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Together, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part Three - Chapter 33 |
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_ PART THREE CHAPTER XXXIII These days Larry Pole began to think well of himself once more. He had made his mistakes,--what man hasn't?--but he had wiped out the score, and he was fulfilling the office of under-secretary to the great Malachite Company admirably. He was conscious that the men in the office felt that his personality, his bearing, and associations gave distinction to the place. And he still secretly looked for some turn in the game which would put him where he desired to be. In New York the game is always on, the tables always set: from the newsboy to the magnate the gambler's hope is open to every man. Only one thing disturbed his self-complacency,--Margaret treated him indifferently, coldly. He even suspected that though by some accident she had borne him three children he had never won her love, that she had never been really his. Since their return from Europe and establishing themselves in the country, she had withdrawn more and more from him--where? Into herself. She had her own room and dressing-room, beyond the children's quarters, in the rear of the rambling house, and her life seemed to go on in those rooms more and more. It was almost, Larry observed discontentedly, as if there were not a husband in the situation. Well, he reflected philosophically, women were like that,--American women; they thought they owned themselves even after they had married. If a wife took that attitude, she must not complain if the husband went his way, too. Larry in these injured moods felt vague possibilities of wickedness within him,--justified errancies.... One day he was to see deep into that privacy, to learn all--all he was capable of understanding--about his wife. Margaret had been to the city,--a rare event,--had lunched with Isabella, and gone to see a new actress in a clever little German play. She and Isabelle had talked it over,--very animatedly. Then she had brought back with her some new books and foreign reviews. After dinner she was lying on the great lounge before the fire, curled up in a soft dress of pale lilac, seriously absorbing an article on a Russian playwright. Hers was a little face,--pale, thin, with sunken eyes. The brow was too high, and latterly Margaret paid no attention to arranging her hair becomingly. It was not a face that could be called pretty; it would not be attractive to most men, her husband thought as he watched her. But it had drawn some men strongly, fired them; and Larry still longed for its smiles,--desired her. He had felt talkative that evening, had chattered all through dinner, and she had listened tolerantly, as she might to her younger boy when he had a great deal to say about nothing. But now she had taken refuge in this review, and Larry had dropped from sight. When he had finished his cigarette, he sat down on the edge of the lounge, taking her idle hand in his. She let him caress it, still reading on. After a time, as he continued to press the hand, his wife said without raising her eyes:-- "What do you want?" "'What do you want?'" Larry mimicked! "Lord! you American women are as hard as stone." "Are the others different?" Margaret asked, raising her eyes. "They say they are--how should I know?" "I thought you might know from experience," she observed equably. "I have never loved any woman but you, Margaret!" he said tenderly. "You know that!" Margaret made no response. The statement seemed to demand something of her which she could not give. He took her hand again, caressed it, and finally kissed her. She looked at him steadily, coldly. "Please--sit over there!" As her husband continued to caress her, she sat upright. "I want to say something to you, Larry." "What is it?" "There can't be any more of _that_--you understand?--between us." "What do you mean?" "I mean--_that_, what you call love, passion, is over between us." "Why? ... what have I done?" Margaret waved her hand impatiently:-- "It makes no difference,--I don't want it--I can't--that is all." "You refuse to be my wife?" "Yes,--that way." "You take back your marriage vow?" (Larry was a high churchman, which fact had condoned much in the Bishop's eyes.) "I take back--myself!" Margaret's eyes shone, but her voice was calm. "If you loved any other man--but you are as cold as ice!" "Am I?" "Yes! ... I have been faithful to you always," he observed by way of defence and accusation. Margaret rose from the couch, and looked down at her husband, almost compassionately. But when she spoke, her low voice shook with scorn:-- "That is your affair,--I have never wanted to know.... You seem to pride yourself on that. Good God! if you were more of a man,--if you were man enough to want anything, even sin,--I might love you!" It was like a bolt of white fire from the clear heavens. Her husband gasped, scarcely comprehending the words. "I don't believe you know what you are saying. Something has upset you.... Would you like me to love another woman? That's a pretty idea for a wife to advance!" "I want you to--oh, what's the use of talking about it, Larry? You know what I mean--what I think, what I have felt--for a long time, even before little Elsa came. How can you want love with a woman who feels towards you as I do?" "It is natural enough for a man who cares for his wife--" "Too natural," Margaret laughed bitterly. "No, Larry; that's all over! You can do as you like,--I shan't ask questions. And we shall get on very well, like this." "This comes of the rotten books you read!" he fumed. "I do my own thinking." "Suppose I don't want the freedom you hand out so readily?" he asked with an appealing note. "Suppose I still love you, my wife? have always loved you! You married me.... I've been unfortunate--" "It isn't that, you know! It isn't the money--the fact that you would have beggared your mother--not quite that. It's everything--_you!_ Why go into it? I don't blame you, Larry. But I know you now, and I don't love you--that is all." "You knew me when you married me. Why did you marry me?" "Why--why did I marry you?" Margaret's voice had the habit of growing lower and stiller as passion touched her heart. "Yes--you may well ask that! Why does a woman see those things she wants to see in a man, and is blind to what she might see! ... Oh, why does any woman marry, my husband?" And in the silence that followed they were both thinking of those days in Washington, eight years before, when they had met. He was acting as secretary to some great man then, and was flashing in the pleasant light of youth, popularity, social approbation. He had "won out" against the Englishman, Hollenby,--why, he had never exactly known. Margaret was thinking of that why, as a woman does think at times for long years afterwards, trying to solve the psychological puzzle of her foolish youth! Hollenby was certainly the abler man, as well as the more brilliant prospect. And there were others who had loved her, and whom even as a girl she had wit enough to value.... A girl's choice, when her heart speaks, as the novelists say, is a curious process, compounded of an infinite number of subtle elements,--suggestions, traits of character, and above all temporary atmospheric conditions of mind. It is a marvel if it ever can be resolved into its elements! ... The Englishman--she was almost his--had lost her because once he had betrayed to the girl the brute. One frightened glimpse of the animal in his nature had been enough. And in the rebound from this chance perception of man as brute, she had listened to Lawrence Pole, because he seemed to her all that the other was not,--high-souled, poetic, restrained, tender,--all the ideals. With him life would be a communion of lovely and lovable things. He would secure some place in the diplomatic service abroad, and they would live on the heights, with art, ideas, beauty.... "Wasn't I a fool--not to know!" she remarked aloud. She was thinking, with the tolerance of mature womanhood: 'I could have tamed the brute in the other one. At least he was a man!' "Well, we dream our dreams, sentimental little girls that we are! And after a time we open our eyes like kittens on life. I have opened mine, Larry,--very wide open. There isn't a sentimental chord in my being that you can twang any longer.... But we can be good-tempered and sensible about it. Run along now and have your cigar, or go over to the country club and find some one to play billiards,--only let me finish what you are pleased to call my rotten reading,--it is so amusing!" She had descended from the crest of her passion, and could play with the situation. But her husband, realizing in some small way the significance of these words they had exchanged, still probed the ground:-- "If you feel like that, why do you still live with me? Why do you consent to bear my name?" The pomposity of the last words roused a wicked gleam in his wife's eyes. She looked up from her article again. "Perhaps I shan't always 'consent to bear your name,' Larry. I'm still thinking, and I haven't thought it all out yet. When I do, I may give up your name,--go away. Meanwhile I think we get on very well: I make a comfortable home for you; you have your children,--and they are well brought up. I have kept you trying to toe the mark, too. Take it all in all, I haven't been a bad wife,--if we are to present references?" "No," Larry admitted generously; "I have always said you were too good for me,--too fine." "And so, still being a good wife, I have decided to take myself back." She drew her small body together, clasping her arms about the review. "My body and my soul,--what is personally most mine. But I will serve you--make you comfortable. And after a time you won't mind, and you will see that it was best." "It goes deeper than that," her husband protested, groping for the idea that he caught imperfectly; "it means practically that we are living under the same roof but aren't married!" "With perfect respectability, Larry, which is more than is always the case when a man and a woman live under the same roof, either married or unmarried! ... I am afraid that is it in plain words. But I will do my best to make it tolerable for you." "Perhaps some day you'll find a man,--what then?" Margaret looked at him for a long minute before replying. "And if I should find a Man, God alone knows what would happen!" Then in reply to the frightened look on her husband's face, she added lightly:-- "Don't worry, Larry! No immediate scandal. I haven't any one in view, and living as I do it isn't likely that I shall be tempted by some knightly or idiotic man, who wants to run away with a middle-aged woman and three children. I am anchored safely--at any rate as long as dad lives and your mother, and the children need my good name. Oh!" she broke off suddenly; "don't let us talk any more about it!" ... Leaning her head on her hands, she looked into the fire, and murmured to herself as if she had forgotten Larry's presence:-- "God! why are we so blind, so blind,--and our feet caught in the net of life before we know what is in our souls!" For she realized that when she said she was middle-aged and anchored, it was but the surface truth. At thirty, with three children, she was more the woman, more capable of love, passion, understanding, devotion--more capable of giving herself wholly and greatly to a mate--than any girl could be. The well of life still poured its flood into her! Her husband could never know that agony of longing, those arms stretched out to--what? When would this torture of defeated capacity be ended--when had God set the term for her to suffer! In the black silence that had fallen between them, Pole betook himself to the club, as his wife had suggested, for the consolation of billiards and talk among sensible folk, "who didn't take life so damned hard." In the intervals of these distractions his mind would revert to what had passed between him and his wife that evening. Margaret's last remarks comforted him somewhat. Nothing of a scandalous or public demonstration of her feeling about her marriage was imminent. Nevertheless, his pride was hurt. In spite of the fact that he had suspected for a long time that his wife was cold,--was not "won,"--he had hitherto travelled along in complacent egotism. "They were a fairly happy couple" or "they geed as well as most," as he would have expressed it. He had not suspected that Margaret might feel the need of more than that. To-night he had heard and understood the truth,--and it was a blow. Deep down in his masculine heart he felt that he had been unjustly put in the wrong, somehow. No woman had the right--no wife--to say without cause that having thought better of the marriage bargain she had "taken herself back." There was something preposterous in the idea. It was due to the modern fad of a woman's reading all sorts of stuff, when her mind was inflammable. He recognized that his wife was the more important, the stronger person of the two,--that was the trouble with American women (Larry always made national generalizations when he wished to express a personal truth)--they knew when they were strong,--felt their oats. They needed to be "tamed." But Larry was aware that he was not fitted for the task of woman-tamer, and moreover it should have been begun long before this. So having won his game of billiards Larry had a drink, which made him even more philosophical. "Margaret is all right," he said to himself. "She was strung up to-night,--something made her go loose. But she'll come around,--she'll never do the other thing!" Yet in spite of a second whiskey and soda before starting for home, he was not absolutely convinced of this last statement. What makes a man like Larry Pole content to remain the master of the fort merely in name, when the woman has escaped him in spirit? Why will such men as he live on for years, aye and get children, with women, who do not even pretend to love them? * * * * * Meanwhile the wife sat there before the fire, her reading forgotten, thinking, thinking. She had said more than she herself knew to be in her heart. For one lives on monotonously, from day to day, unresolved, and then on occasion there flame forth unsuspected ideas, resolves. For the soul has not been idle.... It was true that their marriage was at an end. And it was not because of her husband's failures, his follies,--not the money mistakes. It was himself,--the petty nature he revealed in every act. For women like Margaret Pole can endure vice and folly and disappointment, but not a petty, trivial, chattering biped that masquerades as Man. _ |
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