Dorothy Canfield Fisher

“ Many of my countrymen say that the culture of American women is like a child’s idea of ornamentation—the hanging on the outside of all odd bits of broken finery. I have not found it always so. I have met many learned women here, many women more cultivated than my own wife. But listen, Madame, to the words of an old man. Culture is dust and ashes if the spiritual foundations of life are not well laid; and, believe me, it takes two, a man and a woman, to lay those foundations. It can not be done alone.”
“But how, how—” began Lydia impatiently. ”

“ But now, as the miracle of awakening consciousness took place daily in her very sight, and as the first dawnings of a personality began to look out of her child’s eyes, all Lydia’s vague spiritual cravings, all the groping tendrils of her aspirations, clung about the conviction more and more summing up her inner life, that she must do her best for Ariadne, must make the world, into which that little new soul had come, a better place than she herself had found it. ”

“ Paul had his visions of other than material elements in his future and Lydia’s. Such a dream came to him there, standing in the dusk before the germ of his home to be. He saw himself an alert man of forty-five, a good citizen, always on the side of civic honor; a good captain of industry, quick to see and reward merit; a good husband who loved and cherished his wife as on the day he married her, and protected her from all the asperities of reality ”

“ She shook her dark head with a gesture like her father’s, and said with his blunt decisiveness, “Really, Mother, you must draw the line about Lydia. She’s only human. I guess if the house is good enough for you and father it is good enough for her.”
She crossed the room toward the door with a brisk rattle of starched skirts, but as she passed her mother her hand was caught and held. “That’s just it, Marietta—that’s just what came over me! Is what’s good enough for us good enough for Lydia? Won’t anything, even the best, in Endbury be a come-down for her?” ”

“ Everybody’s jumping on the American woman because she knows more about bridge-whist than about her husband’s business. Why does she? Because he’s satisfied to have her—you can take my word for it! He likes her to be absorbed in clubs and bridge and idiotic little dabblings in near-culture and pseudo-art, just for the reason that a busy mother gives her baby a sticky feather to play with. It keeps the baby busy. It keeps his wife’s attention off him. It’s the American man just as much as the woman who’s mortally afraid of a sure-enough marriage with sure-enough shared interests. ”

“ To Lydia he went on, “You’ve been gone quite a while, you know, and—well, till you have a baby-girl of your own I guess you won’t have much notion of how we feel.”
Lydia’s dark eyes filled, responsive to the emotion about her. “I’m just about distracted,” she cried. “I love everybody and everything so, I can’t stand it! I want to kiss you both and I can’t make up my mind which to kiss first—and it’s that way about everything! It’s all so good I don’t know what to begin on.” She brought their faces together and achieved a simultaneous kiss with a shaky laugh. ”

“ The confusion of the last days had been such that she had for a moment the not uncommon experience of an entire blankness as to her whereabouts and identity. Realization of where and who she was came back to her with much more than the usual neutral relief at slipping into one’s own personality as into the first protection available against the vague horror of nihility. After an instant’s uncomfortable wandering in chaos, Lydia found herself with a thrill of exultation. She was not negatively relieved that she was somebody; she rejoiced to find herself Lydia Emery. ”

“ If I had strength of mind enough I could be honest without endless friction with partners, employers, banks, creditors, employés, and all the rest of the spider web of business life. At any rate, it looked as though there were a chance for me to lead the life I wanted, and I had an idea that if I started myself in square and straight, maybe after a little while I could see clearer about how to help other people to occupations that would let them live a little as well as make money, and let them grow a few scruples into the bargain. ”

“ Judge Emery clapped him on the shoulder with a rough friendliness. “No wonder you do miracles in curing women, Marius. You must know their insides. You talk like a mother in a fit of the nerves over a sick child. In the Lord’s name, what has Lydia to fight against? If there was ever a creature with a happy, successful life before her— Besides, don’t we all stand ready to do her fighting for her?” ”

“ She must do something to make it better for her! Her desire that Ariadne should find it easier than she to know how to live well, rose to a fervor that was a prayer emanating from all her being. Perhaps she was not clever or strong enough to know how to make her own life and Paul’s anything but a dreary struggle to get ahead of other people, but somehow—somehow, Ariadne must have a better chance. ”

“ O’Hern, her washwoman, had come directly to her with that revolting revelation of Ellen’s influence on her grandson, little Patsy. At the recollection of the old woman’s face of embittered anguish, Lydia shuddered. Oh, if she could only tell Paul! He was so loving and caressing to her—perhaps he would not mind being bothered this once—she did not know what to think of such things—she did not know what to do, which way to turn. She was startled beyond measure at having real moral responsibility put on her. ”

“ The doctor made a shocked gesture. “But, Lydia, someone must earn the livings. You are—”
Lydia broke in fiercely: “They are not earning livings—they are earning more dresses and furniture and delicate food than their families need. They are earning a satisfaction for their own ambitions. They are willing to give their families anything but time and themselves.”
“Lydia! Lydia! I never knew you to be cruel before! They can not help it—the way their lives are run. It’s not that they wish to—they can not help it! It is against an economic law you are protesting.” ”

“ Why, Miss Lydia, to give you some idea let me tell you just one little thing. Lots and lots of the working-women of Endbury live with their families in two or three rooms right on that horrid Main Street near their work because they can’t afford carfares!”
Lydia looked at her without speaking. She remembered her futile, desperate, foolish proposition to Paul to get more time together by living near his work. With a roar, the flood of her bewilderment, diverted for a time, broke over her again. She braced herself against it. ”

“ Finally, “Come, dear; we must get our breakfasts,” said Lydia, leading along the little girl, still flushed and smiling from her play.
Her passion for the child grew with Ariadne’s growth, and there were times when she was tempted to agree in the unspoken axiom of those about her, that all she needed was enough children to fill her heart and hands too full for thought; but sometimes at night, when Paul was away and she had the little crib moved close to her bed, very different ideas came to her in the silent hours when she lay listening to the child’s quick, regular breathing. ”

“ She sat down by her sister-in-law and put her arms around her with an impulse of affectionate pity that almost undid Lydia, always so helplessly responsive to tenderness. “What’s the matter, Lyd?” Madeleine went on. “Something’s not going just right. Are you scared about this second confinement? Is Paul being horrid about something? You just take my advice, and if you want anything out of him, you fight for it. Nobody gets anything in this world if they don’t put up a fight for it.” ”

“ Lydia did not openly dissent from this axiom, though she murmured helplessly: “I feel so awfully shut out. It is what you think about most of the time, and I do not know enough about it even to imagine—”
Paul leaned across the table to lay an affectionate hand on his wife’s slim fingers. “Count your mercies, my dear. It’s all grab, and snap, and cutting somebody’s throat before he has a chance to cut yours. It wouldn’t please you if you did know anything about it—the business world.” ”

“ Melton answered with his usual free-handed use of language: “Well, it’s because, like everybody else old and spoiled and stodgy and settled, you’ve no eyes in your head when it comes to something important, like young people. Because they’re all smooth and rosy you think they’re all alike.” He rushed on, delivering himself as always with restless vivacity of gesture, “I tell you youth is one of the most wastefully ignored forces in the world! Talk about our neglecting to get the good out of our water-power! ”

“ There was a scraping of chairs, a stir of draperies, and little gusts of delicate perfumes floated out, as the hundred or more women settled themselves at the right angle, all their keen, handsome, nervous faces lifted to the speaker in a pleasant expectancy. Not only were they agreeably aware that they were forming part of one of the most recherché events of Endbury’s social life, but they were remembering piquant rumors of M. Buisine’s sensational attacks on American materialism. ”

“ Lydia was transfixed to hear the poison of the memory as fresh in his voice as though it had happened yesterday.
“I’m simply not worth putting yourself out for,” went on Paul, turning away and picking up his overcoat. “I’m only a common, ignorant, materialistic beast of an American husband!” He added in an insulting tone: “I suppose you’d like two husbands; one to earn your living for you, and one to talk to about your soul and to exchange near-culture with!” ”

“ There was little to break the long, lonely, monotonous expectancy of her life. And yet nothing surprised those who knew her better than her equable physical poise during this time of trial and discomfort. Everyone had expected so high-strung a creature to be “half-wild with nerves.” But Lydia, although she continued to say occasional disconcerting things, seemed on the whole to be gaining maturity and firmness of purpose. Paul was away a great deal that summer and she had many long, solitary hours to pass—a singular contrast to the feverish hurry of the winter “season.” ”

“ He said nothing, but as they emerged upon the long treeless road, stretching away over the flat country to where 76the lights of Endbury glowed tremulously through the rain, he looked at his companion with a quick intensity, as though it were the first time he had really seen her.
It was that man’s look which makes a woman’s heart beat faster, even if she is as inexperienced as Lydia. She was already tingling with an undefined emotion, and the shock of their meeting eyes made her face glow. ”

“ She thought, as so many other women have thought, that there must be something wrong with a system of life that meant that, with rare exceptions, such help was all that could be coaxed into doing housework; but Lydia, unlike the other women she knew, did not—could not—stop at the realization that something was wrong. Some irresistible impulse moved her to try at least to set it right. ”

“ She turned away with a blind impulse for flight. Her gesture brought her husband flying to her. He took her forcibly in his arms. “What the devil—what is the matter now?” he asked, praying for patience. She hung unresponsive in his grasp. “What’s the matter?” he repeated.
“You’ve just told me a horrible thing,” she whispered; “that life is so dreadful that the only way we can get through it at all is by never looking at—”
Paul actually shook her in his exasperation. “Gee whiz, Lydia! you’re enough to drive a man to drink! ”

“ Lydia climbed the stairs to her mother’s room. She was looking forward to a long visit, but finding the invalid asleep she turned away from the door rather blankly. She was as yet too much a stranger in her own home to have at hand the universal trivial half-dozen unfinished tasks that save idle women from the perils of uninterrupted thought. ”

“ Rankin smiled at little ruefully at her swift conclusion. “I believe in telling the truth, even to young ladies, and I can not say I didn’t mind at all—or that I don’t now. But I am convinced that you were right in dropping me—out of the realm of acquaintances.” His assumption was, Lydia saw with gratitude, that they were talking simply about a possible acquaintanceship between them. “It’s evidently true—what I told you the very first time I saw you. We don’t belong in the same world.” ”

“ Emery said, like Lydia at her age, except that she seemed to have none of Lydia’s native mirth, but, rather, a little pensive air that made her singularly appealing to all who saw her, and that pierced her mother’s heart with an anguish of protecting love.
Lydia said to her godfather one day, suddenly, “I wonder if people can be taught how to fight?”
He had one of his flashes of intuition. “The baby, you mean?”
Lydia evaded the directness of this. “Oh, in general, aren’t folks better off if they like to fight for themselves? Don’t they have to?” ”

“ Then Lydia appeared in the door. Mrs. Emery gave a scream. “Why, Lydia! what makes you look so queer?”
They turned startled, inquiring, daunting faces upon her. It was the baptism of fire to Lydia. The battle, inevitable for her, had begun. She faced it; she did not take refuge in the safe, silent lie which opened before her, but her courage was a piteous one. In her utter heartsick shrinking 114from the consequences of her answer she had a premonition of the weakness that was to make the combat so unequal. “It was not Paul,” she said, pale in the doorway; “it was Daniel Rankin.” ”

“ Lydia’s drooping position changed slightly. She lifted her hands and folded them together on the table, leaning forward, and bending full on the doctor the somber intensity of her dark, deep-sunken eyes. “Dear Godfather, I have no time or strength to waste.” The slowness with which she chose her words gave them a solemn weight. “I cannot choose. If it hurts you to have me speak truth, you must be hurt. ”