the "woman-problem." She had thought at first that it was going to
prove a helpful talk--he had been in a fairer mood than she was
usually able to induce. "He evaded some of my questions," she
explained, "but I don't think it was deliberate; it is simply the
evasive attitude of mind which the whole world takes. He says he
does not think that women are inferior to men, only that they are
different; the mistake is for them to try to become _like_ men. It
is the old proposition of 'charm,' you see. I put that to him, and
he admitted that he did like to be 'charmed.'
"I said, 'You wouldn't, if you knew as much about the process as I
do.'
"'Why not?' he asked.
"'Because, it's not an honest process. It's not a straight way for
one sex to deal with the other.'
"He asked what I meant by that; but then, remembering the cautions
of my great-aunt, I laughed. 'If you are going to compel me to use
the process, you can hardly expect me to tell you the secret of it.'
"'Then there's no use trying to talk,' he said.
"'Ah, but there is!' I exclaimed. 'You admit that I have
'charm'--dozens of other men admitted it. And so it ought to count
for something if I declare that I know it's not an honest
thing--that it depends upon trickery, and appeals to the worst
qualities in a man. For instance, his vanity. "Flatter him," Lady
Dee used to say. "He'll swallow it." And he will--I never knew a man
to refuse a compliment in my life. His love of domination. "If you
want anything, make him think that _he_ wants it!" His egotism. She
had a bitter saying--I can hear the very tones of her voice: "When
in doubt, talk about HIM." That is what is called "charm"!'
"'I don't seem to feel it,' he said.
"' No, because now you are behind the scenes. But when you were in
front, you felt it, you can't deny. And you would feel it again, any
time I chose to use it. But I want to know if there is not some
honest way a woman can interest a man. The question really comes to
this--Can a man love a woman for what she really is?'
"'I should say,' he said, 'that it depends upon the woman.'
"I admitted this was a plausible answer. 'But you loved me, when I
made myself a mystery to you. But now that I am honest with you, you
have made it clear that you don't like it, that you won't have it.
And that is the problem that women have to face. It is a fact that
the women of our family have always ruled the men; but they've done
it by indirection--nobody ever thought seriously of "women's rights"
in Castleman County. But you see, women _have_ rights; and somehow
or other they will fool the men, or else the men must give up the
idea that they are the superior sex, and have the right, or the
ability, to rule women.'
"Then I saw how little he had followed me. 'There has to be a head
to the family,' he said.
"I answered, 'There have been cases in history of a king and queen
ruling together, and getting along very well. Why not the same thing
in a family?'
"'That's all right, so far as the things of the family are
concerned. But such affairs as business and politics are in the
sphere of men; and women cannot meddle in them without losing their
best qualities as women.'
"And so there we were. I won't repeat his arguments, for doubtless
you have read enough anti-suffrage literature. The thing I noticed
was that if I was very tactful and patient, I could apparently carry
him along with me; but when the matter came up again, I would
discover that he was back where he had been before. A woman must
accept the guidance of a man; she must take the man's word for the
things that he understands. 'But suppose the man is _wrong?_' I
said; and there we stopped--there we shall stop always, I begin to
fear. I agree with him that woman should obey man--so long as man is
right!"
4. Her letters did not all deal with this problem. In spite of the
sewing, she found time to read a number of books, and we argued
about these. Then, too, she had been probing her young doctor, and
had made interesting discoveries about him. For one thing, he was
full of awe and admiration for her; and her awakening mind found
material for speculation in this.
"Here is this young man; he thinks he is a scientist, he rather
prides himself upon being cold-blooded; yet a cunning woman could
twist him round her finger. He had an unhappy love-affair when he
was young, so he confided to me; and now, in his need and
loneliness, a beautiful woman is transformed into something
supernatural in his imagination--she is like a shimmering
soap-bubble, that he blows with his own breath. I know that I could
never get him to see the real truth about me; I might tell him that
I have let myself be tied up in a golden net--but he would only
marvel at my spirituality. Oh, the women I have seen trading upon
the credulity of men! And when I think how I did this myself! If men
were wise, they would give us the vote, and a share in the world's
work--anything that would bring us out into the light of day, and
break the spell of mystery that hangs round us!
"By the way," she wrote in another letter, "there will be trouble if
you come down here. I was telling Dr. Perrin about you, and your
ideas about fasting, and mental healing, and the rest of your fads.
He got very much excited. It seems that he takes his diploma
seriously, and he's not willing to be taught by amateur experiments.
He wanted me to take some pills, and I refused, and I think now he
blames you for it. He has found a bond of sympathy with my husband,
who proves his respect for authority by taking whatever he is told
to take. Dr. Perrin got his medical training here in the South, and
I imagine he's ten or twenty years behind the rest of the medical
world. Douglas picked him out because he'd met him socially. It
makes no difference to me--because I don't mean to have any
doctoring done to me!"
Then, on top of these things, would come a cry from her soul. "Mary,
what will you do if some day you get a letter from me confessing
that I am not happy? I dare not say a word to my own people. I am
supposed to be at the apex of human triumph, and I have to play that
role to keep from hurting them. I know that if my dear old father
got an inkling of the truth, it would kill him. My one real solid
consolation is that I have helped him, that I have lifted a
money-burden from his life; I have done that, I tell myself, over
and over; but then I wonder, have I done anything but put the
reckoning off? I have given all his other children a new excuse for
extravagance, an impulse towards worldliness which they did not
need.
"There is my sister Celeste, for example. I don't think I have told
you about her. She made her _d?but_ last fall, and was coming up to
New York to stay with me this winter. She had it all arranged in her
mind to make a rich marriage; I was to give her the _entr?e_--and
no
w I have been selfish, and thought of my own desires, and gone
away. Can I say to her, Be warned by me, I have made a great match,
and it has not brought me happiness? She would not understand, she
would say I was foolish. She would say, 'If I had your luck, _I_
would be happy.' And the worst of it is, it would be true.
"You see the position I am in with the rest of the children. I
cannot say, 'You are spending too much of papa's money, it is wrong
for you to sign cheques and trust to his carelessness.' I have had
my share of the money, I have lined my own nest. All I can do is to
buy dresses and hats for Celeste; and know that she will use these
to fill her girl-friends with envy, and make scores of other
families live beyond their means."
5. Sylvia's pregnancy was moving to its appointed end. She wrote me
beautifully about it, much more frankly and simply than she could
have brought herself to talk. She recalled to me my own raptures,
and also, my own heartbreak. "Mary! Mary! I felt the child to-day!
Such a sensation, I could not have credited it if anyone had told
me. I almost fainted. There is something in me that wants to turn
back, that is afraid to go on with such experiences. I do not wish
to be seized in spite of myself, and made to feel things beyond my
control. I wander off down the beach, and hide myself, and cry and
cry. I think I could almost pray again."
And then again, "I am in ecstasy, because I am to bear a child, a
child of my own! Oh, wonderful, wonderful! But suddenly my ecstasy
is shot through with terror, because the father of this child is a
man I do not love. There is no use trying to deceive myself--nor
you! I must have one human soul with whom I can talk about it as it
really is. I do not love him, I never did love him, I never shall
love him!
"Oh, how could they have all been so mistaken? Here is Aunt
Varina--one of those who helped to persuade me into this marriage.
She told me that love would come; it seemed to be her idea--my
mother had it too--that you had only to submit yourself to a man, to
follow and obey him, and love would take possession of your heart. I
tried credulously, and it did not happen as they promised. And now,
I am to bear him a child; and that will bind us together for ever!
"Oh, the despair of it--I do not love the father of my child! I say,
The child will be partly his, perhaps more his than mine. It will be
like him--it will have this quality and that, the very qualities,
perhaps, that are a source of distress to me in the father. So I
shall have these things before me day and night, all the rest of my
life; I shall have to see them growing and hardening; it will be a
perpetual crucifixion of my mother-love. I seek to comfort myself by
saying, The child can be trained differently, so that he will not
have these qualities. But then I think, No, you cannot train him as
you wish. Your husband will have rights to the child, rights
superior to your own. Then I foresee the most dreadful strife
between us.
"A shrewd girl-friend once told me that I ought to be better or
worse; I ought not to see people's faults as I do, or else I ought
to love people less. And I can see that I ought to have been too
good to make this marriage, or else not too good to make the best of
it. I know that I might be happy as Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver, if I
could think of the worldly advantages, and the fact that my child
will inherit them. But instead, I see them as a trap, in which not
only ourselves but the child is caught, and from which I cannot save
us. Oh, what a mistake a woman makes when she marries a man with the
idea that she is going to change him! He will not change, he will
not have the need of change suggested to him. He wants _peace_ in
his home--which means that he wants to be what he is.
"Sometimes I can study the situation quite coolly, and as if it
didn't concern me at all. He has required me to subject my mind to
his. But he will not be content with a general capitulation; he must
have a surrender from each individual soldier, from every rebel
hidden in the hills. He tracks them out (my poor, straggling, feeble
ideas) and either they take the oath of allegiance, or they are
buried where they lie. The process is like the spoiling of a child,
I find; the more you give him, the more he wants. And if any little
thing is refused, then you see him set out upon a regular campaign
to break you down and get it."
A month or more later she wrote: "Poor Douglas is getting restless.
He has caught every kind of fish there is to catch, and hunted every
kind of animal and bird, in and out of season. Harley has gone home,
and so have our other guests; it would be embarrassing to me to have
company now. So Douglas has no one but the doctor and myself and my
poor aunt. He has spoken several times of our going away; but I do
not want to go, and I think I ought to consider my own health at
this critical time. It is hot here, but I simply thrive in it--I
never felt in better health. So I asked him to go up to New York, or
visit somewhere for a while, and let me stay here until my baby is
born. Does that seem so very unreasonable? It does not to me, but
poor Aunt Varina is in agony about it--I am letting my husband drift
away from me!
"I speculate about my lot as a woman; I see the bitterness and the
sorrow of my sex through the ages. I have become physically
misshapen, so that I am no longer attractive to him. I am no longer
active and free, I can no longer go about with him; on the contrary,
I am a burden, and he is a man who never tolerated a burden before.
What this means is that I have lost the magic hold of sex.
"As a woman it was my business to exert all my energies to maintain
it. And I know how I could restore it now; there is young Dr.
Perrin! _He_ does not find me a burden, _he_ would tolerate any
deficiencies! And I can see my husband on the alert in an instant,
if I become too much absorbed in discussing your health-theories
with my handsome young guardian!
"This is one of the recognized methods of keeping your husband; I
learned from Lady Dee all there is to know about it. But I would
find the method impossible now, even if my happiness were dependent
upon retaining my husband's love. I should think of the rights of my
friend, the little doctor. That is one point to note for the 'new'
woman, is it not? You may mention it in your next suffrage-speech!
"There are other methods, of course. I have a mind, and I might turn
its powers to entertaining him, instead of trying to solve the
problems of the universe. But to do this, I should have to believe
that it was the one thing in the world for me to do; and I have
permitted a doubt of that to gain entrance to my brain! My poor
aunt's exhortations inspire me to efforts to regain the faith of my
mothers, but I simply cannot--I cannot! She sits by me with the
terror of all the women of all the ages in her eyes. I am losing a
/> man!
"I don't know if you have ever set out to hold a man--deliberately,
I mean. Probably you haven't. That bitter maxim of Lady Dee's is the
literal truth of it--'When in doubt, talk about HIM!' If you will
tactfully and shrewdly keep a man talking about himself, his tastes,
his ideas, his work and the importance of it, there is never the
least possibility of your boring him. You must not just tamely agree
with him, of course; if you hint a difference now and then, and make
him convince you, he will find that stimulating; or if you can
manage not to be quite convinced, but sweetly open to conviction, he
will surely call again. 'Keep him busy every minute,' Lady Dee used
to say. 'Run away with him now and then--like a spirited horse!' And
she would add, 'But don't let him drop the reins!'
"You can have no idea how many women there are in the world
deliberately playing such parts. Some of them admit it; others just
do the thing that is easiest, and would die of horror if they were
told what it is. It is the whole of the life of a successful society
woman, young or old. Pleasing a man! Waiting upon his moods, piquing
him, flattering him, feeding his vanity--'charming' him! That is
what Aunt Varina wants me to do now; if I am not too crude in my
description of the process, she has no hesitation in admitting the
truth. It is what she tried to do, it is what almost every woman has
done who has held a family together and made a home. I was reading
_Jane Eyre_ the other day. _There_ is your woman's ideal of an
imperious and impetuous lover! Listen to him, when his mood is on
him!--
"I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night; and that
is why I sent for you; the fire and the chandelier were not
sufficient company for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none of
these can talk. To-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss
what importunes, and recall what pleases. It would please me now to
draw you out--to learn more of you--therefore speak!"
6. It was now May, and Sylvia's time was little more than a month
off. She had been urging me to come and visit her, but I had
refused, knowing that my presence must necessarily be disturbing to
both her husband and her aunt. But now she wrote that her husband
was going back to New York. "He was staying out of a sense of duty
to me," she said. "But his discontent was so apparent that I had to
point out to him that he was doing harm to me as well as to himself.
"I doubt if you will want to come here now. The last of the winter
visitors have left. It is really hot, so hot that you cannot get
cool by going into the water. Yet I am revelling in it; I wear
almost nothing, and that white; and even the suspicious Dr. Perrin
cannot but admit that I am thriving; his references to pills are
purely formal.
"Lately I have not permitted myself to think much about the
situation between my husband and myself. I cannot blame him, and I
cannot blame myself, and I am trying to keep my peace of mind till
my baby is born. I have found myself following half-instinctively
the procedure you told me about; I talk to my own subconscious mind,
and to the baby--I command them to be well. I whisper to them things
that are not so very far from praying; but I don't think my poor
dear mamma would recognize it in its new scientific dress!
"But sometimes I can't help thinking of the child and its future,
and then all of a sudden my heart is ready to break with pity for
the child's father! I have the consciousness that I do not love him,
and that he has always known it--and that makes me remorseful. But I
told him the truth before we married--he promised to be patient with
me till I had learned to love him! Now I want to burst into tears
and cry aloud, 'Oh, why did you do it? Why did I let myself be
persuaded into this marriage?'
"I tried to have a talk with him last night, after he had decided to