Читать книгу: «Making People Happy», страница 2

"I'm ever so much obliged to you," she declared, and kissed her hands gracefully to her fellow club-members. Thereat, the applause was of the briskest. "Really, I am," she made assurance, and wafted another kiss. On this occasion, the applause was of even greater volume than ever before, although four of those present did not join in the ovation to the new chief executive. "Yes, really – truly!" Cicily went on, fluently. "And I think this is a wonderful club we have started. We need a club. It gives us – us married women – something to do. That's the real answer – the real cause, I think, of the woman question. These men have gone on inventing vacuum cleaners and gas-stoves and apartment hotels and servants that know more than we do. They haven't treated us fairly. They've taken away all our occupation, and now we've got to retaliate. We can't keep house for them any more, and, if we – if we care anything about them, or want to help them, we've got to go into business, or to help them vote… Well, they brought it on themselves. They've got too proud. They used to be dependent on us: now, we're dependent on them, on their inventions and their servants. So, we're going to show them. We'll make them dependent on us in the wider outside world, just as they used to be dependent on us in the home. They've hurt our pride, and we're going to make them pay. They say we are nervous and reckless and always on the go… It's their fault: they've made the new woman, and now we are going to make the new man. They put us out of work, and made us so, and now they're going to be sorry… The time is fast coming when each of us will have at least three or four men – "

It was Miss Johnson who caused the interruption to this burst of eloquence.

"Why, that's positively immoral!" gasped the outraged spinster.

" – at least three or four men dependent upon her," concluded the unabashed president of the Civitas Club, as she cast a withering look on her enemy, who quailed visibly. "And I think that's all," Cicily added, contentedly. She felt that she could with justice claim to have conducted herself nobly throughout a critical situation.

"I move that we adjourn," said Mrs. Flynn, energetically. Her vigorous temperament would permit no longer sulking in silence despite the humiliation to which she had so recently been subjected.

Mrs. Carrington, however, had not yet rejected all hope of office.

"We must first select a secretary," she suggested.

This was opposed by Miss Johnson, always persistently moved to discredit the older woman who had snubbed her socially.

"Why not select a professional stenographer as a member of the club; then make her secretary? Any number of young working women would doubtless be glad of the honor." This brought an outcry against the admission of any professional working woman into the exclusive Civitas.

"Oh, remember that we have ideals!" Ruth Howard remonstrated, with sincere, if vague, adherence to her ideals; and she up-turned her great eyes toward the ceiling.

Mrs. Flynn, curiously enough, was opposed to the idealist in this instance.

"Yes," she said, "I fear that it's quite true. The professional working woman thinks more of her salary and a comfortable living than of our great cause."

Cicily herself disposed of the matter with a blithesome nonchalance that was beautiful to behold.

"Oh, don't bother," was her way of cutting the Gordian knot. "I'll make my husband's stenographer do the work."

"I move that we adjourn," the militant suffragette repeated in a most businesslike manner.

Mrs. Carrington was determined that her rival should not outdistance her at the finish. She spoke with her most forcible dignity:

"I second the motion."

The motion was put and carried… Thus ended the first session of that epoch-marking organization: The Civitas Society for the Uplift of Woman and for Encouraging the Spread of Social Equality among the Masses.

CHAPTER II

Cicily Hamilton, bride of a year, was seemingly as fortunate a young woman as the city of New York could offer to an envious world. Her house in the East Sixties, just off the Avenue, was a charming home, dainty, luxurious, in the best of taste, with a certain individuality in its arrangement and ornamentation that spoke agreeably of the personality of its mistress. Her husband, Charles Hamilton, was a handsome man of twenty-six, who adored his wife, although recently, in the months since the waning of the honeymoon, he had been so absorbed in business cares that he had rather neglected those acts of tenderness so vital to a woman's happiness. Some difficulties that disturbed him downtown rendered him often preoccupied when at home, and the effect on his wife was unwholesome. Little by little, the girl-woman felt a certain discontent growing within her, indeterminate in a great measure, but none the less forceful in its influence on her moods day by day.

The statements that Cicily had made in her inaugural speech to the Civitas Society exhibited, albeit crudely, some of the facts breeding revolt in her. In very truth, she found herself without sufficient occupation to hold her thoughts from fanciful flights that led to no satisfactory result in action. An excellent housekeeper, who was far wiser in matters of ménage than she could ever be, held admirable sway over the domestic machinery. The servants, thus directed, were as those untroubling inventions of which she had complained. Since she was not devoted to the distraction of social gaieties, Cicily found an appalling amount, of unemployed time on her hands. She was blest with an excellent education; but, with no great fondness for knowledge as such, she was not inclined to prosecute any particular study with the ardor of the scholar. To rid herself of the boredom induced by this state of affairs, the young wife decided that she must develop a new interest in her fellow creatures. She went farther, and resolved to establish herself on a basis of equality with her husband, not merely in love, but in the sterner world of business. Thus, she was brought to entertain a convincing belief in equality for the sexes, in society and in the home.

She revealed something of her mind and heart to her aunt on the afternoon of the day following the singular session of the Civitas Society. The two women were together in Cicily's boudoir, a delightful room, all paneled in rose silk, with furniture Louis Quatorze, and Dresden ornaments… It was an hour yet before time for the dressing-bell. Cicily, in a negligee of white silk that fitted well with the color scheme of the room and that only emphasized the purity of her ivory skin, suddenly sat up erect in the chair where she had been nestling in curving abandonment.

"Why, Aunt Emma," she exclaimed, with a new sparkle in the amber eyes, "we forgot to set any date for another meeting of the club?"

But Mrs. Delancy did not seem impressed by the oversight.

"Do you think it makes any real difference, dear?" she questioned placidly.

At this taunt, Cicily assumed an air of reproach that was hardly calculated to deceive the astute old lady, who had known the girl for twenty years.

"Don't you take our club seriously?" she questioned in her turn. Her musical voice was touchingly plaintive.

"Oh, it's serious enough," was the retort. "It's either seriously pitiful, or pitifully serious, whichever way you choose to look at it."

Cicily abandoned her disguise of concern, and laughed heartily before she spoke again.

"I must admit that I think it's a joke, myself," she admitted: "more's the pity." There was a note of genuine regret in her voice now. Then, she smiled again, with much zest. "But it was so amusing – stirring them up, and then calmly taking the presidency myself, because none of them knew just how to stop me!"

"It was barefaced robbery!" Mrs. Delancy exclaimed reprovingly, although she, too, was compelled to smile at the audacity of the achievement. "But," she added meditatively, "I really don't see what it all amounts to, anyhow?"

"I suspect that you didn't listen attentively to the president's speech," Cicily railed.

"I listened," Mrs. Delancy declared, firmly. "In spite of that fact, my dear, what does it all mean? Down deep, are you serious in some things I have heard you say, lately?"

"Oh, yes, I'm serious enough," was the answer, spoken with a hint of bitterness in the tone. "That is, I'm seriously bored – desperately bored, for the matter of that. I tell you, Aunt Emma, a married woman must have something to do. As for me, why, I have absolutely nothing to do. Those other women, too, or at least most of them, have nothing to do, and they are all desperately bored. Well, that's the cause of the new club. Unfortunately, the club, too, has nothing to do – nothing at all – and so, the club, too, is desperately bored… Oh, if only I could give that club an object – a real object!"

Mrs. Delancy murmured some remonstrance over the new enthusiasm that sounded in her niece's voice while uttering the aspiration in behalf of the Civitas Society; but the bride paid no heed.

"Yes," she mused, straightening the arches of her brows in a frown of perplexity, "it could be made something, with an object. I myself could be made something, with an object – something worth while to strive for… Heavens, how I wish I had something to do!"

This iconoclastic fashion of speech was not patiently endured by the orthodox aunt, who listened to the plaint with marked displeasure.

"A bride with a young husband and a beautiful home," she remarked tartly, "seeking something to do! In my day, a bride was about the busiest and the happiest person in the community." Her voice took on a tone of tender reminiscence, and a little color crept into the wrinkled pallor of her cheeks, and she perked her head a bit coquettishly, in a youthful manner not unbecoming, as she continued: "I remember how happy – oh, how happy! – I was then!"

Cicily, however, displayed a rather shocking lack of sympathy for this emotion on the part of her relative. She was, in fact, selfishly absorbed in her own concerns, after the manner of human nature, whether young or old.

"Yes," she said, almost spitefully, "I have noticed how always old married ladies continually remember the happy time when they were brides. A bride's happy time is as much advertised as a successful soap… But I – I – well, I'm not a bride any longer – that's all. I've been married a whole year!"

"A whole year!" Mrs. Delancy spoke the word with the fine scorn of one who was looking forward complacently to the celebration of a golden wedding anniversary in the near future.

Cicily, however, was impervious to the sarcasm of the repetition.

"Yes," she repeated gloomily, "a whole year. Think of it… And all the women in my family live to be seventy. Mamma would have been alive if she hadn't been drowned. A good many live to be eighty. Why, you're not seventy yet. Poor dear! You may have ten or a dozen more years of it!"

Mrs. Delancy was actually horrified by her niece's commiseration.

"Cicily," she eluded, "you must not speak in that manner. I've been happily married. You – "

The afflicted bride was not to be turned aside from her woe.

"I'm perfectly wretched," she announced, fiercely. "Auntie, Charles is a bigamist!"

"Good Lord!" Mrs. Delancy ejaculated with pious fervor, and sank back limply in her chair, too much overcome for further utterance. Then, in a flash of memory, she beheld again the facts as she had known them as to her niece's courtship and marriage. The girl and Charles Hamilton had been sweethearts as children. The boy had developed into the man without ever apparently wavering in his one allegiance. Cicily, too, had had eyes for no other suitor, even when many flocked about her, drawn by the fascination of her vivacious beauty and the little graces of her form and the varied brilliance of her moods. It was because of the steadfastness of the two lovers in their devotion that Mr. and Mrs. Delancy had permitted themselves to be persuaded into granting consent for an early marriage. It had seemed to them that the constancy of the pair was sufficiently established. They believed that here was indeed material for the making of an ideal union. Their belief seemed justified by the facts in the outcome, for bride and groom showed all the evidences of rapturous happiness in their union. It had only been revealed during this present visit to the household by the aunt that, somehow, things were not as they should be between these two erstwhile so fond… And now, at last, the truth was revealed in all its revolting nudity. Mrs. Delancy recalled, with new understanding of its fatal significance, the aloof manner recently worn by the young husband in his home. So, this was the ghastly explanation of the change: The man was a bigamist! The distraught woman had hardly ears for the words her niece was speaking.

"Yes," Cicily said, after a long, mournful pause, "besides me, Charles has married – " She paused, one foot in a dainty satin slipper beating angrily on the white fur of the rug.

"What woman?" Mrs. Delancy demanded, with wrathful curiosity.

"Oh, a factory full of them!" The young wife spoke the accusation with a world of bitterness in her voice.

"Good gracious, what an extraordinary man!" Mrs. Delancy, under the stimulus of this outrageous guilt again sat erect in her chair. Once more, the flush showed daintily in the withered cheeks; but, now, there was no hint of tenderness in the rose – it was the red of anger. "I know how you must feel, dear," she said, gently. "I was jealous once, of one woman. But to be jealous of a factory full – oh, Lord!"

"Yes," Cicily declared, in tremulous tones, "all of them, and the men besides!"

Mrs. Delancy bounced from her seat, then slowly subsided into the depths of the easy chair, whence she fairly gaped at her former ward. When, finally, she spoke, it was slowly, with full conviction.

"Cicily, you're crazy!"

"No," the girl protested, sadly; "only heartbroken. I am so miserable that I wish I were dead!"

"But, my dear," Mrs. Delancy argued, "it can't be that you are quite – er – sensible, you know."

"Of course, I'm not sensible," Cicily admitted, petulantly. "I said I was jealous, didn't I? Naturally, I can't be sensible."

"But Charles can't be married to the men, too!" Mrs. Delancy asserted, wonderingly.

At that, Cicily flared in a burst of genuine anger.

"Yes, he is, too," she stormed; "and to the women, too – to the buildings, to the machinery, to the nasty ground, to the fire-escapes – to every single thing about that horrid business of his! Oh, I hate it! I hate it! I hate every one of them!.. And he is a bigamist, I tell you – yes, a bigamist! He's married to me and to his business, too, and he cares more for his business!"

"Humph!" The exclamation came from Mrs. Delancy with much energy. It was surcharged, with relief, for the tragedy was made clear to her at last. Surely, there was room for trouble in the situation, but nothing like that over which she had shuddered during the period of her misapprehension. In the first minute of relief, she felt aroused to indignation against her niece who had so needlessly shocked her. "I do wish, Cicily," she remonstrated, "that you would endeavor to curb your impetuosity. It leads you into such absurdities of speech and of action. Your extravagant way of opening this subject caused me utterly to mistake your meaning, and set me all a-tremble – for a tempest in a teapot."

"I think I'll get a divorce," Cicily declared, defiantly. The bride was not in an apologetic mood, inasmuch, as she regarded herself as the one undeservedly suffering under great wrongs.

"Perhaps!" Mrs. Delancy retorted, sarcastically. Her usual good humor was returning, after the first reaction from the stress she had undergone by reason of the young wife's fantastic mode of speech. "I suppose you will name Charles's business as the co-respondent."

"It takes more out of him than any woman could," was the spirited retort. "Of course, I shall. Why not?"

Mrs. Delancy, now thoroughly amused, explained to her niece some details concerning the grounds required by the statutes in the state of New York for the granting of absolute divorce, of which hitherto the carefully nurtured girl had been in total ignorance. Cicily was at first astounded, and then dismayed. But, in the end, she regained her poise, and reverted with earnestness to the need of reform in the courts where such gross injustice could be. She surmised even that in this field she might find ultimately some outlet of a satisfactory sort for her wasted energies.

"Why, I and my club, and other clubs like it," she concluded, "find the cause of our being in such things as this. We women haven't any occupation, and we haven't any husbands, essentially speaking – and we're determined to have both."

The bold declaration was offensive to the old lady's sense of propriety.

"You can't interfere with your husband's business, Cicily," she said by way of rebuke, somewhat stiffly.

The young wife, however, was emancipated from such admonitions. She did not hesitate to express her dissent boldly.

"Yes," she exclaimed indignantly, "that's the idea that you old married women have been putting up with, without ever whimpering. Why, you've even been preaching it yourselves – preaching it until you've spoilt the men utterly. So, now, thanks to your namby-pamby knuckling under always, it's business first, last, and all the time – and marriage just nowhere. I tell you, it's all wrong… I know you're older," she went on vehemently, as Mrs. Delancy's lips parted. "I guess that's why you're wrong… Anyhow, it isn't as it was intended. For the matter of that, which was first, marriage or business? Did Adam have a business when he married? Huh! There! No man could answer that!" Cicily paused in triumph, and, in the elation wrought by developing a successful argument, turned luminous eyes on her aunt, while her red lips bent into the daintiest of smiles.

Mrs. Delancy was not to be beguiled from the fixed habits of thoughts carried through scores of years by the winsome blandishments of her whilom ward. She had no answering gentleness for the gladness in the girl's face. When she spoke, it was with an emphasis of acute disapproval:

"Do you mean that you are going to make your husband choose between you and his business, Cicily?"

Something in the tone disturbed the young wife's serenity. The direct question itself was sufficient to destroy the momentary equanimity evolved out of a mental achievement such as the argument from Adam. She realized, on the instant, that her desire must be defeated by the facts of life.

"No," she admitted, after a brief period of hesitancy, "of course not. Charles chooses business first – any man would."

The inexorable question followed:

"Well, what are you going to do?" Then, as no answer came: "I beg of you, Cicily, not to be rash. Don't do anything that will cause you regret after you have come into a calmer mood. Of course, once on a time, marriage was first with men, and I think that it should be first now – I know that it should. But it is the truth that business has now come to be first in the lives of our American men. And, my dear, you can't overcome conditions all by yourself. At heart, Charles loves you, Cicily. I'm sure of that, even though he does seem, wrapt up in his business affairs. Yet, he loves you, just the same. That's the one thing we older women learn to cling to, to solace ourselves with: that, deep down in their hearts, our husbands do love us, no matter how indifferent they may seem. When a woman once loses faith in that, why, she just can't go on, that's all. Oh, I beg you, Cicily, don't ever lose that faith. It means shipwreck!"

The young wife shook her head slowly – doubtfully; then quickly – determinedly.

"No, I won't put up with just that," she asserted, morosely, "I want more. I'll have more, or – " She checked herself abruptly, and once again the arch of her dark brows was straightened, as she mused somberly over her future course.

There fell an interval of silence, in which the two reflected on the mysteries that lie between man and woman in the way of love. It was broken finally by Mrs. Delancy, who spoke meditatively, hardly conscious that the words were uttered aloud.

"Of course, you're not really dependent on Charles. Your own fortune – "

The girl's interruption came in a passionate outburst that filled her hearer with distress and surprise. It would seem that Cicily had been thinking very tenderly, yet very unhappily, of those mysteries of love.

"But I am dependent on him – dependent on him for every ray of sunshine in my heart, for every breath of happiness in my life; while he – " her voice broke suddenly; it came muffled as she continued quiveringly – "while he – he's not dependent on me at all!" After a little interval, she went on, more firmly, but with the voice of despair. "That's the pity of it. That's what makes us women nowadays turn to something else – to some other man, or to some work, some fad, some hobby, some folly, some madness – anything to fill the void in our hearts that our husbands forget to fill, because their whole attention is concentrated on business… But I'm not going to be that wife, I give you warning. I'm going to make my husband fill all my heart, and, too, I'm going to make him dependent on me. I'll make him know that he can't do without me!"

"Nonsense!" Mrs. Delancy objected, incredulously. "Why, as to that, Charles is dependent on you now. You haven't really lost his love – not a bit of it, my dear!"

There was infinite sadness in the young wife's gesture of negation.

"Aunt Emma," she said earnestly, "Charles and I haven't had an evening together in weeks. We haven't had a real old talk in months… Why, I – I doubt if he even remembers what day this is!"

"You mean – ?"

"Our first anniversary! Long ago, we planned to celebrate the day – just the theater and a little supper after – only us two… I wonder if he will remember." The tremulous voice gave evidence that the tears were very near.

"Oh, of course, he will," Mrs. Delancy declared briskly, with a manner of cheerful certainty. Nevertheless, out of the years of experience in the world of married folk, a great doubt lurked in her heart.

Cicily's head with the coronal of dark brown hair, usually poised so proudly, now drooped dejectedly; there was no hopefulness in her tones as she replied:

"I don't know – I am afraid. Why, since the tobacco trust bought out that Carrington box factory five months ago, and began fighting Charles, he talks tobacco boxes in his sleep."

"Don't take it so seriously," the aunt argued. "All men are that way. My dear, your Uncle Jim mumbles woolens – even during Dog Days. No, you mustn't take things so seriously, Cicily. You are not the only wife who has to suffer in this way. You are not the only one who was ever lonesome. Your case isn't unusual – more pity! It's the case of almost every wife whose husband wins in this frightful battle with business. Years ago, dear, I suffered as you are suffering. Your uncle never told me anything. I've never known anything at all about more than half of his life. He rebuffed me the few times at first, when I tried to share those things with him. He said that a woman had no place in a man's business affairs. So, after a little, I stopped trying. For a time, I was lonesome – very lonesome – oh, so lonesome!.. And, then, I began to make a life for myself outside the home – as he had already by his business. I tried in my humble way to do something for others. That's the best way to down a heartache, my dear – try making someone else happy."

The words arrested Cicily's heed. As their meaning seeped into her consciousness, the expression of her face changed little by little. "Making people happy!" She repeated the phrase as she had formulated the idea again, very softly, with a persistence that would have surprised Mrs. Delancy, could she have caught the inaudible murmur. Presently, the faint rose in the pallor of her cheeks blossomed to a deeper red, and the amber eyes grew radiant, as she lifted the long, curving lashes, and fixed her gaze on her aunt. There was a new animation in her voice as she spoke; there was a new determination in the resolute set of the scarlet lips.

"Why, that's something to do!" she exclaimed, joyously. "It's something to do, really, after all – isn't it?"

"Yes," her aunt agreed, sedately; "something big to do. For my part, I joined church circles, and worked first for the heathen."

"Oh, bother the heathen!" Cicily ejaculated, rudely. "Charles is heathen enough for me!" With her characteristic impulsiveness, she sprang to her feet, as Mrs. Delancy quietly rose to go, ran to her aunt, and embraced that astonished woman with great fervor.

"I honestly believe that you've given me the idea I was looking for," she declared enthusiastically. "You darling!.. Making people happy! It would be something for the club, too… Yes," she concluded decisively, "I'll do it!"

"Do what?" Mrs. Delancy questioned, bewildered by the swift succession of moods in the girl she loved, yet could never quite understand.

"You just wait, Aunt Emma," was the baffling answer.

Mrs. Delancy turned at the door, and spoke grimly:

"My dear Cicily," she said, "you're getting to be quite as reticent as your uncle and Charles."

But the girl disdained any retort to the gibe. Instead, she was saying softly, over and over: "Making other people happy! Making other people happy!"