I wanted to make him see that he didn"t really love me, that he only wanted to conquer me, to force me to admire him and submit to him. I want to be myself, and he wants to be himself--that has always been the issue between us."
"That is the issue in many unhappy marriages," I said.
"I"ve done a lot of thinking in the last year," she resumed--"about things generally, I mean. We American women think we are so free. That is because our husbands indulge us, give us money, and let us run about. But when it comes to real freedom--freedom of intellect and of character, English women are simply another kind of being from us. I met a cabinet minister"s wife--he"s a Conservative in everything, and she"s an ardent suffragist; she not merely gives money, she makes speeches and has a public name. Yet they are friends, and have a happy home-life. Do you suppose my husband would consider such an arrangement?"
"I thought he admired English ways," I said.
"There was the Honorable Betty Annersley--the sister of a chum of his.
She was friendly with the militants, and I wanted to talk to her to understand what such women thought. Yet my husband tried to stop me from going to see her. And it"s the same way with everything I try to do, that threatens to take me out of his power. He wanted me to accept the authority of the doctors as to any possible danger from venereal disease. When I got the books, and showed him what the doctors admitted about the question--the narrow margin of safety they allowed, the terrible chances they took--he was angry again."
She stopped, seeing a question in my eyes. "I"ve been reading up on the subject," she explained. "I know it all now--the things I should have known before I married."
"How did you manage that?"
"I tried to get two of the doctors to give me something to read, but they wouldn"t hear of it. I"d set myself crazy imagining things, it was no sort of stuff for a woman"s mind. So in the end I took the bit in my teeth. I found a medical book store, and I went in and said: "I am an American physician, and I want to see the latest works on venereal disease." So the clerk took me to the shelves, and I picked out a couple of volumes."
"You poor child!" I exclaimed.
"When Douglas found that I was reading these books he threatened to burn them. I told him "There are more copies in the store, and I am determined to be educated on this subject.""
She paused. "How much like my own experience!" I thought.
"There were chapters on the subject of wives, how much they were not told, and why this was. So very quickly I began to see around my own experience. Douglas must have figured out that this would be so, for the end of the matter was an admission."
"You don"t mean he confessed to you!"
She smiled bitterly. "No," she said. "He brought Dr. Perrin to London to do it for him. Dr. Perrin said he had concluded I had best know that my husband had had some symptoms of the disease. He, the doctor, wished to tell me who was to blame for the attempt to deceive me. Douglas had been willing to admit the truth, but all the doctors had forbidden it. I must realise the fearful problem they had, and not blame them, and, above all I must not blame my husband, who had been in their hands in the matter."
"How stupid men are! As if that would excuse him!"
"I"m afraid I showed the little man how poor an impression he had made--both for himself and for his patron. But I had suffered all there was to suffer, and I was tired of pretending. I told him it would have been far better for them if they had told me the truth at the beginning."
"Ah, yes!" I said. "That is what I tried to make them see; but all I got for it was a sentence of deportation!"