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8
THE FEDERATION OF WOMEN’S CLUBS IN THE SOUTH
ELIZABETH NEWPORT HEPBURN, in American Motherhood.
In the arbor covered with fertile
grape vines it was dark and cool and
blossom-sweet. An hour earlier they
had been merely comrades, frankly
fond of each other but as frankly in
dependent. Now the full moon and
the autumn night and the touch of
sensitive hands had worked a miracle.
Adrienne still leaned her head against
the lattice and sat motionless, as
though she were carved from lovely,
rosehued marble, but Rob’s dark head
was close, his cheek touched her
cheek, and his low laugh rang with
something more vital than comrade
ship, something warmer, sweeter,
more tense, more thrilling.
In response to that laugh at last
Adrienne sighed.
“But, Rob, I don’t want to marry!
All the married people we know are
such pokes. They live, move, breathe
the atmosphere of commonplace. They
say ‘we’ and ‘our,’ they talk about
the household allowance and the
plumbing and how much it costs to
commute. And they all get to playing
bridge.
Rob had stopped laughing. He,,
too, made a sound as much like a
genuine sigh as a normal, healthy,
prosperous youth of twenty-three can
manage.
“And yet Dad and Mother have an
awfully good time together,” he com
mented. “But they do talk about the
cost of things, and they play bridge,
even two handed on Saturday nights.
Isn’t it awful?”
Then he forgot how awful it all
was, and kissed her; and Adrienne’s
lips answered him in the one ancient,
eloquent, wordless way.
But after a while they came back
to that engrossing topic, the deadly
prose of married life.
“It’s so monotonous.” Thus
Adrienne.
“It’s so beastly conventional.” This
from Rob.
Adrienne mused. “It’s horribly ex
pensive, and it gets you in a rut for
the rest of your life, and it’s morally
unwholesome because it develops ego
tism, and it’s a dangerous example to
people who haven’t a talent for reading
human nature, and it’s selfish and
stupid and hackneyed and —”
But Rob stopped the verbal deluge
with a force and in a manner that
took away Adrienne’s breath.
“A fellow might suppose you didn’t
care a hang,” he cried reproachfully.
Adrienne made no protestation. She
considered that none was necessary.
After a little she spoke reminiscently.
“I’m twenty, almost twenty-one. And
I’ve never done it before.”
Curiously. Rob understood. “Why
haven’t you, Adrienne? Was it be
cause you thought it wrong?”
She considered. “No I don’t think
it’s wrong. Lots of nice girls do it—
and mean it at the time —and the boys
generally understand, I think.”
“Then why didn't you, dear, until
now?”
This time the boy’s kiss was exquis
itely gentle, as though he were trying
to express some chivalric apprecia
tion too subtle for mere words.
“I think,” she said slowly, feeling
for the right words, “that perhaps it
was because above all things I have
always wanted to play fair, to be quite
honest. You know, since Mother died
—and I was a little girl then —there
haven’t been many people with the
right to kiss me. Aunts, of course,
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"INFORMATION IS INSPIRATION”
THE GIFT
and old friends of the family, and
the two girls I liked best at college.
But nobody awfully close, like youi J
mother or sister, or your dad. So
I’ve felt a little as if a kiss were sa
cred, that it meant real fondness, a
thrill deep down.”
“And you haven’t felt it —for any
of the fellows?” asked Rob.
The girl blushed; he could see the
blush even in the moonlight.
“I’ve wanted to, once or twice, but
I wasn’t sure —so I waited, and now
I believe I am glad I did.”
For the first time Rob kissed her
hand. “I’m glad, too —Adrienne. Only
if you had, it would still have been
all right. I know that.”
They were silent for a long time,
not touching each other, and yet in
some strange way closer linked than
they had ever been. Adrienne was
remembering her young mother, dead
so long ago, wondering whether she
knew and understood all this warm
flood of safety and happiness which
was supporting her child’s eager spirit.
And Rob was thinking what a mys
terious thing love is, how much it is
like religion and reverence and un
named, holy things which he did not
understand nor profess to believe, yet
which he felt far down in the secret
recesses of consciousness.
At last Adrienne drew a long
breath, and then smiled at him. “Rob
—it’s so wonderful to feel how you
really care —to know that it is going
to last and grow all through, our
lives. It’s not the marriage part that
matters; it’s the love that makes peo
ple marry so they can keep together,
i-ke this.”
The boy’s arm trembled. “But there’s
more to it, Adrienne.” He spoke in
a low voice, shyly; his w T ords shook
a little. They were both silent for
a moment. Then Adrienne seemed
suddenly to have grown older. She
took the boy’s face in her hands. Her
look and gesture had the exquisite,
protective quality which is maternal.
“I know it, dear. And I think I un
derstand. I’m not afraid —because
it’s you. And then I want to take
care of you, always.”
Again silence in the perfumed dark
ness. About the young figures seem
ed to float a winged presence the dim
and lovely shape of that “True Ro
mance” of which a modern poet sings.
At length the boy spoke, slowly,
half regretfully, as though afraid to
frighten away the dear presence.
“Adrienne, I want to tell you some
thing.”
The girl turned her dreaming eyes
upon him, and for the first time fear
altered the sweetness of her mouth.
She was, despite her temperament, a
girl of the period and a college girl.
She had read a great deal, and once
or twice she had shuddered at that
wisdom which is folly, the wisdom of
the average married woman. She
knew enough to be afraid.
But the boy was not looking at her.
Hardly was he thinking of her. He
stared straight out of the doorway
upon the wide, rolling lawn flecked
with leaf shadows in the pale radi
ance of the night.
“Adrienne,” he began, “even nowa
days men are very different from
women. When they are young boys,
hardly more than children, in a sense
they’re out in the world. They hear
things talked about, they learn a dif
ferent code of honor from the code
The Golden Age for October 12, 1911.
of their sisters and mothers, and they
get to taking a lot of things for grant
ed that —well that aren’t so.”
Adrienne had an impulse which she
forced herself to ignore. She wanted
to move away, so that Rob need not
so much as touch her dress. There
was a pang at her heart; she knew,
suddenly, that she was no longer an
irresponsible girl, but a woman. And
because of this she moved not farther
from, but closer to, this boy whom she
loved —and who was living that mys
terious life, the life of a young man.
Rob went on quietly: “Temptations
come early to most boys, temptations
you wouldn’t dream of, Adrienne. I
was only seventeen when I realized
that for every decent boy on earth
there is a fight on, the fight just to
keep decent. It was queer, but the
day it came I had a telegram from
Dad. I was staying with a school
chum, in a little manufacturing town
out West. We’d been having great
larks because his family were away,
and we were keeping bachelor hall to
gether like two grown men. And
then the wire came —Mother was ill —
and I went home on the limited, and
when I got there she was delirious and
the only person she recognized for
almost two weeks was not Mildred,
nor Father, but me.”
He shifted his position a little, and
now Adrienne was free of the arm
which a little while ago she had re
sented.
“Somehow Mother and I got closer
and chummier as she was getting
strong than we had ever been before.
We had long talks, new ones. She
seemed to me younger—more like a
pal than like a chap’s mother. One
night, out on the lawn in the moon
light, like this, she said something I
never forgot. She had been talking
about Father —what a corking man he
is—l knew that —and she told me
what a wonderful lover he had been;
not just a good husband but a lover,
guarding the romance of youth under
all the apparent prose of marriage. As
she talked she seemed to me rather
wonderful, too —for a mother to be
able to show such intimate, splendid
things to her own son.
“And then sne said: ‘Rob. I want
to tell you something. The most
precious gift a man can bring his wife,
when he loves and marries, is not suc
cess, not culture nor great achieve
ments nor money, but this one thing—
a record as clean as her own! Rob,
when a man does this, he crowns his
wife; she is a queen among women.
And all her life she wears her invisi
ble crown proudly!”’
Rob paused for a long, long moment.
“After that, Adrienne, the fight really
was on. I had always honored Dad,
now I worshiped him, for I had learn
ed to see him through Mother’s eyes.
But that fall I went to college. And
there I got my taste of the real thing
—temptation. It made all other
things—mothers and ideals and clean,
simple prayers—pale into a kind of
far-away mist of dreams.
“Before I went back after Christmas
my senior year, I had made up my
mind. Every man has to live his own
life, meet his own fate, I told myself.
Dad and I were different, made differ
ently. And I might never marry. I
remember when I kissed Mother good
bye that time, I had a sense that she
was saying good-bye to the boy she
knew.
“Dad and I walked to the station to
gether; it was a mile and a half, even
by the path, but we didn’t want the
Edited by Margaret Beverly Upshaw
machine. He had left papers piled a
foot high on his desk to be with me.
He was doing the biggest and most
scientific work he had ever done, and
he loved his work, but he said he
needed the walk.
“On the way he talked a bit about
Mother. He said: ‘Your mother is
the purest, the best, and the bravest
woman I have ever known.’ ”
“I said: ‘The best ever, Dad. But
she has never needed courage when
she has had you.’
“He didn’t say anything for a min
ute. Then he looked at me hard, and
his big chin set in that firm line —I
could see that what he was going to
tell me hurt him. Finally he came
out with it.
“ ‘You and I are alike, Rob. We
have the capacity for loving a few
people greatly —and, I believe, of rec
ognizing the right woman, when she
comes. But we are also obstinate,
hot-blooded, passionate. Ordinary
warnings avail not an atom! When
I married your mother I had the aver
age man’s confession to make her —
but she had her dreams, her white
ideals —and what I told her nearly
broke her heart.’
“I was so stunned that I stood still
in the path and stared at him. I told
him what Mother had said to me—
but he was not suprised.
“ ‘She is too loyal to let you know
that I ever disappointed her, Rob. But
I’m afraid that all her life she herself
has missed the feel of that crown on
her dear head.’
“When he shook hands before we
reached the station he said: ‘Each
generation should climb a rung higher
than the last, my son. If some day
you can give your wife the thing I
did not bring your mother, she and I
will not have lived in vain.”
Adrienne breathed a passionate sigh
that was almost a sob. “Yet we call
ed marriage prosaic—when it holds
pain—and love —like that. Oh, Rob,
we were fools!”
“You understand what I mean you
to know —Adrienne?”
Then he saw the light in her eyes—
he knew that his reward was the pur
est joy a man may experience. Ad
riennne raised his hand to her lips,
then laid it on her head.
*
THE ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR.
A story is current concerning a
professor who is reputed to be slight
ly absent-minded. The learned man
had arranged to escort his wife one
evening to the theater.
“I don’t like the tie that you have
on. I wish you would go up and put
on another,” said his wife.
The professor tranquilly obeyed.
Moment after moment elapsed, until
finally the impatient wife went up
stairs to learn the cause of delay. In
his room she found her husband un
dressed and getting into bed. Habit
had been too much for him when he
took off his tie. —London Tit-bits.
*
NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN.
“See here!” cried the irate man, "I
propose to sue you. Look at my
head! You professed to cure ”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted the
maker of Fakeley’s Balsam, “we ad
vertise merely that we cure partial
baldness and not ”
“Well, I was only partially bald
when I started using your stuff; now
I haven’t a hair!”
“Well, then, you’re cured of your
partial baldness, aren’t you?”