"... in tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be. Passions spin the plot."
"Say, Lydia," said Madeleine with her bluff good humor, coming into the
house a few days after the French lecture, "say, I'm awfully sorry I
told Paul! I never supposed he'd go and get mad. It was just my fool
notion of being funny."
Lydia was dusting the balustrade, her back to her visitor. She tingled
all through at this speech, and for an instant went on with her work,
trying to decide if she should betray the fact that she knew nothing of
the incident to which Madeleine's remark seemed to refer, or if she
should, as she had done so many times already, conceal under a silence
her ignorance of what her husband told other people. She never learned
of matters pertaining to Paul's profession except from chance remarks of
his business associates. He had not even told her, until questioned,
about his great inspiration for rearranging the territory covered in
that region by his company; a plan that must have engrossed his thoughts
and fired his enthusiasm during months of apparently common life with
his wife. And Paul had been genuinely surprised, and a little put out at
her desire to know of it.
She decided that she dared not in this instance keep silent. She was too
entirely in the dark as to what Madeleine had done. "I don't know what
you're talking about, Madeleine," she said, turning around, dust-cloth
in hand, trying to speak casually.
Her sister-in-law stared. "Didn't Paul come home and give it to you? He
looked as though he were going to."
Lydia's heart sank in a vague premonition of evil. "Paul hasn't said
anything to me. Why in the world should he? Is it about 'Stashie? She's
been back several days now, but I thought he hadn't noticed her much."
"Well, he _hasn't_ said anything, that's a fact!" exclaimed Madeleine,
with the frank implication in her voice that she had not before believed
Lydia's statement. "My, no! It's not about 'Stashie. It's about the
French lecturer."
Lydia's astonishment at this unexpected answer quite took away her
breath. "_About the_--" she began.
"Why, look-y here, it was this way," explained Madeleine rapidly. "I
told you I was only joking. I thought it would be fun to tease Paul
about the mash you made on old What's-his-name--about your sitting off
on a sofa with him, and being so wrapped up you didn't even notice when
the whole gang of us came to look at you--and maybe I stretched it some
about how you looked leaning forward and gazing into his eyes--" She
broke off with a laugh, cheerfully unable to continue a serious attitude
toward life. "Oh, never you mind! It does a married man good to make him
jealous once in a while. Keeps 'em from getting too stodgy and
husbandy."
"Jealous!" cried Lydia. "Paul jealous! Of me! Never!" Her certainty on
the point was instant and fixed.
"Well, you'd ha' thought he was, if you'd seen him. I was jollying him
along--we were in the trolley, going to Endbury. I had to take that
early car so's to keep a date with Briggs, and, oh, Lydia! that brown
suit he's making for me is a _dream_, simply a dream! He's put a little
braid, just the least little bit, along--"
"What did Paul say?"
"Paul? Oh, yes--How'd I get switched off onto Briggs? Why, Paul didn't
say _anything_; that was what made me see he wasn't taking it right. He
just sat still and listened and listened till it made me feel foolish. I
thought he'd jolly me back, you know. He's usually a great hand for
that. And then when I looked at him I saw he looked as black as a
thundercloud--that nasty look he has when he's real mad. When we were
children and he'd look that way, I'd grab up any old thing and hit him
quick, so's to get it in before he hit me. Well, I was awfully sorry,
and I said, 'Why, hold on a minute, Paul, let me tell you--' but he said
he guessed I'd told him about enough, and before I could open my mouth
he dropped off the car. We'd got in as far as Hayes Avenue. I wanted to
explain, you know, that the Frenchman was old enough to be our
_grandfather_!"
"When did this happen?"
"Oh, I don't know; three or four days ago--why, Thursday, it must have
been, for after I got through with Briggs I went on to that--"
"And this is Monday," said Lydia; "four days."
At the sight of her sister-in-law's troubled eyes, Madeleine was again
overcome with facile remorse. She clapped her on the shoulder
hearteningly. "I'm awfully sorry, Lyd, but don't you go being afraid of
Paul. You're too gentle with him, anyhow. A married woman can't afford
to be. You have to keep the men in their places, and you can't do that
if you don't knock 'em the side of the head once in so often. It's good
for 'em. Honest! And about this, don't you worry your head a minute.
Like as not Paul's forgot everything about it. He'd forget anything, you
know he would, if an interesting job came up in business. And if he ever
does say anything, you just laugh and tell him about old Thingamajig's
white hair and pop eyes, and he'll laugh at the joke on himself."
Lydia drew back with a gesture of extreme repugnance. "Don't talk so--as
though Paul could be so--so vulgar."
Madeleine laughed. "I guess you won't find a man in _this_ world that
isn't 'vulgar' that way."
"Why, I've been _married_ to Paul for years--he wouldn't think I--no
matter what you told him, he couldn't conceive of my--"
Mrs. Lowder, as usual, found her brother's wife very diverting. "Of your
doing a little hand-holding on the side? Oh, go on! Flirting's no
crime! And you did--honest to goodness, you did, turn that old fellow's
head. You ought to have seen the way he looked after you."
Lydia cut her off with a sharp "Oh, _don't_!" She was now sitting, still
absently grasping the dust-cloth.
Madeleine stood for a moment looking at her in a meditative silence
rather unusual for her. "Lydia, you don't look a bit well," she said
kindly. "Are you still bothered with that nausea?" She sat down by her
sister-in-law and put her arms around her with an impulse of
affectionate pity that almost undid Lydia, always so helplessly
responsive to tenderness. "What's the matter, Lyd?" Madeleine went on.
"Something's not going just right. Are you scared about this second
confinement? Is Paul being horrid about something? You just take my
advice, and if you want anything out of him, you fight for it. Nobody
gets anything in this world if they don't put up a fight for it."
Lydia began to say that there were some things which lost their value if
obtained by fighting, but suddenly she stopped her faltering words, drew
a long breath, and laid her head on the other's shoulder. More than
wifely loyalty kept her silent. All her lifelong experience of Madeleine
crystallized into a certainty of her limitations, and with this
certainty came the realization that Madeleine stood for all the circle
of people about her. Lydia had learned one lesson of life. She knew, she
now knew intensely, that there was no cry by which she could reach the
spiritual ear of the warm human beings so close to her in the body. She
knew there was no language in which she could make intelligible her
travail of soul. In the moment the two women sat thus, she renounced,
once for all, any hope of outside aid in her perplexities. They lay
between herself and Paul. She could hope to find expression and relief
for them only through that unique privilege of marriage, utter intimacy.
She kissed her husband's sister gently, comforted somewhat by the mere
fact of her presence. "You're good to bother about me, Maddely," she
said, using a pet name of their common childhood. "I guess I'm not
feeling very well these days. But that's to be expected."
"Well, I tell you what, I wouldn't be so patient about it as _you_ are!"
cried the other wife. "It's simply horrid to have all this a second
time, and Ariadne so little yet. It's _mean_ of Paul."
She continued voicing an indignant sympathy with her usual energy. Lydia
looked at her with a vague smile. At the first words of the childless
woman, she had been filled with the mother-hunger which gave savor to
her life during those days. As Madeleine went on, she sat unheeding,
lost in a fond impatience to feel the tiny body on her knees, the downy
head against her cheek. Her arms ached with emptiness. For an instant,
so vivid was her sense of it, the child seemed to be there, in her arms.
She felt the eager tug of the soft lips at her breast. She looked
down--"Well, anyhow, you poor, dear thing! I hope you will bottle-feed
this one! It would be just a little _too_ much if they made you nurse
it!"
Lydia did not even attempt a protest. Her submissive, entire acceptance
of spiritual isolation seemed an answer to many of the conflicting
impulses which had hitherto distracted her. She wished that she could
reassure Madeleine by telling her that she would never again make
another "odd" speech to her. She renounced all common life except the
childlike, harmless, animal-like one of mutual material wants, and this
renunciation brought her already a peace which, though barren, was
infinitely calming after her former struggling uncertainties. "How did
those waists come out that you sent to the cleaner's, Madeleine?" she
asked, in a bright, natural tone of interest. "I hope the blue one
_didn't_ fade."
Madeleine reported to her husband that Lydia had seemed in one of her
queer notional moods at first, but cheered up afterward and talked more
"like folks," and seemed more like herself than she had since her father
died. They had a real good visit together she said, and she began to
think she could get some good satisfaction out of having Lydia for a
neighbor, after all.
But after Lydia was alone, there sprang upon her the terror of living on
such terms with Paul. No, no! Never that! It would be dying by inches!
Beaten back to this last inner stronghold of the dismantled castle of
her ideals of life, she prepared to defend it with the energy of
desperation.
She did not believe Madeleine's story, or, at least, not her
interpretation of Paul's attitude, but she felt a dreary chill at his
silence toward her. It seemed to her that their marriage ought to have
brought her husband an irresistible impulse to have in all their
relations with each other a perfect openness. She resolved that she
would begin to help him to that impulse that very day; now, at once.
When Paul came in, he seemed abstracted, and went directly upstairs to
pack a satchel, stating with his usual absence of explanatory comment
that he was called to Evanston on business. He ate his dinner rather
silently, glancing furtively at the paper. Only at the
breakfast-table--such was their convention--did he allow himself to
become absorbed in the news.
Ariadne prattled to her mother of her adventures in the kitchen, where
Patsy O'Hern, 'Stashie's cousin Patsy, was visiting her, and he made
Ariadne a "horse out of a potato and toothpicks for legs, and a little
wagon out of a matchbox, and a paper doll to sit and drive, and Patsy
was perfectly loverly, anyhow, and he was making such a lot of money
every day, and, oh, he made the wheels out of potato, too, as round as
could be he cut it, and he gave every cent of it to his grandmother and
she loved him as much as she did 'Stashie, and wasn't it good to have
'Stashie back, and--"
Paul frowned silently over his pie.
"Come, dear; it's seven o'clock and bedtime," said Lydia, leading the
little girl away.
When she came back she noticed by the clock that she had been gone
almost half an hour. She was surprised to see Paul still in the
dining-room, as though he had not stirred since she left him. He was
sitting in an attitude of moody idleness, singular with him, his elbows
on the table, his chin in his hands. He looked desperately, tragically
tired.
No inward monitor gave any warning to Lydia of what the next few moments
were to be in her life. She crossed the room quickly to her husband,
feeling a great longing to be close to him.
As she did so, a rattling clatter of tin was heard from the kitchen,
followed by a shout of roaring laughter. Something in Paul's tense face
snapped. He started up, overturning his chair. "Oh, _damn_ that idiot!"
he cried.
The door opened behind them. 'Stashie stood there, her red hair hidden
in a mass of soft dough that was beginning to ooze down over her
perspiring, laughing face. "I just wanted to show you what a comycal
thing happened, Mis' Hollister," she began, in her familiar way.
"'Twould make a pig laugh, now! I'd begun my bread dough, and put it on
a shelf, an'--"
"Oh, get out of here!" Paul yelled at her furiously. "And less noise out
of you in the kitchen!"
He slammed the door shut on her retreat, and turned to Lydia with a face
she did not recognize. The room grew black before her eyes.
"I suppose you still prefer that dirty Irish slut to my wishes," he
said.
His words, his accent, the quality of his voice, were the zigzag of
lightning to his wife. The storm burst over her head like thunder.
She was amazed to feel a great wave of anger surge up in her, responsive
to his own. She cried, in outraged resentment at his injustice: "You
know very well--" and stopped, horrified at the passion which rose
clamoring to her lips.
"I know very well that my home is the last place where my wishes are
consulted," said Paul, catching her up.
"I will dismiss 'Stashie to-morrow," returned Lydia with a bitter,
proud brevity.
"You're rather slow to take a hint. How long has she been with us? As
for your saying that you can't get anyone else, and can't keep house
decently as other decent people do, there isn't a word of truth in it!
You can do whatever you care enough about to try to do. You didn't make
an incompetent mess of taking care of the baby as you did out of that
disgusting dinner party!"
It was the first time he had ever spoken outright to her of that
experience. Lydia was transfixed to hear the poison of the memory as
fresh in his voice as though it had happened yesterday.
"I'm simply not worth putting yourself out for," went on Paul, turning
away and picking up his overcoat. "I'm only a common, ignorant,
materialistic beast of an American husband!" He added in an insulting
tone: "I suppose you'd like two husbands; one to earn your living for
you, and one to talk to about your soul and to exchange near-culture
with!"
He had not looked at Lydia as he poured out this sudden flood of
acrimony, but at her quick, fierce reply, he faced her.
"I'd like _one_ husband," she cried white with indignation.
"And I'd like a wife!" Paul flashed back at her hotly. "A wife that'd be
a help and not a hindrance to everything I want to do--a wife that'd be
loyal to me behind my back, and not listen to sneaking foreigners
telling her that she's a misunderstood martyr--_martyr_!" His sense of
injury exalted him. "Yes; all you American wives are martyrs, all right,
I must say. While your husbands are working like dogs to make you money,
you're sitting around with nothing to do but drink tea and listen to a
foreigner who tells you--in summer time, while you're enjoying the cool
breeze out here on a--maybe you think a dynamo-room's a funny place to
be, with the thermometer standing at--what am I _doing_ when I'm away
from you? Enjoying myself, no doubt. Maybe you think it's enjoyment to
travel all night on a--maybe you think it's nice to make yourself
conspicuous with another man that's been abusing your--"
Lydia could hear no more for a loud roaring in her ears. She knew then
the blackest moment of her life--a sickening scorn for the man before
her. Madeleine had been right, then. They were of the same blood. His
sister knew him better than--she, his wife, his wedded wife, was not to
be spared the pollution of having her husband--
"I didn't take any stock in Madeleine's nasty insinuations about your
flirting with him, of course, but it showed me what you've been thinking
about me all this time I've been working like a--"
Lydia drew the first conscious breath since the beginning of this
nightmare. The earth was still under her feet, struck down to it though
she was. The roaring in her ears stopped. She heard Paul say:
"Maybe you think I'm made of iron! I tell you I'm right on my nerves
every minute! Dr. Melton threatens me with a breakdown every time I see
him!" There was a sort of angry pride in this statement. "I can't sleep!
I'm doing ten men's work! And what do I get from you? Any rest? Any
quiet? Why, these first years, when you might have made things easier
for me by taking all other cares off my mind and leaving me free for
business--they've actually been harder because of you!"
He thrust his arms into his overcoat and caught up his satchel. "I
haven't wanted anything so hard to give! Good Lord! All I asked for was
a well-kept house where I could invite my friends without being ashamed
of it, and to live like other decent people!" He moved to the door, and
put one hand, one strong, thin hand, on the knob. With the unearthly
clearness of one in a terrible accident, Lydia noticed every detail of
his appearance. He was flushed, a purple, congested color, singularly
unlike his usual indoor pallor; hurried pulses throbbed visibly, almost
audibly, at his temples; one eyelid twitched rapidly and steadily, like
a clock ticking. With a gesture as automatic as drawing breath, he
jerked out his watch and looked at it, apparently to make sure of
catching his trolley, although his valedictory was poured out with such
a passionate unpremeditation that the action must have been involuntary
and unconscious. "But I don't even ask that now--since it doesn't suit
you to bother to give it! All I ask now ought to be easy enough for any
woman to do--not to _bother_ me! Leave me alone! Keep your everlasting
stewing and fussing and hysterical putting-on to yourself! I don't
bother you with my affairs--I haven't, and I never will--why, for God's
sake, can't you-- Some men marry women who help them, and pull with them
loyally, instead of pulling the other way all the time! Such a woman
would have made me a thousand times more successful than I--"
Lydia broke in with a loud voice of anguished questioning: "Do they make
them better men?" she asked piercingly.
Her husband looked at her over his shoulder. "Oh, you and your
goody-goody cant!" he said, and going out without further speech, closed
the door behind him.
The clock struck the half-hour. Their conversation had lasted less than
five minutes.