Sylvia's Marriage Read online

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