Chapter XVII

The boat docked and the rain fell in torrents. I called a cab and gave the driver directions to go to a wholesale florist, anywhere he could find one on the way uptown. It took some persuasion to get the big bunch of violets from the wholesaler, but I did so, and sped away to my love. The wonderful violets alone would have told the story of my love for her, for they personified everything beautiful.

When I arrived, Juno was waiting for me in the parlor of our hotel, eager, and with a most ardent welcome. After the necessary formalities, we were shown to our room. When we were alone our arms were about each other and our lips met in the first kiss that was a pledge of a great and beautiful love. She loved the violets and, in our enthusiasm, it was rather hard to come to earth and make some plans.

She had arranged for a free day. That was an important point gained. Then, being both very normal beings, we felt that we must have the breakfast to which we were accustomed. A delicious one was ordered, and we sat and loved and talked and thought. She wondered.

After the removal of the breakfast dishes, we began to talk of our love. I tried to make her see that for me it was not a passing fancy and that I believed it was a serious matter to her. We discussed all phases of marriage, and I gave her my views, based on my own experience. She, of course, felt that there could never be a man in her life again. So we decided that a union such as ours was to be could be made as holy and complete as the most conventional marriages, if not more so.

I suggested that we read the marriage ceremony together as a sort of benediction to our union. We had built up a firm foundation for our lives in the love we held for each other. Our coming together was not for animal satisfaction. There was a real sympathy of ideas and ideals and, as a by-product, as it were, was to come the physical relief of sex desire. As I always carried my prayer book with me, we very solemnly read the service, and meant every word of it.

It may seem incongruous that I should have carried a prayer book with me on my journeyings. I had joined the Episcopal Church at the time when I became engaged to the youth during my college life, as that was his church. The prayer book was the gift of my dear sister who had passed on. While I always have had a deep spiritual conception of life and a deep respect for the teachings of Christ, which doubtless came to me through my mother’s influence, at the time when my children were lost to me and I was forced by the conventional sympathizer to believe that this had been by God’s will, I had little respect for that God. Of course I interpreted “God’s will” differently than they, but in applying it to my case I could see no justice shown by a God who could create me with so strange a nature. In using the words as written in that book, there came back to me a certain comfort in believing that there was a Force to bring joy, even if it had had to come through sorrow.

We both believed that I was the only one in the world who desired the love of a woman. The time for mere conversation was over. I found willing response to my caresses.

She, too, wanted to show her love, as I had mine. At last I had reached the heights of physical love.

Poets have written and sung of “that day of love” or “that night of love” in words and tones which could not express the bliss of it, so why should I try to do so?

We lingered and loved and rested, and felt there could be no end to the desires which arose. It was the expression of about twenty-five years of suppression of emotion in both of us. In a sane moment, we dressed and took a long drive and had lunch at a favorite restaurant in the Park, and then returned to our room early in the afternoon. We had to make plans now for the future.

One thing was certain: that we must live together. If she could make arrangements to keep on with her work and live away from the hotel where she was employed, it would be best for me to stay in the city and find some work other than handling my toy. If I were to go on with that business, it would involve traveling about and being away from her too much. So we decided to stay in the city. I knew that I was giving up a fortune by giving up my business, as I was assured that it was a success and that there would be no end of the sales I could make myself. Unfortunately, no one else was ever able to handle it. However, I had found my mate, and no fortune could keep me from her.

Juno had to go back to her hotel that night, and it tore our hearts terribly to have to part. I did not see her until the next evening, when I was waiting with impatience the result of her conference with her employers. In the meantime, I had spent the day looking for a furnished apartment where we could make our home, and I had found one which suited me and which I felt would please her too. The minute I saw her, I knew that all was well. The dames had consented to a change of plans, as they knew that otherwise they would lose their most valuable asset to the success of the house. They arranged for her to have day duty, and all was well. The next day I saw my friends, who were delighted to have me re-open my little school, and in a few days we were settled in our own home and were supremely happy.

The mother of two of the children who were to be in my school tried to have me go with her and the children, as a companion and teacher, to Rome for six months and then to Paris for another six months. A year in Europe! How I would have jumped at it before I met Juno! But now, what was a year in Europe compared to a lifetime in paradise?

Our days were not spent in longing for each other. We both had real joy in our work, which was done better than ever before. We read much together, we saw the best plays, took long walks, and lived on a plane higher than we realized before to be possible.

Our lives blended to perfection. We seemed to satisfy in each other every need and craving. The hypocrisy in that hotel for women disgusted her daily, but nevertheless she put into her work the real Christ spirit, and many poor and weary hearts were cheered and comforted by Juno.

As our souls and hearts were drawn together, so were our bodies. We both felt that, without the deep and true love we felt for each other, there could be no satisfaction in sexual contact. This was a result of, rather than a cause for, our love and happiness.

It was our equal desire to be continually doing some great or little tender and loving thing for the other. Knowing that little rifts might occur, Juno confessed to a somewhat unruly temper at times and that, if she should err, it was an impossibility for her to confess her error. She had always believed that she could never say she was “sorry,” and had been through the tortures of Hell while obdurate on that point when her elders had tried to force her to a confession. She asked me, if such an occasion should arise, when she should be wholly to blame, if I would assume the role of the guilty one; in that way, she would be able to contradict me and say it was her fault. It seemed a silly thing, as the acknowledgment of a fault had always been one of the easiest things I had to do, but there was nothing I would not have promised her, and this little eccentricity became in time a great joke.

It was years, however, before we had occasion to resort to that little game.

I held my little school in our apartment, as I was alone there through the day. It was a great success and, from the applications I had from new pupils, it would soon have grown beyond its bounds. I felt, however, that I could not give it the assurance of permanency, as my life was so bound up in Juno’s. I felt that I could not do anything that might interfere with our life and plans together. Another opportunity passed by because of my great love for the woman of my heart.

Juno felt a growing disgust for her work, which was being conducted on lines wholly base at the “semi-philanthropic memorial tablet.” So we were casting about for some more congenial work for her. We kept on until spring, when there came a crisis in my affairs which caused a change in our lives.

My father’s sudden illness and death made it necessary for me to go home, take charge of affairs, and be with my mother, for a time at least. Before this Juno had arranged for a secretarial position in one of the most select and fashionable private (and they were private) finishing schools in the city. (The girls were finished in some instances also.) This position was to be open in the fall, so this fitted in perfectly with our plans. A separation was not to be thought of, so Juno resigned her position, and I had again to disappoint the parents of the children whom I was teaching. I gave up the school, and we both went to my mother’s home in the country.

To illustrate the fact that sexual problems arise right under our very eyes, though many times we never see them, I will here tell of an incident connected with our life in the little apartment where Juno and I began our life together.

I procured a young East Side girl, through the recommendation of a laundress we employed, to come to the apartment each morning to do the ordinary work. I did most of the cooking when we did not go out for dinner. Lizzie’s first work was in the kitchen, next to the dining room where I had my school. She had a wooden leg, so was not able to go into regular service. She was very happy with us and we got used to the thump of the wooden member of her anatomy and to the usual noises in the kitchen, so that our school was not disturbed by them.

One day she came to work in a pouring rain. When she arrived I said, “You have no rubbers on, your feet must be very wet,” she replied: “Oh! me wan fut is and tother don’t count.” She evidently thought it would be a waste of money to buy a pair of rubbers with only one “fut” to benefit thereby.

One morning it was necessary for a plumber to do some work in the kitchen during the school session. We got used to the various hammerings and noises connected with the work, but, after a time, I was conscious of a regular and rather desultory knocking. Knock! knock! knock! I was puzzled, and quietly opened the door into the kitchen, out of pure curiosity, while the children were singing. To my astonishment, I found Lizzie and the plumber in a compromising situation, the man at the same time pounding away with his hammer. I gave him a look which he remembered and quietly told Lizzie to go to the front of the apartment and do her work there. This she did, skipping along on her unmated pair of legs.

In the afternoon, I went to the plumber’s place of business. He had just started on his own and looked scared to death when he saw me. I talked with him about the affair from the girl’s point of view. He said she was willing enough, but he soon saw that there might be serious results and that the girl and her mother would be the ones to suffer. He was quite ready to place a certain amount of money in my hands, in escrow, as it were, to await developments. I told him that in case everything came out all right, I would return the money.

When I was assured that Lizzie was not pregnant, I took the money to the plumber and had a long talk with him. I told him of my talk with Lizzie and that she had told me she only did as she had as “it was an easy way to get fifty cents for her mother.” It seemed to open up a new idea to him. Whether the impression lasted I shall never know, but at least he asked me to keep the money he had given me and to use it for the girl in such a way that she would never know where it came from.

I was convinced that sexual desire on the part of the girl was not responsible for this incident, but she was willing to sell her body for fifty cents to gratify the desire of the man, in order to help her mother who, of course, would never have been convinced that her daughter would do such a thing. Society still condemns the girl and the man is considered to be enjoying his so-thought natural and necessary privileges.

When we were to leave for the country, Lizzie begged so hard to go with us, and her mother was likewise so anxious to have her go, that we consented to take her. I felt it would be a good thing for her to be away from an environment which might lead to her defeat. In her life she had had one “country week” under the auspices of some society, and had always carried in her mind the glorified picture of green grass, upon which she could step without being “chased by the cops,” and of the flowers which were free for all. We told her that at that season of the year we should find only ice and snow and mud, with no green grass for weeks and weeks to come, but this made no difference to her. Go she must, and go she did.

Poor Lizzie! She could find there no semblance to the wonderful picture she had carried in her mind for so long. The change from the bright lights and hurdy-gurdies to a bleak northern New England farm in early spring was too great for the poor child. She became homesick and almost desperate with longing for “dear old Av’nyer A” and we had to send her back. To what? We never knew, as there ended our contact with the wooden-legged child of the slums.

As there seemed to be no other way, I took the responsibility of running the farm for the summer. With Juno by my side we made of it a wonderful adventure. Of course, my duties were strenuous, as I had only the help of a young boy of fourteen. I loved the work, however. As a small girl I had followed my father and brothers about as they were doing the work of the farm, and it all came naturally to me.

The life was a revelation to Juno. She had never been in the country, to see the beginnings of things agricultural, as she had always spent her summers at the height of the season at some fashionable resort, carefully guarded by nurses or companions. Yet she did not long for “dear old Avenue Five” as Lizzie had for her old haunts.

Juno’s almost childish wonder and enthusiasm and her naive remarks were a constant joy to both my dear mother and to me. Juno and Mother loved each other from the very first. To her death, my mother was always happy in our love and friendship for each other. Never by word, look, or act did she ever betray in any way that she mistrusted anything unnatural in the devotion which existed between us. How could she believe that such a love were possible, when we both believed that we were the only ones in the world who cherished such a love?

We never wavered in our belief that ours was the very highest type of human love, and our joy in each other grew greater and greater all the time. Now, in my declining years I still believe that, while it lasts, such a relation is the highest and most complete union of two human beings.

To our friends, ours was “an ideal friendship,” and we knew hardly a married woman who did not envy us that oneness of heart, mind, and purpose which we manifested to the outside world. No one knew of the real union, of our bodies.