of married life. You have been a model wife, a charming companion--and
if occasionally it has occurred to me--just lately--that my wife has
developed rather singular, to say the least, unflattering ideas of
life, why, you have such a brilliant way of putting it, that I am more
than half proud that you've the brains to hold such ideas, though
they are a bit disconcerting to me as a husband. I suppose the
development is logical enough. You were always, even as a girl,
inclined to making footnotes. I suppose their present daring is simply
the result of our being just a little older than we used to be. I
suppose if we did not outgrow our illusions, the road to death would
be too tragic."
For a moment she made no reply. Then, as if for the first time owning
to the idea which had long been uppermost in her mind, she said
suddenly: "The truth of the matter is, that I really believe marriage
is foolish. I do believe that no man ever approached it without
regretting that civilization had made it necessary, and that many men
would escape, at the very last moment, if women did not so rigidly
hold them to their promises, and if, between two ridiculous positions,
marriage having been pushed nearest, had not become desperately
inevitable."
"How absurd, Naomi, when you see the whole procession of men
walking,--according to their dispositions--calmly or eagerly to their
fate every day."
"Nevertheless, I think the pre-nuptial confessions of a majority of
men of our class, would prove that what I say is true."
"Are you hinting that it was true in your case?"
"Perhaps."
Shattuck gave an amused laugh. "Do you mean to say that you kept me to
the point?"
"Not exactly. At that time I had an able bodied father who would have
had to be dealt with. Besides, a man does not own up even to
himself--not always--when he finds himself face to face with the
inevitable. I am not speaking of what men talk about in such cases, or
of what they do, but of what they feel,--of the fact that, in too many
instances, Nature not having meant men for bondage, after they have
passed the Rubicon to that spot from which the code of civilized honor
does not permit them to turn back, they usually have a period of
regret, and are forced to make a real effort to face the Future,--to
go on, in fact."
The smile had died out of Shattuck's face and he said quite seriously:
"As far as we are concerned, Naomi, I have very different
recollections of the whole affair."
"Have you? And yet, months before we were married, I knew that it
would not have broken your heart if the wedding had not come off at
all."
"My dear, the modern heart does not break easily in this age. We are
schooled to meet the accidents of life with some philosophy."
"And yet to have lost you then, would have killed me."
Shattuck looked at her sharply, with, one might almost have said, a
new interest, but she was no longer looking at him. She went on,
hurriedly: "You loved me, of course. I was of your world. I was a
woman that other men liked, and therefore a desirable woman. I was of
good family--altogether your social equal, in fact, quite the sort of
woman it became you to marry. I pleased you--and I loved you."
"Thank you, my dear," he said. "In ten years, I doubt if you have ever
made so frank a declaration as that--in words." He was wondering, if,
after all, she were going to develop into an emotional woman, and his
heart gave a quick leap at the very thought--for there are hours when
a woman who runs too much to head has a man at a cruel disadvantage.
"Things are so much harder, so much more complex for a woman," she
went on.
"For the protection of the community?"
"Perhaps. Still, it is not always pleasant to be a woman,--and yet
think; a woman whose reason has been mistakenly developed at the
expense of her capacity to enjoy being a woman, and who is forced at
the same time to encounter the laws of Nature, and pay at the same
time, the penalty of being a woman, and the penalty of knowledge. For,
just so surely as we live, we must encounter love.--"
"You might take it out," interrupted the husband, "in feeling
flattered that it takes so much to conquer such as you."
"So we might, but that, once conquered, neither man nor Nature has any
further use for us, and regret, like art, is long. Not even you can
deny," she exclaimed, sitting up in some excitement, and letting her
cushions fall in a mess all about her, "that life is very unfair to
women."
"Well, I don't see that. Physically it is a little rough on you, but
there are compensations."
"I have never been able to discover them. Love itself is hard on a
woman. It seems to stir a man's faculties healthily. They seem the
stronger and more fit for it. It does not seem to uproot a man's whole
being. Does it serve women in that way?"
"I bear witness that it makes some of you deucedly handsome. And I
have heard that it makes some of you--good."
"Yes, as chastisement does. No, Life seems to have adjusted matters
between men and women very badly, very unjustly."
"And yet, as this life is the only one we know we must adjust
ourselves to it as we find it."
"No, no. We had better have accepted the thing as Nature gave it to
us. We came into this world like beasts--why aren't we content to live
like beasts, and make no pretenses? Women would have nothing to expect
then, and there'd be no such thing as broken hearts. In spite of all
the polish of civilization, man is simply bent on conquest. Woman is
only one phase of the chase to him--a chase in which every active
virile man is occupied from his cradle to his grave. You are the
conquerors. We are simply the conquered."
Shattuck tried to make his voice light, as he said: "Not always
unhappy ones, I fancy."
"I suppose all men flatter themselves that way, and argue that
probably the Sabine women preferred their fate to no fate at all."
"Don't be bitter on so old and impersonal a topic, Naomi. It is the
law of life that one must give, and one must take. That the emotions
differ does not prove that one is better than the other."
Shattuck took a turn up and down the long room, not quite at ease with
himself.
Mrs. Shattuck seemed to be thinking. As he passed her, he stopped,
picked up her cushions, and re-arranged them about her, with an idle
caress by the way, a kiss gently dropped on the inside of her white
wrist.
She followed his every movement with a strange speculative look in her
eyes, almost as if he were some new and strange animal that she was
studying for the first time.
When she spoke again, it was to go on as if she had not been
interrupted, "It seems to me that man comes out of a great passion
just as good as new, while a woman is shattered--in a moral
sense--and never fully recovers herself."
Shattuck's back was toward her when he replied. "Sorry to spoil any
more illusions, dear child, but how about the long list of men who are
annually ruined by it? The men in the prisons, the men who kill
themselves, the men who hang for it?"
"Those are crimes. I am not talking of the criminal classes, but of
the world in which normal people live."
"Our set," he laughed, "but that is not the whole world, alas!"
"I know that men--well bred, cultivated, refined, even honorable
men,--seem to be able to repeat every emotion of life. A woman scales
the heights but once. Hence it must depend, in the case of women
capable of deep love--on the men whether the relation into which
marriage betrays them be decent or indecent. What I should like to be
able to discover is--what provision does either man or civilization
propose to make for the woman whom Fate, in wanton irony, reduces,
even in marriage, to the self-considered level of the girl in the
street?"
There was amazement--even a foreboding--on Shattuck's face as he
paused in his walk, and, for the first time speaking anxiously
ejaculated, "I swear I don't follow you!"
She went on as if she had not been interrupted, as if she had
something to say which had to be said, as if she were reasoning it out
for herself: "Take my case. I don't claim that it is uncommon. I do
claim that I was not the woman for the situation. I was an only child.
My father's marriage had not been happy. I was brought up by a
disappointed man on philosophy and pessimism."
"Old sceptics, and modern scoffers. I remember it well."
"Before I was out of my teens, I had imbibed a mistrust for all
emotions. Perhaps you did not know that? You may have thought, because
they were not all on the outside, that I had none. My poor father had
hoped, with his teachings, to save me from future misery. He had
probably thought to spare me the commonplace sorrows of love. But he
could not."
"There is one thing, my child, that the passing generation cannot do
for its heirs--live for them--luckily. Why, you might as well forbid a
rose to blossom by word of mouth, as try to thwart nature in a
beautiful healthy woman."
"It seems to me that to bring up a woman as I was brought up only
prepares her to take the distemper the quicker."
"I do not remember that of you. But I do know that no woman was ever
wooed as hotly as you were--or ever--I swear it--more ardently
desired. No woman ever led a man the chase you led me. If ever in
those days you were as anxious for my love as you have said you were
this evening, no one would have guessed it, least of all I."
"My reason had already taught me that mine was but the common fate of
all women: that life was demanding of me the usual tribute to
posterity: that the sweetness of the emotion was Nature's trick to
make it endurable. But according to Nature's eternal plan, my heart
could not listen to my head--it beat so loud when you were by, it
could not hear, perhaps. But there was something of my father's
philosophy left in me, and when I was alone it would speak, and be
heard, too. Even when I believed in you--because I wanted to--and half
hoped that all my teaching was wrong, I made a bargain with myself. I
told myself, quite calmly, that I knew perfectly well all the
possibilities of the future. That if I went forward with you, I went
forward deliberately with open eyes, knowing what, logically, I might
expect to find in the future. Ignorance--that blissful comfort of so
many women,--was denied me. Still, the spell of Nature was upon me,
and for a time I dreamed that a depth of passionate love like mine, a
life of loyal devotion might wrap one man round, and keep him
safe--might in fact, work a miracle--and make one polygamous man
monogamous. But, even while that hope was in my heart, reason rose up
and mocked it, bidding me advance into the Future at my peril. I did
it, but I made a bargain with myself, I agreed to abide the
consequences--and to abide them calmly."
"And during all those days when I supposed we were so near
together--you showed me nothing of this that was in your heart."
"Men and women know very rarely anything of the great struggles that
go on in the hearts of one another. Besides, I knew how easily you
would reply--naturally. We are all on the defensive in this life. It
was with things deeper than words that I was dealing--the things one
_does_--not says. Even in the early days of our engagement I knew that
I was not as essential to you as you were to me. Life held other
interests for you. Even the flattery of other women still had its
charm for you. Young as I was, I said to myself: 'If you marry this
man--with your eyes open--blame yourself, not him, if you suffer.' I
do believe that I have been able to do that."
Shattuck was astride his chair again, his elbows on the back, his chin
in his hands. He no longer responded. Words were dangerous. His lips
were pressed close together, and there was a long deep line between
his eyes.
"My love for you absorbed every other emotion of my life. But I seemed
to lack some of the qualities that aid to reconcile other wives to
life. I seemed to be without mother-love. My children were dear to me
only because they were yours. The maternal passion, which in so many
women is the absorbing emotion of life, was denied me. My children
were to me merely the tribute to posterity which Life had demanded of
me as the penalty of your love--nothing more. I must be singularly
unfitted for marriage, because, when the hour came in which I felt
that I was no longer your wife, your children seemed no longer mine.
They merely represented the next generation--born of me. I know that
this is very shocking. I have become used to it,--and, it is the
truth. I have not blamed you, I could not--and be reasonable. No man
can be other than Nature plans or permits, but how I have pitied
myself! I have been through the tempest alone. In spite of reason,--in
spite of philosophy--I have suffered from jealousy, from shame, from
rage, from self contempt. But that is all past now."
She had not raised her voice, which seemed as without feeling as it
was without emphasis. She carefully examined her handkerchief corner
by corner, and he noticed for the first time how thin her hands had
become.
"Naturally," she went on in that colorless voice, "my first impulse
was to be done with life. But I could not bring myself to that, much
as I desired it. It would have left you such a wretched memory of me.
You could never have pardoned me the scandal--and I felt that I had
at least the right to leave you a decent recollection of me."
Shattuck's head fell forward on his arms.--The idea of denial or
protest did not occur to him.
The steady voice went monotonously on. "I could not bear to humble you
in the eyes of others even by forcing you to face a scandal. I could
not bear to humble you in your own eyes by letting you suspect that I
knew the truth. I could not bring myself to disturb the outward
respectability of your life by interrupting its outward calm. To be
absolutely honest--though I had lost you, I could not bring myself to
give you up,--as I felt I must, if I let any one discover--most of all
you--what I knew. So, like a coward, I lived on, becoming gradually
accustomed to the idea that my day was past, but knowing that the
moment I was forced to speak, I would be forced to move on out of your
life. Singularly enough, as I grew calm, I grew to respect this other
woman. I could not blame her for loving you. I ended by admiring her.
I had known her so well--she was such a proud woman! I looked back at
my marriage and saw the affair as it really was. I had not _sold_
myself to you exactly--I had loved you too much to bargain in that
way; nevertheless, the marriage had been a bargain. In exchange for
your promise to protect and provide for me,--to feed me, clothe me,
share your fortune with me, and give me your name, I had given you
myself,--openly sanctioned by the law, of course--I was too great a
coward to have done it otherwise, in spite of the fact that the law
gives that same permission to almost any one who asks for it."
"Naomi," he groaned from his covered mouth, "what ghastly philosophy."
"Isn't that the marriage law? How much better am I after all than the
poor girl in the street, who is forced to it by misery? To be sure, I
believe there is some farcical phrase in the bargain about promising
to love none other,--a bare-faced attempt to outwit Nature,--at which
Nature laughs. Yet this other woman, proud, high-minded, unselfish,
hitherto above reproach, had given herself for love alone--with
everything to lose and nothing to gain. I have come to doubt myself. I
have had my day. For years it was an enviable one. No woman can hope
for more. What right have I to stand in the way of another woman's
happiness? A happiness no one can value better than I, who so long
wore it in security. I bore my children in peace, with the divine
consolation of your devotion about me. What right have I to deny
another woman the same joy?"
Shattuck sprang to his feet.
"It's not true!" he gasped. "It's not true!"
The woman never even raised her eyes. She went on carefully inspecting
the filmy bit of lace in her hands.
"It _is_ true," she replied. "Never mind how I discovered it. I know
it. That is why she has gone abroad alone. I did not speak until I had
to. I am a coward, but not enough of one to bear the thought of her
alone in a foreign country with mind and emotions clouded. I may be
cowardly enough to wish that I had never found it out,--I am not
coward enough to keep silent any longer."
A torrent of words rushed to the man's lips, but he was too wise to
make excuses. Yet there were excuses. Any fair-minded judge would have
said so. But he knew better than to think that for one moment they
would be excuses in the mind of this woman. Besides, the first man's
excuse for the first sin has never been viewed with much respect under
the modern civilization.
He felt her slowly rise to her feet, and when he raised his head to
look at her--not yet fully realizing what had happened to him--all
emotion seemed to have become so foreign to her face, that he felt as
if she were already a stranger to him.
She took a last look round the room. Her eyes seemed to devour every
detail.
"I shall find means to give you your freedom at once."
"You will actually leave me--go away?"
"Can we two remain together now?"
"But your children?"
"Your children, Dick--I have forgotten that I have any. I have had my
life. You have still yours to live."
She swept by him down the long room, everything in which was so
closely associated with her. Before she reached the door, he was
there--and his back against it. She stopped, but she did not look at
him. If she could have read the truth in his face, it would have told
her that she had never been loved as she was at that moment. All that
she had been in her loyalty, her nobility, was so much a part of this
man's life. What, compared to that, were petty sins, or big ones? He
saw the past as a drowning man sees the panorama of his existence. Yet
he knew that everything he could say would be powerless to move her.
It was useless to remind her of their happy years together. They could
never be happy again with this between them. It would be equally
useless to tell her that this other woman had known, but too well,
that he would never desert his wife for her. Had he not betrayed her?
Of what use to tell her how he had repented his folly, that he could
never understand it himself? There were the facts, and Nature, and his
wife's philosophy against him.
And he had dared be gay the moment the steamer slid into the channel!
Was that only this morning? It seemed to be in the last century.
She approached, and stretched her hand toward the door.
He did not move.
"Don't stop me," she pleaded. "Don't make it any harder than it is.
Let me take with me the consolation of a decent life together--a
decent life decently severed."
He made one last appeal--he opened his arms wide to her.
She shrank back with a shudder, crying out that he should spare her
her own contempt--that he should leave her the power to seek
peace--and her voice had such a tone of terror, as she recoiled from
him, that he felt how powerless any protest would be.
He stepped aside.
Without looking at him she quickly opened the door and passed out.
* * * * *
The Divorcée nervously rolled up her manuscript.
The usual laugh was not forthcoming. No one dared. Men can't
rough-house that kind of a woman.
After a moment's silence the Critic spoke up. "You were right to
_read_ that story. It is not the sort of thing that lends itself to
narrating. Of course you might have acted it out, but you were wise
not to."
"I can't help it--got to say it," said the Journalist: "What a horrid
woman!"
The Divorcée looked at him in amazement. "How can you say that?" she
exclaimed. "I thought I had made her so reasonable. Just what all
women ought to be, and what none of us are."
"Thank God for that," said the Journalist. "I'd as lief live in a
world created and run by George Bernard Shaw as in one where women
were like that."
"Come, come," interrupted the Doctor, who had been eyeing her profile
with a curious half amused expression, all through the reading: "Don't
let us get on that subject to-night. A story is a story. You have
asked, and you have received. None of you seem to really like any
story but your own, and I must confess that among us, we are putting
forth a strange baggage."
"On the contrary," said the Critic, "I think we are doing pretty well
for a crowd of amateurs."
"You are not an amateur," laughed the Journalist, "and yours was the
worst yet."
"I deny it," said the Critic. "Mine had real literary quality, and a
very dramatic climax."
"Oh, well, if death is dramatic--perhaps. You are the only one up to
date who has killed his heroine."
"No story is finished until the heroine is dead," said the Journalist.
"This woman,--I'll bet she had another romance."
"Did she?" asked the Critic of the Divorcée, who was still nervously
rolling her manuscript in both hands.
"I don't know. How should I? And if I did I shouldn't tell you. It
isn't a true story, of course." And she rose from her chair and walked
away into the moonlight.
"Do you mean to say," ejaculated the Violinist, who admired her
tremendously, "that she made that up in the imagination she carries
around under that pretty fluffy hair? I'd rather that it were
true--that she had picked it up somewhere."
As we began to prepare to go in, the Doctor looked down the path to
where the Divorcée was still standing. After a moment's hesitation he
took her lace scarf from the back of her chair, and strolled after
her. The Sculptor shrugged his shoulders with such a droll expression
that we all had to smile. Then we went indoors.
"Well," said the Doctor, as he joined her--she told me about it
afterwards--"was that the way it happened?"
"No, no," replied the Divorcée, petulantly. "That is not a bit the way
it happened. That is the way I wish it had happened. Oh, no. I was
brought up to believe in the proprietary rights in marriage, and I did
what I thought became a womanly woman. I asserted my rights, and made
a common or garden row."
The Doctor laughed, as she stamped her foot at him.
"Pardon--pardon," said he. "I was only going to say 'Thank God.' You
know I like it best that way."
"I wish I had not told the old story," she said pettishly. "It serves
me quite right. Now I suppose they've got all sorts of queer notions
in their heads."
"Nonsense," said the Doctor. "All authors, you know, run the risk of
getting mixed up in their romances--think of Charlotte Brontë."
"I'm not an author, and I am going to bed,--to repent of my folly,"
and she sailed into the house, leaving the Doctor gazing quizzically
after her. Before she was out of hearing, he called to her: "I say,
you haven't changed a bit since '92."
She heard but she did not answer.
VII
THE LAWYER'S STORY
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING
THE TALE OF A BRIDE-ELECT
The next day we all hung about the garden, except the Youngster, who
disappeared on his wheel early in the day, and only came back, hot and
dusty, at tea-time. He waved a hand at us as he ran through the garden
crying: "I'll change, and be with you in a moment," and leapt up the
outside staircase that led to the gallery on which his room opened,
and disappeared.
I found an opportunity to go up the other staircase a little
later--the Youngster was an old pet of mine, and off and on, I had
mothered him. I tapped at the door.
"Can't come in!" he cried.
"Where've you been?"
"Wait there a minute--and mum--. I'll tell you."
So I went and sat in the window looking down the road, until he came,
spick and span in white flannels, with his head not yet dried from the
douching he had taken.
"See here," he whispered, "I know you can keep a secret. Well, I've
been out toward Cambrai--only sixty miles--and I am tuckered. There
was a battle there last night--English driven back. They are only two
days' march away, and oh! the sight on the roads. Don't let's talk of
it."
In spite of myself, I expect I went white, for he exclaimed: "Darn it,
I suppose I ought not to have told you. But I had to let off to some
one. I don't want to tell the Doctor. In fact, he forbade my going
again."
"Is it a real German victory?" I asked.
"If it isn't I don't know what you'd call it, though such of the
English as I saw were in gay enough spirits, and there was not an
atmosphere of defeat. Fact is--I kept out of sight and only got stray
impressions. Go on down now, or they'll guess something. I'm not going
to say a word--yet. Awful sorry now I told you. Force of habit."