Dividing Waters — Story, Setting & Ideas

A very faint smile played about the corners of her own mouth.

"Nora, you know, a few months ago, when we promised to send you up to London to begin your studies, we were comparatively rich people. Rich people can afford luxuries, and our pet luxury was to imagine that our little girl was a genius who was going to show the world great things. We meant to give you every chance—we would have seen that our ship lacked nothing to make its first passage in public waters a success. Well, we are poor now, and the first luxury which we must part with is that fond hope. You and I must face the fact—you are a sweet musician, not a genius."

"Mother, you knew that all the time—as well as I did."

A pale rose sprang to Mrs. Ingestre’s cheeks. Quite unconsciously she avoided her daughter’s challenging eyes.

"Mother, why did you pretend to think otherwise?" Nora went on. "Did you believe me so silly as to imagine myself anything more than an amateur? Why, of course I knew. I had only to compare myself with others."

"And yet you let us think and talk about you as a genius!" Mrs. Ingestre interposed.

Nora nodded defiantly.

"I was a humbug," she declared. "I wanted to go to London. It seemed the only way."

"Wasn’t that a rather disreputable way?"

"Not more disreputable than yours. I remember, when father complained about the useless expense you told him it was a sin against Providence not to encourage Genius. It was then I first made the discovery that when you are most serious you are really laughing—at father and me and every one."

"Nora! Nora!" The tone of mild reproof died away Mother and daughter looked each other in the eyes and laughed. When she had done laughing, Mrs. Ingestre bent down and kissed the girl lightly on the forehead.

"You pry too deep to be an altogether very respectful person," she said; "but since you have pryed, I must make the best of it and confess. I knew your father would not understand my ideas, so I too humbugged a little—just a very little. I wanted you to go to London, and afterwards into the world. It was the only way."

"And now this is the end of it all!"

Nora Ingestre rose and stood by her mother’s side. Her voice rang with all the protest and despair of which youth is so capable—very real protest and very real despair, whole-hearted and intense, as is the way with youth.

"It wasn’t the music," she went on. "I loved it, of course, but I wanted to see the world and people more than anything else. I wanted the world so badly, mother. I felt like a caged animal that sees the forests and the plains through its prison bars. I wanted to get out and be free. Oh, you can’t understand—you can’t!"

Mrs. Ingestre stirred suddenly, as though a wound had been touched with rough fingers.

"I do understand," she said. But Nora was too young, above all, too absorbed in her own griefs, to hear all that was hidden in her mother’s words.

"At any rate, no one else would understand," she went on. "Father wouldn’t, Miles wouldn’t, and the whole village wouldn’t. They would all say I was a New Woman, or unwomanly, or something—why, I don’t know. I don’t care whether I have a vote or not. I can cook and I can sew; I love children. All that sort of thing is womanly, isn’t it? Isn’t it womanly to want to live, and to know what life means? Nobody thinks it strange that Miles, though he has no talent for anything except loafing, should travel, should live away from home and get to know other people. It is all for his development! But I am not to develop, it seems. Perhaps development isn’t womanly. Perhaps the only right thing for me to do is to look after the flowers and worry the cook and bore myself through my days with tea-parties and tennis-parties and occasional match-making dances, until somebody asks me to be his wife, and I marry him to save myself from turning into a vegetable!"

She stopped, breathless with her fierce torrent of sarcasm and bitterness. Her cheeks were flushed, her hands clenched; there were tears in her bright eyes. Mrs. Ingestre rose and followed her daughter to the window, whither she had wandered in her restless energy.

"How long have you been thinking all this, Nora?" she asked.