Part 41 (1/2)
”But it would have hurt Lucy, dear, if you hadn't worn something new.
She even wanted me to order my dress from New York, but I was so afraid of wounding poor little Miss w.i.l.l.y--she has made my clothes ever since I could remember--that I persuaded the child to let her make it. Of course, it won't be stylish, but n.o.body will look at me anyway.”
”I hope it is coloured, mother. You wear black too much. The psychological effect is not good for you.”
With her knees on the floor and her back bent over the trunk into which she was packing a dozen pairs of slippers wrapped in tissue paper, Virginia turned her head and stared in bewilderment at her daughter, whose cla.s.sic profile showed like marble flushed with rose in the lamplight.
”But at my time of life, dear? Why, I'm in my forty-sixth year.”
”But forty-six is still young, mother. That was one of the greatest mistakes women used to make--to imagine that they must be old as soon as men ceased to make love to them. It was all due to the idea that men admired only schoolgirls and that as soon as a woman stopped being admired she had stopped living.”
”But they didn't stop living really. They merely stopped fixing up.”
”Oh, of course. They spent the rest of their lives in the storeroom or the kitchen slaving for the comfort of the men they could no longer amuse.”
This so aptly described Virginia's own situation that her interest in Lucy's trousseau faded abruptly, while a wave of heartsickness swept over her. It was as if the sharp and searching light of truth had fallen suddenly upon all the frail and lovely pretences by which she had helped herself to live and to be happy. A terror of the preternatural insight of youth made her turn her face away from Jenny's too critical eyes.
”But what else could they do, Jenny? They believed that it was right to step back and make room for the young,” she said, with a pitiful attempt at justification of her exploded virtues.
”Oh, _mother_!” exclaimed Jenny still sweetly, ”whoever heard of a man of that generation stepping back to make room for anybody?”
”But men are different, darling. One doesn't expect them to give up like women.”
”Oh, mother!”--this time the sweetness had borrowed an edge of irony. It was Science annihilating tradition, and the tougher the tradition, the keener the blade which Science must apply.
”I can't help it, dear, it is the way I was taught. My darling mother felt like that”--a tear glistened in her eye--”and I am too old to change my way of thinking.”
”Mother, mother, you silly pet!” Rising from her chair, Jenny put her arms about her and kissed her tenderly. ”You can't help being old-fas.h.i.+oned, I know. You are not to blame for your ideas; it is Miss Priscilla.” Her voice grew stern with condemnation as she uttered the name. ”But don't you think you might try to see things a little more rationally? It is for your own sake I am speaking. Why should you make yourself old by dressing as if you were eighty simply because your grandmother did so?”
She was right, of course, for the trouble with Science is not its blindness, but its serene infallibility. As useless to reject her conclusions as to deny the laws and the principles of mathematics! After all manner of denials, the laws and the principles would still remain.
Virginia, who had never argued in her life, did not attempt to do so with her own daughter. She merely accepted the truth of Jenny's inflexible logic; and with that obstinate softness which is an inalienable quality of tradition, went on believing precisely what she had believed before. To have made them think alike, it would have been necessary to melt up the two generations and pour them into one--a task as hopeless as an endeavour to blend the Dinwiddie Young Ladies' Academy with a modern college. Jenny's clearly formulated and rather loud morality was unintelligible to her mother, whose conception of duty was that she should efface herself and make things comfortable for those around her. The obligation to think independently was as incomprehensible to Virginia as was that wider altruism which had swept Jenny's sympathies beyond the home into the factory and beyond the factory into the world where there were ”evils.” Her own instinct had always been the true instinct of the lady to avoid ”evil,” not to seek it, to avoid it, honestly if possible, and, if not honestly--well, to avoid it at any cost. The love of truth for truth's sake was one of the last of the virtues to descend from philosophy into a working theory of life, and it had been practically unknown to Virginia until Jenny had returned, at the end of her first year, from college. To be sure, Oliver used to talk like that long ago, but it was so long ago that she had almost forgotten it.
”You are very clever, dear--much too clever for me,” she said, rising from her knees. ”I wonder if Lucy has anything else she wants to go into this trunk? It might be packed a little tighter.”
In response to her call, the door opened and Lucy entered breathlessly, with her hair, which she had washed and not entirely dried, hanging over her shoulders.
”What is it, mother? Oh, Jenny, you have come! I'm so glad!”
The sisters kissed delightedly. In spite of their lack of sympathy, they were very fond of each other.
”Do you want to put anything else in this trunk before I lock it, Lucy?”
”Could you find room for my blue flannel bath robe? I'll want it on top where I can get it out without unpacking, and, oh, mother, won't you please put my alcohol stove and curling irons in my travelling bag?”
She was prettily excited, and during the last few days she had shown an almost child-like confidence in her mother's opinions about the trivial matters of packing.
”Mother, I don't want to come down yet--my hair isn't dry. Will you send supper up to me? I'll dress about nine o'clock when Bertie and the girls are coming.”
”Of course I will, darling. I'll go straight downstairs and fix your tray. Is there anything you can think of that you would like?”
At this Jenny broke into a laugh: ”Why, anybody would think she was dying instead of being married!”