Читать книгу Angela's Business - Henry Sydnor Harrison - Страница 10

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The first thing the author did, on opening the door of the Studio, was to look at the clock. Big Bill pointed to but five minutes of eleven. Good! There remained a clean hour and a half before he would have to cease work and go to bed, to wake up a private tutor.

All the lethargy of the earlier evening seemed to have vanished now, under the strong reverse stimulus of the Redmantle Club. Having turned up the light in his gas-lamp, the young man stood a moment, thinking intently, and then sat down at his writing-table. The table was twelve years old, and had been to college and law-school. It was worn and stained, but still strong, and bore up, besides the lamp and clock, not only a large array of writer's paraphernalia, but a considerable floating miscellany, too, including a clipping or so, several unanswered letters, a stray tobacco-pouch, a thick exercise-book, and the particular volume on Women he happened to be reading at the moment. Ignoring these, the proprietor drew from the back of his table drawer a capacious brown-paper folder, and from the folder plucked three typewritten sheets, held together with a clip.

It was seen that the topmost of these sheets bore a heading: Mary Wing. And for some moments the author of them sat in stillness, conning over the lines that followed: the magnanimous lines he had prepared with such pains long ago, and then tamely put to sleep in a drawer.

He had composed this eulogy last winter, to help Miss Wing in her campaign for the assistant principalship of the High School. His plan, of which she knew nothing to this day, had been cunning and complete. First he would get this "write-up" into the "Persons in the Foreground" department of "Willcox's," the famous and enormously circulated weekly; then he would have the "Post" reprint it; finally he would induce all the local papers to print glowing editorials demanding, "Is this prophetess to be without honor in her own country?" Unquestionably a most helpful plan; but characteristically, Mary had not waited for it. By some "pull" she had, she had put her little matter through months ahead of schedule, and Judge Blenso had just finished typing the "write-up," late one winter's afternoon, when Charles was summoned to the telephone to be greeted by the first woman assistant principal in history. He, of course, had been delighted with her success. And yet—had he not felt even then that the episode was typical of a positively manly independence?

Now he read over his forgotten words with cool judiciality:—

Her name was in newspaper headlines before she was out of her teens; and many and many a time since. She wished to be a doctor, and the Medical School would not take her in. And shortly this slim girl, with her sweetly-cut chin and ethereal eyes, had raised the whole State on the issue of principle thus thrown down: Did a woman have the right to study, or not? She stormed the courts for an injunction, she set the legislature by the ears for a special act. The story of her personal interview with the Governor, at the height of the disturbance, is often told to this day; but never by any friend of the Governor's. And then, when she was within a step of winning the long fight, her father died suddenly and she faced the immediate necessity of earning a living.

Farther along, the author's eye found the particular passage that had been in his mind from the start, the part about the National League for Education Reform. Having recounted how the bequest of Rufus B. Zecker's millions had "assured the permanence and ultimate triumph of the League's programme," the generous "puff" went on:—

What the National League contemplates is nothing less than the remaking of our entire educational system, on the basis of a new perception of truth, namely: that education is, not learning at all, but purely the process of fitting the individual for effectual relations with his (or her) environment. With the League's propaganda to that end, under the brilliant leadership of Horace Gurney Ames, Miss Wing has been closely associated for the past seven years. Her work here has been, indeed, the dominant part of her career....

The dominant part of her life, he would better have written. And that was precisely the trouble.

The sheets dropped from the young man's hands, and he gazed unwinking at the green translucence of his lamp. His mind skipped back to a day in early September, when Mary and her mother had come home from their two weeks in the metropolis—Mrs. Wing still looking rather crushed from the overwhelming rush of New York, Mary radiant with the hope that before long she might go back to New York, to stay there the rest of her life. For on that journey she had abruptly learned that the League directors had their eyes upon her with reference to their General Secretaryship, which was to become vacant next March. Undoubtedly, the brilliant Dr. Ames had sounded her pretty directly on this point. Undoubtedly, too, it would be another long step up for Mary, making her, in the educational world at least, a figure of national consequence. Once again, of course, Charles Garrott had been delighted. And yet it was clear to him now that his Modernity had first felt conservative reactions on that very day.

Through the shut door of the bedroom there came a gentle snoring. After the day's secretarial labor, Judge Blenso slept well. Charles rose and walked his carpet, much worn with a writer's meditative pacing.

The wisest of us generalize from the instances that lie nearest us. How far this young man's views on Woman had been moulded by contrasting the maturing uselessness of his pupil Grace Chorister, say, with the fine efficience of Miss Wing, he himself could not have said. But at least he knew that Mary Wing had long embodied the best of the whole Movement for him. He had held her up, in season and out, as a perfect example of the New Woman at her best. And Mary Wing was that, he declared it now; the real thing, as different as possible from the hollow shams of the Redmantle Club. Of course—of course—she had a right, just the same right that a man had, to put away her mother, her family and friends, and follow away the star of her work. But ... if only she showed a little more appreciation of values apart from My Career; if only you could imagine Mary sometimes speaking of Being a Daughter and Being a Sister.

Yes; those were the words that rose naturally in his mind. Beyond doubt, Mary Wing's cousin from the backwoods had given a push to Charles Garrott's thought; he would have been the first to admit that. Not merely had Miss Angela happened to body forth, in the most pleasing, unconscious way, that very type which all Redmantlers so derided; but further, she had artlessly used a phrase which, to his authoritative mind, had helped to scientize her case at a bound. For of course the most scientific modern demand as to Miss Angela's class came simply down to this, that all Temporary Spinsters should have some regular business to occupy their hands and heads. Very well, then, laughed this little girl: What about the Business of Making Homes?

The phrase, connoting so much more than mere "keeping house," was worthy of a writer. And when had this other doctrine grown so strong and sure, that the Business of Making a Career, of Developing My Ego, was necessarily the biggest business in the world?

In the silence of the large dim Studio, the young man stood stroking the bridge of his nose, somewhat worriedly. It was a well-cut bridge, and held three brown freckles.

It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he himself was helping to spread the egoistic doctrine referred to. He remembered his novel, in short: his Old Novel, as he already called it, albeit it was his only one, and he and Judge Blenso had completed it but two weeks ago, to a day. This novel, in manuscript, was now in the hands of the great house of Willcox Brothers Company, whom Charles, after due thought, had selected as his publishers. Willcox's offer, and the contract, might come by any mail now.

To the writing, and infinite rewriting, of this first work had gone the scant leisure of more than four years. Its title-page read: "Bondwomen: A Novel of Modern Marriage." (The Judge had first typed the title Bandwomen, as if it were a Novel of Female Bandsmen, which had annoyed Charles very much.) Considering the cunning with which he had labored to "keep the story moving," it could scarcely be doubted, that "Bondwomen" was destined to have a large sale. And that, in fact, was just the danger; that was precisely the reason that he, the author, felt this sense of moral responsibility. Young married women, young impressionable Temporary Spinsters everywhere, would soon be reading this book, and moulding their characters upon it. He, of course, had never preached any of the wilder, Trevenna Modernity. But all the same.... That passage there, for instance, where Lily Slender, in the lonely vigil on the terrace, reviews the status of Parasitic Woman and decides to leave her husband, and grow her Soul: certainly the probability was that intelligent women all over the world (he would have to grant British and Colonial rights at once, no doubt) would shortly be devouring that keen, advanced Thinking; and, it was to be feared, a general exodus from Homes would follow. In his mind's eye, Charles saw armies of women rising and packing Gladstone bags in the stilly night, and stealing forth, just as the dawn whitened the east, to join Lily Slender in lifting marriage to the Higher Plane, by means of Commerce.

He had put much of Mary Wing into Lily; he knew that. But then he hadn't taken it in, in those days, how serious Mary was as to—what was the word of that mad ass Hodger?—fiercely hacking away whatever impeded her in her Self-Development.

Had not the moment rather come when some one, some all-seeing and completely modern authority, should resolutely sound the Note of Warning? Was it so sure that careering Egoism had anything more valuable to give the world than the old virtues which it flouted? Beauty, charm, and cheer, tenderness, selfless sympathy, all that mothering meant: was it not ridiculous to ignore these enormous contributions to the work of the world, because, forsooth, they could not show an immediate cash return?

Now all the clocks of the city—all, that is, that were right, and had bells—began to sound midnight. But the absorbed author and authority paced on, aware of no sound. He was thinking, with something like excitement, of his next novel, "Bondwomen's" greater successor, for which he was now just struggling to fix his point of view, straighten out his "moral plot," by means of notes in the old French exercise-book. Long as he had sensed a certain spiritual starkness in his first novel, long as he had looked forward to his second, the vital questions concerning his new "line" had never yet been settled in his mind.... Well, suppose that, with a frank, courageous change of front, he employed the New Novel to sound the wholesome Note of Warning; suppose that he boldly took a Home-Maker for his heroine, for example, and justified her—justified her scientifically—as no modern thinker had ever justified her before....

The striking idea was not a new one altogether; but its possibilities, suddenly opening out, rapidly grew more and more interesting. Unfortunately, before it could be developed in even the smallest degree, it was abruptly interfered with by a most unwelcome intrusion of the practical.

Charles Garrott was a tutor. He had turned eagerly to his table, to capture certain phrases at least, while they were yet hot in his mind. But now, chillingly, his eye fell upon that other exercise-book, lying there publicly atop the volume on Women. At a glance that book looked exactly like its sister, kept hidden in a drawer; but in fact there was a boundless distinction. No hand had overwritten the label of that book there raising it to the peerage, as it were. That book was just a common book: "French Composition." And it was known to contain uncorrected exercises, forty sentences at least, which must be tutorially attended to, before Charles Garrott slept this night.

There followed a brief struggle; but it could end in only one way. Charles, with no good grace, sat at his table and clutched up a fat blue pencil.

It was a galling occurrence. Yet a man, of course, must live, whether cynical Frenchmen can see the necessity or not. And the tutoring, say what you would against it, was the best net result of a gradual sifting process, designed to find what would yield the largest amount of money for the least amount of work. So had Charles Garrott bent his life, to be a writer. Bred casually to the law, he had thrown over the encouraging beginnings of a practice directly he found that clients expected to take all a man's time, including nights even. Teaching he did not love, and yet, as he had enjoyed an excellent education, it "came easier" than anything else. His boast to friends, indeed, was that he could teach anything, whether he had ever heard of it before or not; and it was a fact that at a private school once—years ago, in the interval between college and law-school—he had taught Spanish on three days' notice, keeping, as he said, precisely one page and a half ahead of his class the whole year through. But teaching Ancient Languages at Blaines College was found, upon fair experiment, to involve too many papers in the Studio, conferences with boys, annoying teachers' meetings, and similar invasions of a writer's privacy. Besides, it was not nearly lucrative enough, after the coming of the Judge, who drew twenty-five dollars a month as Secretary, besides his keep.

Thus had evolved the private tutor, with a waiting-list. Thus it was that probably the only living compeer of the lady in Sweden must put aside his Thinking to-night, to peruse and criticize such stuff as this:—

16. Bon jour, Monsieur le Curé! Avez vous vu le grand cheval de mon oncle, le médecin?

Oh, detestable!

The two French exercise-books—twins with what a difference!—had started life equally as the property of a certain dear old lady, who had been spurred into studious endeavor by reading in a magazine that Roman Cato learned Greek at eighty. She had pointed out to her daughter, quite excitedly, that she herself was but seventy-one, and French was easier, besides; and that evening she had telephoned to Charles. The old lady wrote a very neat but virtually illegible hand, employing the finest Spencerian pen ever seen:—

23. Non, petit Henri, non; votre sœur Marie n'est pas jamais aussi méchante que vous fûmes hier soir.

The author's golden moments fled.

Nevertheless, before he went to bed, Charles Garrott did produce from his drawer that other private book of his (the front part of which, also, was stuffed with observations about the Curé and naughty little Henry). Here, for what time he had, the young modern set down, on a fresh page, preliminary Notes, such as, indeed, contrasted oddly with those inscribed in the earlier evening. And when he shut up his book to go to bed, he did it with an air, and spoke aloud:—

"Let 'em bite on that!"

From his tone, you might have supposed that all the Redmantlers of the world would come to-morrow and look at these novel words of his. That, of course, was far from being the case: these were his inviolable secrets. Yet so real were his imaginings to the young man, so reactionary seemed even the thought of a Novel of Warning, that an unmistakable defiance had tinged his voice as he spoke. And particularly did this defiant air seem to extend to his excellent friend, Mary Wing.

Charles Garrott went to bed that night thinking defiantly of Mary (and almost tenderly of Mary's so different cousin); and on succeeding afternoons, when he took his walks abroad, he did not turn his steps, as was frequently his habit, toward streets where the advanced assistant principal was likely to be met.

None the less, he did meet Mary on the street, before the week was out; and then the case was such that the secret sense of disloyalty faded, and Charles saw that he had been right all along. Mary, in short, was found parading Washington Street, where the largest possible number of people would be certain to see her, in the company of the too celebrated Miss Trevenna. And then the authority thought of the Home-Making cousin more sympathetically than ever; though he did not guess that the cousin, chancing to see him and his ladies from an upstairs window, was also thinking, not unsympathetically, of him.