E-text prepared by D Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 36551-h.htm or 36551-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36551/pg36551-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36551/36551-h.zip)
THE BRUTE
by
FREDERIC ARNOLD KUMMER
Author of "The Green God"
Illustrations by Frank Snapp
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1912, by
W. J. Watt & Company
Published, April
[Illustration: "IT'S A LIE," HE GASPED HOARSELY, THEN SANK BACK IN
HORROR]
THE BRUTE
CHAPTER I
Every evening, almost, Donald Rogers and his wife Edith sat in a plain
little living-room in their apartment in Harlem, and worked until ten or
eleven o'clock. By that time they were both ready to go to bed. It was
not very exciting. Edith darned stockings or sewed; Donald toiled at
his desk, writing letters--going over reports. Sometimes, very rarely,
they went to the theater. They had done the same thing for nearly eight
years, and to Edith, at least, it seemed a very long time.
The room in which they sat reflected in its furnishings much of the
life these two led. It seemed to suggest, in every line, an unceasing
conflict between poverty and ambition--not, indeed, the poverty of the
really poor, of those in actual want, but the poverty of the well born,
of those whose desires are forever infinitely beyond their means.
This was evidenced by many curious contrasts. The furniture, for
instance, was for the most part of that cheap and gloomy variety known
as mission oak, yet the designs were good, as though its purchasers had
striven toward some ideal which they had not the means to realize.
The rug on the floor, an imitation oriental, was still of excellent
coloring; the pictures showed taste in their selection--such taste,
indeed, as is possible under the limitations imposed by a slender
purse--among them might have been discovered a charming little
water-color and some reproductions of etchings by Whistler.
The curtains were imitation lace, the ornaments on the mantel imitation
bronze, the cushions in the Morris chair imitation Spanish leather. The
keynote of the whole room was imitation--everything in it, almost, was
the result of refinement and excellent taste on the one hand, hampered
by lack of money on the other. The effect was somewhat that given by
twenty dollar sets of ermine furs, or ropes of pearls at bargain-counter
prices. Edith, caring more about such matters than her husband, realized
this note of imitation keenly, but found it more satisfactory to have
even the shadow of what she really desired than to drop back to another
level of existence, and content herself with ingrain carpets, shiny
yellow furniture, and the sort of pictures made of mother of pearl,
which are given away with tea-store coupons. In her present environment,
she chafed--in the other, she would have been suffocated.
On this particular night in March, they were at home as usual. Donald
had composed himself at his desk, hunched over, his head resting upon
his left hand, staring at the papers before him. The only sound in the
room was the ticking of the trading-stamp clock on the mantel, and the
clanking of the steam pipes. For a long time Donald stared, and wrote
nothing. Suddenly he turned to his wife.
"For Heaven's sake, Edith," he exclaimed impatiently, "what's the matter
with those pipes?"
Edith glanced at him, but did not move. She came back slowly from her
land of dreams.
"The janitor has probably just turned on the steam. It's been off for
the past week on account of the warm weather."
Donald rose, and went nervously over to the radiator under the window.
"I can't write with this infernal noise going on," he grumbled, as he
turned to his desk. "Will it be too cold for you?"
"Oh, no. I'm used to it." Mrs. Rogers' tone was patient, resigned.
Donald resumed his writing, and sat for a few moments in silence, but
the tone of his wife's remark had not been lost upon him. He turned
toward her presently, with an anxious look, searching her face keenly.
"What's the matter, Edith?" he inquired kindly. "Don't you feel well?"
"Not particularly." Mrs. Rogers' voice was discouraging.
"Anything wrong?"
"No."
"You haven't seemed yourself for the past week. You don't seem to take
any interest in things."
"What things?" inquired Edith, with sudden asperity. She took a
sufficient interest in the things that seemed worth while to her, she
well enough knew, but they were not those which made up her present
surroundings.
Donald seemed hurt at her tone. He regarded her with an injured
expression.
"Why," he ventured hesitatingly, "all the things that make up our
life--our home."
The suggestion was not happy. It was, indeed, those very things that
Edith had been mentally reviewing in her inner consciousness throughout
the evening, and her conclusions had not been in their favor.
"The steam pipes, I suppose," she returned scornfully, "and the price of
eggs, and whether we are going to be able to pay our bills next month or
not."
"Don't be so unkind, Edith," said her husband, with an expression of
pain. Her remark had hurt him, and, although she realized it, she
somehow refused to admit to herself that she regretted it.
"It's true, isn't it?" she asked.
"Surely you realize that I am doing the best I can," he replied slowly.
"I can't do any more."
"Well, suppose I do. Does that make it any easier?"
She felt angry and annoyed, first with Donald because he seemed unable
to realize how barren her life with him was, and then with herself
because she had allowed herself to become involved in this useless
discussion. Donald, she knew, would always be the same. It was hopeless
to expect him to change, or to try, by argument, to make him do so.
"Are you angry because I couldn't afford to get you that new hat for
Easter?" he asked, as he began to refill his pipe.
This falling back upon man's universal belief that a woman's happiness
or unhappiness depends solely upon her clothes annoyed her still
further.
"Don't talk like a fool, Donald," she exclaimed, throwing down her
sewing angrily. "I'm tired, that's all. For eight years I've darned
stockings, collected trading stamps, done my own housework, and tried to
imagine that the hats I've trimmed myself looked as though they came
straight from Paris. When a woman has done that for eight years, she has
a right to be tired."
"But, Edith, it will not always be that way. You know how I am working
for the future."
Mrs. Rogers picked up her sewing and resumed her air of patient
resignation. "The future is a long way off. When it comes, if it ever
does, I shall probably be so old that I won't care what sort of hats I
wear."
"Haven't I had to endure it all, as well as you? Don't you suppose it
hurts me not to be able to give you everything you wish?"
"It's different with a man." She smiled a trifle bitterly, as she spoke.
"You have your business, your friends, your ambitions. In ten years I
shall be an old woman; you will be just ready to enjoy yourself."
Donald rose from the desk and began to walk about the room nervously.
He was too sincerely fond of Edith to want to quarrel with her, and
he knew, as well as she did, the truth of what she had just said.
After all, he thought, perhaps the woman does have the worst of the
matrimonial bargain, in circumstances, at least, such as those with
which he and Edith were struggling.
"There's nothing I would care about enjoying, Edith, without you. Surely
you know that."
"I know. It's very good of you to feel that way. It's lack of money, I
suppose, after all, that makes everything so hard."
"I can't do the impossible, Edith. You know what my income is, and what
I have been scraping and saving for all these years."
"To put every cent you had in the world into that glass factory in West
Virginia. I know--very well." It was clear, from the tone of Mrs.
Rogers' voice, that she felt little sympathy for this part of her
husband's plans, at any rate.
"Yes, I have. I know you have opposed it, but I am convinced that it is
a great proposition. In five years, or possibly less, I expect to get
big profits from it. Isn't it worth waiting and saving for?"
"I don't know whether it is or not." Mrs. Rogers' tone was not
encouraging. "Five years is a long time. I'm not sure but I'd rather
have a little bit more human pleasure and enjoyment as I go along. For
years--ever since Bobbie was born--I've had to spend the summer here in
this wretched, hot place. It hasn't done me any good. It hasn't done him
any good. I'd rather you would put a little less into the glass business
and a little more into your wife's and child's health and happiness."
Mr. Rogers stopped in his pacing up and down the room. It was clear that
his wife's remarks had touched a sensitive spot.
"Edith," he exclaimed, "you cannot mean what you say. Everything I have
done has been for you and for him. Bobbie seems to me to be well enough.
Think of the hundreds of thousands of children that have to spend the
summer in the city. God knows I'd give my life for him, or for you, too,
if you needed it; it's what I am doing. I can't do any more."
"I know it," said Edith, with a sigh. "I suppose I'm very unreasonable,
but somehow my life has seemed so empty, all these years."
"Haven't you everything you need?"
"Everything I need? Do you think three meals a day and a place to sleep
is everything a woman needs?"
"Many women have less."
"And many have more. A woman's needs depend upon her desires, her
temperament. What may be a necessity to one, another would have no use
for. Some women, down in Tenth Avenue, might think this Paradise." She
looked about the room scornfully. "And a lot more, up in Fifth Avenue,
would think it--well--the other place. That's the difference."
Donald looked at her curiously, and noted her flushed face, her heaving
breast. These things evidently were very near her heart. "What are your
needs, Edith?" he asked kindly.
"How can you ask me such a question?" Edith failed to appreciate his
kind intention. She was fairly launched upon her argument, and the
tumult of discontent which had been gathering in her breast burst forth
with bitter intensity. "Did you ever suppose for a moment that I was a
woman who could be satisfied with the merest commonplaces of existence?
Don't you see that I need life--real, broadening, joyous, human life,
with all its hopes, its fears, its longings, its successes, its
failures? Do you think I find those things here?" She swept the room
with an all-embracing gesture, and stood confronting him with flushed
cheeks, her eyes flashing rebelliously.
Her evidence of feeling both startled and hurt him. He had supposed that
all her years of patient waiting had covered a mind serenely satisfied
with the present through a belief in the future. He looked at her for a
few moments in surprise. "I am very sorry, Edith," he began haltingly.
"I, too, feel the need of those things, but I do not allow the lack of
them to spoil my life. I have borne my trials and done my duty as best
I could, and I expect you to do the same. If we have not money, and all
the pleasures and luxuries it brings, we at least have health and our
daily bread, and above all, our little boy. We ought to be very
thankful."
"Do you suppose for a moment that I do not appreciate Bobbie? He is the
only thing that keeps me here."
The troubled look on Donald's face grew deeper as he answered her, and
with it came an expression of alarm. He had never doubted Edith's love
for him, and her words were a great shock.
"The only thing that keeps you here!" he cried. "Is your love for me of
no importance to you?"
Edith surveyed the plain, poorly furnished little room with
ill-concealed dislike. "This sort of thing," she said bitterly, "doesn't
offer much for love to feed upon."
"Edith! You surely do not realize what you are saying. To hear you talk,
anyone might suppose we were on the point of going to the poorhouse."
"It couldn't be worse. I'm tired of it, and I can't help saying so. I
suppose you will think me very ungrateful, but I can't help it. We never
have any pleasures, any happiness, any real enjoyment. It's nothing but
mere existence."
"I don't agree with you. I am not doing so badly. We are both of us
young. In a few years I hope to be comparatively well off, and then
things will be very different. I am working and striving for you every
hour of the day. Do you think I would do it, if I did not feel that you
love me--that you believed in me?"
He went over to her, and took her hand in his. "What has upset you so,
to-night, dear? Is there anything you particularly want--anything that I
could do for you? Tell me--if there is, you know I will do everything in
my power to gratify you."
"No--nothing that you could do." She seemed unconscious of the pain she
was giving him.
"I thought perhaps it was about this summer. You told me that your
mother and sister were anxious to take a cottage at the seashore, and
that they wanted you to go with them--is that it?"
"No," she replied. "It isn't important. You said you couldn't afford
it."
Donald left her abruptly and, walking over to the desk, began to fumble
nervously with the papers on it. It hurt him to the depths of his
nature to be obliged to refuse Edith this request; indeed, what she had
asked he had already himself thought of, and been forced to conclude
that, much as he wanted to give her and Bobbie this pleasure, he could
not do it. He turned to her with a nervous twitching of the mouth, which
had of late become characteristic.
"Every year, Edith," he said, "we have this discussion. Your mother and
sister have no responsibilities. They can give up their rooms at the
boarding house and go to the country without adding a dollar to their
expenses. You cannot do that. It will cost a hundred dollars a month, at
least, for your expenses and Bobbie's, to say nothing of the extra
expense of my taking my meals at restaurants. I can't afford it this
year, Edith. I wish I could, but I can't."
"Why can't you?" Her tone was aggrieved--almost defiant. "Is business so
bad? I thought things had been so much better this month."
"It's the glass plant, Edith. We are having a lot of trouble. It takes
every cent I can scrape together to meet expenses. We are a new concern.
Our goods are not known. Competition is severe.
"We are trying to build up a new business. I can't weaken on it now.
Surely you can stand one more summer in the city--if I can. Perhaps,
next year--"
"Next year!" she cried. "It's always next year. It's been that way now
for eight years, and about the only outing I've had has been a trip to
Coney Island on the boat. I'm sick of it. It's drudgery. A hired girl
has more freedom that I have--and more money, too, for that matter."
"Edith!"
"Oh, I know what you are going to say. I made my bed, and I ought to be
willing to lie in it. I knew you were a poor man when I married you.
Well, suppose I did. I didn't mind poverty then--the enthusiasm of youth
made it all seem a pleasure, like camping out, and living on canned
beans and corn bread. It's fine, for a time, but after a while, when the
novelty has worn off, you get sort of tired of it. There comes a time in
every married woman's life when she sits down and looks at things from
both sides, and wonders whether, after all, it's really worth while."
"I don't see why you should complain, if I don't," said Donald wearily.
"I'm sorry we haven't more money, on your account and on my own, as
well. There are many things I should like to do."
"Oh, you're a man." Edith flung herself across the room and began
turning over the sheets of music upon the piano. "If you have a couple
of new suits of clothes a year and can smoke the kind of cigars you
like, you don't bother your head if some other man has a dozen suits and
keeps a valet. It's different with a woman. Home-made dresses, dollar
corsets, riding in surface cars, seem mighty hard, when you see other
women in their autos, their Russian sables, their Paris gowns--women who
spend more money on their dogs every month than I have to spend on
Bobbie. It's a thousand times harder for a woman to be poor than it is
for a man. Most men don't know it, but that doesn't alter the fact--it's
true, just the same."
She suddenly sat down at the piano, and after striking a few discords,
began to play the "Jewel Song" from "Faust" in a rapid tempo.
Donald followed her with his eyes. "It seems to me," he said gravely,
"that when a man wants to do so much for his wife and realizes that he
can't it's the hardest of all--much harder than doing without things
yourself."
Edith did not speak for several moments.
"I don't wonder Marguerite was tempted by the jewels, and all that," she
remarked, presently, then concluded her playing with a series of
crashing chords, and rose from her seat with a harsh laugh.
"Edith, I wish you wouldn't say such things."
"Why shouldn't I? Perhaps they are true. How do you know that I am not
being tempted, too? I suppose, if the devil were to come along and offer
me a million or two, I'd run away with him without stopping to pack my
trunk." She resumed her chair, and picked up her sewing again. "Go on
with your writing, Donald. I'm sorry this discussion came up. It hasn't
done a bit of good. I suppose you think me heartless and unkind. I can't
help it. I'm not the first woman who has found married life a harder
road than she had anticipated."
She bent over her sewing with a sense of anger and annoyance with
herself for having entered into such a purposeless discussion. Donald
sat down at his desk and again took up his work. Only the ticking of the
clock and the scratching of his pen broke the heavy silence. Life had
once more resumed its monotonous procession.
After a long time, Edith put away her sewing, and retired to her
bedroom. What sort of a life was this, she thought to herself, where one
was forced to go to bed at ten o'clock because there was nothing further
to keep one awake? She got into bed and read a magazine for an hour.
Then she fell asleep. Donald was still writing.