Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 34, Number 348, 23 October 1909 — Page 6

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SITTING before the tea-urn at one end of the long studio table, Mrs. Alward eagerly watched the approach of the woman to whom she had just listened. Of the club's studio "tea-talks" this had been the first to interest her, though she might have been justified in wondering whether her interest was centred in what Mrs. Page-Price had been laying or in the exquisite look of the woman. When Mrs. Page-Price at last came for her tea, Mrs. Alward prettily detained her. " Pray, let me ask you something," she said with a humility which less popular women would have given much to assume, " there was " she hesitated " something in your paper that I do so want to know about." Mrs. Page-Price took the vacant chair beside her. " Yes, Mrs. Alward," she said, sacrificing the face of this chance acquaintance to her own scrutiny, a habit that belied her easy recollection of the name a recollection less instinct, one would have said, than profession. Mrs. Alward sent a quick glance to the club's president, who, combining the practices of a hostess with those of a bee, might be expected at any moment to :omc buzzing after her guest of honor, loudly making honey on the way. Whatever was to be said must be said immediately, in conformity with the social idea of the Conversational Mosaic that is, the more scraps, the more skilful work. " Ah, I am so serious," urged Mrs. Alward, hurriedly. ' " Do you recall your sentence about the independence of women consisting of far subtler and more important things than the franchise? Will you explain your meaning to me?" Mrs. Page-Price's eyes met her own in perfect comprehension. " Gladly," she said, setting her cup on the table in the delicate flattery of her undivided interest. " I mean that while thousands of women are begging to be allowed to . be present at the polls, their independence is really being restricted in ways which it never occurs to them to resent." Mrs. Page-Price always gave her theories royal birth, so that they left her lips crowned and wearing purple. Therefore when the theories were sound they were hailed as divine, and when they were infirm they still won instant homage, as does decrepit royalty. Mrs. Alward's " Yes ? " was like an affirmation. "The instance," the older woman went on evenly, "which, lest I be misunderstood, I hesitated to cite in my talk is apparent. It is that no woman of conscience feels free, as things are now ordered for her, to use her day quite as. she pleases and to use her own judgment about relating all its details to her husband. For if she indulges in any innocent diversion of which she does not tell him, she has been taught that she has committed a breach of honor. But I affirm that there is almost no woman who does not practise a certain justifiable amount of concealment, though this she continues to regard as unjustifiable. And thus she continues to submit to the false belief that she is sacrificing her honor by so doing, until she really has no honor. The standard is false, but so long as she submits to it her departures are really reprehensible. It is against accepting this false standard, therefore, that I would have women guard. Is it not important?" Hovering before bonnet after bonnet, the hostess bee had busied herself across the floor, and now poised beside them in time to sip the last words. "Ah, such cowards, dear me, are we not?" she cried with that ability to converse without hearing what other people have said that describes many women without distinguishing them. Mrs. Page-Price looked at her in well-bred recognition of her distraction ; she was wise enough, however, to ' . know that a guest can never put her hostess at ease s , without seeming to steal her weapons from her and likely being detected. She permitted herself to be borne away with one last dictum to Mrs. Alward. "I am convinced," she said, "that individual effort is our only salvation. One's husband cannot be expected to realize this at once. The pioneer in her own household must not only dare to live the truth; she must dare to teach it a far harder matter." Driving down the Avenue alone after the meeting, Mrs. Alward was conscious of a pleasurable stir, less of emotion than of adventure. She was, indeed, not of a sort to take pleasure in her emotions or to be conscious of them. Like all women of slight imagination who attach to events only the importance of their results, she lived honestly enough in those results. A new belief was not sufficient to stir her, perhaps because it ; was so easy for her to acquire new beliefs; but an undertaking was a delight, and Mrs. Page-Price had revealed to Mrs. Alward a new undertaking. ... Mrs. Alward had been married the year before, after a brief wooing, to a well-favored young broker whom she met abroad. He was an American, also, resting his nerves after a furious fight on the Stock Exchange, and the nerves were the more readily pacified that the contest had been of his winning. She, having lived twentyeight carefully guarded years, chiefly in America, had just found herself at her mother's death alone in the world. After six months of tasting the discreet joys of being consulted in the details of the estate, she had v gone abroad, deliberately refusing all companionship. This action she innocently agreed with her friends in believing to be a proof of her grief; in reality it was largely complacence in being her own mistress. She was still unconscious of her keen enjoyment in her liberty when, in Italy, she met Martin Alward. In the haunted ways about Florence in early spring the young stock-broker, restless in his exile, threw himself into the courtship of Bettina Mennis, who, in spite of her freedom, was yet just lonely enough to be glad of his devotion. In a few months the restlessness of the one and the palling liberty of the other were wearing the guise of love; and when she had barely tasted her independence, Bettina willingly parted with it. The result was the usual one. In six months Mrs. 'Alward was chafing delicately at restraint, forgetting that the breeding of American women, had it been planned to induce rebellion after marriage, could have been no more cunningly contrived, and that, therefore, what she was experiencing was not a desire, but, so to speak, a disease. Without the skill to find a solution in either compliance or illusion, and without the knowledge that she would sorely have missed chattering out a nightly account of her day, Mrs. Alward had accepted the situation without ceasing to resent it She was not able to feel the matter an issue or even an injustice; indeed, it was not in the realm of problems at all, her realm of problems consisting of things wicked and forbidden. It was simply a discomfort; and Mrs. Page-Price had shown her that to remove it she had not to institute a reform, only to point out abuses that really existed. In this natural analysis of a matter the feminine mind will never be far removed from that of the professional reformer. Leaving the florist's presently, Mrs. Alward was greeted by a little woman of so exactly her own type that, seeing them together, one would have believed that they had sought each other out on the grounds of the least resistance the b?is of very many warm friendships. Mrs. Ethan Osgood v.as a trifle more petulant than Mrs. Alward. given to pretty distresses and the voicing of delightful grievances. She packed her life with events by elevating moods to the estate of incidents. She had always something to tell. So a village housewife gives zest to her day by the mystery of the loss of the scis" or the prodigy of a bat in the best-room closet

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"Bettina!" cried Mrs. Osgood, warmly, "I've been longing to see you. Send your man home and come with me. It's early yet Can't we do something ? " " I wish we could," said Mrs. Alward as they drove away. " I've been hearing such a helpful talk by Mrs. Page-Price on doing amusing things for oneself," she ended, vaguely, settling her flower-box. Mrs. Osgood had no disquieting sense of humor. She always saw exactly what was meant without insisting on its comic inference. Her eager support of the recital of what Mrs. Page-Price had said was a foregone conclusion, and she only interrupted her own disquisition to stop the victoria impulsively at a little shop on lower Fifth Avenue. " You have time, haven't you ? " she asked. " The chocolate is delicious, and the china and linen are so good that the place is doomed." " Let it be my treat," he begged. " There are some cakes that I think are hand-painted." When Mr. Winfield Penn, who was Mrs. Osgood's cousin, had explained his presence there by the purchase of an old pewter mug and the later temptation of " hand-painted " cakes, they sat in the red burlap corner and were served by a faint-voiced little maid. "And now let us talk about our friends," said Mr. Penn, pleasantly. " Since you have been to the studio tea, you must have heard about Miss Light." They had not, but they forthwith guessed his news,

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WHEN MRS. PAGE with that fine feminine instinct for recognizing the aroma of unspoken words. " She is," affirmed Mr. Penn. " To Tommy Lawton, her cousin. The marriage is to take place next month." " Marion Light ! " said Mrs. Alward in low tones. "Why, she has lived alone for ten years, doing her wonderful miniatures. Do you think she can ever settle down?" "Settle down?" queried Mr. Penn in amusement " Is miniature painting something frivolous ? And have I missed it?" " No," said Mrs. Alward, pensively, " but she has lived alone for so long, and she has had all her time for her own, and nobody to telephone to if she was not coming home for dinner, and now? " Mr. Winfield Penn listened in frank amusement to the wise-eyed discoursing that followed, wherein the two women tried solemnly to show him how much courage it takes to give anyone the right to know what one is doing, hour by hour, and not to make guilty concealment of perfectly innocent affairs. He had observed much of such doll's-house life, this pretty relegation of welcome duties to the realm of distresses, for lack of more wholesome excitement. When, presently, an idle impulse came to him, he gave way to it half in idleness, half from a native desire to please. " Let us form a club," he suggested, agreeably, " for the Carrying on of Crime by Day. Let us have. chocolate together when we like, and take ferry rides, and telephone to one another whenever we choose. And let it be secret. And suppose, as a first ceremony," he added, "you both run away with me to-morrow morning in my new car, up the country somewhere, for luncheon ? " Upon their eager assent, he amiably imposed the condition for which he supposed they were longing: that no one be told of the trip, and that to no one should their chance meeting of that day be mentioned. Mr. Penn was as good-natured as if he had been playing with children, and he received their delighted assent as if it had been a decision to steal gingerbread. Not until they had driven away did there come to him, strolling up the avenue, a disturbing recollection. "By the way," he remembered, "I'd an appointment with Wyndham to-morrow. IH have to put the motorparty oft for half an hour. And "Oh," Mrs. Alward was saying in the victoria, "this is wonderful! I feel as I used when there was going to be a big cotillion. You know Martin doesn't dance." Martin Alward had reached home a few minutes earlier with exultation, for the exultation of merely reaching home had never forsaken him. He was just returning from an inspection of her room when his wife

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rang. " I was looking for a note on the pincushion," he said, gathering her in his arm's behind the library curtains. " Martin," said Mrs. Alward, adoringly, " how wonderful you look in that kind of collar." " Don't, Bettina," said her husband. " It embarrasses me that you aren't wearing cloth-of-gold to-day." "It's horrid, scratchy stuff, I'm sure," she said. "Do you know, Martin, I'm thinking of having a yellow dinner gown to wear with my topazes " So the happy talk ran on until, when his wife's veil was thrown back, Martin turned to her with : "What a beautiful color you have, Bettina. Where have you been ? " " I've had such a nice day, dear," said his wife, busy with the tea things. " I've been to the studio tea-talk the fourth, you know and afterward " She stopped abruptly. Memory of Mrs. Page-Price's paper swept up at mention of the "tea-talk," and the " afterward " was part of the secret "Afterward Mrs. Osgood drove me home," she finished, handing his cup. Her husband, poking about with the tongs for another lump of sugar, did not notice. " What absurdly little muffins," he complained. Mrs. Alward was conscious of a vague disappointment. "What was the use of knowing anything,' she reflected, "if no one else was to know that he didn't

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- PRICE AT LAST CAME FOR HER TEA, MRS. ALWARD PRETTILY know what you knew?" They were dining alone, and Bettina, therefore, put on her prettiest gown. It was white, and she sat in her solemn high oak chair, looking like a little white flower growing alone on a solemn tree. There were candles at each end of the table, and a low bowl of gardenias in the middle. A fire was shining on the hearth, and the conservatory door stood ajar, yielding a glimpse of green and a sweet breath. Martin took his place at his wife's left with a sigh of content and smiled into her eyes for a moment in silence before the soup was brought. "Oh, Martin," began Mrs. Alward, with the eager importance of the feminine bearer of one variety of tidings, "what do you think? Mr. Penn told me that Marion Light is going to marry Mr. Lawton, the leather man." " Really," said Mr. Alward with gratifying surprise. " I hope that she won't give up miniature painting for burnt-leather work. But Penn why, I thought Penn was rather in love with her himself. Where did you see Penn?" " He was ? " cried Mrs. Alward, this excitement completely absorbing her newly acquired discretion. " Wrhy, he didn't say so I mean he didn't seem so. He talked about her quite naturally for a long time this afternoon, and " "Was Penn at the studio talk?" asked Mr. Alward with uplifted eyebrows. Mrs. Alward dropped her eyes to her plate. " He was not," she said, a little stiffly. "Where did you see Penn?" asked Mr. Alward, naturally. "Why do you ask?" she bungled it immediately, meeting her husband's eyes with a faltering attempt at determination. Mr. Alward's face stiffened a little, he stared a moment, and then broke into an amused smile. "Why, dear?" he said. "What is it? I ask because I am interested in everything you do. Why should I not ask?" Behind the pretty mask of his wife's face there lurked a wealth of petty determination. " Well, Martin, if it comes to that, dear," she picked up the glove with spirit "why should you ask? An honorable woman," went on little Mrs. Alward, m Mrs. Page-Price's very tone, "ought to have the same right to her day as an honorable roan, and she should be as free to be silent about it as is he." "I could always tell you, you know," she aided him with enchanting earnestness. "Of course I could but the point is that you're not to expect me to. If I do, I do; but I'm not tc be compelled to. And I don't want COPYRIGHT I9dI arassa s

to feel guilty if I don't She waited hopefully for her husband's words. They came with great gentleness. " I am sorry," he said, clearly, " that this issue has arisen between us. It seems to me very unworthy and very ugly. But I see your point 1 beg your pardon. It shall be quite as you wish." They made a mere pretense at dessert, and trailed silently out of the pretty room where the fire smiled and the conservatory slept its green sleep just as alluringly as an hour before. As they crossed the hall, Bennett, having admitted a messenger boy, shut him out in time to hand a note to Mrs. Alward as she preceded her husband to the library. Its superscription, though it was one which Mrs. Alward did not recognize, was evidently masculine. Mr. Alward, after his involuntary glance at the letter, withdrew with a useful but icy suggestion. " Bennett should have kept the boy," he said, " for & reply." Following their late discussion the sprawling signature of Winfield Penn at the bottom of the page was like an accusation. Dear Mrs. Alward (he had written), I regret that I shall have to keep our engagement at twelve to-morrow instead of ela en-thirty. I do apologize, and I shall hope to be allowed to explain.

DETAINED HER. Mr. Penn had smiled wickedly as he gave the note into the boy's hand; he was ten years older than Mrs. Alward and his cousin Grace, and he was, if not a philosopher, a grieved observer. Mrs. Alward read the note twice, and glanced at her husband, who was lighting a cigarette with finished unconsciousness. Then she deliberately tore the paper in two and threw it on the open fire, facing him thereafter on the hearth-rug with a fine, if wasted, show of defiance. Mr. Alward was taking a book from the shelves. "Where were we?" he inquired, easily, "and shall we go on?" . His wife hesitated a moment and then sank into a great chair. "Yes, let's," she said, wearily. Mr. Alward read aloud for two hours, commenting here and there, even suggesting a point or two for discussion. But it was very unlike the other evenings, wherein the reading was interrupted a dozen times by happy talk that the most agile mind could not construe to have been suggested by the context To-night the reading proceeded evenly and swiftly. Toward the end Mrs. Alward watched her husband with a forlorn hope. She supposed that she was weak, but if he would just give some sign that he was hurt or worried ! Mr. Alward did not and when he closed his book and observed that he would have another cigarette or two, she hardened her heart "Good-night, then, Martin, dear," she said with a formal little kiss, and went as far as the curtains. " Martin, dear," she said, making a bewitching picture against their deep purple, " won't vou think over seriously what we have been saying? I don't want to be horrid about it but, dear, we must both remember, as progressive people, that my ordinary independence consists of far subtler and more important things than the franchise." Mr. Alward heard her soft skirts touch and lift upon each stair, and his match burned nearly to his fingertips while he stood looking at the unlighted cigarette in his hand. In her own room, Mrs. Alward permitted herself the luxury of feeling a victim. Her impulse was not to appear at breakfast but she shared the instinct which gives Jie simplest women credit for method; that though a pretty petulance will win a point fairly enough. " glooming " apart never will ; so she appeared, with a little coldness of manner, which she early contrived to be seen trying to subdue. Her husband greeted her smilingly; she responded smilingly; they breakfasted smilingly. And it was all

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very strained and unnatural People who are too wellbred to be indecently polite to each other can still make moments very uncomfortable by excessive attempts at being natural. Thus, when Mrs. Alward announced that the window-boxes were doing beautifully, her husband said : ' Are they, indeed ? Now that's encouraging ! " with such an unconsciously elaborate show of hearty anxiety that his wife lost patience. " Oh, please stop seeming so interested ! she cried. When she kissed him good-by she slipped her banJl about his neck beneath his coat collar. " You love me ? " she inquired, solicitously. "Very dearly, he responded, promptly. "And you understand how I feel about the other "About ? he interrogated deferentially. " About keeping my day to to myself," said little Mrs. Alward with a quaver. "Oh. quite," he agreed heartily; "oh, quite." She went with him to the door. "Good-by." she said a little wistfully. "Good-by," he assented, cheerily, and was gone. Triumphantly she formed her conclusion, with the gratified vanity of all little people who arrive at wise decisions only because they have taken the way of least resistance. To women lacking Mrs. Alward's dexterity in evading the significance of crucial moments the debate would have ended in a healthy flood of tears, which would have cleared the vision, at least as to the inward state of the mind. But Mrs. Alward. by the hackneyed method of denying conditions, virtually withdrew on a plea of personal choice and left her abandoned cause to flap its wings in the rarefied air. Fortunately for her, however. Love insists on no academic defense; an irresponsible intuition or two is all he asks as dialectic. It was the custom of Mrs. Cynthia Lee Page-Price to devote a part of her day to what she termed altruistic endeavor. She had awakened that very morning with the sense of some new and pleasant demand upon which, when her unasserting household had finished breakfast, she set out in pursuit " " Dear Mrs. Alward," she said, entering upon the blue fog of her hostess's rambling reflections, " I came directly to you this morning because I felt that we have much to talk over!" Mrs. Alward murmured something in that suave, unclear speech of the woman who, without really wishing to please, finds it easier to assume that attitude. " My own ideals are very high," pursued Mrs. PagePrice, "and I saw yesterday that you were struggling toward them that you wanted to make for freedom I may say for an elegant freedom among women, of which the suffrage does not yet conceive. Woman the Architect of her Own Exemption' I have sometimes designated it In brief, I wish to teach women that marriage need not destroy the sweet freedom and peace of home. You see, I find a middle ground whereon old prejudice and the most advanced thought may clasp hands" Mrs. Alward listened with the sinking conviction that against this array of words her own poor, little fluttering decisions were like bodiless wings. She had the obstinacy which serves small natures as a vehicle to valid destinations; at the same time she was flattered by the interest of the distinguished older woman. Therefore, it was, perhaps, an inexorable law of her nature that she should hit on an expedient She leaned toward her guest with pretty humility. " Dear Mrs. Page-Price," she said, evenly, " I have to thank you for something delightful. I left you yesterday enthusiastically deciding to follow your advice. I did so. And " "Yes?" said Mrs. Page-Price, eager, confident " I find," went on Mrs. Alward, gently, " that my husband is of the same mind. He quite agrees with as." Mrs. Page-Price, brows delicately lifted, head just poising at a gratified angle, said an amazed "Indeed?" " Yes," said Mrs. Alward, " I discussed the matter with him. And he said that since the issue had arisen, it would be quite as I wished." "Ahl" exclaimed Irs. Page-Price, suddenly enlightened. If Mrs. Alward had not been easily flattered or embarrassed from a useful reticence, she might yet have left the field with grace; but, never skilful whh negative weapons, she was unequal to the moment of silence that fell. And as all women who are not diplomatists take refuge in declaring for the simplicity and straightforwardness of their own natures, Mrs. Alward risked too much in an airy attempt to be cunningly frank. "That, of course," she added with charming inconsequence, "makes me resolve to tell him everything." " Ah ! " said Mrs. Page-Price again, and did not smile her understanding. And the social amenities being trained by their keeper, there appeared on her face no premonition of the conviction with which she presently closed her carriage door. She is an average little woman, she thought in a disappointment which was as much at having found no opponent as at having missed a partisan. She is blindly in love with her husband and ready to do everything he wants. But she is not willing to own up to it What a pity ! Mrs. Alward, waiting in her hall whh Mr. Penn's telephone number fresh from her lips, was conscious of nothing but that Mrs. Page-Price was really a very charming woman, and that she did so understand everything, and that it was exciting but not necessary to be demanding a man's telephone number. Besides, she reflected convincingly, Mr. Penn was different "A headache 1 came Mr. Penns distressed voice in a moment " Shall I confess just bow disappointed I am? Grace telephoned half an hour ago that she cannot go to-day, either. Yes, and I have been making up . my mind whether to tell you or to deceive you." Mrs. Alward's words blurred and fluttered down the wire. "Ah, I am afraid." he confessed, "that the car would have been at your door at twelve." After an exciting day at the office day so packed with other people's concerns and the provocations of others that his own lapsed into unconcern, Martin Alward turned home with the struggling consciousness of disaster with which one in deep trouble returns to wakefulness. His face clouded as he remembered. He had no definite alarm, no expectation of grievance, only a heavy-heart edness to which he had long been stranger; for he was of a singularly placid disposition, and able to harbor ever so many ill-favored guests so long as they remained unannounced. ' At their meeting, he greeted his wife in a warm effort to be natural, and put some trivial question. For all answer she projected herself in his arms. "And oh, Martin," she said, permitting herself a prodigality of intonations after her confession, "I have done nothing at all to-day. And I'll tell you all about it And I will every day. Because " " Because what?" said Martin Alward. very tenderly. " Because it seems so much more womanly ! " said little Mrs. Alward. and believed in herself and her inspired answer. with all her heart 1 Martin Alward smiled into her penitent, uplifted face which radiated consciousness of deserving abject praises, and straightway for him the incident was dosed. He dismissed it without having really lifted its veil, as men dismiss a score of the events that crowd their days. If he understood something of her need of revolt, of the mere fluke upon which his happiness depended, he riid not admit it even to himself.

By MARVIN DANA