“It will be like another wedding trip, darling,” said Dick tenderly, and
hurried out to make some final arrangements. The motor with the children
had just moved away and Cecily sat in her compartment in the train and
waited for her husband. He was taking her away for a few months on the
advice of every one, to dull some ugly memories, to rest her and give
people a chance to forget that there had ever been “trouble.” Not that
people took that trouble very seriously. They smiled a good deal over
it.
It seemed like a dream, thought Cecily. She had learned in the past few
weeks to take comments casually, to listen to the sentimental
I-told-you-sos, to even listen to the jesting, jesting about the storm
which had been the great storm of her life. There would never be another
one, she thought. She had learned too much for that. It was good to know
how to avoid storms, to have Dick back, to have again the sense of
normality, to love and be loved.
Another wedding trip, he had said. So he meant it. He was rapidly
getting over the sense of difficulty between them. His wife was more
pliable and he was starvedly grateful for her affection. He would have
said that “they both had learned a lesson.” But, as Cecily looked
quietly out of the window, she knew it was not another wedding trip. Not
because the mysteries were gone, but because her belief--or was it
illusion--that life between them would be all love, all fine devotion,
all delicate tenderness, was gone.
It could not be that now. Something--the raucous spirit of the times,
the noisy unbelief of the age, or perhaps her own cloistral spirit--had
ruined that first belief. But her marriage would go on and she was going
on with it. Not passively, but actively.
Going on with marriage. Because it was her business to go on with her
husband, with her children--even if she must make concessions.
Idly, to still her thoughts, she opened the magazine lying on her lap.
From the page before her a full length picture of Fliss stared up at her
and the caption seemed to leap at Cecily in capital letters.
“The beautiful Mrs. Allenby, wife of Senator Allenby, who has been such
a success in Washington this season, relies for her success not only on
her beauty but on her intellect. Mrs. Allenby has studied the modern
woman’s problems deeply. She says that the modern marriage----”
Cecily closed the book with disgust. The old spirit was aflame
again--resentment that this sort of thing should be tolerated, that
marriage should be made so cheap. She half pushed the magazine out of
the window to drop it to the tracks below.
Then she pulled it back and, looking at it thoughtfully for a moment,
laid it down beside her to show to Dick.
THE END
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
said Cicely, unperturbed=> said Cicely, unperturbed {pg 50}
They kept up a a gay banter=> They kept up a a gay banter {pg 54}