_ CHAPTER VI
Little Fred has been graduated from college without the loss of his front teeth or an eye. He has a few scars, which will not permanently disfigure him; and though he halts slightly as the result of a strained tendon in the calf of one of his legs, Dr. Meredith assures us that this is chiefly a nervous symptom, which will pass off presently. He says Fred is a little run down, and he advises raw eggs and milk between meals. I assume that the doctor is right, but it seems strange to me that a boy should get run down through foot-ball exercise. However, he is to go abroad for six months, which ought to mend matters, and then buckle down to work with Leggatt & Paine. He is an honest, manly fellow, who will make friends, and, provided he does not break his neck in following the hounds or playing polo, is likely to do well.
David, my second boy, is a born chemist and a genuine book-lover besides. He is at the School of Science, to which we decided to send him, instead of to college, in view of the fact that his proclivities were in the line of gases and forces rather than Greek roots and history. He is doing famously, I believe; and though I am a profound ignoramus on such matters, I should not be at all surprised if he were to make a name for himself early in life by some valuable discovery in the electrical or bacillic line. He has lately made a test of all the wall-papers and upholstery in our house, and discovered, to our dismay, that there is arsenic in pretty nearly everything, including some of the bed-sheets, which, strange to state, in spite of their innocent appearance, proved to be particularly full of the deleterious poison. We have had to overhaul everything in consequence, and Josephine firmly believes that Fred's nervous halt is due to the presence of arsenic in his system, for the bed-sheets in his college room belonged to the condemned batch. Seeing that the rest of us are perfectly well, I secretly suspect that late hours and tobacco are more to blame than arsenic for my athletic son's condition; but in the teeth of scientific warning I have not ventured to run the risk of continued exposure, and have consented to the purchase of new carpets, curtains, window-shades, and other household apparel.
I am much more concerned, to tell the truth, lest some of the germs which David is cosseting in his bed-chamber may get loose and ravage the community. He has a bacillus farm, where, according to his account, the cholera germ, the germ of tuberculosis, the typhoid-fever germ, and the diphtheria germ are growing side by side for his private edification. As Josephine says, there are certain risks which a brave man has to take; but I am not sure that this is one of them. Even my darling is a little anxious on the score of contamination, in spite of her scientific son's assurance that his pets are thoroughly harmless.
I do not really know whether Josephine is prouder of Fred or of David. Certainly her mind is comparatively at rest regarding them both, notwithstanding my second troy is not quite like other people. I do not mean that he is boorish or eccentric, merely that he is bookish and self-absorbed. He takes no interest in his personal appearance, and he avoids every young woman except his sisters. Fred is dandified, keenly fond of the social interests of the day and of the other sex. I foresee that he bids fair to be a leading man of affairs, and to figure prominently in society, and later on to become a member of Congress or to be sent abroad as a foreign minister. But he is just like everybody else, so to speak; or rather he accepts the world as he finds it and accommodates himself to it. Now, David is cast in a different mould. He is essentially unconventional. And yet, though his mother sighs now and then over his repugnance to young ladies, and tries to badger him into looking a little more spruce, I can perceive that she is thoroughly proud of his originality and independence, and believes that he is even more likely than his conventional brother to distinguish himself and immortalize the family name. Josephine used to say, when the boys were little, that she hoped one of them would be a clergyman, and I know that she has more sympathy than I--and I have considerable--with a scheme of life which entertains starving in a garret for the sake of art or science as a meritorious contingency. She has held up before her boys, since their earliest childhood, the perils of idle and purely worldly living, and spurred them to make the most of themselves.
Curiously enough, our two girls are just as dissimilar to each other as Fred and David. Josie, the elder--who, as I have already specified, is, according to the world at large, the image of her mother at the same age--will not be troublesome in the least degree, so my wife tells me. She has taken to society as a duck takes to water. She has a natural aptitude for pleasing and being pleased; consequently she has plenty of partners. My wife says that, considering the dear child was all legs and arms three years ago, we have every reason to congratulate ourselves that she has turned out such a pleasant-looking girl, and that her red hair is decidedly ornamental. I call her handsome, but Josephine declares that I make myself ridiculous by the assertion, and that it is very rare that a girl who has not really a ray of beauty to commend her becomes such a thorough-going favorite in her first season.
"She constantly reminds me of you, and that is enough for me," I remarked, tenderly, on one occasion.
"You make me boil when you say that, Fred. I was really a very pretty girl, if I do say it; whereas Josie, the sweet soul, only just escapes being homely. Her smile and her hair save her, so that she passes. But it is a libel to compare her with what I was at her age. We must look facts in the face, dear."
"People tell me every day that she is the living image of her mother," I answered humbly.
"People are idiots. They know you will believe it because you are a man. They don't dare tell me anything of the sort. No, Fred, we must build all our hopes of beauty on Winona."
"Ah!" I remarked, with an intonation of pride; "even her mother will not be able to pick a flaw in _her_."
"She is a very handsome girl, but----"
Josephine stopped short, and I could see that her lip was trembling with emotion.
"There is no 'but,'" I protested. "Whatever Josie may be, Winona is a raving beauty."
"Oh, yes, Fred, I am perfectly satisfied with her looks. That makes it all the harder. I'm on tenterhooks lest she is going to be queer."
"Queer?" I inquired, with agitation, dreading some disclosure of mental derangement.
"Odd--not like other people. It would break my heart, Fred. She is seventeen, and she doesn't take the slightest interest in coming out. You remember I had her appear for an hour at Josie's party, and that she was surrounded by young men from the moment she entered the room until I sent her to bed? Most girls would have been in danger of having their heads turned. Winona was bored."
"She will get over that as soon as she is a year older. She is shy."
"She is not shy. If she were shy I should think nothing of it. She declares that society is all nonsense, and that she wishes never to come out at all."
"What an egregiously sensible girl," I murmured.
"I hope you will not encourage her, Fred," pleaded my darling. "I have counted so much on her. If Josie had taken it into her head to be queer, I shouldn't have said a word, for I think myself that is often for a plain girl's happiness not to have to undergo the ordeal of being neglected; but in the case of a beauty like Winona it would be such a waste! There is not a girl of her age who compares with her in beauty."
"What is it she wishes to do?" I asked, with a knitted brow. A man is apt to leave the management of his own daughters to his wife, even though he is a philosopher and prolific in theories. I had rather taken it for granted that certain advanced notions of mine regarding the conduct of women's lives would be allowed to lie dormant in my brain for lack of an animating cause, or, more accurately speaking, for lack of moral courage on my part to exploit them for the benefit of my own flesh and blood. It is more satisfactory to try experiments in the line of education on some one else's children. Besides, I had argued that Josephine was the proper person to propose a departure from the established method, in conformity with which conclusion I had paid out a handsome round sum for a coming-out party and a social wardrobe for my eldest girl. But now I felt in conscience bound to prick up my ears.
"She doesn't know herself what she wishes to do," said my wife, dejectedly. "She is daft on the subject of books and education."
"Is not that rather to her credit?" I ventured to inquire.
Josephine gazed at me as though my words had stung her.
"Of course it is to her credit," she replied, almost fiercely. "You know perfectly well, Fred, I have encouraged the girls to study and cultivate their minds in every conceivable manner, and that I have always said they should have equal advantages in the way of education with their brothers so far as it was possible to procure them. I have just told you that if Josie had wished to be a student and to go in for a career of some kind, I should have been perfectly willing; yes, I should have been glad. But it does seem hard that they should change places, and the one who is a radiant beauty, and sure to be universally admired, should take it into her head to cut loose from society. I remember saying when she was christened that we were gambling with Divine Providence in giving her such an individualizing name, for fear she would grow up a fright. I little thought I was running the risk of such a contingency as this."
"It _is_ hard, Josephine," I murmured, wishing to be sympathetic. "I think, though, you are a little premature in taking it for granted that Winona will not come round all right in the end."
My darling shook her head. "She may consent to go about in order to please me, but her heart will never be in it. Oh, I know!" she added, with another outburst, as though she were arguing with an accusing spirit, "that society is all very frivolous in theory and a waste of time, and that the moralists and people who never had the chance to go anywhere would tell me I ought to be thankful to have a daughter who cares for something besides going to balls and dinner-parties and flirting with young men. That's the way they would look at it; but they might argue until they were black in the face and they couldn't make me feel otherwise than disappointed. And, what is more, I believe that Winona will be very sorry herself ten years hence if she perseveres in her present determination."
These last words were spoken by my wife almost tragically, and it was evident to me that they proceeded from the heart. I am free to confess that when Josephine gives utterance to opinions with so much earnestness as this I cannot help feeling that there must be more or less truth in them. She may be no philosopher, but she is a sensible woman. And especially in a matter where another woman, and one of her own flesh and blood, besides, is concerned, it would certainly seem as though she would be apt to be right. This whole business of the emancipation of woman is one well adapted to drive a philosopher, to say nothing of the father of a family, crazy. Naturally I wish my daughters to become all that they ought to be. On the other hand, if a paterfamilias cannot trust his better half on this particular subject, he may as well imitate the example of certain savage tribes, and make mince-meat of the girls. Perhaps I seem to be worked up on the subject? Well, I am. The din of the moralists, and of the people who have never had a chance to go anywhere, is in my ears, and I cannot get altogether rid of it. Let us start afresh and attack the question from another point of view.
There is no doubt, even to the average masculine mind, although the possessor of the mind may not publish the fact on the house-tops, that the most interesting product of this enlightened century is emancipated woman. There are certain enthusiasts, though principally of the emancipated sex, who are already so confident as to the rapid future progress and ultimate glorious evolution of womankind that they are ready to venture the prediction to people whom they think they can trust, that sooner or later there will be no more men. Whether this desirable result is to be brought about by the gradual extinction or snuffing out of the hitherto sterner sex by a process of killing kindness, or by the discovery of a system of generation whereby women only will be procreated, is not foretold by these seers of the future; accordingly, while one might not be warranted in dismissing the theory as untenable, its fulfilment may fairly be regarded as a remote expectancy, and consigned to the consideration of real philosophers.
There is no doubt, though, that woman has been kept down for generations, and has only just begun to bob up serenely, to hazard a coloquial metaphor. The eyes of civilization are upon her, and there is legitimate curiosity from Christiania to Yokohama to discover what she is going to do. To me as a philosopher, and taking into account one consideration with another, including Josephine's plaint, it seems as though woman would have much plainer sailing in her progress toward reconstruction if it were not that she is so exceedingly good-looking in spots and bunches. Let her distinction as an ornamental factor be totally negatived and overcome, and there is no telling how rapidly she might progress. By ornament, I mean, of course, not merely beauty of face and form, but sweetness of speech, delicacy of physique and sentiment, captivating clothes, and all those distinguishing characteristics which have tended to fasten upon the female sex the epithet of gentle. It will generally be admitted that women of homely presence, clumsy in their gait, dowdy in their dress, and raucous in their intonation, are much safer from the infliction of gallantries at the hands or lips of mortal men than those whose attributes are more pleasing; and it is safe to assert that many a male monster has been rooted to his seat in street-cars by the coldly intellectual eye of some not altogether able-bodied feminine person. The recent victories all along the line of women over men in examination-rooms, and their more or less successful ventures in the fields of law, medicine, and newspaper enterprise, would be more appalling to man and encouraging to the progressionists, but for the obstinate though obvious adhesion of the great mass of woman-kind to the trick bequeathed to them by their great-great-grandmothers of trying to look as well as they can. And the terrible part of it is they succeed so wonderfully that philosophers like myself are apt to find our ratiocinations wofully mixed when we try to reason about the matter.
You remember, perhaps, that Josephine induced me earlier in our wedded life to give a large party for her sister Julia? Within a year I have submitted to a similar domestic upheaval on account of my elder daughter, and I do not think that it can be said that I acquitted myself in either case malignantly or even morosely. Indeed, though this is not strictly relevant to the discussion, my wife informed me after Josie's party was over that I had behaved like an angel. Now, my sister-in-law, Julia, is still unmarried, and she cannot be far from thirty. As I reflected at the time she came out, she is less comely than my wife and not so sagacious, but she is decidedly an attractive girl. She has had every advantage in the line of social entertainments, and every opportunity to meet available young men. She has waltzed all winter and been successively to Bar Harbor and Newport in summer. She has been to Europe so as to let people forget her and to reappear as a novelty, and she has altered the shape of her hair twice to my individual observation. Yet somehow she hangs fire. I am informed by Josephine, in strict confidence, that she has had offers and might have been married to at least one eminently desirable man before this had she seen fit to accept him; but I tell my darling that though the consciousness of what might have been may be a legitimate consolation to her and to her sister, it does not controvert the bald fact that Julia is still unmarried at the end of ten years of social divagations.
I do not mean that Julia may not marry. Very likely she will. She certainly ought to if she has the desire; and she has time enough yet if the right man only thinks so. It is rather on the system I am pondering than on the individual, though the vision of Josie at thirty unwedded, and a little hard and worn, haunts my retina and makes me feel philosophical. Away down in the bottom of my boots or my soul, or wherever a man can most safely harbor a secret reflection, has long lain a feeling of wonder that the world continues to put its daintiest, most cherished, and most carefully tended daughters through the peculiar social programme in vogue. Is it not bewilderingly true that every young woman of position and manners in Christendom, be her father a Knight of the Garter or a Congressman, her mother an azure-blooded countess or the ambitious better half of a retired grocer, finds on the threshold of life only one course open to her if she desires to be conventional, and to do what is naturally expected of her? From twelve to eighteen instruction--and in these latter days exemplary instruction--Latin, Greek, if there is a craving for it, history, psychology, chemistry, political economy, to say nothing of the modern languages and special courses in summer in botany, conchology, and physiology. And then, dating from a long anticipated day, or rather night, a metamorphosis startling as the transition of the cocoon; a formal letting loose of the finished maiden on the polished parquet floor of the social arena. Tra-la-la-la-la! Tra-la-la-la-la! Off she whirls to the rythm of a Strauss waltz or a blood-stirring polka, and for the next four years, on an average, she never stops, metaphorically speaking. She may not always be waltzing or polkaing, but if she is conventionally sound she is sure to be in a whirl. She exchanges daylight for gaslight; her daily sustenance is stewed mushrooms with a rich gray gravy, beef-tea, and ice-cream, varied by an occasional mouthful of fillet as a conscience composer. All winter she participates in a feverish round of balls, receptions, luncheons, dinners, teas, theatre parties, with every now and then a wedding. All summer she sails, floats, glides, sits, perches, sprawls, walks, meanders, talks, climbs, rides, saunters, or dances madly as her mood or circumstances suggest. There is her life, varying a little according to clime and disposition, according to whether she is daughter of a duke or of a successful grocer. It is what everyone expects of her, so no one is surprised; and she is expected also to keep up the pace until she is married, which is likely to come to pass any day, but which, as in the case of poor Julia, may not be until she is thirty. Fancy living on mushrooms with a rich gray gravy and successively waltzing, meandering, or floating with the Tom, Dick, and Harry of the workaday social world from eighteen to thirty! And yet we fathers and philosophers ask ourselves why in thunder (or even more vehemently) our daughters have nervous prostration. Why should they? And yet I hear Josephine ask, for the discussion is uppermost in our thoughts at the moment:
"Do you wish Winona to become a second Miss Jacket?"
Let me explain that Miss Jacket, Miss Cora Jacket, M.D., lives opposite to us, and has for some months been a serious menace to the happiness of Josephine, in that my wife declares that the wretch is poisoning our Winona's mind. The charge startled me seriously when it was broached, but I have been trying to consider dispassionately whether the injury likely to be worked will be greater than that consequent upon a continuous fare of mushrooms with rich gray gravy and flirtation. Winona and Miss Cora Jacket, M.D., are certainly thicker than thieves; hence a pardonable lurking suspicion in Josephine's mind that the older woman is seeking to induce the beauty of our family to study medicine. Dr. Jacket must be thirty--just about the age of my sister-in-law. To me she appears to be a trig, energetic little woman, rather pretty and rather well dressed, and though she seems intelligent there is nothing especially frigid or forbidding in her eye. Its intellectuality is not forced upon one. I have found her so attractive that I ventured to insinuate, by way of answer to my wife's expostulation, that Winona might do much worse than model herself on Miss Cora Jacket, M.D. This drew upon my head the vial of Josephine's righteous wrath.
"Now, Fred, just stop and think for one moment," she said. "I have not a word to say against Miss Jacket. I have no doubt she is a most worthy young woman and an excellent physician, though I should never care to consult her myself. But that is neither here nor there. Do you happen to know what Miss Jacket's antecedents were, and what her life has been?"
I shook my head droopingly.
"She was born in Ohio, and was left an orphan, and practically unprovided for, at an early age. She was helped by kind friends--all this is from her own lips--until she was old enough to help herself by teaching, and then, by some means or other, she came East and studied medicine, and made the start for herself that you see. All of which, I beg to anticipate you in saying, is marvellously to her credit. She is plainly a brilliant and capable young woman of whom any mother might be proud, provided she had to be. But because it was creditable and sensible in Miss Jacket to make the most of herself in that particular way, you surely would not advocate that the daughters of the Princess of Wales and the Empress of Germany should do the same."
"I should certainly advocate their doing something useful," I said in my dogged fashion. "Besides, Winona is the daughter neither of the Princess of Wales nor the Empress of Germany."
"No, she is not," said Josephine, in a tone which seemed to imply that she was grateful for the escape. After all, who of us to-day would give a rush to be a king or queen? What successful business or professional man would exchange the exquisite comfort of the domestic hearth and all the magazines for the prerogatives of royalty? I understand perfectly what Josephine wished to express, and agreed with her on the point. Her daughters, save for a little pomp and circumstance, were practically the peers of any and all princesses.
"Just consider, for a moment, Winona and Miss Jacket side by side," Josephine continued. "Don't you see any difference between them?"
"Well, of course, Winona is an unusually handsome girl," I murmured. "Besides, she is younger."
"Younger!" groaned Josephine, evidently believing me hopeless. "Do you really, seriously think, Fred, that they are to be mentioned in the same breath as ladies?"
I rather think I looked foolish and twiddled my fingers.
"If," said Josephine, with an emphasis on the conjunction, and repeating it still more emphatically, "if it were necessary I would not say a word. If Winona were one of seven girls, I should be sorry, but I would not say a word. If it had been Josie, I should have been rather pleased--which shows, Fred, that I am not altogether hostile to the spirit of the age. But I am not prepared as yet to see my only really handsome daughter--and such a handsome one, Fred--fly in the face of convention and custom merely--merely to please Miss Jacket and the people who never have a chance to go anywhere."
All Josephine's combativeness and pride of opinion seemed to ooze suddenly away, and she buried her face on my shoulder, murmuring--
"Oh, yes, the whole system of society for girls is ridiculous and degenerating. I know it, I know it perfectly well. I don't approve of it, I never have approved of it. I wonder that so many come out of it as well as they do. And they are not content as in my day to be merely giddy; they go in now for smoking cigarettes and drinking liqueurs after dinner, and some of them paint their faces. Not all of them, of course, not one-tenth of them; Josie will never do anything of the kind. I ought, though, to be thankful, heartily thankful, if Winona prefers to stay away from all this and to develop worthy tastes of her own. She shall do what she pleases, Fred, only----"
My darling stopped short as though she had concluded not to complete her sentence. She gulped bravely and lifted her eyes to mine.
"Kiss me, dear," she whispered. "I am not really so worldly as you think."
"You are an angel, and will never be anything else to me," I responded, stroking her hair.
She lay still for a moment, happy but pensive. "She shall do whatever she pleases; only it is a very much easier matter for you to be virtuous and to say, 'Let her study medicine,' than for me."
"I have not said so, dearest."
"You have thought so, though. You do not need to speak to have me know when you are thinking things. No man can possibly conceive what it means to a mother to have a daughter a radiant beauty and peculiar."
"I dare say not," I murmured, humbly.
"Especially," she continued, reflectively, "when you consider that, though society is foolish, there is really nothing else at present to take its place to give a girl what nothing else is likely to give her--I do not say nothing else can give it to her, but nothing else is in the least likely to; and when you consider the vast number of wives and mothers who have been through it all when they were young, and are charming and--yes, Fred, sensible, intelligent women to-day. I don't pretend that I myself am half what I might have been, but I went through it all as a girl without becoming absolutely vapid and volatile. Didn't I, dear?"
"You certainly did, Josephine. If Winona turns out your equal I shall be more than satisfied."
"Thank you, dear, but you mustn't say it. I do wish her to have more mind. My mind was more or less neglected; but, on the other hand, Fred, I never had the opportunity to be peculiar, for there was no chance to be in those days. Now the disease is liable to break out in any family. All we can do, Fred, is to remember that we are growing old, and to trust that the world of to-day is wiser than we."
"Amen!" I murmured.
And yet the consciousness that Josephine passed through it all and is what she is, makes me feel a little doubtful still on the score of the new dispensation, in spite of the mushrooms with rich gray gravy. _