To Horatia the affair was immensely serious, but, Langley’s attitude in
_The Journal_ office the next morning, though anxious, was not yet
gravely troubled. According to reason he should have been right, what
had jarred between him and Horatia was nothing after all, but in fact it
was Horatia who gauged the dangers of the situation correctly. What she
herself did not realize was that the episode about Mrs. Hubbell was one
which only added another fear and another doubt to the fears and doubts
which already had invaded her mind, unacknowledged. And these fears and
doubts were in the air of her generation. Her discovery about Grace had
perhaps begun the uncertainty. Tricked once into belief in a person and
deceived, she herself had learned to feel suspicion and fear. She had
learned that the men about her were not necessarily faithful to their
wives and try as she would to put the thought out of her mind it crept
back sometimes while she was talking to this man or that. Langley had
reassured her--had made her smile again--events had driven the memory of
Grace out of her mind--but the stain remained, corroding the faith and
beauty of her feeling for Jim more than she guessed. There had been the
doubts created by her fears about money matters and as to whether she
and Jim would be able to keep themselves orderly and happy on their
income. There had been the fear of the pain of marriage as she hovered
at the door of the little sick child in her sister’s house. These things
once accepted as the lot of woman became a problem now that they were a
choice and not a lot. Subtly too, the temptations of the luxury of the
life of the married women whom she met around Mrs. Clapp had dulled the
edge of her own desire to work after she married. And Horatia had found
no anchor philosophical or sociological. She was one of those who
drifted with people rather than with causes and it was a hard age into
which she had come to maturity. She could not like so many contemporary
women fling herself into a cause and put the cause (or pretend to put
it) before all personal life, and yet she could not, like her
grandmother, fling herself into the institution of matrimony and expect
the institution to solve her problems. Her faith in marriage with Jim
was a structure subtly undermined by the conditions surrounding her and
upheld only by one great and mighty prop--the prop of faith in Jim. Jim
would adjust the problem of how they should live--Jim would keep them
from stupidity and shabbiness--against the furtiveness of the married
scoundrel who sought illicit relations, Jim stood, magnificent in his
love for her. Everywhere he supported her, held her up, made her strong.
And then this had come, this little thing which had curiously grown into
a big thing. It was not that she feared Rose Hubbell as a rival. In
that she was quite honest. But she feared Jim. She feared herself if Jim
should seem weak, if he should appear to be the tool of a woman, if he
could be the prey of a conscienceless woman. What sort of weakness was
it to which she was looking for strength? The more she thought about it
the more reasonable her position seemed to her. There that dangerous
touch of feminine dogmatism absorbed at Maud’s came into play. She was
asking him to give up a meaningless relationship, to trust in her
judgment, to fulfill her desire. If he would not sacrifice a thing which
was worthless, if he would not trust her judgment, if he would not
fulfill her desire, either he had not been honest in telling of the
whole relationship between him and Rose Hubbell or he was a lover whose
love was only skin deep. To such a preposterous pitch of unconscious
arrogance had her feelings brought her. Those were sad days for Horatia.
She struggled for a week, while it grew steadily more hot in the city.
Frantically her mind circled on itself, seeking rest and peace. There
were times when it seemed that to turn to Jim and bury her head on his
shoulder would solve everything. But when she did that, as she sometimes
did, she found that it solved nothing--that she always began again on
her endless round of argument.
There came a day when she and Jim, sitting opposite each other in his
office after the rest had gone home, faced decision.
“You’ll wear out, Horatia. I can’t bear this. Won’t you please let the
matter drop?”
“It doesn’t drop me,” said poor Horatia. “It goes on to mount up to the
big question of whether you love me at all when you can let me suffer
so.”
“It’s bigger than this affair,” said Jim, “you’re right. If it were a
question of that promise only, perhaps I could find a way to make it
even if it involved abandoning a trust. But the thing is bigger. You ask
me to promise you something for which you’d despise me if I agreed.” She
began to protest, but he shook his head. “Not now, but ultimately. You
ask me to promise because you don’t trust me. If I gave that promise I’d
be less a man and you less a woman for forcing it. You see, dear, I
don’t quite satisfy you or make you confident. This promise would help
things for a bit. Then you’d find another difficulty in my
nature--another flaw to make you doubt and perhaps you’d want to bind
that too with promises. Rose Hubbell is no more to me than that blotter.
But I am something to myself in my relation to Rose Hubbell as well as
to the newsboy on the corner. And I must decide those relationships
myself because I am a man. If you want this promise it’s because you
fear the strength of my manhood--and that’s basic.”
He was so much older, so much wiser than the Horatia who, tired and
pale, hardly heeded his talk.
“Oh, I’m frightened,” she cried, “all this arguing! If this happened
afterwards----”
“I’d become a brute or you a shrew,” said Langley.
But what she had wanted was his denial that it would ever happen again.
“I’m afraid of you. You are hard and unyielding. You don’t bring me----”
“I don’t bring you rest or comfort,” he said bitterly. “But, my God, how
I long to, Horatia. Only I love you too much to bring you false rest or
comfort or to drug you with words. I too have come to fear myself. What
have I to give you----”
They sat drearily fatigued, the paper-strewn table between them.
Horatia made no protest; she was or thought she was full of questioning
herself. Yet what came next brought about in three breaths a vast
surprise; one moment what Langley was saying sounded like a natural
sequence, and the next all the values of life shifted, and they faced
each other in a new, strange, graceless world.
“I want you to go away for a rest,” said Jim. “Go away and forget all
this. Then if you never want to come back to me, it’s all right. But if
you should, Horatia, I’ll be here--I’ll always be here--always waiting,
always thankful for what you’ve done for me--what you’ve given me, and
always knowing that it was far, far more than I deserved.”
It was youth, inexperienced girlhood that disregarded the magnificence
of that appeal. Horatia was primitive, green enough to want to be
overcome--to want to be forced into surrender. That he did not force her
but left her path open seemed weakness--and something like coldness. An
older woman would have known that it was strength and rare devotion.
She was silent and in a turmoil within.
“Then you’ll give me up?” she asked at last, evenly enough.
“I’ll never give you up, but I’ll never imprison you.”
“It all is the same.” Horatia spoke out of a weary effort to keep
dignity, not to break down before the indifference of her lover.
The languor that was all he could have heard in her voice was hard on
him. Langley put his head on his hands and hid the agony in his face.
“I told you once that you loved the romance you found in me,” he said
without resentment. “Well, I’ve destroyed the romance. I’m just
ordinary, cheap, uninspiring. But I’m not going to make you ordinary or
cheap. There’s so much romance left for you to find.”
She stood up and struck her hands together angrily.
“Don’t mock at me.”
“For God’s sake, Horatia, I wasn’t mocking.”
“Let me go--I will go now. I’ll go--on my vacation.”
“Your vacation?”
“We’ll call it that. I’ll go for a month--two months. And if I can come
back, I’ll come. But I’m afraid.”
“My darling--my darling--if you can’t, you are to find happiness more
worthily.”
He took her in his arms hungrily, sacrificially. That should have told
her. But she was hungering for prohibitions, for demands upon her. There
was no warmth in her, and he let her go.
At the door she lingered.
“Can you get someone to fill my place?”
“Yes--don’t worry about that. Just rest.”
“I’ve been happy here.”
“You’ve brought life with you.”
The door closed after her. She went down the staircase slowly,
miserably.
Langley’s face was grey and old.