THE HONEYMOON
The first months of winter were full of excitement to Lena. She
frequently assured herself that she was rapturously happy, but, while
intellectually she accepted the fact, no genial warmth pervaded her
consciousness. The entrance to her new life was too brier-sprinkled for
bliss. Daily to face her mother's mingling of complaisance, self-pity
and fault-finding; to meet Dick's friends, whom Lena, in her suspicions,
regarded as thinly-disguised enemies; to scrimp together some little
show of bridal finery for her quiet wedding; all this filled her with
mingled irritation and gratification.
Most aggravating of all were the persistent attentions of Miss Madeline
Elton. No one likes to be loved as a matter of duty, certainly not Lena
Quincy, whose shrewd little soul easily divined that this equable warmth
of manner, which she dubbed snippy condescension, sprang from affection
for Dick and Mrs. Percival and not for herself. Madeline set Lena's
teeth on edge, and it must be confessed that Lena often did as much for
Madeline, but each politely kept her sensations to herself. Miss Elton
always assured her optimistic soul that things would come out all right,
that love was a great developer, that small vulgarities of mind were the
result of association.
Lena, on the other hand, might have broken friendly relations once and
for all except that she found Miss Elton both useful and interesting. A
friendly and very sly conspiracy between Madeline and Mrs. Percival had
for its object the helping out of Lena's meager trousseau by certain
little gifts, and even of money delicately proffered so that it might
not wound a sensitive pride; and since Mrs. Percival was a victim to
invalidish habits, it fell to Madeline to act as executive committee.
But they need not have troubled themselves about delicacy, for Miss Lena
greedily gobbled everything that was offered to her, with pretty
expressions of gratitude, to be sure, but internal irritation because
the donors were not more lavish.
Madeline, who would have shrunk from accepting a gift except from one
she really loved, of course expected Lena to feel the same way, and
every one of these presents given and taken was to her an assurance
strong of a new bond between them. So they shopped together, and Lena
modestly picked out some appallingly cheap affair and said:
"You know I feel that is the best I can afford." And Madeline would
whisper, "Take the other, dear, and let the difference be a small
wedding present from me. Won't you be so generous?" and Lena was so
generous; but she told herself that they were not doing it for her, but
only because they were ashamed that Dick should have a shabby bride. And
perhaps she was right. It is pretty hard to analyze human motives, so
you may always take your choice, and fix your mind either on the good
ones or on the bad ones, whichever suit you best. Doubtless they are
both there.
Sometimes Lena wished that she had been given a lump sum and allowed to
browse alone, for she felt her taste pruned and pinioned by the very
presence of Miss Elton, who, though she never ventured to criticize, had
yet a depressing influence on Lena's exuberant fancies.
Once, after such a silent sacrifice on her part, Madeline and she drove
up to the Percivals' for five-o'clock tea. Her future mother-in-law was
in the accustomed seat, and Lena found a footstool near at hand, with a
pretty air of affectionate proprietorship that brought a glow to Dick's
face.
"Yes," said Lena with a charming pout, "I'm utterly played out, getting
myself ready for your approval, sir."
"Poor little girl," he whispered. "If you only knew what an easy task
that ought to be!"
"I'm so glad Madeline can go with you," Mrs. Percival said, patting the
girl's hand approvingly. "I always think she has such perfect taste.
Some people get fine clothes and then make an heroic effort to live up
to them, but Madeline has the supreme gift of managing clothes that seem
a part of herself."
It is impossible to tell how a speech like this rankled in Lena.
Sometimes she had a wild impulse to stand up and stamp and scream out,
"I hate the whole lot of you!" but she never did. She kept on smiling
and purring and longing for the freedom which would come when she was
safely married, had passed her initiation ceremonies, and could command
her own money.
But it was wonderful what a fascination she felt for everything that
concerned Miss Elton. Every act, every garment, every inflection of the
girl she hated most was interesting to her. She watched Madeline like a
cat, and disliked her more and more.
At length came the new year, and the day when Lena sat in a carriage by
Dick's side and was whirled away on that journey that was to take her
out of the old and into the new. Her hour-old husband looked at her with
an expression half-quizzical, half-adoring as she sat back and glanced
up with a heartfelt sigh, secure at last of her position as the wife of
Richard Percival. Until this moment she had never wholly believed it.
"I'm glad the wedding's over," she said.
"And I. More glad that our married life has begun. Lena, Lena, how
beautiful you are! When you came down the aisle, I hardly dared to look
at you; and yet it seems to me now that you are more lovely here alone
with me. I should think God would have been afraid to make such eyes and
lips and hair, sweetheart, knowing that He could never surpass them."
He softly touched the little curl that crept out from below her hat and
kissed the upturned mouth in that ecstasy that borders on awe.
"Now," he said, "you are never so much as to think of anything
unpleasant for the rest of your life. I wonder what you will most like
to do?"
"Buy all the clothes I want," cried Lena with such a deliciously
whimsical twist of her little lips that Dick laughed at her irresistible
wit. That was coming to be one of Lena's most fetching little ways, to
say what she meant as though it were the last thing in the world that
could be expected of her. It was piquant.
It was no time of year to dally in true lovers' fashion under pine trees
in some remote solitude, so Dick took her to cities and theaters and big
shops and got his fun out of watching her revel with open purse. Their
honeymoon was more full of occupation and less of rapture and sweet
isolated intimacy than Dick could have wished, but it was much to watch
the color come and go on her cheek in her moments of excitement, to
fulfil every capricious whim of her who had been starved in her feminine
hunger of caprice, to punctuate the rush of life by celestial moments
when she rested a tired but bewildering head against his shoulder and
listened silently with drooping lids to all he had to say, to feel that
he could answer the admiring glances of other men with the triumphant
knowledge, "All this loveliness is mine--only mine." Lena was so happy,
so outrageously happy,--and so shyly affectionate, what could the young
husband do but take with content the gifts the gods provided; and Dick
was lavish and easily cajoled. The simple trousseau helped out by Miss
Elton suddenly swelled to new and magnificent proportions. Lena
blossomed and glowed; she tricked herself out in the finery that he
provided and paraded before him and the glass until they both laughed
with delight. Dick felt that he was playing with a new and sublimated
doll, it was all so amusing, so inconsequential, and such fun. Although
he wondered a little where it would be appropriate to wear the enormous
pink hat with drooping plumes which perched on the showily fluffy head
now facing him, he quite appreciated the effect.
"Oh, of course you think I'm stunning," Lena pouted. "But the question
is, what will other people think?"
"Other people aren't the question at all," retorted Dick. "Who cares
what they think so long as you and I know that you are the very
loveliest woman on this whole wide earth--this good old earth."
When they came home, Lena exulted again in the luxurious rooms that Dick
had fitted up for her in fashion more modern than the somber dignity of
the rest of the house. Here was another new sensation--a household
without bickerings. The elder Mrs. Percival, having accepted the
situation, was no niggard in her spirit of courtesy, but very gracious
as was her wont, and Lena was astonished to find that she and her new
mother-in-law ran their respective lines without collisions. The
half-invalid older woman breakfasted in her own room and occupied
herself with quiet readings and sewings and drivings, but when she did
appear on the family horizon, it was always as a beneficent presence.
Lena purred in the presence of comfort; but when you see a kitten
serenely snoozing before the fire, it does not do to leap to the
conclusion that this kitten would not know what was expected of her on
the back fence at midnight.
If storm and stress should ever come, Dick had himself helped her to
feel that beauty would fill the measure, wherever it fell short; that
however she might sin, beauty was her sufficient apology.
Mrs. Quincy, established in a little flat with a middle-aged submissive
slavey, was as nearly reconciled to fate as her nature would allow. Her
rooms were pleasantly furnished, but Lena's mother was full of the
genius of discord, and almost automatically she so rearranged her
surroundings that each particular article made strife with its neighbor.
Harmony and Mrs. Quincy could not live in the same house. When Lena paid
her duty visits (and she was irritated at the frequency with which
Dick's and Madame Percival's expectations seemed to exact them) she had
not only to listen in nauseated impatience to Mrs. Quincy's minute
questions and comments on people and things, but she had also to feel
her rapidly-developing tastes offended by her mother's domestic order.
"Miss Elton's real kind. She's been here twice since you was here. And
she brought flowers."
"Mother! And did you have a newspaper on top of that pretty little
table?"
"Land sakes! And if I didn't I should have to watch Sarah every minute
to see she didn't put something hot on it or scratch the mahogany top. I
can't afford to have everything I've got spoiled. No knowin' when I'll
git anything more--dependent as I am on other people."
"I'll bring you a pretty table-cover then."
"I'd like a red one. But I didn't suppose you'd think of gittin' one."
"Oh, mother, red wouldn't look well in this room."
"Now, I just think a bit of real bright red would hearten it up. If you
don't git red, you needn't git any, Lena Quincy, for I won't use it. Are
you goin' now? Seems to me you got precious little time for your old
mother since you put on all your fine lady airs."
And Lena? Have you ever watched a cecropia moth when it crawls out of
its dull gray prison of chrysalis? It is a moist, frail, tottering
creature with tiny wings folded against its quivering body, but as the
spring sunshine brings to play its magic and infuses its "subtle heats,"
there come shivers of growth. Great waves seem to pulsate from the body
into the wings, and with each wave goes color and strength. In quick
throbs they come at last until they look like a continuous current, and
before your eyes is a glorious bird-like creature, with damask wings
outspread, and flecked with peacock spots, hiding the slender body
within. It feels its strength, spreads and preens itself, and is away to
the forest to meet its fate.
Such was Lena in the first months of her marriage. The world's warmth
welcomed her, partly in curiosity, and partly because she was in truth
Richard Percival's wife, and the protégée of Mrs. Lenox, who took every
pains to shield her and help her. The ways of that little sphere that
calls itself society she found it not difficult to acquire, when to
beauty she added the paraphernalia of luxury. A little trick of holding
oneself, a turn of speech, a familiarity with a certain set of people
and their doings, and the thing is accomplished. Was there ever yet an
American girl, whose supreme characteristic is adaptability, who could
not learn it in a few months, if she set her mind to it?
As she experienced the true pleasure of being inside, which is the
knowledge that there are outsiders raging to make entrance, she spread
her wings, did Madame Cecropia, and the only wonder was that she was
ever packed away in the dull gray chrysalis. And now every one forgot
that ugly thing, when Lena changed her sky but not her heart.
Dick and she lived in a whirl; and if he would have liked, after
strenuous days spent in spreading political feelers, to have found at
home quiet evenings and old slippers, he was rapidly learning that the
position of husband to a young beauty is no sinecure. And he admired and
loved her too much to fling even a rose leaf of opposition in her path.
The very hardship of her past made him tender to every whim of the
present. Dick's chivalry was deep-grained, as it is in men who have
lived among pure and simple women. In everything that wore petticoats he
saw something of his mother, fragile, noble, ambitious for those she
loved and forgetful of self. When Lena began to show him things that he
could not admire, he laid the blame of them, not to her, but to the
world that had played the brute to her. And if he tried to change her it
was with apology in his heart for daring to criticize. But as Lena came
to take for granted the ease and comfort of her new life, she more and
more laid aside the pose with which she had at first edified her lord,
and spoke her real mind. She had fully acquired the manner and the
garments of a lady. She could not see that more was needed.
One gray wintry day, as they walked homeward together from a midday
musicale, they passed a grimy little girl who whimpered as she clutched
her small person.
"What's the matter, girlie?" asked Dick, and as he stopped his wife,
too, halted perforce.
"My pettitoat's comin' down," sobbed the child.
"Is that all?" said Dick. "I wouldn't cry about such a little thing.
I'll soon fix it for you." And he stooped.
"Dick," said Lena imperatively, "there's a carriage coming!"
"Let it come!" said Dick. "Sorry I haven't a safety-pin, girlie, but I
guess this one will do till you get home." That impulsive interest in
all varieties of human nature was so natural to him that he took for
granted that it was a part of our common nature.
He looked up with a smile to see Lena's face crimson with wrath and
shame. Her expression sobered him.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
"It was Mrs. Lenox who drove by," she urged. "And she looked so
amused."
"I don't wonder. I'm amused myself," he replied gaily.
"A nice thing for a gentleman to be seen doing," Lena went on, with a
voice growing shrill like her mother's. "To play nursemaid to a dirty
little street brat!" She had said things like this to him before, but
always with that little smile and naughty-child air. Now, for the first
time she forgot the smile, and this small omission made an astonishing
difference in the impression.
"I don't know what else a gentleman should do," answered Dick; "or a
lady, either. Mrs. Lenox would have done as much for any baby, her own
or another."
"Much she would!" said Lena sharply. "I've been at her house. She has
rafts of nurses to do all the waiting on her children. I guess she
doesn't let them trouble her any more than she can help. If she's
unlucky enough to have the squally little things, she keeps away from
them."
Even as she spoke, Lena realized that her acid voice was a mistake, but
she said to herself that she was tired of acting, and it did not make
any difference what Dick thought now. She was his wife.
"Perhaps you don't know the whole, Lena," Dick answered. "I happen to
have seen Mrs. Lenox when she was devoting herself to a sick baby, and
Madeline has told me of the kind of personal care she gives."
"The more fool she, when she can get some one else to do it for her,"
said Lena, with feminine change of front.
"Is that the way you feel about children?" asked Dick soberly.
"I suppose they are necessary evils," said Lena with a smart laugh. "But
I'd rather they'd be necessary to other women than to me."
"Well, perhaps that's a natural feeling, when we're young and like to be
irresponsible; but I fancy, dear, that things look pretty different as
we get along and are willing to pay the price for our happinesses--to
pay for love with service and self-sacrifice. As for me, I pray that you
and I may not some day be childless old folks."
Lena glanced at him sidewise as they walked, and his somber face showed
her that her mistake went deeper than she had suspected.
"I'm sorry I was cross," she said with pretty contrition, but her
prettiness and contrition did not have their usual exhilarating effect
on Dick. Lena even turned and laid her hand softly on his arm. Still he
did not look at her.
"I wasn't hurt by your crossness, dear," he said gently.
* * * * *
Among those to open hospitable doors to the bride and groom was Mr.
Early. His house adjoined theirs, and only a hedge separated the two
gardens, old-fashioned, with comfortable seats under wide trees on the
Percival place, elaborately Italian on Mr. Early's domain, but spacious
both, for St. Etienne had the advantage of doing most of its growth
after rapid transit was invented, and had therefore never cribbed and
cabined its population into solid blocks of brick and mortar, but had
given everybody elbow-room, so that its residence district looked much
like the suburbs of older cities.
So Dick and Lena went to dine with Mr. Early, and the bride had the
thrilling delight of sitting between her world-famous host and an
equally illustrious scholar, who had his head with him, extra size, and
was plainly bored to death by his own erudition. It was a large dinner,
and Lena was alert to study every one, both what he did and how he did
it; but chiefly, from her vantage point at the right hand of her host;
did she watch Miss Madeline Elton, who sat near the middle of the table
on the other side, where Lena could study her face over a sea of
violets. Lena was puzzled. Madeline seemed less reposeful and more
charming than she remembered. For an instant she wondered if her own
beauty, now tricked out by jewels, was not cheap beside Miss Elton's
undecorated loveliness. She noted that the men around the table looked
often in Madeline's direction. Even Mr. Early occasionally let his
attention wander from his suave courtesy toward herself, and Lena
resented this. She deeply admired Mr. Early. His was the big and blatant
success which she could easily comprehend, and she exulted at the idea
of sitting at the post of honor beside a man distinguished over the
length and breadth of the land. Once, even her own husband, Richard
Percival, leaned forward and gazed at Madeline as she spoke across the
table, and there was a look in his face that Lena treasured in her
cabinet of unforgiven things. She flushed with anger. Her hatred of Miss
Elton was as old as her acquaintance with her husband, and its growth
had been parallel.
Then her eyes met the glowing glance of a dark face under a turban of
soft white silk, and she turned hastily away.
"I see you are looking at my ceiling, Mrs. Percival," said Mr. Early.
"It is a reproduction of the beautiful fan-tracery in the Henry VII
chapel at Westminster. Doubtless you recognize it. But, alas, it is
impossible to attain the spiritual beauty of the original until age has
laid its sanctifying hand on the carving. This has had but a year of
life for each century that the chapel tracery can boast. And, of course,
I admit that the effect must be modified by the surroundings. A
dining-room can never have the atmosphere of a church, can it, my dear
Mrs. Percival? Though I assure you, I have tried to be consistent in all
the decorations and the furniture of this room."
"It's very beautiful," said Lena. "And who is the large gentleman with
the long white mustaches?"
"Surely you have met Mr. Preston. He is one of our best type of business
men, and the candidate that the new reform element, in which your
husband is playing an honorable part, is hoping to set up for mayor. It
would be a notable thing for this community if we might have a man of
his stamp represent our municipality."
"I have heard Dick speak of him," said Lena, "And is that the wonderful
Hindu of whom I've heard? All the ladies are crazy about him, but I
never happened to see him before."
"That is Ram Juna. He has been with me now for two months, and is to
stay indefinitely. He is engaged on a work that will, I am convinced,
add one more to the sacred books of the world. We need such men in this
age of materialism, do we not? And I feel gratefully the beneficent
effect of such a presence in my house."
So Mr. Early went on with ponderous sentences and a sharp look in his
eye.
But Lena hardly heard him. She was absorbed in the soft lights and the
flowers and the wonderful china, most of which, her host told her, had
been made in his own works and was unique in the world. But strange as
were all these things, her eyes kept coming back, as if fascinated, to
the man-mountain in the silky white robe. The big ruby on his forehead
seemed to wink and flash at her, and as often as she looked she met the
sleepy eyes fixed on her face. Then she was irresistibly drawn to look
again to see if he was still watching. For once, she forgot her big blue
eyes and her bright little fluffs of hair and all the execution that
they were meant to do on the masculine heart, because there was
something different in the way this Oriental surveyed her. It was an
unblinking and unemotional study.
Fortunately Mr. Early was content to talk and let her answer in brief.
Talking was not Lena's strong point. Mr. Early went on with his
monologue, in platitudes about art, and Lena looked interested, or tried
to, while she caught scraps of conversation from farther down the table.
Miss Elton was telling a story of her cooking-class in a certain poor
district. She had shown a flabby wife, noted even in that region for her
lack of culinary skill, how to make a dish at once cheap, palatable and
nutritious.
"And I said, 'Now Mrs. Koshek, if you'd give that to your husband some
night when he comes home tired, don't you think it would be a pleasant
surprise?' But all I could get out of her was, 'I'd ruther eat what I'd
ruther; I'd ruther eat what I'd ruther.' And I'm afraid Mr. Koshek is
still living on greasy sausages."
"That might teach you, Miss Elton," said Mr. Preston, "the futility of
trying to improve women by reason. Now a man--"
"Oh, pooh, reason! reason!" exclaimed Mrs. Lenox, turning upon him, "I'm
sorry for you poor men, you mistaken servants of boasted reason! Reason
is the biggest fallacy on earth. It leads men by the straight path of
logic to pure foolishness."
"And how is your woman's reason to account for that?" he asked
tolerantly.
"Oh, I suppose your premises are never true. Or, if they are, another
man's opposite premises are equally true. So there you are. Two
contradictions are equally valid, but being a reasonable man you can't
see more than one of them."
"And women can see both sides, of course."
"Truly. And flop from one to the other with lightning rapidity. We are
too completely superior to reason to have any respect for or reliance on
it. Do you think I try reason on my husband when he is in the wrong in
his arguments with me! Not at all. I just say, 'I'm afraid you are not
feeling well, dear.' And I put a mustard plaster on him. It's
extraordinary how seldom he disagrees nowadays. Or when he's very
obstinately set on an objectionable course, it's a good plan to say
sweetly, 'I'll do just as you like, dear.' He invariably comes back with
an emphatic, 'No--we'll do as _you_ like.'"
"I relinquish all claims to be called a reasonable being," said Mr.
Lenox with a wry face.
"When we, the unmarried, hear confessions of this kind," said Madeline,
"it gives us an incongruous feeling to remember how happy you, the
married, seem, after all."
"Getting along becomes a habit," retorted Dick. "Matrimony is like
taking opium. It fixes itself on you. I suppose when the hero of
Kipling's poem found out that she was only 'a rag and a bone and a hank
of hair,' he kept on loving the rag, even while he felt like gnawing the
bone and pulling the hair."
He knew he had said an ugly thing. It wasn't like him. He flushed as he
saw Mrs. Lenox glance sharply at him.
"Dick, Dick, that is heresy," she exclaimed gaily. "We must pretend
there aren't any vampires, and that we do not know what they are made
of. If we tell the naked truth, how can we cry out with conviction that
the old world is an harmonious and beautiful place?"
"That isn't your real philosophy," he said.
"No, it isn't," she said. "I sometimes wish it were. If one could have
the temperament to shut one's eyes and say, 'I don't see it; therefore
it isn't true,' what a very easy thing life would be."
"I don't know," answered Dick. "Going it blind with a dog and a string
doesn't generally make it easier to walk."
"That's true," Madeline put in. "A little dog isn't a very good guide up
the hilly road of righteousness. As for me, I prefer open-eyed obedience
to blind obedience."
"I'll be bound you prefer obedience anyway," Dick said in an undertone,
and he looked at her as though something in her hurt him. He turned
abruptly to Mr. Preston.
"Preston," he said, "I wish we could hold a special election and put you
into the executive chair before your time. Every kind of evil thing is
taking advantage of our present lax administration. I believe the crooks
of other cities are flying to us on the wings of the wind. One of the
plain-clothes men told me to-day that the government detectives have
traced a gang of counterfeiters to our beloved city, though they have
not succeeded in spotting the rascals' whereabouts. It's rather
humiliating to find St. Etienne picked out as a good hiding-place for
any villany there is going."
"You needn't be so sure that a special election or any other kind would
carry us in," laughed Mr. Preston. "I'm not so confident as you seem,
Percival, that this community is overwhelmed with the consciousness of
its rare opportunity."
And so the talk drifted on, as usual, to politics.
After dinner, in the drawing-room, Lena saw her husband in conversation
with Ram Juna. The two crossed the room, and Dick introduced the new
prophet.
"I fear my too constant inspection disturbed you. Myriad pardons for
me," began the Swami in his mellifluous voice. "It is the tribute. When
I feel deep interest I am prone to forget all but my study. See, I am
the last of a family once powerful and wealthy; yet I hardly regret that
heritage that I have lost. I look at you. You are the type of another
fate. You are a bride, young, lovely, with the vigor and glory of this
new race of America. I envy not, but I wonder. So I look too long."
Lena glanced discomfited at the retreating back of her husband and
said, "I'm sure I didn't notice anything peculiar."
A curious gleam came into Ram Juna's sleepy eyes.
"Ah, then you, like me, love to examine the soul, your own or another's.
You have fellow feeling. So you forgive. May I sit here beside you?"
Lena drew aside her petticoats and the Swami shared her little sofa.
"You see that while you make study of others, I make study of you. I
should wish to be your friend. I should in fact fear to have you count
me an enemy."
Lena blinked at him in an uncomprehending way with her big eyes, and he
smiled innocently in return.
"A woman who is an enemy is a danger. But men are tough-skinned and hard
to kill. Is it not so? And even a woman enemy is often powerless to
hurt. But when a woman hates a woman, then the case is different. A
woman is easy to hurt. A little blow, even a breath on her reputation or
to her pride, and the woman is wounded beyond repair. Is it not so?"
Still Lena stared blankly at him, but as he did not return her gaze, her
eyes followed his to the other side of the room where Miss Elton bent
over a table, with Mr. Early on one side of her and Dick Percival on the
other.
"Oh!" she said with a little gasp. "Oh!" And Ram Juna looked back at her
and smiled again.
"Therefore I was right to desire your friendship and not your enmity,
was I not?" said he. "I, too, am a good friend and a bad enemy. See, Mr.
Early shows some wonderful Japanese paintings. Shall we join them in the
inspection?"
And Lena went with wonder, and in her mind there began to form vague
clumsy purposes which the Hindu would have despised if he had read them.
Nor did her conversation with her husband in the home-returning carriage
tend to soften Lena's heart.
Dick was in an uncomfortable and irritable state of mind which was
strange and disconcerting even to himself. Instead of giving her the big
hug that was his habit when they found themselves safely alone, he said
sharply,
"Lena, you use too much perfume about you. I wish you wouldn't."
"Do I?" asked Lena ominously. "Is there anything else?"
"Well, since you give me the chance to say it, dear," Dick's tone was
now apologetic, "I'd a little rather you wore your dinner gowns higher.
I know many women do wear things like yours to-night, and your
dressmaker has dictated to you; but I think the extremes are not
well-bred. Just look at the best women. Look at Mrs. Lenox and
Madeline--"
But here Lena gave so sharp a little cry of anger that Dick stopped
dismayed.
"How dare you?" she screamed. "How dare you hold up a girl you know I
hate as an example to me! If she's so perfect, why didn't you marry her?
I'm sure she wanted you badly enough."
Dick shrank back a little. To him love--the desire for marriage--was
hardly a thing to be touched by outside hands. He wished Lena would not
tear down the veils of reticence so ruthlessly.
"Lena, she did not want me at all. Be reasonable."
"Well, then, you took me just because you couldn't get her, did you?
Everything she does and wears is perfection. And there's nothing about
me that's right!" Lena had now come to the point of angry tears.
"There's one thing about you that's right; and that's my arms,
sweetheart." Dick spoke sturdily in spite of trepidation, for this was a
new experience to him. "You know I love you, Lena, I did not mean to
hurt you. I thought only that you were a sweet little inexperienced
woman, and that you would welcome any hints from your husband's worldly
wisdom. Come, don't turn into an Undine, dear, and get the carriage all
wet,"--for his wife was now sobbing on his shoulder.
"You've told me lots of times that I was perfect," she cried. "I don't
see why you want to change me now. You're so inconsistent, Dick."
"I wish that I could make up for my brutality," said Dick. "How can I,
Lena? I feel like the fellow that threw a catsup bottle at his wife's
head at the breakfast-table and then felt so badly when he saw the nasty
stuff trickling down her pretty curls that he brought her home a pair of
diamond earrings for dinner."
"What a horrid vulgar story!" exclaimed Lena.
"Isn't it?" Dick rejoined. "But vulgar things are frequently true, as
we learn with sorrow. Lena, can't we believe that our marriage
certificate had an affection insurance policy given with it? Don't let
us indulge in little quarrels. As you say, they are vulgar. I want love
to be not only a rich solid pudding full of plums, but I want it to have
a meringue on top."
As he hoped, this made Lena laugh, and she pulled out her over-scented
handkerchief to wipe her eyes. Dick shut his lips tightly, grown too
wise to speak.