FREE AND
OTHER STORIES
FREE AND OTHER
STORIES
BY THEODORE DREISER
AUTHOR OF “SISTER CARRIE,” “THE HAND OF THE POTTER,”
“JENNIE GERHARDT,” ETC.
[Illustration]
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
NEW YORK 1918
Copyright, 1918
BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
_First Printing_ _August, 1918_
_Second Printing_ _August, 1918_
_Third Printing_ _August, 1918_
_Fourth Printing_ _December, 1918_
CONTENTS
PAGE
FREE 9
MCEWEN OF THE SHINING SLAVE MAKERS 54
NIGGER JEFF 76
THE LOST PHŒBE 112
THE SECOND CHOICE 135
A STORY OF STORIES 163
OLD ROGAUM AND HIS THERESA 201
WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR 229
THE CRUISE OF THE “IDLEWILD” 300
MARRIED 323
WHEN THE OLD CENTURY WAS NEW 351
FREE
The large and rather comfortable apartment of Rufus Haymaker,
architect, in Central Park West, was very silent. It was scarcely dawn
yet, and at the edge of the park, over the way, looking out from the
front windows which graced this abode and gave it its charm, a stately
line of poplars was still shrouded in a gray morning mist. From his
bedroom at one end of the hall, where, also, a glimpse of the park was
to be had, came Mr. Haymaker at this early hour to sit by one of these
broader windows and contemplate these trees and a small lake beyond.
He was very fond of Nature in its manifold art forms--quite poetic, in
fact.
He was a tall and spare man of about sixty, not ungraceful, though
slightly stoop-shouldered, with heavy overhanging eyebrows and hair,
and a short, professionally cut gray mustache and beard, which gave
him a severe and yet agreeable presence. For the present he was clad
in a light-blue dressing gown with silver cords, which enveloped him
completely. He had thin, pale, long-fingered hands, wrinkled at the
back and slightly knotted at the joints, which bespoke the artist, in
mood at least, and his eyes had a weary and yet restless look in them.
For only yesterday Doctor Storm, the family physician, who was in
attendance on his wife, ill now for these three weeks past with a
combination of heart lesion, kidney poisoning and neuritis, had taken
him aside and said very softly and affectionately, as though he were
trying to spare his feelings: “To-morrow, Mr. Haymaker, if your wife
is no better I will call in my friend, Doctor Grainger, whom you know,
for a consultation. He is more of an expert in these matters of the
heart”--the heart, Mr. Haymaker had time to note ironically--“than
I am. Together we will make a thorough examination, and then I hope
we will be better able to say what the possibilities of her recovery
really are. It’s been a very trying case, a very stubborn one, I might
say. Still, she has a great deal of vitality and is doing as well as
could be expected, all things considered. At the same time, though I
don’t wish to alarm you unnecessarily--and there is no occasion for
great alarm yet--still I feel it my duty to warn you that her condition
is very serious indeed. Not that I wish you to feel that she is certain
to die. I don’t think she is. Not at all. Just the contrary. She may
get well, and probably will, and live all of twenty years more.”
(Mentally Mr. Haymaker sighed a purely spiritual sigh.) “She has fine
recuperative powers, so far as I can judge, but she has a bad heart,
and this kidney trouble has not helped it any. Just now, when her heart
should have the least strain, it has the most.
“She is just at that point where, as I may say, things are in the
balance. A day or two, or three or four at the most, ought to show
which way things will go. But, as I have said before, I do not wish to
alarm you unnecessarily. We are not nearly at the end of our tether. We
haven’t tried blood transfusion yet, and there are several arrows to
that bow. Besides, at any moment she may respond more vigorously to
medication than she has heretofore--especially in connection with her
kidneys. In that case the situation would be greatly relieved at once.
“However, as I say, I feel it my duty to speak to you in this way in
order that you may be mentally prepared for any event, because in such
an odd combination as this the worst may happen at any time. We never
can tell. As an old friend of yours and Mrs. Haymaker’s, and knowing
how much you two mean to each other”--Mr. Haymaker merely stared at
him vacantly--“I feel it my duty to prepare you in this way. We all of
us have to face these things. Only last year I lost my dear Matilda,
my youngest child, as you know. Just the same, as I say, I have the
feeling that Mrs. Haymaker is not really likely to die soon, and that
we--Doctor Grainger and myself--will still be able to pull her through.
I really do.”
Doctor Storm looked at Mr. Haymaker as though he were very sorry for
him--an old man long accustomed to his wife’s ways and likely to be
made very unhappy by her untimely end; whereas Mr. Haymaker, though
staring in an almost sculptural way, was really thinking what a farce
it all was, what a dull mixture of error and illusion on the part
of all. Here he was, sixty years of age, weary of all this, of life
really--a man who had never been really happy in all the time that he
had been married; and yet here was his wife, who from conventional
reasons believed that he was or should be, and who on account of
this was serenely happy herself, or nearly so. And this doctor, who
imagined that he was old and weak and therefore in need of this loving
woman’s care and sympathy and understanding! Unconsciously he raised a
deprecating hand.
Also his children, who thought him dependent on her and happy with her;
his servants and her and his friends thinking the same thing, and yet
he really was not. It was all a lie. He was unhappy. Always he had been
unhappy, it seemed, ever since he had been married--for over thirty-one
years now. Never in all that time, for even so much as a single day,
had he ever done anything but long, long, long, in a pale, constrained
way--for what, he scarcely dared think--not to be married any more--to
be free--to be as he was before ever he saw Mrs. Haymaker.
And yet being conventional in mood and training and utterly
domesticated by time and conditions over which he seemed not to have
much control--nature, custom, public opinion, and the like, coming
into play as forces--he had drifted, had not taken any drastic action.
No, he had merely drifted, wondering if time, accident or something
might not interfere and straighten out his life for him, but it never
had. Now weary, old, or rapidly becoming so, he condemned himself for
his inaction. Why hadn’t he done something about it years before?
Why hadn’t he broken it up before it was too late, and saved his own
soul, his longing for life, color? But no, he had not. Why complain so
bitterly now?
All the time the doctor had talked this day before he had wanted to
smile a wry, dry, cynical smile, for in reality he did not want Mrs.
Haymaker to live--or at least at the moment he thought so. He was too
miserably tired of it all. And so now, after nearly twenty-four hours
of the same unhappy thought, sitting by this window looking at a not
distant building which shone faintly in the haze, he ran his fingers
through his hair as he gazed, and sighed.
How often in these weary months, and even years, past--ever since he
and his wife had been living here, and before--had he come to these
or similar windows while she was still asleep, to sit and dream! For
some years now they had not even roomed together, so indifferent had
the whole state become; though she did not seem to consider that
significant, either. Life had become more or less of a practical
problem to her, one of position, place, prestige. And yet how often,
viewing his life in retrospect, had he wished that his life had been as
sweet as his dreams--that his dreams had come true.
After a time on this early morning, for it was still gray, with the
faintest touch of pink in the east, he shook his head solemnly and
sadly, then rose and returned along the hall to his wife’s bedroom,
at the door of which he paused to look where she lay seriously ill,
and beside her in an armchair, fast asleep, a trained nurse who was
supposedly keeping the night vigil ordered by the doctor, but who no
doubt was now very weary. His wife was sleeping also--very pale, very
thin now, and very weak. He felt sorry for her at times, in spite of
his own weariness; now, for instance. Why need he have made so great a
mistake so long ago? Perhaps it was his own fault for not having been
wiser in his youth. Then he went quietly on to his own room, to lie
down and think.
Always these days, now that she was so very ill and the problem of her
living was so very acute, the creeping dawn thus roused him--to think.
It seemed as though he could not really sleep soundly any more, so
stirred and distrait was he. He was not so much tired or physically
worn as mentally bored or disappointed. Life had treated him so badly,
he kept thinking to himself over and over. He had never had the
woman he really wanted, though he had been married so long, had been
faithful, respectable and loved by her, in her way. “In her way,” he
half quoted to himself as he lay there.
Presently he would get up, dress and go down to his office as usual
if his wife were not worse. But--but, he asked himself--would she be?
Would that slim and yet so durable organism of hers--quite as old as
his own, or nearly so--break under the strain of this really severe
illness? That would set him free again, and nicely, without blame or
comment on him. He could then go where he chose once more, do as he
pleased--think of that--without let or hindrance. For she was ill at
last, so very ill, the first and really great illness she had endured
since their marriage. For weeks now she had been lying so, hovering, as
it were, between life and death, one day better, the next day worse,
and yet not dying, and with no certainty that she would, and yet not
getting better either. Doctor Storm insisted that it was a leak in her
heart which had suddenly manifested itself which was causing all the
real trouble. He was apparently greatly troubled as to how to control
it.
During all this period Mr. Haymaker had been, as usual, most
sympathetic. His manner toward her was always soft, kindly, apparently
tender. He had never really begrudged her anything--nothing certainly
that he could afford. He was always glad to see her and the children
humanly happy--though they, too, largely on account of her, he thought,
had proved a disappointment to him--because he had always sympathized
with her somewhat unhappy youth, narrow and stinted; and yet he had
never been happy himself, either, never in all the time that he had
been married. If she had endured much, he kept telling himself when he
was most unhappy, so had he, only it was harder perhaps for women to
endure things than men--he was always willing to admit that--only also
she had had his love, or thought she had, an actual spiritual peace,
which he had never had. She knew she had a faithful husband. He felt
that he had never really had a wife at all, not one that he could love
as he knew a wife should be loved. His dreams as to that!
Going to his office later this same day--it was in one of those tall
buildings that face Madison Square--he had looked first, in passing,
at the trees that line Central Park West, and then at the bright wall
of apartment houses facing it, and meditated sadly, heavily. Here the
sidewalks were crowded with nursemaids and children at play, and in
between them, of course, the occasional citizen loitering or going
about his errands. The day was so fine, so youthful, as spring days
will seem at times. As he looked, especially at the children, and
the young men bustling office-ward, mostly in new spring suits, he
sighed and wished that he were young once more. Think how brisk and
hopeful they were! Everything was before them. They could still pick
and choose--no age or established conditions to stay them. Were any
of them, he asked himself for the thousandth time, it seemed to him,
as wearily connected as he had been at their age? Did they each have
a charming young wife to love--one of whom they were passionately
fond--such a one as he had never had; or did they not?
Wondering, he reached his office on one of the topmost floors of one
of those highest buildings commanding a wide view of the city, and
surveyed it wearily. Here were visible the two great rivers of the
city, its towers and spires and far-flung walls. From these sometimes,
even yet, he seemed to gain a patience to live, to hope. How in his
youth all this had inspired him--or that other city that was then.
Even now he was always at peace here, so much more so than in his own
home, pleasant as it was. Here he could look out over this great scene
and dream or he could lose the memory in his work that his love-life
had been a failure. The great city, the buildings he could plan or
supervise, the efficient help that always surrounded him--his help, not
hers--aided to take his mind off himself and that deep-seated inner
ache or loss.
The care of Mr. Haymaker’s apartment during his wife’s illness and his
present absence throughout the day, devolved upon a middle-aged woman
of great seriousness, Mrs. Elfridge by name, whom Mrs. Haymaker had
employed years before; and under her a maid of all work, Hester, who
waited on table, opened the door, and the like; and also at present
two trained nurses, one for night and one for day service, who were
in charge of Mrs. Haymaker. The nurses were both bright, healthy,
blue-eyed girls, who attracted Mr. Haymaker and suggested all the youth
he had never had--without really disturbing his poise. It would seem as
though that could never be any more.
In addition, of course, there was the loving interest of his son
Wesley and his daughter Ethelberta--whom his wife had named so in
spite of him--both of whom had long since married and had children
of their own and were living in different parts of the great city.
In this crisis both of them came daily to learn how things were, and
occasionally to stay for the entire afternoon or evening, or both.
Ethelberta had wanted to come and take charge of the apartment entirely
during her mother’s illness, only Mrs. Haymaker, who was still able
to direct, and fond of doing so, would not hear of it. She was not
so ill but that she could still speak, and in this way could inquire
and direct. Besides, Mrs. Elfridge was as good as Mrs. Haymaker in
all things that related to Mr. Haymaker’s physical comfort, or so she
thought.
If the truth will come out--as it will in so many pathetic cases--it
was never his physical so much as his spiritual or affectional comfort
that Mr. Haymaker craved. As said before, he had never loved Mrs.
Haymaker, or certainly not since that now long-distant period back in
Muskegon, Michigan, where both had been born and where they had lived
and met at the ages, she of fifteen, he of seventeen. It had been,
strange as it might seem now, a love match at first sight with them.
She had seemed so sweet, a girl of his own age or a little younger, the
daughter of a local chemist. Later, when he had been forced by poverty
to go out into the world to make his own way, he had written her much,
and imagined her to be all that she had seemed at fifteen, and more--a
dream among fair women. But Fortune, slow in coming to his aid and
fickle in fulfilling his dreams, had brought it about that for several
years more he had been compelled to stay away nearly all of the time,
unable to marry her; during which period, unknown to himself really,
his own point of view had altered. How it had happened he could never
tell really, but so it was. The great city, larger experiences--while
she was still enduring the smaller ones--other faces, dreams of larger
things, had all combined to destroy it or her, only he had not quite
realized it then. He was always so slow in realizing the full import of
the immediate thing, he thought.
That was the time, as he had afterward told himself--how often!--that
he should have discovered his mistake and stopped. Later it always
seemed to become more and more impossible. Then, in spite of some
heartache to her and some distress to himself, no doubt, all would be
well for him now. But no; he had been too inexperienced, too ignorant,
too bound by all the conventions and punctilio of his simple Western
world. He thought an engagement, however unsatisfactory it might come
to seem afterward, was an engagement, and binding. An honorable man
would not break one--or so his country moralists argued.
Yes, at that time he might have written her, he might have told
her, then. But he had been too sensitive and kindly to speak of it.
Afterward it was too late. He feared to wound her, to undo her, to
undo her life. But now--now--look at his! He had gone back on several
occasions before marriage, and might have seen and done and been free
if he had had but courage and wisdom--but no; duty, order, the beliefs
of the region in which he had been reared, and of America--what it
expected and what she expected and was entitled to--had done for him
completely. He had not spoken. Instead, he had gone on and married her
without speaking of the change in himself, without letting her know how
worse than ashes it had all become. God, what a fool he had been! how
often since he had told himself over and over.
Well, having made a mistake it was his duty perhaps, at least
according to current beliefs, to stick by it and make the best of
it;--a bargain was a bargain in marriage, if no where else--but
still that had never prevented him from being unhappy. He could not
prevent that himself. During all these long years, therefore, owing to
these same conventions--what people would think and say--he had been
compelled to live with her, to cherish her, to pretend to be happy
with her--“another perfect union,” as he sometimes said to himself. In
reality he had been unhappy, horribly so. Even her face wearied him at
times, and her presence, her mannerisms. Only this other morning Doctor
Storm, by his manner indicating that he thought him lonely, in danger
of being left all alone and desperately sad and neglected in case she
died had irritated him greatly. Who would take care of him? his eyes
had seemed to say--and yet he himself wanted nothing so much as to be
alone for a time, at least, in this life, to think for himself, to
do for himself, to forget this long, dreary period in which he had
pretended to be something that he was not.
Was he never to be rid of the dull round of it, he asked himself now,
never before he himself died? And yet shortly afterward he would
reproach himself for these very thoughts, as being wrong, hard,
unkind--thoughts that would certainly condemn him in the eyes of the
general public, that public which made reputations and one’s general
standing before the world.
During all this time he had never even let her know--no, not once--of
the tremendous and soul-crushing sacrifice he had made. Like the
Spartan boy, he had concealed the fox gnawing at his vitals. He had not
complained. He had been, indeed, the model husband, as such things go
in conventional walks. If you doubted it look at his position, or that
of his children; or his wife--her mental and physical comfort, even in
her illness, her unfailing belief that he was all he should be! Never
once apparently, during all these years, had she doubted his love or
felt him to be unduly unhappy--or, if not that exactly, if not fully
accepting his love as something that was still at a fever heat, the
thing it once was--still believing that he found pleasure and happiness
in being with her, a part of the home which together they had built up,
these children they had reared, comfort in knowing that it would endure
to the end! To the end! During all these years she had gone on molding
his and her lives--as much as that was possible in his case--and those
of their children, to suit herself; and thinking all the time that she
was doing what he wanted or at least what was best for him and them.
How she adored convention! What did she not think she knew in regard
to how things ought to be--mainly what her old home surroundings had
taught her, the American idea of this, that and the other. Her theories
in regard to friends, education of the children, and so on, had in the
main prevailed, even when he did not quite agree with her; her desires
for certain types of pleasure and amusement, of companionship, and so
on, were conventional types always and had also prevailed. There had
been little quarrels, of course, always had been--what happy home is
free of them?--but still he had always given in, or nearly always, and
had acted as though he were satisfied in so doing.
But why, therefore, should he complain now, or she ever imagine, or
ever have imagined, that he was unhappy? She did not, had not. Like all
their relatives and friends of the region from which they sprang, and
here also--and she had been most careful to regulate that, courting
whom she pleased and ignoring all others--she still believed most
firmly, more so than ever, that she knew what was best for him, what he
really thought and wanted. It made him smile most wearily at times.
For in her eyes--in regard to him, at least, not always so with
others, he had found--marriage was a sacrament, sacrosanct, never to
be dissolved. One life, one love. Once a man had accepted the yoke or
even asked a girl to marry him it was his duty to abide by it. To break
an engagement, to be unfaithful to a wife, even unkind to her--what a
crime, in her eyes! Such people ought to be drummed out of the world.
They were really not fit to live--dogs, brutes!
And yet, look at himself--what of him? What of one who had made a
mistake in regard to all this? Where was his compensation to come
from, his peace and happiness? Here on earth or only in some mythical
heaven--that odd, angelic heaven that she still believed in? What
a farce! And all her friends and his would think he would be so
miserable now if she died, or at least ought to be. So far had asinine
convention and belief in custom carried the world. Think of it!
But even that was not the worst. No; that was not the worst, either. It
had been the gradual realization coming along through the years that he
had married an essentially small, narrow woman who could never really
grasp his point of view--or, rather, the significance of his dreams or
emotions--and yet with whom, nevertheless, because of this original
promise or mistake, he was compelled to live. Grant her every quality
of goodness, energy, industry, intent--as he did freely--still there
was this; and it could never be adjusted, never. Essentially, as he
had long since discovered, she was narrow, ultraconventional, whereas
he was an artist by nature, brooding and dreaming strange dreams and
thinking of far-off things which she did not or could not understand
or did not sympathize with, save in a general and very remote way.
The nuances of his craft, the wonders and subtleties of forms and
angles--had she ever realized how significant these were to him, let
alone to herself? No, never. She had not the least true appreciation
of them--never had had. Architecture? Art? What could they really mean
to her, desire as she might to appreciate them? And he could not now
go elsewhere to discover that sympathy. No. He had never really wanted
to, since the public and she would object, and he thinking it half evil
himself.
Still, how was it, he often asked himself, that Nature could thus allow
one conditioned or equipped with emotions and seekings such as his,
not of an utterly conventional order, to seek out and pursue one like
Ernestine, who was not fitted to understand him or to care what his
personal moods might be? Was love truly blind, as the old saw insisted,
or did Nature really plan, and cleverly, to torture the artist mind--as
it did the pearl-bearing oyster with a grain of sand--with something
seemingly inimical, in order that it might produce beauty? Sometimes
he thought so. Perhaps the many interesting and beautiful buildings
he had planned--the world called them so, at least--had been due to
the loving care he lavished on them, being shut out from love and
beauty elsewhere. Cruel Nature, that cared so little for the dreams of
man--the individual man or woman!
At the time he had married Ernestine he was really too young to know
exactly what it was he wanted to do or how it was he was going to feel
in the years to come; and yet there was no one to guide him, to stop
him. The custom of the time was all in favor of this dread disaster.
Nature herself seemed to desire it--mere children being the be-all and
the end-all of everything everywhere. Think of that as a theory! Later,
when it became so clear to him what he had done, and in spite of all
the conventional thoughts and conditions that seemed to bind him to
this fixed condition, he had grown restless and weary, but never really
irritable. No, he had never become that.
Instead he had concealed it all from her, persistently, in all
kindness; only this hankering after beauty of mind and body in ways
not represented by her had hurt so--grown finally almost too painful
to bear. He had dreamed and dreamed of something different until it
had become almost an obsession. Was it never to be, that something
different, never, anywhere, in all time? What a tragedy! Soon he would
be dead and then it would never be anywhere--anymore! Ernestine was
charming, he would admit, or had been at first, though time had proved
that she was not charming to him either mentally or physically in any
compelling way; but how did that help him now? How could it? He had
actually found himself bored by her for more than twenty-seven years
now, and this other dream growing, growing, growing--until----
But now he was old, and she was dying, or might be, and it could not
make so much difference what happened to him or to her; only it could,
too, because he wanted to be free for a little while, just for a little
while, before he died.
To be free! free!
One of the things that had always irritated him about Mrs. Haymaker was
this, that in spite of his determination never to offend the social
code in any way--he had felt for so many reasons, emotional as well
as practical, that he could not afford so to do--and also in spite
of the fact that he had been tortured by this show of beauty in the
eyes and bodies of others, his wife, fearing perhaps in some strange
psychic way that he might change, had always tried to make him feel or
believe--premeditatedly and of a purpose, he thought--that he was not
the kind of man who would be attractive to women; that he lacked some
physical fitness, some charm that other men had, which would cause all
young and really charming women to turn away from him. Think of it! He
to whom so many women had turned with questioning eyes!
Also that she had married him largely because she had felt sorry for
him! He chose to let her believe that, because he was sorry for
her. Because other women had seemed to draw near to him at times in
some appealing or seductive way she had insisted that he was not
even a cavalier, let alone a Lothario; that he was ungainly, slow,
uninteresting--to all women but her!
Persistently, he thought, and without any real need, she had harped
on this, fighting chimeras, a chance danger in the future; though he
had never given her any real reason, and had never even planned to sin
against her in any way--never. She had thus tried to poison his own
mind in regard to himself and his art--and yet--and yet---- Ah, those
eyes of other women, their haunting beauty, the flitting something they
said to him of infinite, inexpressible delight. Why had his life been
so very hard?
One of the disturbing things about all this was the iron truth which
it had driven home, namely, that Nature, unless it were expressed or
represented by some fierce determination within, which drove one to
do, be, cared no whit for him or any other man or woman. Unless one
acted for oneself, upon some stern conclusion nurtured within, one
might rot and die spiritually. Nature did not care. “Blessed be the
meek”--yes. Blessed be the strong, rather, for they made their own
happiness. All these years in which he had dwelt and worked in this
knowledge, hoping for something but not acting, nothing had happened,
except to him, and that in an unsatisfactory way. All along he had seen
what was happening to him; and yet held by convention he had refused to
act always, because somehow he was not hard enough to act. He was not
strong enough, that was the real truth--had not been. Almost like a
bird in a cage, an animal peeping out from behind bars, he had viewed
the world of free thought and freer action. In many a drawing-room, on
the street, or in his own home even, had he not looked into an eye,
the face of someone who seemed to offer understanding, to know, to
sympathize, though she might not have, of course; and yet religiously
and moralistically, like an anchorite, because of duty and current
belief and what people would say and think, Ernestine’s position and
faith in him, her comfort, his career and that of the children--he had
put them all aside, out of his mind, forgotten them almost, as best he
might. It had been hard at times, and sad, but so it had been.
And look at him now, old, not exactly feeble yet--no, not that yet, not
quite!--but life weary and almost indifferent. All these years he had
wanted, wanted--wanted--an understanding mind, a tender heart, the some
one woman--she must exist somewhere--who would have sympathized with
all the delicate shades and meanings of his own character, his art, his
spiritual as well as his material dreams---- And yet look at him! Mrs.
Haymaker had always been with him, present in the flesh or the spirit,
and--so----
Though he could not ever say that she was disagreeable to him
in a material way--he could not say that she had ever been that
exactly--still she did not correspond to his idea of what he needed,
and so---- Form had meant so much to him, color; the glorious
perfectness of a glorious woman’s body, for instance, the color of her
thoughts, moods--exquisite they must be, like his own at times; but no,
he had never had the opportunity to know one intimately. No, not one,
though he had dreamed of her so long. He had never even dared whisper
this to any one, scarcely to himself. It was not wise, not socially
fit. Thoughts like this would tend to social ostracism in his circle,
or rather hers--for had she not made the circle?
And here was the rub with Mr. Haymaker, at least, that he could not
make up his mind whether in his restlessness and private mental
complaints he were not even now guilty of a great moral crime in so
thinking. Was it not true that men and women should be faithful in
marriage whether they were happy or not? Was there not some psychic
law governing this matter of union--one life, one love--which made the
thoughts and the pains and the subsequent sufferings and hardships of
the individual, whatever they might be, seem unimportant? The churches
said so. Public opinion and the law seemed to accept this. There were
so many problems, so much order to be disrupted, so much pain caused,
many insoluble problems where children were concerned--if people did
not stick. Was it not best, more blessed--socially, morally, and in
every other way important--for him to stand by a bad bargain rather
than to cause so much disorder and pain, even though he lost his own
soul emotionally? He had thought so--or at least he had acted as though
he thought so--and yet---- How often had he wondered over this!
Take, now, some other phases. Granting first that Mrs. Haymaker had,
according to the current code, measured up to the requirements of a
wife, good and true, and that at first after marriage there had been
just enough of physical and social charm about her to keep his state
from becoming intolerable, still there was this old ache; and then
newer things which came with the birth of the several children: First
Elwell--named after a cousin of hers, not his--who had died only two
years after he was born; and then Wesley; and then Ethelberta. How he
had always disliked that name!--largely because he had hoped to call
her Ottilie, a favorite name of his; or Janet, after his mother.
Curiously the arrival of these children and the death of poor little
Elwell at two had somehow, in spite of his unrest, bound him to this
matrimonial state and filled him with a sense of duty, and pleasure
even--almost entirely apart from her, he was sorry to say--in these
young lives; though if there had not been children, as he sometimes
told himself, he surely would have broken away from her; he could not
have stood it. They were so odd in their infancy, those little ones,
so troublesome and yet so amusing--little Elwell, for instance, whose
nose used to crinkle with delight when he would pretend to bite his
neck, and whose gurgle of pleasure was so sweet and heart-filling
that it positively thrilled and lured him. In spite of his thoughts
concerning Ernestine--and always in those days they were rigidly put
down as unmoral and even evil, a certain unsocial streak in him perhaps
which was against law and order and social well-being--he came to have
a deep and abiding feeling for Elwell. The latter, in some chemic,
almost unconscious way, seemed to have arrived as a balm to his misery,
a bandage for his growing wound--sent by whom, by what, how? Elwell had
seized upon his imagination, and so his heartstrings--had come, indeed,
to make him feel understanding and sympathy there in that little child;
to supply, or seem to at least, what he lacked in the way of love
and affection from one whom he could truly love. Elwell was never so
happy apparently as when snuggling in his arms, not Ernestine’s, or
lying against his neck. And when he went for a walk or elsewhere there
was Elwell always ready, arms up, to cling to his neck. He seemed,
strangely enough, inordinately fond of his father, rather than his
mother, and never happy without him. On his part, Haymaker came to be
wildly fond of him--that queer little lump of a face, suggesting a
little of himself and of his own mother, not so much of Ernestine, or
so he thought, though he would not have objected to that. Not at all.
He was not so small as that. Toward the end of the second year, when
Elwell was just beginning to be able to utter a word or two, he had
taught him that silly old rhyme which ran “There were three kittens,”
and when it came to “and they shall have no----” he would stop and say
to Elwell, “What now?” and the latter would gurgle “puh!”--meaning, of
course, pie.
Ah, those happy days with little Elwell, those walks with him over his
shoulder or on his arm, those hours in which of an evening he would
rock him to sleep in his arms! Always Ernestine was there, and happy
in the thought of his love for little Elwell and her, her more than
anything else perhaps; but it was an illusion--that latter part. He did
not care for her even then as she thought he did. All his fondness was
for Elwell, only she took it as evidence of his growing or enduring
affection for her--another evidence of the peculiar working of her
mind. Women were like that, he supposed--some women.
And then came that dreadful fever, due to some invading microbe which
the doctors could not diagnose or isolate, infantile paralysis perhaps;
and little Elwell had finally ceased to be as flesh and was eventually
carried forth to the lorn, disagreeable graveyard near Woodlawn. How he
had groaned internally, indulged in sad, despondent thoughts concerning
the futility of all things human, when this had happened! It seemed for
the time being as if all color and beauty had really gone out of his
life for good.
“Man born of woman is of few days and full of troubles,” the preacher
whom Mrs. Haymaker had insisted upon having into the house at the time
of the funeral had read. “He fleeth also as a shadow and continueth
not.”
Yes; so little Elwell had fled, as a shadow, and in his own deep sorrow
at the time he had come to feel the first and only sad, deep sympathy
for Ernestine that he had ever felt since marriage; and that because
she had suffered so much--had lain in his arms after the funeral and
cried so bitterly. It was terrible, her sorrow. Terrible--a mother
grieving for her first-born! Why was it, he had thought at the time,
that he had never been able to think or make her all she ought to be to
him? Ernestine at this time had seemed better, softer, kinder, wiser,
sweeter than she had ever seemed; more worthy, more interesting than
ever he had thought her before. She had slaved so during the child’s
illness, stayed awake night after night, watched over him with such
loving care--done everything, in short, that a loving human heart could
do to rescue her young from the depths; and yet even then he had not
really been able to love her. No, sad and unkind as it might seem, he
had not. He had just pitied her and thought her better, worthier! What
cursed stars disordered the minds and moods of people so? Why was it
that these virtues of people, their good qualities, did not make you
love them, did not really bind them to you, as against the things you
could not like? Why? He had resolved to do better in his thoughts, but
somehow, in spite of himself, he had never been able so to do.
Nevertheless, at that time he seemed to realize more keenly than ever
her order, industry, frugality, a sense of beauty within limits, a
certain laudable ambition to do something and be somebody--only, only
he could not sympathize with her ambitions, could not see that she had
anything but a hopelessly commonplace and always unimportant point
of view. There was never any flair to her, never any true distinction
of mind or soul. She seemed always, in spite of anything he might
say or do, hopelessly to identify doing and being with money and
current opinion--neighborhood public opinion, almost--and local social
position, whereas he knew that distinguished doing might as well be
connected with poverty and shame and disgrace as with these other
things--wealth and station, for instance; a thing which she could never
quite understand apparently, though he often tried to tell her, much
against her mood always.
Look at the cases of the great artists! Some of the greatest architects
right here in the city, or in history, were of peculiar, almost
disagreeable, history. But no, Mrs. Haymaker could not understand
anything like that, anything connected with history, indeed--she hardly
believed in history, its dark, sad pages, and would never read it, or
at least did not care to. And as for art and artists--she would never
have believed that wisdom and art understanding and true distinction
might take their rise out of things necessarily low and evil--never.
Take now, the case of young Zingara. Zingara was an architect like
himself, whom he had met more than thirty years before, here in New
York, when he had first arrived, a young man struggling to become an
architect of significance, only he was very poor and rather unkempt
and disreputable-looking. Haymaker had found him several years before
his marriage to Ernestine in the dark offices of Pyne & Starboard,
Architects, and had been drawn to him definitely; but because he smoked
all the time and was shabby as to his clothes and had no money--why,
Mrs. Haymaker, after he had married her, and though he had known
Zingara nearly four years, would have none of him. To her he was low,
and a failure, one who would never succeed. Once she had seen him in
some cheap restaurant that she chanced to be passing, in company with a
drabby-looking maid, and that was the end.
“I wish you wouldn’t bring him here any more, dear,” she had insisted;
and to have peace he had complied--only, now look. Zingara had since
become a great architect, but now of course, owing to Mrs. Haymaker,
he was definitely alienated. He was the man who had since designed the
Æsculapian Club; and Symphony Hall with its delicate façade; as well as
the tower of the Wells Building, sending its sweet lines so high, like
a poetic thought or dream. But Zingara was now a dreamy recluse like
himself, very exclusive, as Haymaker had long since come to know, and
indifferent as to what people thought or said.
But perhaps it was not just obtuseness to certain of the finer shades
and meanings of life, but an irritating aggressiveness at times, backed
only by her limited understanding, which caused her to seek and wish to
be here, there and the other place; wherever, in her mind, the truly
successful--which meant nearly always the materially successful of a
second or third rate character--were, which irritated him most of all.
How often had he tried to point out the difference between true and
shoddy distinction--the former rarely connected with great wealth.
But no. So often she seemed to imagine such queer people to be truly
successful, when they were really not--usually people with just money,
or a very little more.
And in the matter of rearing and educating and marrying their two
children, Wesley and Ethelberta, who had come after Elwell--what
peculiar pains and feelings had not been involved in all this for him.
In infancy both of these had seemed sweet enough, and so close to him,
though never quite so wonderful as Elwell. But, as they grew, it seemed
somehow as though Ernestine had come between him and them. First, it
was the way she had raised them, the very stiff and formal manner in
which they were supposed to move and be, copied from the few new-rich
whom she had chanced to meet through him--and admired in spite of his
warnings. That was the irony of architecture as a profession--it was
always bringing such queer people close to one, and for the sake of
one’s profession, sometimes, particularly in the case of the young
architect, one had to be nice to them. Later, it was the kind of school
they should attend. He had half imagined at first that it would be the
public school, because they both had begun as simple people; but no,
since they were prospering it had to be a private school for each, and
not one of his selection, either--or hers, really--but one to which the
Barlows and the Westervelts, two families of means with whom Ernestine
had become intimate, sent their children and therefore thought
excellent!
The Barlows! Wealthy, but, to him, gross and mediocre people who had
made a great deal of money in the manufacture of patent medicines
out West, and who had then come to New York to splurge, and had been
attracted to Ernestine--not him particularly, he imagined--because
Haymaker had built a town house for them, and also because he was
gaining a fine reputation. They were dreadful really, so _gauche_, so
truly dull; and yet somehow they seemed to suit Ernestine’s sense of
fitness and worth at the time, because, as she said, they were good and
kind--like her Western home folks; only they were not really. She just
imagined so. They were worthy enough people in their way, though with
no taste. Young Fred Barlow had been sent to the expensive Gaillard
School for Boys, near Morristown, where they were taught manners and
airs, and little else, as Haymaker always thought, though Ernestine
insisted that they were given a religious training as well. And so
Wesley had to go there--for a time, anyhow. It was the best school.
And similarly, because Mercedes Westervelt, senseless, vain little
thing, was sent to Briarcliff School, near White Plains, Ethelberta had
to go there. Think of it! It was all so silly, so pushing. How well he
remembered the long, delicate campaign which preceded this, the logic
and tactics employed, the importance of it socially to Ethelberta, the
tears and cajolery. Mrs. Haymaker could always cry so easily, or seem
to be on the verge of it, when she wanted anything; and somehow, in
spite of the fact that he knew her tears were unimportant, or timed
and for a purpose, he could never stand out against them, and she knew
it. Always he felt moved or weakened in spite of himself. He had no
weapon wherewith to fight them, though he resented them as a part of
the argument. Positively Mrs. Haymaker could be as sly and as ruthless
as Machiavelli himself at times, and yet believe all the while that she
was tender, loving, self-sacrificing, generous, moral and a dozen other
things, all of which led to the final achievement of her own aims.
Perhaps this was admirable from one point of view, but it irritated him
always. But if one were unable to see him- or herself, their actual
disturbing inconsistencies, what were you to do?
And again, he had by then been married so long that it was almost
impossible to think of throwing her over, or so it seemed at the
time. They had reached the place then where they had supposedly
achieved position together, though in reality it was all his--and not
such position as he was entitled to, at that. Ernestine--and he was
thinking this in all kindness--could never attract the ideal sort.
And anyhow, the mere breath of a scandal between them, separation or
unfaithfulness, which he never really contemplated, would have led to
endless bickering and social and commercial injury, or so he thought.
All her strong friends--and his, in a way--those who had originally
been his clients, would have deserted him. Their wives, their own
social fears, would have compelled them to ostracize him! He would have
been a scandal-marked architect, a brute for objecting to so kind and
faithful and loving a wife. And perhaps he would have been, at that. He
could never quite tell, it was all so mixed and tangled.
Take, again, the marriage of his son Wesley into the De Gaud
family--George de Gaud _père_ being nothing more than a retired
real-estate speculator and promoter who had money, but nothing more;
and Irma de Gaud, the daughter, being a gross, coarse, sensuous girl,
physically attractive no doubt, and financially reasonably secure,
or so she had seemed; but what else? Nothing, literally nothing; and
his son had seemed to have at least some spiritual ideals at first.
Ernestine had taken up with Mrs. George de Gaud--a miserable, narrow
creature, so Haymaker thought--largely for Wesley’s sake, he presumed.
Anyhow, everything had been done to encourage Wesley in his suit and
Irma in her toleration, and now look at them! De Gaud _père_ had
since failed and left his daughter practically nothing. Irma had been
interested in anything but Wesley’s career, had followed what she
considered the smart among the new-rich--a smarter, wilder, newer
new-rich than ever Ernestine had fancied, or could. To-day she was
without a thought for anything besides teas and country clubs and
theaters--and what else?
And long since Wesley had begun to realize it himself. He was an
engineer now, in the employ of one of the great construction companies,
a moderately successful man. But even Ernestine, who had engineered
the match and thought it wonderful, was now down on her. She had
begun to see through her some years ago, when Irma had begun to
ignore her; only before it was always the De Gauds here, and the De
Gauds there. Good gracious, what more could any one want than the De
Gauds--Irma de Gaud, for instance? Then came the concealed dissension
between Irma and Wesley, and now Mrs. Haymaker insisted that Irma
had held, and was holding Wesley back. She was not the right woman
for him. Almost--against all her prejudices--she was willing that he
should leave her. Only, if Haymaker had broached anything like that in
connection with himself!
And yet Mrs. Haymaker had been determined, because of what she
considered the position of the De Gauds at that time, that Wesley
should marry Irma. Wesley now had to slave at mediocre tasks in order
to have enough to allow Irma to run in so-called fast society of a
second or third rate. And even at that she was not faithful to him--or
so Haymaker believed. There were so many strange evidences. And yet
Haymaker felt that he did not care to interfere now. How could he? Irma
was tired of Wesley, and that was all there was to it. She was looking
elsewhere, he was sure.