I was surprised to find John Fulton in the Club. As a home-loving man
he was not a frequent visitor. He had dropped in, he said, to get a
game of bridge, had tired of waiting for somebody to cut out, and had
been reading the newspapers to find out how the world was getting along.
"I haven't more than glanced at them in a week," he said, "but there's
nothing new, is there? Just new variations of public animosity and
domestic misfortunes. Have you read this Overman business?"
"I haven't."
"It's a case or a hard-working, thoroughly respectable man who, for no
reason that is known, suddenly shoots down his wife and children in
cold blood, and then blows his own head to smithereens."
"But of course there was a reason," I said; "he must have felt that he
was justified."
"He seems to have had enough money and good health. And he passed for
a sane, matter-of-fact sort of fellow."
"If it was the regular reason," I said, "jealousy, he wouldn't have
hurt the children."
"Only a very unhappy man could kill his children," said Fulton. "His
idea would be to save them from such unhappiness as he himself had
experienced. But in nine cases out of ten it would be a mistaken
kindness. Causes similar to those which drove the father into a
despair of unhappiness would in all probability affect the children
less. No two persons enjoy to the same degree, suffer to the same
degree or are tempted alike. How many wronged husbands are there who
swallow their trouble and endure to one who shoots?"
"Legions," I said. "Fortunately. Otherwise one could hardly sleep for
the popping of pistols."
"Do you believe that or do you say it to be amusing?"
"I think that the number of husbands who find out that they have been
wronged is only exceeded by the number who never even suspect it. But
they are not the husbands we know, the modern novelist to the contrary
notwithstanding. In our class it is the wives who are wronged as a
rule; in the lower classes, the husbands. I've known hundreds of what
the newspapers call society people; the women are good, with just
enough exceptions to prove the rule: the men aren't."
"When you say that the women are good, you mean they are technically
good?"
"Who is technically good?"
"Hallo, Harry!"
Colemain, having pushed a bell, pulled up a big chair and joined us.
"We were saying that the average woman we know is technically good."
"You bet she is!" said Colemain. "She has to be! If she wasn't how
could she ever put over the things she does put over? And as a rule
her husband isn't technically good and so she has power over him. She
says nothing, but he knows that she knows, and so when she does
something peculiarly extravagant and outrageous, he reaches meekly for
his checkbook. For one man who is ruined by drink there are ten ruined
by women; and not by the kind of women who are supposed to ruin men
either; not by the street-walker, the chorus girl or the demi-mondaine.
American men are ruined by their wives and daughters who are
technically good. Don't we know dozens of cases? When there is a
crash in Wall Street how many well-to-do married men go to smash to one
well-to-do bachelor? A marriage isn't a partnership. It's the
opposite except in name. It's a partnership in which the junior
partner gives her whole mind to extracting from the business sums of
money which ought to go back into it. And she spends those sums almost
invariably on things which diminish in value the moment they are
bought. It isn't the serpent that is the arch enemy of mankind. It's
the pool in which Eve first saw that she was beautiful, or would be if
she could only get her fig-leaf skirt to hang right."
"But I think," said Fulton gently, "that women ought to have pretty
clothes, and bright jewels and luxuries. If a girl loves a man, and
proves it and keeps on loving him, how is it possible for him to pay
her back short of ruining himself? Haven't you ever felt that if the
whole world was yours to give you'd give it gladly? Why complain then
when afterwards you are only asked to give that infinitesimal portion
of the world that happens at the moment to be yours? If a man is
ruined for his wife, if cares shorten his life, even then he has done
far, far less than he once said he was willing and eager to do."
He looked at the big clock over the mantelpiece, sat silent for a
moment, then rose, wished us good-night and went out.
"You wouldn't think," said Harry, "to hear him talk that a woman was
playing chuck-cherry with that infinitesimal portion of the world that
happens to be his. I was in the bank this morning and I saw him come
out of the President's room. He looked a little as if he'd just
identified the body of a missing dear one in the morgue."
"I'm afraid he is frightfully hard up," I said, "but he hasn't said
anything to me about it, and I don't like to volunteer."
"He's a good man," said Harry, "one of the few really good men I know,
and it's a blamed shame."
"Oh, it will all come out in the wash."
"It depends on how dirty the linen is!"
"American men," I said, "never seem to have the courage to retrench.
Why not take your family to a cheap boarding-house for a year or two?
Cut the Gordian knot and get right down to bed rock? Boarding-house
food may be bad for the spirit, but it's good for the body. My father
had dyspepsia one spring, and his doctor told him to spend six weeks in
a summer hotel--_any_ summer hotel--and take _all_ his meals in it."
Just then one of the bell-boys interrupted us. He said that Mrs.
Fulton wished to speak with me. He followed me into the coat room,
where the telephone is, in a persistent sort of way, so that I turned
on him rather sharply and asked what he wanted.
His eyes were bulging with a look of importance and his black face had
an expression of mystery. "She ain't on de telephone," he said, "she's
outside."
"Well, why couldn't you say so?"
I went out bareheaded into the dusk and walked quickly between the
bedded hyacinths and the evergreen hedges of Carolina cherry to the
sidewalk. But she wasn't there. Far up the street I saw a familiar
horse and buggy, and a whip that signaled to me.
She was all alone. Even Cornelius Twombley, as much a part of the
buggy as one of the wheels, had been dropped off somewhere.
"I haven't seen you all day," she said. "I thought maybe you'd like to
go for a little drive."