She made no attempt to explain to Landry her reasons for marrying
Lawrence. It had been with her purely a spiritual matter, a valiant
effort at consoling him. The material aspects of the thing didn’t
trouble her; she didn’t even regard it as a sacrifice. She knew that she
didn’t love him as she had loved Nick Landry; she had felt for him only
that kindly affection she was ready to feel for any human creature. But
she believed that in marrying him she would be doing something worthy,
something of use; that she would be serving God.
Lawrence didn’t know this; he honestly believed that Lawrence Iverson,
even if he were blind and penniless, was a brilliant match for Rosaleen.
They were married at City Hall, with no friend present except Miss
Waters, who wept all the time, and they went back to the studio, to take
up their joint life there without any sort of festivity, any
celebration. Lawrence had said that he could not stand it, that he was
in no mood for that sort of thing; but as a matter of fact, he was
ashamed of Rosaleen. He would have been proud to be her lover, but he
was ashamed to be her husband. He didn’t mention that he was married to
anyone; there were no announcements sent out, no notice in the paper.
No one sent a present, except Miss Waters; no one came to call upon
Rosaleen.
Lawrence had been just emerging from Bohemianism to the respectability
of success. He had lived with order and comfort; he had been invited
about, flattered, more or less “lionized.” But he was not yet really
established; he had no solid footing in that upper world, that “society”
he so worshipped. He had no prestige to give Rosaleen, even if he had
wished to do so. As a matter of fact, he carefully concealed the fact of
his marriage from all these people.
The first invitation he got after the wedding was to a tea.
“You haven’t got anything suitable to wear,” he told her. “I’ll have to
go alone.”
After establishing this precedent, he found it quite easy. He never
suggested her accompanying him.
He was still fairly nice to Rosaleen in those days, although he was
beginning to grow exasperated with her. She insisted upon being always
his servant; never his friend, his comrade. She was always constrained;
she never talked freely about what interested her; instead she was
forever anxious to hearten and encourage Lawrence, to “draw him out”;
she pretended to be interested in what interested him. He knew that she
was prepared to endure everything, to forgive everything, out of
compassion, and it was intolerable. He could never reach her; he could
never make any sort of impression upon her; the coarsest talk made no
stain on her heart, no evil knowledge could disturb her; she was
incorruptible, by reason of her divine stupidity.
His gentleness vanished; he allowed himself to be as irritable as he
pleased. He could still see well enough, but he had been forbidden to
use his eyes, and he was like a caged animal. He used to walk up and
down the studio, groaning.
“How are we going to live?” he demanded, one day.
“I think I can get work,” said Rosaleen, promptly, “if you won’t mind
being left alone part of the time?”
“Do it then! Do it!” he cried.
She tried, she tried faithfully, but her work was no longer good. She
was too anxious to please. A blight had settled on her, her fancy was
destroyed, her developing facility with her pencil was checked, and she
had not had sufficient experience to go on without thought or effort,
like a machine. She made next to nothing; and the day came, inevitably,
when there was no money left. Lawrence had come home from somewhere in a
taxi, and there hadn’t been enough in his pocket to pay the tariff. He
had come upstairs to ask Rosaleen for three dollars.
She had handed him a five dollar bill.
“It’s all I have,” she said. “All I have to buy dinner with....”
“_What!_” he bellowed. “No more? What do you do with what you earn? Eh?”
“I don’t earn very much, Lawrence. And I use it to pay for things----”
He went down and paid the chauffeur. Then he re-entered the room and
went over to the table where she was working. He snatched up the card
she had been painting--three fat robins on a telephone wire, with nine
gold bells underneath bearing the letters of MERRY XMAS.
“Painting?” he said. “_This is painting_, eh? Good God!... _This_ going
on in the room with _me_!... Rosaleen, you are no longer an artist. It’s
too blasphemous!”
He picked up her four cherished camel’s hair brushes and snapped them
into bits; then he tore up her cards and took up all the debris he had
made, together with her paint box and her blocks of paper, and threw it
all out of the window.
“Finished!” he said. “Go back to your pots and pans, wench, and leave
such matters to your betters!”