Their railway-carriage had been full when the train left Bologna; but at
the first station beyond Milan their only remaining companion--a courtly
person who ate garlic out of a carpet-bag--had left his crumb-strewn
seat with a bow.
Lydia’s eye regretfully followed the shiny broadcloth of his retreating
back till it lost itself in the cloud of touts and cab-drivers hanging
about the station; then she glanced across at Gannett and caught the
same regret in his look. They were both sorry to be alone.
“_Par-ten-za!_” shouted the guard. The train vibrated to a sudden
slamming of doors; a waiter ran along the platform with a tray of
fossilized sandwiches; a belated porter flung a bundle of shawls and
band-boxes into a third-class carriage; the guard snapped out a brief
_Partensa!_ which indicated the purely ornamental nature of his first
shout; and the train swung out of the station.
The direction of the road had changed, and a shaft of sunlight struck
across the dusty red velvet seats into Lydia’s corner. Gannett did not
notice it. He had returned to his _Revue de Paris,_ and she had to rise
and lower the shade of the farther window. Against the vast horizon of
their leisure such incidents stood out sharply.
Having lowered the shade, Lydia sat down, leaving the length of the
carriage between herself and Gannett. At length he missed her and looked
up.
“I moved out of the sun,” she hastily explained.
He looked at her curiously: the sun was beating on her through the
shade.
“Very well,” he said pleasantly; adding, “You don’t mind?” as he drew a
cigarette-case from his pocket.
It was a refreshing touch, relieving the tension of her spirit with the
suggestion that, after all, if he could _smoke_--! The relief was
only momentary. Her experience of smokers was limited (her husband had
disapproved of the use of tobacco) but she knew from hearsay that men
sometimes smoked to get away from things; that a cigar might be the
masculine equivalent of darkened windows and a headache. Gannett, after
a puff or two, returned to his review.
It was just as she had foreseen; he feared to speak as much as she did.
It was one of the misfortunes of their situation that they were never
busy enough to necessitate, or even to justify, the postponement of
unpleasant discussions. If they avoided a question it was obviously,
unconcealably because the question was disagreeable. They had unlimited
leisure and an accumulation of mental energy to devote to any subject
that presented itself; new topics were in fact at a premium. Lydia
sometimes had premonitions of a famine-stricken period when there would
be nothing left to talk about, and she had already caught herself doling
out piecemeal what, in the first prodigality of their confidences,
she would have flung to him in a breath. Their silence therefore
might simply mean that they had nothing to say; but it was another
disadvantage of their position that it allowed infinite opportunity
for the classification of minute differences. Lydia had learned to
distinguish between real and factitious silences; and under Gannett’s
she now detected a hum of speech to which her own thoughts made
breathless answer.
How could it be otherwise, with that thing between them? She glanced
up at the rack overhead. The _thing_ was there, in her dressing-bag,
symbolically suspended over her head and his. He was thinking of it now,
just as she was; they had been thinking of it in unison ever since they
had entered the train. While the carriage had held other travellers they
had screened her from his thoughts; but now that he and she were alone
she knew exactly what was passing through his mind; she could almost
hear him asking himself what he should say to her....
* * * * *
The thing had come that morning, brought up to her in an
innocent-looking envelope with the rest of their letters, as they were
leaving the hotel at Bologna. As she tore it open, she and Gannett were
laughing over some ineptitude of the local guide-book--they had been
driven, of late, to make the most of such incidental humors of travel.
Even when she had unfolded the document she took it for some unimportant
business paper sent abroad for her signature, and her eye travelled
inattentively over the curly _Whereases_ of the preamble until a word
arrested her:--Divorce. There it stood, an impassable barrier, between
her husband’s name and hers.
She had been prepared for it, of course, as healthy people are said to
be prepared for death, in the sense of knowing it must come without
in the least expecting that it will. She had known from the first
that Tillotson meant to divorce her--but what did it matter? Nothing
mattered, in those first days of supreme deliverance, but the fact that
she was free; and not so much (she had begun to be aware) that freedom
had released her from Tillotson as that it had given her to Gannett.
This discovery had not been agreeable to her self-esteem. She had
preferred to think that Tillotson had himself embodied all her reasons
for leaving him; and those he represented had seemed cogent enough to
stand in no need of reinforcement. Yet she had not left him till she met
Gannett. It was her love for Gannett that had made life with Tillotson
so poor and incomplete a business. If she had never, from the first,
regarded her marriage as a full cancelling of her claims upon life,
she had at least, for a number of years, accepted it as a provisional
compensation,--she had made it “do.” Existence in the commodious
Tillotson mansion in Fifth Avenue--with Mrs. Tillotson senior commanding
the approaches from the second-story front windows--had been reduced to
a series of purely automatic acts. The moral atmosphere of the Tillotson
interior was as carefully screened and curtained as the house itself:
Mrs. Tillotson senior dreaded ideas as much as a draught in her back.
Prudent people liked an even temperature; and to do anything unexpected
was as foolish as going out in the rain. One of the chief advantages of
being rich was that one need not be exposed to unforeseen contingencies:
by the use of ordinary firmness and common sense one could make sure
of doing exactly the same thing every day at the same hour. These
doctrines, reverentially imbibed with his mother’s milk, Tillotson
(a model son who had never given his parents an hour’s anxiety)
complacently expounded to his wife, testifying to his sense of their
importance by the regularity with which he wore goloshes on damp days,
his punctuality at meals, and his elaborate precautions against burglars
and contagious diseases. Lydia, coming from a smaller town, and
entering New York life through the portals of the Tillotson mansion, had
mechanically accepted this point of view as inseparable from having a
front pew in church and a parterre box at the opera. All the people who
came to the house revolved in the same small circle of prejudices. It
was the kind of society in which, after dinner, the ladies compared the
exorbitant charges of their children’s teachers, and agreed that, even
with the new duties on French clothes, it was cheaper in the end to get
everything from Worth; while the husbands, over their cigars, lamented
municipal corruption, and decided that the men to start a reform were
those who had no private interests at stake.
To Lydia this view of life had become a matter of course, just as
lumbering about in her mother-in-law’s landau had come to seem the
only possible means of locomotion, and listening every Sunday to a
fashionable Presbyterian divine the inevitable atonement for having
thought oneself bored on the other six days of the week. Before she met
Gannett her life had seemed merely dull: his coming made it appear like
one of those dismal Cruikshank prints in which the people are all ugly
and all engaged in occupations that are either vulgar or stupid.
It was natural that Tillotson should be the chief sufferer from
this readjustment of focus. Gannett’s nearness had made her husband
ridiculous, and a part of the ridicule had been reflected on herself.
Her tolerance laid her open to a suspicion of obtuseness from which she
must, at all costs, clear herself in Gannett’s eyes.
She did not understand this until afterwards. At the time she fancied
that she had merely reached the limits of endurance. In so large a
charter of liberties as the mere act of leaving Tillotson seemed to
confer, the small question of divorce or no divorce did not count. It
was when she saw that she had left her husband only to be with Gannett
that she perceived the significance of anything affecting their
relations. Her husband, in casting her off, had virtually flung her at
Gannett: it was thus that the world viewed it. The measure of alacrity
with which Gannett would receive her would be the subject of curious
speculation over afternoon-tea tables and in club corners. She knew what
would be said--she had heard it so often of others! The recollection
bathed her in misery. The men would probably back Gannett to “do
the decent thing”; but the ladies’ eye-brows would emphasize the
worthlessness of such enforced fidelity; and after all, they would
be right. She had put herself in a position where Gannett “owed” her
something; where, as a gentleman, he was bound to “stand the damage.”
The idea of accepting such compensation had never crossed her mind; the
so-called rehabilitation of such a marriage had always seemed to her
the only real disgrace. What she dreaded was the necessity of having to
explain herself; of having to combat his arguments; of calculating, in
spite of herself, the exact measure of insistence with which he pressed
them. She knew not whether she most shrank from his insisting too much
or too little. In such a case the nicest sense of proportion might be at
fault; and how easy to fall into the error of taking her resistance
for a test of his sincerity! Whichever way she turned, an ironical
implication confronted her: she had the exasperated sense of having
walked into the trap of some stupid practical joke.
Beneath all these preoccupations lurked the dread of what he was
thinking. Sooner or later, of course, he would have to speak; but that,
in the meantime, he should think, even for a moment, that there was any
use in speaking, seemed to her simply unendurable. Her sensitiveness on
this point was aggravated by another fear, as yet barely on the level of
consciousness; the fear of unwillingly involving Gannett in the trammels
of her dependence. To look upon him as the instrument of her liberation;
to resist in herself the least tendency to a wifely taking possession of
his future; had seemed to Lydia the one way of maintaining the dignity
of their relation. Her view had not changed, but she was aware of a
growing inability to keep her thoughts fixed on the essential point--the
point of parting with Gannett. It was easy to face as long as she kept
it sufficiently far off: but what was this act of mental postponement
but a gradual encroachment on his future? What was needful was the
courage to recognize the moment when, by some word or look, their
voluntary fellowship should be transformed into a bondage the more
wearing that it was based on none of those common obligations which make
the most imperfect marriage in some sort a centre of gravity.
When the porter, at the next station, threw the door open, Lydia drew
back, making way for the hoped-for intruder; but none came, and the
train took up its leisurely progress through the spring wheat-fields and
budding copses. She now began to hope that Gannett would speak before
the next station. She watched him furtively, half-disposed to return
to the seat opposite his, but there was an artificiality about his
absorption that restrained her. She had never before seen him read with
so conspicuous an air of warding off interruption. What could he be
thinking of? Why should he be afraid to speak? Or was it her answer that
he dreaded?
The train paused for the passing of an express, and he put down his book
and leaned out of the window. Presently he turned to her with a smile.
“There’s a jolly old villa out here,” he said.
His easy tone relieved her, and she smiled back at him as she crossed
over to his corner.
Beyond the embankment, through the opening in a mossy wall, she caught
sight of the villa, with its broken balustrades, its stagnant fountains,
and the stone satyr closing the perspective of a dusky grass-walk.
“How should you like to live there?” he asked as the train moved on.
“There?”
“In some such place, I mean. One might do worse, don’t you think so?
There must be at least two centuries of solitude under those yew-trees.
Shouldn’t you like it?”
“I--I don’t know,” she faltered. She knew now that he meant to speak.
He lit another cigarette. “We shall have to live somewhere, you know,”
he said as he bent above the match.
Lydia tried to speak carelessly. “_Je n’en vois pas la nécessité!_ Why
not live everywhere, as we have been doing?”
“But we can’t travel forever, can we?”
“Oh, forever’s a long word,” she objected, picking up the review he had
thrown aside.
“For the rest of our lives then,” he said, moving nearer.
She made a slight gesture which caused his hand to slip from hers.
“Why should we make plans? I thought you agreed with me that it’s
pleasanter to drift.”
He looked at her hesitatingly. “It’s been pleasant, certainly; but
I suppose I shall have to get at my work again some day. You know I
haven’t written a line since--all this time,” he hastily emended.
She flamed with sympathy and self-reproach. “Oh, if you mean _that_--if
you want to write--of course we must settle down. How stupid of me not
to have thought of it sooner! Where shall we go? Where do you think you
could work best? We oughtn’t to lose any more time.”
He hesitated again. “I had thought of a villa in these parts. It’s
quiet; we shouldn’t be bothered. Should you like it?”
“Of course I should like it.” She paused and looked away. “But I
thought--I remember your telling me once that your best work had been
done in a crowd--in big cities. Why should you shut yourself up in a
desert?”
Gannett, for a moment, made no reply. At length he said, avoiding her
eye as carefully as she avoided his: “It might be different now; I can’t
tell, of course, till I try. A writer ought not to be dependent on his
_milieu_; it’s a mistake to humor oneself in that way; and I thought
that just at first you might prefer to be--”
She faced him. “To be what?”
“Well--quiet. I mean--”
“What do you mean by ‘at first’?” she interrupted.
He paused again. “I mean after we are married.”
She thrust up her chin and turned toward the window. “Thank you!” she
tossed back at him.
“Lydia!” he exclaimed blankly; and she felt in every fibre of her
averted person that he had made the inconceivable, the unpardonable
mistake of anticipating her acquiescence.
The train rattled on and he groped for a third cigarette. Lydia remained
silent.
“I haven’t offended you?” he ventured at length, in the tone of a man
who feels his way.
She shook her head with a sigh. “I thought you understood,” she moaned.
Their eyes met and she moved back to his side.
“Do you want to know how not to offend me? By taking it for granted,
once for all, that you’ve said your say on this odious question and that
I’ve said mine, and that we stand just where we did this morning before
that--that hateful paper came to spoil everything between us!”
“To spoil everything between us? What on earth do you mean? Aren’t you
glad to be free?”
“I was free before.”
“Not to marry me,” he suggested.
“But I don’t _want_ to marry you!” she cried.
She saw that he turned pale. “I’m obtuse, I suppose,” he said slowly. “I
confess I don’t see what you’re driving at. Are you tired of the whole
business? Or was _I_ simply a--an excuse for getting away? Perhaps you
didn’t care to travel alone? Was that it? And now you want to chuck
me?” His voice had grown harsh. “You owe me a straight answer, you know;
don’t be tender-hearted!”
Her eyes swam as she leaned to him. “Don’t you see it’s because I
care--because I care so much? Oh, Ralph! Can’t you see how it would
humiliate me? Try to feel it as a woman would! Don’t you see the misery
of being made your wife in this way? If I’d known you as a girl--that
would have been a real marriage! But now--this vulgar fraud upon
society--and upon a society we despised and laughed at--this sneaking
back into a position that we’ve voluntarily forfeited: don’t you see
what a cheap compromise it is? We neither of us believe in the abstract
‘sacredness’ of marriage; we both know that no ceremony is needed to
consecrate our love for each other; what object can we have in marrying,
except the secret fear of each that the other may escape, or the secret
longing to work our way back gradually--oh, very gradually--into
the esteem of the people whose conventional morality we have always
ridiculed and hated? And the very fact that, after a decent interval,
these same people would come and dine with us--the women who talk about
the indissolubility of marriage, and who would let me die in a gutter
to-day because I am ‘leading a life of sin’--doesn’t that disgust you
more than their turning their backs on us now? I can stand being cut by
them, but I couldn’t stand their coming to call and asking what I meant
to do about visiting that unfortunate Mrs. So-and-so!”
She paused, and Gannett maintained a perplexed silence.
“You judge things too theoretically,” he said at length, slowly. “Life
is made up of compromises.”
“The life we ran away from--yes! If we had been willing to accept
them”--she flushed--“we might have gone on meeting each other at Mrs.
Tillotson’s dinners.”
He smiled slightly. “I didn’t know that we ran away to found a new
system of ethics. I supposed it was because we loved each other.”
“Life is complex, of course; isn’t it the very recognition of that fact
that separates us from the people who see it _tout d’une pièce?_ If
_they_ are right--if marriage is sacred in itself and the individual
must always be sacrificed to the family--then there can be no real
marriage between us, since our--our being together is a protest against
the sacrifice of the individual to the family.” She interrupted
herself with a laugh. “You’ll say now that I’m giving you a lecture on
sociology! Of course one acts as one can--as one must, perhaps--pulled
by all sorts of invisible threads; but at least one needn’t pretend, for
social advantages, to subscribe to a creed that ignores the complexity
of human motives--that classifies people by arbitrary signs, and puts it
in everybody’s reach to be on Mrs. Tillotson’s visiting-list. It may
be necessary that the world should be ruled by conventions--but if we
believed in them, why did we break through them? And if we don’t believe
in them, is it honest to take advantage of the protection they afford?”
Gannett hesitated. “One may believe in them or not; but as long as they
do rule the world it is only by taking advantage of their protection
that one can find a _modus vivendi.”_
“Do outlaws need a _modus vivendi?”_
He looked at her hopelessly. Nothing is more perplexing to man than the
mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions.
She thought she had scored a point and followed it up passionately.
“You do understand, don’t you? You see how the very thought of the thing
humiliates me! We are together to-day because we choose to be--don’t
let us look any farther than that!” She caught his hands. “_Promise_ me
you’ll never speak of it again; promise me you’ll never _think_ of it
even,” she implored, with a tearful prodigality of italics.
Through what followed--his protests, his arguments, his final
unconvinced submission to her wishes--she had a sense of his but
half-discerning all that, for her, had made the moment so tumultuous.
They had reached that memorable point in every heart-history when, for
the first time, the man seems obtuse and the woman irrational. It was
the abundance of his intentions that consoled her, on reflection,
for what they lacked in quality. After all, it would have been worse,
incalculably worse, to have detected any over-readiness to understand
her.