The Preliminaries Part 12

IV

It was eleven o'clock on a mid-April morning--she never in after-life forgot the day or the hour--that Clarissa Charleroy saw to the depths of her daughter's mind.

Clarissa awoke that morning with a severe neuralgia. She had given two parlor-talks the day before, and was now paying the penalty of overexertion. To lie flat was sickening, yet to rise was impossible.

Marvel promptly took the case in {188} hand. The pillows were piled high; one hot-water bag was slipped under that aching spot at the back of her neck, and another placed at her chilly feet. Marvel knew that a hot bag must be covered with linen; Marvel knew that an alcohol rub changes even a neuralgic's outlook. Marvel was perfectly familiar with the latest non-depressant remedy for neuralgia, hunted up the empty box, telephoned the druggist, and had the prescription filled and ready to administer in half an hour; when she left the room it was only to reappear with a cretonne-and-mahogany tray, fresh toast, and weak tea, at the very psychological moment when the thought of food ceased to be a horror.

Under these ministrations, what had promised to be an all-day siege gave way so satisfactorily that by eleven {189} o'clock Clarissa, arrayed in Marvel's blue negligee, was temporarily reposing on the lounge in the living-room, while her own room was airing. She was in that delicious, drowsy, yet stimulated, state which follows the cessation of suffering.

For April, the day was unusually warm. The windows were open; the sun was pouring happily in, contending in gayety with a great jar of daffodils covering the low table at Clarissa's side. Marvel in a dull-blue house dress, white-braided, sat across the room darning a stocking, with an expression of severity. Mending was one of the domestic duties for which she had little taste. Owing to her constant activities as housekeeper and secretary for Clarissa, she had not yet begun to attend lectures at the University. Her mother, I fear, was {190} serenely blind to the implications of this fact.

Clarissa, lying high among pillows, in the peace that follows pain, regarded her daughter with a profound pleasure. There was something about her--was it the length of curling lashes veiling her eyes? or the tendrils of fair hair the warm wind lifted on her forehead? or the exquisite color that came and went in her cheeks? or the slender roundness of her erect young body?--there was a something, at all events, a dearness, an interest, a charm, unlike all other girls of twenty-three! Not for the first or the second, but for the hundreth time, that winter, Clarissa was conscious of an unutterable hunger for the years she had foregone. She seldom looked at Marvel's bloom without remembering that she had no mental picture of her girlish charm, {191} her maiden magic. How was it possible to grow old without such memories to feed her withering heart upon?

She must not think that the locust had eaten these years! The thought pierced her like a knife, and she put it away from her with all her might. Had she not chosen the better, though more barren, part? Had she not fought a good fight? And for this hour, at least, she was happy.

Leaving Marvel's face, her gaze traveled round the room. The actual alterations were not many, yet they had produced harmony. The apartment was restful now. The very walls seemed to encompa.s.s and caress her. Perhaps it was only just, Clarissa reflected, that a woman who had poured out her years and her strength in working and planning for an obdurate world, should have, when her energy {192} was spent, some such warm and tender shelter, some equable spot all flowers and sunshine, wherein she might be tended as Marvel was tending her, so that she might gather strength to go forth to other battles.

She turned her eyes again upon her daughter. Marvel, feeling the long look, glanced up.

"Are you comfy? Is there anything more you want, mother?" the girl inquired.

Clarissa shook her head. "No, nothing. Really, child, you are an excellent nurse. Quite a--quite a Marvel! Were you born so? Where did you get it? Not from Paul or me!"

Marvel smiled faintly to herself.

"Where did I get that name?" she parried. "I have often wondered about that. Father could n't, or would n't, tell me."

{193}

The slow, difficult color came to Clarissa's cheeks. How many years since she had recalled the naming of her daughter!

"There is no secret about it," she said. "When the nurse first laid you on my arm, I saw what seemed to me such a wonder-child that I said, Every baby in the world ought to be named Marvel. Mine shall be.-- That's all. It was just a fancy. Your father wanted to name you Clarissa Josephine. Where did those daffodils come from? Did the Herr Professor send them?"

Marvel nodded carelessly. This was so common a matter as to be undeserving of comment.

Clarissa resumed her train of thought. What tact the girl had shown!

She had slipped into her mother's life easily. At the beginning she had taken her little stand, a.s.sumed {194} her pose. "I am not a believer in your panaceas," her manner always, and her lips once or twice, had said, "but nothing human is alien to me. Pray shatter society to bits and remould it nearer to the heart's desire--if you can."

Clarissa saw no reason why Marvel should not remain with her. A couple of legacies had increased her small income to the point where she might have dispensed with her irregular and uncertain earnings, had these not represented an effort that was the essence of life to her.

She could even afford, for a time, the inconsistent luxury of an idle daughter; but if Marvel desired to exercise her teacher's gift, why not do so in Chicago?

"How comfortable we are!" said Clarissa, drowsily and happily. "That blue dress is very becoming to you, {195} child. I believe we can't do better than to keep this flat for next winter. I wonder if we could n't arrange with Myra Ann to come back in the fall? We could pay her half-wages while we were out of town. Her cooking seems to agree with my stomach better than I dared suppose any home cooking could!"

"Why, mother! You forget I am still an instructor-elect at Midwest. I must go to my work in September."

Clarissa started up against her pillows and spoke with her usual vehemence and directness.

"I do not wish you to go back to Midwest, Marvel. I want you to stay with me. I have had too little of my daughter's society in my life."

The girl dropped her work and faced her mother. "That, mother, is hardly my fault."

{196}

Their glances met and crossed, rapier-like, with the words.

Apprehension seized Clarissa. She did not fathom the meaning of Marvel's gaze.

"Do you mean it is my fault, Marvel?"

Her daughter kept silence. For almost the first time in her life, the older woman felt herself compelled to valiant self-defense.

"My work has justified itself, Marvel. I am not boasting when I say that I truthfully believe the good day of release from servitude is nearer for all women because I had the courage to leave my home and go into the wilderness, preaching the coming of the Woman's Age and furthering, even though feebly, all the good causes that will help it on."

Marvel still kept silence. She knew so many things to say! Was it not better to utter none of them?

{197}

"I wanted," continued Clarissa, "to give my mite toward making this a better world for girl-babies like you to be born into."

Her face wore the deep, wistful look that marked her highest moments; this was the reason upon which in her secret soul she relied for justification--but her daughter was not touched by it at all!

"Well, Marvel?"

"Really, mother," said the girl crisply, driven to make answer, "don't you realize that you would never have gone in for Humanity if you had n't hated cooking?"

"Why cook when I hated it?" Clarissa, up-in-arms, flashed back.

"Why, indeed?--but why drag in Humanity? And why should I give up my work to stay here? I felt I ought to come--for a while--when you {198} asked it. I could see that father and Evelyn thought I ought. But now that I have put the flat in shape and trained Myra Ann,--she wants to stay with you, by the way,--things will run smoothly. I can come up occasionally to see how it goes."

At this a.s.sumption that her need of her child was purely practical, something, some tangible, iron thing, seemed to strike Clarissa's heart. She could feel its impact, feel the distressful shudder along all her nerves, the explosion in her palms. She looked down at them curiously. It almost seemed to her that she would behold them shattered by the pain!

She turned her eyes away and they fell upon the bowl of daffodils.

Daffodils burning in an April sun. In what long-forgotten hour of stress had she once seen the flame of daffodils burn {199} bright against an April sun? Slowly her brain made the a.s.sociation. Ah, yes!

That day she told Paul she would leave him, he had brought her daffodils.--Had _Paul_ felt like this?

Clarissa--Clarissa who had never before either asked or given quarter --heard her own voice, tense with feeling, say, "Marvel, I can't let you go, not yet!"

"Why, mother! I can't stay longer than June. Of all people in the world, you ought to admit that I must do my work! Of course I know you need a home as much as any one, though you never own it. That's why you have liked to have me here this winter because I could help you make one. You none of you know, you reformers! You are just air-plants. You have no roots."

"It is part of the profession. 'Foxes {200} have holes--" Clarissa retorted, driven to her last defense.

Marvel lifted her head, shocked at the implication.

"I don't believe it is wrong to tell you what I think," she said abruptly. "You ought to know the other side, my side. Of course I'm only a girl still. I dare say there is a great deal I do not understand. But I do know about homes. The att.i.tude of these people you admire and quote does seem to me so ridiculous! They all admit that the race lives for the child. But they say--and you follow them-- that the child can be best cared for by specialists, and the house can be left to itself, while the mothers can, and should, go out and hunt up some other specialty. It is the idea of a shirk! Loving a child is a profession in itself. You have to give your mind {201} and soul to it. I tell you I know. _I know because I was motherless!_ Can't you see that everything your specialists can do for the child is useless if you don't give it what it wants and needs the very most of all? Oh, I think some grown-ups were born grown-up. They don't seem to remember!"

"Remember--remember what?" Clarissa interjected sharply.

"I don't know that I can make you understand. It is such a simple, elemental thing. You either know it, or you don't. You may mother chickens in a brooder, but you must mother children in your arms.

After you left, mother, for four mortal years I was the most miserable sc.r.a.p on earth. I was fed and clothed and taught and cared for. I was petted, too, but it was never _right_. All the while I felt {202} myself alone. Aunt Josephine did n't count; even father did n't, then. I could not sleep for loneliness, and I used to wake far in the night, my eyes all wet with tears. I had been crying in my sleep. The universe felt desolate and vacant. Just one little girl alone in it!

There was such a weight at my heart! I would cry and cry. It was an awful, constant hunger for the mother that I did n't have. So I know how it is with all children. Their hearts must be fed!"