I Was a Wife in Name Only

Life Takes Its Toll of a Madcap Girl Because of a Mummer's Sorry Jest

MAISIE DAY MONTGOMERY

EDITOR'S NOTE:—The recent vogue of "confession" stories—which has brought prosperity to such magazines as True Stories, I Confess and Marriage Problems, has surely not escaped the attention of the readers of Vanity Fair. Lately the tabloids have begun to sponsor this branch of literature with a vengeance and have carried it to a point far beyond the dreams of the magazines who invented the idea Vanity Fair, therefore, deems itself truly fortunate in having obtained, from her own pen, the life story of Miss Maisie Day Montgomery. Our readers, all of whom have doubtless heard of Miss Montgomery. will be enthralled by this little peep into the life, thoughts and dreams of a young woman who notable not only for her achievement, enjoys the further distinction of being the only prize-winner in the long annals of such events to be awarded a prize for which she did not consciously contest

"I am the master of my Fate

I am the captain of my Soul"

spoke the good poet, of Fate. Yet 1* ate moves us about, and moves the best of us, like pawns. For was it not a whim of Destiny that I, having in good faith entered a Beauty Contest for the purpose of being chosen Most Perfectly Formed Girl Below the Mason-Dixon Line, should find myself, instead, acclaimed First Mother to Hang for Eleven Minutes by Her Teeth from the Queens-borough Bridge? Kismet.

Dear readers, you have probably all seen my picture in the newspapers; you have all read of my prowess; but do you ever suspect the heartbreak that lies behind that smiling face, the agony of woe that oft-times has bowed that fragile figure in an attitude of despair? I hazard not.

A motherless madcap in my father's mansion, I often made the old corridors ring with my childish treble. I was playmate to the pixies and the elves in my dream-world of make-believe, the flowers were my friends, and old black Mammy Lou the only mother I had ever known until the fateful day when my father, an aged philanderer, met and married his second wife—my stepmother! She was, I suppose, a "good" woman, but cold and stern, and she nursed a virulent hatred for Herbert Tremaine, my fiancé. Herbert was neither prince nor pauper, but just a man s man. I drooped and pined under her heartless regime, but in vain, for my aged father, a weakling indeed, was as much intimidated by the termagant as I.

"THE thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts" said the good poet Longfellow of the thoughts of youth, and one evening when my stepmother sneeringly entered the room where Herbert and I were pirouetting to the strains of the Victrola, something snapped within me, and I gave her a good smack with "Roll On. O Silvery Moon" which I happened to have in my hand at the time.

The doctor spoke the dread word concussion," and my father addressed me gravely. "Maisie Day," he said, "you had better go and enter a beauty contest or something until this little matter blows over." So, bidding a wistful adieu to Herbert Tremaine and to old black Mammy Lou, and with my father s blessing light upon me, I spread my wings and flew away, a fledgling from the home nest, into the unknown.

A MUMMER'S JEST

It was at a gay supper-party, backstage in the sumptuous New York Theatre where our Contest was soon to be held, that I first forgot my vows to far-away Herbert Tremaine, and fell anew a victim to the arrow of the "little blind god"; which is just another name for marriage, at least to a girl of my refinement. For there is a camaraderie about the temples of Thalia, and it is just such madcaps as l that, lured by its riot and roses, become, alas, too quickly Folly's pawn.

Yes, I have savoured to its bitterest dregs the will-o'-the-wisp called Love. But was it my fault that my slightest glance or pirouette inflamed men's passions? In my childish innocence, it was all a game to me, for, as the poet Swinburne says of the fugitive passion,

"If you have forgotten my kisses,

Why, I have forgotten your name."

And I think that Swinburne has expressed it truly once and for all. although some of his poems seem a little off-colour, at least to a girl of my sensitive calibre.

AH, Thespis! Could I have looked into the future as we sat that night, a merry crew, around the banquet-board! I was, for the nonce, shy and silent, for I sensed myself a novice at such festivals, and vainly racked my brains for some sally that might amuse these kindly friends. At last, recalling an old toast that I had read in some childish book, I raised my glass with an effort, and laughingly cried:

"Here's to the bride that's to be!

Happy and smiling and fair,

And here's to those who would like to be, And are wondering when, and where."

Alas! How could I know that they would not turn it off lightly as the jest that it was? The girls clustered round me, and merrily proposed many another toast, such as

"There swims no goose so gray but soon or late She finds some honest gander for her mate"

Which I was inclined to resent for a wee moment, but just then Miss Dongan Hills chimed in with one beginning Here s to you, Richard Wagner," which, she courteously explained, was all she knew, although not appropriate to the occasion. I blushed and hid my face, and it was then that, looking underneath the table, I suddenly espied a gentleman—a stranger to me—shyly lurking there. Thinking to create a diversion, I began to feed him tidbits from my plate, which he accepted civilly, although I afterwards discovered that he did not eat them but placed them, instead, in the cuff of a gentleman s trouser sitting opposite. Well, this gentleman grew very angry and said to me, "If that is the gentleman YOU are going to marry, you had better do it now before I give him a good sock in tin* nose." And it turned out that the man with the trouser-cuffs was a Justice of the Peace!

I felt my face burn.

And so it all began as a feu d'esprit, a quip, a quirk, a sally of the stage, a very mummer's jest. I swooned away, and knew no more until, amid a shower of rice, I found myself in a taxi, whirling dizzily through the dark, deserted streets, the marriage certificate in my hand. It seemed to sear and burn; and in a mood of hot rebellion, I fed it to a passing horse and lay back with closed eyes.

So this was the culmination of my girlish dreams! Married to a man I did not love, nay, whose very name I did not know! Well —

I would take it with a stiff upper lip. I would "play tin game." W ill; outstretched arms, I turned to my husband of an hour, as a mellow ray of moonlight threw its pencilled beam of comfort into the interior of the cab. And then my eyes widened with tears, my lips quivered in plaintive wonder.

He was not there.

A "KISSLESS" BRIDE

I WAS a wife in name only! A sixty-minute bride, a kissless consort. Paying the taxi with my last coin, I wandered brokenly about the streets for hours until the pangs of hunger brought me to a realization of my predicament. "An army fights on its stomach said the great French marshal, Napoleon, referring to the pangs of hunger. So, quickly dissembling my pride, I approached a richly-dressed gentleman who was standing on the curb. Yes, I accosted him—but with lowered eyes and haughty mien.

"Sir," I said, "you see before you one brought low by Folly's whim. Can you not spare such a one a twenty-five cent piece to allay her pangs of hunger?"

lie bowed low in courtly fashion. "Little lady," he replied in well-modulated tones, "will you not accept the poor hospitality of one who ranks high in his profession but wears a beggar's heart upon his sleeve? '

I blushed prettily, for I sensed that he was a gentleman. "Only for the briefest of whiles." I answered cautiously, "for I must be off to the Beauty Contest held to ascertain The Most Perfectly Formed Girl Below the MasonDixon Line."

So, hailing a taxi, he gave the driver an address in an exclusive section of West One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Street, and sat down beside me in the cab to tell me something of himself.

He was Moncrieff Van Alstyne, a breath-holder, and aspirant to the World's BreathHolding Championship, the grilling test for which was to take place in the near future. And I—I was that broken blossom in life's nosegay, a wife in name only! Was it any wonder that I could do little more than blush and hang my head?

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But it's always darkest just before dawn, and the gentleman, it would seem, found my ways winning. For it was two hours later, and as his bride, that I at length crossed the threshold of Moncricff Van Alstyne's home.

WHEN BABY CAME

"Welcome to One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Street!" cried my husband gaily, flinging wide the door. And with little Maisie Junior clinging to my hand, and the patter of her childish feet echoing before me down the stately corridors, I entered that haven of a good man's love.

Yes, I was a mother. "Love waits for no man's lure" (Swinburne) and I, a petal in the whirling maelstrom of life, had learned, with a pain that was akin to joy, the sweetest story ever told to a woman's waiting heart.

Ever the madcap, I brushed aside my serious thoughts and joined Maisie Junior in a merry game in the richly-furnished rooms. But my husband's voice rebuked me.

"You are a woman grown, and must put aside childish things," he said kindly, taking off his hat and vest and settling down to his pipe. Alas! Was this to be my life? I choked with the ignominy of it all. But before a retort could rise to my lips, the door opened to admit a handsome gentleman bearing upon his cheek the honoured scar of a student of old Heidelberg.

"Mr. Gommick, my trainer for the great Breath-Holding Contest", explained my husband affably. I flushed as the stranger eyed me with a kindly I scrutiny. "Sit down, little woman, and be at ease," he said courteously, "hut as for you,"—turning to my husband—"why, let us get down to work." And he punched Mr. Van Alstyne lightly in the diaphragm.

I think it was at that moment that, quite simply, my love for Mr. Gommick was born.

For truly, in the weeks that followed, my love for my husband turned to ashes, and my heart to gall and wormwood within me; for Mr. Van Alstyne constantly practised holding his breath in preparation for his forthcoming test, and I was a wife in name only. Hour after hour, he would busy himself with his great, gleaming oxygen-tank, polishing and adjusting it. and drawing i deep, brutal breaths of air into his lungs, until often my frayed nerves would snap, and I would querulously murmur, "A plague take your old Breath-Holding Contest! I have a Contest of my own." And with ambition burning within me, I would set forth for the Beauty Contest. But a wistful something in Mr. Gommick's eyes would bring me back again and again, for I was a captive of love indeed.

And so the weeks sped by, and baby Freddie came to join Maisie and to twine his little fingers around my heart. At last came the day of the great Breath-Holding Contest. I sat idly by the window, fashioning a false beard and mustache for baby Freddie out of some old mattress-hair that I had found among my possessions, while, nearby, Mr. Gommick put in readiness the oxygen-tank which was to accompany my husband upon his ordeal. In his room, the breath-holder fretted to be off.

"If the oxygen-tank is in readiness, Gommick," he called, "I will take it with mg presently in my taxi, and you may follow with Mrs. Van Alstyne and the children. For I think that solitude will refresh me."

I sighed. "What are you thinking of, my dear?" queried Mr. Gommick gently.

"Of shoes and ships and sealing, wax, of cabbages and kings," I laughed lightly, though my heart was sore. He knelt fervently at my side, and kissed the little hand that held the beard and mustache. "Think of me, too, Maisie Day," he pleaded in a low tone, vibrant with emotion.

I knew' what he meant. "B-but," I stammered, shrinking. And then I w-as in his arms.

"Is everything ready, Gommick?" came my husband's voice querulously from the next room.

"In a moment," replied his trainer courteously, and taking the false mustache and beard of mattress-hair from my helpless hands, he dropped them silently into the oxygen-tank and folded me to his heart.

FATE'S FINAL CAPRICE

Well, poor Mr. Van Alstyne was in the hospital for quite a while after the Contest, while they got the mattress-hair out of his lungs, and I was sorry in a way to see him deprived of the championship, and of his wife, at one fell blow. But Mr. Gommick and I were soon plunged into a whirl of gaiety, and many were the little supperparties at our home in an exclusive quarter of Manhattan. Yet, although Love had wooed me for a time from the path that leads to fame, I had not lost my determination to be chosen Most Perfectly Formed Girl Below the Mason-Dixon Line, so, one day, Mr. Gommick and I, with Maisie Junior, little Freddie and baby Arthur, set out in a taxicab for the Beauty Contest.

It was a childish whim of Maisie Junior's that then altered the whole course of my life. For little Maisie wanted to go to the Zoological Gardens.

"Hush, dear," I said firmly, "Mummy has to go to the Beauty Contest." But she would not hush, and kept putting her foot through the window of the taxi until the driver grew very angry, and sarcastically suggested that she would have just as much fun at the pretty new jail to which He was going to drive us, instead.

With an indignant outcry, Mr. Gommick struck the insolent fellow a smart blow, and the next thing I knew there was a great deal of noise, and my husband was disappearing very quickly down the street with Maisie Junior clinging to his hand.

Can Satan's regions hold a greater woe than that of a mother bereft? Mother-love lent wings to my feet and I followed them furiously as they vanished into the maw of a large crowd gathered about the Queens-borough Bridge. They were chiefly women with little children clinging to their hands, and in an agony of apprehension, I scanned their faces, hut Maisie Junior was not among them. As I was despairing, my eyes detected a shadow upon the delicate tracery of steel below the bridge, and, like a hound on the scent, I followed. With all the dignity I could muster, I courteously excused myself to a gentleman who was trying to sell me a pennant, and climbed the railing of the bridge, letting myself down, inch by inch, into the glittering metal web below. I know not what supported me; my woman's heart gave me strength. But alas! What I had thought to be Mr. Gommick and Maisie Junior turned out to be nothing more nor less than a little speck of some foreign matter, so, choking back a few' tears of disappointment, I manoeuvered the perilous ascent, and stood once more upon the bridge.

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The rest is History. Amid cheers and a fluttering of banners, a kindly gentleman in a silk hat approached me and said, in cultured tones: "Madam, as Vice-President of the Mother's Day Emblem and Talisman Association, it is my privilege to confer upon you the proud title of First Mother to Hang for Eleven Minutes by Her Teeth from the Queens-borough Bridge. And now look your prettiest, for here come the gentlemen of the Press!"

"B-but," I stammered, wide-eyed and

uncomprehending, "T am on my way to the Beauty Contest!"

"The Beauty Contest," said Mr. Herbert Tremaine (for indeed, as I realised with incredulous joy, Herbert, my early fiance, and the Vice-President of the Mother's Day Emblem and Talisman Association were one and the same) "took place several w'eeks ago, and was won by this well-proportioned young lady here." And he introduced a comparatively plain girl who was photographed with me, after which, amid the fuss and feather of a nation's acclaim. I rode proudly beside Herbert in a sumptuous parade up Fifth Avenue.

I have never found Mr. Gommick or Maisie Junior. But baby Herbert has come to fill the aching void in my heart, and often, as I sit with my husband (who has now become President of the Mother's Day Emblem and Talisman Association) at our fireside in a Duplex apartment in the fashionable 'Sixties, I lay my head upon his lap and stare dreamily into the flames.

"Herbert," I murmur tremulously, "old friends arc best."

The world calls me famous. Yet I am a mother first; and as I gather my kiddies about me in the twilight, I sometimes think that they are, indeed, a tender reward for one who was—A Wife In Name Only.