The Golden House | Page 8

that it began to dawn upon
her mind could not be done, and things of immediate urgency that must
be done. Life did not seem quite such a simple problem to her as it had
looked a year ago. That there is nothing like experiment to clear the
vision is the general idea, but oftener it is experience that perplexes.
Indeed, Edith was thinking that some things seemed much easier to her
before she had tried them.
As she sat at the table with a faultless morning-gown, with a bunch of
English violets in her bosom, an artist could have desired no better
subject. Many people thought her eyes her best feature; they were large
brown eyes, yet not always brown, green at times, liquid, but never
uncertain, apt to have a smile in them, yet their chief appealing

characteristic was trustfulness, a pure sort of steadfastness, that always
conveyed the impression of a womanly personal interest in the person
upon whom they were fixed. They were eyes that haunted one like a
remembered strain of music. The lips were full, and the mouth was
drawn in such exquisite lines that it needed the clear-cut and
emphasized chin to give firmness to its beauty. The broad forehead,
with arching eyebrows, gave an intellectual cast to a face the special
stamp of which was purity. The nose, with thin open nostrils, a little too
strong for beauty, together with the chin, gave the impression of
firmness and courage; but the wonderful eyes, the inviting mouth, so
modified this that the total impression was that of high spirit and great
sweetness of character. It was the sort of face from which one might
expect passionate love or unflinching martyrdom. Her voice had a
quality the memory of which lingered longer even than the expression
of her eyes; it was low, and, as one might say, a fruity voice, not quite
clear, though sweet, as if veiled in femineity. This note of royal
womanhood was also in her figure, a little more than medium in height,
and full of natural grace. Somehow Edith, with all these good points,
had not the reputation of a belle or a beauty--perhaps for want of some
artificial splendor--but one could not be long in her company without
feeling that she had great charm, without which beauty becomes insipid
and even commonplace, and with which the plainest woman is
attractive.
Edith's theory of life, if one may so dignify the longings of a young girl,
had been very simple, and not at all such as would be selected by the
heroine of a romance. She had no mission, nor was she afflicted by that
modern form of altruism which is a yearning for notoriety by
conspicuous devotion to causes and reforms quite outside her normal
sphere of activity. A very sincere person, with strong sympathy for
humanity tempered by a keen perception of the humorous side of things,
she had a purpose, perhaps not exactly formulated, of making the most
out of her own life, not in any outward and shining career, but by a
development of herself in the most helpful and harmonious relations to
her world. And it seemed to her, though she had never philosophized it,
that a marriage such as she believed she had made was the woman's
way to the greatest happiness and usefulness. In this she followed the
dictates of a clear mind and a warm heart. If she had reasoned about it,

considering how brief life is, and how small can be any single
contribution to a better social condition, she might have felt more
strongly the struggle against nature, and the false position involved in
the new idea that marriage is only a kind of occupation, instead of an
ordinance decreed in the very constitution of the human race. With the
mere instinct of femineity she saw the falseness of the assumption that
the higher life for man or woman lies in separate and solitary paths
through the wilderness of this world. To an intelligent angel, seated on
the arch of the heavens, the spectacle of the latter-day pseudo-
philosophic and economic dribble about the doubtful expediency of
having a wife, and the failure of marriage, must seem as ludicrous as
would a convention of birds or of flowers reasoning that the processes
of nature had continued long enough. Edith was simply a natural
woman, who felt rather than reasoned that in a marriage such as her
heart approved she should make the most of her life.
But as she sat here this morning this did not seem to be so simple a
matter as it had appeared. It began to be suspected that in order to make
the most of one's self it was necessary to make the most of many