Twilight Sleep (Wharton)/Chapter 9
IX
WELL, perhaps Dexter would understand now the need of hushing up the Grant Lindons. . . The picture might be a libel, of course such things, Pauline knew, could be patched up out of quite unrelated photographs. The dancing circle might have been skilfully fitted into the Dawnside patio, and goodness knew what shameless creatures have supplied the bodies of the dancers. Dexter had often told her that it was a common blackmailing trick.
Even if the photograph were genuine, Pauline could understand and make allowances. She had never seen anything of the kind herself at Dawnside—heaven forbid!—but whenever she had gone there for a lecture, or a new course of exercises, she had suspected that the bare whitewashed room, with its throned Buddha, which received her and other like-minded ladies of her age, all active, earnest and eager for self-improvement, had not let them very far into the mystery. Beyond, perhaps, were other rites, other settings: why not? Wasn't everybody talking about "the return to Nature," and ridiculing the American prudery in which the minds and bodies of her generation had been swaddled? The Mahatma was one of the leaders of the new movement: the Return to Purity, he called it. He was always celebrating the nobility of the human body, and praising the ease of the loose Oriental dress compared with the constricting western garb: but Pauline had supposed the draperies he advocated to be longer and less transparent; above all, she had not expected familiar faces above those insufficient scarves. . .
But here she was at her own door. There was just time to be ready for the Mothers; none in which to telephone to Dexter, or buy up the whole edition of the "Looker-on" (fantastic vision!), or try and get hold of its editor, who had once dined with her, and was rather a friend of Lita's. All these possibilities and impossibilities raced through her brain to the maddening tune of "too late" while she slipped off her street-dress and sat twitching with impatience under the maid's readjustment of her ruffled head. The gown prepared for the meeting, rich, matronly and just the least bit old-fashioned—very different from the one designed for the Birth Control committee—lay spread out beside the copy of her speech, and Maisie Bruss, who had been hovering within call, dashed back breathless from a peep over the stairs.
"They're arriving—"
"Oh, Maisie, rush down! Say I'm telephoning—"
Her incurable sincerity made her unhook the receiver and call out Manford's office number. Almost instantly she heard him. "Dexter, this Mahatma investigation must be stopped! Don't ask me why—there isn't time. Only promise—"
She heard his impatient laugh.
"No?"
"Impossible," came back.
She supposed she had hung up the receiver, fastened on her jewelled "Motherhood" badge, slipped on rings and bracelets as usual. But she remembered nothing clearly until she found herself on the platform at the end of the packed ball-room, looking across rows and rows of earnest confiding faces, with lips and eyes prepared for the admiring reception of her "message." She was considered a very good speaker: she knew how to reach the type of woman represented by this imposing assemblage—delegates from small towns all over the country, united by a common faith in the infinite extent of human benevolence and the incalculable resources of American hygiene. Something of the moral simplicity of her own bringing-up brought her close to these women, who had flocked to the great perfidious city serenely unaware of its being anything more, or other, than the gigantic setting of a Mothers' Meeting. Pauline, at such times, saw the world through their eyes, and was animated by a genuine ardour for the cause of motherhood and domesticity.
As she turned toward her audience a factitious serenity descended on her. She felt in control of herself and of the situation. She spoke.
"Personality—first and last, and at all costs. I've begun my talk to you with that one word because it seems to me to sum up our whole case. Personality—room to develop in: not only elbow-room but body-room and soul-room, and plenty of both. That's what every human being has a right to. No more effaced wives, no more drudging mothers, no more human slaves crushed by the eternal round of house-keeping and child-bearing—"
She stopped, drew a quick breath, met Nona's astonished gaze over rows of bewildered eye-glasses, and felt herself plunging into an abyss. But she caught at the edge, and saved herself from the plunge—
"That's what our antagonists say—the women who are afraid to be mothers, ashamed to be mothers, the women who put their enjoyment and their convenience and what they call their happiness before the mysterious heaven-sent joy, the glorious privilege, of bringing children into the world—"
A round of applause from the reassured mothers. She had done it! She had pulled off her effect from the very jaws of disaster. Only the swift instinct of recovery had enabled her, before it was too late, to pass off the first sentences of her other address, her Birth Control speech, as the bold exordium of her hymn to motherhood! She paused a moment, still inwardly breathless, yet already sure enough of herself to smile back at Nona across her unsuspecting audience—sure enough to note that her paradoxical opening had had a much greater effect than she could have hoped to produce by the phrases with which she had meant to begin.
A hint for future oratory—
Only—the inward nervousness subsisted. The discovery that she could lose not only her self-control but her memory, the very sense of what she was saying, was like a hand of ice pointing to an undecipherable warning.
Nervousness, fatigue, brain-exhaustion . . . had her fight against them been vain? What was the use of all the months and years of patient Taylorized effort against the natural human fate: against anxiety, sorrow, old age—if their menace was to reappear whenever events slipped from her control?
The address ended in applause and admiring exclamations. She had won her way straight to those trustful hearts, still full of personal memories of a rude laborious life, or in which its stout tradition lingered on in spite of motors, money and the final word in plumbing.
Pauline, after the dispersal of the Mothers, had gone up to her room still dazed by the narrowness of her escape. Thank heaven she had a free hour! She threw herself on her lounge and turned her gaze inward upon herself: an exercise for which she seldom had the leisure.
Now that she knew she was safe, and had done nothing to discredit herself or the cause, she could penetrate an inch or two farther into the motive power of her activities; and what she saw there frightened her. To be Chairman of the Mothers' Day Association, and a speaker at the Birth Control banquet! It did not need her daughter's derisive chuckle to give her the measure of her inconsequence. Yet to reconcile these contradictions had seemed as simple as to invite the Chief Rabbi and the Bishop of New York to meet Amalasuntha's Cardinal. Did not the Mahatma teach that, to the initiated, all discords were resolved into a higher harmony? When her hurried attention had been turned for a moment on the seeming inconsistency of encouraging natality and teaching how to restrict she had felt it was sufficient answer to say that the two categories of people appealed to were entirely different, and could not be "reached" in the same way. In ethics, as in advertising, the main thing was to get at your public. Hitherto this argument had satisfied her. Feeling there was much to be said on both sides, she had thrown herself with equal zeal into the propagation of both doctrines; but now, surveying her attempt with a chastened eye, she doubted its expediency.
Maisie Bruss, appearing with notes and telephone messages, seemed to reflect this doubt in her small buttoned-up face.
"Oh, Maisie! Is there anything important? I'm dead tired." It was an admission she did not often make.
"Nothing much. Three or four papers have 'phoned for copies of your address. It was a great success."
A faint glow of satisfaction wavered through Pauline's perplexities. She did not pretend to eloquence; she knew her children smiled at her syntax. Yet she had reached the hearts of her audience, and who could deny that that was success?
"Oh, Maisie-I don't think it's good enough to appear in print . . ."
The secretary smiled, made a short-hand memorandum, and went on: "The Marchesa telephoned that her son is sailing on Wednesday—and I've sent off her cable about the Cardinal, answer paid."
"Sailing on Wednesday? But it can't be—the day after tomorrow!" Pauline raised herself on an anxious elbow. She had warned her husband, and he wouldn't listen. "Telephone downstairs, please, Maisie—find out if Mr. Manford has come in." But she knew well enough what the answer would be. Nowadays, whenever there was anything serious to be talked over, Dexter found some excuse for avoiding her. She lay back, her lids dropped over her tired eyes, and waited for the answer: "Mr. Manford isn't in yet."
Something had come over Dexter lately: no closing of her eyes would shut that out! She supposed it was over-work—the usual reason. Rich men's doctors always said they were over-worked when became cross and trying at home.
"Dinner at the Toys' at 8.30." Miss Bruss continued her recital; and Pauline drew in her lips on a faintly bitter smile. At the Toys'—he wouldn't forget that! Whenever there was a woman who attracted him . . . why, Lita even . . . she'd seen him in a flutter once when he was going to the cinema with Lita, and thought she had forgotten to call for him! He had stamped up and down, watch in hand. . . Well, she supposed it was one of the symptoms of middle age: a passing phase. She could afford to be generous, after twenty years of his devotion; and she meant to be. Men didn't grow old as gracefully as women—she knew enough not to nag him about his little flirtations, and was really rather grateful to that silly Gladys Toy for making a fuss over him.
But when it came to serious matters, like this of the Mahatma, it was different, Dexter owed it to her to treat her opinions with more consideration—a woman whose oratory was sought for by a dozen newspapers! And that tiresome business of Michelangelo; another problem he had obstinately shirked. Discouragement closed in on Pauline. Of what use were eurythmics, cold douches, mental deep-breathings and all the other panaceas?
If things went on like this she would have to have her face lifted.