Sylvia's Marriage Read online

enforce in case of necessity. "But surely," cried Sylvia, "you don't

  want to make divorce more easy!"

  "I want to make the conditions of it fair to women," I said.

  "But then more women will get it! And there are so many divorced

  women now! Papa says that divorce is a greater menace than

  Socialism!"

  She spoke of Suffrage in England, where women were just beginning to

  make public disturbances. Surely I did not approve of their leaving

  their homes for such purposes as that! As tactfully as I could, I

  suggested that conditions in England were peculiar. There was, for

  example, the quaint old law which permitted a husband to beat his

  wife subject to certain restrictions. Would an American woman submit

  to such a law? There was the law which made it impossible for a

  woman to divorce her husband for infidelity, unless accompanied by

  desertion or cruelty. Surely not even her father would consider that

  a decent arrangement! I mentioned a recent decision of the highest

  court in the land, that a man who brought his mistress to live in

  his home, and compelled his wife to wait upon her, was not

  committing cruelty within the meaning of the English law. I heard

  Sylvia's exclamation of horror, and met her stare of incredulity;

  and then suddenly I thought of Claire, and a little chill ran over

  me. It was a difficult hour, in more ways than one, that of my first

  talk with Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver!

  I soon made the discovery that, childish as her ignorance was, there

  was no prejudice in it. If you brought her a fact, she did not say

  that it was too terrible to be true, or that the Bible said

  otherwise, or that it was indecent to know about it. Nor, when you

  met her next, did you discover that she had forgotten it. On the

  contrary, you discovered that she had followed it to its remote

  consequences, and was ready with a score of questions as to these. I

  remember saying to myself, that first automobile ride: "If this girl

  goes on thinking, she will get into trouble! She will have to stop,

  for the sake of others!"

  "You must meet my husband some time," she said; and added, "I'll

  have to see my engagement-book. I have so much to do, I never know

  when I have a moment free."

  "You must find it interesting," I ventured.

  "I did, for a while; but I've begun to get tired of so much going

  about. For the most part I meet the same people, and I've found out

  what they have to say."

  I laughed. "You have caught the society complaint already--_ennui_!"

  "I had it years ago, at home. It's true I never would have gone out

  at all if it hadn't been for the sake of my family. That's why I

  envy a woman like you--"

  I could not help laughing. It was too funny, Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver

  envying me!

  "What's the matter?" she asked.

  "Just the irony of life. Do you know, I cut you out of the

  newspaper, and put you in a little frame on my bureau. I thought,

  here is the loveliest face I've ever seen, and here is the

  most-to-be-envied of women."

  She smiled, but quickly became serious. "I learned very early in

  life that I was beautiful; and I suppose if I were suddenly to cease

  being beautiful, I'd miss it; yet I often think it's a nuisance. It

  makes one dependent on externals. Most of the beautiful women I've

  known make a sort of profession of it--they live to shine and be

  looked at.

  "And you don't enjoy that?" I asked.

  "It restricts one's life. Men expect it of you, they resent your

  having any other interest."

  "So," I responded, gravely, "with all your beauty and wealth, you

  aren't perfectly happy?"

  "Oh, yes!" she cried--not having meant to confess so much. "I told

  myself I would be happy, because I would be able to do so much good

  in the world. There must be some way to do good with money! But now

  I'm not sure; there seem to be so many things in the way. Just when

  you have your mind made up that you have a way to help, someone

  comes and points out to you that you may be really doing harm."

  She hesitated again, and I said, "That means you have been looking

  into the matter of charity."

  She gave me a bright glance. "How you understand things!" she

  exclaimed.

  "It is possible," I replied, "to know modern society so well that

  when you meet certain causes you know what results to look for."

  "I wish you'd explain to me why charity doesn't do any good!"

  "It would mean a lecture on the competitive wage-system," I

  laughed--" too serious a matter for a drive!"

  This may have seemed shirking on my part. But here I was, wrapped in

  luxurious furs, rolling gloriously through the park at twilight on a

  brilliant autumn evening; and the confiscation of property seems so

  much more startling a proposition when you are in immediate contact

  with it! This principle, which explains the "opportunism" of

  Socialist cabinet-ministers and Labour M.P.s may be used to account

  for the sudden resolve which I had taken, that for this afternoon at

  least Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver should not discover that I was either

  a divorced woman, or a soap-box orator of the revolution.

  9. Sylvia, in that first conversation, told me much about herself

  that she did not know she was telling. I became fairly certain, for

  instance, that she had not married Mr. Douglas van Tuiver for love.

  The young girl who has so married does not suffer from ennui in the

  first year, nor does she find her happiness depending upon her

  ability to solve the problem of charity in connection with her

  husband's wealth.

  She would have ridden and talked longer, she said, but for a dinner

  engagement. She asked me to call on her, and I promised to come some

  morning, as soon as she set a day. When the car drew up before the

  door of her home, I thought of my first ride about the city in the

  "rubber-neck wagon," and how I had stared when the lecturer pointed

  out this mansion. We, the passengers, had thrilled as one soul,

  imagining the wonderful life which must go on behind those massive

  portals, the treasures outshining the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,

  which required those thick, bronze bars for their protection. And

  here was the mistress of all the splendour, inviting me to come and

  see it from within!

  She wanted to send me home in the car, but I would not have that, on

  account of the push-cart men and the babies in my street; I got out

  and walked--my heart beating fast, my blood leaping with exultation.

  I reached home, and there on the bureau was the picture--but behold,

  how changed! It was become a miracle of the art of

  colour-photography; its hair was golden, its eyes a wonderful

  red-brown, its cheeks aglow with the radiance of youth! And yet more

  amazing, the picture spoke! It spoke with the most delicious of

  Southern drawls--referring to the "repo't" of my child-labour

  committee, shivering at the cold and bidding me pull the "fu-uzz" up

  round me. And when I told funny stories about the Italians and the

 
Hebrews of my tenement-neighbourhood, it broke into silvery

  laughter, and cried: "Oh, de-ah me! How que-ah!" Little had I

  dreamed, when I left that picture in the morning, what a miracle was

  to be wrought upon it.

  I knew, of course, what was the matter with me; the symptoms were

  unmistakable. After having made up my mind that I was an old woman,

  and that there was nothing more in life for me save labour--here the

  little archer had come, and with the sharpest of his golden arrows,

  had shot me through. I had all the thrills, the raptures and

  delicious agonies of first love; I lived no longer in myself, but in

  the thought of another person. Twenty times a day I looked at my

  picture, and cried aloud: "Oh, beautiful, beautiful!"

  I do not know how much of her I have been able to give. I have told

  of our first talk--but words are so cold and dead! I stop and ask:

  What there is, in all nature, that has given me the same feeling? I

  remember how I watched the dragon-fly emerging from its chrysalis.

  It is soft and green and tender; it clings to a branch and dries its

  wings in the sun, and when the miracle is completed, there for a

  brief space it poises, shimmering with a thousand hues, quivering

  with its new-born ecstasy. And just so was Sylvia; a creature from

  some other world than ours, as yet unsoiled by the dust and heat of

  reality. It came to me with a positive shock, as a terrifying thing,

  that there should be in this world of strife and wickedness any

  young thing that took life with such intensity, that was so

  palpitating with eagerness, with hope, with sympathy. Such was the

  impression that one got of her, even when her words most denied it.

  She might be saying world-weary and cynical things, out of the

  maxims of Lady Dee; but there was still the eagerness, the sympathy,

  surging beneath and lifting her words.

  The crown of her loveliness was her unconsciousness of self. Even

  though she might be talking of herself, frankly admitting her

  beauty, she was really thinking of other people, how she could get

  to them to help them. This I must emphasize, because, apart from

  jesting, I would not have it thought that I had fallen under the

  spell of a beautiful countenance, combined with a motor-car and a

  patrician name. There were things about Sylvia that were

  aristocratic, that could be nothing else; but she could be her same

  lovely self in a cottage--as I shall prove to you before I finish

  with the story of her life.

  I was in love. At that time I was teaching myself German, and I sat

  one day puzzling out two lines of Goethe:

  "Oden and Thor, these two thou knowest; Freya, the heavenly, knowest

  thou not."

  And I remember how I cried aloud in sudden delight: _"I know her!"_

  For a long time that was one of my pet names--"Freya dis

  Himmlische!" I only heard of one other that I preferred--when in

  course of time she told me about Frank Shirley, and how she had

  loved him, and how their hopes had been wrecked. He had called her

  "Lady Sunshine"; he had been wont to call it over and over in his

  happiness, and as Sylvia repeated it to me--"Lady Sunshine! Lady

  Sunshine!" I could imagine that I caught an echo of the very tones

  of Frank Shirley's voice.

  10. For several days I waited upon the postman, and when the summons

  came I dodged a committee-meeting, and ascended the marble stairs

  with trepidation, and underwent the doubting scrutiny of an English

  lackey, sufficiently grave in deportment and habiliments to have

  waited upon a bishop in his own land. I have a vague memory of an

  entrance-hall with panelled paintings and a double-staircase with a

  snow-white carpet, about which I had read in the newspapers that it

  was woven in one piece, and had cost an incredible sum. One did not

  have to profane it with his feet, as there was an elevator provided.

  I was shown to Sylvia's morning-room, which had been "done" in pink

  and white and gold by some decorator who had known her colours. It

  was large enough to have held half-a-dozen of my own quarters, and

  the sun was allowed to flood it. Through a door at one side came

  Sylvia, holding out her hands to me.

  She was really glad to see me! She began to apologize at once for

  the time she had taken to write. It was because she had so much to

  do. She had married into a world that took itself seriously: the

  "idle rich," who worked like slaves. "You know," she said, while we

  sat on a pink satin couch, and a footman brought us coffee: "you

  read that Mrs. So-and-so is a 'social queen,' and you think it's a

  newspaper phrase, but it isn't; she really feels that she's a queen,

  and other people feel it, and she goes through her ceremonies as

  solemnly as the Lord's anointed."

  She went on to tell me some of her adventures. She had a keen sense

  of fun, and was evidently suffering for an outlet for it. She saw

  through the follies and pretences of people in a flash, but they

  were all such august and important people that, out of regard for

  her husband, she dared not let them suspect her clairvoyant power.

  She referred to her experiences abroad. She had not liked

  Europe--being quite frankly a provincial person. To Castleman County

  a foreigner was a strange, dark person who mixed up his consonants,

  and was under suspicion of being a fiddler or an opera-singer. The

  people she had met under her husband's charge had been socially

  indubitable, but still, they were foreigners, and Sylvia could never

  really be sure what they meant.

  There was, for instance, the young son of a German steel-king, a

  person of amazing savoir faire, who had made bold to write books and

  exhibit pictures, and had travelled so widely that he had even heard

  of Castleman County. He had taken Sylvia to show her the sights of

  Berlin, and had rolled her down the "Sieges All�e," making

  outrageous fun of his Kaiser's taste in art, and coming at last to a

  great marble column, with a female figure representing Victory upon

  the top. "You will observe," said the cultured young plutocrat,

  "that the Grecian lady stands a hundred meters in the air, and has

  no stairway. There is a popular saying about her which is

  delightful--that she is the only chaste woman in Berlin!"

  I had been through the culture-seeking stage, and knew my Henry

  James; so I could read between the lines of Sylvia's experiences. I

  figured her as a person walking on volcanic ground, not knowing her

  peril, but vaguely disquieted by a smell of sulphur in the air. And

  once in a while a crack would open in the ground! There was the Duke

  of Something in Rome, for example, a melancholy young man, with whom

  she had coquetted, as she did, in her merry fashion, with every man

  she met. Being married, she had taken it for granted that she might

  be as winsome as she chose; but the young Italian had misunderstood

  the game, and had whispered words of serious import, which had so

  horrified Sylvia that she flew to her husband and told him the

  story--begging him incidentally not to horse-
whip the fellow. In

  reply it had to be explained to her she had laid herself liable to

  the misadventure. The ladies of the Italian aristocracy were severe

  and formal, and Sylvia had no right to expect an ardent young duke

  to understand her native wildness.

  11. Something of that sort was always happening--something in each

  country to bewilder her afresh, and to make it necessary for her

  husband to remind her of the proprieties. In France, a cousin of van

  Tuiver's had married a marquis, and they had visited the chateau.

  The family was Catholic, of the very oldest and strictest, and the

  brother-in-law, a prelate of high degree, had invited the guests to

  be shown through his cathedral. "Imagine my bewilderment!" said

  Sylvia. "I thought I was going to meet a church dignitary, grave and

  reverent; but here was a wit, a man of the world. Such speeches you

  never heard! I was ravished by the grandeur of the building, and I

  said: 'If I had seen this, I would have come to you to be married.'

  'Madame is an American,' he replied. 'Come the next time!' When I

  objected that I was not a Catholic, he said: 'Your beauty is its own

  religion!' When I protested that he would be doing me too great an

  honour, 'Madame,' said he, 'the _honneur_ would be all to the church!'

  And because I was shocked at all this, I was considered to be a

  provincial person!"

  Then they had come to London, a dismal, damp city where you "never

  saw the sun, and when you did see it it looked like a poached egg";

  where you had to learn to eat fish with the help of a knife, and

  where you might speak of bitches, but must never on any account

  speak of your stomach. They went for a week-end to "Hazelhurst," the

  home of the Dowager Duchess of Danbury, whose son van Tuiver, had

  entertained in America, and who, in the son's absence, claimed the

  right to repay the debt. The old lady sat at table with two fat

  poodle dogs in infants' chairs, one on each side of her, feeding out

  of golden trays. There was a visiting curate, a frightened little

  man at the other side of one poodle; in an effort to be at ease he

  offered the wheezing creature a bit of bread. "Don't feed my dogs!"

  snapped the old lady. "I don't allow anybody to feed my dogs!"

  And then there was the Honourable Reginald Annersley, the youngest

  son of the family, home from Eton on vacation. The Honourable

  Reginald was twelve years of age, undersized and ill-nourished.

  ("They feed them badly," his mother had explained, "an' the

  teachin's no good either, but it's a school for gentlemen.")

  "Honestly," said Sylvia, "he was the queerest little mannikin--like

  the tiny waiter's assistants you see in hotels on the Continent. He

  wore his Eton suit, you understand--grown-up evening clothes minus

  the coat-tails, and a top hat. He sat at tea and chatted with the

  mincing graces of a cotillion-leader; you expected to find some of

  his hair gone when he took off his hat! He spoke of his brother, the

  duke, who had gone off shooting seals somewhere. 'The jolly rotter

  has nothing to do but spend his money; but we younger sons have to

  work like dogs when we grow up!' I asked what he'd do, and he said

  'I suppose there's nothin' but the church. It's a beastly bore, but

  you do get a livin' out of it.'

  "That was too much for me," said Sylvia. "I proceeded to tell the

  poor, blas� infant about my childhood; how my sister Celeste and I

  had caught half-tamed horses and galloped about the pasture on them,

  when we were so small that our little fat legs stuck out

  horizontally; how we had given ourselves convulsions in the green

  apple orchard, and had to be spanked every day before we had our

  hair combed. I told how we heard a war-story about a "train of

  gunpowder," and proceeded to lay such a train about the attic of

  Castleman Hall, and set fire to it. I might have spent the afternoon

  teaching the future churchman how to be a boy, if I hadn't suddenly