The Inferior Woman
View a copy of the original publication of “The Inferior Woman." Hampton’s Magazine May 1910:727-31. (via Issuu)
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Mrs. Spring Fragrance walked through the park, admiring the flowers and listening to the birds singing. It was a beautiful afternoon, with the warmth of the sun cooled by a refreshing breeze. As she walked along, she meditated upon a book which she had some notion of writing. Many American women wrote books. Why should not a Chinese? She would write a book about Americans for her Chinese women friends. The American people were so interesting and mysterious. Something of pride and pleasure crept into Mrs. Spring Fragrance's heart as she pictured Fei and Sie and Mai Gwi Far listening to Lae-Choo reading her illuminating paragraphs.
As she turned down a by-path, she saw Will Carman, her American neighbor's son, coming toward her; and by his side a young girl who seemed to belong to the sweet air and brightness of all the things around her. They were talking very earnestly and the eyes of the young man were on the girl's face.
"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Spring Fragrance, after one swift glance. "It is love." Retreating behind a syringa bush which completely screened her from view, she watched the young couple go up the winding path.
"It is love," repeated Mrs. Spring Fragrance, "and it is the ‘Inferior Woman.'''
After tea that evening, Mrs. Spring Fragrance stood musing at her front window. The sun hovered over the Olympic mountains like a great golden-red bird with dark purple wings, its long tail of light trailing underneath in the waters of Puget Sound.
"How very beautiful!" exclaimed Mrs. Spring Fragrance; then she sighed.
"Why do you sigh?" asked Mr. Spring Fragrance.
"My heart is sad," answered his wife.
"Is the cat sick?" inquired Mr. Spring Fragrance.
"It is not our Wise One who troubles me to-day," replied Mrs. Spring Fragrance, shaking her head. "It is our neighbors. The sorrow of the Carman household is that the mother desires for her son the Superior Woman, and his heart enshrines but the Inferior. I have seen them together to-day, and I know."
"What do you know?"
"That the Inferior Woman is the mate for young Carman."
Only the day before, Mrs. Spring Fragrance's arguments had all been in favor of the Superior Woman; the woman equal in all things to man. Her husband uttered some words expressive of surprise, to which Mrs. Spring Fragrance retorted:
"Yesterday, O Great Man, I was a caterpillar!"
Just then young Carman came strolling up the path and Mr. Spring Fragrance opened the door to him.
"Come in, neighbor," said he, "I have received some new books from Shanghai."
"Good," replied young Carman, who was interested in Chinese literature. While he and Mr. Spring Fragrance discussed "The Odes of Chow" and "The Sorrows of Han," Mrs. Spring Fragrance studied her visitor's countenance. Why was his expression so much more grave than gay? It had not been so a year ago. Mrs. Spring Fragrance noted other changes also, both in speech and manner. "He is no longer a boy," mused she. “He is a man, and it is the work of the ‘Inferior Woman’."
"And when, Mr. Carman," she inquired, "will you bring home a daughter to your mother?"
"And when, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, do you think I should?" returned the young man.
Mrs. Spring Fragrance spread wide her fan and gazed thoughtfully over its silver edge.
"The summer moons will soon be over," said she. "You should not wait until the grass is yellow."
"The woodmen's blows responsive ring,
As on the trees they fall,
And when the birds their sweet notes sing,
They to each other call.
From the dark valley comes a bird,
And seeks the lofty tree.
Ying goes its voice, and thus it cries,
'Companion, come to me.'
The bird, although a creature small,
Upon its mate depends,
And shall we men, who rank o'er all,
Not seek to have our friends,"
quoted Mr. Spring Fragrance.
"I perceive," said young Carman, "that you are both allied against my peace."
"It is for your mother," replied Mrs. Spring Fragrance, soothingly. "She will be happy when she knows that your affections are fixed by marriage."
There was a gleam of amusement in the young man's eyes as he answered: "But if my mother has no wish for a daughter, at least no wish for the daughter I would want to give her-- "
"When I first came to America," returned Mrs. Spring Fragrance, "my husband desired me to wear the American dress. I protested, and declared that never would I so appear. But one day he brought home a gown fit for a fairy, and ever since then I have worn and adored the American dress."
"Mrs. Spring Fragrance," declared young Carman, "your argument is incontrovertible."
Whether Will took her argument seriously to heart or not, the following evening found him standing outside the door of a little cottage perched upon a bluff overlooking the sound. The chill sea air was sweet with the scent of roses.
"Are you not surprised to see me?" he inquired of the young person who opened the door.
"Not at all," replied the young person, demurely.
"I wish I could make you feel," said he.
She laughed—a pretty infectious laugh which exorcised all his gloom. He looked down upon her as they stood together under the cluster of electric lights in her cozy little sitting room. Such a slender girlish figure! Such a soft cheek, red mouth, and firm little chin! Often in his dreams of her he had taken her into his arms and coaxed her into a good humor. But, alas! dreams are not realities, and the calm friendliness of this young person made any demonstration of tenderness well-nigh impossible. But for the shy regard of her eyes, he might have been no more to her than a friendly acquaintance.
"I hear," said she, taking up some needlework, "that your Welland case comes on to-morrow."
"Yes," he answered, "and I have all my witnesses ready."
He drew his chair a little nearer to her side and turned over the pages of a book lying on her work table. On the fly leaf was inscribed in a man's writing: "To the dear little woman whose friendship is worth a fortune." Another book beside it bore the inscription, "With the love of all the firm, including the boys," and a volume of poems was dedicated to the young woman "With the high regards and stanch affection" of some other masculine person.
Will Carman pushed aside these evidences of his sweetheart's popularity with his own kind, and leaned across the table.
"Alice," said he, "once upon a time you admitted that you loved me."
A blush suffused her countenance.
"Did I?" she queried.
"You did, indeed."
"Oh, please!" protested the girl, covering her ears with her hands.
"I will please," asserted the young man. "I have come here tonight, Alice, to ask you to marry me—and at once."
"Deary me!" exclaimed the young person; but she let her needlework fall into her lap, as her lover laid his arm around her shoulders and pleaded his most important case.
If, for a moment, the small mouth quivered, the firm little chin lost its firmness, and the proud little head yielded to the pressure of a lover's arm, it was only for a moment so brief and fleeting that Will Carman had hardly become aware of it before it had passed.
"No," said the young person, sorrowfully but decidedly. She had arisen and was standing on the other side of the table facing him. "I cannot marry you while your mother regards me as beneath you."
"When she knows you, she will acknowledge you are above me. But I am not asking you to come to my mother; I am asking you to come to me, dear. If you will put your hand in mine and trust to me through all the coming years, no man or woman born can come between us."
But the young person shook her head.
"No," she repeated, "I will not be your wife unless your mother welcomes me with pride and with pleasure."
He pleaded and argued in vain. Alice would not alter her decision, and at last he left her in anger.
"Will Carman has failed to snare his bird," said Mr. Spring Fragrance to Mr. Spring Fragrance a few days later.
Their neighbor's son had just passed their veranda without turning to bestow upon them his usual cheerful greeting.
"It is too bad," sighed Mrs. Spring Fragrance, sympathetically. She clasped her hands together and exclaimed:
"Ah, these Americans! These mysterious, inscrutable, incomprehensible Americans! I would put them into an immortal book!"
Mr. Spring Fragrance eyed her for a moment with suspicion.
"As I have told you, O Great Man," continued Mrs. Spring Fragrance, "I desire to write an immortal book. My first subject will be 'The Inferior Woman of America.' Please advise me how I shall best inform myself concerning her."
Mr. Spring Fragrance, perceiving that his wife was now serious, rubbed his head. After thinking for a few moments, he replied:
"It is the way in America when a person is to he illustrated for the illustrator to interview the person's friends. Perhaps, my dear, you had better confer with the' Superior Woman.' "
"Surely," cried Mrs. Spring Fragrance, "no sage was ever so wise as my Great Man!"
Mr. Spring Fragrance laughed heartily.
"You are no Chinese woman," he teased, “you are an American."
''Please bring me my parasol and my folding fan," said Mrs. Spring Fragrance. "I am going out for a walk."
And Mr. Spring Fragrance obeyed her.
She started out with no direct purpose in view, but as she walked, sniffing the rose-heavy air delicately, Mr. Spring Fragrance's advice about visiting the "Superior Woman" came to her mind and she hastened, sedately, to call on her friend Miss Evebrook. As she climbed the veranda steps, she overheard Mrs. Evebrook and her daughter talking.
"This is from Mary Carman, who is in Portland," Mrs. Evebrook was saying, looking up from a letter she was reading.
"Indeed," carelessly responded Miss Evebrook.
"Yes, it's chiefly about Will."
"Oh, is it? Well, read it then, dear. I'm interested in Will Carman, because of Alice Winthrop."
"I had hoped, Ethel, at one time, that you would have been interested in him for his own sake. However, this is what she writes:
“’I came here chiefly to rid myself of a melancholy which has taken possession of me lately, and also because I cannot bear to see my boy so changed toward me, owing to his infatuation for Alice Winthrop. It is incomprehensible to me how a son of mine can find any pleasure whatever in the society of such a girl. I have traced her history and find that she is not only uneducated in the ordinary sense, but her environment from childhood up has been the sordid and demoralizing one of extreme poverty and ignorance. Her parents were of the class who allow their children to do pretty much as they please, so long as they are not called upon to provide for them. This girl, Alice, entered a law office at the age of fourteen. Now, after seven years in business, through the friendship and influence of men far above her socially, she holds the position of private secretary to the most influential man in Washington—a position which belongs only to a well-educated young woman of good family. Many such applied. I, myself, sought to have Jane Walker appointed. Is it not disheartening to our Woman's Cause to be compelled to realize that girls such as this one can win men over to be their friends and lovers, when there are so many splendid young women who have been carefully trained to be the companions and comrades of educated men?'"
"Pardon me, mother," interrupted Miss Evebrook, "but I have heard enough. Mrs. Carman is your friend and a well meaning woman sometimes; but a woman suffragist, in the true sense, she certainly is not. Mark my words: If any young man had accomplished for himself what Alice Winthrop has accomplished, Mrs. Carman could not have said enough in his praise. It is women such as Alice Winthrop who, in spite of every drawback, have raised themselves to the level of those who have had every advantage, who are the pride and glory of America. There are thousands of them, all over this land. Women, such as I, who are called the 'Superior Women of America,' are, after all, nothing but school girls in comparison."
Mrs. Evebrook eyed her daughter mutinously. "I don't see why you should feel like that," said she. "Alice is a dear, bright child, and it is prejudice engendered by Mary Carman's disappointment about you and Will which is the real cause of poor Mary's bitterness toward her; but to my mind, Alice does not compare with my daughter. She would be scared to death if she had to make a speech."
"You foolish mother!" rallied Miss Evebrook. "To stand upon a platform at woman suffrage meetings and exploit myself is certainly a great recompense to you and father for all the sacrifices you have made in my behalf. But since it pleases you, I do it with pleasure, even on the nights when my beau should 'come a-courtin'.' "
"There is many a one who would like to come, Ethel. You're the handsomest girl in this town, and you know it."
"Stop that, mother. You know very well I have set my mind upon having ten years' freedom, ten years in which to love, live, suffer, see the world, and learn about men (not schoolboys), before I choose one."
"Alice Winthrop is the same age as you are and looks like a child beside you."
"Physically, maybe, but her heart and mind are better developed. She has been out in the world all her life, I only a few months."
"Your lecture last week on 'The Opposite Sex' was splendid."
"Of course. I have studied one hundred books on the subject and attended fifty lectures. All that was necessary was to repeat in an original manner what was not by any means original."
Miss Evebrook picked up a letter from her desk.
"This is a letter from Alice which I want to read you," she said. "I wrote her asking her to come to the suffrage meeting next week to speak to us, using her own experiences as illustration, on the suppression and oppression of women by men. Strange to say, Alice and I have never talked of this. If we had, I would not have written her as I did. Listen:
"I should dearly love to please you, but I am afraid my experiences, if related, would not help the cause. It may be, as you say, that men prevent women from rising to their level; but if there are such men, I have not met them. Ever since, when a little girl, I walked into a law office, and asked for work and the senior member kindly looked me over through his spectacles and inquired if I thought I could learn to index books, and the junior member glanced under my hat and said, "This is a pretty little girl and we must be pretty to her," I have loved and respected the men among whom I have worked and wherever I have worked. I may have been exceptionally fortunate, but I know this: the men for whom I have worked and among whom I have spent my life, whether they have been business or professional men, students or great lawyers and politicians, all alike, have upheld me, inspired me, advised me, taught me, given me a broad outlook upon life for a woman, interested me in themselves and in their work. As to corrupting my mind and my morals, as you say so many men do when they have young and innocent girls to deal with, I look back over my years spent among business and professional men, and see myself, as I was at first, an impressionable, ignorant little girl, born a Bohemian, easy to lead and easy to win, but home aloft and morally supported by the goodness of my brother men-the men among whom I worked. That is why, dear Ethel, you will have to forgive me, because I cannot carry out your design and help your work, as otherwise I would like to do.”
"That, mother," declared Miss Evebrook, "answers all Mrs. Carman's insinuations, and should make her ashamed of herself. Can any one know the sentiments which little Alice entertains and wonder at her winning out as she has? "
Mrs. Evebrook was about to make reply, when her glance happening to stray out of the window, she noticed a pink parasol.
"Mrs. Spring Fragrance!" she ejaculated, while her daughter went to the door and invited in the owner of the pink parasol, who was seated in a veranda rocker calmly writing in a notebook.
"I'm so sorry that we did not hear your ring, Mrs. Spring Fragrance," said she.
"There is no necessity for you to sorrow," replied the little Chinese woman. "I did not expect you to hear a ring which rang not. I failed to pull the bell."
"You forgot, I suppose," suggested Ethel Evebrook.
"Is it wise to tell secrets?" ingenuously inquired Mrs. Spring Fragrance.
"Yes, to your friends. Oh, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, you are so refreshing!"
"I have pleasure, then, in confiding to you. I have an ambition to accomplish an immortal book about the Americans, and the conversation I heard through the window was so interesting to me that I thought I would take some of it down for my book before I intruded myself. With your kind permission, I will translate for your correction.
"I shall be delighted--honored," said Miss Evebrook, her cheeks glowing and her laughter rippling, "if you will promise me that you will also translate for our friend, Mrs. Carman."
"Ah, yes, poor Mrs. Carman! My heart is so sad for her," murmured the little Chinese woman.
And during the week that followed, she thought much of her friend.
When the mother of Will Carman returned from Portland, the first person upon whom she called was Mrs. Spring Fragrance. Having lived in China while her late husband was in the customs service there, Mrs. Carman's prejudices did not extend to the Chinese, and ever since the Spring Fragrances had become the occupants of the villa beside the Carmans, Mrs. Carman and Mrs. Spring Fragrance had been great friends. Indeed, Mrs. Carman was wont to declare that among all her acquaintances there was not one more congenial and interesting than little Mrs. Spring Fragrance. So after she had sipped a cup of delicious tea, tasted some piquant candied limes, and told Mrs. Spring Fragrance all about her visit to the Oregon city and the Chinese people she had met there, she reverted to a personal trouble confided to Mrs. Spring Fragrance some months before, and dwelt upon it for more than half an hour. Then she checked herself, and gazed at Mrs. Spring Fragrance in surprise. Hitherto she had found the little Chinese woman sympathetic and consoling. Chinese ideas of filial duty chimed in with her own. But to-day, Mrs. Spring Fragrance seemed strangely uninterested and unresponsive.
"Perhaps," gently suggested the American woman, who was nothing if not sensitive, "you have some trouble yourself. If so, my dear, tell me all about it."
"Oh, no!" answered Mrs. Spring Fragrance, brightly, "I have no troubles to tell; but all the while I am thinking about the book I am writing."
"A book!"
"Yes, a book about Americans, an immortal book."
"My dear Mrs. Spring Fragrance!" exclaimed her visitor in amazement.
"The American woman writes books about the Chinese. Why not a Chinese woman write books about the Americans?"
"Now I see what you mean. What an original idea!"
"Yes, I think that is what it is. My book, I shall take from the words of others."
"What do you mean, my dear?"
"I listen to what is said, I apprehend, I write it down. Let me illustrate by the ‘Inferior Woman' subject. The 'Inferior Woman' is most interesting to me, because you have told me that your son is in much love with her. My husband advised me to learn about the 'Inferior Woman' from the 'Superior Woman.' I go to see the 'Superior Woman.' I sit on the veranda of the ‘Superior Woman's' house. I listen to her converse with her mother about the 'Inferior Woman.' With the speed of flames I write down all I hear. When I enter the house, the 'Superior Woman' advise me that what I write is correct. May I read to you?"
"Yes, yes, do please."
There was eagerness in Mrs. Carman's voice. What could Ethel Evebrook have to say about that girl!
When Mrs. Spring Fragrance had finished reading, she looked up into the face of her American friend—a face in which there was nothing now but tenderness.
"Mrs. Mary Carman," said she, "you are so good as to admire my husband because he is what the Americans call, 'a man who has made himself.' Why, then, do you not admire the 'Inferior Woman' who is a woman who has made herself? "
"I think I do," said Mrs. Carman, slowly.
It was an evening that invited to reverie. The far stretches of the sea were gray with mist, and the city itself, lying around the sweep of the bay, seemed dusky and distant. From her cottage window Alice Winthrop looked silently at the world around her. It seemed a long time since she had heard Will Carman's whistle. She wondered if he were still angry with her. She was sorry that he had left her in anger, and yet not sorry. If she had not made him believe that she was proud and selfish, the parting would have been much harder, and perhaps had he known the truth and realized that it was for his sake and not for her own that she was sending him away from her, he might have refused to leave her at all. His was such an imperious nature! And then they would have married—right away.
Alice caught her breath a little, and then she sighed. But they would not have been happy. No, that could not have been possible if his mother did not like her. When a gulf of prejudice lies between the wife and mother of a man, that man's life is not what it should be. And even supposing she and Will could have lost themselves in each other and been able to imagine themselves perfectly satisfied with life together, would it have been right?
The question of right and wrong was a very real one to Alice Winthrop. She put herself in the place of the mother of her lover—a lonely, elderly woman, a widow with an only son, upon whom she had expended all her love and care, ever since in her early youth she bad been bereaved of his father. What anguish of heart would be hers if that son deserted her for one whom "he, his mother, deemed unworthy!
"Yes," said she aloud to herself, and though she knew it not, there was an infinite pathos in such philosophy from one so young, "if life can not be bright and beautiful for me, at least it can be peaceful and contented."
The light behind the hills died away; darkness crept over the sea. Alice withdrew from the window and knelt before the open fire in her sitting room. Her cottage companion, the young woman who rented the place with her, had not yet returned from town.
Alice did not turn on the light. She was seeing pictures in the fire, and in every picture was the same face and form—the face and form of a man with love and hope in his eyes. No, not always love and hope. In the last picture of all, there was an expression which she wished she could forget. And yet she would remember—ever—always—
When she had told him she loved him, she had not dreamed that her love for him and his for her, would estrange him from one who before ever she had come to this world, had pillowed his head on her breast.
Suddenly this girl, so practical, so humorous, so clever in everyday life, covered her face with her hands and sobbed like a child. Two roads of life had lain before her and she had chosen the hardest.
The warning bell of an automobile passing the crossroads checked her tears. That reminded her that Nellie Blake would soon be home. She turned on the light and went to bathe her eyes. Nellie must have forgotten her key. There, she was knocking.
The chill sea air was sweet with the scent of roses as Mary Carman stood upon the threshold of the little cottage.
"I have come, Miss Winthrop," she said, "to beg of you to return home with me. Will met with a slight accident while out shooting, so he could not come for you himself. He has told me that he loves you, and if you love him, I want to arrange for the prettiest wedding of the season. Come, dear!"
"I am so glad," said Mrs. Spring Fragrance. "Will Carman's bird is in his nest and his felicity is assured."
"What about the 'Superior Woman'?" asked Mr. Spring Fragrance.
"Ah, the 'Superior Woman'! Radiantly beautiful and gifted with the divine right of learning! I love well the 'Superior Woman,' but O Great Man, when we have a daughter, may heaven ordain that she walk in the groove of the 'Inferior Woman!'"
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