"You are very hard, father. I thought you would stand by me."
"Not yet, not yet, Yanna! You must stand for yourself; stand on your own merits, your beauty, your rights; stand on Harry"s love for you, and your great, patient love for him; stand on your faith in G.o.d, your desires for the happiness of others, and your measureless charity for all. Oh, Adriana, when a wife cannot lean on her husband, she must stand alone until she can! Interferers only bring sorrow."
"It is all so dark and void and lonely, father."
"Put your hand out into the darkness, and you will find _The Hand_ that you can safely clasp; that will lead you and Harry into confident and satisfied affection. There is much good in Harry; there are many years of great love and happiness in store for you both, if you, Yanna, do not get weary in well-doing. Is there any sin for which a man may not be pardoned? Is not the Gospel built on unlimited forgiveness?"
As Peter was speaking Miss Alida entered. She looked at him, and then at Yanna, and shrugged her shoulders with an understanding glance at the pale, troubled woman. "Well, Cousin Peter," she said, "I am glad to see you; but I doubt if you are the best adviser for Yanna, at this time. Suppose you leave us a little. I have some words for my girl that I do not want you to contradict until she has had time to think them over." Then Peter went out, and Miss Alida set her chair down with a vigorous little thump close to Yanna"s side. "I called on Rose this morning," she said, "and I heard from Antony that she had come here, so I guessed what she had come to say. Now, Yanna, we are going to have some straight, sensible talk, and then, if you make a little fool of yourself afterwards, it will not be Alida Van Hoosen"s fault.
Rose told you about Harry"s fondness for certain society?"
"Yes."
"And made more of her information than there was need to--that of course. What have you been telling Cousin Peter?"
"I said to father that Harry would make a great complaint if I behaved with certain gay men as he behaves with certain gay women. I told him I thought the sin in both cases just alike, and that I was tired of bearing wrongs which would send Harry to the divorce court."
"Hum--m--m! What did your father say?"
"He said Harry"s sin towards G.o.d was the same as my sin would be in like circ.u.mstances; but that Harry"s sin to me was less than the same sin on my part would be towards him. And he told me to pray, and forgive, and hope, and wait, and so on," she added with a weary sigh.
"Good, as far as it goes. We are going further, and we must not look in a one-eyed manner at the question. To begin at the beginning, none of us supposed, not you, nor I, not yet your father, that Harry was before his marriage to you, a model of morality. Before your marriage, antecedent purity was not pretended on Harry"s side; and your family never inquired after it, I dare say. Unfortunately, though early marriage is rare, early depravity is not rare; and I will venture to doubt if one youth in one hundred struggles unpolluted out of the temptations that a.s.sail youth. Whatever future obligations were imposed on Harry by his marriage, n.o.body thought of blaming him for the past."
"I do not permit myself to consider Harry"s past. In our marriage he was bound by the same vows and obligations as I was. When he breaks them he is precisely as guilty as I would be if I should break them."
"Not quite so. The offence of a married woman changes purity to impurity; the offence of a married man usually only makes what was impure a little more so. That is one difference. Your father pointed out the social difference--pity for the woman, scorn and derision for the man. I will go still further, and remind you that society in blaming the woman so much more than the man acts on a great physiological truth, affecting not only racial and family characteristics, but the proper heirship of large properties and the successions to vast estates. The infidelity of the husband inflicts no spurious children on his wife. If a woman has no other married privilege, she has that of knowing her own children."
"That is not the whole of the question. A bad man may not be able to impose spurious children on his wife; but that does not prevent him from imposing them on his friend and neighbor."
"That is a case between man and man, not between a man and his wife; and we have nothing to do with it. I am only trying to convince you that Harry is not as bad as you think he is."
"And I say that it is wrong to expect purity from wives and not also from their husbands."
"My dear Yanna, we shall have to call justice to our aid. There are certain virtues that belong peculiarly to men, and others which belong peculiarly to women. For instance, bravery is to a man all that chast.i.ty is to a woman. The want of courage that disgraces a man is no slur to a woman. If a ship is going to pieces, men postpone their own deliverance until all the women have been saved; and if they did not, they would be infamous forever in the eyes of their fellow men. In the hour of death or danger, women faint and cry out, and it is no shame to them, it is only womanly, and they are loved the more for it; but if men were to so far forget themselves, what a measure of contempt would be justly given them! Yet men do not complain of this apparent unfairness; they know that being men, they must suffer as men, and not claim the privilege of a woman"s immunity."
"One sin cannot excuse another, Cousin Alida."
"It is not only one, there are many other points, which are just as remarkable; for instance, there is the dishonor of being found out cheating at cards. Men laugh at the fault in women; they call them "pretty little frauds," and go on with the game. But if a man is caught in the same act, he is quickly sent to Coventry, or to Halifax, or to some other shameful limbo."
"Women are proverbially weak, and men a.s.sume to be their superiors in strength of character. They ought to prove it."
"Come, come, Mrs. Filmer! If a woman"s weakness is an excuse, then the vigor, the strength, and the temptations of men are a much larger one.
Their very excess of life makes them powerful to _do_, and impotent to resist. It is clearly unreasonable to expect men to be both as they are and as they are not. Simple justice demands that we should be more tolerant with men than with women on the score of those offences, which are the death-blow to a woman"s good name. You see, then, that each s.e.x has a right to plead certain extenuations not permissible to the other s.e.x."
"I see that it is the privilege of the male s.e.x to wound and to injure the female s.e.x; and the privilege of the latter to bear and to forgive."
"Well, then, Yanna, to forgive is a n.o.ble privilege, a safe and blessed generosity. And I can tell you, that I have known many pure, chaste wives who were just as bad wives as you could possibly find--cruel, selfish, spiritually-proud, intolerant women, filling their husband"s days with the bitterness of their tempers, or else giving way to an egotism of despair and weeping worse than all the wrongs they complain of."
"My dear cousin, I do hope that you do not include me in that list."
"I hope not, Yanna. I hope not. There are certain things that can only be got by renouncing them--your own way, your own desire is usually one of these things."
"What am I to do then? I cannot bear things as they are."
"If you cannot bear your troubles, you may be able to bear their remedies. You ought to have for Harry such a love as masters Time, and the infelicities of Time. Have you this love?"
"Yes, I have."
"You can bear to think of loving Harry and living with him eternally?"
"I should be miserable if I thought death would separate us."
"Good gracious, child! And yet you have suffered the word "divorce" to pa.s.s your lips. Just remember that men do not marry women because they are very beautiful, or very clever, or very good, indeed; they generally marry them because there is "something nice about them."
Now, let Harry always find there is "something nice about you." You do not complain of Harry to any one, do you?"
"I have not, until this morning; nor have I listened to any report about him."
"Quite right. To talk of matrimonial troubles is to burn the dirtiest chimney ever set on fire. But there are sins of omission as well as of commission. You have stayed at home too much. You ought to go out with Harry while his mood is to go out."
"I cannot go with the set that Rose and he prefer."
"You can go with my set. Harry must really be forgetting how you look in anything but tweed and China silk. Put away every appearance of being an injured wife. Be a happy wife. Let him always come into an atmosphere of good humor. No man can resist that."
"Rose and Mrs. Filmer drop so many unkind words about me."
"Drop kind ones about them. The incongruity will eventually strike him."
"His family have always tried to make sorrow for me."
"Of course. A wife"s foes are to be found in her husband"s family. Let them plot and plan, and you be sincere. Whatever is sincere invariably conquers. A week to-day we are going to have a grand dinner-party.
Wear your wedding dress, and I have brought you my sapphires and diamonds. Dress your hair high. Dress to the utmost of your conception of what is splendid. Then march on Harry, and take him anew by storm.
One-half of men"s pa.s.sion for pretty actresses is grounded on their picturesque dressing. If they saw the same girls in a housemaid"s cotton gown and ap.r.o.n, they would not look at them."
"Such a low side to touch Harry on!"
"Oh, dear me! Can you build a marble palace without the rough wood scaffolding? Do but be bright and cheerful and handsome and patient, and my word for it! you will see how swiftly Harry will tire of meaner women. For the rapid transformation whereby carnal love is turned into carnal hatred is one of the most wonderful things to consider. Now mind, you are to conquer all before you next Thursday night!"
So the invitation was formally sent, and Adriana announced her intention of accepting it. Harry was a trifle annoyed. He had grown accustomed to going out alone, and feeling a kind of safe repose in the idea of the wife watching on his hearthstone.
"Do you think you had better go, dear?" he asked. "Is little Harry well enough to leave? And there is your dress! I suppose it will be a very fine affair."
"Cousin Alida made a point of my being present. I must go for dinner.
I need not stay long after."
"I have an engagement at the Union Club that very night--rather an important one--I wonder how I can manage?"
"You can take me to the Zabriski house, and make your apologies in person to Cousin Alida. After your dinner at the club, you can call for me. I dare say I shall be ready to go home."
"Those Zabriski affairs are so very stupid."