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Contrary Mary, a novel by Temple Bailey |
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Chapter 18 |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII _In Which Mary Writes of the Workaday World, and in Which Roger Writes of the Dreams of a Boy._
I have been working in the office for a week, and it has been the hardest week of my life. But please don't think that I have any regrets--it is only that the world has been so lovely outside, and that I have been shut in. I am beginning to understand that the woman in the home has a freedom which she doesn't sufficiently value. She can run down-town in the morning; or slip out in the afternoon, or put off until to-morrow something which should have been done to-day. But men can't run out or slip away or put off--no matter if the sun is shining, or the birds singing, or the wind calling, or the open road leading to adventure. Yet there are compensations, and I am trying to see them. I am trying to live up to my theories. And I am sustained by the thought that at last I am a wage-earner--independent of any one--capable of buying my own bread and butter, though all masculine help should fail! Aunt Isabelle is a dear, and so is Susan Jenks. And that's another thing to think about. What will the wage-earning part of the world do, when there are no home-keepers left? If it were not for Aunt Isabelle and Susan, there wouldn't be any one to trail after me with cushions for my tired back, and cold things for me to drink on hot days, and hot things to drink on cool days. I begin to perceive faintly the masculine point of view. If I were a man I should want a wife for just that--to toast my slippers before the fire as they do in the old-fashioned stories, to have my dinner piping hot, and to smooth the wrinkles out of my forehead. That's why I'm not sure that I should make a comfortable sort of wife. I can't quite see myself toasting the slippers. But I can see Constance toasting them, or Leila--but Grace and I--you see, after all, there are home women and the other kind, and I fancy that I'm the other kind. This, you'll understand, is a philosophy founded on the vast experience of a week in the workaday world--I'll let you know later of any further modification of my theories. Well, the house seems empty with just the three of us, and Pittiwitz. I miss Constance beyond words, and the beautiful baby. Constance wanted to name her for me, but Gordon insisted that she should be called after Constance, so they compromised on Mary-Constance, such a long name for such a mite. We all went to New York to see them off. By "all," I mean our crowd--Aunt Frances and Grace, Leila and the General--oh, poor little Leila--Delilah and Colin Quale, Aunt Isabelle and I, Susan Jenks with the baby in her arms until the very last minute--and Porter Bigelow. At the boat Leila went all to pieces. I could never have believed that our gay little Leila would have taken anything so hard--and it was pitiful to see Barry. But I can't talk about that--I can't think about it. Porter was dear to Leila. He treated her as if she were his own little sister, and it was lovely. He took her right away from the General, when the ship was leaving the dock. "Brace up, little girl," he said; "he'll be back before you know it." He literally carried her to a taxi and put her in, and then began such a day. We did all of the delightful things that one can do in New York on a summer day, beginning with breakfast at a charming inn on Long Island, and ending with a roof garden at night. And that night Leila was so tired that she went to sleep all in a minute, like a child, and forgot to grieve. Since we came back to Washington, Porter has kept it up, not letting Leila miss Barry any more than possible, and playing big brother to perfection. It is queer how we misjudge people. If any one had told me that Porter could be so sweet and tender to anybody, I wouldn't have believed it. But perhaps Leila brings out that side of him. Now I am independent, and aggressive, and I make Porter furious, and most of the time we fight. As I said, the house seems empty--but I am not in it much now. If I had not had my work, I think I should have gone crazy. That's why men don't get silly and hysterical and morbid like women--they are saved by the day's work. I simply have to forget my troubles while I transcribe my notes on the typewriter. Of course you know what life in the Departments is without my telling you. But to me it isn't monotonous or machine-like. I am awfully interested in the people. Of course my immediate work is with the nice old Chief. I'm glad he is old, and gray-haired. It makes me feel comfortable and chaperoned. Do you know that I believe the reason that most girls hate to go out to work is because of the loss of protection. You see we home girls are always in the care of somebody. I've been more than usually independent, but there has always been some one to play propriety in the background. When I was a tiny tot there was my nurse. Later at kindergarten I was sent home in a 'bus with all the other babies, and with a nice teacher to see that we arrived safely. Then there was mother and father and Barry and Constance, some of them wherever I went--and finally, Aunt Isabella. But in the office, I am not Mary Ballard, Daughter of the Home. I am Mary Ballard, Independent Wage-Earner--stenographer at a thousand a year. There's nobody to stand between me and the people I meet. No one to say, "Here is my daughter, a woman of refinement and breeding; behind her I stand ready to hold you accountable for everything you may do to offend her." In the wage-earning world a woman must stand for what she is--and she must set the pace. So, in the office I find that I must have other manners than those in my home. I can't meet men as frankly and freely. I can't laugh with them and talk with them as I would over a cup of tea at my own little table. If you and I had met, for example, in the office, I should have put up a barrier of formality between us, and I should have said, "Good-morning" when I met you and "Good-night" when I left you, and it would have taken us months to know as much about each other as you and I knew after a week in the same house. I suppose if I live here for years and years, that I shall grow to look upon my gray-haired chief as a sort of official grandfather, and my fellow-clerks will be brothers and sisters by adoption, but that will take time. I wonder if I shall work for "years and years"? I am not sure that I should like it. And there you have the woman of it. A man knows that his toiling is for life; unless he grows rich and takes to golf. But a woman never looks ahead and says, "This thing I must do until I die." She always has a sense of possible release. I am not at all sure that I am a logical person. In one breath I am telling you that I like my work; and in the next I am saying that I shouldn't care to do it all my life. But at least there's this for it, that just now it is a heavenly diversion from the worries which would otherwise have weighed. What did you do about lunches? Mine are as yet an unsolved problem. I like my luncheon nicely set forth on my own mahogany, with the little scalloped linen doilies that we've always used. And I want my own tea and bread and butter and marmalade, and Susan's hot little made-overs. But here I am expected to rush out with the rest, and feast on impossible soups and stews and sandwiches in a restaurant across the way. The only alternative is to bring my lunch in a box, and eat it on my desk. And then I lose the breath of fresh air which I need more than the food. Oh, these June days! Are they hot with you? Here they are heavenly. When the windows are open, the sweet warm air blows up from the river and across the White Lot, and we get a whiff of roses from the gardens back of the President's house; and when I reach home at night, the fragrance of the roses in our own garden meets me long before I can see the house. We have wonderful roses this year, and the hundred-leaved bush back of the bench by the fountain is like a rosy cloud. I made a crown of them the other day, and put them on the head of the little bronze boy, and I took a picture which I am sending. Somehow the boy of the fountain has always seemed to me to be alive, and to have in him some human quality, like a faun or a dryad. Last night I sat very late in the garden, and I thought of what you said to me that night when you tried to tell me about your life. Do you remember what you said--that when I came into it, it seemed to you that the garden bloomed? Well, I came across this the other day, in a volume of Ruskin which father gave me, and which somehow I've never cared to read--but now it seems quite wonderful: "You have heard it said that flowers flourish rightly only in the garden of some one who loves them. I know you would like that to be true; you would think it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them; if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, and say to the south wind, 'Come thou south wind and breathe upon my garden that the spices of it may flow forth.' This you would think a great thing. And do you not think it a greater thing that all this you can do for fairer flowers than these--flowers that have eyes like yours and thoughts like yours, and lives like yours; which, once saved, you save forever. "Will you not go down among them--far among the moorlands and the rocks--far in the darkness of the terrible streets; these feeble florets are lying with all their fresh leaves torn and their stems broken--will you never go down to them, not set them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor fence them in their shuddering from the fierce wind?" There's a lot more of it--but perhaps you know it. I think I have always done nice little churchly things, and charitable things, but I haven't thought as much, perhaps, about my fellow man and woman as I might. We come to things slowly here in Washington. We are conservative, and we have no great industrial problems, no strikes and unions and things like that. Grace says that there is plenty here to reform, but the squalor doesn't stick right out before your eyes as it does in some of the dreadful tenements in the bigger cities. So we forget--and I have forgotten. Until your letter came about that boy in the pines. Everything that you tell me about him is like a fairy tale. I can shut my eyes and see you two in that circle of young pines. I can hear your voice ringing in the stillness. You don't tell me of yourself, but I know this, that in that boy you've found an audience--and he is doing things for you while you are doing them for him. You are living once more, aren't you? And the little sad children. I was so glad to pick out the books with the bright pictures. Weren't the Cinderella illustrations dear? With all the gowns as pink as they could be and the grass as green as green, and the sky as blue as blue. And the yellow frogs in "The frog he would a wooing go," and the Walter Crane illustrations for the little book of songs. You must make them sing "Oh, What Have You Got for Dinner, Mrs. Bond?" and "Oranges and Lemons" and "Lavender's blue, Diddle-Diddle." Do you know what Aunt Isabelle is making for the little girls? She is so interested. Such rosy little aprons of pink and white checked gingham--with wide strings to tie behind. And my contribution is pink hair ribbons. Now won't your garden bloom? You must tell me how their little garden plots come on. Surely that was an inspiration. I told Porter about them the other night, and he said, "For Heaven's sake, who ever heard of beginning with gardens in the education of ignorant children?" But you and I begin and end with gardens, don't we? Were the seeds all right, and did the bulbs come up? Aunt Isabelle almost cried over your description of the joy on the little faces when the crocuses they had planted appeared. I am eager to hear more of them, and of you. Oh, yes, and of Cousin Patty. I simply love her. There's so much more to say, but I mustn't. I must go to bed, and be fresh for my work in the morning. Ever sincerely, MARY BALLARD.
I shall have to begin at the last of your letter, and work toward the beginning, for it is of my sad children that I must speak first--although my pen is eager to talk about you, and what your letter has meant to me. The sad children are no longer sad. Against the sand-hills they are like rose petals blown by the wind. Their pink aprons tied in the back with great bows, and the pink ribbons have transformed them, so that, except for their blank eyes, they might be any other little girls in the world. I have taught them several of the pretty songs; you should hear their piping voices--and with their picture books and their gardens, they are very busy and happy indeed. Their mother is positively illumined by the change her young folks. Never in her life has she seen any country but this one of charred pines and sand. I find her bending over the Cinderella book, liking it, and liking the children's little gardens. "We ain't never had no flower garden," she confided to me. "Jim he ain't had time, and I ain't had time, and I ain't never had no luck nohow." But the boy still means the most to me. And you have found the reason. It isn't what I am doing for him, it is what he is doing for me. If you could see his eyes! They are a boy's eyes now, not those of a little wild animal. He is beginning to read the simple books you sent. We began with "Mother Goose," and I gave him first "The King of France and Forty Thousand Men." The "Oranges and Lemons" song carried on the Dick Whittington atmosphere which he had liked in my poem, with its bells of Old Bailey and Shoreditch. He'll know his London before I get through with him. But we've struck even a deeper note. One Sunday I was moved to take out with me your father's old Bible. There's a rose between its leaves, kept for a talisman against the blue devils which sometimes get me in their grip. Well, I took the old Bible out to our little amphitheater in the pines, and read, what do you think? Not the Old Testament stories. I read the Beatitudes, and my boy listened, and when I had finished, he asked, "What is blessed? And who said that?" I told him, and brought back to myself in the telling the vision of myself as a boy. Oh, how far I have drifted from the dreams of that boy! And if it had not been for you I should never have turned back. And now this boy in the pines, and the boy who was I are learning together, step by step. I am trying to forget the years between. I am trying to take up life where it was before I was overthrown. I can't quite get hold of things yet as a man, for when I try, I feel a man's bitterness. But the boy believes, and I have shut the man in me away, until the boy grows up. Does this sound fantastic? To whom else would I dare write such a thing, but to you? But you will understand. I feel that I need make no apology. Coming now to you and your work. I can bring no optimism to bear, I suppose I should say that it is well. But there is in me too much of the primitive masculine for that. When a man cares for a woman he inevitably wants to shield her. But what would you? Shall a man let the thing which he would cherish be buffeted by the winds? I don't like to think of you in an office, with all your pretty woman instincts curbed to meet the stern formality of such a life. I don't like to think that any chief, however fatherly, shall dictate to you not only letters but rules of conduct. I don't like to think of you as hustled by a crowd at lunch time. I don't like to think of the great stone walls which shut you in. I don't want your wings clipped for such a cage. And there is this I must say, that all men do not need wives to toast their slippers or to serve their meals piping hot, or even to smooth the wrinkles, although I confess that there's an appeal in this last. Some of us need wives for inspiration, for spiritual and mental uplift, for the word of cheer when our hearts are weary--for the strength which believes in our strength--one doesn't exactly think of Juliet as toasting slippers, or of Rosalind, or of Portia, yet such women never for one moment failed their lovers. My Cousin Patty says that work will do you good, and we have great arguments. I have told her of you, not everything, because there are some things which are sacred. But I have told her that life for me, since I have known you, has taken on new meanings. She glories in your independence and wants to know you. Some day, it is written, I am sure, that you two shall meet. In some things you are much alike--in others utterly different, with the differences made by heredity and environment. My little Cousin Patty is the composite of three generations. Amid her sweets and spices, she is as domestic as her grandmother, but her mind sweeps on to the future of women in a way which makes me gasp. Politics are the breath of her life. She comes of a long line of statesmen, and having no father or brother or husband to uphold the family traditions of Democracy, she upholds them herself. She is intensely interested just now in the party nominations. A split among the Republicans gives her hope of the election of the Democratic candidate. She's such a feminine little creature with her soft voice and appealing manner, with her big white aprons covering her up, and curling wisps of black hair falling over her little ears, that the contrasts in her life are almost funny. In our evenings over the little white boxes, we mix questions of State Rights and Free Trade with our bridal decorations, and it seems to me that I shall never again go to a wedding without a vision of my little Cousin Patty among her orange blossoms, laying down the law on current politics. The negro question in Cousin Patty's mind is that of the Southerner of the better class. It isn't these descendants of old families who hate the negro. Such gentlefolk do not, of course, want equality, but they want fair treatment for the weaker race. Find me a white man who raves with rabid prejudice against the black, and I will show you one whose grandfather belonged not to the planter but to the cracker class, or a Northerner grafting on Southern Stock. Even in slave times there was rancor between the black man and what he called "po' white trash" and it still continues. The picture of the little bronze boy with his crown of roses lies on my desk. I should like much to sit with you on the bench beneath the hundred-leaved bush. What things I should have to say to you! Things which I dare not write, lest you never let me write again. You glean the best from everything. That you should take my little talk about gardens, and fit it to what Ruskin has said, is a gracious act. You speak of that night in the garden. Do you remember that you wore a scarlet wrap of thin silk? I could think of nothing as you came toward me, but of some glorious flower of almost supernatural bloom. All about you the garden was dying. But you were Life--Life as it springs up afresh from a world that is dead. I know how empty the old house seems to you, without Barry, without Constance, without the beautiful baby whom I have never seen. To me it can never seem empty with you in it. Is the saying of such things forbidden? Please believe that I don't mean to force them on you, but I write as I think. By this post Cousin Patty is sending a box of her famous cake, for you and Aunt Isabelle. There's enough for an army, so I shall think of you as dispensing tea in the garden, with your friends about you--lucky friends--and with the little bronze boy looking on and laughing. To Mary of the Garden, then, this letter goes with all good wishes. ROGER POOLE. _ |
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