The Woman Who Vowed Part 7

CHAPTER VI

NEAERA

Meanwhile I was becoming acquainted with Lydia's family and their friends. They occupied a building extending from Fifth Avenue to Lenox Avenue and from 125th Street to 130th Street. It had a large cloistered court within which was a beautiful garden, consisting of a grove inclosing a lawn bordered by flowers. It was usual for the inmates of the building to meet for tea in the grove on the border of the lawn.

They divided themselves into groups, each with his own arrangement of chairs, hammocks, and tables, which reminded me of some of our _fetes champetres_. Within the grove were openings for such games as tennis--of which they had an infinite variety--and also for stages on which they rehea.r.s.ed concerts and plays. The hours between five and seven were by common consent surrendered to social amus.e.m.e.nts. At seven there was an adjournment to the swimming bath and gymnasium with which every building was provided. Eight was the usual hour for dinner, this meal being usually reserved to the family; and the evening was spent very much as with us, either at some theater or at home. The dinner party was a thing almost unknown. In the first place, the princ.i.p.al meal, and the only one which required much preparation, was in the middle of the day.

The evening meal at eight was never more than our high tea, the object of this system being to lighten domestic service. In the second place, the unmarried, who did not live with their families, generally dined together in the common hall; and if members of a family wished to dine at the common table they could at any time do so. Members of different families frequently dined at one another's domestic table but upon terms of intimacy; the conventional dinner party had become ridiculous, no one having the means or feeling the necessity to make a display. The more thrifty and the best managers, who were skillful at dressing food and chose to apply their leisure to securing exquisite wines, often entertained; but out of the hospitality that enjoys sharing good things with others, rather than the pride which seeks to impress a neighbor by ostentation of wealth.

I learned later that, although the conditions I have described still prevailed, the state was pa.s.sing out of the pure Collectivism with which it started; that numerous factories had been started by private enterprise, partly to supply things not supplied by the state, partly because of dissatisfaction at state manufacture. Although private enterprise could only count on voluntary labor during one-half of every day it had already a.s.sumed vast proportions, had given rise to considerable private wealth and was modifying the social conditions that resulted from primitive Collectivism.

I also perceived that although many of the problems of life, such as pauperism and prost.i.tution, had been solved by the introduction of Collectivism, nevertheless it had not brought that total disappearance of ill feeling which prophets of Collectivism had promised us in my time. On the contrary, I soon discovered that the inmates of every building were split up into cliques as devoted to gossip as in our day, the only difference being that they were determined by individual preference and political divisions and not by poverty or wealth; perhaps it might be said, that the absence of the wealth standard raised the level of the social struggle, deciding it by personal excellence and attractiveness, rather than along conventional lines. Every man and woman knew that popularity--and even political influence--could be secured only by these, and this knowledge checked many an angry word and prompted many an act of kindness. Chaff, too, and even sallies of wit with a dash of malice in them were borne with more good humor than in our day; because we all of us love to laugh, and generally the more if it is at the expense of a neighbor, provided only there be no intention to wound; so that those who bore banter well were as popular as those who best could set it going.

And yet there were some very foolish and malicious people among them. I remember a foolish one particularly, Aunt Tiny they called her. She was an aunt of Lydia and Cleon. Lydia First, as Lydia's mother was called, had married twice. Her first husband had not known how to keep her love and they had separated after her first child was weaned. Then she had married a second time; her second husband was an excellent man but inferior to her; he had not been able to impress his personality nor his name upon the family, and so the children of the second marriage as well as the child of the first had taken the name of the mother. The second husband had died some years before the beginning of this story; but a sister of his--Aunt Tiny--had remained attached to the family. She was very small and plump; her hair was of a sickly yellow color and so thin on the top of her head that the scalp was plainly visible; she wore a perpetual smile of self-satisfaction which expressed the essential feature of her character; it was impossible for her to entertain the thought that she was plain or unattractive; her happiness depended, on the contrary, upon the conviction that no one could resist her charms did she only decide to exercise them. Age did not dull this keen self-admiration; on the contrary, as the mirror told her that lengthening teeth contributed little to an already meaningless mouth, or wrinkles little to browless eyes, she felt the need of faith in herself grow the more, and her efforts by seductive glances to elicit from others the expression of regard so indispensable to her happiness redoubled.

I first saw her in Lydia's drawing-room. I had found it empty on entering, but presently there came into it a little body with a hand stretched up, in her eagerness to be cordial, at the level of her head, and behind it a smirking face bubbling over with the effort of maidenly reserve to keep within bounds an overflowing heart.

"Welcome to New York!" she said. "I'm _so_ glad to see you!"

She lisped a little, and as she emphasized the word "_tho_" she shook her head in a little confiding way, and the smirk deepened into a nervous grin.

I had been so long in New York that I felt her welcome a little superfluous, but it was part of the doctrine, which kept her happiness alive, that New York had not completed a welcome to a stranger until it had been expressed by her.

I was a little confused by her effusiveness, for I did not wish to offend an aunt of Lydia's, and yet I felt it impossible to respond in proper proportion to her advances.

"You must be Aunt Tiny," I said. "I have often heard of you."

I refrained from telling her what I had heard; how she had const.i.tuted one of the favorite types for Ariston's mimicry; how, indeed, Ariston had gone through the very performance I had just witnessed, in which the uplifted hand, the smirk, and the lisping "_tho_" had lost nothing in Ariston's art.

"Dear Lydia!" she exclaimed; and in the p.r.o.nunciation of the "d" in "dear" she put exaggerated significance and added a shake of her head.

She wore little corkscrew curls; every time she shook her head the curls quivered with suppressed agitation.

"Do sit down," she added--with unnecessary emphasis in the "do."

There was nothing to be done but to resign myself; she drew up a chair quite close to mine and settled down in it as an army might settle down for a Trojan siege.

"Do tell me--I am dying to know--how did it happen and what do you think of us? You don't look very different from us; you remind me of Chairo, and he is thought _very_ handsome"--her head and curls shook again and she giggled consciously--"_very, very_ handsome!" She giggled still more and her eyes a.s.sumed a coy meaningfulness that increased my discomfort.

I have never been able to understand why this poor little woman--perfectly innocent of any real ability to harm--should have been able to cause me so much annoyance; but there was something in her glance that made me wish to throw things at her.

"And Lydia--isn't Lydia beautiful?" There was something caressing in her tone as she puckered up her lips and dwelt on the word "beautiful" that exasperated me again.

"What _do_ you suppose she is going to do? _Is_ she going to accept the mission or marry Chairo? She is a great flirt, you know; quite a terrible flirt! But _I_ shouldn't talk of flirting!"--and she giggled again the same suggestive giggle. "_We_ mustn't be hard on flirts, must we?"

This appeal to me, as though I were already _particeps criminis_, would have led me to protest, but she did not allow me the opportunity, for she continued:

"But she has not been fair to Chairo; a girl ought to know when to make up her mind"--she became very serious now--"_I_ always knew where to stop; no man ever had the right to reproach _me_."

I at last could agree with her and I smiled approval. She seemed delighted.

"I am sure we are going to be great friends, and you will never misunderstand me, will you?"

I protested that I never would, and was relieved by the entrance of Lydia First, who suggested our going to tea in the grove.

On our way there as we pa.s.sed the main entrance a detachment of militia--some dozen or so--entered, divided into two columns, and stood at arms while between them pa.s.sed a woman somewhat more heavily draped than usual. I asked the meaning of this, and was told that she was a Demetrian.

"But why the military escort?" asked I.

"Demetrians are always attended by an escort unless they particularly desire to be spared the honor; many would avoid it but the cult dispenses with it only as a special favor and for a limited time."

"I cannot see the use of it," lisped Aunt Tiny.

But Lydia First looked sadly at her, and turning to me, said:

"All of us do not understand the importance of upholding the dignity of the cult. It is the very key-stone of social order and we cannot pay too much honor to those by whose sacrifice it is preserved."

We were joined at the grove by quite a party; Ariston came later; and among others I remarked a young girl with bright black eyes who was described to me as a journalist. It took me some time to become accustomed to their habit of describing a person's occupation as that adopted for recreation. The work they did for the state was not regarded as a matter of particular concern; it was the work they selected for their leisure hours which marked their character and bent. Neaera had been first attached to the official journal of the state; but she had joined Chairo's political party and her work on the journal betrayed her partisanship, so the state a.s.signed her work in a factory, and she devoted her leisure therefore to the paper edited by Chairo.

As leader of the opposition Chairo was, by an established tradition, relieved of all work for the state. Every political party representing a designated proportion of the voters of the state could elect a certain number of representatives upon the plan of minority representation, and the leaders of the opposition were by virtue of such election released from working for the state. No law had enacted this, but it had become the rule by the operation of the principle of _n.o.blesse oblige_. The representatives who neither belonged to the ministry nor were recognized as leaders of the opposition did not enjoy this privilege, except during the sessions of the legislature. But it was recognized that the minority parties in opposition had as much work to do as the party in power, and public opinion approved the plan which gave to the recognized leaders of these parties the greatest opportunity possible for exercising vigilance. The number of these leaders being small, there was no fear that the plan would give rise to idleness on a scale to be feared, and the temptation of the government to annoy leaders of the opposition by the allotment to them of onerous tasks, or that of ascribing such motives to the government, was thereby eliminated.

So Chairo had his whole time free for the organization of his so-called Radical party, and he published, with the a.s.sistance of his supporters, a paper ent.i.tled _Liberty_, to which Neaera devoted all her spare time.

She was uncommonly pretty, but like all these women, was capable of sudden changes of face and manner which, until I became accustomed to it, constantly surprised me; though, indeed, I remember having noticed it in some of the women of my own day whom we described then as "advanced." Neaera was already seated at a small tea table with a young man called Balbus, also a member of the _Liberty_ staff, when we arrived and was engaged in earnest conversation with him. She looked at me scrutinizingly when I was presented to her, neither rising nor offering me her hand, and acknowledged the presentation only by a little conventional smile. There was something that seemed to me ill-bred in her keeping her seat when Lydia First and the rest of us arrived; but I soon discovered that Neaera was a person of no small importance, and expected attention from others which she did not herself concede. Our party seated itself about an adjoining table and presently Neaera called to me:

"Xenos, are you going to lecture at our hall?"

I had been invited by the Pater to lecture on the social, political, and economic conditions of the twentieth century. He had a.s.sumed that such a lecture would tend to strengthen the conservative and collectivist government; and Chairo had asked me to lecture at his hall in the hope, on the contrary, that it could be made to serve his own cause. I had been told that these lectures were usually followed by an open discussion, and I knew that it was from this discussion that both parties hoped to draw arguments to sustain their views respectively.

Fearing, therefore, to become involved in their political animosities I had not yet decided whether I would lecture or not, so I answered:

"I am not sure; I feel a little the need of understanding your own conditions better than I do, before undertaking to contrast them with those of our day."

"We'll undertake to explain our conditions," she said, with an oblique smile at Balbus, "if you'll let us."

"I could wish for no pleasanter instruction," I answered.

"But I see you have Aunt Tiny," retorted she maliciously.

"Oh, I haven't taken him in hand yet," said Aunt Tiny, taking the suggestion _au grand serieux_, "but," she added encouragingly, "I will!

I will!"

Balbus threw his head back and laughed outrageously.

"What are you laughing at, you goose!" said Neaera.

"Let him laugh and enjoy himself," answered Aunt Tiny quickly, by way of discarding the thought that there could be in his laughter anything disobliging for herself.

And Balbus, taking the cue, said: