amount to anything with you around. You’re always bursting into my nice,
quiet little art world, and you’re so earnest and busy and disturbing!”
“I know it!” he said, contritely. “It’s one of my limitations, old girl.
I don’t appreciate art in any shape. I don’t take it seriously. But I do
take you and your development seriously. Very seriously. You go ahead
with your own work, and I’ll try to shut up about mine. We’ll let each
other alone, and just love each other.”
“Love’s a terrible disturbance!”
“It shouldn’t be. It ought to be peace and completion. It’s a help to
me. Why, do you know, I have ten years’ work planned out--three books. I
have the data ready, but I haven’t begun them yet. I’ve never worked so
well in my life. And it’s simply because I’ve found you, after looking
for you all my life.”
She smiled at him.
“But you see, I never expected you!” she said. “I never looked for you!
You’re a surprise--and a nuisance!”
She seized his hair in both hands and pulling down his head, kissed him
roughly.
“And yet I suppose you’re a sort of help,” she said. “Because I’m
determined to astonish you. I’m going to spoil all your nice peace and
satisfaction, and trouble you and worry you and make you think about me
and nothing else!”
“Perhaps I’m still a little dazzled and stupid by having got you,” he
said. “But don’t think for a moment I take you for granted. You’re the
greatest wonder in the world to me. You’re not the companion woman I
thought I wanted. You’re not a pal. You’ll never be a friend. You’re
strange to me, and you always will be. When I look at you, I see some
sense in poetry. I know what those fellows mean with that woman-worship
I used to hate so.”
“I _am_ a friend to you!”
“Oh, no, you’re not! You don’t care a rap about my work and my plans. I
don’t exactly want you to. You haven’t anything to do with everyday
life. You’re--you’re my love.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to be awfully nice,” she said, “not to spoil all
that.”
“No. It doesn’t matter what you do. You couldn’t change what I love so
in you. It’s eternal.”
“Till death do us part!” she said, with a sombre little smile.
“And after,” he added.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE HOUSEWARMING
§ i
Al didn’t say what he thought; it seemed to him a singularly
infelicitous time for that. He was beginning to learn the rudiments of a
lamentable sort of tact; he followed Andrée about the new flat and
admired all that was pointed out to him; seven rooms and two baths,
fronting on Riverside Drive, all furnished now and ready for their
installation. Claudine had so urged them to have a home that she had won
over Andrée, and according to his principle, he had yielded to Andrée.
He said to himself, in his customary struggle to square facts with
ideas, that it might be a woman’s instinct to have a home, and he was
prepared to admit that women had almost all the instincts left to the
race. He couldn’t quite classify the instinct that made her spend so
much money on the furnishings; she wasn’t ostentatious, didn’t do it to
“show off”--a thing he could have understood--she didn’t do it for him,
nor was comfort her object. It was, he decided, her artistic desire for
beauty.
Personally, he was ashamed of it. Riverside Drive itself had long been
for him a sort of symbol; many, many times he had come to sit there and
feast his eyes upon the opulent women with their pet dogs. As a fat man
in a white vest and a silk hat typified the Capitalist, so was a stout,
well-dressed woman with a Pomeranian the outward and visible sign of all
this inward corruption of private life. He saw many such from his
windows; there had been one that day in the very lift with him.
On the question of servants he had been firm. And had been diddled.
“No,” he said. “I can’t have people paid to wait on my personal wants.”
“People wait on you in hotels,” said Andrée.
“Professionally,” he said. “They serve the public, not me.”
“But if we don’t have servants, how can we be free to do our work?”
“That’s one of the reasons these private homes are so bad,” he said. “It
means nothing but an autocratic--”
“I know,” said Andrée, hastily. “Well, then, we can go out to dinner
every night, and we’ll have a visiting maid and a Jap for a few hours
every day. They can still be serving some more of the public when
they’re not with us.”
“That’s nothing but compromise. But it’s better than having anyone’s
life entirely given up to our personal service. I suppose it’s a
necessary part of--all this,” he said, looking about his domain. He was
inwardly miserable and humiliated; Andrée knew it, but she felt that he
would soon enough get used to it. She wanted beauty and luxury about
her, and she considered that several grosser souls might well be
occupied in ministering to her.
“Servants aren’t unhappy, Al,” she said, “if they’re well treated.”
“No, I dare say they’re not. Neither are kept women. Or imbeciles,” he
replied. He suppressed the rest of his thoughts, in deference to
Andrée’s instincts, both feminine and artistic. As a woman she was
apparently obliged to have a home, and as an artist, it had to be this
sort of home. He was conscious himself of a very unreasonable instinct
to give her everything she wanted; he consoled himself by the reflection
that this desire to please women was what stimulated men to supreme
effort--a condition which gave more credit to his sex than to hers, he
thought. He had by this time almost entirely discarded his idea that men
and women were not very different, were all simply human beings. He
considered it generously; which, he asked himself, was the true normal
human being, Man or Woman? Not both of them....
“Perhaps what we call feminine traits are the really human ones,” he
thought. “Woman’s compassion, her intuition, her flexibility.... Our
masculine justice and logic may be aberrations from the normal.... Women
are primarily concerned with reality--birth, love, death--”
Only Andrée was not. He felt discouraged, and went into his brand new
bedroom to dress for this party he so dreaded. He had flatly refused to
wear a dinner jacket--and not entirely from principle, either. Andrée
had been unexpectedly nice about it. She came into his room now as he
stood before the mirror in his shirt sleeves, and rumpled his wiry hair.
“That’s the way you ought to wear it,” she said, laughing. “Every inch
a Socialist! But you are a darling.”
He saw her in the mirror, and it gave him a shock. She was lovely,
radiant, in a low cut frock of silver cloth; he might have admired her
impersonally on the stage. But as Mrs. Al Stephens, as his wife and
comrade, it made his heart sink. He fastened his low collar and made a
neat little bow of his necktie.... The two clear eyed and fearless
comrades who were to face life together--to solve problems of
living--this earnest young man in a blue serge suit, and this slender,
seductive creature in silver.
“My God!” he said to himself. “The Life Urge works the wrong way--no
doubt about it. It’s _against_ progress and clear thinking.”
He was not given to facile caresses; he only looked at Andrée, with eyes
sombre and doubtful.
“Am I outrageous?” she asked, smiling, utterly sure of her power. “Would
you rather I had short hair and wore a red flannel blouse?”
“I don’t know ...” he answered, with a sigh. “I’m no better and no worse
than lots of others.... I’d be damned eternally for you.”
She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him.
“That’s dear of you!” she cried. “Only I don’t want you to be. I don’t
want to be a drag on you.”
“A drag,” he repeated, thoughtfully. She appeared to him not at all a
drag, but a terrific impetus--in the wrong direction.
§ ii.
Mr. MacGregor was watching Andrée with mild amusement. He had pupils who
played better than she, who were undoubtedly more gifted, but he had
never had one of whom he expected a more brilliant future. He was
careful not to tell her that not through talent alone would she conquer,
that, on the contrary, her greatest advantage was something quite
different. It lay in her extraordinary and provocative charm. He
believed that her beauty, the ardour and grace of her playing might
atone for certain undeniable imperfections not only in technic, but in
interpretation, a certain perilous latitude, an alarming tendency to
anarchistic originality. She was standing in the centre of a group of
her guests, all men, as befitted her; she was listening with her moody,
unsmiling air, quite indifferent to any whisper of admiration. She knew
very well how to take care of herself; she had her own particular sort
of rudeness, an odd, innocent sort of bluntness; she wasn’t in the least
like a married woman. Mr. MacGregor was glad of this, because her
husband was a grave error, and it was necessary to keep him in the
background. Fortunately, he seemed willing to stay there; he appeared to
be neither jealous nor uxurious. Mr. MacGregor had told her that if she
wished to appear in public she couldn’t possibly be called Mrs.
Stephens, and he hoped that she would have sufficient tact not to look
or to behave like Mrs. Stephens either.
He was approached by Claudine, who had a secret atonement to make; he
understood how she felt; she had, in the matter of Andrée, gone farther
and fared worse. He was sorry for her, for having sent him away and
thus left the field to Stephens. He liked Claudine; she was one of those
agreeable people who took everything for granted and never said what she
meant; there was a feeling of security in talking to her. She looked
charming that evening because she was happy, bright with pride in her
marvelous children. She was enthralled by Andrée in her beautiful dress;
this was how she liked to see her; Andrée was born to be worshipped. The
somewhat scandalous Bevan Martinsburgh stood beside her, and obviously
approved. He was a fair, very tall young fellow of twenty-eight, casual,
magnificent, good-humouredly regal; he had a habit of looking down from
his great height into adoring feminine eyes uplifted--Andrée’s were not.
He approved all the more. She was the only girl present who was making
no effort to attract; she had the attitude of her father in his young
days; it was for others to please her. She was notably unresponsive, not
even critical. The conquering Bevan compared her with Vi Sidell, who was
quite as good-looking and apparently as indifferent, but Vi’s was a
false indifference which covered a smouldering readiness to be pleased.
Vi was insolent, while Andrée was only distrait. He had known Andrée
more or less all her life, but never before had he bestowed attention
upon her. It was her _cachet_; Claudine saw it as such. She couldn’t
help a little pang of regret at the sight of Al in his blue suit, off in
a corner talking to that eccentric Cyril Smith--talking so much and so
earnestly. Of course, Smith always looked blank and supercilious like
that; and never answered, but she had an unpleasant conviction that he
must be bored and indignant. He surely hadn’t come that evening for
this. It was, she reflected, like the wedding guests and the Ancient
Mariner, only that Al’s tale was frequently by no means absorbingly
interesting. No one else paid the least attention to the host; it really
wasn’t right. She smiled brightly at Mr. MacGregor, but her mind was on
the Breath of Life. She saw him run his fingers through his hair in that
familiar gesture, making himself so untidy and so touching. It was cruel
to put him here, where none of his good qualities were visible.... Her
belief, never shaken by experience or observation, that in a marriage,
one or the other of the couple would inevitably change and conform to
the other, was slightly disturbed at that moment. What if Alfred never
became less opinionated, or Andrée more amenable? If they didn’t change
...?
She was glad as a relief from this oppressive fancy to look at Edna with
that young Malloy. He was entirely right. He had been brought over by
Mr. Quillen from the English branch of the Line, and was reputed as
promising; he was altogether a gentleman, and very handsome, and there
was about him a romantic air which charmed her mother heart. When he
first arrived in the country he had been instantly smitten by the
graceless Vi Sidell, but quite of his own accord he had turned toward
the simpler charms of little Edna. They were progressing slowly; Edna
was not the sort to smite; she grew on you little by little, with her
thoughtful, gracious air, and her infantile, dimpled smile. That would
be such a good thing....
Bertie too was entirely reassuring. He was never infatuated, like those
other silly boys; he had a gallant and delightful air, but it hid a
secret indifference. He always knew what he was doing; he was no
passionate fool, that boy of hers. He could be silly enough, but never
without a certain grace; it was impossible for him to be ridiculous. He
had characteristically passed over all the younger and prettier girls
and concerned himself with poor Phyllis Jenkins, who already at
twenty-five had learned not to take anyone seriously. She was penniless;
years ago this had had a sort of romantic appeal, and she had been many
times on the point of becoming engaged, to quite nice men. But that has
its limits; it was a horrible fact, now, known to all men, that to be
engaged to Phyllis Jenkins would be a joke. She knew it herself, and was
obliged to be sprightly. She was an angular, almost pretty girl,
nervously vivacious; she had had to be grateful so much that it had
rather worn her down. She was wearing a superfluous bouquet of Edna’s
and a necklace universally recognized as a former possession of Mrs.
Arnold’s; she had come with the Sidells in their motor and someone else
would be morally obliged to take her home. Let Bertie flatter and cajole
her as much as he wished; it did him only credit and no harm.
It is probable that no one else enjoyed the evening quite so much as
Claudine. Andrée was an inexperienced hostess and by no means solicitous
for the pleasure of her guests. There was a sort of formality and
stiffness that didn’t wear off; there was dancing--Bertie saw to
that--but it was dutiful and polite. The supper, provided waiters and
all, by Santi, was good enough, but trite; Andrée lacked all hostess
alchemy. Only Claudine retained the joyous air of a proud mother at a
children’s party.
At last it was over. Bertie had taken Phyllis home, everyone had gone
but Claudine and Edna and the attentive Malloy. Andrée stood yawning by
the piano.
“I’m glad it’s over,” she said, frankly.
“It was very nice,” said her mother. “Where is Alfred?”
“I don’t know. He went out with Cyril Smith long ago,” Andrée answered,
carelessly. Claudine didn’t like that; she frowned slightly, but the
presence of Malloy restrained her from speaking further. She kissed her
beloved child and prepared to go; she took it for granted that the young
man was coming with them, but Edna, with a nice perception for the
psychologic moment for parting, thought otherwise. She and Malloy had
had a little conversation to which she desired no anticlimax.
“Good night, Mr. Malloy,” she said, with a smile there was no mistaking.
The young man looked after her, astonished and rueful. He was for the
moment forgetful of Andrée.
“That’s that,” he said aloud.
Andrée laughed, and he turned quickly; the light of a red-shaded lamp
gave a strange lustre to her silver dress; she was sitting in a big
chair, with her hands clasped behind her head, and she looked--she
looked very unlike a Vincelle, he thought.
“Sit down, if you like,” she said, “and smoke a cigarette before you
go.”
He was willing enough to do that.
“I thought I was taking them home,” he observed, “but it seems I
wasn’t.”
“Edna’s like that,” said Andrée, smiling. “Misleading.”
He considered that the privilege of pretty girls. He was a chivalrous
and rather artless young fellow, with a kind and susceptible heart; he
was a little vain and unduly anxious to please; he was what would have
been called a “flirt” in Claudine’s day, with all the innocence the word
implied. He gratified Andrée’s æsthetic eye; he was faultless, an
ornament to the room. He was supple and tall, with a punctilious grace;
he had a dark, lean face which might have been too regular in its beauty
but for the attractive defects of cheek-bones that were too high and an
upper lip a trifle too long. Andrée had long ago put him down as stupid
as an owl, and had expressed to her mother her dislike for the way he
“hovered” about Edna.
“He’s like a stage lover,” she had said.
But to-night she was tired, and his stupidity was agreeable; moreover
she was annoyed at Al and wished to keep this handsome creature sitting
here until he returned, to punish him.
He talked about her music, and very agreeably remembered all the various
times he had heard her play, and gave her ardent praise.
“Oh, but you’re not a critic,” she said.
“No,” he said, looking at her with a smile. “I’m certainly not a
critic--of you.”
It was agreeable of him, she thought, not to be serious, like Al, but to
be frankly interested, just in her. She offered him a cigarette from a
box on the table and lighted one herself.
“Al’s late,” she observed. “I suppose he’s gone to a meeting. He can’t
keep away from them.... Are you a Socialist, Mr. Malloy?”
“I don’t really know what a Socialist is. I may be one without knowing
it. But I’m afraid I’m frivolous.”
“You’re in business, though. That justifies you. I’ve heard often enough
from Father what a prodigious struggle that is!”
“I’ve dabbled in music, too.”
“What a horrible thing to say!”
“I’m not a bit ashamed of it. If you asked me, I’d sing for you.”
“I couldn’t accompany you now. I’m too tired.”
“I accompany myself.”
“Go ahead then! But don’t forget that I _am_ a critic!”
“You’d never have the heart to criticize my artless efforts.”
He sat down at the piano and began playing in a loose, execrable style
which made her frown. But when he began to sing, her frown vanished. He
had a delightful voice, true, strong, and full of touching fervour. He
emphasized his Irishness, he sang old Irish ballads, exactly as they
should be sung....
Andrée, leaning back in her chair and listening, was half amused at her
own pleasure.
“Have I ‘worked up’ this mood?” she reflected. “What a darling he is!
I’ll be glad to have him in the family.... He’ll be a nice foil for
little rumpled Al.”
With his strong and tender voice still sounding in her ears, she held
out her hand to bid him good-by. And perhaps without quite meaning it,
she gave him a glance that went to his head. She saw him kindle, and she
smiled, withdrawing her hand.
“Indeed I didn’t want to criticize!” she said. “It was very lovely!”
“You’d inspire a donkey!” he cried.
“Don’t be a donkey!” she said, laughing. “It’s late. You’d better go.”
“May I come again?”
“Of course!” she answered, and almost without meaning it, smiled again,
a little too nicely.
“You’re wonderful,” he cried, impulsively. “Like--”
“I know,” she interrupted, laughing. “Never mind! Good night!”
* * * * *
“I shouldn’t have been like that,” she reflected, when he had gone. It
had been the most insignificant little conversation in the world, and
yet it took on the aspect of a betrayal. She was really uneasy about it;
she wandered about the room, waiting for Al, in a most unpleasant frame
of mind. Certainly she hadn’t said or done anything to feel guilty
about; it must have been some secret mutiny in her heart of which she
was only half aware.
“Very silly of me,” she said, almost surprised. “It might help Edna....
He’s a dilatory suitor.... I can talk a lot about her, in an artful
way.... If I see him again....”
CHAPTER SIX
DISCORDS
§ i
“Twice in one day,” thought Al. “It won’t do! We can’t go on like this!”
He was walking up and down that bedroom he so hated, with its silly
little four post bed and the thick carpet, and the offensive, dainty
imitation masculinity of it--a woman’s idea of a man’s room. Two little
blue shaded electric lamps, a fool of a little table--he kicked at the
table as he passed it, and Andrée’s photograph on it fell down. He was
profoundly disturbed, not so much angry as dismayed. Trapped; no way of
getting out....
“Why, damn it all!” he cried. “I can’t be like this! This isn’t me! This
isn’t what I meant! We are interfering--every hour of the day, with each
other. It won’t do!”
The first thing had been his fault, he admitted; he shouldn’t have been
so vehement, or so hasty. But it had been the sort of thing hardest of
all for him to endure with patience.
He had gone into the kitchen, where he was not expected to go, because
he had been hungry at a wrong time, and there he had seen a hideous
thing. It might have looked to other people like a char-woman scrubbing
the floor, but to him it was very much more than that. She didn’t even
look up; what concern was it of hers who came and went in this house?
She was a wretched little old woman; he stood in the doorway looking
down at her, at the tiny knob of white hair on her bony skull, her
narrow shoulders working stiffly, at her clumsy hands pushing the brush
back and forth. She breathed hard from her puny effort; she tried to
appear more vigorous when she heard someone enter, being well aware that
for the char-women of the world effort is accounted of more worth than
accomplishment. He stared and stared at her, crawling slowly on her
hands and knees, doing this work in the stupidest and cruellest way....
On the kitchen table her lunch was set out for her on a newspaper by the
superior visiting maid; no one would come near her or speak to her; she
was shut up here to scrub alone.
“Here! Get up!” he said, abruptly.
She looked round with bleared and watery eyes.
“Get up!” he said, again.
“But I ain’t done,” she protested.
“Get up!” he shouted. He could not tolerate for one instant longer the
sight of this old creature at his feet; it was obscene. She clutched at
the table and pulled herself to her feet.
“I can do it, if yer give me time,” she said, with quivering
indignation. “If I take longer, I don’t charge so much.”
Al knew everything in the world about her; she was the typical “case”;
he knew where and how she lived, what she earned and how she spent it.
He cross-examined her and she answered him mendaciously, but he was
able to sift the truth from the lies.
“Now, see here,” he said. “You’re sixty-five or so.” She declared, for
working purposes, that she was fifty. “You’ve earned a rest. You’ve
worked all your life.”
“I’m able--” she began.
“You’re not. Now, see here! I want you to go home--now. I’ll see that
you get a living allowance from--from a certain source every week. It’s
not charity, d’you understand, not charity. It’s what you have a right
to demand from society. You can consider me the agent of society.”
Her education was incomplete and she did not understand the meaning of
his terms.
“The Society give me coal last winter,” she observed. “I didn’t never--”
He didn’t trouble to explain that he represented nothing more than
impartial justice.
“Take this now and go home,” he said. “And for God’s sake, don’t go
crawling round scrubbing up anyone else’s floors, ever! Get drunk, if
you want--”
“Oh, I never, never, never--”
“It’s better,” he said. “Better than this. It’ll be your money--the
allowance you’ll get. Little enough, but you can waste it any way you
like. Try to live.”
From behind the kitchen door she took down a heart-breaking fuzzy black
cape trimmed with jet, and the disreputable ghost of a hat; she tucked
the money he gave her into a tremendous hand-bag and retied the clasps
with string. She was not grateful, any more than one is grateful for
sunshine; in an inexplicable world these benefits came sometimes upon
the just and the unjust. She had had a neighbor, mother of nine
children, who had been miraculously sent off to the sea-side for two
weeks of rest out of forty years of life; she knew of other things like
that. She was only in a hurry to get away before further investigation
revealed little weaknesses that might repel the Agent of Society.
Al had gone to his wife about this, and she had been angry.
“Who’s going to finish the floor?” she demanded. “Jennie won’t do that
rough work.”
“I don’t care if it’s never finished. I won’t have that sort of thing in
my house. It’s just what I’d give my life to put an end to. It’s--”
“I suppose you’d admire me if I did it?”
“Yes, I should,” he answered. “You’re better able to do it than that
poor old skeleton.”