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Read Ebook: Possessed by Moffett Cleveland
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Ebook has 1209 lines and 57714 words, and 25 pages
admire my own sombre beauty. I let my hair fall in a black cloud over my shoulders, then I braid it slowly with bare arms lifted in graceful poses. I sway my hips like Carmen, I thrust red flowers into my bosom. I move my head languidly, letting my white teeth gleam between red lips. I study my profile with a hand glass, getting the double reflection. I smile and beckon with my eyes. Yes, I am a beautiful woman--primeval, elemental--I was made for love."
Again I wrote, showing that I half understood the perils that beset me:
And again:
No wonder that, with such thoughts and inclinations, I was always more or less under temptation with men, who were drawn to me, I suppose, just as I was drawn to them. And I tried to excuse myself in the old way, as here:
"It is certain that some women have strong emotional desires, whereas other women have none at all or scarcely any. This fact has an evident bearing upon the question of women's morality. Some women must be judged more leniently than others. I have wondered if there are similar differences in men. I doubt it!"
Of course I had agitating experiences with men because I half invited them. It seemed as if I could not help it. As I said to myself, I was a moth, I wanted to play with fire.
On the next page I find this:
"Seraphine disapproves of my attitude towards men. She gave me a great talking to last night and said things I would not take from anyone else. Dear old Seraphine, she is so fine and kind! She says there is nothing in my physical makeup that compels me to be a flirt. I can act more discreetly if I wish to. It is my mental attitude toward romantic things that is wrong. Thousands of women just as pretty as I am never place themselves in situations with men that are almost certain to lead them into temptation. They will not start an emotional episode that may easily, as they know quite well, have a dangerous ending. But I am always ready to start, confident that my self-control will save me from any immediate disaster. And so far it always has."
I am horribly sad tonight--lonely--discouraged. The doctor wants to know about my married life, about my husband. Why was I unhappy? Why is any woman unhappy? Because her love is trampled on, degraded--the spiritual part of it unsatisfied. Women are made for love and without love life means nothing to them. Women are naturally finer than men, they aspire more strongly to what is beautiful and spiritual, but their souls can be coarsened, their love can be killed. They can be driven--they have been driven for centuries into lies and deceits and sensuality or pretence of sensuality.
The great tragedy of the world is sensuality, and it may exist between man and wife just as much as between a man and a paid woman. I don't know whether the Bible condemns sensuality between man and wife, but it ought to. I remember a story by Tolstoy in which the great moralist strips off our mask of hypocrisy and shows the hideous evil that results when a man and a woman degrade the holy sacrament of marriage. That is not love, but a perversion of love. How can God bless a union in which the wife is expected to conduct herself like a wanton or lose her husband? And she loses him anyway, for sensuality in a man inevitably leads him to promiscuousness. I know this to my sorrow!
Perhaps I am morbid. Perhaps I see life too clearly, know it too well. I do not want to be cynical or bitter. Oh, if only those old days of faith and trust could come back to me! When I think of what I was before I married Julian I see that I was almost like a child in my ignorance of the animal side of man's nature....
Dr. Owen thinks my trouble is shell shock, but he is mistaken. I have taken care of too many shell shock cases not to recognize the symptoms. Can I ever forget that darling soldier boy from Maryland who mistook me for his mother? "They're coming! They're coming!" he screamed one night; you could hear him all over the hospital. Then he jumped out of bed like a wild man--it took two orderlies and an engineer to get him back under the covers. I can see his poor wasted face when the little doctor came to give him a hypodermic. There he lay panting, groaning: "Oh those guns! Oh those guns! They break my ears!" Then he sprang up again, his eyes starting out of his head: "Look out, there! On the ammunition cart! Look out, Bill! Oh my God, they've got Bill--my pal! Blown him to hell! Oh, oh, oh!" and he put his head down and sobbed like a woman. That is shell shock. I have nothing like that. I know what I am doing.
There was a storm today with great crashing waves, then everything grew calm under a golden sunset. I take this as a good omen. I feel happier already. The infinite peace of Nature is quieting my soul. I love the sea. I can almost say my prayers to the sea.
The swimming master pays me extravagant compliments every morning when I splash about in the pool. I know my body is beautiful. Thank God, I have never imprisoned it in corsets.
I love the exercises I do in my room every morning. They bring back the play spirit of my childhood. When I get out of bed I slip into a loose garment, then I lie on the floor and stretch my spine along the carpet--it's wonderful how this exhilarates one. After that I take deep breaths at the open window, raising and lowering my arms--up as I draw my breath in, down as I throw it out. Then I lie down again and lift my legs straight up, the right, the left, then both together. I do this twenty times, resting between changes and taking deep breaths.
I sit cross-legged on the floor with my feet on a red and gold cushion and rotate my waist like an oriental dancer. I stand on my head and hands and curve my body to right and left in graceful flexings. I do this no matter how cold it is. I do not feel the cold, for I am all aglow with health and strength. Then, before my bath, I do dumb-bell exercises in front of the mirror.
I remember dining with my husband one night in a pink lace peignoir--we had been married about three years--and during the dessert, I excused myself and went into my bedroom and, posing before a cheval glass, I let the peignoir slip off my shoulders, and stood there like a piece of polished marble, rejoicing in my youth and loveliness!
He was like a hunter following his prey, like an angler fishing, he cared only for the chase, for the capture. That was the man I had married!
What a liar he was! He poisoned my mind with his lies, assuring me that all men were like himself, hypocrites, incapable of being true to one woman. And I believed him. The ghastly part of it is I still believe him. I can't help it. I have suffered too much. I can never have faith in another man, not even in Captain Herrick. That is why I shall never marry again--that is one reason.
A wonderful day! I strolled along the board walk in my new furs, and met a young mother pushing a baby carriage with two splendid baby boys--one of them sucking at his bottle. Such babies! She let me hold the little fellow and I cuddled him close in my arms and felt his soft cheeks and his warm little chubby hands on my face. How I long for a baby of my own! I have thought--hoped--dreamed--
I went to the movies this evening with some friends and laughed so hard that I thought I would break something in my internal machinery.
And yet--alas!
Am I bold and vain to call myself beautiful?
I have written about this with much feeling. In one place I say:
"Sometimes I feel as if there were a conspiracy of men--all kinds of men, including the most serious and respectable--against the virtue of attractive women. What a downfall of masculine reputations there would be if women should tell a little of what they know about men! Only a little! But women are silent in the main--through loyalty or through fear."
And again:
"What happens to an attractive woman who is forced to earn her own living? In the business world? In the artistic world? Anywhere? I do not say that men are a pack of wolves, but--I had such a heartbreaking experience, especially in my brief musical career. I might have had a small part in grand opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, so one particular musical wolf assured me, if I would show a little sympathy with his desire to assist me in some of the r?les--occasional private rehearsals, and so on. Oh, the beast!... He gave the part to another girl who was less particular, and she made her d?but the next season. I went to work at Wanamaker's store!"
And still men pursued me.
I find this entry:
"How I longed to keep that gown! I think I should have kept it if Seraphine had not happened in.
"She looked at me out of her kind, wise eyes.
"'Do you like him?'
"'Well--rather.'
"'Is he married or unmarried?'
"'I think he's married.'
"'Is he the man who gave Roberta her sables?'
"'Y-yes,' I admitted.
"She looked at me again.
"'I can't decide for you, Pen; you must settle it with your own conscience; but I am sure of one thing, that, if you accept this dress, you will pay for it, and probably pay much more than it is worth.'
Here is an interesting thing that Kendall Brown once said on this subject--I recorded it in my diary along with other sayings of this erratic Greenwich Village poet and philosopher:
How true that is!
Again I wrote:
Slowly I turn back to what I wrote in those unhappy days:
"Why do I live with him? I no longer love him. At times I despise him and his slightest touch makes me shiver with disgust, yet I continue to endure this life--why?
"It is because of the great pity I have for him. He is weak and helpless, almost child-like in his dependence on me. I am the prop which holds up the last shreds of his self-respect. If I left him, he would drift lower and lower, I know it. Sometimes I pass some awful creature staggering along the sidewalks. He is dirty and uncared for. Long matted hair falls across his bleared and sunken eyes. I say to myself: 'But for you, Penelope Wells, that might be Julian.' And this gives me courage to take up my burden once more."
And again I find:
"I am beginning to fear. I have been looking in my mirror and it seems to me that my face is taking on the lines of animalism that I see daily becoming deeper in Julian's face. Must I continue this degradation? If I were helping him to raise himself--but I am not, not really. It's too heavy a weight for me to bear. I am sinking ... sinking to his level. I cannot stand it. It is killing me...."
And again:
"I am too heartsick to write....
"He had not come home for dinner that night and it was ten o'clock when I heard the door slam. Julian came into the living room and as soon as I saw him my heart sank. He dropped into a chair without speaking.
"'Tired, dear?' I said, trying to smile a welcome.
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