How To Write Special Feature Articles Part 46

I was a slender bride and had a fresh, becoming trousseau. He was a heavy-jowled banker and had many millions. I was supposed to ply what feminine arts I could command for the highly moral purpose of obtaining his dollars, to be used in destroying his ideals.

Well, that was the first and last time I was ever so employed. Despite the conscientious flattery of the others he gruntingly refused to give a penny. And--who knows--perhaps I was in part responsible for the loss of a million! A dreadful preface to my career as a college professor's wife.

However, before pursuing my personal confessions, I must not overlook the most common and comic characteristic of the college professor we all know and love in fiction. I refer to his picturesque absent-mindedness.

I had almost forgotten that; possibly I have become absent-minded by marriage too! Is not the dear old fellow always absent-minded on the stage? Invariably and most deliriously! Just how he manages to remain on the Faculty when absent-minded is never explained on the program; and it often perplexes us who are behind the scenes.

I tell my husband that, in our case, I, as the dowdy and devoted wife, am supposed to interrupt his dreams--they always have dreams--remove his untidy dressing gown--they always wear dressing gowns--and dispatch him to the cla.s.sroom with a kiss and a coat; but how about that great and growing proportion of his colleagues who, for reasons to be stated, are wifeless and presumably helpless?

Being only a woman, I cannot explain how bachelors retain their positions; but I shall venture to a.s.sert that no business in the world--not even the army and navy--is conducted on a more ruthless and inexorable schedule than the business of teaching.

My two brothers drift into their office at any time between nine and ten in the morning and yet control a fairly successful commercial enterprise; whereas, if my husband arrived at his eight-o'clock cla.s.sroom only one minute late there would be no cla.s.s there to teach.

For it is an unwritten law among our engaging young friends the undergraduates that when the "prof" is not on hand before the bell stops ringing they can "cut"--thus avoiding what they were sent to college for and achieving one of the pleasantest triumphs of a university course.

My confessions! Dear me! What have I, a college professor's wife, to confess? At least three things:

1--That I love my husband so well that I wish I had never married him.

2--That I have been such a good wife that he does not know he ought never to have had one.

3--That if I had to do it all over again I would do the same thing all over again! This is indeed a confession, though whether it be of weakness of will or strength of faith you may decide if you read the rest.

The first time I saw the man who became my husband was at the Casino in Newport. And what was a poor professor doing at Newport? He was not a professor--he was a prince; a proud prince of the most royal realm of sport. Carl, as some of you might recall if that were his real name, had been the intercollegiate tennis champion a few years before, and now, with the kings of the court, had come to try his luck in the annual national tournament. He lasted until the finals this time and then was put out. That was as high as he ever got in the game.

Alas for the romance of love at first sight! He paid not the slightest attention to me, though he sat beside me for ten minutes; for, despite his defeat, he was as enthusiastically absorbed in the runner-up and the dashing defender of the t.i.tle as--well, as the splendid sportsman I have since found him to be in disappointments far more grim.

As for me, I fear I hardly noticed him either, except to remark that he was very good-looking; for this was my first visit to Newport--the last too--and the pageantry of wealth and fashion was bewilderingly interesting to me. I was quite young then. I am older now. But such unintellectual exhibitions might, I fancy, still interest me--a shocking confession for a college professor's wife!

I did not see Carl again for two years, and then it was in another kind of pageant, amid pomp and circ.u.mstance of such a different sort; and, instead of white flannel trousers, he now wore a black silk gown. It had large flowing sleeves and a hood of loud colors hanging down behind; and he was blandly marching along in the academic procession at the inaugural ceremonies of the new president of the university.

I wonder why it is that when the stronger s.e.x wishes to appear particularly dignified and impressive, as on the bench or in the pulpit, it likes to don female attire! No matter whether suffragists or antis--they all do it. Now some of these paraders seemed as embarra.s.sed by their skirts as the weaker s.e.x would be without them; but the way Carl wore his new honors and his new doctor's hood attracted my attention and held it. He seemed quite aware of the ridiculous aspect of an awkward squad of pedagogues paraded like chorus girls before an audience invited to watch the display; but, also, he actually enjoyed the comedy of it--and that is a distinction when you are an actor in the comedy! His quietly derisive strut altogether fascinated me. "Hurrah!

Aren't we fine!" he seemed to say.

As the long, self-conscious procession pa.s.sed where I sat, smiling and unnoticed, he suddenly looked up. His veiled twinkle happened to meet my gaze. It pa.s.sed over me, instantly returned and rested on ray eyes for almost a second. Such a wonderful second for little me!... Not a gleam of recollection. He had quite forgotten that our names had once been p.r.o.nounced to each other; but in that flashing instant he recognized, as I did, that we two knew each other better than anyone else in the whole a.s.semblage.

The nicest smile in the world said as plainly as words, and all for me alone: "Hurrah! You see it too!" Then, with that deliciously derisive strut, he pa.s.sed on, while something within me said: "There he is!--at last! He is the one for you!" And I glowed and was glad.

Carl informed me afterward that he had a similar sensation, and that all through the long plat.i.tudinous exercises my face was a great solace to him.

"Whenever they became particularly tiresome," he said, "I looked at you--and bore up."

I was not unaware that he was observing me; nor was I surprised when, at the end of the exhausting ordeal, he broke through the crowd--with oh, such dear impetuosity!--and asked my uncle to present him, while I, trembling at his approach, looked in the other direction, for I felt the crimson in my cheeks--I who had been out three seasons! Then I turned and raised my eyes to his, and he, too, colored deeply as he took my hand.

We saw no comedy in what followed.

There was plenty of comedy, only we were too romantic to see it. At the time it seemed entirely tragic to me that my people, though of the sort cla.s.sified as cultured and refined, deploring the materialistic tendency of the age, violently objected to my caring for this wonderful being, who brilliantly embodied all they admired in baccalaureate sermons and extolled in Sunday-school.

It was not despite but because of that very thing that they opposed the match! If only he had not so ably curbed his materialistic tendencies they would have been delighted with this well-bred young man, for his was an even older family than ours, meaning one having money long enough to breed contempt for making it. Instead of a fortune, however, merely a tradition of _n.o.blesse oblige_ had come down to him, like an unwieldy heirloom. He had waved aside a promising opening in his cousin's bond-house on leaving college and invested five important years, as well as his small patrimony, in hard work at the leading universities abroad in order to secure a thorough working capital for the worst-paid profession in the world.

"If there were only some future in the teaching business!" as one of my elder brothers said; "but I've looked into the proposition. Why, even a full professor seldom gets more than four thousand--in most cases less.

And it will be years before your young man is a full professor."

"I can wait," I said.

"But a girl like you could never stand that kind of life. You aren't fitted for it. You weren't brought up to be a poor man's wife."

"Plenty of tune to learn while waiting," I returned gayly enough, but heartsick at the thought of the long wait.

Carl, however, quite agreed with my brothers and wanted impetuously to start afresh in pursuit of the career in Wall Street he had forsworn, willing and eager--the darling!--to throw away ambition, change his inherited tastes, abandon his cultivated talents, and forget the five years he had "squandered in riotous learning," as he put it!

However, I was not willing--for his sake. He would regret it later.

They always do. Besides, like Carl, I had certain unuttered ideals about serving the world in those days. We still have. Only now we better understand the world. Make no mistake about this. Men are just as n.o.ble as they used to be. Plenty of them are willing to sacrifice themselves--but not us. That is why so few of the sort most needed go in for teaching and preaching in these so-called materialistic days.

What was the actual, material result of my lover's having taken seriously the advice ladled out to him by college presidents and other evil companions of his innocent youth, who had besought him not to seek material gain?

At the time we found each other he was twenty-seven years of age and had just begun his career--an instructor in the economics department, with a thousand-dollar salary. That is not why he was called an economist; but can you blame my brothers for doing their best to break the engagement?... I do not--now. It was not their fault if Carl actually practiced what they merely preached. Should Carl be blamed? No; for he seriously intended never to marry at all--until he met me. Should I be blamed? Possibly; but I did my best to break the engagement too--and incidentally both our hearts--by going abroad and staying abroad until Carl--bless him!--came over after me.

I am not blaming anybody. I am merely telling why so few men in university work, or, for that matter, in most of the professions nowadays, can support wives until after the natural mating time is past.

By that time their true mates have usually wed other men--men who can support them--not the men they really love, but the men they tell themselves they love! For, if marriage is woman's only true career, it is hardly true to one's family or oneself not to follow it before it is too late--especially when denied training for any other--even though she may be equally lacking in practical training for the only career open to her.

This sounds like a confession of personal failure due to the typical unpreparedness for marriage of the modern American girl. I do not think anyone could call our marriage a personal failure, though socially it may be. During the long period of our engagement I became almost as well prepared for my lifework as Carl was for his. Instead of just waiting in sweet, sighing idleness I took courses in domestic science, studied dietetics, mastered double-entry and learned to sew. I also began reading up on economics. The latter amused the family, for they thought the higher education of women quite unwomanly and had refused to let me go to college.

It amused Carl too, until I convinced him that I was really interested in the subject, not just in him; then he began sending me boxes of books instead of boxes of candy, which made the family laugh and call me strong-minded. I did not care what they called me. I was too busy making up for the time and money wasted on my disadvantageous advantages, which may have made me more attractive to men, but had not fitted me to be the wife of any man, rich or poor.

All that my accomplishments and those of my sisters actually accomplished, as I see it now, was to kill my dear father; for, though he made a large income as a lawyer, he had an even larger family and died a poor man, like so many prominent members of the bar.

I shall not dwell on the ordeal of a long engagement. It is often made to sound romantic in fiction, but in realistic life such an unnatural relationship is a refined atrocity--often an injurious one--except to pseudo-human beings so unreal and unromantic that they should never be married or engaged at all. I nearly died; and as for Carl--well, unrequited affection may be good for some men, but requited affection in such circ.u.mstances cannot be good for any man--if you grant that marriage is!

A high-strung, ambitious fellow like Carl needed no incentive to make him work hard or to keep him out of mischief, any more than he needed a prize to make him do his best at tennis or keep him from cheating in the score. What an ign.o.ble view of these matters most good people accept! In point of fact he had been able to do more work and to play better tennis before receiving this long handicap--in short, would have been in a position to marry sooner if he had not been engaged to marry! This may sound strange, but that is merely because the truth is so seldom told about anything that concerns the most important relationship in life.

Nevertheless, despite what he was pleased to call his inspiration, he won his a.s.sistant professorship at an earlier age than the average, and we were married on fifteen hundred a year.

Oh, what a happy year! I am bound to say the family were very nice about it. Everyone was nice about it. And when we came back from our wedding journey the other professors' wives overwhelmed me with kindness and with calls--and with teas and dinners and receptions in our honor. Carl had been a very popular bachelor and his friends were pleased to treat me quite as if I were worthy of him. This was generous, but disquieting.

I was afraid they would soon see through me and pity poor Carl.

I had supposed, like most outsiders, that the women of a university town would be dreadfully intellectual and modern--and I was rather in awe of them at first, being aware of my own magnificent limitations; but, for the most part, these charming new friends of mine, especially the wealthier members of the set I was thrown with, seemed guilelessly ignorant in respect of the interesting period of civilization in which they happened to live--almost as ignorant as I was and as most "nice people" are everywhere.

Books sufficiently old, art sufficiently cla.s.sic, views sufficiently venerable to be respectable--these interested them, as did foreign travel and modern languages; but ideas that were modern could not be nice because they were new, though they might be nice in time--after they became stale. College culture, I soon discovered, does not care about what is happening to the world, but what used to happen to it.

"You see, my dear," Carl explained, with that quiet, casual manner so puzzling to pious devotees of "cultureine"--and even to me at first, though I adored and soon adopted it! "--universities don't lead thought--they follow it. In Europe inst.i.tutions of learning may be--indeed, they frequently are--hotbeds of radicalism; in America our colleges are merely featherbeds for conservatism to die in respectably."

Then he added: "But what could you expect? You see, we are still intellectually _nouveaux_ over here, and therefore self-consciously correct and imitative, like the _nouveaux riches_. So long as you have a broad _a_ you need never worry about a narrow mind."

As for the men, I had pictured the privilege of sitting at their feet and learning many interesting things about the universe. Perhaps they were too tired to have their feet enc.u.mbered by ignorant young women; for when I ventured to ask questions about their subject their answer was--not always--but in so many cases a solemn owllike "yes-and-no" that I soon learned my place. They did not expect or want a woman to know anything and preferred light banter and persiflage. I like that, too, when it is well done; but I was accustomed to men who did it better.

I preferred the society of their wives. I do not expect any member of the complacent s.e.x to believe this statement--unless I add that the men did not fancy my society, which would not be strictly true; but, even if not so intellectual as I had feared, the women of our town were far more charming than I had hoped, and when you cannot have both cleverness and kindness the latter makes a more agreeable atmosphere for a permanent home. I still consider them the loveliest women in the world.

In short my only regret about being married was that we had wasted so much of the glory of youth apart. Youth is the time for love, but not for marriage! Some of our friends among the instructors marry on a thousand a year, even in these days of the high cost of living; and I should have been so willing to live as certain of them do--renting lodgings from a respectable artisan's wife and doing my own cooking on her stove after she had done hers.

Carl gave me no encouragement, however! Perhaps it was just as well; for when first engaged I did not know how to cook, though I was a good dancer and could play Liszt's Polonaise in E flat with but few mistakes.