As was her custom, Cornelia had written in a decidedly lyrical vein, sounding in turn the strings of pathos, misgiving and melancholy sympathy. Without formal salutation the letter began:
My heart is torn for you, Araminta dearest, as I follow the story of your wanderings. It is a story that reopens old wounds, for in your sufferings I again experience my own. With what a different poignancy! Different as Claude Fontaine and Percival Houghton are different. I know that Claude possesses the supreme fascination that leads so many women to throw themselves recklessly into his arms. He turns their heads; but at least he does not rob them of their souls. This, Percival Houghton did. Thank your kind stars, my dear, that Claude is not as Percival, that he has not the latter's dominating will or piratical psychic personality. Your soul can still be called your own.
How I pray that your trials may turn out for the best! Araminta, every woman is fated to learn at the hands of some man how unscrupulous all men are in matters of sex. But is it not strange that men should outflag us at what is called our own game, and that women should let themselves be deceived by the fact that they are always credited with the victory? This indeed is man's greatest cleverness. He snatches the spoils even whilst loudly protesting that we have him completely at our mercy. Yes, men are our masters in the game of love, the game that is said to be our profession and their pastime. My dear, the amateur who gaily calls the tune has a much better time of it than the professional who is compelled to do the fiddling—unless the fiddler plays wholly and solely for love or is clever enough to exact a price insuring freedom after the dance is over. But this is an elementary principle which I need hardly point out to you, Araminta.
You say you do not mean to marry Claude, although you believe it lies within your power to do so. At the same time, you speak in harsh disparagement of free unions. To be candid, this mystifies me. I hope, however, that I'm wrong in detecting, beneath your criticism, a subtle reproach. If I'm right, you've done me a grievous injustice.
Didn't I consistently urge that free love is for daring and devoted spirits only? And what wonders have not the bold and brave done for our sex in the last thirty years! Look how the market value of men has fallen and how the market value of women has risen, if I may use the crude language of Mazie Ross. No longer do women live, as did our grandmothers, for the sole purpose of "charming" men or of sipping the nectar of their "homage."
Pray observe, dear child, that I never decried marriage in the case of the few women who are strong enough to command the legal tyrant instead of submitting to him, and who thus are in a position to straighten out the irrational knot from the inside. As for the common rule of females, if they will go on flocking to the altar in droves, if they will be infatuated with marriage after we have opened their eyes to man—why, let them rush in where angels fear to tread. And let them take the consequences, too. Small blame to the nuptial fire if it scorches the likes of them. Is the flame guilty because the moths dash in?
But now for the news, although there is precious little.
First, Lydia Dyson has produced a new novel—and a new baby. You know she lets this happen (I mean the baby) every once in so often because she says it is the only way to keep her complexion perfect. (It really is a perfect olive, in spite of the quantities of gold-tipped cigarettes she smokes.) The baby, like its predecessors, has been given out for adoption to a childless couple in good circumstances, Lydia contending (a la Rousseau) that an artist makes a very unsatisfactory parent. Lydia's other achievement, her novel, "The Mother Soul," has been running serially in the Good Householder. It's netting her the usual mint of money, ten thousand dollars down, to say nothing of copious extras in the shape of book and dramatic royalties.
There's Lydia for you, flourishing like the green bay tree! Not like your poor Cornelia, who'd be happy enough to take the child and let the royalties go.
Robert is rarely here nowadays. Charlotte Beecher, therefore, doesn't show up often, and so, what with you and Claude in Europe, I'd be monarch of all I surveyed, if Hercules didn't take pity on me and come in to drive the blue devils away. He spoils me almost as much as you did. A dear, dutiful boy he is, as fond of work as a camel. I feel conscience-stricken when I think how lightly I accept his devotion. Ought I to make him happy? Ah, well-a-day! I'm sometimes tempted—ah, how I'm tempted!