I
"You and I have been married nearly seven years," Margaret Kirby
reflected bitterly, "and I suppose we are as near hating each other as
two civilized people ever were!"
She did not say it aloud. The Kirbys had long ago given up any
discussion of their attitude to each other. But as the thought came
into her mind she eyed her husband--lounging moodily in her motor-car,
as they swept home through the winter twilight--with hopeless, mutinous
irritation.
What was the matter, she wondered, with John and Margaret Kirby--young,
handsome, rich, and popular? What had been wrong with their marriage,
that brilliantly heralded and widely advertised event? Whose fault was
it that they two could not seem to understand each other, could not
seem to live out their lives together in honorable and dignified
companionship, as generations of their forebears had done?
"Perhaps everyone's marriage is more or less like ours," Margaret mused
miserably. "Perhaps there's no such thing as a happy marriage."
Almost all the women that she knew admitted unhappiness of one sort or
another, and discussed their domestic troubles freely. Margaret had
never sunk to that; it would not even have been a relief to a nature as
self-sufficient and as cold as hers. But for years she had felt that
her marriage tie was an irksome and distasteful bond, and only that
afternoon she had been stung by the bitter fact that the state of
affairs between her husband and herself was no secret from their world.
A certain audacious newspaper had boldly hinted that there would soon
be a sensational separation in the Kirby household, whose beautiful
mistress would undoubtedly follow her first unhappy marital experience
with another--and, it was to be hoped, a more fortunate--marriage.
Margaret had laughed when the article was shown her, with the easy
flippancy that is the stock in trade of her type of society woman; but
the arrow had reached her very soul, nevertheless.
So it had come to that, had it? She and John had failed! They were to
be dragged through the publicity, the humiliations, that precede the
sundering of what God has joined together. They had drifted, as so many
hundreds and thousands of men and women drift, from the warm, glorious
companionship of the honeymoon, to quarrels, to truces, to discussion,
to a recognition of their utter difference in point of view, and to
this final independent, cool adjustment, that left their lives as
utterly separated as if they had never met.
Yet she had done only what all the women she knew had done, Margaret
reminded herself in self-justification. She had done it a little more
brilliantly, perhaps; she had spent more money, worn handsomer jewels
and gowns; she had succeeded in idling away her life in that utter
leisure that was the ideal of them all, whether they were quite able to
achieve it or not. Some women had to order their dinners, had
occasionally to go about in hired vehicles, had to consider the cost of
hats and gowns; but Margaret, the envied, had her own carriage and
motor-car, her capable housekeeper, her yearly trip to Paris for
uncounted frocks and hats.
All the women she knew were useless, boasting rather of what they did
not have to do than of what they did, and Margaret was more
successfully useless than the others. But wasn't that the lot of a
woman who is rich, and marries a richer man? Wasn't it what married
life should be?
"I don't know what makes me nervous to-night," Margaret said to herself
finally, settling back comfortably in her furs. "Perhaps I only imagine
John is going to make one of his favorite scenes when we get home.
Probably he hasn't seen the article at all. I don't care, anyway! If it
SHOULD come to a divorce, why, we know plenty of people who are happier
that way. Thank Heaven, there isn't a child to complicate things!"
Five feet away from her, as the motor-car waited before crossing the
park entrance, a tall man and a laughing girl were standing, waiting to
cross the street.
"But aren't we too late for gallery seats?" Margaret heard the girl
say, evidently deep in an important choice.
"Oh, no!" the man assured her eagerly.
"Then I choose the fifty-cent dinner and 'Hoffman' by all means," she
decided joyously.
Margaret looked after them, a sudden pain at her heart. She did not
know what the pain was. She thought she was pitying that young husband
and wife; but her thoughts went back to them as she entered her own
warm, luxurious rooms a few moments later.
"Fifty-cent dinner!" she murmured. "It must be awful!"
To her surprise, her husband followed her into her room, without
knocking, and paid no attention to the very cold stare with which she
greeted him.
"Sit down a minute, Margaret, will you?" he said, "and let your woman
go. I want to speak to you."
Angry to feel herself a little at loss, Margaret nodded to the maid,
and said in a carefully controlled tone:
"I am dining at the Kelseys', John. Perhaps some other time--"
Her husband, a thin, tall man, prematurely gray, was pacing the floor
nervously, his hands plunged deep in his coat pockets. He cleared his
throat several times before he spoke. His voice was sharp, and his
words were delivered quickly:
"It's come to this, Margaret--I'm very sorry to have to tell you, but
things have finally reached the point where it's--it's got to come out!
Bannister and I have been nursing it along; we've done all that we
could. I went down to Washington and saw Peterson, but it's no use! We
turn it all over--the whole thing--to the creditors to-morrow!" His
voice rose suddenly; it was shocking to see the control suddenly fail.
"I tell you it's all up, Margaret! It's the end of me! I won't face it!"
He dropped into a chair, but suddenly sprang up again, and began to
walk about the room.
"Now, you can do just what you think wise," he resumed presently, in
the advisory, quiet tones he usually used to her. "You can always have
the income of your Park Avenue house; your Aunt Paul will be glad
enough to go abroad with you, and there are personal things--the house
silver and the books--that you can claim. I've lain awake nights
planning--" His voice shook again, but he gained his calm after a
moment. "I want to ask you not to work yourself up over it," he added.
There was a silence. Margaret regarded him in stony fury. She was
deadly white.
"Do you mean that Throckmorton, Kirby, & Son have--has failed?" she
asked. "Do you mean that my money--the money that my father left me--is
GONE? Does Mr. Bannister say so? Why--why has it never occurred to you
to warn me?"
"I did warn you. I did try to tell you, in July--why, all the world
knew how things were going!"
If, on the last word, there crept into his voice the plea that even a
strong man makes to his women for sympathy, for solace, Margaret's eyes
killed it. John, turning to go, gave her what consolation he could.
"Margaret, I can only say I'm sorry. I tried--Bannister knows how I
tried to hold my own. But I was pretty young when your father died, and
there was no one to help me learn. I'm glad it doesn't mean actual
suffering for you. Some day, perhaps, we'll get some of it back. God
knows I hope so. I've not meant much to you. Your marriage has cost you
pretty dear. But I'm going to do the only thing I can for you."
Silence followed. Margaret presently roused herself.
"I suppose this can be kept from the papers? We needn't be discussed
and pointed at in the streets?" she asked heavily, her face a mask of
distaste.
"That's impossible," said John, briefly.
"To some people nothing is impossible," Margaret said.
Her husband turned again without a word, and left her. Afterward she
remembered the sick misery in his eyes, the whiteness of his face.
What did she do then? She didn't know. Did she go at once to the
dressing-table? Did she ring for Louise, or was she alone as she slowly
got herself into a loose wrapper and unpinned her hair?
How long was it before she heard that horrible cry in the hall? What
was it--that, or the voices and the flying footsteps, that brought her,
shaken and gasping, to her feet?
She never knew. She only knew that she was in John's dressing-room, and
that the servants were clustered, a sobbing, terrified group, in the
doorway. John's head, heavy, with shut eyes, was on her shoulder;
John's limp body was in her arms. They were telling her that this was
the bottle he had emptied, and that he was dead.