After the Storm

by T. S. Arthur

But there was an undercurrent of feeling in all she said that a wiser and more experienced woman than Irene would have noted. It was not a feeling of admiration for moral, but for intellectual, beauty. She could dissect a character with wonderful skill, but always passed the quality of goodness as not taken into account. In her view this quality did not seem to be a positive element.

When Mrs. Lloyd went away, she left the mind of Irene stimulated, restless and fluttering with vague fancies. She felt envious of her new friend's accomplishments, and ambitious to move in as wide a sphere as she had compassed. The visit was returned at an early period, and, as before, Mrs. Emerson met Mrs. Lloyd in the public parlor of her boarding-house. The same gentleman whose manner had a little annoyed her was present, and she noticed several times, on glancing toward him, that his eyes were fixed upon her, and with an expression that she did not understand.

After this, the two ladies met every day or two, and sometimes walked Broadway together. The only information that Mrs. Emerson had in regard to her attractive friend she received from Mrs. Talbot. According to her statement, she was a widow whose married life had not been a happy one. The husband, like most husbands, was an overbearing tyrant, and the wife, having a spirit of her own, resisted his authority. Trouble was the consequence, and Mrs. Talbot thought, though she was not certain, that a separation took place before Mr. Lloyd's death. She had a moderate income, which came from her husband's estate, on which she lived in a kind of idle independence. So she had plenty of time to read, visit and enjoy herself in the ways her fancy or inclination might prompt.

CHAPTER XVI.

WEARY OF CONSTRAINT.

TIME moved on, and Mrs. Emerson's intimate city friends were those to whom she had been introduced, directly or indirectly, through Mrs. Talbot. Of these, the one who had most influence over her was Mrs. Lloyd, and that influence was not of the right kind. Singularly enough, it so happened that Mr. Emerson never let this lady at his house, though she spent hours there every week; and, more singular still, Irene had never spoken about her to her husband. She had often been on the point of doing so, but an impression that Hartley would take up an unreasonable prejudice against her kept the name of this friend back from her lips.

Months now succeeded each other without the occurrence of events marked by special interest. Mr. Emerson grew more absorbed in his profession as cases multiplied on his hands, and Irene, interested in her circle of bright-minded, independent-thoughted women, found the days and weeks gliding on pleasantly enough. But habits of estimating things a little differently from the common sentiment, and views of life not by any means consonant with those prevailing among the larger numbers of her sex, were gradually taking root.

Young, inexperienced, self-willed and active in mind, Mrs. Emerson had most unfortunately been introduced among a class of persons whose influence upon her could not fail to be hurtful. Their conversation was mainly of art, literature, social progress and development; the drama, music, public sentiment on leading topics of the day; the advancement of liberal ideas, the necessity of a larger liberty and a wider sphere of action for woman, and the equality of the sexes. All well enough, all to be commended when viewed in their just relation to other themes and interests, but actually pernicious when separated from the homely and useful things of daily life, and made so to overshadow these as to warp them into comparative insignificance. Here lay the evil. It was this elevation of her ideas above the region of use and duty into the mere æsthetic and reformatory that was hurtful to one like Irene—that is, in fact, hurtful to any woman, for it is always hurtful to take away from the mind its interest in common life—the life, we mean, of daily useful work.

Work! We know the word has not a pleasant sound to many ears, that it seems to include degradation, and a kind of social slavery, and lies away down in a region to which your fine, cultivated, intellectual woman cannot descend without, in her view, soiling her garments. But for all this, it is alone in daily useful work of mind or hands, work in which service and benefits to others are involved, that a woman (or a man) gains any true perfection of character. And this work must be her own, must lie within the sphere of her own relations to others, and she must engage in it from a sense of duty that takes its promptings from her own consciousness of right. No other woman can judge of her relation to this work, and she who dares to interfere or turn her aside should be considered an enemy—not a friend.