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One Woman's Life, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part Three. Aspirations - Chapter 5. Women's Talk |
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_ PART THREE. ASPIRATIONS CHAPTER V. WOMEN'S TALK One day something dreadful happened. Milly realized that she was to have a child. A strange kind of terror seized her at the conviction. _This_, she had felt ever since her marriage, was the one impossible thing to happen: she had promised herself when she married her poor young artist it should never be. One could be "Bohemian," "artistic"--light and gay--without money, if there were no children. And now, somehow, the impossible had happened, in this unfamiliar city, far away from friends and female counsellors. She wandered out into the street in a dull despair, and after a time got on top of an omnibus with a vague idea of going off somewhere, never to return, and sat there in the drizzle until she reached the end of the route, which happened to be the Luxembourg. She recognized the place because she had visited the gallery with her husband and also dined at Foyot's and gone to the Odeon on one of their expansive occasions. She walked about aimlessly for a while, feeling that she must get farther away somehow, then wandered into the garden and sat down near one of the fountains among the nurses. The sun had come out from the watery sky, and it was amusing to watch the funny French children and the chattering nurses in their absurd headdresses. The graceful lines of the old Palais made an elegant frame for the garden, the fountains, and the trees. Milly couldn't brood long, but after a time the awful fact would intrude and pull her up with a start. What should she do? There was no room in their life for a child, especially just now. She could never tell Jack. What useless things women were anyway! She didn't wonder that men treated them badly, as they did sometimes, she had heard. A familiar small figure came towards her. It was Elsie Reddon, the two-year-old girl she had played with on the steamer. "Where's Mama, Elsie?" Milly asked. The child pointed off to a corner of the garden near by, and Milly followed her small guide to the bench where Marion Reddon was seated. The other child hadn't yet come, but evidently was not far off. Milly felt strangely glad to see the little woman again, and before long confided in her her own trouble. "That's good!" Marion Reddon said quickly and with evident sincerity. "You think so!" Milly cried pettishly. "Well, I don't." "It simplifies everything so." "Simplifies?" "Of course. When you're having children, there are some things you can't do--just a few you can--and so you do what you can and don't worry about the rest." "It spoils your freedom." The pale-faced little woman laughed. "Freedom? That's book-talk. Most people do so much more when they aren't free than when they are. Sam says it's the same with his work. When he's free, he does nothing at all because there's so much time and so many things he'd like to try. But when he's tied down with a lot of work at the school, then he uses every spare moment and gets something done--'just to spite the devil.'" She smiled drolly. "You'll see when it comes." Milly looked unconvinced and said something about "the unfair burden on women," the sort of talk her more advanced women friends were beginning to indulge in. Mrs. Reddon had other views. "It's the natural thing," she persisted. "If I didn't want children for myself, I'd have 'em anyway for Sam." "Does he like babies?" "Not especially. Few men do at first. But it trains him. And it makes a hold in the world for him." "What do you mean?" "Children make a home--you have to have one. The man can't run away and forget it." She smiled with her droll expression of worldly wisdom. "Sam would be in mischief half the time, if it weren't for us. He'd be running here and there, sitting up all hours, wasting his energies smoking and drinking with everybody he met--and now he can't--very much." "But--but--how about you?" "Oh," the little woman continued calmly, "I don't flatter myself that I could hold my husband long alone, without the children." She looked Milly straight in the eyes and smiled. "Few women can, you know." "I don't see why not." "They get used to us--in every way--and want change, don't you see that? They know every idea we have, every habit, every look good and bad--clever men, especially." "So we know them!" "Of course! But women don't like change, variety--the best of us don't. We aren't venturesome. Men are, you see, and that's the difference.... I don't know that we mightn't become so if we had the chance, but we've been deprived of it for so long that we have lost the courage, the desire for change almost. What we know we cling to, isn't that so?" She rose to capture the wandering Elsie. "I must go back now to get Sam's _dejeuner_. Won't you come? He'd love to see you--he often speaks about you and your husband." Milly accepted readily enough. Although she did not agree with all that Marion Reddon had said, she was soothed by the talk, and she had a curiosity to see the Reddon _menage_ in operation. "So," she remarked, as they passed through the great gilt gate out to the noisy street, "you think a woman should have children to keep a man true to her." "Tied to her," Marion Reddon emended, "and truer than he otherwise might be. Then they are something in case the husband quits altogether--if he turns out to be a bad lot. Most of them don't, of course; they are loyal and faithful. But if they do, then a woman has the children, and that's a world for any one." "It makes it all the worse--if she has to support them without a man's help." "I wonder! It's the incentive that makes work effective, isn't it?" They crossed the vivid stream of the boulevard, the child between them, and mounted the hill towards the Pantheon. "You know the time is coming when the woman will again be the responsible head of the family in form as she is in fact to-day, and then she will tolerate the man about her house just so long as she thinks him a fit father, and take another if she prefers him as the father of her children." These anarchistic doctrines had a quaint absurdity on the lips of this mild, little New England woman. Milly, not having lived in circles where the fundamental relations of life were discussed with such philosophical frankness, was puzzled. The Reddons must be "queer" people, she thought. "So I tell Sam when he gets fussy that if he isn't careful, I'll _flanquer la porte_ to him and run the shop myself." "My!" "I could, too, and he knows it--which is very salutary for him when he gets uppish and dictatorial, as all men will at times." "How could you?" "You see I'm an expert taxidermist. I learned the thing vacations to help an uncle out, who was a collector. I could always make a living at it, and one for the kiddies too. That's the nub of the whole matter, as we used to say in the country." (Later, Milly remembered this talk in its every bearing, and had reason to appreciate the profound truth of the last statement.) "But you love your husband," Milly remarked as if to reassure herself. "Of course I do, or I shouldn't be living with him and bearing his children. But he needs me and the children rather more than I need him--which is the better way." * * * * * The Reddons lived on the fourth floor back of an old lantern-jawed building that tilted uphill behind Ste. Genevieve. Milly found the stairs steep and dark and the odor of the old building anything but pleasant. Marion assured her cheerfully that the smell was not unhealthy, and as they kept their windows open most of the time they did not mind it. The three little rooms of the _apartement meublee_ were dingy, to say the least, but they looked out over the clock tower of Ste. Genevieve into an old college garden. "I make Sam get the coffee mornings, and I do the _dejeuner_; then an old woman comes in to clean us up and cook dinner, if we don't go out. Sam is rather given to the student cafes." Mrs. Reddon moved dexterously within the confined limits of the closet kitchen and continued to describe her household. "You see we pay only thirty dollars a month for this place, and I cover the housekeeping bills with another thirty or a little more." "Heavens! How can you do it?" Milly gasped. Their pension was over that amount apiece. "It's cheaper than anything at home, and lots more fun!" Presently Sam Reddon came whistling upstairs. He stopped in histrionic surprise at sight of Milly. "Not really, Milady! How did you find your way?" "By accident." "Ma," he sang out to his wife, "you aren't going to try one of your historic stews on Mrs. Bragdon--our one fashionable visitor of the season? Don't you think we had better make an occasion of this and adjourn to Foyot's?" "No," his wife replied firmly, "you've had too many 'occasions' this month. One of my _dejeuners_ won't hurt Mrs. Bragdon or you either." "Well," he submitted dolefully, "she can't drink that red ink you mistakenly bought for wine, my dear.... I'll just fetch a bottle of something drinkable." "Hurry then! _Dejeuner_ is quite ready." "You see," she observed placidly as Reddon departed, "he takes every excuse to escape his work and make a holiday. It wasn't altogether _you_, my dear!" "It's so human!" "It's so--Sam." They had a very jolly luncheon, and afterwards, the old servant having arrived to take charge of the apartment and Elsie, the two women accompanied Reddon down the hill as far as the Sorbonne, where Marion was attending a course of lectures. Milly gathered that the little woman, in spite of her housekeeping, the one child on the spot, and another coming, had many lively interests and saw far more of Paris, which she loved, than Milly and her husband did. Both the Reddons lived carelessly, but lived hard every minute, taking all their chances, good and bad, of the minutes to come. It was a useful philosophy, but not one that Milly wholly admired. Late that afternoon Milly met her husband in a frame of mind much more serene than it was before she saw the Reddons, and told him her momentous news. He seemed more pleased and less disturbed by it than she had supposed possible. A few days later he got the proof-sheets of Reinhard's novel from the trunk, where they had been lying neglected, and worked diligently on the foolish sketches required by the text to illustrate the hero and heroine in their "tense" moments. He finished the job before they left Paris in March, which was his male way of acknowledging the new obligation that was on its way. Milly thought there might be something in Marion Reddon's ideas about men, after all. _ |
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