Meredith Nicholson

“ Oh, I know Grace, you’re all for our glorious independence and fighting in the ranks shoulder to shoulder with the men. But the trouble is we can’t fight with them; we’re fighting against them every hour of the day! My dear, there’s a curse on us—the curse of sex! There’s absolutely no ducking it. You may talk all you like about equality and how men and women meet in business and the woman is the equal of the man. ”

“ Grace’s thoughts raced madly in the days that followed. She saw herself in new aspects, dramatized herself in new and fascinating situations. She was like a child peering into a succession of alluring shop windows, [176] the nature and value of whose strange wares it only imperfectly understands. Life was disclosing itself, opening long vistas before her. As to men she now believed that she knew a great deal. Confident that she loved Trenton and without regret that she had confessed her love she did not question her happiness. ”

“ Grace answered.
“That’s the correct answer, Grace—may I call you Grace? I hate having a lot of people around; I like to concentrate on one person, and when I met you in the church entry it just popped into my head that you wouldn’t mind a bit giving me an evening. It’s awfully tiresome going to dinners where the people are all my own age. I’ve always hated formal entertaining. You struck me as a very fair representative of the new generation that appeals to me so much. Don’t look so startled; I mean that, my dear, as a compliment! ”

“ And besides you’re always right, Tommy.”
“Do stop spoiling him!” cried Irene. “Everybody spoils Tommy.”
“Not you!” returned Kemp. “Your business in life seems to be to keep me humble.”
“It doesn’t show on you! You don’t see any signs of it, do you, Ward?”
“I think he’s aging fast,” replied Trenton. “He’s breaking down under the weight of his own humility.”
“Find the man who’s giving the party! It’s going to be a beautiful evening for me. Just one knock after another! Grace, don’t let these birds prejudice you against me!” ”

“ One thing was clear and Grace derived a deep satisfaction from the reflection,—Mrs. Trenton not only didn’t love her husband, but she was incapable of loving any one but herself. Grace, having accepted the invitation to meet Mrs. Trenton with a sense that there was something a little brazen in her going when Miss Reynolds believed her to be a clean-hearted, high-minded girl, in bitterness of spirit yielded to a mood of defiance. This woman had no right to be a burden and a hindrance to the man she had married. ”

“ Why did men marry the wrong women? she asked herself with proneness of youth to propound and answer unanswerable questions. There was Trenton, who had so frankly admitted the failure of his own marriage and with equal frankness took the burden of his failure upon himself. No two men could be more utterly unlike than Ward Trenton and Bob Cummings, and she busied herself contrasting them. Trenton was practical-minded; Bob a dreamer, and save for his college experiences the range of his life had been narrow. ”

“ The heartache that had troubled her little since she left home again became acute. Here was peace, but it was a peace that mocked rather than calmed the spirit....
... “We humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men.”...
The mournful cadence of the prayer only increased her loneliness. She was like a child who, watching night descend in a strange place, is overcome by a stifling nostalgia. Her throat ached with inexpressible emotions; her heart fluttered like a wild bird in her breast. She knew she wanted Trenton; nothing else mattered; no one else could ever fill his place. ”

“ Durland lifted her head and called her older daughter’s name and from some remote place Ethel answered. Mrs. Durland was as dark as Grace, but cast in a larger mold, and while there were points of resemblance in their faces there was a masculine vigor in the mother that the girl lacked. Mrs. Durland’s iron-gray hair was brushed back smoothly from her low broad forehead. She wore an authoritative air, suggesting at once managerial capacity; a woman, [4] one would say, strongly independent in her thinking; self-assertive and obstinate, but of kind and generous impulses. ”

“ We know we love each other; but we’ve got to be sane about this.”
“Let’s not talk about it, Ward! You know as well as I do that we’ve reached the end. And please, dear, don’t make it harder for me by pretending it isn’t. I’m not a child, you know.”
“We’re not going to pretend anything, Grace, least of all we’re not going to pretend that everything’s over when we know we couldn’t forget if we wanted to. But we’ve got to have a care for a little while at least, now that Mrs. Trenton knows just enough to arouse her suspicions. I feel my responsibility about you very seriously. ”

“ Grace replied hastily. “I was just thinking that it’s like a play, this quaint interesting house hidden away, with all these lovely things, and kind of funny to think that there is a woman somewhere who belongs here.”
“While we’re here we belong, my dear. We’ll pretend it’s all ours. My conscience had awful twinges the first time I came out; but one does somehow get used to things. There’s no use bucking the spirit of the age; we’ve got to step to the music of the band. Tommy prefers a party of four and nearly always brings an out-of-town man, so I have to find the other girl. ”

“ There were times when Grace felt an aversion for Irene. The most sacred relationships of life the girl treated with a cold cynicism that affected Grace disagreeably. She was pondering the sordidness of Irene’s liaison with Kemp. The lofty condescension with which Irene spoke of him amused Grace only mildly.
“Wouldn’t it be grand,” Irene continued, “to be made love to—I mean by some one who really knew how! Somebody who’d approach you as though you were a queen and stand in terrible awe of you! The trouble with all us women nowadays is that we’re too easy. ”

“ Don’t let Miss Beulah Reynolds intimidate you! She took you to Colorado hoping you’d forget Ward!”
“Miss Reynolds is perfectly fine!” Grace flared. “She’s never said a word against Ward!”
“Oh, she wouldn’t need to say it! She’s just trying to keep you away from him. I’m not knocking Beulah—she’s all right; but when there’s a man in the world who is eating his heart out about you, you just can’t stick your nose in the air and pretend you don’t know he’s alive.”
Grace had been proud of her strength in denying Trenton the interview for which he had asked; but she left Irene with an unquiet heart. ”

“ The idea that he would take a girl like you—and you’re a good deal of a kid, my dear—to call on a woman like that wife of his, who’s an experienced worldly creature, and as much as tell her that he’s in love with you! It’s the limit!”
“But,” said Grace, quick to defend the moment Trenton was attacked, “he had every reason to believe she would be decent! She’d always let him think that if there was any one else she’d—she’d——”
“She’d hand him a transfer!” Irene laughed ironically. “Isn’t that just like poor old Ward! I tell you men are even as little babes where women are concerned. ”

“ She wanted to laugh over the encounter at McGovern’s, but in the quiet street it was not so easy to laugh at it. What society had done to educate her, to fortify and strengthen her for the battle of life—a phrase she detested from her mother’s frequent use of it—counted for naught. She was alarmed to find that she never really reached any conclusion in attempting to settle her problems. When she thought she had determined any of the matters that rose with so malevolent an insistence for decision some unexpected turn left her still beset by uncertainties. ”

“ He seemed rather amused when I told him I’d read her ‘Clues to a New Social Order’.”
“You haven’t read that awful thing?” cried Mrs. Durland.
“Why, certainly, mother; I read it last winter. It’s not so awfully shocking; I suppose there are a good many people who believe as Mrs. Trenton does.”
“How can you speak so, Grace! What would become of the home and the family if such ideas prevailed? That woman’s positively opposed to marriage.”
“Oh, I don’t believe it’s as bad as that! I think it’s more her idea that where marriages are unhappy it’s cruel to make people live together. ”

“ She had an odd little way of turning her head to one side when listening, and mistaking this for a sign of deafness Grace had lifted her voice slightly.
“Now, my dear child!” cried Miss Reynolds, “just because I cock my head like a robin don’t think I’m shy of hearing. It always amuses me to have people take it for granted that I can’t hear. I hear everything; I sometimes wish I didn’t hear so much! I’ve always had that trick. It’s because one of my eyes is a bit stronger than the other. ”

“ Young women from all the state colleges were coming into the store for hurried purchases. Two members of her sorority, girls she had lived with for two years, dropped in to see her—cheery, hopeful young women, eagerly flinging at her scraps of college news and giving a sharper edge to her homesickness for the campus and all it connoted. She was beset with serious doubts as to her fitness to meet the problems of life; the conceit was gone out of her. ”

“ When I was a boy on the home farm and all the neighbors met at the country church every Sunday, I always hated to go in; it seemed a lot cheerfuller outside. I suppose if I got right down to it I’d say I believe in a great power that I haven’t any name for, that moves the world. It’s bigger than any church, and it works in all of us whether we go to church or not. I suppose if you got down to bed rock you’d call me an agnostic. But I’m strong for whatever any church does to help people live right. When it comes to believing a lot of things I can’t square with reason I just can’t do it. ”

“ You needn’t be afraid of me; I’m a queer old person but sometimes I do understand. I wouldn’t force your confidence; you know that,—but—why you dear child!”
Grace’s eyes had filled with tears. Miss Reynolds crossed to her quickly.
“How clumsy I am! I wouldn’t hurt you for worlds, dear!”
She sat down on a stool at Grace’s feet and drew the girl’s hands into her own.
“Poor dear heart,” she murmured softly. “It’s an awful big old world and little girls do sometimes get hurt—and lost. Maybe you’d like me to call the car and take you for a drive.” ”

“ You’re a pretty girl, you know, and he spent twice what he’d let her blow on herself if it hadn’t been for your blandishments. And when I go down to New York on a buying jaunt the polite gentlemen in our line buy me expensive dinners and take me in swift taxies to the theatre and to supper and to snappy dance places afterwards. That’s sex! If the store sends a man down there the same birds buy him a quick lunch and that’s all. But a woman’s different! Sex, my dear, sex!”
“Oh, it’s not as bad as that!” Grace protested. “I want to be considered as a human being first and as a woman afterwards. ”

“ Ward isn’t really a sport like Tommy, but he’ll go on a party and keep amused in his own peculiar way. He does a lot of thinking, that man. You’ll understand when you meet him. I’m never sure whether Ward approves of me, but he’s always nice.”
“He may not like me at all,” said Grace.
“Don’t be foolish! You’re just the kind of girl men of that sort like. They’re bored to death by girls—you know the kind—who begin every sentence with ‘say’ or ‘listen,’ and would drop dead if they ever had an idea. ”

“ Ever since I came home I’ve been staying in at night except when I’ve gone to a movie with father. I’m working hard every day to help keep things going here at home. And I mean to keep on doing it; but I’m not a child and I’m not going to be checked up for every hour I’m out of your sight.”
“Calm yourself, Grace. Don’t say anything you’ll be sorry for!” admonished Mrs. Durland.
“After I’d warned you about the Kirby girl—” began Ethel with the serene patience due an erring child who may yet be saved from further misdemeanors. ”

“ Kemp’s chauffeur called me on the telephone after trying to get Judge Sanders, who’s Kemp’s lawyer and an old friend. It happens that the judge left for Washington tonight. I think that covers it all.”
It was not until Grace had crept into bed that she was able to think clearly. It was like a hideous dream that Kemp was dead—that she had seen him die. His death obscured the memory of her parting with Trenton, or blending with it, became a part of the dissolution of all things. Alone in the dark, remorse stole upon her like a nightmare. ”

“ Trenton was lonely, and his letter had been written in a fine and tender spirit. She knew that she was guilty of dishonesty in trying to persuade herself that the nature of their past association made marriage with him impossible. He had said nothing that even remotely suggested this. On the other hand he had declared plainly that sooner or later he would have her, meaning, of course, through marriage. She despised herself for her inconsistencies. She had told him that she loved him; love alone could have justified their relationship ”

“ You’re certainly the queen of the kill-joys.”
“I should think,” said Ethel, regarding her sister pityingly, “that with your education you’d be above putting yourself on the level with the cheap people who patronize fortune-tellers. People who really have faith that there’s a life to come don’t need such things. They have no place in a Christian home.”
Grace stared at her helplessly. Ethel was an enigma; it was incredible that any one could feel so intensely about so small a matter, or find so complete a joy in making others uncomfortable. ”