[Cover Illustration]
By PHYLLIS BOTTOME
THE DARK TOWER
THE SECOND FIDDLE
THE SERVANT OF REALITY
THE DERELICT AND OTHER STORIES
ROSE AND HELEN
THE CRYSTAL HEART
THE KINGFISHER
THE VICTIM AND THE WORM
THE
PERFECT WIFE
BY
PHYLLIS BOTTOME
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1924,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
THE PERFECT WIFE
—△—
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The Perfect Wife
CHAPTER I
Anne’s trained, supple mind went over the house carefully, but there was
nothing wrong with it; malleable things had never failed her. Her
uneasiness couldn’t discover so much as the Princess’s pea under nine
mattresses. The blue and green chintzes kept their look of mysterious,
perpetual spring. The high delphiniums in opalescent vases reared azure
spires in unfaded splendour. The well-swept, blue carpet showed no
specks of dust; and Anne knew that all the unseen rooms above and below
her were in the same, fresh, clean, ordered state.
Nobody in London had better or more permanent maids. Anne was always
serene with her servants, definite and firm. She expressed her wishes
without harshness or flurry, and with the clarity of an expert who could
at any moment carry out her own intentions.
She was without suspicion, and was the harder to deceive; her mind was
uninfluenced except by facts. It had taken Anne a long while to become
uneasy about Norman. Ten years of very happy married life had made her
consciousness stiff against surprises, she could have accepted them from
any other quarter, but she was perfectly sure of Norman. He was there in
her life, the centre of it, like a God in a temple. You do not move gods
except by prayer, and even then you are not supposed to move them away.
There had always been something of the poet about Norman, and at first
he had loved Anne with inspiration and passion. He had asked everything
of her, he had wanted to break his way into her heart and force her into
all his thoughts, importunately to tune and mould her into his sharpened
personal image; he had even resented her preoccupation with his own
comforts. Anne had taken his love conscientiously and accustomed herself
carefully to all his habits and desires; but she had kept somehow her
own image intact. After a time, however, Norman had asked less of her
and she had felt happier, and as if their marriage had taken the final
mould of success. There was no longer any strain about it, Norman had
absences and absorptions which were sometimes a relief to her. She liked
to be a good deal alone, it ministered to her unshakable poise and gave
her time to do with finish all the myriad household duties which she set
herself.
Her tenderness for Norman deepened with every year. She learned that she
was stronger than he was, his more sensitive and excitable spirit had to
be spared the burden of practical life; and Anne loved to spare him
burdens. His career, which was that of a young and promising barrister,
took up all his strength. It would never have done to pull at him with
daily needs; so that Norman thought that households have no
difficulties. He had no idea that you cannot have perfect smoothness
without hard struggle going on somewhere out of sight. He took his
servants, his ease, his clever little dinners, his wife’s carefully
studied appearance for granted; he even took for granted that while he
lived better than men of his age and income usually lived, it cost him
less. He would have said that Anne was a good manager, but he wouldn’t
in the least have realized what being a good manager meant. He had
thought of nothing but Anne when he first married her, and now he
thought about her hardly at all. That was the trouble, because he was an
ardent thinker, and ardent thinkers have to think about something.
Anne’s eyes strayed to the little French china clock. She was at last
prepared to admit to herself that there was trouble. Norman was later
even than usual, and for the last few weeks he had been always late.
When he came in he seemed to have left his personality behind him. He
would sit irritable and silent through the dinner hour, smoke a rapid
succession of cigarettes, skimming books and throwing them aside, and
telling her briefly if she spoke to him that he was too tired to talk.
Sometimes he went straight out again after dinner, as if their home was
strange to him—almost as if he was angry with it. Anne felt this deeply
because she loved their home, and had made it for him to love. His room
was exactly the kind of room he liked. The delicate, fine, French prints
which she had bought him birthday by birthday were his delight. Every
book on the shelves was the outcome of his private taste. It hurt Anne
very much to see his eyes wandering over everything about him as if he
was irritated by what he saw.
When he spoke to her, it was as if she had done him some grave wrong,
and he was trying to control himself in order not to overwhelm her with
his sense of it. He did not meet her eyes, and though he still kissed
her when he came and went, it was a dropped, inconclusive kiss. He no
longer turned to her to fulfill his needs, and when she gave him
anything unasked, it seemed to add to the great wrong he felt that she
had done him.
When things—little, harmless, household things—went astray, Anne’s
first instinct was to get to the bottom of them, she never let
dissatisfactions fester, and now she saw that something in the centre of
her life was wrong, and knew that she must go to the bottom of it—even
though as it sometimes happened—the process might knock the bottom out.
She heard the click of Norman’s key in the latch, there was a moment’s
pause in the hall, and then his step on the stairs, not light and eager
as it used to be, but dragging and reluctant.
She lifted her rather short-sighted grey eyes to the doorway and met
Norman’s. He stood there looking at her curiously, like a creature at
bay. Her heart contracted with pity for him. She could not bear that he
should look pursued, least of all pursued by her, as if she were an
unfamiliar, menacing fellow-creature and not the wife of his heart.
“Norman,” she said very gently, “will you come here and tell me what is
the matter with you?”
He winced sharply and said, “Matter? I don’t know what you mean. It’s
time to dress for dinner.”
But Anne waved this function aside.
“No, darling,” she said, “tell me first, dinner can wait.” She rang as
she spoke and gave a quiet order to the maid. When they were alone
again, he said bitterly,
“You always arrange everything beautifully, but you can’t arrange this!”
“I am so sorry,” she said patiently, “to have had to speak to Jane
first, but one has to let them know. Now we have more than half an hour
undisturbed, sit down and have a cigarette. Whatever has happened,
Norman, we can bear it together.”
What Anne really meant was “I can bear most of it for you,” but not even
to herself did she admit how much of what Norman had to bear she took
from him.
He gave a short, queer laugh.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said roughly, “but I
suppose I’ve got to tell you. We can’t go on living like this. Well! I’m
in love, damnably, wretchedly in love—with a girl. She’s not one of the
sort that don’t give a rap for convention either, but a girl as good as
you—but not so quiet about it! Poor child, it’s struck her all of a
heap. She didn’t know I was married before to-day. I’ve been a beastly
cad to you both. I never thought she’d care, and I couldn’t talk of you,
Anne. I tried, but I couldn’t get it out—it stuck in my throat.”
He put his head in his hands and she watched his slight shoulders heave.
He was thirty-five and so was Anne, but Norman looked ten years younger;
and he was in love with a girl.
Anne sat up very straight in a high backed chair. She was slim and young
looking too, but she had reached the age when women look as young as
they feel, and when they are unhappy the youth in their faces goes,
never to return again.
In nine cases out of ten, people not only act as they are accustomed to
act, but they feel as they are accustomed to feel. Anne was accustomed
to feel first for Norman, and it was for Norman that she felt first now.
“Dearest,” she whispered, “dearest—my poor boy!”
He stumbled across the room to her and laid his head on her lap. She was
quite happy stroking it and murmuring to him. All her heart was his, it
had never been anyone else’s; and it would be his always.
“Don’t grieve, my darling,” she whispered, “it will all come right. It
_must_ all come right. You shall have what you want!”
“But I can’t,” he sobbed, “I can’t! And I don’t even know what I want!”
His arms tightened round her. “I’m a beast and I mind that most!”
She saw that he did, and set herself to remedy it. Norman had always
been extraordinarily chivalrous and generous to women—he was of the
type that never breaks anything except hearts.
“But you needn’t feel like that,” she urged, “you see I understand
perfectly. You can’t help love, nobody can help love. All I want to
know, all I _must_ know, my darling, is how certain it is? How sure, I
mean, you are that the very deepest thing in you loves her, and will
always love her?”
“Yes, that’s it,” he agreed, “I do—it _is_ the deepest thing in me. I
want so awfully to take care of her. Anne, I did—I _did_ want to love
you like that—but it seemed as if you wouldn’t let me. She’s not like
that, you know; she wants me terribly—the way I want her. We’re not as
good as you are.”
Norman Elliot was an intellectual man, but he spoke as simply as a child
explaining its hunger to its mother, and Anne listened as mothers listen
to a child’s importunate need; but she wished he had explained his needs
before.
“My dear,” she said, “of course I see how it is! She’s young and you’re
really young. You’re half a poet, you know, I’ve always told you that
you were like a poet, and they never quite grow up. I haven’t kept young
enough for you.”
She didn’t try to explain her own love, nor that it was quite as
“terrible” as any that this young strange girl might feel for him. She
could deal with her terror later. She foresaw that she would have plenty
of time for it—all the rest of her life.
“Tell me about her,” she said gently. Norman got up and walked about the
room. He told her, in a confused and eager way, all the charm—the
headstrong, violent charm—of the young creature. How he had come across
her quite by accident in a friend’s office. The friend didn’t turn up,
but Nina Dean sat with flaming red bobbed hair on an office stool, and
told him what she thought of London. That was the beginning. They met
afterwards again and again, for lunch in the City—queer old Soho
places—she lit them from end to end with magic. She had magic; she was
very vehement, they quarreled often, he gave her books to read and they
fought about them. He didn’t suppose she had been very well brought up.
There was a large family somewhere in Ireland. She had the sweetest
accent, a very short upper lip, and the skin of a pale pink rose. Her
eyebrows were dark and arched, they made her look as if she was always
being surprised. Had he said her eyes were brown—very dark brown and
immensely sad—her whole face was tragic, small and tragic? You wanted
awfully to be good to her, and now he’d made her sick with crying. It
was too beastly, too terrible; after he had told her he was married, she
had rushed away from him out into the Strand. He saw her jump on to a
fast moving ’bus. She lived somewhere off in Maida Vale with an aunt.
The whole thing had been innocent. That was the worst of it. Innocence
hurt, and innocence lasted. You couldn’t get over innocence, not if you
were like Norman and never wanted to hurt beautiful things.
“I daresay you’d give me a divorce,” he added, “in fact I never doubted
you would, but God knows if she’d take it, and besides if I smash my
career how can I keep her? I daresay literary chaps can afford this kind
of thing, but not a man in my position, especially as almost all my
backing has come from your people.”
“My family doesn’t matter now,” said Anne. “You’ll get on all right
without them. But of course I see what you mean. Isn’t there any other
way? A way in which we could shield the girl and yet you could be free
without having to ruin your career?”
Norman hesitated. “The whole thing’s impossible,” he groaned, “I must
get away for a bit or I shall cut my throat.”
A silvery gong sounded from the hall.
“We will talk about it again after dinner,” Anne said getting up, “I
think a way must be found, don’t be afraid, darling.”
He turned to her with a passion of remorseful tenderness. “Anne! Anne!”
he said, “how could I leave you? I don’t want to leave you!”
Anne tried to overcome a shuddering feeling as she felt his arm across
her shoulder. She wished he would not touch her, but she submitted even
to his reactions; knowing that they were reactions. She wanted him to
come down quietly and eat his dinner, and in the end he did what she
wanted. He was able to talk now, about politics and personalities. Anne
was very well read and though she talked less than he did, she could
hold her own. She wondered if the red haired girl who cried herself sick
in the Strand could talk intelligently too. Probably she could, modern
children were very clever, but Anne doubted if she could keep her wits
while her heart was being broken. The old-fashioned training is best for
those who desire to suppress emotion. Anne had always been modern in her
ideas, but rigidly old-fashioned in the government of her feelings. She
ate her dinner without appetite, but she ate as much as usual. When they
had finished she went with Norman into his smoking room.
“I’ve thought of something,” Anne said slowly, “instead of trying to get
a tiresome ordinary divorce, which you’ve not only got no grounds for,
but which if you had good grounds for, would upset your career, couldn’t
you get one for nullity? You see we have never had a child.” Anne was
glad that he turned away from her, because even when they were happy she
hadn’t liked saying that particular sentence; it had always seemed to
her as if she had failed Norman more than Nature had failed her, and she
could bear to say it very much less now that he did not want her love,
which had never failed him. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew his
silences. This was what he had wanted her to say, but he would never
have said it himself. He would have been cut in pieces first. Still he
had hoped that perhaps she wouldn’t let him be cut in pieces. Anne went
on casually, point by point, “I could go away for a time, to Italy
perhaps. I have never been since the War. It would be a wonderful change
for me to go abroad again, and then when it was all arranged, I could
come back when I liked. It seems to me a very good plan. My people will
object, but they would object to any divorce; and nobody can stop
us—nobody knows anything that could stop us. Of course I don’t know if
there are any legal difficulties?”
“None,” said Norman without turning round. “If you can bring yourself to
swear that you were never really my wife?”
“I have always thought the divorce laws very wrong,” said Anne steadily.
“If you can prove that both husband and wife want a divorce they can’t
have it. If only one of them wants it, it’s comparatively easy to get
it—by doing wrong for it. I have always believed in divorce by mutual
consent after a three years’ probation. Love is sacred—and marriage is
sacred—as long as there is love in it—but marriage by itself is merely
legal. I don’t see why I should mind swearing a lie when the whole
situation is a lie, if it’s the only way out of it for you, Norman?”
“Only you happen not to like telling lies,” he reminded her.
“I don’t think that matters,” said Anne.
“My dear, I feel such a beast,” Norman said again, and again (only more
easily now, because his heart was uplifted by a surge of hope). Anne
took his remorse away from him. “But Anne,” he said at last, “I don’t
want to leave you. That’s what’s been hurting me so dreadfully all these
weeks. You see I adore her, all the time she’s in me pulling me to
pieces. I can’t tell you what it’s like. You’re such an angel but you
couldn’t understand—and yet there’s you, and there’s no one in the
world like you. Whatever happens I want you to remember I think you
_perfect_.”
This tribute hurt Anne more than anything he had yet said. For a moment
she could not even comfort him any more. “You don’t seem to see I’ve got
to _lose_ you!” he finished almost resentfully. She pulled herself
together to meet this difficulty. “But Norman,” she said, “I shan’t
change. I can’t be your wife if you love this other girl, but I shall
love you always, and I shall love her because of you. I want, as soon as
all the tiresome legal things are cleared away, to be your friend and
hers for the rest of my life.” He looked at her with eyes in which
worship and astonishment mingled. Anne had really succeeded in
surprising him. He had always thought of her as immaculate and safer
than the safest institution, but he hadn’t believed anyone who was safe
and immaculate could be so kind; nor had he believed that women love
without jealousy. He did not quite believe it now, but he was shaken by
her eyes. “Oh, if you could only make her see,” Norman breathed. “She’ll
be like all the devils let loose when I tell her I’ve told you. I had to
swear I wouldn’t. She’s full of rage with me now—cursed me out of the
room, not because I’d let her down, but because I’d let you down. She’s
a feminist, you know, and she’s awfully frank. You’ll have to let her
pitch into me frightfully. But it would be the best thing in the world
if you’d see her yourself. Then you could make her see that you don’t
awfully mind.”
Anne said nothing at all. It took her breath away that he couldn’t see
how much she minded. It would not have surprised her if she had died of
it where she stood, not simply and softly fainted (she was far too
conscious for that), but died hard, in ugliness and agony, as men die
hard from wounds on noisy battlefields. Her life in Norman had been
intact, and had gone far deeper than her physical life, and now it had
been broken, ruthlessly, in a moment—from its fine full strength—into
fragments. But this life—the life of the hidden senses and intricate
attachments of the heart—can die without a sign, and it died now in
Anne, very quietly while she was still thinking what she should say to
this girl who was going—for her sake—to pitch into Norman. “Of course
I will go and see her,” she said at last, “to-morrow.”
He gave a sigh of relief. “Oh, Anne,” he said, “what a fool I was not to
tell you about it weeks ago! You see I thought you’d mind so awfully.”
He looked at her a little doubtfully, and she saw that he was going to
ask her more about her feelings; but she had come to the end of her
tether, she could not stand any more explanations, she felt that she had
reached the last even of her reassurances. “It makes a great
difference,” she said gently. “It changes one’s life. I must go now and
think about it, but don’t worry any more, Norman—I feel quite sure it
will come all right for all of us.” He made a step towards her, but Anne
reached the door first in safety, and fled across the little familiar
hall. It felt curiously large and empty to her, as if she might lose her
way in it before she reached the stairs. Norman was still speaking, but
she couldn’t take in what he said. His words went on like mosquitoes
outside an impenetrable netting. She heard the sound of them, but they
couldn’t get into her brain.
Fortunately they had always had different rooms—they usually had the
door between them open, but to-night Anne shut her door so that he
should not come in and try to comfort her. She would have liked to lock
it, but there was no real need. If Norman saw that it was shut it would
be enough. He was so quick to understand everything, and so gentle when
he understood. And all of it, his gentleness, his understanding, and the
ardour that she hadn’t quite wanted, were going to be given to a young
woman called Nina Dean who cried and cursed and jumped on to swiftly
moving ’buses.