Book 1. The Emancipation - Chapter 8

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_ BOOK I. THE EMANCIPATION
CHAPTER VIII

The consciousness that she was dependent for the means of support solely on her own exertions was a genuine pleasure to Selma, and she applied herself with confidence and enthusiasm to the problem of earning her livelihood. She had remained steadfast to her decision to accept nothing from her husband except the legal costs of the proceedings, though Mr. Lyons explained to her that alimony was a natural and moral increment of divorce. Still, after her refusal, he informed her as a man and a friend that he respected and admired the independence of her action, which was an agreeable tribute. She had fixed definitely on newspaper work as the most inviting and congenial form of occupation. She believed herself to be well fitted for it. It would afford her an immediate income, and it would give her the opportunity which she craved for giving public expression to her ideas and fixing attention on herself. There was room for more than one Mrs. Earle in Benham, for Benham was growing and wide-awake and on the alert for originality of any kind--especially in the way of reportorial and journalistic cleverness. Selma had no intention of becoming a second Mrs. Earle. That is, she promised herself to follow, but not to follow blindly; to imitate judiciously, but to improve on a gradually diverging line of progress. This was mere generalization as yet. It was an agreeable seething brain consciousness for future development. For the moment, however, she counted on Mrs. Earle to obtain for her a start by personal influence at the office of the _Benham Sentinel_. This was provided forthwith in the form of an invitation to prepare a weekly column under the caption of "What Women Wear;" a summary of passing usages in clothes. The woman reporter in charge of it had just died. Selma's first impulse was to decline the work as unworthy of her abilities, yet she was in immediate need of employment to avoid running in debt and she was assured by Mrs. Earle that she would be very foolish to reject such an offer. Reflection caused her to think more highly of the work itself. It would afford her a chance to explain to the women of Benham, and indirectly to the country at large, that taste in dress was not necessarily inconsistent with virtue and serious intentions--a truth of which she herself had become possessed since her marriage and which it seemed to her might be utilized delightfully in her department. She would endeavor to treat dress from the standpoint of ethical responsibility to society, and to show that both extravagance and dowdy homeliness were to be avoided. Clothes in themselves had grown to be a satisfaction to her, and any association of vanity would be eliminated by the introduction of a serious artistic purpose into a weekly commentary concerning them. Accordingly she accepted the position and entered upon its duties with grave zeal.

For each of these contributions Selma was to receive eight dollars--four hundred a year, which she hoped to expand to a thousand by creative literary production--preferably essays and poetry. She hired a room in the same neighborhood as Mrs. Earle, in the boarding-house district appurtenant to Central Avenue--that is to say, on the ragged edge of Benham's social artery, and set up her new household gods. The interest of preparing the first paper absorbed her to the exclusion of everything else. She visited all the dress-making and dry-goods establishments in town, examined, at a hint from Mrs. Earle, the fashion departments of the New York papers, and then, pen in hand, gave herself up to her subject. The result seemed to her a happy blending of timely philosophy and suggestions as to toilette, and she took it in person to the editor. He saw fit to read it on the spot. His brow wrinkled at first and he looked dubious. He re-read it and said with some gusto, "It's a novelty, but I guess they'll like it. Our women readers have been used to fashion notes which are crisp and to the point, and the big houses expect to have attention called to the goods they wish to sell. If you'll run over this again and set your cold facts in little paragraphs by themselves every now and then, I shouldn't wonder if the rest were a sort of lecture course which will catch them. It's a good idea. Next time you could work in a pathetic story--some references to a dead baby--verses--anecdotes--a little variety. You perceive the idea?"

"Oh, yes," said Selma, appropriately sober at the allusion yet ecstatic. "That's just what I should like to do. It would give me more scope. I wish my articles to be of real use--to help people to live better, and to dress better."

"That's right, that's right; and if they make the paper sell, we'll know that folks like them," responded the editor with Delphic urbanity.

The first article was a success. That is, Selma's method was not interfered with, and she had the satisfaction of reading in the _Sentinel_ during the week an item calling gratified attention to the change in its "What Women Wear" column, and indicating that it would contain new features from week to week. It gave her a pleasant thrill to see her name, "Selma White," signed at the end of the printed column, and she set to work eagerly to carry out the editor's suggestions. At the same time she tried her hand at a short story--the story of an American girl who went to Paris to study art, refused to alter her mode of life to suit foreign ideas of female propriety, displayed exceptional talent as an artist, and finally married a fine-spirited young American, to the utter discomfiture of a French member of the nobility, who had begun by insulting her and ended with making her an offer of marriage. This she sent to the _Eagle_, the other Benham newspaper, for its Sunday edition.

It took her a month to compose this story, and after a week she received it back with a memorandum to the effect that it was one-half too long, but intimating that in a revised form it would be acceptable. This was a little depressing, especially as it arrived at a time when the novelty of her occupation had worn off and she was realizing the limitations of her present life. She had begun to miss the advantages of a free purse and the importance of a domestic establishment. She possessed her liberty, and was fulfilling her mission as a social force, but her life had been deprived of some of its savor, and, though she was thankful to be rid of Babcock, she felt the lack of an element of personal devotion to herself, an element which was not to be supplied by mere admiration on the part of Mrs. Earle and the other members of the Institute. It did not suit her not to be able to gratify her growing taste in clothes and in other lines of expenditure, and there were moments when she experienced the need of being petted and made much of by a man. She was conscious of loneliness, and in this mood she pitied herself as a victim of untoward circumstances, one who had wasted the freshness of her young life, and missed the happiness which the American wife is apt to find waiting for her. Under the spell of this nostalgia she wrote a poem entitled "The Bitter Sweets of Solitude," and disposed of it for five dollars to the _Sentinel_. The price shocked her, for the verses seemed flesh of her flesh. Still, five dollars was better than nothing, and she discerned from the manner of the newspaper editor that he cared little whether she left them or not. It was on that evening that she received a letter from Littleton, stating that he was on the eve of leaving New York for Benham. He was coming to consult concerning certain further interior decorations which the committee had decided to add to the church.

Selma's nerves vibrated blissfully as she read the news. For some reason, which she had never seen fit definitely to define, she had chosen not to acquaint Littleton with the fact of her divorce. Their letters had been infrequent during the last six months, for this visit had been impending, having been put off from time to time because the committee had been dilatory and he otherwise engaged. Perhaps her secret motive had been to surprise him, to let him find himself confronted with an accomplished fact, which would obviate argument and reveal her established in her new career, a happy, independent citizen, without ties. At any rate she smiled now at the address on the envelope--Mrs. Lewis Babcock. Obviously he was still in the dark as to the truth, and it would be her privilege to enlighten him. She began to wonder what would be the upshot of his coming, and tears came to her eyes, tears of self-congratulation that the narrow tenor of her daily life was to be irradiated by a sympathetic spirit.

When Littleton duly appeared at the committee meeting on the following day, Selma saw at a glance that he was unaware of what had happened. He looked slightly puzzled when one of the members addressed her as Mrs. White, but evidently he regarded this as a slip of the tongue. Selma looked, as she felt, contented and vivacious. She had dressed herself simply, but with effective trigness. To those who knew her experience, her appearance indicated courage and becoming self-respect. Public opinion, even as embodied in the church committee, while deploring the necessity, was not disposed to question the propriety of her action. That is, all except Mrs. Taylor. In her, Selma thought she had detected signs of coldness, a sort of suspicious reservation of judgment, which contrasted itself unpleasantly with the sympathetic attitude of the others, who were fain to refer to her, in not altogether muffled whispers, as a plucky, independent, little woman. Hence, she was glad that Mrs. Taylor happened to be detained at home by illness on this afternoon, and that, accordingly, she was free to enjoy unreservedly the dramatic nature of the situation. Her heart beat a little faster as the chairman, turning to her to ask a question, addressed her unmistakably as Mrs. White. She could not refrain from casting half-amused, half-pathetic sheep's eyes at Littleton. He started visibly, regarded her for, a moment in obvious amazement, then flushed to the roots of his hair. She felt the blood rising to her own cheeks, and a sensation of mild triumph. The meeting was over and the members were merely lingering to tie up the loose threads of the matter arranged for. In a few moments Selma found herself with the architect sufficiently apart from the others for him to ask:

"Two persons have addressed you this afternoon as Mrs. White. I do not understand."

She cast down her eyes, as a woman will when a question of modesty is involved, then she raised them and said: "You did not know, then, that I had left my husband?"

"Left him?"

"Yes. I have obtained a divorce. He was unfaithful to me."

"I see"--said Littleton with a sort of gasp--"I see. I did not know. You never wrote to me."

"I did not feel like writing to any body. There was nothing to be done but that."

Littleton regarded her with a perturbed, restless air.

"Then you live no longer at 25 Onslow Avenue?"

"Oh, no. I left there more than six months ago. I live in lodgings. I am supporting myself by literary work. I am Mrs. Selma White now, and my divorce has been absolute more than a month."

She spoke gravely and quietly, with less than her usual assurance, for she felt the spell of his keen, eager scrutiny and was not averse to yield at the moment to the propensity of her sex. She wondered what he was thinking about. Did he blame her? Did he sympathize with her?

"Where are you going when you leave here?" he asked.

"Home--to my new home. Will you walk along with me?"

"That is what I should like. I am astonished by what you have told me, and am anxious to hear more about it, if to speak of it would not wound you. Divorced! How you must have suffered! And I did not have the chance to offer you my help--my sympathy."

"Yes, I have suffered. But that is all over now. I am a free woman. I am beginning my life over again."

It was a beautiful afternoon, and by mutual consent, which neither put into words, they diverged from the exact route to Selma's lodging house and turned their steps to the open country beyond the city limits--the picturesque dell which has since become the site of Benham's public park. There they seated themselves where they would not be interrupted. Selma told him on the way the few vital facts in her painful story, to which he listened in a tense silence, broken chiefly by an occasional ejaculation expressive of his contempt for the man who had brought such unhappiness upon her. She let him understand, too, that her married life, from the first, had been far less happy than he had imagined--wretched makeshift for the true relation of husband and wife. She spoke of her future buoyantly, yet with a touch of sadness, as though to indicate that she was aware that the triumphs of intelligence and individuality could not entirely be a substitute for a happy home.

"And what do you expect to do?" he inquired in a bewildered fashion, as though her delineation of her hopes had been lost on him.

"Do? Support myself by my own exertions, as I have told you. By writing I expect. I am doing very well already. Do you question my ability to continue?"

"Oh, no; not that. Only--"

"Only what? Surely you are not one of the men who grudge women the chance to prove what is in them--who would treat us like china dolls and circumscribe us by conventions? I know you are not, because I have heard you inveigh against that very sort of narrow mindedness. Only what?"

"I can't make up my mind to it. And I suppose the reason is that it means so much to me--that you mean so much to me. What is the use of my dodging the truth, Selma--seeking to conceal it because such a short time has elapsed since you ceased to be a wife? Forgive me if I hurt you, if it seem indelicate to speak of love at the very moment when you are happy in your liberty. I can't help it; it's my nature to speak openly. And there's no bar now. The fact that you are free makes clear to me what I have not dared to countenance before, that you are the one woman in the world for me--the woman I have dreamed of--and longed to meet--the woman whose influence has blessed me already, and without whom I shall lack the greatest happiness which life can give. Selma, I love you--I adore you."

Selma listened with greedy ears, which she could scarcely believe. It seemed to her that she was in dream-land, so unexpected, yet entrancing, was his avowal. She had been vaguely aware that he admired her more than he had allowed himself to disclose, and conscious, too, that his presence was agreeable to her; but in an instant now she recognized that this was love--the love she had sought, the love she had yearned to inspire and to feel. Compared with it, Babcock's clumsy ecstasy and her own sufferance of it had been a sham and a delusion. Of so much she was conscious in a twinkling, and yet what she deemed proper self-respect restrained her from casting herself into his arms. It was, indeed, soon, and she had been happy in her liberty. At least, she had supposed herself so; and she owed it to her own plans and hopes not to act hastily, though she knew what she intended to do. She had been lonely, yes starving, for lack of true companionship, and here was the soul which would be a true mate to hers.

They were sitting on a grassy bank. He was bending toward her with clasped hands, a picture of fervor. She could see him out of the corner of her glance, though she looked into space with her gaze of seraphic worry. Yet her lips were ready to lend themselves to a smile of blissful satisfaction and her eyes to fill with the melting mood of the thought that at last happiness had come to her.

The silence was very brief, but Littleton, as would have seemed fitting to her, feared lest she were shocked.

"I distress you," he said. "Forgive me. Listen--will you listen?" Selma was glad to listen. The words of love, such love as this, were delicious, and she felt she owed it to herself not to be won too easily. "I am listening," she answered softly with the voice of one face to face with an array of doubts.

"Before I met you, Selma, woman but was a name to me. My life brought me little into contact with them, except my dear sister, and I had no temptation to regret that I could not support a wife. Yet I dreamed of woman and of love and of a joy which might some day come to me if I could meet one who fulfilled my ideal of what a true woman should be. So I dreamed until I met you. The first time I saw you, Selma, I knew in my heart that you were a woman whom I could love. Perhaps I should have recognized more clearly as time went on that you were more to me even then than I had a right to allow; yet I call heaven to witness that I did not, by word or sign, do a wrong to him who has done such a cruel wrong to you."

"Never by word or sign," echoed Selma solemnly. The bare suggestion that Babcock had cause to complain of either of them seemed to her preposterous. Yet she was saying to herself that it was easy to perceive that he had loved her from the first.

"And since I love you with all my soul must I--should I in justice to myself--to my own hopes of happiness, refrain from speaking merely because you have so recently been divorced? I must speak--I am speaking. It is too soon, I dare say, for you to be willing to think of marriage again--but I offer you the love and protection of a husband. My means are small, but I am able now to support a wife in decent comfort. Selma, give me some hope. Tell me, that in time you may be willing to trust yourself to my love. You wish to work--to distinguish yourself. Would I be a hindrance to that? Indeed, you must know that I would do every thing in my power to promote your desire to be of service to the world."

The time for her smile and her tears had come. He had argued his case and her own, and it was clear to her mind that delay would be futile. Since happiness was at hand, why not grasp it? As for her work, he need not interfere with that. And, after all, now that she had tried it, was she so sure that newspaper work--hack work, such as she was pursuing, was what she wished? As a wife, re-established in the security of a home, she could pick and choose her method of expression. Perhaps, indeed, it would not be writing, except occasionally. Was not New York a wide, fruitful field, for a reforming social influence? She saw herself in her mind's eye a leader of movements and of progress. And that with a man she loved--yes, adored even as he adored her.

So she turned to Littleton with her smile and in tears--the image of bewitching but pathetic self-justification and surrender. Her mind was made up; hence why procrastinate and coyly postpone the desirable, and the inevitable? That was what she had the shrewdness to formulate in the ecstasy of her transport; and so eloquent was the mute revelation of her love that Littleton, diffident reverencer of the modesty of woman as he was, without a word from her clasped her to his breast, a victor in a breath. As, regardless of the possible invasion of interlopers, he took her in his embrace, she felt with satisfaction once more the grasp of masculine arms. She let her head fall on his shoulder in delighted contentment. While he murmured in succession inarticulate terms of endearment, she revelled in the thrill of her nerves and approved her own sagacious and commendable behavior.

"Dearest," she whispered, "you are right. We are right. Since we love each other, why should we not say so? I love you--I love you. The ugly hateful past shall not keep us apart longer. You say you loved me from the first; so did I love you, though I did not know it then. We were meant for each other--God meant us--did he not? It is right, and we shall be so happy, Wilbur."

"Yes, Selma." Words seemed to him an inadequate means for expressing his emotions. He pressed his lips upon hers with the adoring respect of a worshipper touching his god, yet with the energy of a man. She sighed and compared him in her thought with Babcock. How gentle this new lover! How refined and sensitive and appreciative! How intelligent and gentlemanly!

"If I had my wish, darling," he said, "we should be married to-night and I would carry you away from here forever."

She remembered that Babcock had uttered the same wish on the occasion when he had offered himself. To grant it then had been out of the question. To do so now would be convenient--a prompt and satisfactory blotting out of her past and present life--a happy method of solving many minor problems of ways and means connected with waiting to be married. Besides it would be romantic, and a delicious, fitting crowning of her present blissful mood.

He mistook her silence for womanly scruples, and he recounted with a little laugh the predicament in which he should find himself on his own account were they to be so precipitate. "What would my sister think if she were to get a telegram--'Married to-night. Expect us to-morrow?' She would think I had lost my senses. So I have, darling; and you are the cause. She knows about you. I have talked to her about you."

"But she thinks I am Mrs. Babcock."

"Oh yes. Ha! ha! It would never do to state to whom I was married, unless I sent a telegram as long as my arm. Dear Pauline! She will be radiant. It is all arranged that she is to stay where she is in the old quarters, and I am to take you to a new house. We've decided on that, time and again, when we've chanced to talk of what might happen--of 'the fair, the chaste and unexpressive she'--my she. Dearest, I wondered if I should ever find her. Pauline has always said that she would never run the risk of spoiling everything by living with us."

"It would be very nice--and very simple," responded Selma, slowly. "You wouldn't think any the worse of me, Wilbur, if I were to marry you to-night?"

"The worse of you? It is what I would like of all things. Whom does it concern but us? Why should we wait in order to make a public spectacle of ourselves?"

"I shouldn't wish that. I should insist on being married very quietly. Under all the circumstances there is really no reason--it seems to me it would be easier if we were to be married as soon as possible. It would avoid explanations and talk, wouldn't it? That is, if you are perfectly sure."

"Sure? That I love you? Oh Selma!"

She shut her eyes under the thrill which his kiss gave her. "Then we will be married whenever you wish," she said.

It was already late in the afternoon, so that the prospects of obtaining a license did not seem favorable. Still it happened that Littleton knew a clergyman of his own faith--Unitarian--in Benham, a college classmate, whom he suggested as soon as he understood that Selma preferred not to be married by Mr. Glynn. They found him at home, and by diligent personal effort on his part the necessary legal forms were complied with and they were made husband and wife three hours before the departure of the evening train for New York. After the ceremony they stepped buoyantly, arm in arm in the dusk, along the street to send the telegram to Miss Littleton, and to snatch a hasty meal before Selma went to her lodgings to pack. There were others in the restaurant, so having discovered that they were not hungry, they bought sandwiches and bananas, and resumed their travels. The suddenness and surprise of it all made Selma feel as if on wings. It seemed to her to be of the essence of new and exquisite romance to be walking at the side of her fond, clever lover in the democratic simplicity of two paper bags of provender and an open, yet almost headlong marriage. She felt that at last she was yoked to a spirit who comprehended her and who would stimulate instead of repress the fire of originality within her. She had found love and she was happy. Meanwhile she had decided to leave Benham without a word to anyone, even Mrs. Earle. She would write and explain what had happened. _

Read next: Book 2. The Struggle: Chapter 1

Read previous: Book 1. The Emancipation: Chapter 7

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