"Um--um," said the old lady, half to herself. "Yes--yes--perhaps.
Um--um--"
"He will be much more content once he"s settled in the new line.
Politics as an end is silly--what becomes of the men who stick to it?
But politics as a means is sensible, and Joshua has got out of it about all he can get--about all he needs."
"He hopes to be President."
"So do thousands of other men. And even if he should get it how would we live--how would _I_ live--while we were waiting--and after it was over?
I detest politics--all those vulgar people." Margaret made a disdainful mouth. "It isn"t for our sort of people--except, perhaps, the diplomatic posts, and they, of course, go by "pull" or purchase. I like the life I"ve led--the life you"ve led. You"ve made me luxurious and lazy, Grandma.... Rather than President I"d prefer him to be amba.s.sador to England, after a while, when we could afford it. We could have a great social career."
"You think you can manage him?" repeated Madam Bowker.
She had been simply listening, her thoughts not showing at the surface.
Her tone was neither discouraging nor encouraging, merely interrogative.
But Margaret scented a doubt. "Don"t you think so?" she said a little less confidently.
"I don"t know.... I don"t know.... It will do no harm to try."
Margaret"s expression was suddenly like a real face from which a mask has dropped. "I must do it, Grandma. If I don"t I shall--I shall HATE him! I will not be his servant! When I think of the humiliations he has put upon me I--I almost hate him now!"
Madam Bowker was alarmed, but was too wise to show it. She laughed. "How seriously you take yourself, child," said she. "All that is very young and very theatrical. What do birth and breeding mean if not that one has the high courage to bear what is, after all, the lot of most women, and the high intelligence to use one"s circ.u.mstances, whatever they may be, to accomplish one"s ambitions? A lady cannot afford to despise her husband. A lady is, first of all, serene. You talk like a Craig rather than like a Severance. If he can taint you this soon how long will it be before you are at his level? How can you hope to bring him up to yours?"
Margaret"s head was hanging.
"Never again let me hear you speak disrespectfully of your husband, my child," the old lady went on impressively. "And if you are wise you will no more permit yourself to harbor a disrespectful thought of him than you would permit yourself to wear unclean underclothes."
Margaret dropped down at her grandmother"s knee, buried her face in her lap. "I don"t believe I can ever love him," she murmured.
"So long as you believe that, you never can," said Madam Bowker; "and your married life will be a failure--as great a failure as mine was--as your mother"s was. If I had only known what I know now--what I am telling you--" Madam Bowker paused, and there was a long silence in the room. "Your married life, my dear," she went on, "will be what you choose to make of it. You have a husband. Never let yourself indulge in silly repinings or ruinous longings. Make the best of what you have.
Study your husband, not ungenerously and superciliously, but with eyes determined to see the virtues that can be developed, the faults that can be cured, and with eyes that will not linger on the faults that can"t be cured. Make him your constant thought and care. Never forget that you belong to the superior s.e.x."
"I don"t feel that I do," said Margaret. "I can"t help feeling women are inferior and wishing I"d been a man."
"That is because you do not think," replied Madam Bowker indulgently.
"Children are the center of life--its purpose, its fulfillment. All normal men and women want children above everything else. Our only t.i.tle to be here is as ancestors--to replace ourselves with wiser and better than we. That makes woman the superior of man; she alone has the power to give birth. Man instinctively knows this, and it is his fear of subjection to woman that makes him sneer at and fight against every effort to develop her intelligence and her independence. If you are a true woman, worthy of your race and of your breeding, you will never forget your superiority--or the duties it imposes on you--what you owe to your husband and to your children. You are a married woman now.
Therefore you are free. Show that you deserve freedom and know how to use it."
Margaret listened to the old woman with a new respect for her--and for herself. "I"ll try, Grandmother," she said soberly. "But--it won"t be easy." A reflective silence, and she repeated, "No, not easy."
"Easier than to resist and repine and rage and hunt another man who, on close acquaintance, would prove even less satisfactory," replied her grandmother. "Easy--if you honestly try." She looked down at the girl with the sympathy that goes out to inexperience from those who have lived long and thoughtfully and have seen many a vast and fearful bogy loom and, on nearer view, fade into a mist of fancy. "Above all, child, don"t waste your strength on imaginary griefs and woes--you"ll have none left for the real trials."
Margaret had listened attentively; she would remember what the old lady had said--indeed, it would have been hard to forget words so direct and so impressively uttered. But at the moment they made small impression upon her. She thought her grandmother kindly but cold. In fact, the old lady was giving her as deep commiseration as her broader experience permitted in the circ.u.mstances, some such commiseration as one gives a child who sees measureless calamity in a rainy sky on a long-antic.i.p.ated picnic morning.
CHAPTER XX
MR. CRAIG KISSES THE IDOL"S FOOT
Grant Arkwright reached the Waldorf a little less than an hour after he had seen the bride and groom drive away from Doctor Scones". He found Craig pacing up and down before the desk, his agitation so obvious that the people about were all intensely and frankly interested. "You look as if you were going to draw a couple of guns in a minute or so and shoot up the house," said he, putting himself squarely before Josh and halting him.
"For G.o.d"s sake, Grant," cried Joshua, "see how I"m sweating! Go upstairs--up to their suite, and find out what"s the matter."
"Go yourself," retorted Grant.
Craig shook his head. He couldn"t confess to Arkwright what was really agitating him, why he did not disregard Margaret"s injunction.
"What"re you afraid of?"
Josh scowled as Grant thus unconsciously scuffed the sore spot. "I"m not afraid!" he cried aggressively. "It"s better that you should go. Don"t haggle--go!"
As Grant could think of no reason why he shouldn"t, and as he had the keenest curiosity to see how the "old tartar" was taking it, he went.
Margaret"s voice came in response to his knock. "Oh, it"s you," said she in a tone of relief.
Her face was swollen and her eyes red. She looked anything but lovely.
Grant, however, was instantly so moved that he did not notice her homeliness. Also, he was one of those un.o.bservant people who, having once formed an impression of a person, do not revise it except under compulsion; his last observation of Margaret had resulted in an impression of good looks, exceptional charm. He bent upon her a look in which understanding sympathy was heavily alloyed with the longing of the covetous man in presence of his neighbor"s desirable possessions. But he discreetly decided that he would not put into words--at least, not just yet--his sympathy with her for her dreadful, her tragic mistake. No, it would be more tactful as well as more discreet to pretend belief that her tears had been caused by her grandmother. He glanced round.
"Where"s Madam Bowker?" inquired he. "Did she blow up and bolt?"
"Oh, no," answered Margaret, seating herself with a dreary sigh. "She"s gone to her sitting-room to write with her own hand the announcement that"s to be given out. She says the exact wording is very important."
"So it is," said Grant. "All that"s said will take its color from the first news."
"No doubt." Margaret"s tone was indifferent, absent.
Arkwright hesitated to introduce the painful subject, the husband; yet he had a certain malicious pleasure in doing it, too. "Josh wants to come up," said he. "He"s down at the desk, champing and tramping and pawing holes in the floor." And he looked at her, to note the impression of this vivid, adroitly-reminiscent picture.
"Not yet," said Margaret curtly and coldly. All of a sudden she buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.
"Rita--dear Rita!" exclaimed Grant, his own eyes wet, "I know just how you feel. Am I not suffering, too? I thought I didn"t care, but I did--I do. Rita, it isn"t too late yet--"
She straightened; dried her eyes. "Stop that, Grant!" she said peremptorily. "Stop it!"
His eyes sank. "I can"t bear to see you suffer."
"You don"t mean a word of what you"ve just said," she went on. "You are all upset, as I am. You are his friend and mine." Defiantly: "And I love him, and you know I do."
It was the tone of one giving another something that must be repeated by rote. "That"s it," said he, somewhat sullenly, but with no hint of protest. "I"m all unstrung, like you, and like him."
"And you will forget that you saw me crying."
"I"ll never think of it again."
"Now go and bring him, please."
He went quickly toward the door.