Mrs. Spring Fragrance
“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 went over to a desk and took a paper therefrom.
“This,” said she, “is what Alice has written me in reply to my note
suggesting that she attend next week the suffrage meeting, and give some
of the experiences of her business career. The object I had in view when
I requested the relation of her experiences was to use them as
illustrations of the suppression and oppression of women by men. Strange
to say, Alice and I have never conversed on this particular subject. If
we had I would not have made this request of her, nor written her as I
did. Listen:
“I should dearly love to please you, but I am afraid that 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 amongst 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 amongst 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: As a woman I look back
over my years spent amongst 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 borne aloft and
morally supported by the goodness of my brother men, the men amongst
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 toward men, 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 note-book.
“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 laugh 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.
V
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,
there had been social good feeling between the American and Chinese
families. Indeed, Mrs. Carman was wont to declare that amongst 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
today 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?”
“I see what you mean. Why, yes, of course. 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 advises me that what I
write is correct. May I read to you?”
“I shall be pleased to hear what you have written; but I do not think
you were wise in your choice of subject,” returned Mrs. Carman somewhat
primly.
“I am sorry I am not wise. Perhaps I had better not read?” said Mrs.
Spring Fragrance with humility.
“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.
VI
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 open 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 had been bereaved of his father. What anguish of heart
would be hers if that son deserted her for one whom she, his mother,
deemed unworthy! Prejudices are prejudices. They are like diseases.
The poor, pale, elderly woman, who cherished bitter and resentful
feelings towards the girl whom her son loved, was more an object of pity
than condemnation to the girl herself.
She lifted her eyes to the undulating line of hills beyond the water.
From behind them came a silver light. “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 cannot 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 went 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
fine, handsome young 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—and
with it, these words: “Is it nothing to you—nothing—to tell a man that
you love him, and then to bid him go?”
Yes, but 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 every-day
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 cross-roads checked her
tears. That reminded her that Nellie Blake would soon be home. She
turned on the light and went to the bedroom and bathed 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, and beheld in the illumination
from within the young girl whom she had called “the Inferior Woman.”
“I have come, Miss Winthrop,” said she, “to beg of you to return home
with me. Will, reckless boy, met with a slight accident while out