Author of “Angelica”
She had got used to Andrew’s forgetting all sorts of important
anniversaries. In fact, she rather liked him to do so. It gave her
something to forgive, and fed her measureless indulgence. All his
eccentricities, his absurdities, his brilliant and explosive energy, his
terrible exactions, constituted “Andy’s ways,” which she loved with a
deep and pitying love.
Even if he was clever and successful and attractive, he couldn’t do the
things she could do so easily and so well. He couldn’t darn his own
socks or cook a dinner or make a bed. She insisted that he was
helpless--that all men were helpless. She was the sort of woman who
would have pitied Julius Cæsar because he couldn’t make an omelet.
Something of this kindly indulgence was reflected upon her nice face as
she sat in the library sewing and waiting for Andrew. She was a
handsome, dignified, good-tempered woman of thirty-five, who was never
to be taken by surprise. No matter what might happen, she would raise
her eyebrows and smile and say, “Well?”--which was her nice, kind way of
saying, “I told you so!”
And generally she had told you so, because, like so many other
unimaginative people, she could almost always foresee ordinary
consequences. Her prognostications were based, not upon probabilities,
but upon experience.
It was the tenth anniversary of their wedding--an important day in a
household. And yet, knowing Andrew as she did, Marian had made no
preparations for festivity, because he was as likely as not to forget or
to neglect even a special dinner. She would remind him when he came in,
and smile at him, and he would be startled and contrite. She would not
acknowledge the little wound that was there, even to herself.
Nor would she acknowledge what she really knew quite well--that Andy
wasn’t happy, as she was. Hadn’t she provided him with all the materials
for happiness--a lovely, peaceful home, three pretty, healthy children,
and just the social background he required?
What is more, she knew that no just man could find a fault in her as a
wife. She was thrifty, conscientious, sympathetic, a correct and popular
hostess, an excellent mother. She was never irritable, never gloomy,
never exacting. She was handsome, and understood how to dress. There was
really nothing within the domestic cosmos to which a sane man could
object.
That may have been the trouble. Andrew was a man who did not approve of
happiness. He wanted and required to be forever struggling and rebelling
and resenting. Marian had often, with amusement, noticed him trying to
provoke a quarrel with her; but of course he never could, for she never
quarreled.
The clock struck eleven. She sighed a little, laid down her sewing, and
picked up a book. It had been a very trying day. Andrew had vanished,
without the least regard for appointments he himself had made, or office
hours, and she had had to placate all sorts of people without knowing at
all the cause of his delinquency. It was simply another of “Andy’s
ways,” and a very troublesome one in a doctor.
She recognized it as part of a wife’s duties to smooth the path of her
husband--above all, of a husband who was the next thing to a genius. She
was accustomed to hearing him spoken of as “brilliant.” She was proud of
it, and secretly a little proud of his eccentricities. He was an
extraordinary man, no doubt about it, and he required a wife of
extraordinary tact.
He was a physician, but not satisfied with that. He liked to write
articles and give lectures, and he had a reputation as a very daring if
not very sound investigator along sociological lines. He had proclaimed
and printed office hours; but if he were busy writing, he wouldn’t see
any one who came, and it was Marian, of course, who did have to see
these people and get them away not too grossly offended.
At other times there would be some patient who interested him, and he
would shut himself up with him or her; and again in this case Marian had
to soothe and placate the other patients who had seen the favored one
admitted, and who naturally resented being kept waiting so outrageously.
There was not a trace of jealousy, or of curiosity, in Marian. She
smiled at his interest in a pretty woman.
She wasn’t too much interested in anything--certainly not in the book
she had taken up, for she put it down again with a yawn within a very
few minutes, to look at the clock and to give a small sigh. She couldn’t
help wishing that Andrew had remembered what day it was, at least to the
extent of an extra kiss. Even the most able and placid woman might wish
that.
Then, at last, he did come in, in a mood she knew well; and her faint
hope that perhaps he had remembered, and would bring her flowers, fell
stone dead. He flung himself into a chair, hot and tired and rather
pale, with his red hair ruffled up, giving him the look of a sulky and
earnest child.
“Well!” said Marian, with a nice smile. “Here you are! Such a day as
I’ve had, Andy! People telephoning and insisting that they had
appointments and refusing to be put off; and poor me without the least
idea where you were or when you’d come back! There was that poor woman
with the albino twins--”
He frowned impatiently.
“That doesn’t matter. I don’t want the case, anyway. No! See here,
Marian. I want to talk to you.”
She said “Yes?” inquiringly, with her kind and pleasant face turned
toward him, but he didn’t look at her. He sat staring at the ground,
huddled down in his chair, rumpled, disheveled.
“What is there about him so attractive?” Marian reflected, not for the
first time.
He was not handsome, he was very untidy, he was casual, rude, distrait;
a slender, wiry red-haired fellow of thirty-five, with a sharp-featured,
rather pale, freckled face and restless, bright brown eyes.
At last he looked up at his wife, still frowning.
“Don’t be hurt!” he said “And _try_ to understand!”
“Of course I will, Andy.”
“I’ve been walking,” he went on, “for hours--almost all day--thinking it
out. This lecture that I’m to give, you know, to-morrow--”
“Oh, yes--before the Moral Courage Club.”
“I’d made fairly comprehensive notes of what I was going to say; but
it’s been growing on me, every day, how weak and cowardly it is--how
evasive. I hadn’t _dared_ to be frank, I never have dared. I’ve
compromised. I’ve lied. I’ve kept it up for ten years--ten years to-day,
Marian!”
“Kept up what?” she asked, startled.
“This damnable hypocrisy!” he cried. “This wretched, revolting pretense!
Do you know that it’s the anniversary to-night of that horrible
ceremony--that perjury--that mockery we called our marriage?”
Marian had grown quite white.
“Why, Andy!” she faltered. “I never thought--I thought--I always hoped
you were--happy!”
He sprang up and began to pace the room.
“I can’t _stand_ it any longer!” he cried. “I’m at the end of my tether.
Oh, this _marriage_!”
“Is it--me, Andy?” Marian asked rather pitifully.
“No! No! It’s simply marriage--marriage with any one. It’s this base,
disgusting monotony, this abominable pettiness, this eternal talk about
servants and children and coal-bills and neighbors and card-parties. It
stifles me. It sickens me. I can’t _live_ any more unless I’m free!”
“Do you mean that you--want a divorce, Andy?” she asked, with a gallant
effort to disguise her terror and distress.
“No,” he answered, “not necessarily. I shouldn’t like to lose you
altogether, Marian--unless, of course, you’d like to form another
connection. Would you?”
“No--no, Andy, I wouldn’t!”
“I didn’t think so. What I want, Marian, is simply to ignore our
marriage. I want to be released from its petty restrictions and
obligations. Will you do that, Marian? Will you absolve me from all
these preposterous ‘vows,’ and so on?”
“Yes,” she answered promptly. “I will--if you like.”
“And you won’t be hurt? You won’t be petty? You won’t think I’m not fond
of you, Marian?”
She shook her head.
“You see, don’t you, that we can be just as fond of each other, and yet
go our separate ways?”
“Are we--does that mean--that we’re to--part?” she asked.
He came over and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“My dear girl,” he said, “I can’t live with you any longer.”
She couldn’t restrain a sob.
“Oh, Andy! Oh! Is there--some one else?”
“No! Can’t you _see_? I want to be alone--to live alone--in freedom.
I’ll take a house for myself somewhere, and you’ll go on here, just as
usual; except that I’d like to have the children part of the time. I
won’t be unreasonable, though.”
“I don’t think I’d--like to--go on here, without you,” she said in a
trembling voice. “I’d be--lonely.”
“Nonsense! Not after a day or so. You’d enjoy the freedom, too. I’ve got
my eye on a little house that will suit me very well. And really,
Marian, I’d very much prefer you and the children keeping on here in the
same way. Of course, I should make you the same housekeeping allowance,
and so on.”
“I would like a little freedom, too,” she said. “I--can’t stop
here--without you, Andrew.”
“Well, of course,” he answered, rather disconcerted, “I’ve no right to
dictate to you.”
“You can stay here,” she said, “with the children, and I’ll go and stop
with mother for a few days, where I can think it over quietly. Then I’ll
send for the babies. I--you see, I want to--get used to this.
It’s--rather sudden.”
It was no longer possible to conceal the fact that she was weeping. Her
husband was really distressed. He patted her lovely, shining hair with a
careless hand, while he scowled anxiously before him.
“My dear girl! Please! This isn’t a tragedy, by any means. Simply let’s
be two sensible, modern people who refuse to be bound by certain
conventions. Do be your own sensible self, won’t you?”
“I--will--try!” she sobbed. “Only--you’ll have to give me--a little
time.”
He looked at the clock; it was a little after midnight.
“Perhaps I’d better leave you alone,” he said. “I’ll be going now.”
“Going? Where? At this hour?”
“Well, you see--that lecture to-morrow. It’s to be ‘Marriage from the
Man’s Point of View.’ I can’t, with any dignity, any decency, say what I
wish to say--be really honest--in the character of a domestic man. It
would be a farce. I must be able to say that I’m a free man, do you
see?”
“Yes,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But--does that mean it’s got to begin
now?”
“What?”
“The--living apart?”
“I’m afraid so. I thought I’d go to a hotel for the night, and send
after my things in the morning.”
“Oh, no, Andy, please! I couldn’t explain--to the servants. No! That’s
the only thing I ask you. Let me be the one to go. You can say it’s a
telegram from mother.”
“Nonsense, my dear girl! I won’t hear of it! Turning you out of the
house at this hour of the night! Let _me_ go!”
“No, Andrew, I’d rather; really I would! I’d _like_ to go. I--need a
change. If you’ll call a taxi while I pack my bag--”
“You’re quite sure?” he asked anxiously, and again she assured him that
she really wished to go.
She went up to the big, lamp-lit bedroom, so immaculate, so charming,
with its two brass beds, the dressing-table and bureau gleaming with
silver, the soft gray rug on the floor, her dear little sewing-table,
all the photographs--
“Oh, _why_?” she cried. “Oh, why do I have to leave it?”
She went about in her brisk, sensible way, selecting things out of one
drawer and another and packing them neatly into a bag; but long before
she had finished a sudden spasm of pain overcame her. She sat down in
her own particular wicker chair, and sobbed bitterly.
“I _don’t_ understand!” she cried. “I _don’t_! I _don’t_! Not a bit!”