“There are other methods, of course. I have a mind, and I might turn its powers to entertaining him, instead of trying to solve the problems of the universe. But to do this, I should have to believe that it was the one thing in the world for me to do; and I have permitted a doubt of that to gain entrance to my brain! My poor aunt’s exhortations inspire me to efforts to regain the faith of my mothers, but I simply cannot—I cannot! She sits by me with the terror of all the women of all the ages in her eyes. I am losing a man!
“I don’t know if you have ever set out to hold a man—deliberately, I mean. Probably you haven’t. That bitter maxim of Lady Dee’s is the literal truth of it—‘When in doubt, talk about HIM!’ If you will tactfully and shrewdly keep a man talking about himself, his tastes, his ideas, his work and the importance of it, there is never the least possibility of your boring him. You must not just tamely agree with him, of course; if you hint a difference now and then, and make him convince you, he will find that stimulating; or if you can manage not to be quite convinced, but sweetly open to conviction, he will surely call again. ‘Keep him busy every minute,’ Lady Dee used to say. ‘Run away with him now and then—like a spirited horse!’ And she would add, ‘But don’t let him drop the reins!’
“You can have no idea how many women there are in the world deliberately playing such parts. Some of them admit it; others just do the thing that is easiest, and would die of horror if they were told what it is. It is the whole of the life of a successful society woman, young or old. Pleasing a man! Waiting upon his moods, piquing him, flattering him, feeding his vanity—‘charming’ him! That is what Aunt Varina wants me to do now; if I am not too crude in my description of the process, she has no hesitation in admitting the truth. It is what she tried to do, it is what almost every woman has done who has held a family together and made a home. I was reading Jane Eyre the other day. There is your woman’s ideal of an imperious and impetuous lover! Listen to him, when his mood is on him!—
“I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night; and that is why I sent for you; the fire and the chandelier were not sufficient company for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none of these can talk. To-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss what importunes, and recall what pleases. It would please me now to draw you out—to learn more of you—therefore speak!”
6. It was now May, and Sylvia’s time was little more than a month off. She had been urging me to come and visit her, but I had refused, knowing that my presence must necessarily be disturbing to both her husband and her aunt. But now she wrote that her husband was going back to New York. “He was staying out of a sense of duty to me,” she said. “But his discontent was so apparent that I had to point out to him that he was doing harm to me as well as to himself.
“I doubt if you will want to come here now. The last of the winter visitors have left. It is really hot, so hot that you cannot get cool by going into the water. Yet I am revelling in it; I wear almost nothing, and that white; and even the suspicious Dr. Perrin cannot but admit that I am thriving; his references to pills are purely formal.
“Lately I have not permitted myself to think much about the situation between my husband and myself. I cannot blame him, and I cannot blame myself, and I am trying to keep my peace of mind till my baby is born. I have found myself following half-instinctively the procedure you told me about; I talk to my own subconscious mind, and to the baby—I command them to be well. I whisper to them things that are not so very far from praying; but I don’t think my poor dear mamma would recognize it in its new scientific dress!
“But sometimes I can’t help thinking of the child and its future, and then all of a sudden my heart is ready to break with pity for the child’s father! I have the consciousness that I do not love him, and that he has always known it—and that makes me remorseful. But I told him the truth before we married—he promised to be patient with me till I had learned to love him! Now I want to burst into tears and cry aloud, ‘Oh, why did you do it? Why did I let myself be persuaded into this marriage?’
“I tried to have a talk with him last night, after he had decided to go away. I was full of pity, and a desire to help. I said I wanted him to know that no matter how much we might disagree about some things, I meant to learn to live happily with him. We must find some sort of compromise, for the sake of the child, if not for ourselves; we must not let the child suffer. He answered coldly that there would be no need for the child to suffer, the child would have the best the world could afford. I suggested that there might arise some question as to just what the best was; but to that he said nothing. He went on to rebuke my discontent; had he not given me everything a woman could want? he asked. He was too polite to mention money; but he said that I had leisure and entire freedom from care. I was persisting in assuming cares, while he was doing all in his power to prevent it.
“And that was as far as we got. I gave up the discussion, for we should only have gone the old round over again.