"Don't you think you've overdrawn things, Maude exaggerated them? No
marriages are perfect. You've let your mind dwell until it has become
inflamed on matters which really don't amount to much."
"I was never saner, Hugh," she replied instantly. And indeed I was forced
to confess that she looked it. That new Maude I had seen emerging of late
years seemed now to have found herself; she was no longer the woman I had
married,--yielding, willing to overlook, anxious to please, living in me.
"I don't influence you, or help you in any way. I never have."
"Oh, that's not true," I protested.
But she cut me short, going on inexorably:--"I am merely your
housekeeper, and rather a poor one at that, from your point of view. You
ignore me. I am not blaming you for it--you are made that way. It's true
that you have always supported me in luxury,--that might have been enough
for another woman. It isn't enough for me--I, too, have a life to live, a
soul to be responsible for. It's not for my sake so much as for the
children's that I don't want it to be crushed."
"Crushed!" I repeated.
"Yes. You are stifling it. I say again that I'm not blaming you, Hugh.
You are made differently from me. All you care for, really, is your
career. You may think that you care, at times, for--other things, but it
isn't so."
I took, involuntarily, a deep breath. Would she mention Nancy? Was it in
reality Nancy who had brought about this crisis? And did Maude suspect
the closeness of that relationship?
Suddenly I found myself begging her not to go; the more astonishing
since, if at any time during the past winter this solution had presented
itself to me as a possibility, I should eagerly have welcomed it! But
should I ever have had the courage to propose a separation? I even wished
to delude myself now into believing that what she suggested was in
reality not a separation. I preferred to think of it as a trip.... A
vision of freedom thrilled me, and yet I was wracked and torn. I had an
idea that she was suffering, that the ordeal was a terrible one for her;
and at that moment there crowded into my mind, melting me, incident after
incident of our past.
"It seems to me that we have got along pretty well together, Maude. I
have been negligent--I'll admit it. But I'll try to do better in the
future. And--if you'll wait a month or so, I'll go to Europe with you,
and we'll have a good time."
She looked at me sadly,--pityingly, I thought.
"No, Hugh, I've thought it all out. You really don't want me. You only
say this because you are sorry for me, because you dislike to have your
feelings wrung. You needn't be sorry for me, I shall be much happier away
from you."
"Think it over, Maude," I pleaded. "I shall miss you and the children. I
haven't paid much attention to them, either, but I am fond of them, and
depend upon them, too."
She shook her head.
"It's no use, Hugh. I tell you I've thought it all out. You don't care
for the children, you were never meant to have any."
"Aren't you rather severe in your judgments?"
"I don't think so," she answered. "I'm willing to admit my faults, that I
am a failure so far as you are concerned. Your ideas of life and mine are
far apart."
"I suppose," I exclaimed bitterly, "that you are referring to my
professional practices."
A note of weariness crept into her voice. I might have known that she was
near the end of her strength.
"No, I don't think it's that," she said dispassionately. "I prefer to put
it down, that part of it, to a fundamental difference of ideas. I do not
feel qualified to sit in judgment on that part of your life, although
I'll admit that many of the things you have done, in common with the men
with whom you are associated, have seemed to me unjust and inconsiderate
of the rights and feelings of others. You have alienated some of your
best friends. If I were to arraign you at all, it would be on the score
of heartlessness. But I suppose it isn't your fault, that you haven't any
heart."
"That's unfair," I put in.
"I don't wish to be unfair," she replied. "Only, since you ask me, I have
to tell you that that is the way it seems to me. I don't want to
introduce the question of right and wrong into this, Hugh, I'm not
capable of unravelling it; I can't put myself into your life, and see
things from your point of view, weigh your problems and difficulties. In
the first place, you won't let me. I think I understand you, partly--but
only partly. You have kept yourself shut up. But why discuss it? I have
made up my mind."
The legal aspect of the matter occurred to me. What right had she to
leave me? I might refuse to support her. Yet even as these thoughts came
I rejected them; I knew that it was not in me to press this point. And
she could always take refuge with her father; without the children, of
course. But the very notion sickened me. I could not bear to think of
Maude deprived of the children. I had seated myself again at the table. I
put my hand to my forehead.
"Don't make it hard, Hugh," I heard her say, gently. "Believe me, it is
best. I know. There won't be any talk about it,--right away, at any rate.
People will think it natural that I should wish to go abroad for the
summer. And later--well, the point of view about such affairs has
changed. They are better understood."
She had risen. She was pale, still outwardly composed,--but I had a
strange, hideous feeling that she was weeping inwardly.
"Aren't you coming back--ever?" I cried.
She did not answer at once.
"I don't know," she said, "I don't know," and left the room abruptly....
I wanted to follow her, but something withheld me. I got up and walked
around the room in a state of mind that was near to agony, taking one of
the neglected books out of the shelves, glancing at its meaningless
print, and replacing it; I stirred the fire, opened the curtains and
gazed out into the street and closed them again. I looked around me, a
sudden intensity of hatred seized me for this big, silent, luxurious
house; I recalled Maude's presentiment about it. Then, thinking I might
still dissuade her, I went slowly up the padded stairway--to find her
door locked; and a sense of the finality of her decision came over me. I
knew then that I could not alter it even were I to go all the lengths of
abjectness. Nor could I, I knew, have brought myself to have feigned a
love I did not feel.
What was it I felt? I could not define it. Amazement, for one thing, that
Maude with her traditional, Christian view of marriage should have come
to such a decision. I went to my room, undressed mechanically and got
into bed....
She gave no sign at the breakfast table of having made the decision of
the greatest moment in our lives; she conversed as usual, asked about the
news, reproved the children for being noisy; and when the children had
left the table there were no tears, reminiscences, recriminations. In
spite of the slight antagonism and envy of which I was conscious,--that
she was thus superbly in command of the situation, that she had developed
her pinions and was thus splendidly able to use them,--my admiration for
her had never been greater. I made an effort to achieve the frame of mind
she suggested: since she took it so calmly, why should I be tortured by
the tragedy of it? Perhaps she had ceased to love me, after all! Perhaps
she felt nothing but relief. At any rate, I was grateful to her, and I
found a certain consolation, a sop to my pride in the reflection that the
initiative must have been hers to take. I could not have deserted her.
"When do you think of leaving?" I asked.
"Two weeks from Saturday on the Olympic, if that is convenient for you."
Her manner seemed one of friendly solicitude. "You will remain in the
house this summer, as usual, I suppose?"
"Yes," I said.
It was a sunny, warm morning, and I went downtown in the motor almost
blithely. It was the best solution after all, and I had been a fool to
oppose it.... At the office, there was much business awaiting me; yet
once in a while, during the day, when the tension relaxed, the
recollection of what had happened flowed back into my consciousness.
Maude was going!
I had telephoned Nancy, making an appointment for the afternoon.
Sometimes--not too frequently--we were in the habit of going out into the
country in one of her motors, a sort of landaulet, I believe, in which we
were separated from the chauffeur by a glass screen. She was waiting for
me when I arrived, at four; and as soon as we had shot clear of the city,
"Maude is going away," I told her.
"Going away?" she repeated, struck more by the tone of my voice than by
what I had said.
"She announced last night that she was going abroad indefinitely."
I had been more than anxious to see how Nancy would take the news. A
flush gradually deepened in her cheeks.
"You mean that she is going to leave you?"
"It looks that way. In fact, she as much as said so."
"Why?" said Nancy.
"Well, she explained it pretty thoroughly. Apparently, it isn't a sudden
decision," I replied, trying to choose my words, to speak composedly as I
repeated the gist of our conversation. Nancy, with her face averted,
listened in silence--a silence that continued some time after I had
ceased to speak.
"She didn't--she didn't mention--?" the sentence remained unfinished.
"No," I said quickly, "she didn't. She must know, of course, but I'm sure
that didn't enter into it."
Nancy's eyes as they returned to me were wet, and in them was an
expression I had never seen before,--of pain, reproach, of questioning.
It frightened me.
"Oh, Hugh, how little you know!" she cried.
"What do you mean?" I demanded.
"That is what has brought her to this decision--you and I."
"You mean that--that Maude loves me? That she is jealous?" I don't know
how I managed to say it.
"No woman likes to think that she is a failure," murmured Nancy.
"Well, but she isn't really," I insisted. "She could have made another
man happy--a better man. It was all one of those terrible mistakes our
modern life seems to emphasize so."
"She is a woman," Nancy said, with what seemed a touch of vehemence.
"It's useless to expect you to understand.... Do you remember what I said
to you about her? How I appealed to you when you married to try to
appreciate her?"
"It wasn't that I didn't appreciate her," I interrupted, surprised that
Nancy should have recalled this, "she isn't the woman for me, we aren't
made for each other. It was my mistake, my fault, I admit, but I don't
agree with you at all, that we had anything to do with her decision. It
is just the--the culmination of a long period of incompatibility. She has
come to realize that she has only one life to live, and she seems
happier, more composed, more herself than she has ever been since our
marriage. Of course I don't mean to say it isn't painful for her.... But
I am sure she isn't well, that it isn't because of our seeing one
another," I concluded haltingly.
"She is finer than either of us, Hugh,--far finer."