Tom Gaylor’s wife was almost--but not quite--as much sought after in
London as Ivy Sên had been. An unmarried heiress presents innumerable
possibilities--a fascinating theme. “Which of them will she marry?”
Ivy’s peculiar appearance had made speculation delightedly piquant.
Her marriage ended that. But the radiant young wife was even a more
valuable social asset than Miss Sên had been. Mrs. Gaylor’s house was
delightful in every way, her entertaining yielded pride of place to
none.
Society set much store by Ivy Gaylor; she was so unusual, and at
the same time so everything that was exactly right. The Gaylors had
everything, did everything, and whatever Mrs. Tom Gaylor did, she did
to perfection.
And Ivy Gaylor was moderately happy.
Tom was contented--in every way but one. He was a kind and constant
comrade, if no longer, after two years of marriage, quite the
pronounced lover that the wife, more ardent of nature than he, secretly
craved.
The old weak-spot of marriage had found them out, as it usually does:
“woman’s whole existence,” and man’s sagging into tranquil half-time
good-fellowship, taking his wife and his home a little for granted if
the marriage keeps rather more than the average of happiness.
But marriage had developed Ivy richly. She took what Tom gave, made
the most of it, and was grateful. She knew that Tom loved her, that
he never had dreamed of regretting their marriage. He spent very much
more time with her than most husbands did, in their set. He had not
tired of her, even if he had rather outgrown the ebullient endearments
of betrothal and honeymoon days. Ivy Gaylor knew that she had a rich
portion of what every woman (own it or deny it) longs for from girlhood
to death intensely as no woman ever longs for anything else: the ardent
devotion and longing of one man--_and its constant expression_. Few
women can satisfy themselves with tranquil affection; foolish sex,
no doubt, that claims to wear the flowers of Spring and feast on the
fruits of frost-ripened Autumn at the same time! Is it perhaps because
woman asks so much--over-asks and clamors--that she often receives so
little, holds it so insecurely?
Ivy Gaylor knew that her man was not tired of her, but he no longer
wooed her, and she was the type of woman that craves constant
courtship--an enormously preponderant part of the sex, in the West.
Society interested and pleased her, but it did not engross her at all,
and amused more than it satisfied. She cared for but three things
really intensely: the English countryside, men--greatly narrowed to
one man--and little children. Ivy adored babies. She always had. In
the most tempestuous days of her naughty childhood and discontented,
rebellious girlhood, the companionship of tiny children or a baby to
cuddle never had failed to gladden and soothe her, and to turn all her
churning bitterness into sweetness.
It was her determination that hers should be a childless marriage. It
hurt.
Tom Gaylor, staunch, easy-going, a trifle thick-skinned, always
courteous, inclined to be casual, complacent, amiable, far more
negative than positive, impressionable but not inflammable, had not
fallen in love with even half the violence that Ivy had. She knew
it--a girl always knows--and it had jarred her happiest hours. He
took marriage, after its first stimulating novelty, at a comfortable
jog-trot. It hurt; but she had the wit and the character not to show
that it did; she had pride, that best and stoutest buckler of a
disappointed woman; she had the sense to realize that her husband gave
her all that he had to give; and she had the justice not to blame him
for what was not his fault, for what he could not help. But Ivy Gaylor
was no more thick-skinned or easily satisfied than Ivy Sên had been,
and it rankled.
Still, after two years of marriage Ivy was moderately happy and in
every way but one Gaylor was content. “Quite resigned to matrimony,”
Lady Snow said of him impatiently once. Sir Charles had smiled and
retorted, “Sensible fellow.”
But Gaylor wished for a son. He was every bit as fond of children as
Ivy was, and the one passionate desire of his otherwise tranquil being
was for a boy of his own, a girl or two, and another boy or two to
follow--of course.
His wife knew, and it cankered.
It made her own not-to-be-satisfied longing a double cross, a longing
that whipped her mercilessly.
But her grim determination only hardened as time went. Her English name
was a great palliative to Ivy Gaylor. She knew that her own position in
the England she so acutely loved was established and secure. But she
still disliked to see her own face and the tint of her lovely hands,
and she swore that no child should lie in her arms--to look up at her
perhaps with her own Chinese eyes set in a baby Chinese face--a son to
be branded as long as he lived with an un-English face, or a girl to
suffer as she herself had done.
Love has to be paid for; disobedience has to be paid for--everything
has. The heaviest price that any human debtor has to pay is the price
of disobedient love.
For the love of Sên King-lo and Ivy Gilbert, beautiful, unselfish,
enduring--always fine and pure in itself--had disobeyed a Law. Ivy
their daughter had paid a terrible price and was paying it yet--one of
the inexorable debts that time and Heaven may forgive, but that can
never be paid, and that life never forgives nor forgets. Sên King-lo
had drunk and drained his hyssop; Ruby Sên had tasted it; for Ivy their
daughter it brimmed in a cup always at her lip.
It stung and was bitter, just a drop or two, on Tom Gaylor’s mouth now
and then, though he never had suspected it, probably never would, and
by no mental or spiritual effort could have understood, had you told
him all about it, what in the world all the ridiculous pother was about.
Gaylor considered his wife the prettiest thing in London, a judgment in
which he was far more acute than he often was.
Gaylor was proud of his “Chinese” wife. But he wanted children
inordinately, if the most natural of all human wishes ever can be
called “inordinate”--the desire and instinct that of all human desires
is fullest or emptiest, best or worst, in fulfillment. The gamble of
marriage is small, and its retributions are puny compared to the gamble
and retributions of parenthood.