The trouble with Gil was that he was so very suspicious by nature and
not very clever. He was really a clerk, with a clerk’s mind and a
clerk’s point of view. He would never rise to bigger things, because
he couldn’t, and yet she could not utterly dislike him either. He
was always so very much in love with her, so generous—to her, at
least—and he did the best he could to support her and Tickles which
was something, of course. A lot of the trouble was that he was too
affectionate and too clinging. He was always hanging around whenever he
was not working. And with never a thought of going any place without
her except to his lodge or on a business errand that he couldn’t
possibly escape. And if he did go he was always in such haste to get
back! Before she had ever thought of marrying him, when he was shipping
clerk at the Tri-State and she was Mr. Baggott’s stenographer, she had
seen that he was not very remarkable as a man. He hadn’t the air or the
force of Mr. Baggott, for whom she worked then and whose assistant Gil
later became. Indeed, Mr. Baggott had once said: “Gilbert is all right,
energetic and faithful enough, but he lacks a large grasp of things.”
And yet in spite of all that she had married him.
Why?
Well, it was hard to say. He was not bad-looking, rather handsome, in
fact, and that had meant a lot to her then. He had fine, large black
eyes and a pale forehead and pink cheeks, and such nice clean hands.
And he always dressed so well for a young man in his position. He was
so faithful and yearning, a very dog at her heels. But she shouldn’t
have married him, just the same. It was all a mistake. He was not the
man for her. She knew that now. And, really, she had known it then,
only she had not allowed her common sense to act. She was always too
sentimental then—not practical enough as she was now. It was only after
she was married and surrounded by the various problems that marriage
includes that she had begun to wake up. But then it was too late.
Yes, she had married, and by the end of the first year and a half,
during which the original glamour had had time to subside, she had
Tickles, or Gilbert, Jr., to look after. And with him had come a new
mood such as she had never dreamed of in connection with herself.
Just as her interest in Gil had begun to wane a little her interest
in Tickles had sprung into flame. And for all of three years now it
had grown stronger rather than weaker. She fairly adored her boy and
wouldn’t think of doing anything to harm him. And yet she grew so weary
at times of the humdrum life they were compelled to live. Gil only made
forty-five dollars a week, even now. And on that they had to clothe
and feed and house the three of them. It was no easy matter. She would
rather go out and work. But it was not so easy with a three-year-old
baby. And besides Gil would never hear of such a thing. He was just one
of those young husbands who thought the wife’s place was in the home,
even when he couldn’t provide a very good home for her to live in.
Still, during these last few years she had had a chance to read and
think, two things which up to that time she had never seemed to have
time for. Before that it had always been beaux and other girls. But
most of the girls were married now and so there was an end to them. But
reading and thinking had gradually taken up all of her spare time, and
that had brought about such a change in her. She really wasn’t the same
girl now that Gil had married at all. She was wiser. And she knew so
much more about life now than he did. And she thought so much more,
and so differently. He was still at about the place mentally that he
had been when she married him, interested in making a better place for
himself in the Tri-State office and in playing golf or tennis out at
the country club whenever he could afford the time to go out there.
And he expected her to curry favor with Dr. and Mrs. Realk, and Mr.
and Mrs. Stofft, because they had a car and because Mr. Stofft and Gil
liked to play cards together. But beyond that he thought of nothing,
not a thing.
But during all of this time she had more and more realized that Gil
would never make anything much of himself. Alice had cautioned her
against him before ever they had married. He was not a business man
in any true sense. He couldn’t think of a single thing at which he
could make any money except in the paper business, and that required
more capital than ever he would have. Everybody else they knew was
prospering. And perhaps it was that realization that had thrown her
back upon books and pictures and that sort of thing. People who did
things in those days were so much more interesting than people who just
made money, anyhow.
Yet she would never have entered upon that dangerous affair with Mr.
Barclay if it hadn’t been for the awful mental doldrums she found
herself in about the time Tickles was two years old and Gil was so
worried as to whether he would be able to keep his place at the
Tri-State any longer. He had put all the money they had been able to
save into that building and loan scheme, and when that had failed they
were certainly up against it for a time. There was just nothing to
do with, and there was no prospect of relief. To this day she had no
clothes to speak of. And there wasn’t much promise of getting them now.
And she wasn’t getting any younger. Still, there was Tickles, and she
was brushing up on her shorthand again. If the worst came—
But she wouldn’t have entered upon that adventure that had come so
near to ending disastrously for herself and Tickles—for certainly if
Gil had ever found out he could have taken Tickles away from her—if it
hadn’t been for that book _Heyday_ which Mr. Barclay wrote and which
she came across just when she was feeling so out of sorts with life and
Gil and everything. That had pictured her own life so keenly and truly;
indeed, it seemed to set her own life before her just as it was and as
though some one were telling her about herself. It was the story of a
girl somewhat like herself who had dreamed her way through a rather
pinched girlhood, having to work for a living from the age of fourteen.
And then just as she was able to make her own way had made a foolish
marriage with a man of no import in any way—a clerk, just like Gil.
And he had led her through more years of meagre living, until at last,
very tired of it all, she had been about to yield herself to another
man who didn’t care very much about her but who had money and could do
the things for her that her husband couldn’t. Then of a sudden in this
story her husband chose to disappear and leave her to make her way as
best she might. The one difference between that story and her own life
was that there was no little Tickles to look after. And Gil would never
disappear, of course. But the heroine of the story had returned to her
work without compromising herself. And in the course of time had met an
architect who had the good sense or the romance to fall in love with
and marry her. And so the story, which was so much like hers, except
for Tickles and the architect, had ended happily.