"That was too much for me," said Sylvia. "I proceeded to tell the
poor, blasГ© infant about my childhood; how my sister Celeste and I
had caught half-tamed horses and galloped about the pasture on them,
when we were so small that our little fat legs stuck out
horizontally; how we had given ourselves convulsions in the green
apple orchard, and had to be spanked every day before we had our
hair combed. I told how we heard a war-story about a "train of
gunpowder," and proceeded to lay such a train about the attic of
Castleman Hall, and set fire to it. I might have spent the afternoon
teaching the future churchman how to be a boy, if I hadn't suddenly
caught a glimpse of my husband's face!" 

12. I did not hear these stories all at once. I have put them
together here because they make a little picture of her honeymoon,
and also because they show how, without meaning it, she was giving
me an account of her husband. 

There had been even fewer adventures in the life of young Douglas
van Tuiver than in the life of the Honourable Reginald Annersley.
When one heard the details of the up-bringing of this "millionaire
baby," one was able to forgive him for being self-centred. He had
grown into a man who lived to fulfil his social duties, and he had
taken to wife a girl who was reckless, high-spirited, with a streak
of almost savage pride in her. 

Sylvia's was the true aristocratic attitude towards the rest of the
world. It could never have occurred to her to imagine that anywhere
upon the whole earth there were people superior to the Castlemans of
Castleman County. If you had been ignorant enough to suggest such an
idea, you would have seen her eyes flash and her nostrils quiver;
you would have been enveloped in a net of bewilderment and
transfixed with a trident of mockery and scorn. That was what she
had done in her husband-hunt. The trouble was that van Tuiver was
not clever enough to realise this, and to trust her prowess against
other beasts in the social jungle. 

Strange to me were such inside glimpses into the life of these two
favourites of the gods! I never grew weary of speculating about
them, and the mystery of their alliance. How had Sylvia come to make
this marriage? She was not happy with him; keen psychologist that
she was, she must have foreseen that she would not be happy with
him. Had she deliberately sacrificed herself, because of the good
she imagined she could do to her family? 

I was beginning to believe this. Irritated as she was by the solemn
snobberies of van Tuiver's world, it was none the less true that she
believed in money; she believed in it with a faith which appalled me
as I came to realise it. Everybody had to have money; the social
graces, the aristocratic virtues were impossible without it. The
rich needed it--even the poor needed it! Could it be that the proud
Castlemans of Castleman County had needed it also? 

If that guess at her inmost soul was correct, then what a drama was
her meeting with me! A person who despised money, who had proven it
by grim deeds--and this a person of her own money-worshipping sex!
What was the meaning of this phenomenon--this new religion that was
challenging the priesthood of Mammon? So some Roman consul's
daughter might have sat in her father's palace, and questioned in
wonder a Christian slave woman, destined ere long to face the lions
in the arena. 

The exactness of this simile was not altered by the fact that in
this case the slave woman was an agnostic, while the patrician girl
had been brought up in the creed of Christ. Sylvia had long since
begun to question the formulas of a church whose very pews were
rented, and whose existence, she declared, had to be justified by
charity to the poor. As we sat and talked, she knew this one thing
quite definitely--that I had a religion, and she had none. That was
the reason for the excitement which possessed her. 

Nor was that fact ever out of my own mind for a moment. As she sat
there in her sun-flooded morning-room, clad in an exquisite
embroidered robe of pink Japanese silk, she was such a lovely thing
that I was ready to cry out for joy of her; and yet there was
something within me, grim and relentless, that sat on guard, warning
me that she was of a different faith from mine, and that between
those two faiths there could be no compromise. Some day she must
find out what I thought of her husband's wealth, and the work it was
doing in the world! Some day she must hear my real opinion of the
religion of motor-cars and hand-woven carpets! 

13. Nor was the day so very far off. She sat opposite me, leaning
forward in her eagerness, declaring: "You must help to educate me. I
shall never rest until I'm of some real use in the world." 

"What have you thought of doing?" I inquired. 

"I don't know yet. My husband has an aunt who's interested in a
day-nursery for the children of working-women. I thought I might
help this, but my husband says it does no good whatever--it only
makes paupers of the poor. Do you think so?" 

"I think more than that," I replied. "It sets women free to compete
with men, and beat down men's wages." 

"Oh, what a puzzle!" she exclaimed, and then: "Is there any way of
helping the poor that wouldn't be open to the same objection?" 

That brought us once more to the subject I had put aside at our last
meeting. She had not forgotten it, and asked again for an
explanation. What did I mean by the competitive wage system? 

My purpose in this writing is to tell the story of Sylvia
Castleman's life, to show, not merely what she was, but what she
became. I have to make real to you a process of growth in her soul,
and at this moment the important event is her discovery of the
class-struggle and her reaction to it. You may say, perhaps, that
you are not interested in the class-struggle, but you cannot alter
the fact that you live in an age when millions of people are having
the course of their lives changed by the discovery of it. Here, for
instance, is a girl who has been taught to keep her promises, and
has promised to love, honour and obey a man; she is to find the task
more difficult, because she comes to understand the competitive
wage-system while he does not understand it and does not wish to.
If that seems to you strange material out of which to make a
domestic drama, I can only tell you that you have missed some of the
vital facts of your own time. 

I gave her a little lesson in elementary economics. I showed her
how, when a capitalist needed labour, he bought it in the open
market, like any other commodity. He did not think about the human
side of it, he paid the market-price, which came to be what the
labourer had to have in order to live. No labourer could get more,
because others would take less. 

"If that be true," I continued, "one of the things that follows is
the futility of charity. Whatever you do for the wage-worker on a
general scale comes sooner or later out of his wages. If you take
care of his children all day or part of the day, he can work for
less; if he doesn't discover that someone else does, and underbids
him and takes his place. If you feed his children at school, if you
bury him free, if you insure his life, or even give him a dinner on
Christmas Day, you simply enable his landlord to charge him more, or
his employer to pay him less." 

Sylvia sat for a while in thought, and then asked: "What can be done
about such a fact?" 

"The first thing to be done is to make sure that you understand it.
Nine-tenths of the people who concern themselves with social
questions don't, and so they waste their time in futilities. For
instance, I read the other day an article by a benevolent old
gentleman who believed that the social problem could be solved by
teaching the poor to chew their food better, so that they would eat
less. You may laugh at that, but it's not a bit more absurd than the
idea of our men of affairs, that the thing to do is to increase the
efficiency of the workers, and so produce more goods." 

"You mean the working-man doesn't get more, even when he produces
more?" 

"Take the case of the glass factories. Men used to get eight dollars
a day there, but someone invented a machine that did the work of a
dozen men, and that machine is run by a boy for fifty cents a day." 

A little pucker of thought came between her eyes. "Might there not
be a law forbidding the employer to reduce wages?" 

"A minimum wage law. But that would raise the cost of the product,
and drive the trade to another state." 

She suggested a national law, and when I pointed out that the trade
would go to other countries, she fell back on the tariff. I felt
like an embryologist--watching the individual repeating the history
of the race! 

"Protection and prosperity!" I said, with a smile. "Don't you see
the increase in the cost of living? The working-man gets more money
in his pay envelope, but he can't buy more with it because prices go
up. And even supposing you could pass a minimum wage law, and stop
competition in wages, you'd only change it to competition in
efficiency--you'd throw the old and the feeble and the untrained
into pauperism." 

"You make the world seem a hard place to live in," protested Sylvia.

"I'm simply telling you the elementary facts of business. You can
forbid the employer to pay less than a standard wage, but you can't
compel him to employ people who aren't able to earn that wage. The
business-man doesn't employ for fun, he does it for the profit there
is in it." 

"If that is true," said Sylvia, quickly, "then the way of employing
people is cruel." 

"But what other way could you have?" 

She considered. "They could be employed so that no one would make a
profit. Then surely they could be paid enough to live decently!" 

"But whose interest would it be to employ them without profit?" 

"The State should do it, if no one else will." 

I had been playing a game with Sylvia, as no doubt you have
perceived. "Surely," I said, "you wouldn't approve anything like
that!" 

"But why not?" 

"Because, it would be Socialism." 

She looked at me startled. "Is that Socialism?" 

"Of course it is. It's the essence of Socialism." 

"But then--what's the harm in it?" 

I laughed. "I thought you said that Socialism was a menace, like
divorce!" 

I had my moment of triumph, but then I discovered how fond was the
person who imagined that he could play with Sylvia. "I suspect you
are something of a Socialist yourself," she remarked. 

She told me a long time afterwards what had been her emotions during
these early talks. It was the first time in her life that she had
ever listened to ideas that were hostile to her order, and she did
so with tremblings and hesitations, combating at every step an
impulse to flee to the shelter of conventionality. She was more
shocked by my last revelation than she let me suspect. It counted
for little that I had succeeded in trapping her in proposing for
herself the economic programme of Socialism, for what terrifies her
class is not our economic programme, it is our threat of
slave-rebellion. I had been brought up in a part of the world where
democracy is a tradition, a word to conjure with, and I supposed
that this would be the case with any American--that I would only
have to prove that Socialism was democracy applied to industry. How
could I have imagined the kind of "democracy" which had been taught
to Sylvia by her Uncle Mandeville, the politician of the family, who
believed that America was soon to have a king, to keep the "foreign
riff-raff" in its place! 

14. At this time I was living in a three-roomed apartment in one of
the new "model tenements" on the East Side. I had a saying about the
place, that it was "built for the proletariat and occupied by
cranks." What an example for Sylvia of the futility of charity--the
effort on the part of benevolent capitalists to civilise the poor by
putting bath-tubs in their homes, and the discovery that the
graceless creatures were using them for the storage of coals! 

Having heard these strange stories, Sylvia was anxious to visit me,
and I was, of course, glad to invite her. I purchased a fancy brand
of tea, and some implements for the serving of it, and she came, and
went into raptures over my three rooms and bath, no one of which
would have made more than a closet in her own apartments. I
suspected that this was her Southern _noblesse oblige_, but I knew
also that in my living room there were some rows of books, which
would have meant more to Sylvia van Tuiver just then than the
contents of several clothes-closets. 

I was pleased to discover that my efforts had not been wasted. She
had been thinking, and she had even found time, in the midst of her
distractions, to read part of a book. In the course of our talks I
had mentioned Veblen, and she had been reading snatches of his work
on the Leisure Class, and I was surprised, and not a little amused,
to observe her reaction to it. 

When I talked about wages and hours of labour, I was dealing with
things that were remote from her, and difficult to make real; but
Veblen's theme, the idle rich, and the arts and graces whereby they
demonstrate their power, was the stuff of which her life was made.
The subtleties of social ostentation, the minute distinctions
between the newly-rich and the anciently-rich, the solemn
certainties of the latter and the quivering anxieties of the
former--all those were things which Sylvia knew as a bird knows the
way of the wind. To see the details of them analysed in learned,
scientific fashion, explained with great mouthfuls of words which
one had to look up in the dictionary--that was surely a new
discovery in the book-world! "Conspicuous leisure!" "Vicarious
consumption of goods!" "Oh, de-ah me, how que-ah!" exclaimed Sylvia.

And what a flood of anecdotes it let loose! A flood that bore us
straight back to Castleman Hall, and to all the scenes of her young
ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's,
how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too
minute for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt--the difference
between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong
kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a
landscape. "Every girl should have a background," had been one of
her maxims, and Sylvia had to have a special phaeton to drive, a
special horse to ride, special roses which no one else was allowed
to wear. 

"Conspicuous expenditure of time," wrote Veblen. It was curious,
said Sylvia, but nobody was free from this kind of vanity. There was
dear old Uncle Basil, a more godly bishop never lived, and yet he
had a foible for carving! In his opinion the one certain test of a
gentleman was the ease with which he found the joints of all kinds
of meat, and he was in arms against the modern tendency to turn such
accomplishments over to butlers. He would hold forth on the subject,
illustrating his theories with an elegant knife, and Sylvia
remembered how her father and the Chilton boys had wired up the
joints of a duck for the bishop to work on. In the struggle the
bishop had preserved his dignity, but lost the duck, and the
bishop's wife, being also high-born, and with a long line of
traditions behind her, had calmly continued the conversation, while
the butler removed the smoking duck from her lap! 

Such was the way of things at Castleman Hall! The wild, care-free
people--like half-grown children, romping their way through life!
There was really nothing too crazy for them to do, if the whim
struck them. Once a visiting cousin had ventured the remark that she
saw no reason why people should not eat rats; a barn-rat was clean
in its person, and far choicer in its food than a pig. Thereupon
"Miss Margaret" had secretly ordered the yard-man to secure a
barn-rat; she had had it broiled, and served in a dish of squirrels,
and had sat by and watched the young lady enjoy it! And this, mind
you, was Mrs. Castleman of Castleman Hall, mother of five children,
and as stately a dame as ever led the grand march at the Governor's
inaugural ball! "Major Castleman," she would say to her husband,
"you may take me into my bedroom, and when you have locked the door
securely, you may spit upon me, if you wish; but don't you dare even
to _imagine_ anything undignified about me in public!" 

15. In course of time Sylvia and I became very good friends. Proud
as she was, she was lonely, and in need of some one to open her
eager mind to. Who was there safer to trust than this plain Western
woman, who lived so far, both in reality and in ideas, from the
great world of fashion? 

Before we parted she considered it necessary to mention my
relationship to this world. She had a most acute social conscience.
She knew exactly what formalities she owed to everyone, just when
she ought to call, and how long she ought to stay, and what she
ought to ask the other person to do in return; she assumed that the
other knew it all exactly as well, and would suffer if she failed in
the slightest degree. 

So now she had to throw herself upon my mercy. "You see," she
explained, "my husband wouldn't understand. I may be able to change
him gradually, but if I shock him all at once--" 

"My dear Mrs. van Tuiver--" I smiled. 

"You can't really imagine!" she persisted. "You see, he takes his
social position so seriously! And when you are conspicuous--when
everybody's talking about what you do--when everything that's the
least bit unusual is magnified--" 

"My dear girl!" I broke in again. "Stop a moment and let me talk!" 

"But I hate to have to think--" 

"Don't worry about my thoughts! They are most happy ones! You must
understand that a Socialist cannot feel about such things as you do;
we work out our economic interpretation of them, and after that they
are simply so much data to us. I might meet one of your great
friends, and she might snub me, but I would never think she had
snubbed _me_--it would be my Western accent, and my forty-cent hat,
and things like that which had put me in a class in her mind. My
real self nobody can snub--certainly not until they've got at it." 

"Ah!" said Sylvia, with shining eyes. "You have your own kind of
aristocracy, I see!" 

"What I want," I said, "is you. I'm an old hen whose chickens have
grown up and left her, and I want something to mother. Your
wonderful social world is just a bother to me, because it keeps me
from gathering you into my arms as I'd like to. So what you do is to
think of some role for me to play, so that I can come to see you;
let me be advising you about your proposed day-nursery, or let me
be a tutor of something, or a nice, respectable sewing-woman who
darns the toes of your silk stockings!" 

She laughed. "If you suppose that I'm allowed to wear my stockings
until they have holes in them, you don't understand the perquisites
of maids." She thought a moment, and then added: "You might come to
trim hats for me." 

By that I knew that we were really friends. If it does not seem to
you a bold thing for Sylvia to have made a joke about my hat, it is
only because you do not yet know her. I have referred to her
money-consciousness and her social-consciousness; I would be
idealizing her if I did not refer to another aspect of her which
appalled me when I came to realise it--her clothes-consciousness.
She knew every variety of fabric and every shade of colour and every
style of design that ever had been delivered of the frenzied
sartorial imagination. She had been trained in all the infinite
minutiae which distinguished the right from the almost right; she
would sweep a human being at one glance, and stick him in a pigeon
hole of her mind for ever--because of his clothes. When later on she
had come to be conscious of this clothes-consciousness, she told me
that ninety-nine times out of a hundred she had found this method of
appraisal adequate for the purposes of society life. What a curious
comment upon our civilization--that all that people had to ask of
one another, all they had to give to one another, should be
expressible in terms of clothes! 

16. I had set out to educate Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver in the things I
thought she needed to know. A part of my programme was to find some
people of modern sympathies whom she might meet without offence to
her old prejudices. The first person I thought of was Mrs. Jessie
Frothingham, who was the head of a fashionable girls' school, just
around the corner from Miss Abercrombie's where Sylvia herself had
received the finishing touch. Mrs. Frothingham's was as exclusive
and expensive a school as the most proper person could demand, and
great was Sylvia's consternation when I told her that its principal
was a member of the Socialist party, and made no bones about
speaking in public for us. 

How in the world did she manage it? For one thing, I answered, she
ran a good school--nobody had ever been heard to deny that. For
another, she was an irresistibly serene and healthy person, who
would look one of her millionaire "papas" in the eye and tell him
what was what with so much decision; it would suddenly occur to the
great man that if his daughter could be made into so capable a
woman, he would not care what ticket she might vote. 

Then too, it was testimony to the headway we are making that we are
ceasing to be dangerous, and getting to be picturesque. In these
days of strenuous social competition, when mammas are almost at
their wits' end for some new device, when it costs incredible sums
to make no impression at all--here was offered a new and inexpensive
way of being unique. There could be no question that men were
getting to like serious women; the most amazing subjects were coming
up at dinner-parties, and you might hear the best people speak
disrespectfully of their own money, which means that the new
Revolution will have not merely its "EgalitГ© Orleans," but also some
of the ladies of his family! 

I telephoned from Sylvia's house to Mrs. Frothingham, who answered:
"Wouldn't you like Mrs. van Tuiver to hear a speech? I am to speak
next week at the noon-day Wall Street meeting." I passed the
question on, and Sylvia answered with an exclamation of delight:
"Would a small boy like to attend a circus?" 

It was arranged that Sylvia was to take us in her car. You may
picture me with my grand friends--an old speckled hen in the company
of two golden pheasants. I kept very quiet and let them get
acquainted, knowing that my cause was safe in the hands of one so
perfectly tailored as Mrs. Frothingham. 

Sylvia expressed her delight at the idea of hearing a Socialist
speech, and her amazement that the head of Mrs. Frothingham's should
be so courageous, and meantime we threaded our way through the
tangle of trucks and surface-cars on Broadway, and came to the
corner of Wall Street. Here Mrs. Frothingham said she would get out
and walk; it was quite likely that someone might recognise Mrs.
Douglas van Tuiver, and she ought not to be seen arriving with the
speaker. Sylvia, who would not willingly have committed a breach of
etiquette towards a bomb-throwing anarchist, protested at this, but
Mrs. Frothingham laughed good-naturedly, saying that it would be
time enough for Mrs. van Tuiver to commit herself when she knew what
she believed. 

The speaking was to be from the steps of the Sub-treasury. We made a
_dГ©tour,_ and came up Broad Street, stopping a little way from the
corner. These meetings had been held all through the summer and
fall, so that people had learned to expect them; although it lacked
some minutes of noon, there was already a crowd gathered. A group of
men stood upon the broad steps, one with a red banner and several
others with armfuls of pamphlets and books. With them was our
friend, who looked at us and smiled, but gave no other sign of
recognition. 

Sylvia pushed back the collar of her sable coat, and sat erect in
her shining blue velvet, her eyes and her golden hair shining
beneath the small brim of a soft velvet hat. As she gazed eagerly at
the busy throngs of men hurrying about this busy corner, she
whispered to me: "I haven't been so excited since my _dГ©but_ party!"

The crowd increased until it was difficult to get through Wall
Street. The bell of Old Trinity was tolling the hour of noon, and
the meeting was about to begin, when suddenly I heard an exclamation
from Sylvia, and turning, saw a well-dressed man pushing his way
from the office of Morgan and Company towards us. Sylvia clutched my
hand where it lay on the seat of the car, and half gasped: "My
husband!" 

17. Of course I had been anxious to see Douglas van Tuiver. I had
heard Claire Lepage's account of him, and Sylvia's, also I had seen
pictures of him in the newspapers, and had studied them with some
care, trying to imagine what sort of personage he might be. I knew
that he was twenty-four, but the man who came towards us I would
have taken to be forty. His face was sombre, with large features and
strongly marked lines about the mouth; he was tall and thin, and
moved with decision, betraying no emotion even in this moment of
surprise. "What are you doing here?" were his first words. 

For my part, I was badly "rattled"; I knew by the clutch of Sylvia's
hand that she was too. But here I got a lesson in the nature of
"social training." Some of the bright colour had faded from her
face, but she spoke with the utmost coolness, the words coming
naturally and simply: "We can't get through the crowd." And at the
same time she looked about her, as much as to say: "You can see for
yourself." (One of the maxims of Lady Dee had set forth that a lady
never told a lie if she could avoid it.) 

Sylvia's husband looked about, saying: "Why don't you call an
officer?" He started to follow his own suggestion, and I thought
then that my friend would miss her meeting. But she had more nerve
than I imagined. 

"No," she said. "Please don't." 

"Why not?" Still there was no emotion in the cold, grey eyes. 

"Because--I think there's something going on." 

"What of that?" 

"I'm not in a hurry, and I'd like to see." 

He stood for a moment looking at the crowd. Mrs. Frothingham had
come forward, evidently intending to speak. "What is this, Ferris?"
he demanded of the chauffeur. 

"I'm not sure, sir," said the man. "I think it's a Socialist
meeting." (He was, of course, not missing the little comedy. I
wondered what he thought!) 

"A Socialist meeting?" said van Tuiver; then, to his wife: "You
don't want to stay for that!" 

Again Sylvia astonished me. "I'd like to very much," she answered
simply. 

He made no reply. I saw him stare at her, and then I saw his glance
take me in. I sat in a corner as inconspicuous as I could make
myself. I wondered whether I was a sempstress or a tutor, and
whether either of these functionaries were introduced, and whether
they shook hands or not. 

Mrs. Frothingham had taken her stand at the base of Washington's
statue. Had she by any chance identified the tall and immaculate
gentleman who stood beside the automobile? Before she had said three
sentences I made sure that she had done so, and I was appalled at
her audacity. 

"Fellow citizens," she began--"fellow-buccaneers of Wall Street."
And when the mild laughter had subsided: "What I have to say is
going to be addressed to one individual among you--the American
millionaire. I assume there is one present--if no actual
millionaire, then surely several who are destined to be, and not
less than a thousand who aspire to be. So hear me, Mr. Millionaire,"
this with a smile, which gave you a sense of a reserve fund of
energy and good humour. She had the crowd with her from the
start--all but one. I stole a glance at the millionaire, and saw
that he was not smiling. 

"Won't you get in?" asked his wife, and he answered coldly: "No,
I'll wait till you've had enough." 

"Last summer I had a curious experience," said the speaker. "I was a
guest at a tennis match, played upon the grounds of a State
insane-asylum, the players being the doctors of the institution.
Here, on a beautiful sunshiny afternoon, were ladies and gentlemen
clad in festive white, enjoying a holiday, while in the background
stood a frowning building with iron-barred gates and windows, from
which one heard now and then the howlings of the maniacs. Some of
the less fortunate of these victims of fate had been let loose, and
while we played tennis, they chased the balls. All afternoon, while
I sipped tea and chatted and watched the games, I said to myself:
'Here is the most perfect simile of our civilization that has ever
come to me. Some people wear white and play tennis all day, while
other people chase the balls, or howl in dungeons in the
background!' And that is the problem I wish to put before my
American millionaire--the problem of what I will call our lunatic-
asylum stage of civilization. Mind you, this condition is all very
well so long as we can say that the lunatics are incurable--that
there is nothing we can do but shut our ears to their howling, and
go ahead with our tennis. But suppose the idea were to dawn upon us
that it is only because we played tennis all day that the lunatic-
asylum is crowded, then might not the howls grow unendurable to us,
and the game lose its charm?" 

Stealing glances about me, I saw that several people were watching
the forty-or-fifty-times-over millionaire; they had evidently
recognised him, and were enjoying the joke. "Haven't you had enough
of this?" he suddenly demanded of his wife, and she answered,
guilelessly: "No, let's wait. I'm interested." 

"Now, listen to me, Mr. American Millionaire," the speaker was
continuing. "You are the one who plays tennis, and we, who chase the
balls for you--we are the lunatics. And my purpose to-day is to
prove to you that it is only because you play tennis all day that we
have to chase balls all the day, and to tell you that some time soon
we are going to cease to be lunatics, and that then you will have to
chase your own balls! And don't, in your amusement over this
illustration, lose sight of the serious nature of what I am talking
about--the horrible economic lunacy which is known as poverty, and
which is responsible for most of the evils we have in this world
to-day--for crime and prostitution, suicide, insanity and war. My
purpose is to show you, not by any guess of mine, or any appeals to
your faith, but by cold business facts which can be understood in
Wall Street, that this economic lunacy is one which can be cured;
that we have the remedy in our hands, and lack nothing but the
intelligence to apply it." 

18. I do not want to bore you with a Socialist speech. I only want
to give you an idea of the trap into which Mr. Douglas van Tuiver
had been drawn. He stood there, rigidly aloof while the speaker went
on to explain the basic facts of wealth-production in modern
society. She quoted from Kropotkin: "'Fields, Factories and Work-
shops,' on sale at this meeting for a quarter!"--showing how by
modern intensive farming--no matter of theory, but methods which
were in commercial use in hundreds of places--it would be possible
to feed the entire population of the globe from the soil of the
British Isles alone. She showed by the bulletins of the United
States Government how the machine process had increased the
productive power of the individual labourer ten, twenty, a hundred
fold. So vast was man's power of producing wealth today, and yet the
labourer lived in dire want just as in the days of crude
hand-industry! 

So she came back to her millionaire, upon whom this evil rested. He
was the master of the machine for whose profit the labourer had to
produce. He could only employ the labourer to produce what could be
sold at a profit; and so the stream of prosperity was choked at its
source. "It is you, Mr. Millionaire, who are to blame for poverty;
it is because so many millions of dollars must be paid to you in
profits that so many millions of men must live in want. In other
words, precisely as I declared at the outset, it is your playing
tennis which is responsible for the lunatics chasing the balls!" 

I wish that I might give some sense of the speaker's mastery of this
situation, the extent to which she had communicated her good-humour
to the crowd. You heard ripple after ripple of laughter, you saw
everywhere about you eager faces, following every turn of the
argument. No one could resist the contagion of interest--save only
the American millionaire! He stood impassive, never once smiling,
never once betraying a trace of feeling. Venturing to watch him more
closely, however, I could see the stern lines deepening about his
mouth, and his long, lean face growing more set. 

The speaker had outlined the remedy--a change from the system of
production for profit to one of production for use. She went on to
explain how the change was coming; the lunatic classes were
beginning to doubt the divine nature of the rules of the asylum, and
they were preparing to mutiny, and take possession of the place. And
here I saw that Sylvia's husband had reached his limit. He turned to
her: "Haven't you had enough of this?" 

"Why, no," she began. "If you don't mind--" 

"I do mind very much," he said, abruptly. "I think you are
committing a breach of taste to stay here, and I would be greatly
obliged if you would leave." 

And without really waiting for Sylvia's reply, he directed, "Back
out of here, Ferris." 

The chauffeur cranked up, and sounded his horn--which naturally had
the effect of disturbing the meeting. People supposed we were going
to try to get through the crowd ahead--and there was no place where
anyone could move. But van Tuiver went to the rear of the car,
saying, in a voice of quiet authority: "A little room here, please."
And so, foot by foot, we backed away from the meeting, and when we
had got clear of the throng, the master of the car stepped in, and
we turned and made our way down Broad Street. 

And now I was to get a lesson in the aristocratic ideal. Of course
van Tuiver was angry; I believe he even suspected his wife of having
known of the meeting. I supposed he would ask some questions; I
supposed that at least he would express his opinion of the speech,
his disgust that a woman of education should make such a spectacle
of herself. Such husbands as I had been familiar with had never
hesitated to vent their feelings under such circumstances. But from
Douglas van Tuiver there came--not a word! He sat, perfectly
straight, staring before him, like a sphinx; and Sylvia, after one
or two swift glances at him, began to gossip cheerfully about her
plans for the day-nursery for working-women! 

So for a few blocks, until suddenly she leaned forward. "Stop here,
Ferris." And then, turning to me, "Here is the American Trust
Company." 

"The American Trust Company?" I echoed, in my dumb stupidity. 

"Yes--that is where the check is payable," said Sylvia, and gave me
a pinch. 

And so I comprehended, and gathered up my belongings and got out.
She shook my hand warmly, and her husband raised his hat in a very
formal salute, after which the car sped on up the street. I stood
staring after it, in somewhat the state of mind of any humble rustic
who may have been present when Elijah was borne into the heavens by
the chariot of fire! 

19. Sylvia had been something less than polite to me; and so I had
not been home more than an hour before there came a messenger-boy
with a note. By way of reassuring her, I promised to come to see her
the next morning; and when I did, and saw her lovely face so full of
concern, I forgot entirely her worldly greatness, and did what I had
longed to do from the beginning--put my arms about her and kissed
her. 

"My dear girl," I protested, "I don't want to be a burden in your
life--I want to help you!'" 

"But," she exclaimed, "what must you have thought--" 

"I thought I had made a lucky escape!" I laughed. 

She was proud--proud as an Indian; it was hard for her to make
admissions about her husband. But then--we were like two errant
school-girls, who had been caught m an escapade! "I don't know what
I'm going to do about him," she said, with a wry smile. "He really
won't listen--I can't make any impression on him." 

"Did he guess that you'd come there on purpose?" I asked. 

"I told him," she answered. 

"You _told_ him!" 

"I'd meant to keep it secret--I wouldn't have minded telling him a
fib about a little thing. But he made it so very serious!" 

I could understand that it must have been serious after the telling.
I waited for her to add what news she chose. 

"It seems," she said, "that my husband has a cousin, a pupil of Mrs.
Frothingham's. You can imagine!" 

"I can imagine Mrs. Frothingham may lose a pupil." 

"No; my husband says his Uncle Archibald always was a fool. But how
can anyone be so narrow! He seemed to take Mrs. Frothingham as a
personal affront." 

This was the most definite bit of vexation against her husband that
she had ever let me see. I decided to turn it into a jest. "Mrs.
Frothingham will be glad to know she was understood," I said. 

"But seriously, why can't men have open minds about politics and
money?" She went on in a worried voice: "I knew he was like this
when I met him at Harvard. He was living in his own house, aloof
from the poorer men--the men who were most worth while, it seemed to
me. And when I told him of the bad effect he was having on these men
and on his own character as well, he said he would do whatever I
asked--he even gave up his house and went to live in a dormitory. So
I thought I had some influence on him. But now, here is the same
thing again, only I find that one can't take a stand against one's
husband. At least, he doesn't admit the right." She hesitated. "It
doesn't seem loyal to talk about it." 

"My dear girl," I said with an impulse of candour, "there isn't much
you can tell me about that problem. My own marriage went to pieces
on that rock." 

I saw a look of surprise upon her face. "I haven't told you my story
yet," I said. "Some day I will--when you feel you know me well
enough for us to exchange confidences." 

There was more than a hint of invitation in this. After a silence,
she said: "One's instinct is to hide one's troubles." 

"Sylvia," I answered, "let me tell you about us. You must realise
that you've been a wonderful person to me; you belong to a world I
never had anything to do with, and never expected to get a glimpse
of. It's the wickedness of our class-civilization that human beings
can't be just human beings to each other--a king can hardly have a
friend. Even after I've overcome the impulse I have to be awed by
your luxury and your grandness; I'm conscious of the fact that
everybody else is awed by them. If I so much as mention that I've
met you, I see people start and stare at me--instantly I become a
personage. It makes me angry, because I want to know _you_." 

She was gazing at me, not saying a word. I went on: "I'd never have
thought it possible for anyone to be in your position and be real
and straight and human, but I realise that you have managed to work
that miracle. So I want to love you and help you, in every way I
know how. But you must understand, I can't ask for your confidence,
as I could for any other woman's. There is too much vulgar curiosity
about the rich and great, and I can't pretend to be unaware of that
hatefulness; I can't help shrinking from it. So all I can say is--if
you need me, if you ever need a real friend, why, here I am; you may
be sure I understand, and won't tell your secrets to anyone else." 

With a little mist of tears in her eyes, Sylvia put out her hand and
touched mine. And so we went into a chamber alone together, and shut
the cold and suspicious world outside. 

20. We knew each other well enough now to discuss the topic which
has been the favourite of women since we sat in the doorways of
caves and pounded wild grain in stone mortars--the question of our
lords, who had gone hunting, and who might be pleased to beat us on
their return. I learned all that Sylvia had been taught on the
subject of the male animal; I opened that amazing unwritten volume
of woman traditions, the maxims of Lady Dee Lysle. 

Sylvia's maternal great-aunt had been a great lady out of a great
age, and incidentally a grim and grizzled veteran of the sex-war.
Her philosophy started from a recognition of the physical and
economic inferiority of woman, as complete as any window-smashing
suffragette could have formulated, but her remedy for it was a
purely individualist one, the leisure-class woman's skill in trading
upon her sex. Lady Dee did not use that word, of course--she would
as soon have talked of her esophagus. Her formula was "charm," and
she had taught Sylvia that the preservation of "charm" was the end
of woman's existence, the thing by which she remained a lady, and
without which she was more contemptible than the beasts. 

She had taught this, not merely by example and casual anecdote, but
by precepts as solemnly expounded as bible-texts. "Remember, my
dear, a woman with a husband is like a lion-tamer with a whip!" And
the old lady would explain what a hard and dangerous life was lived
by lion-tamers, how their safety depended upon life-long
distrustfulness of the creatures over whom they ruled. She would
tell stories of the rending and maiming of luckless ones, who had
forgotten for a brief moment the nature of the male animal! "Yes, my
dear," she would say, "believe in love; but let the man believe
first!" Her maxims never sinned by verbosity. 

The end of all this was not merely food and shelter, a home and
children, it was the supremacy of a sex, its ability to shape life
to its whim. By means of this magic "charm"--a sort of perpetual
individual sex-strike--a woman turned her handicaps into advantages
and her chains into ornaments; she made herself a rare and wonderful
creature, up to whom men gazed in awe. It was "romantic love," but
preserved throughout life, instead of ceasing with courtship. 

All the Castleman women understood these arts, and employed them.
There was Aunt Nannie, when she cracked her whip the dear old
bishop-lion would jump as if he had been shot! Did not the whole
State know the story of how once he had been called upon at a
banquet and had risen and remarked: "Ladies and gentlemen, I had
intended to make a speech to you this evening, but I see that my
wife is present, so I must beg you to excuse me." The audience
roared, and Aunt Nannie was furious, but poor dear Bishop Chilton
had spoken but the literal truth, that he could not spread the wings
of his eloquence in the presence of his "better half." 

And with Major Castleman, though it seemed different, it was really
the same. Sylvia's mother had let herself get stout--which seemed a
dangerous mark of confidence in the male animal. But the major was
fifteen years older than his wife, and she had a weak heart with
which to intimidate him. Now and then the wilfulness of Castleman
Lysle would become unendurable in the house, and his father would
seize him and turn him over his knee. His screams would bring "Miss
Margaret" flying to the rescue: "Major Castleman, how dare you spank
one of _my_ children?" And she would seize the boy and march off in
terrible haughtiness, and lock herself and her child in her room,
and for hours afterwards the poor major would wander about the
house, suffering the lonelines of the guilty soul. You would hear
him tapping gently at his lady's door. "Honey! Honey! Are you mad
with me?" "Major Castleman," the stately answer would come, "will
you oblige me by leaving one room in this house to which I may
retire?" 

21. I would give you a wrong idea of Sylvia if I did not make clear
that along with this sophistication as to the play-aspects of sex,
there went the most incredible ignorance as to its practical
realities. In my arguments I had thought to appeal to her by
referring to that feature of wage-slavery which more than even
child-labour stirs the moral sense of women, but to my utter
consternation I discovered that here was a woman nearly a year
married who did not know what prostitution was. A suspicion had
begun to dawn upon her, and she asked me, timidly: Could it be
possible that that intimacy which was given in marriage could become
a thing of barter in the market-place? When I told her the truth, I
found her horror so great that it was impossible to go on talking
economics. How could I say that women were driven to such things by
poverty? Surely a woman who was not bad at heart would starve,
before she would sell her body to a man! 

Perhaps I should have been more patient with her, but I am bitter on
these subjects. "My dear Mrs. van Tuiver," I said, "there is a lot
of nonsense talked about this matter. There is very little sex-life
for women without a money-price made clear in advance." 

"I don't understand," she said. 

"I don't know about your case," I replied, "but when I married, it
was because I was unhappy and wanted a home of my own. And if the
truth were told, that is why most women marry." 

"But what has THAT to do with it?" she cried. She really did not
see! 

"What is the difference--except that such women stand out for a
maintenance, while the prostitute takes cash?" I saw that I had
shocked her, and I said: "You must be humble about these things,
because you have never been poor, and you cannot judge those who
have been. But surely you must have known worldly women who married
rich men for their money. And surely you admit that that is
prostitution?" 

She fell suddenly silent, and I saw what I had done, and, no doubt,
you will say I should have been ashamed of myself. But when one has
seen as much of misery and injustice as I have, one cannot be so
patient with the fine artificial delicacies and sentimentalities of
the idle rich. I went ahead to tell her some stories, showing her
what poverty actually meant to women. 

Then, as she remained silent, I asked her how she had managed to
remain so ignorant. Surely she must have met with the word
"prostitution" in books; she must have heard allusions to the
"demi-monde." 

"Of course," she said, "I used to see conspicuous-looking women at
the race-track in New Orleans; I've sat near them in restaurants,
I've known by my mother's looks and her agitation that they must be
bad women. But you see, I didn't know what it meant--I had nothing
but a vague feeling of something dreadful." 

I smiled. "Then Lady Dee did not tell you everything about the
possibilities of her system of 'charm.'" 

"No," said Sylvia. "Evidently she didn't!" She sat staring at me,
trying to get up the courage to go on with this plain speaking. 

And at last the courage came. "I think it is wrong," she exclaimed.
"Girls ought not to be kept so ignorant! They ought to know what
such things mean. Why, I didn't even know what marriage meant!" 

"Can that be true?" I asked. 

"All my life I had thought of marriage, in a way; I had been trained
to think of it with every eligible man I met--but to me it meant a
home, a place of my own to entertain people in. I pictured myself
going driving with my husband, giving dinner-parties to his friends.
I knew I'd have to let him kiss me, but beyond that--I had a vague
idea of something, but I didn't think. I had been deliberately
trained not to let myself think--to run away from every image that
came to me. And I went on dreaming of what I'd wear, and how I'd
greet my husband when he came home in the evening." 

"Didn't you think about children?" 

"Yes--but I thought of the CHILDREN. I thought what they'd look
like, and how they'd talk, and how I'd love them. I don't know if
many young girls shut their minds up like that." 

She was speaking with agitation, and I was gazing into her eyes,
reading more than she knew I was reading. I was nearer to solving
the problem that had been baffling me. And I wanted to take her
hands in mine, and say: "You would never have married him if you'd
understood!" 

22. Sylvia thought she ought to have been taught, but when she came
to think of it she was unable to suggest who could have done the
teaching. "Your mother?" I asked, and she had to laugh, in spite of
the seriousness of her mood. "Poor dear mamma! When they sent me up
here to boarding school, she took me off and tried to tell me not to
listen to vulgar talk from the girls. She managed to make it clear
that I mustn't listen to something, and I managed not to listen. I'm
sure that even now she would rather have her tongue cut out than
talk to me about such things." 

"I talked to my children," I assured her. 

"And you didn't feel embarrassed?" 

"I did in the beginning--I had the same shrinkings to overcome. But
I had a tragedy behind me to push me on." 

I told her the story of my nephew, a shy and sensitive lad, who used
to come to me for consolation, and became as dear to me as my own
children. When he was seventeen he grew moody and despondent; he ran
away from home for six months and more, and then returned and was
forgiven--but that seemed to make no difference. One night he came
to see me, and I tried hard to get him to tell me what was wrong. He
wouldn't, but went away, and several hours later I found a letter he
had shoved under the table-cloth. I read it, and rushed out and
hitched up a horse and drove like mad to my brother-in-law's, but I
got there too late, the poor boy had taken a shot-gun to his room,
and put the muzzle into his mouth, and set off the trigger with his
foot. In the letter he told me what was the matter--he had got into
trouble with a woman of the town, and had caught syphilis. He had
gone away and tried to get cured, but had fallen into the hands of a
quack, who had taken all his money and left his health worse than
ever, so in despair and shame the poor boy had shot his head off.

I paused, uncertain if Sylvia would understand the story. "Do you
know what syphilis is?" I asked. 

"I suppose--I have heard of what we call a 'bad disease'" she said.