MENTAL SURGERY
Margaret knew all about it now. From her point of view certain
conventions of non-interference between husband and wife were so many
links in the old chain. Undoubtedly it was not that she wanted to force
Helen’s confidence. But to come upon Helen the Monday after that
exhausting Sunday, come to her to say good-by and make plans for the
future, and to find the splendid dignity and poise of the Helen she had
been with in Chicago destroyed angered her. Helen had told her the
facts. She had to tell some one, she told herself in a justification she
felt bound to make in secret, and Margaret was at least a stranger in
the city and moreover the only woman she knew who would not make the
slightest impulse to carry her story to other ears.
Margaret, in immaculate white linen, looking as cool and competent as an
operating surgeon, had listened. She heard the whole of the story, how
Gage had changed--for that Helen insisted upon.
“He’s simply not himself. I suppose it’s the feeling he has towards the
girl.”
“Don’t ‘the girl’ her, Helen. I’m not a bit sure of that part of the
story. Somehow it’s too preposterous that Freda should be languishing
somewhere waiting for Gage’s casual attention. I tell you that girl
doesn’t languish. She’s not that kind. She’s the most magnificently
unconscious modern you ever saw. She wouldn’t be any one’s mistress. She
hasn’t that much dependence in her. Not for a minute. I simply don’t
believe it.”
“She disappeared the day after he came back from the convention. And
then he was away that week-end she was seen at the Roadside Inn.”
“I don’t believe she was ever seen there,” said Margaret.
Helen put her hand to her head.
“I don’t want to believe it, but if he won’t deny it--and isn’t it
possible that the poor child’s run away even from him? If she should be
going to have--oh, damn, I can’t say it even--” She broke off a little
hysterically.
“No--I don’t believe that either.” But for all her stout words, Margaret
sounded a little more dubious this time. “Let’s leave her out of it.
What is there to do about you and Gage?”
“I despise my own incompetence of decision,” said Helen. “But I don’t
know. I don’t know how to go through the business. It seems impossible
that we’ve come to the edge of divorce but I can’t go on living with a
man who acts as Gage does. I can’t, that is, with any measure of
self-respect. And yet I look around and the very weight of detail--the
tremendous business of unwinding a marriage--it seems then as if the
quick flare-up of partings that you read about--the separations that
never involve themselves with the machinery of complaints and retaining
lawyers and distributing property and--moving vans--are quite fantastic.
I wonder if it’s laziness which keeps me so fearful of the mass of
detail, Margaret--”
“Of course you’re trivial on purpose, I suppose,” answered Margaret.
“The things you speak of don’t really bother you.”
“Yes. Translated into more serious terms I suppose the thing that hurts
is the terrible pain of cleavage between two people who have grown into
each other for years.”
“More likely. Helen, I don’t want to probe, but do you want to live
without Gage?”
Helen pondered.
“I don’t want to lose him. I feel dreadfully cheated--put upon. I didn’t
want any of this. If I’d known that he was going to feel so outraged at
the political venture I’d have stopped, I think, before I let it get to
an impasse. But I’m afraid it’s that now. He and I were--well, there’s
no use debauching myself with memories. No--I don’t think I want to lose
him but even aside from this question of his disloyalty--this business
with Freda Thorstad--he’s becoming impossible to live with. The children
are noticing it. He doesn’t play with them as he used to. Goes off by
himself. There’s no free and easy interchange between us at all. Of
course he’s often flatly rude to me before the servants.”
“Suppose you gave up all the things he doesn’t like now, would that
solve things?”
Helen shook her head.
“Not now. The thing has gone too far. We’ve been ugly to each other and
we wouldn’t forget that. Besides I’m afraid I’d be resentful. There’s no
reason why I should be completely subject to Gage’s slightest word. We
can’t build on that basis.”
“What he wants,” said Margaret astutely, “is to have you subject to his
dream.”
Helen smiled rather ruefully.
“He might wake up from his dream!”
“That’s the chance women have always taken--even the luckiest ones.”
“I don’t see that it’s any use for me to think over causes and rake up a
justification here and a justification there anyway,” said Helen. “The
only thing of vital importance is to decide whether I’m going to let
events come as they will and be passive under them or whether I’m going
to try to manage the events.”
“I shouldn’t think there’d be much choice there.”
“There is though. It’s so easy to sit back and say, ‘I’m trapped. I’ll
just have to take whatever fate sends. There’s nothing I can do.’”
“But you won’t, for there are no ends of things you could do. It’s
complicated of course. If you leave Gage, of course it puts a crimp in
your political possibilities just now, not that the fact of separation
would much matter but of course up to this point your political
reputation has been partly builded on Gage’s name.”
“And I can’t trade on his name and not live with him. But then I can’t
trade on his name anyway. I must define a position and take what is
coming to me as an individual and give up the rest.”
“No. It’s complicated too by money. I haven’t any, you know,
Margaret--and Gage has made a lot but we’ve lived rather up to the limit
of it. I don’t believe he stands awfully well financially. If we are to
separate things would go pretty much to pieces in every direction.”
“Very much,” said Gage. He had come in quietly and stood looking at them
in a kind of derisive anger. “I’m sorry to break in on your conference,
and on this delightful exhibition of my wife’s loyalty but since we are
all here, let’s talk it over.”
He sat down elaborately, his eyes on Margaret, ignoring his wife
fixedly.
“Have you made up your mind what we should do, Miss Duffield?”
“Don’t be insulting, Gage,” said Margaret, “it’s so unnecessary. I
haven’t been interfering with your affairs any more than was necessary.”
“Than was necessary to release Helen from the chains of marriage?” Gage
laughed. “Well, your work is done. As far as I’m concerned she’s
released. You may tell her, since you are in charge of our affairs, that
I will leave her as soon as possible--and that is very soon--and that
whatever financial arrangement is possible shall be made for her and the
children. She is correct in saying that my affairs are in a bad way. Mr.
Sable, from whom I have just separated in business, can tell her more
about that. She might care to engage him to represent her in any action
you might see fit for her to take.”
Helen had risen to her feet, quite white.
“Stop!” she cried. “Don’t you dare keep on insulting me. You’re
mad--abnormal--”
Gage bowed vaguely in her direction and continued speaking to Margaret.
“Tell her that she is right. I am mad and abnormal and that she has made
me so, instigated by you. Excuse me now, won’t you?”
He went upstairs but he could hear through the floor the swift,
staccato, shrieking sobs of Helen’s hysteria, hear the whisper of a maid
to the nurse in the back hall, hear a murmur which must be the calming
voice of Margaret. He paced viciously up and down--up and down.
Yet he had come home, driven by an invigorating impulse which had come
to him inexplicably, perhaps born of pity and sudden insight into
Helen’s mind, come home to ask her forgiveness, explain what Freda
Thorstad had told him and ask her to go away with him for a little while
until their minds both cleared. The impulse had risen in his throat--it
had choked him with delight and fear lest she should not be home. And
then through the sunroom doors he saw them, two calm women, talking
together, making and receiving confidences, uncovering him, dissecting
him, and as he stood still and let the blackness of rage sweep over him
again he had heard Helen tell this stranger, this inimical stranger, of
his financial condition. The sense of outrage overmastered him.
After a little it was quiet downstairs and he decided to go to the city
again, going downstairs, looking straight ahead of him. He wanted to see
the children, to have their reception of him ease this last sharp hurt.
They were in the garden of course, and they greeted him with their usual
shouts of delight.
“Well,” he thought, as he bent down to caress them, “I can’t stop now. I
can’t stop now.”
He sat down on the garden bench and took the children on his knees, the
boy and girl, so sturdy and happy, with fat brown knees and thick soft
hair. They were full of comments and questions. Peggy was three and
Bennett just eighteen months older. It was going to hurt terribly to
break away from them. Sable had said, “You can’t act as though you
didn’t have a family dependent on you.” He had shown Sable that he could
act that way, that the family dependent on him was not going to force
him to knuckle under. He stroked Peggy’s hair. How restful it was--if he
could only stay here in this sheltered little garden with the children
who had no tangles in their minds--if Helen would come out as she used
to come out last summer and sit with him while they talked and planned
of the beautiful things ahead for the children and their initiations
into living.
Helen had deserted. She had gone off notoriety seeking. She preferred to
sit in that room talking disloyalty to that woman to whose hard
influence she had subjected herself--Helen was driving him out.
He kissed the children sternly and went back through the house. In the
hall Helen met him. Her face was ravaged by hysterics, red hollows under
her eyes, mouth pulled out of shape. It hurt to regard it.
“Where are you going, Gage?”
For a moment he was gentle.
“Downtown. I’ll not be back till late. There’s no use trying to talk. We
are killing each other.” Then he thought of Margaret Duffield, listening
perhaps and loosening his wife’s hands from his shoulders, where she had
placed them, he went out.
* * * * *
But that was not the only crisis Margaret had to meet that day. She was
eager to go back to New York. There was no possible work left for her to
do and she wanted to get away from St. Pierre. She did not tell Helen
that she was planning to go in a few days as she had told her landlady
that morning. When she left the Flandon house Helen was quite calm. With
her fine power of organization she had already decided that the best
temporary thing to do was to accept Gage’s actions and see how far he
would go, allowing her action to be modified by that later. Margaret
looked rather pale. The reasonableness of her own mind was bound to be
affected somehow by this drama through which she had passed and in which
she had been forced to play so disagreeable a part. Perhaps it showed
chiefly in the slight hardness of her attitude toward Walter Carpenter
that night.
She never seemed to attack that decision squarely. She seemed to try to
deny it a right to confront her. And yet, definitely, constantly, with
less impatience than a younger lover and vastly more skill than a less
intellectual one, Carpenter made himself felt. Now and then in their
discussions and in their arguments, he destroyed some reason against
their marriage. Her defenses had been made very weak. She had no
argument against the lack of liberty in marriage which he could not
destroy. He would grant anything. Indeed he asked only for the simplest,
most unadorned marriage bond--and companionship which she had admitted
she enjoyed with him. She might retain her own name if she liked without
any altercation--might leave him for months at a time--he let her
frighten him with no such threats. He offered too, more leisure for
thought than she had ever had in the pressure of earning her own living.
She had told him a little of what it meant to always need all the money
she had in the bank--to do many things and yet never have any feeling of
ease, to fear dependency. “It would mean a charitable hospital or going
to a remote little Pennsylvania town to an aunt who lived with my mother
until she died and who lives on in the almost worthless little place
where I was born.” When she told Walter that, he had almost won her, so
absorbed were they both in the pity and dread of her loneliness. Then
again there leapt between them some deep-rooted fear, some instinct,
some dread pulling Margaret back to her little island of celibacy.
It was far from an unpleasant, bickering companionship that they had.
Margaret, at thirty, past all the desires of adolescence, informed
without experience, had given Gregory nothing and had only been
disturbed and made nervous by him, even while she appreciated his fine
fire and ardors. Carpenter satisfied, soothed her. They had the same
shynesses, the same dread of absurdities in themselves. And Margaret was
afraid that she might be lonely without him and that too worried her.
She did not want to be lonely for any one. So she told him and he
laughed and ventured to bring her hand to his lips and hold it there.
She did not draw it away, perhaps because she was reasonable, perhaps
because she was not.
To-night he talked of Gage, reflecting the gossip of the men of Gage’s
acquaintance. With them the fact of the severing of the firm of Sable
and Flandon was a subject of much speculation. Walter was worried about
it, in his own quiet fashion. Gage and Helen were both his close
friends.
“Talking won’t do any good,” advised Margaret.
“Talking never did do any good with a man. It drives him into himself,
and that’s usually unhealthy. I mean the sort of talking which is full
of advice, of course--or of prohibition.”
“Yet some of you ought to do something with Gage Flandon before he goes
straight to pieces.” Margaret said nothing of what had happened that
afternoon.
“Yes,” said Walter absently, “he’s been going to pieces obviously. But
let’s not talk about him. Let’s talk about ourselves, Margaret.”
They were driving through the summer night, trying to get all the
coolness possible. It was soft warm darkness but the swift car made a
wind which blew back upon them, laden with clover smells, deeply sweet.
All the elaborate mental approaches which Walter had made to the girl he
wanted to marry were abandoned. He stopped the car and put his arm
around her, not supplicating but as if the time had come for concession.
“About ourselves. We talk too much impersonal stuff, Margaret. It’s
great fun but there’s more to be done than talk. We must begin on the
other things. We know each other’s minds now. Let’s know each other’s
feelings.”
It may have been the night, the darkness, the remoteness of the country
road which made him so bold. He tipped her face up to his and kissed her
eagerly, quite different now from the calm mannered man who had sat so
calmly in discussion with her night after night, who had squired her so
formally, who had made love to her mind and tried to capture her
intellect but never more, except for those two easily restrained
outbreaks.
She stiffened like an embarrassed school girl, her hands pressed against
his chest--
“Please don’t, Walter--”
“Foolish girl,” he said gently, “you mustn’t tie yourself up so. Let
your mind ride for a minute and just remember that we love each other,
just as every one in the world wants to love and be loved.”
All the while he talked, urging her, demanding her, he held her against
him, unrelaxed.
“I love you,” he told her. “And I want to be--oh, unspeakably
commonplace about it. I want to indulge myself in a lot of emotions that
are as old as the hills and as glorious. But I want you with me,
darling.”
Still she did not speak. He let her go a little and held her shoulders,
searching for her eyes in the dimness.
“You do love me, don’t you? Why, I’ve seen it for weeks. I’ve seen a
look in your face when I’ve come in--it isn’t boasting, dear, it’s just
a wonderful confidence I have to-night.”
She freed her hands and clasped them tightly in each other. They seemed
the index of some passionate inhibition, some repression, which was
charged with nervousness. Her easy freedom had deserted her, and every
muscle seemed drawn taut.
“Oh, my dear,” he pressed her, “don’t be so afraid. I won’t take
advantage of the fact you care for me. Is it that which holds you
back--that worry about making concessions to a man? Everything I’ve ever
said I’ve meant. I respect every militant inch of you. I love you just
as you are and for it. But above all that--beyond it--there’s more and
hasn’t the time come for the least bit of abandonment?”
“Why?” Her voice was low, not as firm in its tones as it was wont to be.
“Why?” Carpenter repeated her question, “Why? Because we love each other
or we don’t. And we can’t love at arms’ length, dear. We’ve got to be
close, trustful, together. You do like me, don’t you, Margaret?”
“You know I do.”
“And you know I love you. Won’t you come a little way to meet me? I’m so
sure you can trust me. I’m so sure we could be happy. Just let your mind
rest. Let yourself go a little.”
Her mood was chilling his. He tried to gather up the shreds of the
impetuosity that had first driven him to embrace her.
“Let’s not talk,” he said again, almost plaintively, “Can’t we
just--rest in each other?”
“But why are you afraid of talk?” she protested.
He dropped his hands from her shoulders.
“Have I been afraid? Haven’t we talked on every conceivable subject?
Haven’t we said enough to understand each other perfectly?”
“Then--”
“Margaret, dear, we’re at it again. This is what I protest--dragging
argument into every natural emotion. I don’t want to be mind to your
mind to-night. I don’t want to reason or even think--I just want to be
man to your woman and caress you without thought.”
But the verve had gone out of his words and as it went she seemed to
regain her confidence. He made a last attempt to bring back his spirit.
But his embrace seemed to stiffen her. He withdrew his arm and sat
tapping on the steering wheel.
“When will you marry me, Margaret?”
No impetuousness in his voice now, no romance. It met hers in calmness.
“I don’t know.”
“You must know. I can’t stand it any longer. You must or you must drive
me away. There’s no sense in further talk. You know I’ll exact nothing
but the right to be near you. But I must have that. I must know. It
isn’t as if I were younger and could rebound from one love into another.
You’ve got me. I don’t think of anything else. You color every bit of
work I do--every bit of thinking. I’ll trust to your terms. I’ve spent
weeks building up my theory of marriage to suit your desires and
visions. I don’t want to play upon your sympathies but I’ve got to have
you, Margaret--or not.”
He sounded very discouraged, very humble, very desperate.
“I think I’d disappoint you, Walter.”
The pity in her voice and her own discouragement made him turn to her
again but she held out a hand to meet his and he stayed, letting her
clasp his hand loosely.
“I’d be just like this all the time. You think I’d change--under
emotion--when we were married. I don’t think I would. You don’t know how
all the things I’ve thought and seen have influenced me. I couldn’t go
into marriage believing in it much. I couldn’t--go through it--trusting
it much. And when I was cold and I’d nearly always be that way, you’d be
disappointed if not angry. And if I did do as you say--relax--I’d be
spoiling it by not trusting my own feeling. Don’t you think I know?
Don’t you think I almost give in and then some devil of analysis comes
and prods me into a watch on myself? I haven’t anything to give,
Walter--except just what you’ve had. And the reason I can’t marry you is
because while you say and I say that companionship is enough we both
know it isn’t all you’d want. And it’s all you’d find. It’s all I can
give to any man.”
“But, my God, Margaret, women and men have to marry--.”
“I know. It’s all right for other women--most other women. I’m not
speaking for them now. They can keep reasonable and still have enough
feeling to transcend reason now and then--carry them through it.” She
still held his hand in a kind of cold comfort and he could feel her
fingers tighten. “I’ve tried to have feeling lately, Walter--tried to
see if I could find enough--and that kind of feeling isn’t there. I
can’t--I can’t--don’t ask me.”
She withdrew her hand now and sat looking straight ahead of her. A cloud
slipped past the moon and as the earth brightened in the cold white
light Walter, turning to look at her saw her quiet and rigid, tears in
her open eyes, a slim statue of what she claimed to be, sterility of
feeling for him or any man.
“I’m afraid that it’s true,” he said. “Perhaps you can’t.”
At that, coming as a terribly dreary acceptance, she let the sobs come
and for a long while she wept, her head in her own hands. Perhaps she
wept for him, perhaps for herself. He did not offer to touch her
again--as if her dearth of feeling had spread to him in those few
minutes. When at last she straightened herself again, he started the car
and they sped silently back through the country towards St. Pierre.
“Good-by, then,” he said, as they reached her door and he unlocked it.
“Good-by.”
She saw his face, heavy and lined and stern and it seemed to hurt her
cruelly.
“I’ve cheated you,” she said pitifully, “but it’s been myself too. It is
myself.”
He hesitated. For a moment he seemed ready to try again and then he saw
the pity in her face stiffen into resistance. Bending, he kissed her
lightly.
“Nothing I can do for you?”
“Nothing, thank you.”
She heard his car back away from the door. As long as she could hear it
she stood listening. Then with swift definiteness she went to her closet
and pulled out the trunk standing there.