Papa's own girl: A novel

by Marie Stevens Howland

“They think we lose our youth when we begin to fade a little,” said Mrs. Kendrick, “when in fact we are then more sensitive than ever to the better part of love; and having a baby makes a very baby of a woman in this respect. Do what we will, though, we cannot keep the very element in a man’s love without which we don’t care for his love at all; and children hardly prove the consolation we expect, except, indeed, when they are babies. When they grow older they go from us, they wound us, and seem to spend half their lives fighting against our desires. After all, it is better to keep our thoughts beyond this world. I find, myself, very little pleasure in it.”

It was very seldom that Mrs. Kendrick gave any expression to the dark under-current of her life. She passed for a very happy woman, and Mrs. Forest considered her position every way enviable. Her husband was rich, as all husbands should be in her opinion, as a duty they owe to society, and he was never known to be eccentric in anything. Mrs. Forest would have found him perfect. As a young man he had been enthusiastic, loved art and poetry, and talked of high purposes in life. He had even written very fair verses himself, and his wife, before marriage and some time after, had adored him; but he had in time so changed the diet of his soul, that whereas it once seemed wholly to feed upon grand aspirations, and upon the beautiful in all things, it now gorged itself upon bonds and stocks, and assimilated vast quantities of the nutriment. His romantic wife became practical too, but she was bitter over the loss of her illusions, and turned the whole current of her life into social ambition. She had the finest establishment in the county, and she seemed to study day and night to show her husband how dependent she was upon society—how little upon him—for her sum of happiness. For years they had ceased to wound each other’s vanity, as married people do after the romance is outlived and the conjugal yoke begins to gall them. It was not worth the trouble. Society held them up as shining examples of conjugal felicity. They always spoke of each other before the world in a tone of reserve, as if the nature of their mutual relations was too sacred to be questioned or discussed. And yet, with all this outside homage and interior luxury, with all her fine carriages and horses, elegant toilettes, splendid gardens and green-houses, Mrs. Kendrick really found life a burden, as thousands of women do in her position, not knowing that their trouble is the want of a wider sphere of action.

Mr. Kendrick must have been enormously rich. It was the wonder of all the country round that so much money could be squandered without the least effect upon the supply. Wise heads declared that Kendrick’s farms and grounds were badly managed, and it was well known that, notwithstanding the extent and cost of keeping his gardens and green-houses, flowers had to be ordered from professional florists on every occasion of a grand reception. Kendrick himself tried to take interest in his winter-gardens. In one there was a large black Hamburg grape-vine, bearing one magnificent bunch of fruit. He had watched this from day to day, but he knew nothing of the art of cultivation under glass, and was made to feel himself a very second-rate object when in the presence of the head-gardener, who was a pompous and important functionary. During the last winter Mr. Kendrick, in paying the coal bill, took the trouble to glance over it. The winter was not yet ended, and there were seventy-five tons of coal consumed for the hot-houses! On this occasion Mr. Kendrick ventured to go to the head-gardener and suggest mildly his astonishment at the consumption of coal. The functionary pointed reproachfully to that bunch of black Hamburgs, and Mr. Kendrick was silent.

On the occasion of Mrs. Kendrick’s call, she asked Mrs. Buzzell, as she rose to go, if she could do anything to help her in the responsibility she had assumed. “I want your sympathy of course,” replied Mrs. Buzzell. “It is not pleasant to feel that you are condemned for doing what you know to be your duty.”

“I certainly do not condemn you,” said Mrs. Kendrick; “but I could never do myself what you are doing; and I think you would see your duty in a different light if you were the mother of a marriageable daughter.”

“What then are we to do, as Christians, in cases like this?”

“Oh, I suppose there ought to be a respectable institution for them, where they could find protection and work to do, and some provision made for the education of their children. I would give something towards the establishment of such an institution; but I could not afford to defend openly a girl like this, as you are doing.”

“But don’t you see, that the religion of Christ plainly teaches us to forgive the erring, and so help them to a higher life.”

“My dear Mrs. Buzzell, the Christian religion, as interpreted to-day, adapts itself to the exigencies of society. That religion, as taught by Christ and his apostles, would be as much out of place in our present social system as a monk would be in a modern ball-room.”

When Dr. Forest called, a day or two after, Mrs. Buzzell told him of Mrs. Kendrick’s speech. “She is more of a philosopher than I thought,” he said.