It was a June evening a year later that Stuart Williams sat on the steps
of the porch that ran round the side of his house, humoring the fox
terrier who thought human beings existed to throw sticks for dogs. After
a while the man grew tired of that theory of human existence, and bade
the panting Fritz lie down on the step below him. From there Fritz would
look up to his master appealingly, eyes and tail saying, "Now let's
begin again." But he got no response, so, in philosophic dog fashion,
soon stretched out for a snooze.
The man was less philosophic: he had not that gift of turning from what
he wanted to what he could have.
A little later he would go to the rehearsal of the out-of-door play the
Country Club was getting ready to give. Ruth Holland would be there: she
too was in the play. Probably he would take her home, for they lived in
the same neighborhood and a little apart from the others. It was Mrs.
Lawrence who, the night of the first rehearsal, commented with relief
for one more thing smoothly arranged upon their going the same way.
For five weeks now they had been going the same way; their talk on those
homeward walks had been the lightest of talk, for the most part a
laughing over things that had happened during the rehearsal. And yet the
whole world had become newly alive, until tonight it seemed a tremulous,
waiting world. That light talk had been little more than a pulling back
from the pauses, little more than retreat, safeguard. It was the pauses
that lived on with him, creating his dreams; her face as she turned it
to him after a silence would sometimes be as if she had been caught into
that world touched to new life--world that waited. They would renew the
light talk as if coming back from something.
He let himself slip into dreaming now; he had told himself that that, at
least, could work no one harm, and in quiet hours, when he smoked,
relaxed, he was now always drawn over where he knew he must not let
himself go. It was as if something stronger than he was all around him.
One drooping hand caressed his dog; he drew in the fragrance from a rose
trellis near by; the leaves of the big tree moved with a gentle little
sound, a sound like the whisper of sweet things; a bird
note--goodnight--floated through the dusk. He was a man whom those
things reached. And in the last year, particularly in those last weeks,
it had come to be that all those things were one with Ruth Holland; to
open to them meant being drawn to her.
He would tell himself that that was wrong, mad; nothing he could tell
himself seemed to have any check on that pull there was on him in the
thought of her. He and his wife were only keeping up the appearance of
marriage. For two years he had not had love. He was not a man who could
learn to live without it. And now all the desirableness of life, hunger
for love, the whole of earth's lure seemed to break in through the
feeling for this girl--that wrong, wonderful feeling that had of itself
flushed his heart to new life.
Sharply he pulled himself about, shifting position as if to affirm his
change of thinking. It turned him from the outer world to his house; he
saw Marion sitting in there at her desk writing a letter. He watched
her, thinking about her, about their lives. She was so poised, so cool;
it would seem, so satisfied. Was she satisfied? Did denial of life leave
nothing to be desired? If there were stirrings for living things they
did not appear to disturb her calm surface. He wondered if a night like
this never touched old things in her, if there were no frettings for
what she had put out of her life.
He watched her small, beautifully shaped dark head, the fine smooth hair
that fell over the little ear he had loved to kiss. She was beautiful;
it was her beauty that had drawn him to her. She was more beautiful than
Ruth Holland, through whom it seemed all the beauty of the world reached
him. Marion's beauty was a definite separate thing; his face went tender
as he thought how Ruth Holland only grew beautiful in beauty, as if it
broke through her, making her.
Once more he moved sharply, disturbing the little dog at his feet; he
realized where his thoughts had again gone, how looking at his wife it
was to this other girl he was drawn, she seeming near him and Marion
apart. He grew miserable in a growing feeling of helplessness, in a
sense of waiting disaster. It was as if the whole power of life was
drawing him on to disaster. Again that bird call floated through the
dusk; the gentle breeze stirred the fragrance of flowers; it came to
seem that the world was beautiful that it might ensnare him, as if the
whole power of the sweetness of life was trying to pull him over where
he must not go. He grew afraid. He got the feeling that he must do
something--that he must do it at once. After he had sat there brooding
for half an hour he abruptly got up and walked in where his wife was
sitting.
"Marion," he began brusquely, "I should like to speak to you."
She had been sitting with her back to the door; at his strange address
of her she turned round in surprise; she looked startled when she saw
his strained face.
"We've been married about six years, isn't it?"
He had come a little nearer, but remained standing. He still spoke in
that rough way. She did not reply but nodded slightly, flushing.
"And now for two years we--haven't been married?"
She stiffened and there was a slight movement as if drawing back. She
did not answer.
"I'm thirty-four and you're a little less than that." He paused and it
was more quietly, though none the less tensely that he asked: "Is it
your idea that we go through life like this?"
She was gathering together the sheets of paper on her desk. She did not
speak.
"You were angry at me--disappointed. I grant you, as I did at the time,
that it was a silly affair, not--not creditable. I tried to show you how
little it meant, how it had--just happened. Two years have passed; we
are still young people. I want to know--do you intend this to go on? Are
our whole lives to be spoiled by a mere silly episode?"
She spoke then. "Mere silly episode," she said with a high little laugh,
"seems rather a slight way to dispose of the fact that you were untrue
to me." She folded her letter and was putting it in the envelope. It
would not go in and she refolded it with hands not steady.
He did not speak until she had sealed the letter and was sitting there
looking down at her hands, rubbing them a little, as if her interest was
in them. "Marion," he asked, and his voice shook now, "doesn't it ever
seem to you that life is too valuable to throw away like this?" She made
no reply and angered by her unresponsiveness he added sharply: "It's
rather dangerous, you know."
She looked up at him then. "Is this a threat?" she asked with a faint,
mocking smile.
He moved angrily, starting to leave the room. "Have you no feeling?" he
broke out at her. "Is this all you _want_ from life?"
She colored and retorted: "It was not the way I expected to live when I
married you."
He stood there doggedly for a moment, his face working with nervousness.
"I think then," he said roughly, "that we'd better be decent enough to
get a divorce!" At what he saw in her face he cried passionately: "Oh
no, you don't believe in divorce--but you believe in _this_!"
"Was it _I_ who brought it about?" she cried, stung to anger.
She had risen and for an instant they stood there facing each other.
"Haven't you any humanity?" he shot rudely at her. "Don't you ever
_feel_?"
She colored but drew back, in command of herself again. "I do not
desecrate my feelings," she said with composure; "I don't degrade my
humanity."
"Feeling--humanity!" he sneered, and wheeled about and left the room.
He started at once for his rehearsal. He was trembling with anger and
yet underneath that passion was an unacknowledged feeling of relief. It
had seemed that he had to do something; now he told himself that he had
done what he could. He walked slowly through the soft night, seeking
control. He was very bitter toward Marion, and yet in his heart he knew
that he had asked for what he no longer wanted. He quickened his step
toward the Lawrences', where they were to hold the rehearsal, where he
would find Ruth Holland.