She further explained that probably Grace Billman was motoring out with their host. "She always manages that: she regards him as her property, you know." It would be a "shop party," she expected. "That's all the social imagination these people have: they get us together by groups—we're the magazine group. Possibly she'll have Clive Reinhard. He's different, though, because he's made a name for himself, so that all sorts of people run after him."

Mrs. Bunker met the young women at the station, driving her own ponies. Milly recognized the type at a glance, as much from her Chicago experience as from Mrs. Fredericks' description. Mrs. Bunker was a largish, violent blonde, with a plethora of everything about her,—hair and blood and flesh. She was cordial in her greeting to the editors' wives. She apparently regarded the magazine as one of her husband's fads,—an incident of his wealth,—like a shooting-box or a racing stable or a philanthropy. It gave prestige.

"I've got Clive Reinhard," she announced, as they started from the station, a note of triumph in her languid voice. "My, but he's popular. I've tried to get him for a month. This time I had him on the telephone, and I said 'I won't let you go—simply won't ring off until you promise. I'll tell Howard to turn down your next book.'"

She laughed at her own wit. Hazel Fredericks glanced at Milly with a look of intelligence. Milly was much amused by the good lady and listened appreciatively to her petty conversation....

It was all just as Mrs. Fredericks had predicted. Their host arrived shortly in his car with Mrs. Montgomery Billman, who cast a scornful glance at the "shop party," nodded condescendingly at Milly, kissed Hazel on the tip of her nose, and retired to her room. The men came along later, in time for dinner, all except the popular novelist, who was motored over from another house party the next morning. Dinner was long and dull. The Responsible Editress absorbed the host for the most part. What little general talk there was turned on the magazine, especially on the noise it was making with a series of "exposure" articles on the "Crimes of Big Business." Milly could not understand how Mr. Bunker, who seemed to have prospered under the rule of Big Business, could permit such articles in his magazine. But Reinhard explained to her the next day that Radicalism was the "new note." "You have to be progressive and reform and all that to break into notice," he said.

After dinner there was a little music, some bridge, more talk; then the women yawningly went to bed, while the men stayed up for another cigar and further shop talk. The next day was also much as Hazel Fredericks had said it would be. It was hot, and after the very late and copious breakfast everybody was languid. Milly was much interested in being shown over the place by her hostess. She admired the gardens, the hothouses, the planting, the stables, and all the other appurtenances of a modern country estate. Later she had a brief tete-a-tete with Bunker, who had been prejudiced against her by Mrs. Billman and was bored by her too evident flattery. She had also a talk with Clive Reinhard, with whom she discussed his last story and his "ideas about women." For the rest it was a torpid and sensual Sunday with much to eat and drink,—very much like the Sunday of some thousands of rich Americans all over the land. Most of the guests returned to the city on an evening train, bored and unconsciously glad to get back into their respective ruts.

All but Milly! She had enjoyed herself quite genuinely, and with her quick social perceptions had gathered a great deal from the visit, much of which she imparted to her drowsing husband on the train. She mapped out for his duller masculine apprehension the social hierarchy of Bunker's. Mrs. Bunker patronized Mrs. Billman, invited her to her best dinners and to her opera box, because she was striking in looks and had made a place for herself in "interesting circles" in the great city and was more or less talked about. "Hazel is jealous of her," Milly averred. Nevertheless the junior editor's wife accepted Mrs. Billman's patronage and invitations to Mrs. Bunker's opera box when it was given on off nights or matinees to the chief editor's wife, and in turn she was inclined to patronize Mrs. Bragdon by sending her tickets to improving lectures and concerts.

Hazel Fredericks, in her quiet and self-effacing manner, had aspirations, Milly suspected. She could not compete either with Mrs. Howard Bunker or Mrs. Montgomery Billman, of course, but she aspired to the Serious and the Distinguished, instead of the Rich or the merely Artistic. She went in for "movements" of all sorts and was a member of various leagues, and associations, and committees. Occasionally her name got into public print. Just at present she was in the "woman movement," about which she talked to Milly a good deal. That promised to be the most important of all her "movements."

Indeed, as Milly saw, all these women "went in" for something. They tried to conduct their lives and their husbands' lives on lines of definite accomplishment, and she was decidedly "old-fashioned" in living hers from day to day for what it offered of amusement or ennui. She was rather proud of the fact that she had never deliberately "gone in" for anything in her life except Love.

Nevertheless, she found the flutter of women's ambitions exciting and liked to observe the indirect working of their wills even in the man's game....

"Mrs. Billman is too obvious, don't you think Jack?" she said to her husband. But Jack had gone sound asleep.



IV

THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE

Before the winter they were established in their own home, in a corner of the new East River Terrace Building, and thereafter their life settled down on the lines it was to follow in New York. Their acquaintance gradually widened from Bunker's and the editorial set to other circles, contiguous and remote, and the daily routine brought husband and wife less often into contact, and they were thrown less and less on each other's resources. As the artist no longer tried to work at home, the large room designed for studio became the living-room of their apartment. Bragdon went off immediately after his breakfast to the magazine office, like a business man, and as Milly usually had her coffee in bed they rarely met before dinner. Sometimes he came back from the office early to play with Virgie before her supper time, but Milly usually appeared about seven, just in time to dress for dinner.

If she ever stopped to think of it, this seemed the suitable, normal relation of husband and wife. He had his business, and she had hers. Sundays when he did not go to the office, he dawdled through the morning at his club, talking with men or writing letters, and they often had people to luncheon, which consumed the afternoons. On pleasant days he might take the child to the Park or even into the distant country. He was very devoted to his little girl and on the whole a considerate and kindly husband. Milly thought she had forgiven him for breaking her heart. As a matter of fact there is less forgiveness than forgetting in this world. Milly felt that on the whole "they got on quite well" and prided herself on her wise restraint and patience with her husband "at that time."

The household ran smoothly. At first there were only two maids,—the second one serving as nurse for Virginia and Milly's personal helper as well,—a triumph of economic management, as Milly pointed out. For Hazel Fredericks had two merely for household purposes and the Billman's house boasted of four and a boy in buttons. They had to have the laundry done outside and engage extra service when they entertained. By the end of the first year Milly convinced herself it would be cheaper to have three regular servants, and still they depended more or less on outside help....

They saved nothing, of course. Few Americans of their class ever save. They were young, and the future seemed large. Living in New York was horribly expensive, as every one was saying, and it was worse the more they got to know people and had their own little place to keep in the world. It seemed to Milly hard that such perfectly nice people as they were should be so cramped for the means to enjoy the opportunities that came to them. The first year they spent only five thousand dollars and paid something towards the huge loan on their apartment. The second year it was seven thousand and they paid nothing, and the third year they started at a rate of ten thousand dollars. The figures were really small when one considered what the other people they knew were spending. Bragdon began to suspect that here was the trouble—they didn't know any poor people! Milly said they "barely lived," as it was. Of course there were good people who got along on three or four thousand dollars a year and even indulged occasionally in a child or two—professors and young painters and that sort. Milly could not see how it was done,—probably in ghastly apartments out in the hinterland, like the Reddons. The newspapers advertised astonishing bargains in houses, but they were always in fantastically named suburban places, "within commuting distance." One had to live where one's friends could get to you, or go without people, Milly observed.

Husband and wife discussed all this, as every one did. The cost of living, the best way of meeting the problem, whether by city or suburb or country, was the most frequent topic of conversation in all circles, altogether crowding out the weather and scandal. At first Jack was severe about the leaping scale of expenditure and inclined to hold his wife accountable for it as "extravagance." He would even talk of giving up their pretty home and going to some impossible suburb,—"and all that nonsense," as Milly put it to her closest friend, Hazel Fredericks. But Milly always proved to him that they could not do better and "get anything out of life." So in the position of one who is sliding down hill in a sandy soil, he saw that it was useless to stick his feet in and hold on—he must instead learn to plunge and leap and thus make progress. And he did what every one was doing,—tried to make more money. It was easy, seemingly, in this tumultuous New York to make money "on the side." There were many chances of what he cynically called "artistic graft,"—editing, articles, and illustration. One had merely to put out a hand and strip the fat branches of the laden tree. It was killing to creative work, but it was much easier than sordid discussion of budget with one's wife. For the American husband is ashamed to confess poverty to the wife of his bosom.

Milly, perceiving this power of money-getting on her husband's part, did not take very seriously his complaints of their expenditure. Even when they were in debt, as they usually were, she was sure it would come out right in the end. It always had. Jack had found a way to make the extra sums needed to wipe out the accumulation of bills. Bragdon might feel misgivings, but he was too busy these days in the gymnastic performance of keeping his feet from the sliding sand to indulge in long reflection. Perhaps, in a mood of depression, induced by grippe or the coming on of languid spring days, he would say, "Milly, let's quit this game—it's no good—you don't get anywhere!"

Milly, recognizing the symptoms, would bring him a cocktail, prepared by her own skilful hand and murmur sweetly,—

"What would you like to do?"

This was her role of wife, submissive to the "head of the house."

* * * * *

That archaic phrase, which Milly used with a malicious pompousness when she wished to "put something hard up" to her lord, was of course an ironical misnomer in this modern household. In the first place there was no house, which demanded the service and the protection of a strong male,—merely a partitioned-off corner in a ten-story brick box, where no man was necessary even to shake the furnace or lock the front door. It was "house" only symbolically, and within its limited space the minimum of necessary service was performed by hirelings (engaged by the mistress and under her orders). Almost all the necessities for existence were manufactured outside and paid for at the end of each month (supposably) by the mistress with little colored slips of paper called cheques. In the modern world the function of the honorable head of the house had thus been reduced to providing the banking deposit necessary for the little strips of colored paper. He had been gradually relieved of all other duties, stripped of his honors, and become Bank Account. The woman was the real head of the house because she controlled the expenditures.

"I draw all the cheques," Hazel Fredericks explained to Milly, "even for Stanny's club bills—at is so much easier."

That was the perfect thing, Milly thought, forgetting that she had once tried this plan with disastrous results and had returned to the allowance system with relief. Most men, she felt, were tyrannical and arbitrary by nature, especially in money matters, or as she sometimes called her husband,—"Turks." She often discussed the relation of the sexes in marriage with Hazel Fredericks, who had "modern" views and leant her books on the woman movement and suffrage. Although she instinctively disliked "strong-minded women," she felt there was great injustice in the present situation between men and women. "It is a man's-world," became one of her favorite axioms. She could not deny that her husband was kind,—she often boasted of his generosity to her friends,—and she knew that he spent very little on his own pleasures: whatever there was the family had it. But it always humiliated her to go to him for money, when she was behind, and in his sterner moods try to coax it from him. This was the way women had always been forced to do with their masters, and it was, of course, all wrong: it classed the wife with "horrid" women, who made men pay them for their complaisance.

Ideas on all these subjects were in the air: all the women Milly knew talked of the "dawn of the woman era," the coming emancipation of the sex from its world-old degradation. Milly vaguely believed it would mean that every woman should have her own check-book and not be accountable to any man for what she chose to spend. She amplified this point of view to Reinhard, who liked "the little Bragdons" and often came to their new home. Milly especially amused him in his role of student of the coming sex. He liked to see her experiment with ideas and mischievously encouraged her "revolt" as he called it. They had tea together, took walks in the Park, and sometimes went to concerts. He was very kind to them both, and Milly regarded him as their most influential friend. She felt that the novelist would make a very good husband, understanding as he did so thoroughly the woman's point of view.

"I'm not a 'new woman,' of course," Milly always concluded her discourse.

"Of course you're not!" the novelist heartily concurred. "That's why you are so interesting,—you represent an almost extinct species,—just woman."

"I know I'm old-fashioned—Hazel always says so. I believe in men doing the voting and all that. Women should not try to be like men—their strength is their difference!"

"You want just to be Queen?" Reinhard suggested.

"Oh," Milly sighed, "I want what every woman wants—just to be loved."

She implied that with the perfect love, all these minor difficulties would adjust themselves easily. But the woman without love must fight for her "rights," whatever they were.

"Oh, of course," the novelist murmured sympathetically. In all his varied experience with the sex he had found few women who would admit that they were properly loved.

* * * * *

Milly's daily programme at this time will be illuminating, because it was much like the lives of many thousands of young married women, in our transition period. As there was no complicated house and only one child to be looked after, the mere housekeeping duties were not burdensome, especially as Milly never thought of going to market or store for anything, merely telephoned for what the cook said they must have, or left it to the servant altogether. She woke late, read the newspaper and her mail over her coffee, played with Virgie and told her charming stories; then, by ten o'clock, dressed, and her housekeeping arranged for, she was ready to set forth. Usually she had some sort of shopping that took her down town until luncheon, and more often than not lunched out with a friend.

Occasionally on a fine day when she had nothing better to do, she took Virginia into the Park for an hour after luncheon. Usually, however, the child's promenade was left to Louise. Her afternoons were varied and crowded. Sometimes she went to lectures or to see pictures, because this was part of that "culture" essential for the modern woman. Old friends from Chicago had to be called upon or taken to tea and entertained, and there was the ever enlarging circle of new friends, chiefly women, who made constant demands on her time. She finished her day, breathlessly, just in time to dress for dinner. They went out more and more, because people liked them, and when they stayed at home, they had people in "quite informally" and talked until late hours. On the rare occasions when they were alone Milly curled up on the divan before the fire and dozed until she went to bed,—"dead tired."

There was scarcely a single productive moment in these busy days. Yet Milly would have resented the accusation that she was an idle woman in any sense. She had the feeling of being pressed, of striving to overtake her engagements, which gave a pleasant touch of excitement to city existence. That she should DO anything more than keep their small home running smoothly and pleasantly—an attractive spot for friends to come to—and keep herself personally as smart and youthful and desirable as her circumstances permitted, she would never admit. A woman's hold on the world, she was convinced, lay in her looks and her charms, not in her character. And what man who had anything of a man in him would expect more of his wife?... Her husband, at any rate, gave no sign of expecting more from his wife. All their friends considered them a contented and delightful young couple....

It should be added that Milly was a member of the "Consumers' League," though she paid no attention to their rules, and had been put on a "Woman's Immigration Bureau" at the instance of Hazel Fredericks, who was active in that movement just then. She also had a number of poor families to look after, to whom she was supposed to act as friend and guide. She fulfilled this obligation by raising money for them from the men she knew. "What most people need most is money," Milly philosophized.... All told, her public activities occupied Milly a little more than an hour a week.

* * * * *

As a whole, Milly looked back over her life in New York with satisfaction. They had a pleasant if somewhat cramped home and a great many warm friends who were very kind to them. They were both well, as a rule, though usually tired, as every one was, and the child, though delicate, was reasonably well. Jack was liked at Bunker's, and his periods of depression and restlessness became less frequent. They were settling down properly into their place in the scheme of things. But sometimes Milly found life monotonous and a trifle gray, even in New York.

"Love is the only thing in a woman's life that can compensate!" she confided to Clive Reinhard.

And the novelist, trained confessor of women's souls, let her think that he understood.



V

A SHOCK

Milly supposed their life would go on indefinitely like this. She lived much in the slight fluctuations of the present, with its immediate gratifications and tribulations. It seemed to her foolish to take long views, as Jack did sometimes, and wonder what the years might bring forth. Life had always been full enough of interesting change.

The most disturbing fact at present was the difficulty they had in deciding where to go for the summers. The question came up every spring, the first warm days of March, when Bragdon developed fag and headaches. Then it was he would suggest "chucking the whole thing," but that obviously, with their present way of living, they could not do. So it resolved itself into a discussion of boarding-places. It had to be some place near enough the city to permit of Bragdon's going to his office at least three or four times a week. One summer they boarded at an inferior hotel on Long Island. That had been unsatisfactory because of the food and the people. Another summer they took a furnished cottage, in Connecticut. That had been hot, and Milly found housekeeping throughout the year burdensome—and it may be added expensive. As the third summer approached, Bragdon talked of staying in the city until midsummer. Milly and the child could go to the Maine coast with the Fredericks, and he would join them for a few weeks in August. Milly accepted this compromise as a happy solution and looked forward to a really cool and restful summer.

While she was making her arrangements, there was a threatened upheaval in their life. This time it was the magazine. There had been growing friction in Bunker's for some time. The magazine, having to maintain its reputation, had become more and more radical, while the proprietor, under the influence of prosperity and increasing years, had become more conservative.

"You see," Hazel Fredericks explained, "the Bunkers find reform isn't fashionable the farther up they get, and the magazine is committed to reform and so is Billman. There must be a break some day."

She further hinted that if it had not been for Grace's strong hand, the break would have already come.

"She's not ready for Montie to get out, yet," she said.

Milly was much interested in the intrigue, but she could learn little from her husband, who always expressed a weary disgust with the topic. One evening in early June, just before her departure, he told her that Bunker's had changed hands: a "syndicate" had bought it, and he professed not to know whose money was in the syndicate. Hazel hinted that Grace Billman knew....

Bragdon seemed more than usually fagged this spring, after his annual attack of the grippe. He had not recovered quickly, and his face was white and flabby, as the faces of city men commonly were in the spring. Milly noticed the languor in his manner when he came to the train to see her off for the summer.

"Do be careful of yourself, Jack," she counselled with genuine concern. He did not reply, merely kissed the little girl, and smiled wearily.

"Try to get away early—in July," were her last words.

Jack nodded and turned back to the steaming city. Milly, reflecting with a sigh that her husband was usually like this in the spring, sank back into her chair and opened Life. For several weeks after that parting she heard nothing from Jack, although she wrote with what for her was great promptness. Then she received a brief letter that contained the astonishing news of his having left the magazine. "There have been changes in the new management," he wrote, "and it seemed best to get out." But neither Billman nor Fredericks had felt obliged to leave the magazine, she learned from Hazel.

She could not understand. She telegraphed for further details and urged him to join her at once and take his vacation. He replied vaguely that some work was detaining him in the city, and that he might come later. "The city isn't bad," he said. And with that Milly had to content herself.... The summer place filled rapidly, and she was occupied with immediate interests. She said to Hazel,—"It's so foolish of Jack to stay there in that hot city when he might be comfortably resting here with us!" Hazel made no reply, and Milly vaguely wondered if she knew more about the situation on the magazine than she would tell.

It was in August, in a sweltering heat which made itself felt even beside the Maine sea, that a telegram came from Clive Reinhard, very brief but none the less disturbing. "Your husband here ill—better come." The telegram was dated from Caromneck,—Reinhard's place on the Sound....

By the time Milly had made the long journey her husband was dead. Reinhard met her at the station in his car. She always remembered afterwards that gravelly patch before the station, with its rows of motor-cars waiting for the men about to arrive from the city on the afternoon trains, and Reinhard's dark little face, which did not smile at her approach.

"He was sick when he came out," he explained brusquely; "don't believe he ever got over that last attack of grippe.... It was pneumonia: the doctor said his heart was too weak."

It was the commonplace story of the man working at high pressure, often under stimulants, who has had the grippe to weaken him, so that when the strain comes there is no resistance, no reserve. He snaps like a sapped reed.... The tears rolled down Milly's face, and Reinhard looked away. He said nothing, and for the first time Milly thought him hard and unsympathetic. When the car drew up before his door, he helped her down and silently led the way to the darkened room on the floor above, then left her alone with her dead husband.

* * * * *

When a woman looks on the face of her dead comrade, it should not be altogether sad. Something of the joy and the tenderness of their intimacy should rise then to temper the sharpness of her grief. It was not so with Milly. It was wholly horrible to plunge thus, as it were, from the blinding light of the full summer day into the gloom of death. Her husband's face seemed shrunken and pallid, but curiously youthful. Into it had crept again something of that boyish confidence—the joyous swagger of youth—which he had when they sat in the Chicago beer-garden. It startled Milly, who had not recalled those days for a long time. Underneath his mustache the upper lip was twisted as if in pain, and the sunken eyes were mercifully closed. He had gone back to his youth, the happy time of strength and hope when he had expected to be a painter....

Milly fell on her knees by his side and sobbed without restraint. Yet her grief was less for him than for herself,—rather, perhaps, for them both. Somehow they had missed the beautiful dream they had dreamed together eight years before in the beer-garden. She realized bitterly that their married life, which should have been so wonderful, had come to the petty reality of these latter days. So she sobbed and sobbed, her head buried on the pillow beside his still head—grieved for him, for herself, for life. And the dead man lay there on the white bed, in the dim light, with his closed eyes, that mirage of recovered youth haunting his pale cheeks.

When she left him after a time, Reinhard met her in the hall. She was not conscious of the swift, furtive glance he gave her, as if he would discover in her that last intimacy with her husband. When he spoke, he was very gentle with her. He was about to motor into the city to make some arrangements and would not return until the morning, leaving to her the silent house with her dead. She was conscious of all his kindness and delicate forethought, and mumbled her thanks. He had already notified Bragdon's older brother, who was coming from the Adirondacks and would attend to all the necessary things for her. As he turned to leave, Milly stopped him with a half question,—

"I didn't know Jack was visiting you."

The novelist hastened to reply:—

"You see he had promised to do another book for me, and came out to talk it over. That was last Saturday."

"Oh!"

"He was not well then," he added, and then he went.

* * * * *

He never told her—she never knew—that he had run across Bragdon quite by accident one day of awful heat, and stopped to exchange a few words with an old friend he had not seen for some time. Bragdon had the limp appearance of a man thoroughly done by the heat, and also to the novelist's keen eye the mentally listless attitude of the man who has been done by life before his time,—the look of one who knows he is not "making good" in the fight. That was what had tortured the lip beneath the mustache.

So on the spur of the moment he had suggested to the artist the new book, though he knew that his publisher would demur. For his fame had raised him altogether out of Bragdon's class. But it was the only tangible way of putting out that helping hand the artist so obviously needed just then. Bragdon had hesitated, as if he knew the motive prompting the offer, then accepted, and the two had motored out of the city together that evening. Even then the artist had a high fever....

* * * * *

That night Milly lived over like a vivid nightmare her married life down to the least detail,—the time of golden hopes and aspirations, Paris and Europe, her disillusionment, the futile scurry of their life in New York, which she realized was a compromise without much result.... It ended in a choke rather than a sob. There was so little left!

In the morning Reinhard reappeared with her brother-in-law. She remembered little of what was done afterwards, in the usual, ordered way, until after the brief service and the journey to the grave she was left alone in their old home. She had wished to be alone. So Hazel Fredericks took Virginia to the Reddons and left Milly for this night and day to collect herself from her blow and decide with her brother-in-law's help just what she should do.



VI

THE SECRET

The large "studio" room of the apartment had an unfamiliar air of disorderliness about it. Bragdon's easel was there and his uncleaned palette. Also a number of canvases were scattered about. These last weeks, after he had left the magazine—voluntarily as Milly now learned—he had got together all his painter's things and worked in the empty apartment. When Milly began to pick up the odds and ends, she was surprised at the number of canvases. A few of them she recognized as pictures he had attempted in his brief vacations. Almost everything was unfinished—merely an impression seized here and there and vigorously dashed down in color, as if the artist were afraid of losing its definite outline in the rush and interruption of his life. Nothing was really finished she saw, as she turned the canvases back to the wall, one by one. Tears started to her eyes again. The tragedy of life was like the tragedy of death—the incomplete! The nearest thing to a finished picture was the group done in Brittany of herself, Yvonne, and the baby on the gleaming sands, which he had tried to get ready for the New York exhibition on their return. That had the superficial finish of mechanical work from which the creator's inspiration has already departed. With a sigh she turned it to the wall with the others, and somehow she recalled what Reinhard has said once about her husband.

"He had more of the artist in him than any of us when he was in college—what has become of it?"

The remark stabbed her now. What had he done with his gift—what had they made of it?...

She came to the last things,—the canvas he had been working on the day his friend had found him. The touch of fever was in it,—a grotesque head,—but it was as vivid as fresh paint. Yes, he had been one who could see things! She had a sense of pride in the belief.

Another of Reinhard's sayings came back to her,—

"It's all accident from the very beginning in the womb what comes to any of us, and most of all whether we catch on in the game of life, whether we fit!"

The novelist himself, she knew, had not "caught on" at first. He had confessed to her that he had almost starved in New York, writing stories that nobody would read and few publishers could be induced to print—then. They were the uttermost best he had in him, and some had been successful since, but they didn't fit then. Suddenly he arrived by accident. A slight thing he had done caught the fancy of an actress, who had a play made out of it, in which she was a great success. A sort of reflected glory came to the author of the story, and the actress with unusual generosity paid him a good sum of money. From that first touch of golden success he had become a different man. His new and popular period set in when he wrote stories about rich and childish boys and girls and their silly love affairs. Hazel Fredericks and her set affected to despise them, but they were immensely popular.

If he had sold himself, as his critics said, he had made a sharp bargain with the devil. He had become prosperous, well-known, envied, invited. Milly had always admired his intelligence in grasping his chance when it came.

She remembered now another story about the popular novelist. He had never married, and the flippant explanation of the fact was that he was under contract with his publishers not to marry until he was fifty in order not to impair his popularity among his bonbon-eating clientele, who wrote him intimate, scented letters. But she knew the truth. She had the story from the sister of the girl, whom she had met in Paris. The girl was poor and trying to paint; they met in the garret-days when Reinhard "was writing to please himself," as they say. The two were obviously deeply in love, and only their common poverty, it was supposed, prevented the marriage. It was still desperate love when the fortunate accident befell Reinhard that led him out of obscurity to fame. It was then that the affair had been broken off. The sister found the poor girl in tears with a horrible resolve to throw herself away. (Later she married a rich man, and was very happy with him, the sister averred.) Milly had always felt that Reinhard must have been "hard" with this poor girl,—he would not let his feeling for her stand in the way of his career. Now she understood better why he would have none of her sex except as buyers of his wares. She admired him and disliked him for it all at once. That was what Jack should have done with her. But he was too tender-hearted, too much the mere man.... Oh, well, these artists with their needs and their temperaments!

Slowly Milly went over all the sketches, one by one. It was like a fragmentary diary of the life she had lived beside and not looked at closely while it was in being. She was surprised there were so many recent ones—all unfinished. She could not recall when he had done them or where. It proved that Bragdon had never really given up the idea of painting. The desire had stung him all the time, and every now and then he must have yielded to it, stealing away from the piffling duties of the magazine office—spat on popular art, so to speak—and shut himself away somewhere to forget and to do. Milly remembered certain unexplained absences, which had mystified her at the time and aroused suspicions that he "was having another affair." On his returns he had been morose and dispirited. Evidently the mistress he had wooed in this intermittent and casual fashion had not been kind. But the desire had never left him,—the urge to paint, to create. And during these last desperate days when, fevered, he was stumbling towards his end, he had seized the brush and gone back to his real work....

At last she had reached the bottom of the pile—the Brittany sketches. These she looked over as one might views of a past episode in life. The memories of those foreign days rushed over her with a sad sort of joy. There, they had been completely happy—at least she thought so now—until that hateful woman had taken her husband from her. She had almost forgotten the Russian baroness. Now with a start of fresh interest she thought of the portrait and wondered where it was,—the masterful picture of the one who had ruined her happiness. She looked through the clutter again, thinking that it was probably with the Russian wherever she was. But the portrait was there with the rest, wrapped carefully in a piece of old silk.

With eager hands Milly undid the cover of the picture and dragged it forward to the light. It was as if an old passion had burst from the closet of the past. There she was, long, lean, cruel,—posed on her haunches with upturned smiling face,—"The woman who would eat." She lived there on the canvas, eternally young and strong. Milly could admire the mastery of the painting even in the swell of her hatred for the woman who had taken her lover-husband from her. He was young when he had done that,—barely twenty-seven. A man who could paint like that at twenty-seven ought to have gone far. Even Milly in the gloom of her prejudiced soul felt something like awe for the power in him, which seemingly justified the wrong he had done her. Even Milly perceived the tragic laws stronger than herself, larger than her little world of domestic moralities. And thus, gazing on her husband's masterpiece, she realized that her hatred for the woman who she believed had done her the greatest wrong one woman can do another was not real. It was not the Baroness Saratoff who had cheated her: it was life itself! She no longer felt eager to know whether they had been lovers,—as the saying is, had "deceived" her. For this ghostly examination of her husband's work convinced her that Jack did not belong to her, never had,—the stronger, better part of him. She had lived for eight years, more or less happily, with a stranger. She understood now that domestic intimacy, the petty exchanges of daily life, even the habit of physical passion, cannot make two souls one....

She turned at last from the picture with weariness, a heavy heart. It had all been wrong, their marriage, and still more wrong their going on with it "in the brave way." Well, he was done with the mistake at last, and he could not be sorry. She was almost glad for him.

* * * * *

Her brother-in-law had asked her to look through her husband's papers for an insurance policy he thought Jack had taken on his advice. In the old desk Bragdon had used there was a mass of letters and bills, a great many unpaid bills, some of which she had given him months and months before and had supposed were paid. There were two letters in an odd foreign hand that she knew instantly must be the Russian woman's. The first was dated from the manoir at Klerac on the evening of their sudden departure. Milly hesitated a moment as if she must respect the secrets of the dead, then with a last trace of jealousy tore it open and read the lines:—

... "So you have decided—you are going back. You will give up all that you have won, all that might be yours,—and ours. I knew it would be so. The puritan in you has won the day,—the weak side. You will never be content with what you are doing, never. I have seen far enough within your soul to know that.... I ask nothing for myself—I have had enough,—no, not that,—but more than I could hope. But for you, who have the great power in you, it is not right. You cannot live like that.... Some day you will be glad as I am that we were not little people, but drank life when it was at our lips."

Milly dropped the letter and stared blankly at the dark wall opposite. What it revealed did not come to her with shock, because she had always felt sure that it had been so. What startled her was the realization for the first time how much the experience had meant to both,—the examination of the picture and the silence of death enabled her to understand that. He had had the strength—or was it rather weakness?—to do "the right thing," to renounce love and fulfilment and fame because of her and their child. It came over her in a flash that she could not have done as much. Give up love that was strong and creative—no, never, not for all the right and convention on the earth. Any more than the Russian woman would have given it up! Women were braver than men sometimes.

She folded the letter and put it back in its envelope with a curious feeling of relief, a sort of gladness that he had had even the little there was—those few days of fulfilment, of the diviner other life which with all the years between them they had failed to grasp.

It was the most generous, the most genuine, the most humiliating moment of Milly's life. Yes, she was glad that in all the drab reality of their life,—in spite of the bills, the worry, the defeat,—he had had his great moments of art and love. They were not stolen from her: such moments cannot be stolen from anybody. She wished that he might only know how freely she was glad,—not forgave him, because forgiveness had nothing to do with it. She understood, at last, and was glad. If he should come back to life now by some miracle, she would have the courage after this self-revelation to leave him, to send him back, if not to her,—at least to his great work. Only that, too, might now be too late—alas!

With a quiet dignity that was new, Milly opened the other letter. It was dated only a few weeks before from some small place in Russia. Madame Saratoff explained briefly that she was now living with her children on her mother's estate in central Russia, and she described the life there in its perfect monotony, like the flat country, with its half animal people. "I live like one of those eastern people," she wrote, "dreaming of what has been in my life." She had heard accidentally of the American from some one who had met him in New York. He was no longer painting, she understood, but engaged in other work. That was sad. It was a mistake always not to do that which one could do with most joy. In the whirlpool of this life there was so much waste matter, so little that was complete and perfect, that no one with power had the right not to exercise it.

She sent this letter with the picture he had made of her. It belonged more to him than to her because he had created it—the man's part—while she had merely offered the accidental cause,—the woman's share. And further she wished to torture him always with this evidence of what once had been in him; not with her face,—that doubtless had already faded from his mind. But no other one had he fixed eternally by his art as he had hers. Of that she was sure. "Farewell."

It was cold; it was cruel. And it must have burned the artist like acid on his wound. The letters should have gone with him to his grave....

With a sense of finality,—that this was the real end, the end of her marriage,—Milly did up the letters carefully and folded the piece of old silk about the portrait. They must be returned to the Baroness Saratoff. And now for the first time since they had met and married, everything seemed clear and settled between her and her husband. She was left with her little girl "to face life," as the saying is.

And Milly bravely turned her face towards life.



VII

BEING A WIDOW

Many times during the ensuing months Milly had occasion to recall the remark of a clever woman she had once heard. "There's no place in modern society for the widow." She came to believe that the Suttee custom was a frank and on the whole a merciful recognition of the situation. Every one was kind to her,—unexpectedly, almost embarrassingly kind, as is the way with humanity. But Milly knew well enough that no one can live for any considerable period on sympathy and the kindness of friends. The provoking cause for any emotion must be renewed constantly.

It would have been much easier, of course, if her husband had left her and his child "comfortably off," or even with a tiny income. Instead, there were the bills, which seemed to shower down like autumn leaves from every quarter. The kindly brother-in-law, who undertook to straighten out affairs, became impatient, then severe towards the end. What had they done with their money? For Bragdon until the last weeks had been earning a very fair income. Nothing seemed paid. On the apartment only the first thousand dollars had been paid, and all the rest was mortgage and loan from him. Even the housekeeping bills for the year before had not been fully settled. (It seemed that one had merely to live with a false appearance of prosperity to secure easy credit, in a social system that compels only the very poor to pay on the nail.)

Milly could not explain the condition of their affairs. She had no idea they were "so far behind." She was sure that she had given Jack most of the bills and supposed that he had taken care of them. She protested that she had always been economical, and she thought she had been, because there were so many more things she wanted,—things that all their friends seemed to have. When confronted by the figures showing that they had spent seven, nine, eleven thousand dollars a year,—and yet had many unpaid bills,—she could not believe them and stammered,—"I know I'm not a good manager—not really. But all that! You must be mistaken." Then the business man showed his irritation. Figures did not lie: he wished every woman could be taught that axiom at her mother's knee....

"We lived so simply," Milly protested. "Just two maids most of the time,—three this winter, but," etc. In the end the brother-in-law gathered up all the unsettled bills and promised to pay them. He would not have his brother's name tarnished. And he arranged for an advantageous lease of the apartment from the first of the next month, so that after paying charges and interest there would be a little income left over for Milly. Here he stopped and made it clear to Milly that although he should do what he could for his brother's child, she must see what she could do for herself, and what her own people offered her. Big Business had been disturbed of late. He was obliged to cut his own expenses. First and last he had done a good deal for Jack. His wife called Milly "extravagant"—Milly had never found her congenial. In the end Milly felt that her brother-in-law was "hard," and she resolved that neither she nor her child should ever trouble him again.

She had already written her father of her bereavement, and received promptly from Horatio a long, rambling letter, full of warm sympathy and consolation of the religious sort. "We must remember, dear daughter, that these earthly losses in our affections are laid upon us for our spiritual good," etc. Milly smiled at the thoroughness with which her volatile father had absorbed the style of the Reverend Herman Bowler of the Second Presbyterian. To Milly's surprise, there was not a word of practical help, beyond a vague invitation,—"I hope we shall see you some day in our simple home in Elm Park. Josephine, I'm sure, will welcome you and my granddaughter."

Milly very much doubted whether the hard-featured Josephine would welcome her husband's widowed daughter. In fact she saw the fear of Josephine in her father's restrained letter. She contemplated a return to Chicago as a last resort, but it was sad to feel that she wasn't wanted....

At this point Milly began to reproach her husband for failing to leave her and his child with resources. "He ought to have made some sort of provision for his family—every man should," she said to herself. There was manifest injustice in this "man-made world," where a good wife could be left penniless with a child to care for.

Milly always thought of herself as "a good wife," by which she meant specifically that she had been a chaste and faithful wife. That was what the phrase in its popular use meant, just as "a good woman" meant merely "a pure woman." If any one had questioned Milly's virtue as a wife, she would have felt outraged. If any one had said that she was a bad wife, or at least an indifferent wife, she would have felt insulted. A girl who gave herself to a man, lived with him for eight of her best years, bore him a child and had been faithful to him in body, must be "a good wife," and as such deserved a better fate of society than to be left penniless. All her friends said it was a very hard situation.

* * * * *

These same friends were endeavoring to do their best for her, pricked by sympathy with her evident need. If it had not been for a cheque for two thousand dollars, which Clive Reinhard sent her, "in payment for your husband's work on the new contract," Milly would soon have been without a dollar in her purse. She took Reinhard's cheque thankfully, without suspecting her right to it. Others might suspect. For there was no contract, no illustrations made—nothing but the novelist's recognition of a need. The cheque was merely one of the ways he took of squaring himself with his world.

When Milly's women friends heard of it, they said with one voice,—"Thank heaven! If Clive Reinhard would only marry Milly—he ought to!"

Which merely meant that, as he was a rich bachelor who had amassed money by exploiting the sentimental side of their sex, there would be a poetic justice in his chivalrously stepping into the breach and looking after his dead friend's helpless widow. It would make up for "the others," they said, and were enthusiastic over their sentimental plan.

"Milly would make a charming hostess in that big country place of Clive's. It would give her a free hand. What Milly has always wanted is a free hand—she has the ability. And Clive is getting pudgy and set. He ought to marry—he's too dreadfully selfish and self-centred," etc.

Mrs. Montgomery Billman took the affair specially in charge. Of course a decent time must elapse after poor Jack's death, but meanwhile there was no harm in bringing the two together. The masterful wife of the Responsible Editor conceived the scheme of having a private exhibition and sale of Bragdon's work, and that took many interviews and much discussion on Sunday evenings when the hostess tactfully left the two to themselves before the fire, while she retired "to finish my letters." When she returned, however, she found them dry-eyed and silent or chatting about some irrelevant commonplace. The private exhibition came off during the winter in the "Bunker's Barn," as they called the big Riverside Drive house. A good many cards were scattered about in literary and artistic and moneyed circles; tea was poured by the ladies interested; Milly appeared in her widow's black, young and charming. A number of people came and a few bought. Mrs. Billman contented herself with the sketch of a magazine cover representing a handsome woman and a young boy, which was said to resemble herself and her son. On the whole the sale would have been a dreary failure if it had not been for Bunker's liberal purchases and Reinhard's taking all that was unsold "to dispose of privately among Jack's friends."

The hard truth was that Jack Bragdon had not shaken the New York firmament, certainly had not knocked a gilt star from its zenith. At thirty-two he was just a promising failure, one of the grist that the large city eats annually. And his friends were not powerful enough to make up for his lack of reclame. "He had a gift—slight though. Nothing much done—charming fellow—died just as he was starting, poor chap!" so the words went. If the portrait of the Russian had been there, the tone might have been less patronizing; but Milly had already sent this off on its long journey.

The practical result was fifteen hundred dollars, of which Bunker contributed a thousand, and various convenient sums that dribbled in opportunely from the novelist, "whenever he was able to make a sale." (A good many of Jack Bragdon's things ultimately will come under the hammer when the Reinhard house is broken up.)

And that romance which Milly's friends had staged came to nothing. Reinhard called on her often, was very kind to her, and really solicitous for her welfare; he also was charming to little Virginia, who called him Uncle Clive; and he had both at his country place for long visits,—abundantly chaperoned. Nothing could have been "nicer" than the novelist's attitude to his friend's widow, all the women declared, and it must have been her fault—or else that "other affair" had gone deeper with him than any one supposed.

Milly herself was not averse to entertaining a new "hope." Her marriage seemed so utterly dead that she felt free to indulge in a new sentiment. But the novelist looked at her out of his beady, black eyes,—indulgently, kindly,—but through and through, as if he had known her before she was born and knew the worth of every heart-beat in her.... Gradually beneath that scalping gaze she grew to dislike him, almost to hate him for his indifference. "He must be horrid with women," she said to Hazel, who admitted that "there have been stories—a man living by himself, as he does!"

And so this solution came to naught.

* * * * *

Milly was "up against it again," as she said to herself. Her small bank-account was fast melting away. (She had her own sheaf of bills that she had not cared to present to her brother-in-law, and she found that a penniless widow has poor credit.) Collectors came with a disagreeable promptness and followed her with an unerring scent through her various changes of residence. It became known among her friends that "Milly must really do something."

The competent wife of the Responsible Editor thought it ought not to be difficult to find something of "a social nature" for Milly to do. "Your gift is people," she said flatteringly. "Let me think it over for a day or two, and I'm sure the right idea will come to me."

She promptly turned the problem over to Mrs. Bunker, with whom she still maintained amicable relations. That lady in due time wrote Milly a note and asked her to call the next morning. Milly went with humbled pride, but with a misgiving due to her previous experiences in the parasitic field of woman's work. When after many preambles and explanations, punctuated by "like that, you know," "all that sort of thing," "we'll have to see," etc., the good lady got to her offer, it sounded like a combination of lady-housekeeper and secretary. With considerable decision Milly said that she did not feel qualified for the work, but Mrs. Bunker was most kind; she would consider her offer and let her know, and left. She had decided already. The memory of her work for Eleanor Kemp,—the humiliation and the triviality of this form of disguised charity,—had convinced her, and Eleanor Kemp was a lady and a friend and a competent person, all of which Mrs. Howard Bunker was not. "I'd scrub floors first," Milly said stoutly, and straightway despatched a ladylike refusal of the proffered job.

("I thought you said she was in great need," Mrs. Bunker telephoned Mrs. Billman in an injured tone of voice. "She is!" "Well, you wouldn't think so," the Bunkeress flashed back. "It's so hard to help that sort. You know, the kind that have been ladies!" "I know," the Editress rejoined, without the glimmer of a smile.)

* * * * *

The only one of all Milly's friends beside the novelist who came promptly to the rescue at this crisis was Marion Reddon,—the one Milly had seen least of since she had been thoroughly launched in New York. Marion with her puritan directness went to the point at once.

"What you want is a place to stay in while you look around. You and Virginia come to us. The hang-out, as Sam calls it, isn't large, but there's always room somehow."

Milly demurred at first, but later when Marion Reddon was obliged to depart hurriedly for the south because one of the children was threatened with tuberculosis, she gratefully accepted the offer of the Reddons' apartment during their absence. She moved from the boarding-house where she had been staying between visits to the top floor of the flimsy building behind Grant's Tomb in which the Reddons had perched themselves latterly. Virginia was obliged to leave her school where "the very nicest children all went," which was a keen regret to Milly, for she had already formed ambitions for her daughter. The contrast of her own pretty apartment with the shabby, worn rooms of the Reddon flat brought home to her, as nothing else had, her precarious situation. And she set herself vigorously to meet it.



VIII

THE WOMAN'S WORLD

Milly's most intimate friend was Hazel Fredericks. That restless, keen young woman, after experimenting variously in settlement work, hygiene for the poor, and immigration, had concentrated her interests on the woman movement then coming more and more into notice. The agitation for the suffrage, it seemed to her, was the effective expression of all advanced, radical ideas for which she had always worked. Her activity in the movement had brought her into close relations with some of the local leaders, among whom were a few women socially prominent, as everybody knows. (In this way she had eclipsed her old rival, Mrs. Billman, who had kept to Art and Society.) Hazel was on intimate terms with a very rich young married woman, who lived apart from her husband, "for the very best of reasons, my dear," and who spoke in private houses on the Cause.

In those happier days when Milly still had her own little place in the world, she had rather made fun of Hazel's views and imputed them to social ambition. "She wants to be talked about," she said. But since the experience of widowhood, Milly was changing her mind and listened much more attentively to all that Hazel had to say about "the woman movement,"—the "endowment of motherhood," the "necessity for the vote,"—and read "What Forty Thousand Women Want," "Love and Marriage," and other handbooks of the Cause.

One of the theories with which Milly most heartily agreed was that the labor of women in the home should be paid just as the labor of men. Milly felt that she had a valid claim for a number of years' wages still due her. This and other subjects she talked over with Hazel and became fired with enthusiasm for the Cause. Now, in her need of work, she asked,—

"Why shouldn't I do something for the movement?"

"I've been thinking of that," Hazel replied, with a shade of hesitation in her voice.

"You said there were paid secretaries and organizers."

"Yes—there are some, and we need more."

She did not explain that there were hundreds of eager young women, college graduates and social workers, younger and much better informed and more modern than Milly,—in a word, trained women. She did not wish to discourage Milly, and believed she had enough influence with Mrs. Laverne (the pretty married worker) and with Mrs. Exeter, the social leader most prominently identified with the Cause, to work Milly into some paid place. So she said reflectively,—

"There's to be a most important meeting of the leaders in the movement at Mrs. Exeter's, and I'll see what I can do."

With a laughing "Votes for Women" and "For a Woman's World," the two friends kissed and parted. Shortly afterwards a card came to Milly from a very grand person in the social world, a name that is quite familiar wherever newspapers penetrate. The card invited Mrs. John Bragdon to take part in a meeting of those interested in the Woman Forward Movement on the evening of the twentieth, at which addresses would be made by certain well-known people. The last name on the list of speakers was that of Mrs. Stanfield Fredericks. Milly was much excited. She was eager to go to the meeting, if for no better reason than from a natural curiosity to see the famous house, so often the theme of newspaper hyperbole. Also she was anxious to hear Hazel talk. But she doubted the propriety of her going anywhere so early in her widowhood. While she was debating this point with herself the telephone rang and Hazel Fredericks asked if she had received the card.

"You're going, of course?"

There followed a long feminine discussion over the propriety of accepting, the dress to be worn, etc. Hazel insisted that this occasion was not really social, but business, and steadily bore down Milly's scruples. "There'll be a great crush. It won't make any difference what you wear—nobody'll know!"

Milly went. She had to bribe the raw Swedish servant to remain in that evening with little Virginia, and she went to the expense of a cab in order not to arrive at the grand house in a sloppy and tousled condition. It was in many respects a thrilling experience. Once inside the glassed vestibule on the marble steps, Milly felt that she would not have missed it for a great deal. In the first place she enjoyed seeing the solemn liveried men servants, one of whom proffered pamphlet literature of the suffrage cause on a large silver tray. (The little books were sold at a good price, and Milly dropped another dollar or two in acquiring stuff that she could have had for nothing from Hazel Fredericks, whose apartment ran over with this "literature.")

Having supplied herself with the ammunition of the Cause, she followed the throng into the celebrated ball-room hung with beautiful old tapestries and with a ceiling stolen bodily from a French chateau. For a time the richness and the gayety of the scene sufficiently occupied Milly's attention. After the sombre experiences through which she had been and her present drab environment, it all seemed like fairyland. She tried to guess who the important-looking people were. A few were already known to her by sight, and others she recognized from their newspaper portraits. There was a majority of elegantly dressed women, and a minority of amused or bored-looking men.

At last the gathering was hushed by the voice of the hostess,—a plump and plethoric person, who said wheezily that in assembling here to-night there were two objects in view: first, to hear cheering words of wisdom from the leaders of the Cause, and secondly, to show the world that the cultivated and leisure classes were for the Emancipation of Woman. It was a democratic movement, she observed, and the toiling sisters most in need of the vote were not with them to-night. But all effective revolts, she asserted, started from above, among the aristocrats. They must rouse the womanhood of the nation, the common womanhood that now slumbered in ignorant content, to a sense of their wrongs, their slavery. She murmured noblesse oblige and sat down. Thereat a little bespectacled lady bobbed up at her side and began reading a poem in a low, intense voice. There were interminable verses. The well-dressed, well-dined men and women in the audience began to show signs of restlessness and boredom, although they kept quiet in a well-bred way. One lone man with a lean, humorous face, who was jammed into the corner beside Milly, looked at her with a twinkle in his eye. She could not help smiling back, but immediately recomposed her face to seriousness.

The verses ended after a time, as all things must end, and the speeches followed,—the first by a very earnest, dignified woman,—a noted worker among the poor,—who argued practically that this man-governed world was a failure, from the point of view of the majority, the unprotected workers, and therefore women should be permitted to do what they could to better things. There was a slight murmur of appreciation—rather for herself than for her argument—when she sat down. She was followed by a pompous little man, who made a legal speech with lumbering attempts at humor. Milly was much impressed by the long list of legal disabilities he cited which women suffered in this "man-made world," and which she had not hitherto suspected. The man by her side was yawning, and Milly felt like reproving him.

After the pompous judge came the star of the performance,—the pretty little woman who was separated from her husband. She was very becomingly dressed, much excited apparently, and swayed to and fro as she talked. Sometimes she closed her eye in a frenetic vision of women's wrongs, then suddenly opened them wide upon her audience with flashing indignation, as old-fashioned actresses once did. After the dull pleas of the preceding speakers, based on general principles and equity, this was an impassioned invective against the animal man. One felt that hers was a personal experience. The low, degraded nature of the sex that had, by physical force, usurped the rule of the universe was dramatically exposed. Milly glowed with sympathy while she listened, though she could not explain why, as her experience with men had not been with lechers, drunkards, wife-beaters. The men she had known had been on the whole a fairly clean, hard-working, kindly lot, yet she knew instinctively, as she often said, that "All men are alike," by which she meant tyrannical and corrupt in regard to women.... The audience listened closely to the speaker. No doubt their interest was increased by the gossip every one knew,—how her husband had struck her at a restaurant, how he had dragged her by the hair, cut her with a bottle from her own dressing-table, etc. Milly noticed that Hazel Fredericks and the settlement worker kept their heads lowered disapprovingly. The man next her twisted his quizzical face into a smile, and turning to Milly as the speaker stopped, amid a burst of applause, said frankly and simply as to an old friend,—

"Whew—what rot!"

Milly could not help smiling back at the engaging stranger, but she protested stoutly,—

"I don't think so!"

Before they could extend their remarks, the next speaker, a rich widow well-known for her large charities, was addressing the audience in low, earnest tones. Her theme was taken from the poet's verses: she pleaded for the full emancipation of Woman as man's equal comrade in the advance of the race. It was a vague, poetic rhapsody, disconnected in thought, and made slight impression on Milly. The last speaker was Hazel Fredericks. Her subject was the intellectual equality of women with men and their right to do their own thinking. Milly recognized many of the pat phrases and all the ideas which were current in the magazine set where she had lived,—woman's self-expression and self-development, etc. It was the most carefully prepared of all the addresses and very well delivered, and it made an excellent impression, though it contained nothing original either in thought or in expression. Like Milly's famous graduation essay on Plato it was a masterpiece of skilful quotation, but in this case the theft was less obvious and the subject was certainly fresher.

There was the usual movement of relieved humanity after it has been talked to for two hours, and then the hostess rose again, and in her languid drawl announced that all who felt interested in the Cause were requested to sign the "Roster" and give their addresses, so that they might be kept in touch with the movement. The "Roster" was a very handsome gilt-edged, blue levatine-bound book, which was carried about in the crowded room by a footman, another man carrying a gold inkstand and pen.

The stranger beside Milly murmured in her ear,—

"So Society has taken up the Cause!"

"I'm afraid," Milly replied with an arch smile, "you don't take us quite seriously."

"Don't think it for one moment!" he retorted. "I don't believe I have ever taken anything so seriously in all my life as Women."

"In what way?"

"In every way."

He resumed in a moment, more seriously,—

"Frankly, I don't believe much is accomplished for your Cause by this sort of thing!"

His gesture included comprehensively the gorgeous room, the gorgeous assembly of socially elect, the speakers, and the liveried servants who were now approaching their corner with the "Roster."

"But you have to start things somehow," Milly rejoined, remembering Hazel's arguments. "Social prestige counts in everything."

"Is that what you need—social prestige?... I don't believe one of those women who talked, including the poet, ever earned a dollar in her life!" and with a glance about the room he added, "nor any woman in this room."

"Oh, yes—I have myself!" Milly replied promptly and proudly.

The man looked at her sharply.

"And that doesn't make any difference," she continued with a superior air; "you men are always trying to bring things down to dollars and cents."

"You'll admit it's a tangible basis of discussion."

"I've no doubt if they only had their rights many of them ought to be paid a great deal for what they've done for you men."

"I mean that not one has ever done anything really productive in her life—has added anything to the world's supply of necessities," he continued with masculine arrogance.

"Oh?" Milly protested.

"Not even children!" he added triumphantly, and glanced at the names on his programme. "I don't believe they could produce a child among 'em."

Milly knew that the women speakers of the evening happened all to be childless women. One of them was not married, another was a widow, a third separated from her husband, and of the others at least one—Hazel—had deliberately evaded maternity.

"That may not be their fault!" Milly retorted with meaning.

"True," the man admitted. "But I'd like to hear something on the question from Mothers."

"Having children isn't the only thing women are good for," Milly suggested.

"It's one mighty fine thing, though!"

(Milly could never understand why men, as a rule, were so enthusiastic over women who had children.)

"Aren't we getting away from the subject?" she suggested.

Their talk was interrupted by the presence of the solemn footman with the book of irreproachable names. To Milly's surprise her unknown companion grasped the pen and scrawled beneath her signature a name that looked like "A. Vanniman," with the address of a well-known club. So he was a single man!

"How could you do that?" Milly demanded accusingly.

"Why not? I want women to vote, just as soon and as often as they like. Then they'll know how little there is in the vote and maybe get down to brass tacks."

"You don't really believe in women," Milly remarked coquettishly.

"I don't believe in this sort of flummery, no.... I want to hear from the waitresses, the clerks, the factory girls—the seven or eight millions of women who are up against it every day of their lives to earn a living. I want to hear what they have to say about suffrage and the rights of women—what they want? Did you ever ask them?"

"No-o," Milly admitted, and then recalled another of Hazel's arguments. "All those women need the vote, of course, to make laws to help them earn their living. But they haven't the time to agitate and organize. They are not educated—not expressive."

"Not expressive!" the man exclaimed. "I wish you and all these good women here could listen to my stenographer for ten minutes on what women need. She knows the game!"

Milly did not approve of her companion's sentiments: he clearly belonged to the large class of prejudiced males whose indifference the Cause had to combat. But he had an interesting face and was altogether an attractive specimen of his species. She wondered who he might be. It seemed to her that "Vanniman" had a familiar sound, and she believed he was some man of importance in the city.

There was a general drift towards the supper room. But Milly hesitated. She had promised Hazel to join her after the speaking and be introduced to some of the leaders,—especially to the pretty young woman who had denounced Man,—in the hope that a paid position could be found for her. At first she could not find her friend, and then she saw Hazel surrounded by a number of important-looking men and women, talking very earnestly with them, and a sudden timidity came over her in the midst of this distinguished gathering.

"We'd better get something to eat," her unknown acquaintance suggested. He had waited for her, and she felt relieved to have some one to speak to. "It makes one fearfully hungry to listen to a lot of talk, don't you think?"

So Milly went out to supper with the agreeable stranger.

"No," he resumed, after presenting her with a comforting beaker of champagne, "I've every sympathy with the woman with a job or with the woman who wants a job. All this silly talk about the sexes makes me tired. Man or woman, the job's the thing."

"Yes!" Milly assented with heartfelt emphasis.

"What every one needs is something to do, and women must be trained like men for their jobs."

He began to talk more seriously and entertainingly on the economic changes in modern society that had produced the present state of unrest and readjustment. He sketched quite feelingly what he called the old-fashioned woman, with her heavy duties and responsibilities in the pioneer days. "The real pillar of Society—and often a domestic slave, God bless her!" he said. "But her granddaughter has become either a parasite, or another kind of slave,—an industrial slave. And the vote isn't going to help her in either case."

Milly wondered in which class she fell. She didn't like the word "parasite,"—it sounded like a disease,—and yet she was afraid that was what she was.

"I think that I must be going," Milly said at last. She noticed that the rooms were fast emptying after the food had been devoured, and she could see Hazel nowhere. She would call her up in the morning and congratulate her on her speech. And so with a nod to the stranger she went for her wraps. But she found him again in the vestibule, and wondered if he had waited for her to come down.

"What's the name?" he asked, as the servant came forward to call her carriage.

"I haven't any cab," Milly replied bravely. It was her custom these days Cinderella-like to dispense with a return cab.

"But it's raining," the man protested. "You must let me set you down at your home."

A private hansom had drawn up to the curb before the awning. "Where?" he insisted.

"It's an awful way out," Milly faltered; "just take me to the nearest subway station."

Embarrassed by the gaze of the servant and by the waiting people behind, she got into the hansom. The man gave some sort of order to his driver and got in beside her. They trotted briskly around the corner on to the Avenue, and as it was misting heavily the driver let down the glass shield. It seemed cozy and pleasant to jog home from a party in a private cab, with an agreeable man by one's side. Quite like old times, Milly thought!

"You'd better let me take you all the way. Where shall I say?" and he raised the top with his stick. For a moment Milly was about to yield. She liked the sense of having a masterful man near her, overbearing her doubts, but she still protested,—

"No, no—it's too far. Just put me down at Columbus Circle."

The man hesitated, looked at Milly curiously, then gave the driver the direction. Milly wondered why he had not insisted as she had expected he would or did not again suggest driving her out, when they had reached the subway station. There was a time when men would not have taken no for an answer. But he didn't—nor even ask her name. Instead he courteously helped her to alight and raising his hat drove off.

* * * * *

She was depressed going up-town in the crowded, smelly, shrieking train. The meeting had not been as thrilling as she had anticipated. Hazel would probably scold her to-morrow for not coming forward and meeting the leaders. But she felt that the Woman Forward movement had little to offer her in her perplexities. Hers was part of that economic maladjustment that the good-looking stranger had talked about, and even with the suffrage it would take generations to do anything for women like her.

What really depressed her most was the fact that her unknown acquaintance had not considered it worth while to find out her name and pave the way for further relations. She realized cynically that for the present at any rate the woman question came down to just this: men could do many pleasant and useful things for women when they were so inclined. And a woman failed when she could not interest a man sufficiently to move him to make the advance. Of course Milly knew that the "modern woman" would fiercely desire to be independent of all such male patronage. But as Milly climbed wearily the long flight of stairs to her apartment, feeling tired and forlorn and very much alone in the world, she knew that in the bottom of her heart she had no wish to be "modern." And she was even sceptical as to how sincerely the other women, like Hazel Fredericks, desired that "complete independence of the male" they chattered so much about.

* * * * *

When Milly turned on the electric light in the little apartment, it was forebodingly still. She glanced at once into the room where Virginia slept and found it empty, with the bedclothes tumbled in a heap. She rushed to the maid's room. That too was empty and the rear door was locked on the outside. For a moment Milly's heart ceased beating, then with a shriek,—"Virgie, Virgie—where are you!" she ran into the front hall and plunged, still shrieking, down the stairs.

A door opened on the floor below, and the figure of a large woman in a rose-pink negligee confronted Milly.

"Lookin' for yer little girl?" the stranger asked in a loud, friendly voice. "Well, she's all right—just come in here!"

She held open the door and pointed to the front room, where under a crocheted shawl little Virginia was curled up asleep on the divan. Milly fell beside her with an hysterical sob. The child, partly awakened, put out her thin arms and murmured sleepily, "The strange lady's very nice, but she's queer. Take me home, mama, please."

The "strange lady," who was looking on interestedly, explained,—

"I heard the kid runnin' round up above and cryin'—oh, that was hours ago when I first com' home—and as she kep it up cryin' as if she were scared and callin', I went up there and brought her down to stay with me till you got back.... Guess she woke up and was lonesome all by herself."

"That brute Hilda," Milly gasped, "must have gone off and left her."

"They're all like that,—them Swedes," the woman of the rose-pink negligee agreed. "Got no more heart than a brick."

She spoke as from a vast experience with the race.

"The little girl has been as nice as pie," the woman replied to Milly's stammered thanks. "We've been real friendly. Good-by, girlie, I'll be up to-morrer some time and tell you the last of that story.... Good-night!"

Milly gathered her precious bundle in her arms and with renewed thanks staggered back to her own quarters.

"She's queer, mama, and something happened to her arm and leg, long ago, but she's very kind," the small Virginia explained sleepily as her mother dropped her on her own bed.

By "queer" Virginia merely meant that her good Samaritan was not of the class she had been accustomed to, and did not use language precisely as her mother and her mother's friends used it. To Virginia the janitor of the building was "queer," and almost all of the many thousands of her fellow-beings whom she saw daily on the streets of the great city.

So Milly thought no more about it.



IX

THE NEW WOMAN

But the "queer" woman in the rose-pink negligee who befriended Virginia on the night when her mother had gone to the meeting of the Woman Forward Movement in the very grand house and "the beast of a Swede" Hilda had slipped out to meet her lover beside Grant's Tomb, has more to do with Milly and the woman question itself than the suffrage meeting and all the talk there. Ernestine Geyer, for such was the woman's name, came into Milly's life rather late, but she will have much to do with it hereafter and deserves a chapter to herself to begin with.

Incredible as it would seem to Milly, Ernestine's origin was not widely separated from that of Milly Ridge. She might very well have been one of the many little schoolmates, not exactly "nice," who sat beside Milly on the benches of the St. Louis public school. Her ancestry, to be sure, was more mongrel than Milly's; it would defy any genealogist to trace it beyond father and mother or resolve it properly into its elements. The name itself indicated that there must have been some German or Dutch blood in the line. Neither would it be possible now to explain what exigencies of the labor market compelled Ernestine's family to migrate from St. Louis to New York.

All that Ernestine herself knew was that her father worked in breweries, and that she with her five brothers and sisters lived in one of those forbidding brick rookeries on the lower west side of New York. This was when she was ten. When she reached fourteen—the legal age—she escaped from the routine of school and joyfully went to work in a laundry. For children of her class it was like coming of age,—to become wage-earners with the accompanying independence and family respect.

The laundry where she found her first job was a small affair, of the "domestic-hand laundry" type, situated in a low brick building that had once served as a gentleman's private stable on one of the cross streets near Gramercy Park. At that time Ernestine was a hearty, vigorous child, strong for her age, or she never could have endured the long hours of hard work on wet floors in a steaming room and with heavy bundles to lift and carry. As a grown woman her squat figure, large and slightly round-shouldered, betrayed these early years of stooping labor, and her colorless complexion, not a sickly pallor but a neutral white beneath the thick black hair, was the result of years spent in a dark, misty atmosphere, through which even the gas-lights burned dimly. In those early days when Ernestine scurried across the city in the procession of working-girls, mornings at seven forty-five and evenings at six, she was very much like all the others,—a not wholly unattractive young woman with quick eyes. Perhaps she was a trifle quieter, less emotional than her companions at the laundry—more reflective in disposition—but not noticeably more intelligent than the many thousands in her class.

And if it had not been for an accident, which at the time seemed frightful to her, Ernestine Geyer would probably have turned out, as most of her kind turn out, either have become the wife of a workingman with a brood of children to feed the labor hopper or gone to her end more rapidly on the streets. But one day, owing to a defect in the machinery that controlled the huge cauldron over which she was bending, the thing tipped and scalded her with a flood of boiling water on her right arm and leg. At the hospital it was thought she would have to lose the arm; but she was too robustly made for that. A frightful red scar from her hip to below the knee and a withered right hand and forearm were the results. They took her back at the laundry when she left the hospital out of pity and a sense of responsibility for her bad luck, and gave her some light work sorting out clothes and checking pieces, which she could do after a fashion with her left hand and the withered stump.

Ernestine quickly realized—and just here was the proof of her innate superiority to the majority—that her only chance for existence was to make herself so useful in the irregular labor she could perform that she would not be discharged at the first opportunity. And she worked as she had never before dreamed she could work! She counted, sorted, marked, checked the huge piles of restaurant and office linen that the laundry took. She had the sense to employ a younger brother to assist her with his whole hands. She became, in a word, the order, the system, the regulator of the small establishment, and hence indispensable to the overworked proprietor. Her accident by depriving her of the ordinary amusements of her fellows also made her more intelligent, because she had nothing but her work to occupy her mind. The laundry became the one thing she lived for: it had her every thought and emotion. She knew from the first that no man would ever think of marrying her—she saw it in the pitying glances that the girls gave her. No man would endure a woman with a withered stump of a right hand, not to mention the ugly scar that defaced her body. Thus the world of sex shut out with all its related disturbances, she became by the process of intense specialization a most efficient worker.

It is not necessary to recount all the steps of her progress upward. When the small proprietor of the "hand laundry" acquired another property farther up town she persuaded him to let her manage the old business under his direction. (He was a widower now and no longer young; he would have married her, perhaps. But she knew what that meant—a loss of salary and double work; and she would have none of him as husband.) She was twenty now, and earning more than she had ever expected to make,—eighteen dollars a week. After that the years passed quickly until she was twenty-five and getting thirty dollars a week. Her family having broken up, she was living in a boarding-house not far from the laundry....

Through the misty, dirty panes of the window in the rough office on the upper floor of the old stable where Ernestine now had her desk, she could look across the narrow street to the row of small brick houses opposite. These houses had suffered various vicissitudes since Ernestine had first come to work in the laundry. Then they had been shabby-genteel boarding-houses like the one a block or two away where she herself now lived. Gradually the character of the street had improved. Some young couples, hunting for a spot in all this crowded, expensive city where they might make their modest nests, had moved into the old-fashioned houses and renovated them according to modern ideas. Number 232, almost directly opposite Ernestine's loft, had been among the first thus to renew its youth. The old iron balconies had been restored and little green shutters with crescent-shaped peep-holes added, and also flower-filled window-boxes.

Ernestine had taken a special interest in this house and often speculated about the life going on within its sober brick walls, behind the fresh muslin curtains of the upper windows. At first there was just a man and his wife and a small child, whose young mother wheeled it out each morning in a basket carriage, for the one maid was busy all day long. Then another child had come and another. The first child went to school with a maid—there were three maids in the house now. Ernestine watched the orderly development of this family with all the interest of a nature lover observing a nest of robins. At first when the shutters were closed in the early hot days of June she was afraid lest other hands might open them in the autumn, but after a time she knew her family well enough to understand that they were not the kind that moves, except for death or other cogent cause. She inferred that they were becoming more prosperous, as was quite proper. There was an increasing amount of coming and going at the old-fashioned door, and she got to know the habitual visitors apart from the merely casual acquaintances. In time she built up from her myriad glances across the street a substantial family tree of uncles and aunts, cousins and brothers. What interested her most were the occasional glimpses of the front rooms she had when the maids opened wide the windows and pushed aside the curtains. She was enabled thus to observe three layers of an orderly, inviting domesticity: on the first floor she could see a large, soft rug, an oil painting, a lovely silk hanging that shut off the inner room, and a corner of a mahogany case with some foreign bric-a-brac. She liked best the floor above, where the family mostly lived when they were by themselves: here was one large recessed room where the crowded book-shelves went to the ceiling, a real fire burned in a fireplace, and real lamps lighted a large table, around which the members of the family read or worked or played. Here the lady of the house—a vigorous little body, with laughing eyes—sat and sewed, had tea with visitors, read to her children, and wrote letters. Here in the winter twilight before the day at the laundry was finished the man of the house entered with a jerky little masterful step, crossed to the chair where his wife sat reading, leaned over, kissed her, and having established himself with back to the fire delivered himself, so Ernestine judged, of his daily budget of news. How she would like to hear what he had to say!