Margaret Culkin Banning

“ Howard Ensign was following Cecily’s eyes.
“Isn’t Mrs. Allenby a lot of fun?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” answered Cecily, mechanically, “lots of fun.”
“She gives everybody such a good time.”
Fun. That was it. Fun, that god whom they all worshiped. Like a heathen god, like a great bright image, casting great shadows. Queer thought. She sat in the shadow while they worshiped the brightness. An impulse came to Cecily to call to Fliss to stop. She was pinning a flower in Dick’s buttonhole. It was a wager or a joke. Everybody was laughing. She had no right to touch Dick like that. Dick didn’t care. ”

“ The hesitation of the first steps of marriage, the explanation of love, the abandonment, the amazing tendernesses, the secret rivalry in affection for each other—those are the moments of greatest dramatic intensity. Stories give us, as is natural for them, perhaps, the odd cases—the ill-matched couples—but for the great number of people who follow nature and are led by her there never comes again greater poignancy in life than steeps the wedding night and the hour of the birth of their children. ”

“ Cecily sat opposite the statue on the ledge of the window, and gravely watched the world darken. It was not quite time for Benediction and she had a great deal to think about. The convent was having a mission for its pupils and especially for the small class of girls who were to graduate next week. They had been exhorted to take the words of the missionary priest with great earnestness, for it would be his especial purpose to prepare these young souls for life in the world. The Jesuit, tall, spiritually emaciated, seethingly emphatic, had caught the spirit of his work. ”

“ Isn’t it better to preserve truth, to live according to beauty—not to be cheap? I know how silly, how common it all sounds, will sound; the things they will say about Dick and me. But it isn’t true that trivialities have made the trouble. It’s big things, basic things. I don’t want to compromise with an age that seems all wrong in its standards. I can’t bear to form myself on people like Della and Fliss. ”

“ And so it was the convent rather than her home which had made the deepest impress on Cecily during the years of her adolescence. To be sure, she had come home for vacations, but the sense of permanency had always been connected with her life in the convent—with the going back to the quiet halls and definite routine rather than with the vacationing which had so kindly but so deliberately been made pleasant for her. ”

“ They had thrown away vital things for trivialities. They’d won their points. He might go where he liked, amuse himself as he liked, live by his own standards. And where was he? A man without a home, without a family; and yet always with the precious sense of that family, his even though he was not with it. And she—he could imagine her sitting quietly in that long living-room of hers, with her book—alone. Or was she? Matthew had said it could not go on that way; that some man was bound to disturb Cecily. Cecily’s husband put that thought from his mind with distaste. ”

“ Marriage for the sake of marriage had not the least appeal for her. She knew too much about the sordid parts of domesticity for that. There were too many girls who had a brief career of local popularity and were now wheeling baby carriages and making over last year’s hats; too many young men who, unmarried, had danced and flirted their gay way through society only to become preoccupied, somewhat shabby, hard-working flat-dwellers after their marriage. Fliss had no intention of making any blunder which would land her in such an existence. She was nice to all men. ”

“ Matthew and, curiously enough, Ellen, were the only people in whom Cecily felt there was comprehension of her and approval. She had one conversation with Mother Fénelon when she and Dick reached the breaking point.
“There’s no reason for this,” said Mother Fénelon. “You are a good woman and your husband is a good man. You have duties to each other.”
“Virtue and duties are the least part of marriage to-day, Mother Fénelon. You can’t manage with just those things. You have to use the modern methods. It’s a science to-day to have a husband.” ”

“ You can’t love anybody but Dick, Cecily, and you can love him much more if you watch him more, if you see that under a certain natural mannishness there is a spirit that probes into things as does yours. ”

“ That it was a great step for Cecily—this relinquishing of her own fastidiousness in discussion, this generosity of method—she did not realize, yet.
Della was growing calmer. Her hysteria had half spent itself and Cecily had turned her mind away from horrors for the moment, anyway. It was probably the first time for many days that she had been able to see anything except blackness, and the relief showed in the relaxation of her body. Cecily ventured a little further. She was feeling a sudden warmth of affection for Della. ”

“ And he had said, “Marriage is a sacrament which has for its purpose the establishment of a home and the bringing up of children. There are those in the world who will try to make you believe not only that marriage is not a sacrament and that it may be dissolved at will, but that the bodies and souls of little children do not belong to it. Who listens to such counsels willingly, who allows them to prevail upon him is in a state of mortal sin.”
And he had not said one word about love, thought Cecily. Lover’s love, that is. ”

“ Then to a florist’s where he supplemented the holly with a great bunch of violets. They were so happy, so young and handsome that many a man and woman turned to look at them in admiration and envy. And the snow covered streets, the street lights and sparkling windows, the faces of happy people passing, all the setting made Dick and Cecily feel a magic in the air. ”

“ And she liked the great hotel lounges and parlors, with their heavy commercialized luxury of velvet and gilt, their desks with low lights at which one might sit and write letters while engaging the attention of any good-looking men who might be passing. Padded corridors, handsome men and luxurious women, dining-rooms pompous with elaborate service, the ceaseless flow of people who might be coming from anything and going anywhere—it all completely captured that roving spirit of excitement which was Fliss’s imagination. ”

“ You mustn’t be so hard, Cecily. You must be tolerant.”
“I’m tired of tolerance for laxity. I’m tired of moral laxity, of cheapness of ideals. Why should those of us who are decent do the work for the ones who aren’t decent?”
“Work?”
“Work. Have the children and try to keep them clean and healthy and fine, while the women who won’t have children, who won’t work, won’t do anything but play, get the real interest of every one?”
“They don’t; they don’t get the real respect of people. There may be a kind of attraction, but it’s hardly skin-deep.” ”

“ The life of a nun, highest in his estimation, had come as the climax of choices. But Cecily felt differently. The life of a married woman in the world—the life of a married woman—a little quiver of excitement ran through her imagination—a married woman. ”

“ But it’s hard to have to explain things when I am so sorry, Cecily, that I lose my philosophy.”
“Don’t bother, Matthew. I guess perhaps I’m just tired and a little jealous.”
“No. You are tired and a little jealous, too, but it’s deeper than that. You’ve been slipped into an age that doesn’t fit you and instead of making things better for you by hardening you young they preserved your quality to your own—no, not destruction. It mustn’t be that.”
He didn’t say any more. Nor let her talk.
“Hush. Now you are to rest. There’s nothing to worry about. ”

“ Warner’s name carried on through this child who looked so much like Allgate Moore.
Envelopes with baby pictures of herself, that brought the tears to her eyes. Letters. Letters which must have been written from her father to her mother. Yes. She had kept those, then. She had wanted to preserve, even through the pain, these letters which must have been letters of love from her father. Even through the disappointment and the infidelities. It did not occur to Cecily to read them. She took them to her mother’s little fireplace and burned them there. They had no meaning now to any one alive. ”

“ It gives much more the look of youth, not that you need that, but you know.”
Della experimented. Cecily looked over their heads at her own hair, combed heavily back in dark waves, at her own cheeks faintly pink with cold. She had it in mind to disdain rouge, but Fliss’s professionalism was tantalizing. She opened her little gold case and gave her cheeks a touch of red below the cheek bone.
“You don’t need it, Cecily. You’re better without,” said Fliss, observing.
“Cecily’s always better looking than anybody else,” contributed Madeline. “You really are, Cecily.” ”

“ Is this nonsense Della talks about Dick’s wanting to go out more and your refusing the actual reason you’ve dared to break up your home?”
“That’s what people will say,” answered Cecily, “but of course that’s just a symptom of what’s the matter with us. The trouble is that we don’t think marriage means the same thing; we don’t mean the same thing by it. And every outward expression of my idea jars on him—and his on me. We’ve become angry and furtive and quarrelsome and condemning.” ”

“ That was Dick. It expressed his feeling for reality.
“Some people live by moods—by the spirit,” answered Matthew.
Matthew went home. Fliss was dining out and had expressly excluded him from the party, characterizing it as a “bunch that would bore you to death. Eat at the club and I’ll let the maids go out. Come and pick me up if you like. I’ll say you’re working.” So Matthew went through the silent house, so perfectly in order, so dimly lit, up to the third floor. In his own rooms a sense of ease and security seemed to envelop him. ”

“ He was a very gay father and ordinarily Cecily loved this mood and joined him in it, but to-night she was wrapped in seriousness.
“Of course they’ll be older soon, and then I can leave them to a nurse, but while I am still nursing the baby, I don’t see how I can manage a lot of society.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Cecily, don’t be so absurd. Who wants you to do society? I wouldn’t let you if you wanted to. Who could be happier than I am just as I am?” ”

“ The young freshness, the rarity, of Cecily attracted other men. There was one, one desperately in earnest older man, who even spoke to Cecily of marriage and drove her, white and trembling, to her mother. After that, a new diffidence, a new hesitation in her manner towards Dick puzzled him and stimulated him.
“I see nothing to do except let Dick Harrison try,” said Mrs. Warner rather sadly to her husband. “I don’t want any of the rest of them to take the bloom off Cecily with a lot of coarse, commonplace love-making. She’s too young, but she’s also too attractive. ”