A 1,014,494
820.8
M36

ARTES
LIBRARY
1837
VERITAS
SCIENTIA
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
SUS UNUM
PLURIOUS
:
TCEBOR
SI-QUÆRIS-PENINSULAM-AMŒNAM
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4
820.8
M36
MARRIAGE
•

MARRIAGE
Short Stories of Married Life
by American Writers
TARKINGTON
DELANO
HOPPER
DREISER
CUTTING
NORRIS
ADAMS
COOPER
HERGESHEIMER GALE
BUTLER
TURNER
MILLER
HARRISON
FOSTER
WEBSTER
STREET
KELLAND
HUGHES
LINCOLN
GARDEN CITY
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1923
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
از آن
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
These stories were published first in the following news-
papers under the auspices of the United Feature Syndi-
cate: The Boston Post; Philadelphia Evening Ledger;
Atlanta Constitution; Cleveland Press; Cincinnati Post;
Columbus Citizen; Toledo News-Bee; Akron Press; Youngs-
town Telegram; Baltimore Sun; Seattle Post-Intelligencer;
Buffalo Commercial; New York American; Los Angeles
Examiner; Chicago Herald-Examiner; Rockford Register-
Gazette; Louisville Courier-Journal; San Francisco Bulle-
tin; Richmond Evening Dispatch; Omaha News; Milwau-
kee Sunday Telegram; Sioux City Tribune; Huntington
Herald-Dispatch; St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Grand Rapids
Press; Hartford Courant; Dubuque Telegraph-Herald;
Bridgeport Post; Washington Star; Syracuse Herald; Mon-
treal Star; Toronto Sunday World; Detroit News; Troy
Record; London Evening News.
CONTENTS
PAGE
"Us"
1
By Booth Tarkington
REALLY MARRIED
25
By Mary Stewart Cutting
MISS CONIFEE
40
By Joseph Hergesheimer
THE HOUSE GUEST
60
By Alice Duer Miller
THE LOST COLUMBINE
72
By Julian Street
FOR VALUE RECEIVED
85
By Edith Barnard Delano
THE PERFECT HUSBAND
99
By Charles G. Norris
THE CLAUSONS
By Zona Gale
PURSUIT
112
126
By Henry Sydnor Harrison
THE MENTAL HAZARD
144
By Clarence Budington Kelland
vii
viii
CONTENTS
THE ANTS .
PAGE
158
By James Hopper
THE INDISSOLUBLE BOND
173
By Samuel Hopkins Adams
THE TENTH MRS. TULKINGTON
189
By Ellis Parker Butler
MRS. REDMOND'S SHAME
206
By Maximilian Foster
PEACHBLOW
222
By Rupert Hughes
MARRIAGE
FOR ONE
238
By Theodore Dreiser
DRIFTWOOD
259
By Courtney Ryley Cooper
BIRTH STONES.
275
By George Kibbe Turner
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR.
298
By Henry Kitchell Webster
THE PIE AND THE PAST.
314
By Joseph C. Lincoln
T
TO THE READER
BEGIN HERE

HIS book is different. It's all about marriage
-marriage as you know it in countless Ameri-
can homes-told in short stories by twenty of
our leading American authors. Its particular point of
newness is that these stories were all published first
in big newspapers throughout the country in THE
ALL-STAR PROGRAMME OF AMERICAN FICTION, which
makes a special point of American writers.
Every one of these authors, among America's very
best, has written, in his own inimitable style, his
view of this universally interesting topic.
Perhaps you won't want to read these stories all at
once-marriage is so many-sided a subject-but
before you go to bed, or between trains, or in an idle
moment, you'll find it entertainingly worth while to
become acquainted again with these authors in this
new guise.
You'll see, by looking through the contents, that
the greater number of the stories are by men, indica-
tive of the masculine viewpoint, and mainly con-
cerning their illusion of the married state, or lack
of it.
ix
X
TO THE READER
Is there a suggestion of bitterness in some of
them? Are their representations true? And who
are most successful in marriage, after all, men or
women?
A woman once answered that last question by say-
ing that if one partner wasn't, neither was the other.
Do you agree with her?
You'll find every kind of story between the covers
of this book, grave, gay, and humorous, and in each
one some phase of marriage is dealt with, in a way
that is seldom touched upon in fiction.
What do you think about gossip? Booth Tark-
ington's "Us" tells in simple, direct, human fashion
how it affected the life of one bride.
If you want to be serious there is "The Perfect
Husband," by Charles G. Norris. It is real life, and
holds vast possibilities for discussion. And Theodore
Dreiser, who gives you a poignant picture in his
"Marriage for One." Then Edith Barnard Delano
shows you the heart of a woman as only a woman
can; and Maximilian Foster presents a man's part
when the wife is bent on a career. Joseph Herge-
sheimer's “Miss Conifee" is in a class all by itself,
and Clarence Budington Kelland's "The Mental
Hazard" tells "of what stuff" some wives are
made.
Alice Duer Miller upholds the wife's side in de-
lightfully humorous terms in "The House Guest";
and Mary Stewart Cutting, exponent of many stories
TO THE READER
xi
of the married, also with humour, but with tears
behind the smile, turns your admiration to the tired
suburban husband. Zona Gale, with her rare under-
standing, brings belief in the happiness of the com-
monplace.
Henry Sydnor Harrison may be a bit cynical, but
then he is the only bachelor in THE ALL-STAR PRO-
GRAMME. Just the same, "Pursuit" will bring its
readers food for reflection.
Ellis Parker Butler, in "The Tenth Mrs. Tulking-
ton," extravaganza that it is, deals with a situation
that is all too common in thousands of homes.
story will make you laugh, and it will make you
think.
The
"The Ants," by James Hopper, shows you ideal-
ism. Where does it lead? Rupert Hughes in
"Peachblow" touches in delicious, amusing form,
woman's basic unrest and gives a hint to husbands.
Julian Street's "Lost Columbine" wins admiration
for the clever wife, and the everlasting question,
"Which one was she?"
Courtney Ryley Cooper's "Driftwood" is a gay
transcription of the horrors of being too polite, and
George Kibbe Turner's "Birth Stones" is as absorb-
ing as a detective yarn with an unexpected point of
big sentiment at the end.
Henry Kitchell Webster extolls the resourcefulness
of a husband in "His Wife's Visitor"; Samuel Hop-
kins Adams turns you back to the beginning of the
xii
TO THE READER
fatal step; and Joseph C. Lincoln is present with an-
other little piece of Cape Cod.
All American, these authors, writing of us—the
American people in a way that is big in thought,
in feeling, and human understanding.
MARY STEWART CUTTING, Jr.
Marriage
"US"
BY BOOTH TARKINGTON
H'
IGHLAND PLACE" was one of those new
little cross-streets in a new little bosky
neighbourhood, "grown up over night," as
we say, meaning grown up in four or five years; so
that when citizens of the older and more solid and
soiled central parts of the city come driving through
the new part, of a Sunday afternoon in spring, they
say: “My goodness, when did this happen? Why, it
doesn't seem more'n a year or so since we used to
have Fourth o' July picnics out here! And now just
look at it—all built up with bride-and-groom
houses!"
"Highland Place" was the name given to this
cross-street by the speculative land company that
had "developed” it, and the only reason they had
not named it "Waverley Place" was that they had
already produced a “Waverley Place" a block below.
Both "Places" were lined with green-trimmed small
white houses, "frame" or stucco; and although the
1
2
MARRIAGE
honeymoon suggestion was architecturally so strong,
as a matter of fact most of the inhabitants held them-
selves to be "settled old married people," some of
the couples having almost attained to a Tin Wedding
Anniversary.
The largest of the houses in "Highland Place"
was the "hollow-tile and stucco residence of Mr. and
Mrs. George M. Sullender." Thus it had been de-
fined, under a photographic reproduction, with the
caption "New Highland Place Sullender Home" in
one of the newspapers, not long after the little street
had been staked out and paved; and since the "Sul-
lender Home" was not only the largest house but the
first to be built in the "Place," and had its pic-
ture in the paper, it naturally took itself for granted
as being the most important.
Young Mrs. William Sperry, whose equally young
husband had just bought the smallest but most con-
spicuously bride-and-groom cottage in the whole
"Place," was not so deeply impressed with the
Sullender importance as she should have been, since
the Sperrys were the newcomers of the neighbour-
hood, had not yet been admitted to its intimacies,
and might well have displayed a more amiable defer-
ence to what is established.
"No," Mrs. Sperry told her husband, when they got
home after their first experience of the "Place's" hos-
pitality, a bridge-party at the Sullenders'-"I just
can't stand those people, Will! They're really awful!"
"US"
3
"Why, what's the matter with 'em?" he inquired.
"I thought they were first rate. They seemed per-
fectly friendly and hospitable and
“Oh, yes: lord-and-lady-of-the-Manor entertaining
the tenantry! I don't mind being tenantry," young
Mrs. Sperry explained, "but I can't stand the lord-
and-lady-of-the-Manor style in people with a nine-
room house and a one-car garage!"
"One-car it may be," her husband laughed; “but
it has two stories. They have a chauffeur, you know,
and he lives in the upstairs of the garage.
"So that entitles the Sullenders to the Manor
style?"
"But I didn't notice any of that style," he pro-
tested. "I thought they seemed right nice and cor-
dial. Of course, Sullender feels that he's been mak-
ing quite a success in business and it naturally gives
him a rather condescending air, but he's really all
right."
"He certainly was condescending," she grumbled,
and went on, with some satire: "Did you hear him
allude to himself as a 'Realtor'?"
"Well, why shouldn't he? He is one. That's his
business."
"My lord, the Realtor!" Mrs. Sperry cried
mockingly. "There ought to be an opera written
called 'El Realtor' like the one there used to be with
the title 'Il Janitor.' Those are such romantic
words! Toreador,' 'Realtor,' 'Humidor'-
""
4
MARRIAGE
"Here, here!" her husband said. "Calm down!
You seem to have got yourself worked up into a
mighty sarcastic mood for some reason. Those
people only want to be nice to us and they're all
right."
Mrs. Sperry looked at him coldly. "Did you hear
Mr. Sullender saying that his company had sold
seven 'homes' this month?" she inquired.
"Oh, you can't expect everybody to know all the
purist niceties of the English language," he said.
"Sullender's all right, and his wife struck me as one
of the nicest, kindest women I ever
"Kind!" Mrs. Sperry echoed loudly. "She doesn't
stop at being 'kind'! She's so caressingly tender,
so angelically loving that she can't possibly pro-
nounce a one-syllabled word without making two
syllables of it! Did you notice that she said ‘yay-
yus' for 'yes,' and 'no-oh' for 'no'? I do hate the
turtle-dove style of talking, and I never met a worse
case of it. Mrs. Sullender's the sweetest sweet-
woman I ever saw in my life, and I'm positive she
leads her husband a dog's life!”
"What nonsense!"
"It serves him right for his Realtoring, though,”
Mrs. Sperry added thoughtfully. "He ought to have
that kind of a wife!"
"But you just said she was the sweetest-
"Yes, the sweetest sweet-woman I ever saw. I
do hate the whole clan of sweet-women!"
"US"
5
The young husband looked perplexed. "I don't
know what you're talking about," he admitted. "I
always thought-
""
"I'm talking about the sweet-woman type that
Mrs. Sullender belongs to. They use intended sweet-
ness. They speak to total strangers with sweetness.
They wear expressions of saintly sweetness. Every-
body speaks of a sweet-woman with loving reverence,
and it's generally felt that it would be practically
immoral to contradict one of 'em. To be actually
sassy to a sweet-woman would be a cardinal sin!
They let their voices linger beautifully on the air and
they listen, themselves, to the lovely sounds they
make. They always have the most exquisitely self-
sacrificing reasons for every action of their lives;
but they do just exactly what they want to do, and
everybody else has to do what a sweet-woman
wants him to. That's why I'm sure Mr. Sullender,
in spite of all his pomposity, leads a dog's life at
home."
"Of all the foolish talk!" young Sperry exclaimed.
"Why, everybody says they're the most ideally
married couple and that they lead the happiest life
together that—”
"Everybody says'!" she mocked him, interrupt-
ing. "How often have you known what 'everybody
says' turn out to be the truth about anything? And
besides, we don't know a thing about any of these
people, and we don't know anybody else that does!
6
MARRIAGE
Who is this 'everybody' that's told you how happy
the Sullenders are?"
“Well, it's just a general impression I got," he ad-
mitted. "I think I heard someone down-town al-
luding to Sullender's domestic relations being very
fortunate and pleasant.
“Oh, you think so? Is that all? You don't really
know a thing about it, then."
"No matter. You're wrong this time, Bella. The
Sullenders
But Bella shook her pretty young head, interrupt-
ing him again. "You'll see! I do hope there won't
have to be too much intimacy, but you can't live
across the street from people very long, in a neigh-
bourhood like this, without getting to know the real
truth about 'em. You wait and see what we get to
know about the Sullenders!"
"Yes, I'll wait," he laughed. "But how long?"
"Oh, I don't know; maybe a year, maybe a
month",
"Let's make it a month, Bella," he said, and put
his arm about her. "If we don't find out in a month
that the Sullenders are miserable together, will you
admit you're wrong?"
"No, I won't! But you'll probably have to admit
that I'm right before that long. I have a sense for
these things, Will, and I never go wrong when I trust
it. Women know intuitively things that men never
suspect. I know I'm right about Mrs. Sullender."
"US"
7
Her husband permitted the discussion to end with
this, wisely fearing that if he sought further to defend
his position Bella might plausibly accuse him of
always insisting upon the last word." And so, for
that night, at least, the matter was dropped from
their conversation, though not from the thoughts of
Mrs. Sperry. Truth to tell, she was what is some-
times called an "obstinate little body," and, also,
she appreciated the advisability of a young wife's
building for future and lifelong use the foundations
of infallibility. That is to say, she was young and
therefore inexperienced, but she had foresight.
Moreover, she had attentively observed the matri-
monial condition of her parents and aunts and uncles.
Many and many a time had she heard a middle-aged
husband speak to his wife of like years somewhat in
this manner: "No, Fannie, you're wrong again.
You're mistaken about this now just as you were
about James Thompson's adding machine in 1897;
and you were wrong about painting the house, the
year after that, too. Don't you remember how you
insisted dark green was the right colour, and finally
had to admit, yourself, that dark green was awful,
and light yellow would have been just right, as I all
along said it would?"
Thus, young Mrs. Sperry, looking to times far
ahead, had determined to be wrong about nothing
whatever during these early years of her matrimony.
Moreover, since argument had arisen concerning the
8
MARRIAGE
Sullenders, she had made up her mind to be right
about them, and to "prove" herself right, "whether
she really was or not"; and that is why, on the morn-
ing after her arraignment of sweet-women generally,
and of her gracious neighbour particularly, the pretty
newcomer in "Highland Place" found herself most
pleasurably excited by the naïve but sinister revela-
tions of a stranger eight years of age.
At a little before nine o'clock Mr. William Sperry
had departed (in a young husband's car) for his place
of business, some five miles distant in the smoky heart
of the city; and not long afterward the thoughtful
Bella, charmingly accoutred as a gardener, came
forth with a trowel to uproot weeds that threatened
a row of iris she had set out along the gravel path
between the tiny white veranda and the white picket
gate. Thus engaged, she became aware of a small
presence fumbling at the latch of this gate, and
she changed her position from that of one on all
fours, who gropes intently in the earth, to that of
one upright from the knees, but momentarily re-
laxed.
"Do you want to come in?" she inquired, looking
out from the shade of her broad hat to where the
little figure in blue overalls was marked off into stripes
of sunshine and shadow by the intervening pickets of
the gate. “Is there something you want here, little
boy?"
He succeeded in operating the latch, came in, and
"US"
9
looked attentively at her excavations. "Have you
found any nice worms?" he asked.
"No, I haven't found any at all," she said, some-
what surprised by his adjective. "But I don't
think there are any 'nice' worms anywhere. Worms
are all pretty horrid."
"No, they ain't," he returned promptly and seri-
ously. "There's lots o' nice worms."
"Oh, I don't think so."
"Yes, there is.”
"Oh, no."
"There is, too!" he said stubbornly, and with some
asperity. "Everybody knows there's plenty of nice
worms."
"Where did you get such nonsense in your head?"
Bella asked, a little sharply. "Who ever told you
there are nice worms?"
"Well, there is!"
"But what makes you think so?" she insisted.
"Well"
He hesitated, then said with a con-
clusive air, settling the question: "My mother. I
guess she knows!"
Bella stared at him incredulously for a moment.
"What's your name?"
"My name's George. My name's George, the
same as my papa," he replied somewhat challeng-
ingly.
"Don't you live just across the street?" she asked.
"Yes, I do." He turned and pointed to the
10
MARRIAGE
"George M. Sullender residence," and Bella thought
she detected a note of inherited pride in his tone as
he added, "That's where I live!"
"But, George, you don't mean," she insisted curi-
ously-"you don't mean that your mother told you
there are nice worms? Surely not!"
"My mother did," he asserted, and then with a
little caution, modified the assertion: "My mother
just the same as did."
"How was that?"
And his reply, so unexpected by his questioner, sent
a thrill of coming triumph through her. "My
mother called my father a worm.'
"What!"
"She did," said George. "She called him a worm
over and over."
"What!"
“And if he's a worm," George went on, stoutly,
well, I guess he's nice, isn't he? So there got to be
plenty nice worms if he's one."
"George!"
"She calls him a worm most every little while
these days," said George, expanding, and he added,
in cold blood: "I like him a great deal better than
what I do her."
"You do?"
“She hit him this morning," George thought fit
to mention, upon this.
"What?"
"US"
11
"With a cloe's brush," he said, dropping into de-
tail. "She hit him on the back of the head with the
wooden part of it and he said, ‘Ooh!””
"But she was just in fun, of course!"
"No, she wasn't; she was mad and said she was
goin' to take me with her and go back to my gram'-
paw's. I won't go with her. She's mad all the time,
these days."
Bella stared, her lips parted, and she wished him
to continue, but remembered her upbringing and
tried to be a lady. "Georgie," she said severely,
66
you shouldn't tell such things. Don't you know
better than to speak in this way of what happens
between your poor papa and your mother?”
The effect upon George was nothing; for even at
eight years of age a child is able to understand what
interests an adult listener, and children deeply enjoy
being interesting. In response to her admonition,
he said simply: "Yesterday she threw a glass o' water
at him and cut him where his ear is. It made a big
mark on him!"
"Georgie! I'm afraid you're telling me a dread-
ful, dreadful story!" Bella said, though it may not
be denied that in company with this suspicion there
arrived a premonitory symptom of disappointment.
'Why, I saw your papa yesterday evening, myself,
and there wasn't any mark, or anything like—————
66
"It don't show," George explained. "It took
him a good while, but he got it fixed up so's it didn't
12
MARRIAGE
show much. Then he brushed his hair over where
it was."
"Oh!"
"My mother hates my papa," said George. "She
just hates and hates him!"
"What for?" Bella couldn't stop this question.
'She wants him to have more money and he says
what good would that do, because she'd only throw
it around."
"No!"
"Yes," said George. "And she's mad because
once he got so mad at her he hit her.”
"What!"
"He did, too,” George informed her, nodding, his
large eyes as honest as they were earnest. "She
said she was goin' to see my gram'paw and she left
me at home, but my papa catched her at the Pitcher
Show with Mr. Grumbaugh."
"Who?"
"Mr. Grumbaugh," George repeated, with the air
of explaining everything amply. "So my papa made
her come home and he hit her, and she hit him, too!"
"Before you !" Bella exclaimed, horrified.
"Sure!" George said, and looked upon her with
some superiority. "They do it all before me. Last
week, when they had their big fight-
He would have continued willingly, but at this
point he was interrupted. Across the street a door
opened, and out of it came Mrs. Sullender leading a
"US"
13
five-year-old girl by the hand. She called loudly,
though in a carefully sweet and musical tone:
"George? Jaw-aurge? Oh, Jaw-awr-gie?"
George looked across. "Yes'm?" he shouted.
Mrs. Sullender nodded smilingly to Bella, and
called: "Georgie, you dear little naughty thing!
Didn't I tell you half-an-hour ago to come indoors
and play with poor dear little Natalie? She's been
waiting and waiting so patiently!"
George looked morose, but began to move in the
desired direction. "I'm comin'," he muttered, and
was so gross as to add, under his breath, "Doggone
you!"
However, he went across the street; and then Mrs.
Sullender, benevolently leading the two children by
the hand, nodded again to Bella with a sweetness
that was evident even at a distance, and reëntered
the house, taking George and the tiny Natalie with
her.
Bella remained upon her knees, staring violently
at the "Sullender Home," but her thoughts were
centred upon her husband.
her husband. "Just wait till he gets
home!" she thought.
But she saved her triumph until after dinner, when
he had made himself comfortable upon the lounge
in their tiny “living room" and seemed to be in good
content with his briar pipe.
“I had a caller after you left this morning," she
informed him sunnily.
14
MARRIAGE
"Who was it?"
"Mr. George M. Sullender."
"So? That's odd," said Sperry. "I saw him
starting down-town in his car just before I did. How
did he happen to come back here?"
"He didn't. This was Mr. George M. Sullender,
Junior."
"Who's that?”
"Their little boy," said Bella. "You've seen him
playing in their yard with the little sister."
"Oh, yes. Did his mother send him over on an
errand?"
999
"No. He came to see if I'd found any 'nice
worms, Bella said, and added, in a carefully casual
tone, but with a flashing little glance from the corner
of her eye, “He said some worms must be nice because
Mrs. Sullender is in the habit of calling Mr. Sullender
a worm, and Georgie thinks his father is nice.”
Young Mr. Sperry took his pipe from his mouth
and looked at his wife incredulously. "What did
you say about Mrs. Sullender's calling
وو
"A 'worm,' William," said Bella. "She calls him
a 'worm,' William, because he doesn't make even
more money than he does, poor man! The child
really hates his mother: he never once spoke of her as
'mamma' but he always said 'my papa' when he
mentioned Mr. Sullender. I think I must have mis-
judged that poor creature a little, by the way. Of
course he is pompous, but I think his pomposity is
"US"
15
probably just assumed to cover up his agony of mind.
He has a recent scar that his wife put on his head,
too, to cover up."
"Bella!”
"Yes," she said reflectively. "I think he's mainly
engaged in covering things up, poor thing. Of course
he does strike his sweet-woman, now and then, when
he finds her at the movies with gentlemen he doesn't
approve of, but one can hardly blame him, consider-
ing the life she leads him. It was last week, though,
when they had their big fight, I understand—with
the children looking on.
""
But at this William rose to his feet and confronted
her. "What on earth are you talking about, Bella?"
"The Sullenders," she said. "It was curious. It
was like having the front of their house taken off, the
way a curtain rolls up at the theatre and shows you
one of those sordid Russian plays, for instance.
There was the whole sickening actual life of that
dreadful family laid bare before me: the continual,
petty bickerings that every hour or so grow into
bitter quarrels, with blows and epithets—and then,
when other people are there, as we were last night,
the assumption of suavity, the false, too-sweet sweet-
ness and absurd pomposities-oh, what an ugly reve-
lation it is, Will! It's so ugly it makes me almost
sorry you were wrong about them-as you're rather
likely to be in your flash judgments, you poor dear!"
Bella (who was "literary" sometimes) delivered
16
MARRIAGE
herself of this speech with admirable dramatic
quality, especially when she made her terse little
realistic picture of the daily life of the Sullenders,
but there was just a shade of happy hypocrisy and
covert triumph in the final sentence, and she even
thought fit to add a little more on the point: "How
strange it is to think that only last night we were
arguing about it!" she exclaimed. "And that I said
we'd not need to wait a month to prove that I was
right! Here it is only the next day and it's proved I
was a thousand times righter than I said I was!"
"Well, perhaps you'll enlighten me
" he be-
gan, but she complied so willingly that she didn't
let him finish his request.
She gave him Georgie's revelation in detail, em-
phasizing and colouring it somewhat with her own
interpretations of many things necessarily only sug-
gested by the child's meagre vocabulary; and she was
naturally a little indignant when, at first, her husband
declined to admit his defeat.
"Why, it's simply not believable!" he said.
"Those people couldn't seem what they seemed to be
last night, and be so depraved. They were genu-
inely affectionate in the tone they used with each
other and they———
وو
'Good gracious!" Bella cried. "Do you think
I'm making this up?"
"No, of course not," he returned hastily. "But
the child may have made it up.'
"US"
17
t
"About his own father and mother?"
Oh, I know, but some children are the most won-
derful little story-tellers: they tell absolutely inex-
plicable lies and hardly know why themselves.
""
But at this Bella looked at him pityingly. "Lis-
ten a moment! There was all the sordid daily life
of these people laid out before me in the poor little
child's prattle: a whole realistic novel, complete and
consistent, and I'd like to know how you account for
a child of seven or eight being able to compose such
a thing--and on the spur of the moment, too! When
children make up stories they make 'em up about
extraordinary and absurd things, not about the sordid
tragedies of everyday domestic life. Do you actu-
ally think this child made up what he told me?”
"Well, it certainly does seem peculiar.
وو
"Peculiar'? Why, it's terrible, and it's true!"
"Well, if it is," he said gloomily, "we certainly
don't want to get mixed up in it. We don't want to
come into a new neighbourhood and get involved in
a scandal-or even as gossiping about one. We must
be careful not to say anything about this, Bella."
She looked away from him, thoughtfully. "I sup-
pose so, though of course these people aren't friends
of ours-hardly acquaintances."
"No, but that's all the more reason for our not
appearing to be interested in their troubles. We'll
certainly be careful not to say anything about this,
won't we, Bella?"
18
MARRIAGE
"Oh, I suppose so," she returned absently. "Since
the people are really nothing to us, though, I don't
suppose
it matters whether we say anything or not."
"Oh, but it does," he insisted; and then, something
in her tone having caught his attention, he inquired:
"You haven't said anything to any one about it, have
you, Bella?"
"What?"
“You haven't repeated to any one what the child
told you, have you?"
“Oh, no,” she said lightly. "Not to any one
that would have any personal interest in it."
"Oh, my!"
"Who'd you tell?"
William exclaimed, dismayed.
"Nobody that has the slightest interest in the
Sullenders," Bella replied, with cold dignity. "No-
body that cares the slightest thing about them."
"Well, then, what in the world did you tell 'em
for?"
"Why, to pass the time, I suppose," Bella said, a
little offended. "Cousin Ethel dropped in for a
while this afternoon and the whole thing was so ex-
traordinary I just sketched it to her. What are you
making such a fuss about?"
"I'm not," he protested feebly. “But even if the
thing's true, we don't want to get the name of people
that gossip about their"
"Oh, my!" she sighed impatiently. "I've told
you Cousin Ethel hasn't the slightest personal in-
"US"
19
terest in these people, and besides she'll never repeat
what I told her."
"Well, if she doesn't, it'll be the first time!"
"Will, please!"
"Golly, I hope it won't get back to the Sullenders!"
66
'Such horrible people as that, what difference
would it make?" Bella demanded impatiently.
"And how could it get back? Cousin Ethel doesn't
move in Sullender circles. Not precisely!"
“No, but her close friend, Mrs. Howard Peebles,
is the aunt of Mrs. Frank Deems, and Frank Deems
is Sullender's business partner."
“Oh, a Realtor, is he?" Bella said icily.
William returned to the lounge, but did not recline.
Instead, he sat down and took his head in his
hands. “I do wish you hadn't talked about it,"
he said.
Bella was sensitive; therefore she began to be
angry. “Do you think it's very intelligent," she
asked, "to imply that I don't know enough not to
make neighbourhood trouble? You may not recall
that only last night you were sure that you were
right and I was wrong about what sort of people
these Sullenders are. Already, the very next day,
you've had to confess that you were utterly mistaken
and that your wife is wholly in the right. I suppose
you may feel a little depressed about that and want
to change the question to something else and claim
I'm in the wrong about that. But don't vou think
20
MARRIAGE
it's a little bit childish of you, Will? Don't you think
that the way you're taking your defeat is just a little
bit-small?"
He was hurt, and looked up at her with an expres-
sion that showed the injury. "I'd hardly have ex-
pected you'd call me that," he said. "At least, not
so soon after our wedding-trip!"
"Well, I might have expected you wouldn't be
accusing me of gossiping harmfully," she retorted.
"Not quite so soon!"
Young Mr. Sperry rose again. "Do you think
that's as bad as using the epithet 'small' to your
husband?"
"Epithet'?" she echoed. "You charge me with
using 'epithets'?”
“Well, but didn't you?”
"I think I'll ask you to excuse me!" Bella said,
with an aspect of nobility in suffering. And she
proudly betook herself from the room.
It was a tiff. Next day they were as polite to each
other as if they had just been introduced, and this
ceremonial formality was maintained between them
until the third evening after its installation, when
a calamity caused them to abandon it. After a
stately dinner in their hundred square feet of dining
room, Bella had gone out into the twilight to refresh
her strips of iris with fair water from the garden hose,
and William reclined upon his lounge, solitary with
a gloomy pipe. Unexpectedly, he was summoned:
"US"
21
1
Bella looked in upon him from the door and spoke
hastily. “Uh-Mr. and Mrs. Sullender," she said.
"Uh-
And as hastily withdrew.
""
Perturbed, he rose and went out to the little ver-
anda, where, with a slightly nervous hospitality, Bella
was now offering chairs to Mrs. George M. Sullender
and her husband. Mrs. Sullender smilingly, and in
her angelic voice, declined the offer.
"Oh, no," she said. "We came in a moment to
admire your lovely irises at closer range; we're just
passing on our way to some friends in Waverley
Place."
"We'd be so glad
"Bella fluttered.
"No, no, no," Mrs. Sullender murmured caress-
ingly. "We've only a moment-I'm so sorry you
disturbed your husband-we're just going over for
bridge. I suppose you know most of the people in
Waverley Place?"
"No, I don't think I know any."
"Well, of course we don't think it compares to
Highland Place," Mrs. Sullender said, with a little
deprecatory laugh. "I'm afraid it's rather-well,
gossipy."
"Oh-" Bella said. "Is it?"
"I'm afraid so," the gentle-mannered lady re-
turned. "Of course that's a great pity, too, in
such a new little community where people are bound
to be thrown together a great deal. Don't you
think it's a great pity, Mrs. Sperry?"
22
MARRIAGE
"Ah-naturally," Bella acquiesced. "Yes, in-
deed."
"I knew you would. Of course it's just thought-
lessness. Most of the people who live there are so
young-but we heard a really dreadful story only
yesterday. It came from a very young newly married
couple, and my husband and I were so sorry to hear
they'd started out by telling such dreadful things
about their neighbours. Don't you think it's most
unwise, Mrs. Sperry?"
Mrs. Sullender's voice, wholly unruffled, and as
indomitably tender as ever, gave no intimation that
she spoke with a peculiar significance; but William
Sperry was profoundly alarmed, and, with a sym-
pathy that held no triumph in it, he knew that Bella
was in a similar or worse condition.
"Ye-es," Bella murmured. "Of-of course I
do."
"I knew you would feel that way," said Mrs.
Sullender soothingly. "It's unwise, because gossip
travels so. It nearly always goes straight back to
the people it's about. In fact, I don't believe I ever
knew of one single case where it didn't. Did you,
Mrs. Sperry?"
“I—I don't—that is, well, n-no," Bella stam-
mered.
"No. It's so unwise!" Mrs. Sullender insisted,
with a little murmur of tender laughter. Then she
took the arm of her solemn and silent husband, and
"US"
23
L
they turned together toward the gate, but paused.
"Oh, I'd meant to tell you, Mrs. Sperry-
"Yes?"
“That dear little boy Georgie-the little boy you
were chatting with the other morning when I called
him in to play with my little girl-you remember,
Mrs. Sperry?"
"Yes!" Bella gasped.
"I thought you made such friends with him you'd
be sorry to know you won't see him any more.
"No?"
"No," Mrs. Sullender cooed gently. "Poor little
Georgie Gotle!"
"Georgie-who?"
“Georgie Goble,” said Mrs. Sullender. “He was
Goble, our chauffeur's little boy. They lived over
our garage and had quite a distressing time of it, poor
things! The wife finally persuaded Goble to move to
another town where she thinks chauffeurs' pay is
higher. I was sure you'd be sorry to hear the poor
dear little boy had gone. They left yesterday.
Good-night. Good-night, Mr. Sperry."
With that, followed by somewhat feeble good-
nights from both the Sperrys, she passed through
the gate with her husband and a moment later
disappeared in the clean dusk of "Highland
Place.'
Then Bella turned to her troubled William. "She
—she certainly made it pl-plain!”
24
MARRIAGE
"Yes," said he. "But after all, she really let us
down pretty easy."
"Us,” the young wife demanded sharply. Did
you say 'us'?”
"Yes," he answered. "I think she let us down
about as easy as we could have expected.”
}
Bella instantly threw herself in his arms. “Oh,
William, do always say 'us'!" she cried. "Do be
the kind of husband that won't throw this up at
me when we're forty and fifty! William, promise me
you'll always say 'us' when I get us in trouble!"
And William promised and William would.
:
REALLY MARRIED
BY MARY STEWART CUTTING
HⓇ
OW does one solve a problem that can't be
solved? Of course all problems are impossi-
ble of solution until you do solve them.
One never knows when the smallest happening may
turn out to be a big thing in its effect on the mind of
two people who love each other, in all the years that
may come never to be forgotten.
Sally, the blue-eyed, soft-cheeked wife of Carleton
May-whose photograph with its firm lips and steady
eyes reinforced her spirit from the little table beside
her—the mother of the two curlyheads and the baby
upstairs with Maggie, was busy with her own prob-
lem, as she sat in the small firelit room lookg out
of the window, in the fast-darkening winter afternoon,
at the flooded vacant suburban lots and the leafless
bushes that trembled at the fierce slashes of the
rain.
She was listening to the footsteps of her father as
he paced up and down the narrow hallway; every now
and then he called to her dejectedly:
"It doesn't look much like clearing, Sally," and
she replied:
25
26
MARRIAGE
"Oh, I think it does, Father!" though she didn't
think so at all.
How, how, she wondered desperately, could she
make her commuting husband appear glad to go back
to town this evening, after the half-mile walk home
from the station in this icy slush and rain? There
never were any taxis in this outlying part of the
suburb. How had she failed to remind him in the
unclouded morning that this and not to-morrow, as
first intended, was to be the night of Father's treat?
Ever since luncheon she had tried repeatedly to get
Carleton on a 'phone that had "gone dead." She
knew intuitively that, unwarned, his first loudly
spoken words in answer to hers would be:
"Go in town to-night? You're crazy."
Oh, no enforced resignation on his part would
suffice. There must be a glow of enjoyment to sat-
isfy poor Father, who had planned this festivity for
his brief trip up from the South, where his health,
since the death of his wife, kept him in the lonely
winters; the thought of this pleasure given to those
he loved would warm his heart for months to come.
He was a tall, soldierly old man, with a square gray
beard and piercing eyes under bushy gray eyebrows.
His old friends called him Major, but he was mostly
known here as Sally May's father; absent or present,
he was so much a father, always, as far as moderate
means could afford, "doing something" for her and
hers.
REALLY MARRIED
27
But this theatre party to-night-for which the
most expensive last-minute seats had been procured
—and the prospective supper, while embracing Sally
and Carleton's young visiting cousins, Howard and
Ellyn Brown, here on their way to Florida, was really
intended as a special treat for his son-in-law. Carle-
ton was going through the struggles of a young man
to support his little family, buying shoes, perforce,
instead of theatre tickets. He had, moreover, a chiv-
alrous kindness for the Major, which the latter deeply
appreciated.
He came in now to stand beside his daughter, say-
ing anxiously:
“I'm afraid Carleton won't want to go out in the
rain again."
"Oh, he's indoors all day, you know," said Sally
brightly. "And Howard and Ellyn are looking for-
ward to it all so much-young people do love a
treat!"
"Yes, yes, that's true," responded the Major with
a pleasant smile.
He turned expectantly as a tall, dark, languid
youth of sixteen strolled into the room.
"What is it, Howard?"
"I don't think I'd better go to-night," said Howard
briefly. "I think I ought to stay home, Sir; I've got
a cold."
"He hasn't at all, Mom!" volunteered the wide-
eyed eight-year-old Carley, who had followed on his
28
MARRIAGE
cousin's heels. "He says he's sick of theatres. He
wants to stay home and read 'The Hound of the
Baskervilles.""
"If he has a cold!" said the Major, oblivious
of his grandson's remarks. Any plea of health was
always valid to the Major.
"Yes, you had much better stay here, my boy;
much better!"
“Well, Ellyn will enjoy it, anyway," began Sally
comfortingly, as Howard disappeared, and stopped
short as a tall, thin, abnormally short-skirted young
girl came toward them, with an agitated expression
on her small, pale, snub-nosed countenance.
"Is there anything the matter, Ellyn?"
"Oh, nothing, but" Ellyn was at the age when
to make one of a family party of pleasure was nothing
short of agony. "I do so hate to tell you and the
Major, but one of my neuralgic headaches is coming
on, and I think—I'm afraid-I ought not to go out
in this weather. I know Mother wouldn't want me
to be exposed."
"No, of course not!" said the Major, hastily, in
spite of his stricken countenance. "You mustn't
be exposed on any account, my dear child. No!"
"I feel dreadfully about it, Major, dear," mur-
mured the girl with a sharp look at Sally, who was
fiercely silent. Two tickets cast away, and the
Major had paid seven dollars apiece for them to a
speculator!
C
REALLY MARRIED
29
Little Maisie May, with her outstanding crop of
curls, guilelessly added her version of the affair as
Ellyn ran upstairs.
"She told Howard she didn't want to go because
she hadn't any sweetie.'
"Oh, if she would like some candy!" began the
Major with eagerness.
"She doesn't mean candy, she means a young
man," said Sally. "Never mind, Father, dear; we'll
get someone else who would be glad to go!"
Her heart was hot within her; it was exactly like
Carleton's relations, they never put themselves out
for anybody!
But all the more need for Carleton to stand by now.
A saving idea occurred to her, solving the problem
at once. Why hadn't she thought of it before? The
rain was hurling itself at the window with renewed
violence. She must manage to get to the Wakefields'
at the corner and telephone Carleton to have his
dinner in town-as they would all have done but for
the baby's needs and meet them there afterward.
He liked to come home and dress first, but he
wouldn't mind this time. She must slip out without
Father's seeing her.
As she splashed through puddles in her arctics, the
rain rattling down on her umbrella and Carleton's
mackintosh, her mind was uncomfortably reverting
to the parting from her husband that morning-there
had been something lacking. To married lovers each
30
MARRIAGE
day differeth extremely in glory-there is a deepening
of the joy of affection, or an imperceptible lessening
of it; there are the days that seem to make neither for
progression nor retrogression, and yet of which it is
dangerous to have too many; non-recognition may
slide so far that what should be the thrilling pleasure
of recovery turns into an irritation. It is a fact often
overlooked, that, taking it by and large, there is no
being more inwardly sensitive to the changes in do-
mestic atmosphere than the unanalytical American
husband.
Carleton had gone off that morning, after the
vaguely unsympathetic conditions of the past week,
with an indefinable effect of glad escape from house-
hold demands that impressed itself on her even in his
kiss of farewell.
Sally was more in love with her husband than
when, nine years ago, they had begun life together;
she knew that his love for her had grown also. That
was what it was to be really married. But she had
a sudden consciousness now that she had perhaps
been tiresome in asking him to do a great many
things lately, from the first moment he entered the
house until he left it; she didn't want him to be glad
to get away from her! He never refused to do what
she asked of him, but he had told her once that he
was exceptionally busy at the office these days. She
had a strange sense of their being out of touch. The
rain beat in her face and chilled her heart.
When
REALLY MARRIED
31
she heard his voice she would feel better; he would
say, "Stop imagining things!"
She had another inspiration when Jimmy, the
nineteen-year-old son and heir, came to her ring at
the Wakefields'.
"Oh, Jimmy! don't you want to go to the
theatre with us to-night? My father has two extra
tickets!"
Jimmy shook his head. "Thank you, but I've
got a date myself. Mother's out."
"I only want to use your 'phone, if I may," said
Sally. "Ours is out of order."
It seemed hours before Central got the right num-
ber, but at last-
“Oh, Mr. Truefit, is this you? This is Mrs. May
speaking. Is Mr. May there?-What?-Went out
after lunch and said he wouldn't be back at the office
again? Do you know where I could reach him?-
Had a good many places to go to?-No, it's nothing
important, thank you! Good-bye."
Out in the storm all that afternoon! As he him-
self would have expressed it for her, it was rotten
luck.
She called up a couple of friends who might retrieve
the party; one was in bed, the other in Philadelphia.
She tried vainly to get the promise of a taxi later.
She carefully laid the coin for her city call beside the
'phone before leaving.
A rainy evening in town has, at least, its cheerful
32
MARRIAGE
illumination of electric lights and flashing motors;
there is a sense of populousness, of action, of speed.
But in an outlying suburb a rainy winter night is the
blackness of desolation.
The outline of a man bent forward against the
storm was the only sign of life as Sally returned
home. But her spirit obstinately rose now against
failure. She would find some way to save the day
yet.
The two children were having their early supper at
the little round table under the big clock in the dining
room. Carley looked up to ask: "What's the matter
with Grandpa? He walks up and down all the time
and won't smile.'
""
He looked very old and worn as he caught sight of
Sally.
Where have you been?" he asked anxiously.
"Only to the Wakefields' for a minute. The rain
isn't so bad when you're out in it,” she lied.
He visibly brightened. "That's just what I've
been thinking. Of course I don't mind weather,
never did!"
Perhaps Carleton might feel that way, too. She
had a sudden buoyance of hope as she ran upstairs
to change her things. She opened the door of Carle-
ton's closet by mistake, and saw The day had
a curse on it, that was all there was to it! A glance
had shown that his new shoes were missing-he had
worn them into town. The fact covered a tragedy.
REALLY MARRIED
33
Carleton was afflicted with a little toe on his left foot
that had to be treated with peculiar consideration.
If a shoe-which, of course, must not be too tight-
were the least bit too broad, the toe slipped back
under its fellows, to be trodden into agony by them
at every step. If Carleton had been out in the rain
all the afternoon in those shoes
Her loving heart swelled with pity for him. Oh,
she couldn't ask him to take another step! She
thought swiftly of the time when she had fallen on
the ice and hurt her knee and he had carried her all
the way home
home of all the big crises in which he had
so dearly come to her aid. She wouldn't sacrifice
him now for any one! If Father had to be disap-
pointed, he had to be; she would try to make up to
him for it by her companionship.
She dressed hurriedly. There was only one thing
left now for her to do: she must manage to speak to
Carleton before the Major saw him, to at least fend
off the blow of his first inevitable words of horrified
surprise and protest.
She hugged the baby to her, a little fat warm bun-
dle, as her one comfort in this dreadful, endless day,
before putting him to bed.
“Well, you are all dressed, I see,” said the Major,
sighing. "My, my, it seems to be raining harder
than ever! It will be pretty tough on the boy to
go out again to-night, and you won't want to go with-
out him. I intended this for a pleasure, you know,
34
MARRIAGE
my dear, but I suppose we'll just have to give it up
this time.'
"Not a bit of it!" said Sally, with forced cheeriness.
"Waste all those lovely tickets? Not much!"
She went to the front door and looked out into the
downpour; no signs of her husband! But the Major
had followed her.
She got away from him and slipped down the base-
ment stairs to peer out secretly from the lower
door.
"Where are you, Sally?" he called. "Come up
here, my dear.”
There began a wild game of hide and seek, Sally
and the Major each on the watch for the first glimpse
of the homecomer. She swept the children out of
her way, when, evading her father, she dashed up
or down to either point of vantage.
"Don't put dinner on the table yet," she ordered
Maggie.
Ellyn was having hers on a tray in her room and
trying a new complexion cream. Howard was still
glued to "The Hound of the Baskervilles." The
Major settled into a steady walk forward and back
in the upper hall, opening the front door at each
round to look out, and Sally in desperation took her
stand half in the wet areaway. Would Carleton
never come?
At last, at last, through the darkness of the deluge
his figure materialized unexpectedly near, as, closing
REALLY MARRIED
35
his umbrella, he turned toward the upper steps. His
arms were full of bundles.
"Oh, Carleton, Carleton! Come this way, down
here!"
Her hands groped for him, dragged him to her.
The touch of his dear body, even in his wet overcoat,
seemed salvation, though he had an effect of resist-
ance, as if the dividing haze of the last few days was
still there.
'What's the matter? Let's get inside.'
"No, no! wait a moment. I've got to speak where
Father can't hear. He is in the hall above waiting
for you."
"Say it quick, then! I've been out all the after-
noon in these infernal shoes. My toe
“Oh, I know it all, dear!" Her whispered words
came in a torrent. "I tried to get you on the 'phone
to remind you this is the night of Father's treat,
that he's been planning for months-not to-morrow,
as you thought."
"To-night! Holy mackerel!"
He stood staring incredulously at her in the ray of
light from the half-closed door behind them.
"Well, you can count me out, then. You don't
mean you want me to go back to town now?" His
voice was outraged.
"No, no, dear! Don't talk so loud. I wouldn't
have you do that for worlds. I've been so sorry for
you! But-but-" Her agonized voice broke.
36
MARRIAGE
"Please, please, don't speak that way to Father. If
you can only say something-I don't know what!-to
sound as if you were disappointed, it might make
things easier for him. It's been such a dreadful day!
Howard and Ellyn have been acting up, and won't
go, and I can't get any one else on those tickets, and
Father's heartbroken on your account. I can't tell
you how he's been watching the weather; it's nearly
killed him."
"Let's get inside," said her husband again. He
deposited his packages on the floor. "Here are the
coffee, and the bacon, and the oranges.
وو
For a moment her world hung in the balance. The
small face raised to his was white and drawn, with
frightened eyes; so had she looked the night before
the baby was born.
"Hel-lo!” he said gently, as he stooped to kiss her.
"Why, why, you mustn't get worked up like this over
nothing!" He stopped short with his hand on her
arm as the Major's voice came from above in tremu-
lous appeal:
"Oh, Carleton, Carleton! Is that you at last?”
At the note of tragedy Carleton registered, as they
say, consternation; his jaw dropped; he looked wildly
around as if for escape. Then his eyes met Sally's
A swift change came over his coun-
tenance, he drew his mouth down in a humorous
resignation. A generous kindness seemed to ema-
nate from him as enfolding as light, as he murmured:
once more
REALLY MARRIED
37
"Well, what do you know about that!”
Sally caught her breath—always when she needed
it the miracle of his help was made manifest. His
arm was around her as they went upstairs to meet the
tall, thin old figure at the top.
66
Carleton, you poor boy! You won't want to
go out again!"
"Who minds a little rain?" said his son-in-law
hardily. "Just the night, I'll say, to get off for
some fun."
If you had seen Father's face then! Old?
Not a bit of it!
"Two
“What's this I hear?" Carleton continued.
tickets to spare? I'll have to kick off this shoe, it's
murdering me. No taxis, of course. I'll settle all
this! Don't you worry, Sally, I'm not going to walk;
I couldn't."
He paused for breath as Carley and Maisie hurled
themselves upon him in welcome.
"Here, children, leave your Dad alone. I've got
to get to the 'phone!"
"It isn't working," moaned Sally.
"Yes, it is Give me Mountain 1670. Hello
-hello! Is this Mr. S. Q. Watts?-Well, Squatty,
this is the president of the United Goldfish Creamery
Association. Yes, I supposed you'd recognize the
voice. The Missus still away?-Anything doing
to-night with you and your kid brother? I thought
not, The question is, can your car make this house
38
MARRIAGE
and the 7:30 train afterward?-Fine! We're off on
a theatre bat, the Major's party; two tickets to do-
nate. The Major's some prince, I'd have you know.
Yes, it rains; we expect to land on Ararat. Are you
and Jim in on this? We're only asking you, on ac-
count of the car, y'un'erstan'- Sally's horrified.
What did you say? Take us all the way into town?
Oh, that's too much! All right, we'll expect you."
He turned to his wife to say, "Never mind my
dinner, all I want is to change and soak up my feet.
It was a wonderful party. It wasn't only that the
hilarious guests motored them all the way into town,
or that the play was "Peg o' My Heart," or that
Father, dear Father, beaming with a touching joy,
sat between Carleton and Sally, and saw that no one
lost a point-there was, besides all this, a deep inner
glow of pleasure, an overtone of harmony that made
itself felt even to those least aware of its cause.
As for the supper at the Bamboula afterward
But why go into details? The Major never did things
by halves. As Jim remarked, "Oh, boy! That was
some eats." If Sally felt a pang for Ellyn, at a re-
membrance of the girl's face over the banisters as
the gay party left the house, she sternly quenched it.
Ellyn would have to learn.
It was after their return-singing all the way,
Father's bass, mind you, joining in-that Sally, get-
ting ready for the night, with her hair unbound,
leaned against her husband's shoulder to say:
REALLY MARRIED
39
"I don't know how you manage it-you never
fail me!"
"That's the big idea," he announced; the tender
pressure of his arms around her voiced the unspoken
words:
"And I never will!"
J
MISS CONIFEE
BY JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER
UST as she was about to vanish from his office
Lewis Beitleman stopped Miss Conifee. While
she had been sitting beyond the arm exten-
sion of his desk, listening, as usual, with her gaze
concentrated on a pencil turning in her thin fingers,
he had been half conscious of something disturbing
in her appearance. This impression had left him,
been absorbed in the immediate subject of his address,
but it had returned in time for him to bring her to
a stop at the door.
"Miss Conifee," he said.
She came halfway back, her brow marked by a
query in which there was a trace of impatience. He
gazed at her swiftly and then looked down at a heap
of catalogues.
"What I wanted to say was
" he began; but
this displeased him. "I was thinking lately," he
went ahead more directly, "that you've had too much
to do, been doing too much. Now this last matter
is disposed of you might as well take a rest. The
shore's nice late in May; you'd better run down for
a week or so."
40
MISS CONIFEE
41
"But this last matter isn't done," she replied
sharply; "we don't know as we can get a leather that
will suit our purpose; the prices'll have to be lower
than any we're quoted on first-class material; and we
ain't right certain how many jobs it would take to
bring us out.'
""
“Details,” he replied, dismissing them with a
waved hand; "I can dispose of all that in the morn-
ing. No, I'm set on you getting a rest. The truth
is, you look a mite tired. You've been going it too
hard at the office again."
A slightly deepened colour, a mere trace of warmth,
answered his solicitude. "No more than usual," she
answered him. "I can take a day or two later, when
things are fixed." In reply he asked how her mother
was. "Well enough," she replied almost defiantly.
Lewis Beitleman accused Miss Conifee of a falsehood.
"You work yourself to death for me here, and the
same at home for your mother." He grew excited,
angry. "The fact is," he exclaimed, "that you
ought to have an interest in this office. If the world
was run right you would have, too; you'd own fifty
per cent. of this business to-day. It wouldn't have
been nothing without you." She tried to stop his
speech, but, in its sense of justice and injustice, it
swept her remonstrance aside. "You've been with
me fourteen years in all; and, since Swope died, you
and me have been it. You've seen it come right
along from a half-dead carriage repository to a pretty
42
MARRIAGE
lively little automobile accessory concern. You
brought it up as much as any one, that's what you
did; yes, sir, and more. You gave it taste, you gave
our jobs tone; and that's what sold them. And now,
I won't have you working yourself to death as a
secretary, or whatever you call it. If it wasn't for
my family-
>>
Suddenly Lewis Beitleman stopped, his energy,
his conviction, suffered a collapse. He frowned
heavily and tapped with his short thick fingers on the
glass sheeting of the desk. "I want you to take a
holiday," he added impotently.
"Is that all, Mr. Beitleman?" she demanded.
He wouldn't answer her nor glance up, and, after
a moment, he heard the soft impact of the door
swinging shut. "Hell," he swore silently, fidgeting.
All that he had said to Miss Conifee was true; it was,
rather than an exaggeration, an underestimate. She
had been invaluable; without her the business would
have been little or nothing. As it was in the past
year the worst of years-he had made fourteen
thousand dollars. This year, and it was only May,
it was clear that the profits would be sixteen
or better. Or better! Miss Conifee, that was the
answer.
He wondered how old she was-near to forty, cer-
tainly, not a good-looking woman, nothing like as
pretty as Nannie, his wife, had been; and, of course,
not within sight of Eldreda, his daughter. Miss
MISS CONIFEE
43
Conifee was too thin, too small; and then her hair
was no particular colour. She wore glasses of an
unbecoming pattern that a little magnified her very
earnest onyx-brown eyes; and her clothes
to save his life, after being with her day and day for
fourteen years, he couldn't remember a detail of her
dress; inexpensive, it would be that. The care of her
mother must absorb most of her salary.
He had spoken of her good taste, exercised in the
direction of specialties for automobiles; that was
splendid, but it wasn't her best quality; she was prin-
cipally remarkable for the energy of her mind, her
energy, and a quality of determination, of—of cour-
age. She believed in him, Lewis Beitleman, and in
their business. Miss Conifee had a temper of her
own as well; he recalled with amusement sharp ver-
bal exchanges with salesmen in which she had not
been loser. But, at last, she was showing the effects
of this; or, as he had said, perhaps she was only tired.
He would make her take a rest; he'd shut the office,
close it down, he thought extravagantly, if he couldn't
get her away by other means.
Lewis Beitleman smiled; he smiled, but at the same
time he was annoyed—all women were so infernally
set, Miss Conifee and Nannie and Eldreda. They
were unreasonable. Following, indirectly, this fact,
he wondered what Nannie would say to a proposal
of giving Miss Conifee something more, enough, in a
necessarily limited way, to make her future safe.
44
MARRIAGE
Not a half, but a fifth, a sixth, of the business. He
didn't wonder long, this briefest of speculations ex-
pired abruptly in an audible sigh. He could hear, in
imagination, Nannie's heated remonstrance at such
a silly, such a preposterous idea—————
As it was, although his family had asked him that
question, he let no one know how much he paid Miss
Conifee: it was as large, in reality, as he could get her
to accept. She had positively refused a further raise.
It wasn't monumental, goodness knew; but Nannie
didn't understand the details of his work-she
thought that business was a battle between selfish
and dishonest interests in which the sharpest man,
and the longest hours of application, principally the
latter, triumphed. She had large ideas, Nannie had,
and little patience for bad months. The high cost of
materials didn't impress her; they existed, she ex-
pressed herself, to be beaten; no matter what adverse
conditions rose other men always forged ahead.
He wished, vainly, that Nannie and Miss Conifee
might be closer to each other, as close as possible
but on Nannie's account. There was a great
deal she might have from Miss Conifee. This desire
suddenly recalled to him the startling fact that Miss
Conifee, except once when he had been ill, to take
dictation, had never been in his house. She had never
had a meal there! The Conifees, mother and daugh-
ter, had rooms in the congested city, but his house
was in a suburb, where it was restful, quiet, and green.
MISS CONIFEE
45
His customary train of late afternoon carried him
for forty minutes through the city to its outskirts
and the development of which his home was a part.
A short block was commanded by iron arches over
either end of the street, and back of the sidewalks
small detached houses, each laboriously different
from all the others, had a plot of grass, a patch of
eccentric porch, and entrance doors in defiance of the
rectangular. Eldreda was outside, in a deep wicker
chair, absorbed in a magazine of the moving picture
world. She was nineteen, had large appealing eyes,
a spectacular pile of naturally blonde hair, and she
had taken third prize in a beauty contest conducted
by just such a magazine as she was reading.
The photograph of her upon which this triumph
had been based, greatly enlarged, hung prominently
on the wall of the living room. In it her firm shoul-
ders were draped in a precariously informal seeming
piece of silk, her hair was dressed to its utmost effec-
tiveness; and the celebrated, the appealing, eyes re-
garded the world with an innocent and tender sur-
prise. Her mouth the photographer had softened in
shadow.
She nodded to her father as he said hullo to her,
and instantly returned to the page before her. El-
dreda, he knew, was cross with him because he
wouldn't send her to California in order to complete
the success already so auspiciously begun. Sending
her West, he had discovered, was not a simple con-
46
MARRIAGE
cern of transportation; it included clothes, the right
clothes; a hotel in Los Angeles, the right hotel for,
perhaps, a month; and then she would be off, or
rather, on. At least she, supported by her mother,
said she would. The truth was that they were both
out of temper with him.
"With your favourites," he commented in a deter-
mination of cheerfulness.
Eldreda raised her eyebrows. "In my opinion,'
she said, "Gloria Swanson is absurdly over-estimated.
What they all see in her personally I can't make out.
But, then, everyone agrees that what the screen
needs is new types, something different." Her
breast heaved sharply. "Yes, that's the truth—the
public are tired of the old ones. Never had there
been such an opportunity." Her chin drooped grace-
fully on a hand steadied by the chair arm; her body
expressed a sort of resignation; the eyes sought the
far horizon.
"I hear the studios are, sooner or later, all coming
East," he observed hopefully.
"In time for me to play old women bits," she re-
torted, in a voice with a perceptible edge. “That
will be just right for me to keep you out of the poor
house."
"Now, Eldreda," Lewis Beitleman expostulated.
"Now, Eldreda
She turned abruptly away from him, the line of her
cheek, her clenched hand, registered hardly con-
MISS CONIFEE
47
tained resentment. He went on into the house, and
up to Nannie's and his room. His wife was reclining
on a couch. Since she had grown so fat she found it
necessary to rest a great deal. That fatness had
come upon her so overwhelmingly that any vestige
of struggle, of dieting, had been doomed from the
first. She had, simply, expanded, until she resem-
bled an inflated caricature of Eldreda. Nannie had
submitted to this unfortunate physical development;
but that acceptance had left what might have been
called her social ambition untouched. Nannie
wanted, reduced to its simplest form, money, more
money, and still more; she wanted a large house, an
array of servants to hurry about at her wishes and
commands, an enclosed motor car, done in bright
yellow and gray, and clothes, more and still more
clothes. She supposed, in an exasperated and often
repeated phrase, that she'd get none of these, Lewis
Beitleman was so unlucky. But that didn't change
it; she had, she guessed, a right to think about such
things, for her child if not for herself.
"There you are," she said languidly.
"Yes, here I am," he agreed. "I thought, maybe,
Nannie, the evening was so fine, we'd all take a little
ride after supper."
"It blows my hair," she answered, without in-
terest. "And that back seat is too short. To say
nothing of Eldreda's complexion.
وو
"Now look here," he cried. "I've heard enough
48
MARRIAGE
'about that back seat and Eldreda's complexion and
your hair. There's a nice little limousine I fixed up
and the owner can't pay for. Well, I can get it right
and I'm going to buy it for you girls. How's that,
hey?"
"It might be good and then it mightn't," she told
him; "it depends if it roars inside. If it does it will
hurt my head."
“I'd hate to think over the times my head's been
hurt through roaring," he retorted, with a display of
spirit, "and there is another thing I got to speak of
-that's Eldreda. I'm not going to give her three
thousand dollars to go to California with, and she
might as well stop posing and posturing. I ain't a
camera, I ain't a director, and it'll get her nowhere."
"Sooner or later," Nannie asserted.
"What do you mean?" he demanded heatedly.
"Genius will be justified," she added emphatically.
"You can't hold it back."
"Genius!" he was practically shouting. "If either
of you think rolling your eyes is genius you're fooled
before you go a mile. It's the capacity for pains; and
that, on the other hand, is what you give me pains.'
""
"You will keep on getting them, too"-her voice
and manner were placid.
Suddenly he felt absolutely helpless; nothing he
could say would move, affect, his wife, nothing touch
his daughter. It might be wiser to give Eldreda
the money at once, to speed her into the West, to
MISS CONIFEE
49
the acclaim and fortune so surely-in her estimation
and her mother's waiting for her. The trouble
with that was that such a sum would not be the last;
it would, he was certain, be only the beginning; and
it would do Eldreda little good—the girl, even if she
was his daughter, was a fool.
"I wish Eldreda'd get married," he observed
moodily.
"So would any man," Nannie responded. "They
hate to see a woman independent and doing for her-
self, they're Turks, besides." He muttered desper-
ately; and, at last alert, half raising her bulk from the
couch, she demanded what he had said.
"Why, this," he was now defiant: "If I was a
Turk I'd like you fat as thin."
Her interest in anything he might think or feel
vanished. "It's the climate," she asserted; “now if
I was West I could get about more. The weather
there, they say, is elegant." This was a new phase
of the Western project and he was startled at the
possibilities it opened. Did she mean that she would
go out with Eldreda? he asked. Nannie did. He
could spend the winters with them.
"Who would run the business, pay for so much?”
This question, very silently, he answered for himself,
Miss Conifee. She could, very nearly, almost, do
just that. But not quite; it was the combination of
Miss Conifee and him that was so potent.
50
MARRIAGE
The memory of the weariness he had discerned in
his secretary came back to trouble him. She had
grown visibly older in the past year; Miss Conifee
was a slight woman; her energy was amazing. The
day had stayed warm into evening, and they, Nannie
and Eldreda and he, were seated on the porch.
There was an illusory glimmer of moonlight, at inter-
vals there was a faint stir in the new leaves of the
maples along the sidewalk, and the ingratiating, sub-
dued ripple of a piano. At irregular intervals El-
dreda sighed explosively, agonized with the tragedy
of everything; and, though she was veiled from
Lewis Beitleman by the dark, he knew exactly to
which emotions she was giving form and body.
In the softened mood of the hour he wondered if
he were wrong in standing in the way of her supreme
desire; perhaps, after all, she was a genius; perhaps,
with his slight assistance, she might mount in a daz-
zling arc to stardom in the sky. He wasn't, he felt,
mean; but, aside from the already comparatively
large cost of his family, there was the greatest need
now to turn everything possible back into his busi-
it could be counted on to make, when
all was considered, tremendous returns. In five
years, say, with a little care now-he made a swift
mental calculation, and was, himself, amazed at the
gratifying result.
ness
In three years, it might be, they could easily send
Eldreda to the South Seas, and he said so, aloud.
MISS CONIFEE
51
"I suppose," her voice answered out of the gloom,
"you chose the South Seas so's you wouldn't have to
buy me any clothes."
"On the contrary," he replied explicitly, "I was
trying to think of the farthest and most expensive
place I could. It seems like, with you and your
mamma, a person is always misunderstood."
"Don't pick continual on Eldreda, I won't have
it," her mamma put in. "You can't seem to learn
that Eldreda's delicate. She's not a pot but a fine
vase easily shattered.”
He muttered again, and there was a sharp comment
upon that among his habits. "Well," he replied
pacifically, "it's too nice an evening for ructions. I
didn't sit out here to fuss. Things is going too
smooth for that." The smoothness of "things'
brought Miss Conifee back to mind; and, after a
moment's forced hopeful consideration, he spoke of
her to his family.
"Now, take Miss Conifee”
"Who's she?" Nannie demanded.
"That's his stenographer," Eldreda explained.
"She is more than that, Eldreda," he patiently
corrected her; "Miss Conifee is a good half of our
business. She's been with me now for fourteen years,
and in the first month after I got her she near to
paid for all she's had since. Taste! That's where
she's valuable, that's what she is; we're a small
house, but I tell you our work's been complimented
52
MARRIAGE
by big people. We are going, not coming. What I
am getting at is this, and I know—” he hesitated
shortly, and then began again with a rush: "I know
you'll both back me up. Miss Conifee's been with
me, us, for fourteen years now, and she's a part of
the place. The truth is she can't work any more.
without me than I can her. If anything happened
to that she'd be gone. It's her mother and her hon-
esty both together; her mother's got a kind of ex-
pensive sickness and Miss Conifee won't take any-
thing from me but a doggoned moderate salary.
She won't have a penny more, after all she's given
us; but with your help, with your approval, I've
thought of a way to make her take it, to make her
safe, when I pass on to my California. It's this-
we will give her an interest in the business, make her
a small partner like."
He waited, on the mark of an optimistic interroga-
tion, through the deep silence that followed, a silence
finally shattered with an unqualified mort.
"Partner," said Nannie, "partner, her, a stenog-
rapher? You're mad, ain't you!"
His momentary unwarranted expectations, like
glass, fell swiftly, shattering on the hard ground of
reality. Eldreda giggled:
"You don't know the best, because you haven't
seen her why, she's a million and looks like an old
whisk broom with most of the straws out. I'll tell
the street Pa's got some taste himself, I'll say so.'
MISS CONIFEE
53
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Lewis
Beitleman's wife told him, in a fat and unconcerned
voice, “trying that on us.
You must think we never
see anything of life. What makes me mad is your
speaking it right out to us, before your daughter.'
"What do you mean?" he demanded, vaguely
trying to face them both.
"Take it to the fireplug," this was Eldreda.
"How long has this been going on?" Nannie asked.
Drawn rigidly up on the edge of his chair, with his
face burning, he was, at first, unable to reply to
either. When he spoke it was in a repressed, hard
tone. "I told you," he said, "I told you Miss
Conifee had been with me fourteen years, and I told
you, too, that we had her to thank for a half of our
success. What I was trying to find out was could
she hope for a little kindness from you so's she could
look easy at any future. Do you understand-
while Eldreda and you have been setting, sitting,
at home reading the moving picture magazines Miss
Conifee and I were in it with our last breath keeping
a roof over your heads and wondering where we'd
all be next year. She's been in, helped to make,
every deal we've pulled out on--those nights I was so
late we were sitting up figuring in dimes———————
A desolating feeling of the uselessness of any at-
tempted explanation overtook and smothered his de-
termined effort, and a fresh silence fell upon them.
"Don't you give her a Christmas present?" Nannie
54
MARRIAGE
asked. "I said don't you give her a present at
Christmas?"
"Yes," he replied finally.
"Well, then?"
"Now, if she was young," Eldreda spoke specula-
tively, "if she was young and beautiful, with violet
eyes and a mass of hair gold in the sun, and you were
different
if you were rich and distinguished
looking and had a wife that didn't understand you
and your secretary secretly was the daughter
of a man your father had ruined, who was seeking
revenge, and your wife was in love with-with a man
who was plotting to get your secretary in his power,
and
and- Well, if it had any class it
•
would be different."
"However did you think of all that, Eldreda?”
her mother demanded. "It's as good as a picture.
و,
Lewis Beitleman laughed, a noisy variety of mirth.
"I'll tell you what," he proclaimed to the dark:
"I'm going to bring Miss Conifee right home to sup-
per and let you see for yourselves.'
وو
He was doubtful about the wisdom of this proc-
lamation later. Going to the office he revolved it
again and again in his mind; but, confident that Miss
Conifee's splendid qualities must be clear even to
his family, he asked her, very formally, to supper at
his home. She was obviously startled, almost dis-
MISS CONIFEE
55
tressed, and instinctively she declined the invitation.
"Nonsense,” he replied, back on his customary foot-
ing with her, "of course you'll come. My wife said
very particularly." That latter, he felt, since it was
absolutely necessary, was justified.
Well, she'd think; Miss Conifee didn't have a thing
suitable to wear; the gray voile the balance of
this, properly, she kept to herself. That was Thurs-
day, and, finally, it was arranged that she should go
out with Lewis Beitleman, for an evening at his home,
on Monday.
"Isn't it ridiculous we never thought of this be-
fore?" he said to her on the train. "We have had
this house four years now, and you've never seen the
inside of it." But then, he hastily remembered, she
had not been asked to his other house. It was in-
excusable, he was thoroughly ashamed of them all.
Neither his wife nor Eldreda were visible when,
with Miss Conifee, he reached the porch of his home.
“Nannie,” he called through the open door, “here
we are." There was no answer, and he was placing
Miss Conifee in a comfortable chair when Eldreda
appeared. Her manner, he recognized, was that of
the Earl's daughter greeting the faithful retainers
from the castle terrace—there was a quick smile, a
widening of the notable eyes, followed by a congeal-
ing of every human aspect.
Lewis Beitleman knew this posture well, and it
specially irritated him.
56
MARRIAGE
"Mamma," she said, "has a touch of her neural-
gia, and asks to be excused."
"I didn't know that," he admitted incautiously;
"I'll go right up and see her."
"What's the matter with you?" he demanded
sharply, standing before the recumbent Nannie. "It
hurts my head to talk," she explained hastily. He
gazed steadily at her for a space, and then, without
further speech, turned and left the room.
It was
too bad about Mrs. Beitleman, Miss Conifee said.
They were at the table, and he was eating in a savage
silence. Eldreda's hands drooped like spent lilies
on her wrists. She couldn't think why they had
cottage cheese—a disgusting dish.
>>
"Smear-case, Lewis Beitleman corrected her,
taking a conspicuous second helping. He blackened
it with pepper, but failed to perceive any pungency
at all, he was incapable of taste. His disappoint-
ment, his resentment and anger, had hardened within
him; he scarcely noticed Miss Conifee, so slight in
the gray voile, with an appropriate pale flower under
the close rim of her hat. After supper the three sat
uneasily in a May evening palpably silver under the
moon, a warm spring breeze barely stirred the foliage
of the maples, a piano played and stopped.
Lewis Beitleman's anger deserted him, but he
ached as though it had left an actual wound. The
evening was so fine, he had worked so long, so faith-
fully, Miss Conifee was so splendid
why
MISS CONIFEE
57
:
was it all so wrong, so empty of happiness and justice?
Eldreda rose, remaining immobile, statuesque, wait-
ing, for a moment, and then, without explanation,
vanished into the hall. This created in his mind an
image of her leaving for the West, for California.
His wife, as well, had spoken of going. He could
come out and see them in the winters. Sharply a
voice within him whispered, cried, that he didn't
have to: they couldn't drag him to California.
He could just see Miss Conifee's profile, thin and
worn, but fine. Her narrow, precise hands were
quiet, for a little, in her lap. She was the most rest-
ful woman in the world. It would be nice, he
thought, to go for rides with her in the car, the open
car, on June afternoons and through evenings in
July. She knew a lot about wayside flowers and
they would stop for her to put some in her belt.
Then he would drop her at the little place in the
peace of the country where, with her mother, she
lived; and he'd go home to a swept and silent house.
He didn't mind that; he had been, except for Miss
Conifee, so long a solitary in one way that the other
would come easily. The truth was that it would be
very grateful to him, he was definitely tired of being
rasped. Nannie and Eldreda, in California, could
have most of his money, three quarters of it. And
he'd have more; he would have more in spite of the
fact that the expense of sending them away, of really
paying them to go, would cripple him at present.
58
MARRIAGE
It wasn't, however, of himself that he was thinking,
nor of Eldreda and Nannie, but of Miss Conifee.
His admiration for her, he discovered, was immeas-
urable. And rightly; a person of integrity, who had
given her vitality, her life, to him and his interest.
Now she was an old maid. But he discarded that
term as soon as it occurred to him-Miss Conifee was
nothing so absurd. With money, with the security
he was about to offer her, she'd have more hats with
roses, roses pink and not gray.
"Miss Eldreda is beautiful," she said, sudden and
wistful. "We must see that she gets to California.
Couldn't we do it this fall, Mr. Beitleman?”
"This summer," he corrected her; "and Mrs.
Beitleman is going with her."
"But who will stay with you?" Miss Conifee de-
manded.
"I'll be all right," he assured her. "I can go out
and see them in the winters
if I have to."
"I don't understand," she replied slowly.
"You will soon enough," all his restraint was gone.
"I don't care how soon they leave and if they never
come back. If my money is all they want they can
have it, most of it, and I'm well rid of them. What
are they to me, I'd like to know, the way you are?
Nothing. You and me have slaved for them long
enough. From now on we're going to work some for
ourselves, we're going to have a little ease and days
off rolling over the country."
1
MISS CONIFEE
59
Turned toward Miss Conifee he saw her sway in
her chair, and then she blundered to her feet.
"Mr. Beitleman!" her voice was so choked that
she was practically inarticulate. "What-what do
you mean! Whatever in my conduct gave you the
liberty to say such things?" She sank back into the
chair. "I'm, I'm all in a tremble." There was the
stopped heave of a sob. "Understand that I am
leaving your employment as soon as you can get
somebody else."
"Miss Conifee," Lewis Beitleman was aghast, "how
could you think I'd insult you-you being you and me
me? I only wanted to protect you, your old age, I
mean. I tried to get Mrs. Beitleman and Eldreda to
agree in making you a partner, but it was no good,
they couldn't see it; so I was going to let them
50.
"You put it very queer," she said; "but I'm sorry I
took you like that. Thank you, Mr. Beitleman—
A tremor shook and interrupted her. In the silence
which followed he was conscious of the fragrance of
the locust petals as they scattered through the air.
Life might, it ought to be, the same: happy and free
and and sweet. Miss Conifee's voice, small but in-
flexible, final, answered his vague rebellious aspira-
tion. "I could never accept anything from you that
way; remember who they are
and daughter!"
your wife
From the floor above came the thin sound of a lazy
and contemptuous snigger.
THE HOUSE GUEST
BY ALICE DUER MILLER
E
LIOT had been married seven years-and he
was bored; not bored with the temporary
languor that came over him of a Sunday
afternoon when he wished for enough energy to go
and play golf-but actively bored so that every ac-
tion of his life as far as he could see was ugly and lus-
treless. And yet he loved his wife and his two good
little girls. Mary was pretty, good, devoted, and—
though his mind hesitated a little over the last step-
intelligent. Her mind was as alert and vigorous and
quick to understand his thoughts as it had been when,
the autumn after he left college, he had married her.
It was matrimony, he told himself, not Mary, that
bored him; but he was aware that the line was a fine
one. Nevertheless, he had been careful to draw it,
when, the evening before, Sam Francis and he had
been discussing the advantages and disadvantages of
the married state. Sam was a bachelor. He had
come over to dine, and after dinner the two friends
had gone to a moving-picture. Mary was busy
putting the children to bed. The picture, as it hap-
pened, dealt with the life of a young married couple;
60
THE HOUSE GUEST
61
and though all the walls were of rough plaster, all
the doorways were arches, and all the trees eucalyp-
tus, breakfasts and babies and bills seemed to be
much the same on one coast as on the other.
"It's a dull picture," said Sam the bachelor
lightly.
"It's a dull subject," said Eliot, the married man,
bitterly.
This opened the door to a discussion none the less
frank and intimate because it was carried on in gen-
eralities. Eliot began by quoting that terrible sen-
tence from Middlemarch: "I never loved any one.
well enough to put my head into a noose for them-'
it is a noose you know." Sam agreed, but wondered
whether every man as he grew older (Sam was twenty-
six) did not want a home of his own? and at this
point an irresistible desire for self-expression came
over Eliot. He remembered how he had once been
free-free not for evil things but for adventures that
were often nothing more than intellectual-free to
miss a dozen suburban trains if he wanted to finish
a book at the club-free to go to the theatre without
asking himself whether the money would not have
been better spent on the children's shoes-free to
wander all night on the bridges, thinking out some
futile paradoxical philosophy, without owing any one
an explanation of his irregular hours-free even to
give up his job if it became intolerable to him-free
to hazard his future in any way he felt inclined.
62
MARRIAGE
This was the aspect of matrimony that no one ex-
plained to you. You were told about giving up your
club or your favourite cigar, and perhaps a good
tailor, but no one made it clear that your privacy
and your leisure and your liberty to choose must go,
too.
"And to some people," Eliot said judicially, as if
he had nothing in common with people like that,
"to some people Life becomes an intolerable bore
when those things go. Of course that does not
apply to us, because Mary is an exceptional woman."
"Oh, very," said Sam, smiling to himself in the
darkness of the theatre over the fact that any one
could call Mary exceptional.
The conversation made little impression on him,
but in Eliot's mind it created a clear mental picture
of his situation that he could not forget.
Never, it seemed to him the next morning at break-
fast, had his two daughters asked why and when so
often. Mary, neat and pretty at the head of the
table, smiled and poured out coffee. She generally
answered the children with a patience that seemed to
Eliot miraculous but misplaced. She thought that
the young minds were stirred by intellectual curiosity.
But Eliot could not understand why, if this were
true, the children never listened to the answers.
"They listen to mine, dear," Mary would reply,
"because I really try to explain to them. You only
try to put them in the wrong for asking." "Oh, I
THE HOUSE GUEST
63
don't question, my dear, that you are better worth
listening to than I am," Eliot would say, "only-
That was the pattern conversation they usually
had upon the subject, but this morning Mary did
not answer every why and when she seemed not
to answer any one immediately-not even Eliot him-
self, though it was only afterward that he remem-
bered her silence.
When he came home that afternoon, a note from
Mary was lying on the hall table-a not unusual oc-
currence. She had probably gone to the garden club.
She was punctilious about letting him know her plans.
It was the afternoon of the children's dancing class.
The house was deserted. Eliot's spirits rose. He
could actually sit down in his own sitting room and
read-or think-or do neither, without any one say-
ing, "What have you been doing all day, dear?" or,
"Did you remember the butter?" or "Why must I,
Father?"
He did it. He clasped his hands behind his head
and looked at the ceiling. The little country neigh-
bourhood was silent. It was the first moment of this
kind that he had had for months. He thoroughly
enjoyed it.
He began to think about a little parody he was
trying to write for a newspaper-he had been trying
to do it at odd moments-in the train or in his bath
-for several weeks. The occasion that made it
appropriate had long since passed, but he wanted to
64
MARRIAGE
finish it if he could. Within a few minutes, however,
he heard the voices of his daughters returning. He
wished the class had lasted a little longer.
Yet he was not an unnatural father and when they
entered the room, flushed with exercise, elegant in
their sheer white dresses and blue bows, he felt proud
of them and glad to see them. He loved them even
when the following interchange took place.
"Hullo, Father. Do you like my new shoes?
What is Jazz?'
"Well Marietta, it's a kind of music where the beat
is irregular."
"Why is it?"
"Because people like it that way-the time.
changes.'
>>
"What is time, Father?"
Remembering Mary's assertion that he didn't try
to answer them, he paused a moment to consider, but
Marietta went on: "I was called out in front of the
class to make a courtesy, Father. Where's Mother?
Why did she go away?"
"She hasn't gone away," said Eliot, disengaging
his mind, with difficulty, from the problem of time.
"She took a bag with her. Why did she, Father?"
"We'll see," said Eliot, thinking to himself that
she had probably taken the wash to the laundry, as
it was Saturday, and sometimes, if they were short
of sheets, and someone coming to stay
fished her letter out of his pocket. He had put off
He
{
THE HOUSE GUEST
65
reading it for fear it would ask him to do something
that would have interfered with his moment of
solitude. He opened it, with Marietta sitting on the
arm of his chair, and Doris, aged four, balancing on
his crossed feet.
The letter said:
DEAR ELIOT:
Something strange has happened that makes it impossible that
you and I should ever live together again. I want to be alone
for a few days and think over how I can arrange my life. I will
come to the office Monday, and talk it all over with you.
I am
sorry this is Nora's Sunday out, but you can probably manage
somehow with the children. They are so good.
Yours,
MARY.
He became aware that Marietta had been saying
for a long time: "What does Mother say, Father?-
What does Mother say, Father?"
He put the letter back in his pocket. "Oh, noth-
ing, dear," he answered. "She had to go away for
Sunday."
"Why did she?”
There was a question he couldn't answer. He had
no idea-no explanation-no possible theory oc-
curred to him. What could have happened? Had
he done something? Or, rather, for his conscience
was absolutely clear, did she imagine he had done.
something to hurt her? Had she fallen under the
spell of some sudden romance one read of such
66
MARRIAGE
things happening, but Mary! No. Had she gone
mad? He remembered now that she had seemed
silent at breakfast, but not portentously silent. He
had questioned the children as to the events of the
day-had any messages come-had any visitors been
there? No, nothing. It was almost incredible that
you should live with a woman seven years and be
unable to form even an hypothesis as to why she had
left you. Not that he admitted she had left him-
it was just some misunderstanding.
To his first shock a feeling of anger succeeded.
How could any one treat another fellow creature like
that-let alone a husband? And to leave him in
suspense for days! And the children-suppose any-
thing happened to the children?
They came to ask him to sit with them while they
had supper and read aloud. They had asked him
this almost every evening since they had been able
to speak, and he often refused. But this evening he
consented. It was like a reproof to Mary. He
chose Thackeray's "Rose and the Ring" to read to
them. He hadn't read it for years. It was a mag-
nificent piece of narrative. He read it well, too.
At that place where the haughty Count Hogginarmo
stepped into the arena, and the lions rushed out,
saying "Wurra, wurra, wur-rra-" he looked up
to see two level spoons arrested in front of two opened
mouths while four eyes dilated with excitement.
After the children had gone to bed he had a long,
THE HOUSE GUEST
67
uninterrupted evening-one of those evenings in
which he could have finished a dozen parodies-
except that his whole being was taken up with anger
and speculation. He walked up and down the sitting
room all evening, and then went to bed-but not to
sleep. How could Mary have behaved so
began to imagine their interview on Monday—his
side of it, at least. About four o'clock he found he
was going to use the phrase, "My little motherless
girls."
He
By morning, however, he had discarded it as sen-
timental. The feeling behind the words was there,
however. It was Sunday. He would take them to
church. He had never taken them to church before.
He brushed his high hat. He looked very tall walk-
ing down the little lane to the paved avenue on which
the church stood. The children, small and fluffy,
held each a hand. His little motherless girls.
Marietta chatted as they wenɩ. "You never went
to church with us before, did you, Father? You're
always so tired on Sunday when Mother's home.
The first time Doris went to church she thought the
minister was God-all children do. I did myself.
Why do clergymen dress like that, Father? Why do
they?"
If Mary had been there he would have answered,
"Why do you wear ruffles on your skirt-because it's
the custom," and Marietta would have replied:
"Why is it?" and then the conversation would have
68
MARRIAGE
been taken up by him and Mary as to whether Mari-
etta was seeking information or simply trying to
thrust herself into the foreground. But now Mary
was not there he felt obliged to try and answer his
little motherless girl, and she actually appeared to
try to understand him, so that they were talking
rather earnestly by the time they reached the church
door.
And so it went on. It wasn't that Eliot had never
before found his children's pocket handkerchiefs, or
even blown their noses, or put their hats on right side
before, but always he had done these things as a
favour to Mary. But now he did them because
there was no one else to do them-which made it
somehow all very different.
In the afternoon he did not play golf, partly be-
cause he did not want to answer questions as to
Mary's whereabouts, but partly because he became
involved in a hymn Marietta had been most incom-
petently committing to memory for six months.
He was tired in the evening-he looked back on the
day as a hard one, yes, and not a pleasant one, either,
but he had not been bored.
He went eagerly to the office the next day, and
waited nervously through the early hours of the
morning. About twelve Mary came. One glance
at her told him that she was neither crazy nor playing
a joke on him. Her face was the face of a woman
who had been through two days of suffering. They
THE HOUSE GUEST
69
went into his private office without greetings of any
kind and shut the door.
Mary was direct. "I sat just back of you the
other night at the picture," she said. "I could not
help hearing."
There was a pause. Eliot's mind rushed back to
the conversation with Sam, and his heart felt like a
falling elevator. He recalled things he had said
with a relish and bitterness hidden from Sam but
obvious to Mary.
<<
He looked at his wife. Her eyes were blazing.
And yet," he said, "I love you, Mary."
"I thank you for such a love," she answered, “the
dull little woman at home-no, you didn't say that
-quite. Suppose you had overheard me telling Vir-
ginia or Carolina that you bored me to death—that
I'd stopped reading because you never talked of any-
thing but housekeeping details"
“That's most unjust," put in Eliot. "I said mat-
rimony-not you."
"Oh, let's be honest," answered Mary, shaking her
head, as if she were shaking out salt water from a
wave that had passed over her. "Your marriage is
me, and mine's you. And it's duller for me than it
is for you-I don't even get to town every day and
see a lot of people, and yet I'm not bored-I know
what you're thinking you think I'm not bored be-
cause I'm not as clever as you, but―"
"I wasn't thinking anything of the kind," said
70
MARRIAGE
Eliot, and he imagined that he was telling the
truth.
"Of course you were, but that isn't the reason.
The reason is that no one can get more out of Life
than he puts into it or out of marriage, either.
You're not bored with your business-and heaven
knows it's a dull one-everyone agrees to that—
duller if possible than your own home-but it doesn't
bore you. Why not? Because you put a lot of
yourself into it.'
Heretofore a sense of guilt had confused Eliot, but
now he saw light.
"Isn't my work here just what I put into the
home?" he asked.
“After office hours, what do you put into it?” said
Mary. "You come home like a king expecting
everything to be arranged for you-or a guest, who
mustn't be interrupted by the children-your own
children, mind you"
"The men in the outer office will hear you if you
speak so loud."
"I hope they will," said Mary.
ably kings and house guests, too.
"They are prob-
They probably
think they have an inalienable right to be bored by
their women and children, too."
“Well, after all," said Eliot, "it's not a crime to
be bored."
"Isn't it!" she returned. "Now listen to me,
Eliot. I can imagine staying with a man who was
THE HOUSE GUEST
71
unfaithful, or stole, or beat me, but I cannot imagine
under any circumstances staying with a man whom
I bored. Why should I? Good-bye.
">
"Hold on, Mary. Where are you going?" He
would like to have spoken with the tongue of men
and angels, but he was distracted by a peculiar mental
state, he felt it was impossible that he should ever
have been bored with this vital, violent, irritating,
handsome creature, and yet he knew quite well that
he had been.
"Oh," Mary replied airily, "I'm going to my
Mother's or on a trip-I really haven't decided."
And are you ever coming back?" Eliot asked
with a sarcasm that was meant to bite.
Mary took a step toward him, away from the door
which she had almost reached. "Yes," she said,
"I'm coming back, and I'll tell you when I'm coming
back. When you've run the house so long that you
feel uncomfortable if the food isn't good, when you
feel guilty when the children interrupt me, when, in
other words, I'm the house guest-that's when I'm
coming back.'
And she went out of the office and slammed the
door.
THE LOST COLUMBINE
BY JULIAN STREET
BOUT this fancy-dress ball at the country
club to-night," said Archibald Welkins, as
A
his wife, looking very lovely in a French-blue
house-dress, poured the morning coffee, "I don't
quite like the idea, do you, Natalie?"
Her large blue eyes turned up to him inquir-
ingly, as she asked, "What don't you like about it,
dear?"
"Oh, this fool notion of husbands and wives dress-
ing separately-not knowing about each other's cos-
tumes.
Often in the eight years of their married life he had
been disturbed by her trait of remaining silent when
she disagreed with him, and now, as she did not reply,
he stated more explicitly what was in his mind, say-
ing: "I think we'd better tell each other what we're
going to wear.'
"We'll find out when we unmask," she said.
"But the idea of secrecy is all nonsense," he in-
sisted with a little show of heat.
"Pass Mr. Welkins the marmalade," his wife said
to the maid.
72
THE LOST COLUMBINE
73
He helped himself, then repeated: "I think it's all
nonsense!"
But she did not answer. He had never known a
woman with Natalie's capacity for silence. It gave
her a mysterious power.
"The steward at the club told me they'd had over
five hundred acceptances," he went on. "That
means a mixed crowd, and I'd like to know what
your costume is going to be so I can look after
you."
"That's sweet of you," she answered, "but I'm
sure I shan't need looking after."
"You might," he declared.
"Oh, I don't think so-not at our own country
club."
"But I tell you it's going to be a mixed crowd.
You're a darn pretty woman-and a blonde." And
as again she was silent, he added in a tone that
seemed to hold a hint of accusation: "Blondes al-
ways attract more attention."
"Take some hot toast," she said to him as the maid
appeared. He took some, and waited till she left
the room again.
"You know perfectly well," he declared, “that
fancy dress makes people reckless. They feel that the
lid's off. There'll be a lot of flasks, too—there's so
much more drinking since prohibition. That's an-
other reason why I want to know.”
"Know what?”
74
MARRIAGE
:
"What?" he repeated irritably. "Just what I've
been asking you—what you're going to wear.'
"I don't think it would be playing the game to
tell," she said. "How do you like this bacon? It's
a new brand."
"Look here," he said sharply, "you can't put me
off that way! You say you don't need looking after,
but your memory doesn't seem to be so good as
mine! Before your flirtation with that dolled-up
French officer you fell for, I used to think
you didn't
need looking after, but I guess I"
He stopped.
Having thrown in her face the one indiscretion of
her married life, he instantly regretted it. He always
did. He always told himself that to keep referring
to it was to take a mean advantage of her, and that
he would never speak of it again. Strange that he
could not overcome the jealousy left with him by
that episode of several years ago, when, ever since,
she had been so circumspect. After all, it had been
only a mild flirtation, and the Frenchman wasn't
very young. Telling himself he was a fool to keep
thinking of it, and a greater fool to harp upon it, he
left the table, angry with her and with himself.
In the interest of secrecy it had been arranged that
the wives should dine and dress together in certain
houses in the neighbourhood, while the husbands
dined and dressed in others, and that all should arrive
THE LOST COLUMBINE
75
at the club masked. Archibald Welkins conse-
quently left the limousine to be used by his wife and
her friends, and taking the bag containing his cos-
tume, which was supposed to make the wearer re-
semble King Charles II, drove in his yellow roadster
to Tom Bayne's house, where he found a group of
men, some of them already in their finery, some
dressing, all with cocktail glasses in their hands.
By the time he had donned the regal wig and knee-
breeches, and drunk three cocktails, he began to
change his mind about the fancy-dress ball; it was
an amusing idea, this secrecy; he was going to have
a good time. Nevertheless, when he asked Natalie
what she was going to wear, she should have told him.
He still felt some resentment about that.
Tom Bayne had an excellent cellar; with dinner
he served large highballs, and his Scotch was ex-
ceptionally good. As Archibald Welkins was leaving
the house with the others, he caught his reflection in
a mirror and approved thereof. The jewelled star
shone brilliantly upon his breast; the black silk stock-
ings admirably set off his leg, which was a good leg,
and the long, dark, curly wig gave him, he thought,
a mysterious appearance. What did he care, after
all, about Natalie's refusal to tell him what her cos-
tume was to be? He wasn't going to worry about
Natalie to-night. Not he! He had offered to that
was enough. She didn't know what he was wearing,
either. Yes, he was going to have a good time!
76
MARRIAGE
With an Arab sheik, a Chinaman, and a soldier in
the buff and blue of the Continental Army as his
passengers, he drove to the club, handling the yellow
roadster dashingly, and to avoid being recognized by
his car, parked beside the drive at some distance from
the door, and walked with his companions to the
clubhouse.
The doors and the French windows were open;
dancing had already started; they could hear the
music as they walked across the grass. Inside the
ballroom door Welkins paused to review the animated
spectacle. Masked soldiers, clowns, coolies, court
beauties, bull-fighters, odalisques, woman jockies,
geishas, harlequins, cowboys, Spanish señoritas, man-
darins, pirates, nymphs, Turks, vaqueros, peasants,
whirled to the music of the jazz band.
Looking them over as they circled past, he pres-
ently thought he recognized his wife. She was
dressed-if indeed it was Natalie-as a French court
lady, with patches, a high, powdered wig and a
panniered gown of flowered silk, and was dancing
with a Roman gladiator. He watched her around
the room. Her height, her figure, her carriage were
Natalie's, and the costume had a dignity character-
istic of his wife's taste. When she had passed several
times he was quite certain of her.
Presently he became interested in Cleopatra, who
fox-trotted into view with Napoleon. Natalie would
have made a handsome Cleopatra, too, were she the
THE LOST COLUMBINE
77
sort of woman who would appear in public in such
scant attire.
That Cleopatra creature was certainly attractive!
He cut in on her and, as they danced, talked in a
false voice, endeavouring to guess her identity.
But the fair Egyptian was popular. An Indian Ra-
jah soon snatched her away, leaving King Charles II
free to seek out a fascinating Columbine who sev-
eral times had passed near him in the dance, and
seemed responsive to his glances.
Presently, with a beau of the Colonial period, she
came down the floor, a sprightly figure in a short black
satin dress with a waist cut to a deep V in back,
springy little skirts, thin openwork stockings, and
ballet slippers. With her huge white ruff and her
black cocked hat pulled down at a saucy angle over
bobbed red hair she looked the incarnation of irre-
sponsible gaiety.
He cut in and instantly discovered that her dancing
confirmed his favourable impression.
"I've been aiming to catch you," he told her, dis-
guising his voice by pitching it low.
"Ave you, monsieur?" she chirped. "Well, zen,
we are sympathique, for I, too, 'ave look at you, you
beeg, 'andsome man!"
The minx! She gave his hand a squeeze-which
he promptly returned.
“Are
you French?" he asked in his assumed voice,
for are you putting on that accent?"
78
MARRIAGE
"W'at you sink, monsieur?"
"I think," he said, "that if you're putting it on
you do it very well.”
“An' you, you bad, week-ed keeng! 'Ow is your
Nell Gwyn?" she asked.
"Never mind Nell Gwyn," he said. "It's you
I'm interested in. Don't tell me you're just a nice
little married woman in disguise-wife of some man
who commutes to business in New York and drives
a ball around these links on Sundays.'
"You 'ope I'm real naughty Franch girl?" she
asked archly.
"Indeed I do!"
"Well, zen, follow me!" And with that she dis-
engaged herself and flitted swiftly through a French
window leading to the terrace.
Pursuing, he lost her momentarily, for in the dark-
ness her black dress gave her an advantage; but as
she scampered down the steps toward the lawn and
the links he caught sight of her white ruff, and sped
after her. As she disappeared behind a large syringa
bush he heard a rippling laugh, and running to the
other side, caught her. Then, as she was pant-
ing and laughing, and as it was dark, and they
were masked, and the syringas smelled so sweet, he
placed his hand beneath her chin, tilted it up, bent
over, and was about to seize the fruits of victory,
when she eluded him and ran off, laughing, in the
direction of the drive.
THE LOST COLUMBINE
79
A prisoner who escapes and is recaptured pays an
added penalty, and when after another chase over the
silver-green of moonlit grass Charles II grasped the
elusive Columbine, and exacted what he deemed
just tribute from her lips, he was flattered by the
apparent willingness with which she paid. In-
deed it was that seeming willingness which made
him confident that she would not again become a
fugitive, and he was holding her lightly when, in
a flash, she was off once more, this time running
toward the clubhouse.
Just at the doorway he caught up; but his appeal
to her to stay outside was unavailing.
"No," she said firmly, "you are a naughty boy, an'
I 'ave foun' you out. My 'usban' would not like."
"Your husband needn't to know," he urged, "nor
my wife, either. That's what makes a party of this
kind such fun."
"Yes," said she, "but I 'ave already 'ad fun
enough, my Keeng." She moved into the ballroom,
and he followed, and stood with her for a moment
inside the door, watching the dancers.
"Look!" he exclaimed suddenly. "There's an-
other Columbine. She's like you-exactly like you,
even to her red hair!"
"Yes, we came togezzer.'
""
"But suppose I were to lose you," said he, "how
could I find you again? How could I tell the two of
you apart?"
80
MARRIAGE
"Zat is a question!" she said.
"Let's dance and talk it over.'
"No, monsieur," replied the Columbine, "now I
mus' dance wiz somewan else." As she spoke, a
cowled monk came up and whirled her away.
"Meet me here afterward," King Charles cried
after her, but she shook her head.
"How shall I find you, then?" he demanded, fol-
lowing.
"I don't sink you can!" said she, and again he
heard her tantalizing laugh.
Crestfallen, the monarch retired to the doorway
and watched for her, and presently, thinking he rec-
ognized her dancing now with a Sicilian brigand,
he cut in. But apparently this was the other Col-
umbine, for she did not seem to know him; her
step was not so light as that of the one he sought,
nor did she speak with a French accent.
Never mind! He would find his lost Columbine.
He was determined to find her. And when they un-
masked he would learn who she was. Time and
again, when he saw a Columbine wearing a black
cocked hat over bobbed red hair, he cut in, but only
to be disappointed. Always it was the wrong one.
He questioned her about the other but could get
no satisfaction.
When, at midnight, the dancers unmasked, he
hastened about the ballroom and the adjacent apart-
ments looking for the Columbines, but now he could
THE LOST COLUMBINE
81
find neither of them. Nor could he find his wife, nor
yet the white-wigged lady of the French court whom
he had identified with her.
Where could Natalie be? She ought to be in the
ballroom. That was where a well-behaved married
woman belonged at a party such as this. It wasn't
wise to go wandering about outside, in the moonlight,
with a strange man, masked. Temporarily he forgot
the Columbine in his concern about his wife's be-
haviour, as he looked for her upon the terrace and
the lawn.
Failing to find her he returned to the club and
telephoned home.
"Hello?" He was surprised to hear Natalie's
voice upon the wire.
“I've been hunting for you all over the place,” he
said. "What took you home so early?"
“Oh, I got enough of it.”
"Didn't you have a good time?”
"I had an exceptionally good time," she assured
him.
"But I don't understand why you went home,
then."
"Fancy dress makes people do all sorts of un-
expected things," she said, and before he could com-
ment upon the cryptical character of the remark, she
asked: "Have you been enjoying yourself?"
"Oh, I've had worse times," said he. And think-
ing to make a final search for his lost Columbine, he
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added: "I guess I'll hang around a while if you
don't mind."
"No, I don't mind at all. Good-night, dear," and
she hung up the receiver.
"Well, dear," said Archibald Welkins, next morn-
ing, as his wife, looking very lovely in a shell-pink
house-gown, poured the coffee, "it was a pretty good
party, wasn't it?" And as she nodded, he went on
in an expansive tone: "Made it rather amusing, after
all-husbands and wives not knowing each other's
costumes-don't you think so?”
"Very amusing," she said.
“I was quite sure I recognized you," he told her.
"Oh, were you?" She looked up quickly.
"Yes, in a French court costume, with a high
powdered wig."
When she smiled and shook her head he was sur-
prised.
"That wasn't you-honestly?"
"No, honestly."
"What was your costume, then?"
"I went as a Columbine," she said; and addressing
the maid: "Pass Mr. Welkins the strawberry jam."
In silence he helped himself, spread jam upon a
piece of toast, ate it, and drank his coffee. Then:
"There were two Columbines dressed exactly
alike," he ventured.
THE LOST COLUMBINE
83
"Yes," said Natalie. "This is the last of that
new bacon. Have you made up your mind yet how
you like it?"
"Oh, it's very good," he answered abstractedly.
"Both the Columbines I saw had red hair."
'Wigs," she returned succinctly.
"Wigs?" he repeated. "They didn't look like
wigs."
"Men aren't very quick at detecting such things,'
said she. Then to his infinite surprise she added:
"Do you remember that nice French officer I liked
so much three years ago?"
"Why, yes.
"Well, he wore a toupee."
"He did? How do you know?”
"I noticed it the first time I saw him."
"Um," he said, and sat reflective for a time.
She, too, was silent.
"Look here, dear," he said, after a time, "let's
never speak of that French officer again. It was long
ago, and anyway it really didn't amount to any-
thing."
If he expected recognition of this magnanimity he
was disappointed for still she did not speak.
"Who was the other Columbine?" he asked in a
casual tone as he was about to rise from table.
"Evidently someone who went to the same cos-
tumer I did," his wife replied.
"But-
""
He checked himself; then, with some
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feeling, added: “I don't think they ought to send out
duplicate costumes for the same party, do you?”
But she failed to reply.
Often in the eight years of their married life he had
been disturbed by her trait of remaining silent when
she disagreed with him. He had never known a
woman with Natalie's capacity for silence. It gave
her a mysterious power.
FOR VALUE RECEIVED
BY EDITH BARNARD DELANO
Ο
N THE way back from the post office Anita
Prescott stopped at the turn of the road,
where the old apple tree was shedding its
rosy petals, and looked down at Miriam's house.
Just so had she first seen it on that day four years
before, when she and Michael were on their honey-
moon wandering; yet it was not that moment of com-
panioned ecstasy that had brought her back, but the
remembered peace of it. Peace that was what she
had wanted; when she determined to escape from all
that was not peace, all that was disillusion, a sudden
vision had come to her of the little white house under
the elm, the red roof, and the smoke wavering up
from its chimney, and the strong, smiling woman who
had given them milk to drink. Peace—a refuge
during the long year that she must wait for freedom;
peace that she must have, and that, she told herself,
she should find here. Determination, vision, flight;
then a visit to a lawyer who "took" cases like hers—
as if there could be any other like hers!—and, finally,
speech with Miriam at the door of the white house.
"You don't want to board here," Miriam had told
85
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MARRIAGE
her. "I have a room, yes. And I'd just love to
have you. But this isn't the place for you. You
don't know anything about me.'
""
"As much as you know about me."
The other shook her head. "I guess it's different,'
said she. "Folks around here don't have anything
to do with me. You'd be lonely."
"I want a place where I can be alone."
The woman gave her a steady look; then she said,
calmly, as though offering an explanation that did
not touch herself at all, "My name's Miriam.
Around here they seem to think it ought to be—
Hagar."
Anita flushed a little under the baldness of it; but
she said, "Well-there's a wilderness for most of us.
I am in flight, too."
'Come in," Miriam had said; and so far that re-
mained the fullness of explanation between them.
Anita was thinking of it to-day, because of the letter
she had brought from the village, the letter post-
marked Cleveland and forwarded by the man who
"took" cases like hers. "You will remember that
you were warned," her mother had written. "Your
hiding yourself away now is nothing more than a
pose. It doesn't help things. You can get your
divorce here as well as wherever you are, and you will
come home at once, where you belong. The sooner
it is all over, and we can forget the unfortunate
affair"
FOR VALUE RECEIVED
87
Anita's lips twisted into a bitter little smile; her
eyes hardened. She crossed the road to the grassy
bank under the apple tree, and leaned her elbows on
the fence, looking off across the mellowing fields.
Beyond, a tremulous breath of green along the river;
early ploughed furrows gleaming where the setting
sun touched them; purpled shadows under the hill,
apple-blow in her hair, bluets and violets under her
feet, a world pulsing to new life—this quietude, this
peace, peace but for her thoughts-her being here a
pose! Oh, yes, they had warned her! Heavens, how
hadn't they warned her! She had been won by the
glamour of a uniform; they didn't know anything
about his people; he wasn't their "sort." He was
poor; worse, he was visionary, with those talked-of
inventions of his; did she suppose she could be happy
as a poor man's wife, even though she did have a
wee bit of money of her own? And look at the way
his lips set, and that hard look that came into his eyes
when he faced their perfectly natural opposition to
the marriage! She had always been headstrong,
always wanted her own way; did she think she could
get on with a man like that? Oh, it was unthink-
able: so the family had warned her. And their warn-
ings had but added to her feeling of release, her joyous
sense of conquest, when she had gone to her man.
Four years ago—and now it was all over! Her
mother had no better word for it than to call it an
unfortunate affair, that marriage and the divorce she
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was waiting for. No better word for those fcur
brimming years of life. Only that, for the first glad
confidence of having found her mate; for the happy
making of the little home; for her pride in her
Michael. That, for the daily growing loneliness, the
feeling of being cut off from her own world; for the
slowly creeping reserves between them that had been
swept away, at lessening intervals, by the re-blossom-
ing of their love; that-for quarrels and kisses, for
bitter words and repentant cheek to cheek, for the
hours that he was away from her and his increasing
absorption in his work and her unreasonable jealousy
of it; for the crowning moments of their re-pledged
love—oh, for all of it, everything! Not great things;
not even great things, but little things that totalled
so disastrously high; and, at last, for her conviction
that their marriage had been a mistake, that they
were not meant for each other, that the only thing to
do was to end it, to end it. Then, her flight; her
communicating with him through the man who
"took" cases like hers; and, at last, Miriam's.
Now for a month she had been here, where she had
thought peace must dwell; been here watching spring
come, watching Miriam, thinking. Sap rising, birds
on the wing; Miriam, working; Anita-thinking.
Miriam ploughing, Miriam at work in the garden,
sowing early peas, digging parsnips and taking a
share to the house next door and leaving them on
the doorstep; Anita-watching, thinking. Miriam
FOR VALUE RECEIVED
89
and her father, that old man who gave her no pleas-
ant word, nor helped in her tasks; the old man with a
snarl, a bitter name for her sometimes; the old man
sitting in the sun, or in the window with a Bible on
his knees; Miriam serene in the kitchen, humming,
tramping from stove to table; Anita―idle, thinking.
The cow lowing for her calf; Miriam carrying a brim-
ming pail of milk across the grass to the house next
door, the girl there who went in when she saw her
coming with the gift; Anita-remembering Michael,
his obliviousness, thinking, thinking. Blue birds
nesting; Miriam running to a child who had stumbled
in the road, wiping the tears from its face; Anita-
thinking of the children Michael had wanted, and
she had not. The clod of a youth next door, and
the stone he threw at Miriam, and the way she smiled
when she put hot water on the cut; Anita-thinking,
thinking of the wounds of the spirit that she had
kept to herself and resented, thinking, thinking.
"You aren't much like other women," Miriam said
to her one day, when she had come back from leaving
another unthanked gift at the house next door.
"You never ask any questions."
"Well-you aren't much like other women your-
self," Anita answered.
But Miriam laughed, tossed back a stray lock of
hair, said, "Oh, yes, I am! That's just exactly what
I am!"
The old man muttered an ugly name; Anita
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watched Miriam, watched the swelling apple buds,
thought. Thoughts that were bruises, memories
that flamed and seared; questionings that would not
be answered; no help from the nights or days, no
bread of understanding, no water of comfort. So
had the weeks passed.
The day the letter came she went out after supper
and sat on the doorstep. A young moon had left
the night to the radiance of gleaming stars; the tender
sweetness of the air was pierced by the song of the
little frogs carolling their return to life, and the sad-
ness of past summers, and the joy of the summer
to come; the fragrance of the drying fields was like
an incense.
A world drowsing, yet stirring to
resurrection
course
Michael
at work, of
later, the opening of a door and the
night's air coming in; his step on the stairs, and the
way-the way- Ah! No-no
Miriam's skirt was brushing Anita's shoulder.
"What a night!" she said. There was a basket in
her hand. "Don't you want to walk down the road?
I have an errand. A man who does work for me
sometimes is in trouble."
They went side by side through the song and the
incense and the starlight, Miriam intent upon her
errand, Anita-remembering, thinking. They went
through the village, and those they met passed them
by as though they were shadows; they came to a
house on a hillside beyond, a low, poor house, where
FOR VALUE RECEIVED
91
a lamp shone from within. A man came to the door;
his eyes in his unshaven face looked as though some
fire of pain had burned in them and died, leaving
them scorched. He looked at Miriam.
"I can't come to work in the morning," he said.
"I know," she told him. "I'll be there with you
to-morrow. Here's something I've brought for her
to eat. You must take some, too. You'll need
your strength."
"She ain't et anything yet," the man said. "She's
awful sick-grievin'.'
وو
Before they had gone far on their homeward way
the man overtook them. "I wanted to ask you-
would it be showing respect if I did it for them my-
self? The sexton charges five dollars, and-but I
wouldn't want to do anything that didn't show
respect.
Miriam touched his arm. "It would be the most
beautiful thing you could do," she said. "You'd
always have it to remember that you had done
something for them."
As they neared Miriam's house, she said softly,
"It is such a very beautiful world."
"Beautiful!" All of Anita's bitterness, all the
dregs of her accumulated thinking, lay in the word.
"Yes, it is. Struggle is not beautiful, nor shirk-
ing; but just living is.'
>>
"There was death back there, wasn't there? Pain
first, and death, and sorrow. Is that beautiful?
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And your days the way you have to work, the way
people that stone-
tiful?"
How can you call it beau-
"I know," said Miriam. "I used to feel that way,
too. I hadn't weighed things. I used to think more
about what I had to pay than about what I had.
Of course you have to pay for whatever you have.
Everybody has to pay, one way or another. But
that's only fair. Life's worth it.”
"Never! Nothing could be worth-what you have
to pay sometimes.'
وو
"Ah!" The word was a murmur of protest; then
Miriam said, "Look up at that sky! It was a night
like this that I went away with him. Oh, I knew
what I was doing. I knew what they'd-think of me.
Rightly, too. I knew I'd have to pay, but I'd made
up my mind that what I would have would be worth
it. It's the greatest thing there is; I guess everybody
Į –, or it one way or another. We had always loved
each other; I threw him over; and after Mother died,
and I came back here to teach the school and look
after Father, he was married to someone else. They
lived next door. Yes, those are his children. He
always worked hard, but he never got on. His wife
—she wasn't easy to live with; at last they had to
take her to the asylum-hopeless. Her mother came
to look after the children. Then he got tubercu-
losis. There on the porch, night and day; not a
chance for him here, but in the West So we
FOR VALUE RECEIVED
93
went. He lived eight years. And I lived them.
Now I'm paying, that's all. It was worth it."
Oh, those thoughts that sobbed and sang, those
thoughts that stung and throbbed and flamed!
"Worth it! Then what you had was different, some-
how greater”
"It was just what other women have. Good and
bad. The better and the worse. Marriage is like
that. Neither of us was an angel. You don't live
with any man eight years on honey. His wife died
soon, and we were married before the law; but some-
times I remembered what I'd done, and something
in me shrank away from myself; sometimes he was
lonely, fretful, impatient. We said things; we
wanted things. But we had each other. We be-
longed. Yes, it was worth it."
They walked on through a shadowy place, came
out into the starlight again. "You are so strong,"
whispered Anita.
"Because I came back here to look after them all?
I'd have had to pay, anyway. It's life that's strong.
You don't get away from life. Life makes you pay,
even when you think you're dodging payment.
Honest-life is. It gives-but it makes you pay for
value received. One way or another.”
They were passing the house next door, where the
surly girl and the cruel lad lived. "One thing you
escaped," Anita said. "You must be thankful that
you had no children.”
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Miriam stood still, looked at her. "I would give
all the rest of my life," she said, "if I might have put
a child of mine into the arms of the man I loved. I
would go into any bondage if I might only serve a
living child of my own, and it would be freedom,
blessed freedom."
Anita shuddered. "Ah-you're not like any other
woman! No one else would say that, honestly! Chil-
dren are care and anxiety and mostly sorrow-do you
think anybody deliberately chooses that to-day?”
"I know they do! It's a small price to pay for the
joy of it, child.”
"Never! It's not worth it! I don't believe any
one honestly thinks it is!"
وو
Miriam walked on. "Come with me to-morrow,"
she said. "I think perhaps you'll understand better
then."
So, in the morning, they walked the road together
again; this time Miriam had a great sheaf of blossoms
in her arms. They came to a quiet place on a hill,
and there they met the man of the night before.
There was a small box at his feet, carefully wrapped,
and in his hand a spade. He began to dig, and as
the yellow earth became a mound Anita drew back,
shuddering.
“One was a boy and one was a girl," the man said.
"Twins. The others is all girls.
"Yes," said Miriam softly. "Two to love. Two
to remember."
FOR VALUE RECEIVED
95
"We'll do that," said the man.
do that."
"Both of us will
Anita's hand went to her throat. They waited
until the mound was higher, until the man stood
waist-deep in the earth.
"I guess it's enough," he said, looking up at
Miriam. "They're so little.”
She gave him the boughs of bloom. "Make them
a soft bed," she told him. He took them-blossoms
that would never be fruit-and lined the grave with
them. Anita watched his mired fingers touching
their pink and whiteness, caressing them, laying them
so that no stems protruded. Then he clambered out,
and knelt beside the box on the ground.
"Would you want to see it?" he asked.
"Oh, yes!" Miriam murmured, stooping; Anita
had all she could do not to draw back.
But she
could not take her eyes from those soil-imed
hands with their nails broken by toil as they un-
fastened the paper. The hands were shaking, shak-
ing; the man did not look up.
"It's velvet. See-white velvet."
Miriam knelt and touched the soft fabric. "Oh.
lovely, lovely," she said.
"Twins," the man said, his voice husky. "They're
laying in there with their arms around each other.
They look like little dolls."
"It isn't everybody has twins," Miriam said.
"You've had them."
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* MARRIAGE
"That's what my wife said.
them, anyway, Ben,' she said."
'I'm glad we had
He laid the little
box down upon the soft bed of flowers.
Anita, feeling as though the wings of her spirit were
beating against her heart, stumbled away into the
woods. Last year's leaves underfoot; a dead thrush
in the path; ferns unfolding, and-and the earth fall-
ing from the spade back there.
was life, everywhere
Life, that
honest life, that gave
Bread of
Water of comfort.
and gave, and made you pay.
understanding.
Michael.
She found their little house locked and unlighted;
she guessed that he had not used it since her flight.
She found him on the old couch in his office, an arm
thrown over his eyes in the gesture of sleep that she
remembered. Her picture was still on his desk; but
the littered untidiness of his papers, his crumpled
clothes, the weary relaxation of him, all impressed
her as never before with the pitiable helplessness of
the male, his unconscious dependence on woman-
made comfort.
"Michael-Michael-
just to touch him.
"Oh, on her knees-
The eyes that met hers were like that other man's
who had lost and suffered, blackened from a fire that
had burned too hot and too long.
pered. Then, sitting up, "Nita!
"Nita!" he whis-
It's Nita!"
FOR VALUE RECEIVED
97
:
Not a sob-speech first, and her hands upon him.
"Michael! I've come back. I'm sorry, Michael. I
didn't understand!"
"Understand
""
"It's you I want, Michael and life-to be to-
gether. I'm willing to pay-
""
His grasp on her arms hurt her, but the hurt made
her glad. "Nita! What are you talking about?
Pay?"
"Pay-yes! I've found
I've found out, Michael-I've
thought, oh, thought! I was wrong I wanted
happiness, and I wasn't willing to pay for it. I
thought you could have without paying. I know
better now. You have to pay for everything-life
makes you do that, whether you want to or not.
But it's worth it, Michael, it's worth it."
His face close to hers, his eyes smouldered, with a
gleam of fire in them, deep. "Worth it!"
"Ah-yes! You and me together! That's the
great thing. Nothing else counts. Life I want
all of it, good days and bad; all our joy and even-
even sorrow. And children-I want children; and
work, and—and wanting and hoping-oh, I want
you! You, Michael! I'm willing to pay whatever
I must-
>>
Now it was his arms that hurt, and his heart on
hers that made the singing. "Oh, my darling! Life
can't be long enough to pay for all that! I need
you so.
""
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Oh, spring and blossoming summer, and the fall
of leaves! Oh, life and its song and its battles! Oh,
the dear weight of his head on her breast, her hand
on his hair! Oh, promise-fulfilment!
"Yes, dear-yes! I'm here with you.
THE PERFECT HUSBAND
BY CHARLES G. NORRIS

HERE was sullen silence across the breakfast
table. Lucy Vallentine bent her head, and
unseeing poked at her food. Her husband
finished his ham and eggs deliberately, pushed away
his plate, and lounging back in his chair, sucked the
wind through his teeth with little smacking noises
of his tongue. Then he leisurely folded the morning
newspaper, rose, took his hat and coat from the
closet, and stalked out of the apartment without
a word, sharply slamming the outer door behind
him.
Lucy sat on, thinking. A look of hopelessness,
almost of despair settled upon her face. That was
Tom-that was the way Tom acted; they were in
for another dreary spell of his surliness! She thought
over the thirteen years of her married life; she vi-
sioned the thirteen that might follow-the twenty-
six, perhaps. That was to be her fate: yoked to a
churl, uncouth and ill-mannered, who was insensible
of how he offended her. And the thought that in-
furiated her most was that Tom regarded himself as
a perfect husband, faithful, good, generous, devoted
99
100
MARRIAGE
to her and to his home! It was true enough. In
fairness, Lucy had to admit that Tom was generous;
he was faithfulness itself; he earned a good salary;
he saved; he spent every night and even Sundays
at home, and gave her an ample allowance. He con-
sidered that by this he discharged his duty as a hus-
band nobly, and regarded the cause of their constant
bickerings, which recently he had chosen to treat in
moody silence, as being entirely his wife's responsi-
bility. He never missed an opportunity to point out
to her that he had no vices; he did not even smoke.
He regarded her sourly as an ungrateful spouse a
cranky, unreasonable, nervous woman.
Lucy rocked her head in her hands and moaned.
Tom was so egregiously stupid, so self-satisfied, so
blind. She could have forgiven his obtuseness, but
she could not forgive his rudeness. Every day of
his life he unconsciously affronted her, and almost as
frequently did so deliberately. He growled at her,
sneered at her, and when crossed, shouted her into
silence.
She had rebelled this morning. The incident that
had precipitated the whole trouble had been of trivial
inconsequence; it always was. Tom had said the
cream was sour, and she had casually remarked that
she didn't see how that could be since it was the
morning's delivery, and then he had shouted at her
that he guessed he knew what he was talking about,
and that when he said the cream was sour, it was
THE PERFECT HUSBAND
101
sour. She had said nothing in reply; she had consid-
ered his ungraciousness dispassionately for a time,
and then in the midst of the breakfast she had sud-
denly put her clasped hands down before her on the
table, and said her say temperately and earnestly,
urging her right to courteous treatment. She was
familiar with the look of displeasure that came into
his face as he listened, and reaching for an argument
that would strengthen her words, she had alluded
to Mr. Gray and his wife, who lived in the adjoining
apartment, and that had proved the spark to his
anger.
For Tom hated the Grays, hated everything about
them. The suite of rooms these neighbours occupied
was on the same floor as the Vallentines'; an air-well
separated the two establishments and upon this
source of light and ventilation a bedroom window of
each apartment gave vent. Much that went on in
the Gray household could be heard by the Vallentines,
and Tom and Lucy listened to the stray words and
casual conversations that went on between their un-
suspecting neighbours, unabashed.
Lucy loved the way in which the Grays spoke to
each other. It was so different from that to which
she was accustomed. The man had extraordinary
nuances in his voice; it was beautifully modulated,
and when he happened to address his wife as "my
dear," it was like a caress. Tom chose to ridicule
the little intimate things they said to one another,
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and to imitate Mr. Gray's manner. It made Lucy
acutely uncomfortable, for she admired Mrs. Gray,
was genuinely fond of her, and was in terror lest Tom
should be in turn overheard.
Lucy had had her misgivings as to the decency
of listening to her friend's confidential murmurings
with her husband, but she assured herself that her
motive was not unworthy curiosity. It was merely
that she enjoyed, with a hungry soul, the manner in
which this particular husband and wife spoke to
each other. It was beautiful, it soothed her, it
was like exquisite distant music.
She had come to be more or less intimately ac-
quainted with Mrs. Gray since that lady had moved
next door. The two women visited each other, made
frequent shopping trips together, and sometimes
lunched in each other's kitchens. Lucy regarded
Mrs. Gray with undisguised envy; she considered her
the most fortunate woman she knew. She had looks,
plenty of clothes, an exquisitely furnished apartment,
and she had an adoring husband. No wonder Alice
Gray could be happy.
Mr. Gray was an interior decorator; he was often
away for several days at a time when he went to
supervise the work on some rich man's country home.
He returned home always with a trifling present for
his wife: a bangle, a pair of silver buckles, a lacquered
box, or perhaps only a handful of jonquils. Fre-
quently he took her out to dinner and the theatre,
THE PERFECT HUSBAND
103
}
and once, to Lucy's positive knowledge, he had in-
veigled her down-town in order to buy her a hat.
That had seemed to Lucy the apotheosis of con-
jugal devotion. Her own husband had never brought
her home unexpectedly a present in all his life.
Once in a great while she induced him to go with her
to the theatre or the movies. He had never com-
mented on anything she wore, or took the smallest
notice of hat or gown.
Lucy, considering her own lot and the happy cir-
cumstances that were Mrs. Gray's on this particular
morning, said to herself with considerable bitterness
that while she was in no danger of coveting her neigh-
bour's husband, she did long with all her soul for
some degree of contentment with her own. And
upon these reflections came Alice Gray, her sweet,
composed face free of worry, her serene beauty glow-
ing to-day with unexpected interest.
Alonzo had telephoned, she explained, that he was
obliged to go to Boston; he would have to be away
for several days, and he wanted her to accompany
him; could she arrange her affairs to be ready to
leave with him on the later afternoon train?
Could she? Alice Gray's eyes danced with excite-
ment as she caught Lucy's hand. There was nothing
to detain her, she had never visited Boston, she
thought it perfectly sweet of Alonzo to want her to
go. There was the whole day before her in which
to get ready; she needed a new hat, a veil, and a
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MARRIAGE
bag, and she urged Lucy to come with her and help
her pick them out.
Lucy could not resist. She was not small enough
to refuse to share this friend's pleasure even though
she felt the injustice of Alice Gray's having so much
and herself so little; and the bitter feelings of the
early morning were forgotten as she hastily piled
the unwashed breakfast dishes in the sink to soak,
gave an indifferent glance at the unmade beds, thrust
head and arms into her trim tailored skirt, and reached
for the smart little yellow straw hat which she had
been able to wear only once since she bought it, a
month before.
Later, seated beside her radiant friend on the top
of a Fifth Avenue bus, the spring sunshine flooding
the city, the street gay with fashionably dressed
women, she caught something of Alice Gray's ex-
hilaration.
The two women threaded the aisles of department
stores, priced fabrics, and exclaimed over the novel-
ties. Alice Gray bought a charming hat, the veil,
and a neat little handbag with nickel clasps, and
Lucy indulged herself in a much-needed electric iron.
In buoyant spirits, they made a leisurely progress
at a late luncheon hour to one of the smart new
French restaurants on Park Avenue.
And almost in the entrance way, about to pass
through the revolving glass doors to the street, ab-
sorbed and gaily chatting together, they encountered
1
THE PERFECT HUSBAND
105
Alonzo Gray and a handsomely dressed woman.
A happy exclamation burst from Lucy and she
started forward with a delighted greeting.
وو
"Why, it's your husband-it's Mr. Gray-
But her words died on her lips. Alice Gray's
fingers closed like a vise upon her arm, and the hand
dragged her aside. Something ugly and unpleasant
flashed into Lucy's mind. There was a whirling si-
lence, a dizzying moment while her pulses raced, and
her breath was still. Then, unconscious and still
chatting amiably, Alonzo Gray and his companion
passed into the street.
"Two, please—and in the corner. I like those
upholstered seats." Alice Gray composedly ad-
dressed herself to the head waiter, and serenely fol-
lowed him into the cool and flower-scented restaurant.
"Come, Lucy-
وو
Lucy, shaken, bewildered, the significance of what
had occurred still half guessed, mechanically obeyed.
'Mechanically she ungloved her hands, mechanically
she pushed stray locks of hair up under her hat,
mechanically she ordered. But when the obsequious
head waiter had murmured: "Bien, madame,” and
had departed, she could only keep her eyes on her
plate, and sit tongue-tied, fearful of any comment
she might hazard, miserably conscious of what must
be her friend's humiliation and discomfiture. That
unquestionably had been Alonzo Gray, and the
woman with him had been-Lucy knew with unmis-
106
MARRIAGE
takable intuition that the woman was not of her
world, or of the world of decent women. Alice had
seen it all; she had understood, and had saved Lucy
from precipitating a frightfully embarrassing en-
counter! And it had been Alonzo! Alonzo, the de-
voted, attentive, considerate companion-the sharer
of her marriage vows-her mate, her man, her law-
fully wedded husband! About Lucy's head came
tumbling a castle's walls, and in her ears there roared
the sound of crumbling masonry. She shuddered,
and bent her face closer to the white cloth.
"My dear my dear" Alice Gray laid her
hand on Lucy's arm. "You mustn't feel so badly.
I understand what's passing in your mind; but, my
dear, you mustn't concern yourself on my account!
I know; I know all about it.”
Lucy met her friend's unruffled gaze with widening
eyes and parted lips. Mrs. Gray smiled at her, a
wry, twisted little smile.
"Oh, yes, I know all about it, and-and I don't
care! Alonzo is all that I need in a husband; he is
considerate, attentive, deferential; he likes to be
with me, and to have me with him, and he loves me.
Oh, yes, he does; he loves me truly.
There
have always been women in Alonzo's life! This one
happens to be a clever artist. Alonzo employs her
as a decorator. I even know her name. She's
Flora Balzanni. You know Balzanni, the opera
singer? She's his divorced wife and is quite pro-
THE PERFECT HUSBAND
107
miscuous. Alonzo has been-well-attentive to her
for more than a year. Of course, he has no idea I
know anything about it, and I wouldn't have him
suspect I've learned for anything in the world. You
see, he wouldn't want to hurt me, and he would think
that if I knew I would be offended. But I have no
more feeling of jealousy for this passing fancy of his
than I would have for a good cigar he enjoys after
dinner.
Oh, I know my views are anything
but conventional. I am shocking you." Alice inter-
rupted herself, smiling a rather hard, cold little smile.
"I would shock most women. But I believe alto-
gether too much emphasis is placed upon fidelity in
marriage. As long as my husband in no way jeop-
ardizes my rights as his lawful wife, why should I
concern myself with what he does outside his home?
Frankly, I would rather have him unfaithful to me
in an occasional way, as he is, than have him drink
himself into besottedness, as many a man does,
and bring home to me a throbbing head, a nasty tem-
per, and a rancid breath. Alonzo satisfies me; he
more than adequately fulfills his part of life's com-
panion with me. I am thoroughly content; what
else matters?"
Her own apartment smelled close to Lucy when,
later the same day, she closed the door behind her.
It seemed cheerless, empty, desolate. The mood
into which Alice Gray had infected her all day
108
MARRIAGE
dropped from her like a cloak suddenly falling to the
floor. She gazed wearily at the familiar walls about
her: there was the old faded sofa, the ugly yellow-
cased piano, the carpet with the stain of ink near the
table, the table itself with its missing caster; even
her father's portrait hung askew from the moulding.
In the bedroom were the tumbled beds, and the
kitchen smelled of stale food and dirty, soaking
dishes. It was just like her life: empty, stale, and
drab.
She put away her things and set about getting
dinner, washing the dishes, whipping the unmade
beds together, setting the table. After all, her hus-
band was probably no worse than any other woman's.
She made him a pan of hot biscuits, of which she knew
he was particularly fond.
At six o'clock she heard him come in. She heard
his creaking steps to the closet where he always hung
his hat and coat; she heard him creak his way back
to the front room where she knew he had thrown him-
self down on the sofa and was reading the evening
paper with feet cocked over one hard, upholstered
arm. He had no word of greeting for her; he would
have none; a dark and sullen silence would enwrap
him for days to come.
She put the food on the table at the half-hour, and
called him to dinner. He did not stop to wash his
face or hands or comb his hair; he came just as he
was, sullenly, silently, and hunched his chair up to
THE PERFECT HUSBAND
109
his place. Without a glance at her he began to
eat. She watched him lifting the food to his mouth,
she watched him spreading the hot biscuits she had
made for him with thick, hard dabs of butter, she
watched him as he moved his heavy muscular jaws
around, slowly and deliberately masticating. There
he sat, glum, lowering, unfriendly!
Suddenly something snapped in her. She
screamed; she screamed piercingly; one wild, sharp
shriek. She buried her face in her hands, forcing the
fingers deep into her eyeballs. Then she began to
sob, brokenly, passionately, all the grief pent up in
her bursting out in an agony of weeping.
In thirteen years Tom Vallentine had never seen
his wife cry. He was startled now-alarmed and
shocked. He watched her in pained uneasiness for
some minutes, groping about in his mind for some
way to check the flood of sobbing that beat upon his
ears. It had been a long, long tim since he had
laid a hand upon her in affection, yet now he was
moved by the violence of her grief, and the unfamiliar
impulse came to him. He laid down his knife and
fork, and stared at her stolidly, frowning deeply. He
thought of getting up and patting her shoulder; he
tried to think of something to say, and in his per-
plexity, began to talk at random. He did not know
how to be gentle; he had forgotten how to be tender.
The iron bonds of habit were too well forged about
him. He had always treated his wife with contumely,
110
MARRIAGE
and now when he strove to reach her troubled spirit
with gentler words he found himself only mouthing
a justification of his actions that morning. Lucy
could not suspect that behind the harsh voice and
slow, clumsy words, there stirred within him the
first concern for her he had known in years. Only
the dogged reiteration of the facts about the cream
reached her consciousness. Her sobbing fell silent,
but she still pressed her palms to her cheeks, her
fingers to her eyes. Presently she was aware he had
forsaken the topic of the cream; now it was of his
virtues he discoursed.
I let you live your own life; you go and
come as you please; you have your own friends. I
never ask you how or why you spend the money
every month, and I never let the first go by without
depositing your check in the bank! I never question
what you do with yourself all day; all I ask of you is
to run the house and keep things nice.
don't see how you've got much fault to find with me.
I don't drink or gamble or smoke; I don't go out
nights, and I've never looked at another woman in
all my life! Now, some men
I
Lucy listened until she could stand no more. With
wet tears staining her cheeks, her face convulsed, she
suddenly straightened herself and faced him, her lip
trembling, her hands half outstretched to him across
the table.
"Oh, Tom, Tom," she cried, "I don't care how
THE PERFECT HUSBAND
111
moral you are.
I don't care anything about other
women. I don't care whether you go after them or
not. Seek them, kiss them, have them-do anything
you like! Gamble, smoke, and drink! Deny your-
self nothing on my account. I don't care how wicked
you are.
All I want you to do is to be kind to me,
Tom-be kind! Don't be so ugly and mean to me.
And sometimes—just now and then-try to love me
a little!”
THE CLAUSONS
BY ZONA GALE
LAUSON stepped from his roadster and held
CLA
out his hand to Miss Rickson. But with a
hand on either side of the opening she swung
herself down, landed lightly, gave him a warm, hard
little fist and a thank you almost gruff, and was up
the steps of her boarding-house. The house looked
as if it had measles, and Clauson drove off thinking
what a frightful life Miss Rickson lived: his stenog-
rapher by day and a tenant of a scarred-looking
boarding-house by night. And what a brick she was
-brown, rosy, businesslike little brick. A woman, too.
Eyes that were deep with what could be tenderness
"None of that," said Clauson and turned into his
own street.
He put up his car, walked the half block to his
apartment, and while he waited for the elevator the
thought which he had kept in the background
abruptly enveloped him, seemed to rush at him from
outside: Suppose Miss Rickson were waiting for him
up in fourth-floor front. Romance of a sweetness
almost forgotten might be possible with Miss
Rickson.
112
THE CLAUSONS
113
He hurried down the tiled hall to his own door,
burst in, shouted: "Hello, Jep!" He was genuinely
shocked at himself. He wanted to make amends by
a home-coming such as he had, before now, carried
off when he was too tired to mean it.
"Hello, darling," she said.
He had a swift look at the picture which had
greeted him on so many nights. The brownish room,
the heaped-up table-everything Jep did seemed to
take so much cloth or wool or whatever it was-and
of Jep herself in a street dress busy at nobody knew
what.
She was measuring something. She put up her
face to be kissed, kissed him, smiled absently, said
without looking at him:
"They sent me up some that the moths have been
in."
“Oh, they did, did they?” said Clauson grimly.
He made his preparations for dinner and as he came
up the passage he sniffed distastefully at an odour-
wax, rubber, gravy-the odour of home. The fa-
miliarity of the pictures on the passage walls op-
pressed him-signed photographs, a pergola, El
Capitan. A little gong was pecked at thrice by the
maid trying simultaneously to "dish it"-in the
kitchen. Jep said, "Ready, darling?" and came
toward him, picking threads from her skirt.
They went down the passage. He slipped his arm
about her. She had his hand under hers.
And when
114
MARRIAGE
they sat at table Clauson looked at her across the
soup and asked:
"Did I have my arm around you-just now, when
we came down the passage?"
"Why, yes, didn't you?" she said. "Yes, I think
you did, why?”
"Nothing," said Clauson; "I just wondered."
From time to time, at dinner, he looked at her
stealthily. Fifteen years they had had together.
There were no children. Suppose there should be
twenty-five, thirty-five years more. And they loved
each other. But heavens above them both, how dull
they were.
"I think I'll send that moth-eaten stuff straight
back to them," said Jep. "Wouldn't you, dear?”
"I certainly would, darling," said Clauson.
He thought of the sacrilege of using such words in
that unthinking fashion. He thought of the ab-
surdity of assenting like a sheep to something which
he knew nothing whatever about. He thought of
Miss Rickson-what if some morning she should
bring in his letters and say, "There, dear”
with that good little way of dipping her head and
turning it sidewise without turning her eyes.
They considered the theatre and gave up going.
They considered telephoning for somebody to come
in and make up a table and gave that up, too. Clau-
son built a fire and smoked and Jep read aloud.
Then they sat talking. Once they disagreed on the
THE CLAUSONS
115
ethics of a bit of gossip and had a spirited ten min-
utes. He didn't quite like Jep when she argued
she wore so gentle an exasperation. When they sat
silent Clauson thought of Miss Rickson's restful way
of rejoining "Exactly" to all his opinions. He
suddenly imagined her saying "Exactly, dear";
imagined her sitting here beside him; caught the zest,
the laughter, the thrill which talk with her could
conceivably hold.
Obediently on that he
halted his meditations.
He looked thoughtfully at Jep. Jep was respon-
sive, she had humour, she could be amusing. But
he was so used to her. Her hands, that gesture to
her hair, her absent look, her little crooked yawns.
Not a surprise, not even a variation. She was Jep
forever.
At nine Clauson rose and wound the clock and
observed as usual that he must have it regulated.
“I've heard you say that oceans of times, dear,'
Jep remarked-also as usual.
"Dear" again. What a continual farce! And he
wished she wouldn't always say "oceans." What a
rotten go everything was. How had he got himself
into this miserable little jail of a life, full of clocks and
keys and kettles? What did any confounded thing
matter? No wonder everybody was tired of every-
body else.
He faced about and said abruptly: "I'm going out
for a little while, Jep."
116
MARRIAGE
"Well, where on earth are you going?" she inevi-
tably asked.
"To take a turn around a block or two. I'm seedy,
I'm seedy!" said he, and went.
Ten minutes later he was back and at the look in
his face Jep said: "Why, darling! Is anything the
matter?"
"I wish you wouldn't call me 'darling' when you
don't mean it," he burst out, and added: "I beg your
pardon. Yes, something is the matter. I met
Dibble down in the office. He gave me the tip that
this building is to be pulled down."
"Pulled down!" she repeated, and he wished irri-
tably that she would not let herself look so surprised
-Jep always did that. He had seen her do it in-
numerable times over nothing.
"Yes, pulled down," he repeated sharply. "We'll
all have to get out by fall. Dibble heard it pretty
straight. Says he's got his eye on a flat and he's
going to get out of here now and sublet till his lease
runs out."
"Arthur," said Jep absorbedly, "do you think
we could get one of those bungalows in the new addi-
tion? If we only could let's look to-morrow, dear-
est, and if we can get one, let's move now."
"But I don't want to move at all," said Clauson
bitterly. "I like this place. I'm used to it. What
right has he got to turn us out?”
"I saw one of them last week," Jep went on.
THE CLAUSONS
117
"Darling little cupboards and such oceans of clos-
ets."
""
"I don't want to move at all," Clauson repeated
doggedly. "I'm used to this place
His eye
rested on the deep fireplace that never smoked, on
the familiar brown tile, on the shelves that could be
reached from his chair.
"Well, but, darling!" Jep was beginning. A thou-
sand times had he seen her settle down with the same
gentle exasperation to an argument.
"I'm going to bed,” said Clauson; and went.
Next day they drove out to look at the bungalows
in the new addition. It had been a terrible day at
the office, appointments broken, a big contract lost,
and Miss Rickson at home ill. When he picked up
Jep waiting on a corner Clauson was in no mood to
like a house on a street of pearl.
Yet the bungalows were undeniably nice. Jep was
in ecstasies. "See, darling. Ocns of pantries.”
She put, he thought distastefully, white tiling and an
outside door for the iceman above every wifely con-
sideration. But even he was forced to admire the
closet room, the leaded windows, the compact kit-
chen.
"No corners, though," he growled. "No corners.
I can't smoke unless there's corners-I tell you, Jep,
I don't want to move."
They went home in the rain and all the way there
Jep was absorbedly—and aloud-imagining furniture
118
MARRIAGE
into that bungalow. Clauson sat silent, hunched at
the wheel. He was thinking how frightfully used he
was to Jep's enthusiasms.
"Miss Rickson," he thought, "now she'd be so
different. So still and-and considerate. Thinking
of a man's comfort instead of the closets."
And now
for the first time he let himself think of her without
reproach.
While he was hanging up his coat Jep called to
him from her room:
“Darling,” she said, "when we came in the house
just now did I kiss you?"
وو
"Why, yes, I think so," said Clauson. "Why?"
“Oh, nothing. I didn't think I'd forgotten,” she
answered. "I never mean to forget.'
Clauson thought: "Good heavens, have we come
to this?"
When he joined her she was bending over the living-
room table, all heaped up again with whatever it was
and she was saying that these looked just as mothy
as the others did. He wondered discontentedly if
any other woman on earth found moths in every-
thing, the way Jep did.
“I'll bet you'll find moths in the new bungalow,'
he told her. "I'll bet you'll find moths in para-
dise.
>>
Through dinner she talked of the new bungalow
and Clauson going in by the fire groaned. He filled
his pipe and thought about the fireplace which drew
THE CLAUSONS
119
so well and the old brown tile and the bookshelves
near enough to reach from his chair. But it wasn't
these things which held him. It was their glorious
accustomedness.
"I don't want to leave this place," he insisted.
"I'm used to it-I tell you, Jep, I'm so used to it
that I'm-I'm rooted. I'd be miserable anywhere
else."
"I'm used to it, too," she admitted. "Truly, for
all my talk, I'm homesick already."
"Then let's cut talking about it, for now," said
Clauson.
The evening passed as all evenings passed. They
considered the theatre and gave up going. They
considered telephoning for somebody to come in and
make up a table and gave that up, too. Clauson
lighted the fire and smoked and Jep read aloud.
Then they sat talking. Once they disagreed. Then
they slip ɔed into silence.
And Clauson fell
to thinking of Miss Rickson. He had heard her say
incredibly little and yet he could feel the zest, the
laughter, the thrill which talk with her could con-
ceivably hold. But he and Jep had nothing to say
to each other, really, which they had not already
said.
He rose abruptly. "I'm going out for a little
while, Jep," he said.
"Where on earth are you going?" she rejoined, as
always.
120
MARRIAGE
This time as he went he did not reply.
At a chemist's he called up the scarred boarding-
house and asked for Miss Ruth Rickson.
"I've something I want to talk over with you,"
he told her earnestly. "Are you well enough to have
a bite of supper with me?"
“I am not, thank you," came back crisply. "Won't
this wait till morning? I'll be down at work then."
"It will not wait," said Clauson, just as crisply.
And then she said that the landlady sometimes let
her use her own sitting room and she would see.
Ten minutes after Clauson was in the landlady's
sitting room and Ruth Rickson sat before him. She
was in her office dress and she waited primly and as
if she were about to take dictation; but with a faint,
puzzled frown.
It was a terrible room, this in which they were
seated. The colours fairly locked horns. Above
Miss Rickson's head depended a bright oil of a dog
much too large for his kennel. The light swooped
down from the naked gas jets. There was an odour
of cold storage.
"I can't get you out of my mind," Clauson began
abruptly. "Look here: I want to help you."
"Help me?" She looked still more puzzled. Her
somewhat wary presence was not as Clauson had
imaged it. She made it a bit difficult for him to go
on. He was not very sure what he intended to say,
anyway-had not been sure any of the time. He
THE CLAUSONS
121
had depended on inspiration and her manner was
not inspiring him.
"Yes. Help-help you somehow to get a better
deal," he brought out.
"Thank you. That's very nice of you. How?"
inquired Miss Rickson rapidly. It was the exact
manner in which she sometimes said, "Will you spell
that name for me, please."
Clauson floundered. "I-I don't know,” he said.
"You tell me. What do you-what do you want
to do?"
Miss Rickson was watching him. It came to
Clauson that she was enormously able to take care
of herself, to make her own deals. There in the office,
taking his orders in silence, deferential, gentle, she
had never seemed anything like so self-sufficient as
she seemed now.
"I want to be a stenographer," she said. "That's
fairly plain, isn't it, by my taking the trouble to
learn the stuff ?”
"Yes, of course. But haven't you any other am-
bition? Haven't you ever wanted—” Clauson
was feeling rather foolish, as if the only reason which
he could think of offhand for coming to see her had
failed.
"Why," said Miss Rickson, "I suppose I want to
be married."
Clauson was startled. "You are going to be
married?” he inquired.
122
MARRIAGE
"Nobody that I'd have has ever asked me. But,'
said Miss Rickson gravely, "he may. He may!"
She smiled a little then, and dipped her head.
It went through the mind of Clauson that this
bookkeeper, or whoever he might prove, would be
the one to hear her agree "Exactly, dear." Or
would she agree so very much? Really, she was
very different from the Miss Rickson in his office.
She sat here waiting politely to hear what he was
going to say next. And what was he going to say
next?
"You-you wouldn't want to go to college?" he
asked her, looking more foolish still.
"Me? Not much. I'm no teacher born. Three
and a bath-that's my measure. And my mother
will live with me when I get it."
Clauson arose. He looked round him a little
wildly. "But couldn't you live somewhere now,”
he wanted to know, "where-where such a cursed
dog wouldn't sit in front of a kennel he doesn't fit!"
She looked quite blank. "What's the matter with
the dog?" she inquired, and dipped her head, and
turned her face a bit without turning her eyes, and
ran her hand up over her bobbed hair at the back.
She was so utterly charming when she was silent-
and agreeing. She was so utterly different when
now she wheeled toward him:
"Look here, Mr. Clauson," she said briskly,
"why did you come to see me to-night?"
THE CLAUSONS
123
She was looking at him aggressively. And abruptly
-perhaps it was because he just noted the thinness
of her wrists-Clauson was swept by a strong pity.
Poor little thing, he thought, suspecting everybody,
quite on her own in this big town. Poor little thing,
in this fearful boarding-house, just working ahead on
the chance that some bookkeeper or other would
marry her out of things. A lonely sordid existence.
Common little thing, he now saw. He leaned for-
ward.
"Miss Rickson," he said, "my wife and I have
been married for fifteen years. We have only our-
selves to look after. Sitting with her to-night in
our comfort and security and--and companionship,
I-in fact, as I told you I couldn't get you out of my
mind. And I resolved to see if I couldn't brighten
up life a little for you as a sort of-er-thank-offering
for the brightness of my own!"
For the first time that evening Miss Rickson re-
laxed. The sweetness came back to her face, her
head drooped, her eyes were liquid.
"There isn't a thing you can do," she told him.
"But my, what a prince you are.'
On a spontaneous word from him about a raise,
they parted. Under the eye of the accursed dog he
took her hand in a friendly, though formal, leave-
taking. The boarding-house with the measles façade
he left in a high though impromptu sense of having
played the benefactor. Clauson hadn't much hu-
124
MARRIAGE
mour. Not enough to laugh at himself. With a
measureless proclivity for self-justification he almost
thought, now, that it was expressly in order to make
this proposition that he had escaped to Miss Rickson.
All the same he entered his own apartment quietly
and rather as if he thought-or hoped-that Jep
might be asleep.
She was not asleep. She came flying to meet him,
her face radiant; and he saw that something had
happened. Something that she liked; that they
would like.
"Oh, dearest," she cried, "what do you think?
It's all a mistake-Mr. Dibble called up to say they
aren't going to tear down the building this year at
all. And we don't have to move."
"Say," said Clauson. "Say!"
He sat before the fire and filled his pipe. The fire-
place that drew so well, the bookshelves near enough
to be reached from his chair, and the old brown fa-
miliar tile were theirs for a long time to come. He
looked round on these things. He liked them, he
was used to them. He looked across at Jep and
smiled. He was used to them as he was used to her.
That held him. He stared at her, his pipe sus-
pended. He was not likely to think things out-
but gently, a certain satisfied sense of her very ac-
customedness assailed him. Of her familiarity as
of a well-loved home.
they always would care.
He cared and she cared and
It had always been and it
THE CLAUSONS
125
would always be. An eternity of being accustomed
to each other. So accustomed that each hardly
knew the other to be there at all.
He had no idea how to voice what he was feeling.
So he got up and wound the clock.
"It's got to be regulated, that thing," he heard
himself mutter.
Jep smiled up at him lazily.
"If you didn't say that every night, dear," she ob-
served, "I'd miss it."
He stood looking down at her. And then he said
in a vast content:
“We certainly are used to each other, dearest—
aren't we?"
PURSUIT
BY HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON
I
T WAS the evening of May Hesketh's picnic
supper, small but memorable; and now the
clocks, had there been any on the island, would
have pointed close to midnight. What was so rare
as this night in June? Sailing wisps of cloud shredded
the face of the high moon; the blackness of the woods,
the glades and dells, the vine-covered rocks and the
empty quarry, were stippled and patched with silver;
the lake was a sheet of silver stretching far away to
lose itself in a lovely dusk. Through the verdure a
soft breeze whispered; from the water floated voices
of the merrymakers, receding; and the woman steal-
ing on light feet up the path, a slim and not in-
congruous figure in her white bathing-dress, with
unbound dark hair streaming to her waist, re-
flected that, for an hour at least, she would be alone
here.
But it was not so. From the impenetrable shadows,
as she neared the ruined cabin, the figure of a man
abruptly emerged upon the path; he stood, confront-
ing her. She started a little, and then she saw, with
126
PURSUIT
127
a mild shoot of satisfaction, that this man was her
husband.
"You!" she said, with the faintly mocking air
she had long ago learned for him: "But fancy meet-
ing you here!"
"You-you looked like a—" he began, a little
confusedly; and then, breaking off, be cleared his
throat and started again, more authoritatively: “I
don't say I approve of that suit, but-but it does
seem to fit in with the surroundings somehow. You
might almost have been mistaken-at a distance,
that is for a-a hamadryad. But-"
"And what may they be? Something very nice
to be mistaken for, may I hope? But I supposed
you'd gone in the launch?"
"No-no. I'm tired of drunks," said he, con-
tinuing to stare at her. "And besides, swimming at
night—ah—affects my sinus-as you once used to
know. But you—why did you come back? You-
you forgot something?"
She was smiling faintly; her dark eyes derided him.
"I almost forgot myself, if you count that! But
no, in your sense, I'm not forgetful, only punitive.
My sinus is sound but my temper uncertain. So I
didn't go. A sweet night, isn't it? Well
Well"
"But-what is it? Why, what happened?'
"Oh, that. Yes, to be sure. I was unexpectedly
kissed, you see. In the dark behind the boat-house,
just as we were ready to start-oh, most ferociously,
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MARRIAGE
I assure you. Really, that made me angry, though
of course not so angry as I seemed. So I'm letting
him paddle himself over alone"
Her husband's dim, heavy face seemed to darken.
"Him? Who was it?"
"My dear Horace, you'll agree that kissing and
telling isn't quite the act of a lady. No, no! But
I'm interrupting your reverie
وو
"No-tell me! I-I want to know."
"Your air of interest is awfully civil, Horace. But
I can't really believe that you've begun at this late
day to take an interest in my private life!"
Her merriment exasperated him clearly.
"Howard Witheredge, I suppose damn his im-
pudence! What you can see in that-
"Oh, name me no names, please! And the inci-
dent's really not worth mentioning-I'm merely dis-
ciplining a beau, that's all. So we two have the
pretty wilds all to ourselves, only think! Charm-
ingly conjugal! But be sure I won't intrude, no,
I'm off to dress-good-bye!"
"No, no! Don't go. I"
Having controlled himself with an obvious effort,
the man resumed with awkward carelessness:
"Ah-it seems too bad for you to miss your moon-
light dip when you enjoy it so merely on account
of the behaviour of an alcoholic cad. Hem. I was
about to say I'll paddle you over to the Pulpit
myself."
PURSUIT
129
She eyed him quizzically, and all at once was
aware of the beating of her heart.
The two stood close together in the darkness and
beauty of the woods. The man's ponderous dignity
was manifestly a little strained. Why? For a long
time past, indeed, it had been evident that she had
undermined his ease in their relationship; for weeks
she had been conscious, in her withdrawals and
through the silences that she had made so common
between them, that he regarded her with a new at-
tentiveness. But he had stopped there; his pride—
or some cowardice perhaps?—had restrained him from
word or act. Was it the romantic solitude now, and
the sudden sight of her in her wood-nymph's guise?-
was it the thought of those kisses she had just taken
from another?-what? Into her husband's eyes
had come a look she had not seen there these three
years; and she wondered suddenly if, here and now,
beyond all calculation, her great moment had come
at last.
But do you think that she would yield him any-
thing for that? Not she.
Ironically grave, she answered: "You are always
kind, Horace. But of course I'd not dream of im-
posing on you that way.'
وو
"No imposition at all. I'd enjoy it. We find
ourselves deserted-each by our own choice—what
more logical than to join forces, eh?”
"Logical!"
130
MARRIAGE
CC
'And-and pleasant," said he with his laboured
lightness. "Why not? Or if you don't care to
join the party now-after what happened—why, we
might just paddle about for awhile. The night-
the night's fine,” said Horace.
"Canoeing in the moonlight with one's husband!
My dear man, do you want to make me the laughing-
stock of the county!"
Her laughter, trilling unexpectedly, took him quite
aback; stung him, too, as she saw with pleasure.
"A very little of that sort of thing," said she, "and
gossip would soon begin connecting our names!"
"I don't think you run many risks of that," he re-
torted, with marked stiffness. "And I wish you'd
cease this—this extravagant way of talking-it's pro-
voking. Now come along. I-we'll enjoy it."
"On the contrary, I should die of shame."
"You're being absurd. Come!"
"A thousand thanks, but no.”
There was a silence. The breeze fluttered her
long hair.
"I see. You actually prefer the society of drunken
male flirts to that of And this is typical, too"
He finished, all but impulsively for him: "I'm sure
you can't realize, Laurel, how little we actually see of
each other-these days."
وو
Ah, but did she not realize?
She leaned back against the slender bole of a white
birch, and stared up at him liquid-eyed.
PURSUIT
131
"How little! Why, Horace good gracious!
That's literally all I can say good gracious! Seven
days a week under the same roof, not separated a
single day in”
"I know, I know!" he said in another tone, em-
barrassed. "It seems odd, I own-I'd hardly think
it was possible. And still
I was of course
sure you weren't conscious of it, but
He hesitated, peering at her with his short-sighted
eyes; and then the natural man let go a little more of
the unnatural constraint.
"Why, Laurel! you go out somewhere every eve-
ning, with or without me, or if you don't go out, you
have people in. At odd moments, when there are
any, in the little between times, as I might term them,
you're always reading, or studying, or practising
something, or else you're writing letters or you have
a headache. Saturdays and Sundays and usually
week-days, too, you have people staying in the house,
all over the place. Noise and dancing and parties
and rushing about-never a quiet moment of-of
just the domestic sort"
"You certainly make it sound different from the
home life of our dear Queen! I'd no idea it was so
bad as that-
وو
"I understate it if anything. But-well, we
won't go into it now. My point is, here, by chance,
we have a quiet hour for once charming nature and
no noise no drunks. Well, don't let's spend it
132
MARRIAGE
standing on these rocks when the lake's right there.
Come!"
She shook her head in silence, faintly smiling.
Gently she released the hand that he had abruptly
clutched. She thought that his massive face paled
a little then.
From far away over the water came the faint
muffled echoes of song; the sound but accentuated
the pervasive stillness. On the solitary trail the hus-
band and wife eyed each other unwinking, and she
was thrilled with the knowledge of her immeasurable
victory. In that second her mind's eye flashed
backward; she thought of Anders Carthew, and the
time and scene which had been the turning-point of
her life.
When she had married this man, glowering at her
now in the primal woods, he loved her madly, and
she, as she had soon understood, was actually all but
indifferent to him. Within six months her interest
in him had become acute and constant: while he,
incredibly, was detected in recurring lapses of ardour.
After two years she adored him without restraint, and
for days and weeks together he was frankly bored
with her. Why? Was it the everlasting law of
things that a relation can support only so much love,
as a bucket holds so much water? Certainly her
efforts to charm this grave senior by doubling her
wifely thoughtfulness and sweet subjections had but
increased his ennui. There had come the inevitable
PURSUIT
133
day when she, with floods of tears, had packed her
trunks and gone off on the usual indefinite visit to
her mother.
So far their story had followed a familiar course.
Would that have been the end of it, right there, but
for Anders Carthew? Nothing seemed to her more
certain. Beyond doubt Anders, who was twice her
age, and had taken an interest in her, paternal or
otherwise, from her sixteenth year, had penetrated
her with a new and startling concept. For Anders
wouldn't accept, he would hardly listen to, her own
ready formula, long since smoothed by the women of
all ages. "Oh, no," he had said in his merciless kind
way. "It isn't that you 'love him too well' that's
letting yourself down too easily. It's simply that
you love him with too little pride and no good sense
at all.” And a little later, when she had conquered
her first furious indignation and sat down again, he
spoke words which she took at last for truth, and
which filled her in the end with an overmastering
purpose. For Anders had said that a man's neces-
sity is not to be loved, but to love; and that, to love,
his fixed need is to pursue and conquer.
So she, because she had a will, and it seemed that
her whole life was at stake, had actually achieved this
impossible. She had warped her nature, she had
broken her heart to pieces: she had recovered the
reserves of maidenhood, made herself again myste-
rious to this once familiar; she had fanned the last
134
MARRIAGE
flickering ember to a flame. Now here he stood
suing her in the romantic night-her Horace, bored
no longer. And still-and still . . . Was it not
ironical that, here in the instant of her tremendous
triumph, her mood should be so skeptical and cool?
How large was Horace's nose, she unsenti-
mentally considered, how halting his tongue, how
really small his vanity and caution! Had something
then permanently passed away? In the long process
of repression, of moral separation, so painful at first,
had she wrought in herself an irreparable change?
She wondered, smiling shadowily, in that second of
dense silence. Now the man, having drawn back a
step, spoke abruptly:
"Look here, what's come over you?"
"Come over me?”
وو
"You've changed so much-just in this last year
that you're like another person-a stranger.
To be sure, her heart swelled a little at that.
"But you hardly offer that as a complaint, Horace?
Hastily recalling our past, I feel sure you must find
any change in me an improvement-
""
“That's just the tone I don't like from you, Laurel!
This constantly evasive manner. Flippant, I am
bound to call it, and—and provoking. I think the
time's come to remind you that a husband has some
rights—and I'm not getting mine!”
"But—why, all this is news to me, my dear! Your
rights! I'd thought you were frightfully fatigued
PURSUIT
135
with them, whatever they are, years ago, and
gladly-
"Never! no! Ridiculous. I—"
"Ah, that poor memory of yours, failing you again,
I see!" said she, shaking her finger in a manner in-
sufferably satirical; and resumed demurely: "But
of course I'm glad that you've forgotten that day—
when I, sobbing like a deserted village lass, most
crudely taxed you with having ceased to love me, and
you, poor dear, could only reply, 'There, there!'
very soothingly, I own, yet it mortified me at the
time, I remember. You've forgotten explaining to
me that life wasn't meant to be an unending song of
romance, that it was normal and necessary that the
disturbing heyday of love should descend to after-
noon, to twilight
dent!
"So that's it!" he interrupted suddenly. "You've
never gotten over that one little scene a mere inci-
Oh, I remember-I've been thinking
back a good deal, here lately," he went on, rather
thickly. "You went off on a visit to your mother's
then, and when you came back, the change had come
-that was the time. You'd assumed this singular
and unwifely attitude. This unfair"
"What adjectives, my dear Horace! Was it un-
wifely to learn the lesson my own husband set
me?"
"That's more flippancy-you know it is! Look
here I wish to know. Did you then-or have you
136
MARRIAGE
at any time since come to take an interest in-in
somebody else?"
She looked up through the black leaves toward the
moon, an odd tumult in her breast, and laughed a
little.
“Your questions astound me, of course. And I'd
supposed that even a wife was entitled to some pri-
vacy. Remember, Horace, I've never questioned
you, though all the world has known when you've
looked over the fence. But the breeze is freshening,
and I've detained you long enough. Now I'll dress,
waiting in the cabin-
وو
"Not so fast, not so fast!" said her husband, block-
ing her way.
"We've started a conversation!-we'll
finish it now!"
"Oh, pardon me, I thought you had finished.”
"No, I've not finished! Laurel, I wish to know
plainly: Are you trying to say, by-all this—that
you no longer love me?”
"Oh! Really-I'm afraid I've never thought to
ask myself such a question."
"Ask yourself now. I insist it is my right.”
Her merriment died.
"I am. And, Horace," she said, regarding him
duskily-"honestly-I don't know the answer."
Yet in that moment, exactly, she seemed to herself
to have the answer. Yes, something had gone out
of her, now and forever. Funny, but you couldn't
crack and make over your nature for nothing.
PURSUIT
137
"Oh, you don't know?" he said darkly. "Well,
the time's come for you to find out!"
"Why? What's your interest in the ancient
point? Haven't I the best authority for saying that
love wasn't meant
""
"That's enough of that! I won't have this atti-
tude any longer. Plenty of time and kisses, too, it
seems for every whippersnapping nincompoop-
nothing at all for the man you married―
“But, my dear Horace, I can't turn myself on and
off like a hot-water faucet! And the nincompoops
never tell me that the heyday of romance-
"Stop provoking me this way!"
"Willingly. Good-bye! But indeed you mustn't
regard me as a stranger, Horace. I assure you I'll
always think of you as among my very best friends.”
His dim face became flooded with colour.
"You're my wife, do you understand that!-my
wife!"
"Wife is a relative term," she said, a little faintly,
again seeking to pass him. "But I'll leave you now."
"I'm damned if you will," said the man, in a
terrible voice.
And, his dignity broken altogether, he seized her
furiously in his arms.
The violence of that embrace astonished her.
Still more surprising, perhaps, was the wave of re-
sistance, of instinctive repulsion even, that swept
through her.
138
MARRIAGE
She succeeded in extricating herself, and backing
away rapidly, shaken and angry, vigorously rubbed
with the palm of her hand the cheek her husband's
lips had just grazed. Still, her fixed smile mocked
him.
"Don't you think, all things considered, that's
quite a liberty?"
He lunged for her, saying gutturally:
"I'll show you a liberty!-God! You forget your-
self—you need to be taught-
""
"No!-p-positively, you don't know me well
enough for this! Please! You brute !”
She managed again, though with difficulty, to free
herself from those violent clutching arms. Her light
airs were gone. She had thought just now that if
Horace touched her, she might actually hate him;
it had not occurred to her that she would fear him,
yet so it was. Now, as he came after her again,
muscularly powerful and altogether wilful, panic
suddenly and unaccountably took possession of her.
Not having planned anything of the sort, she wheeled
abruptly in her tracks and fled from him.
If that was a confession of weakness, unluckily it
did not settle her difficulty on the spot. With dis-
may she heard the large feet of Horace pounding
after her down the path.
She ran as for her life.
It was a sight for the gods, no doubt. In the still
midnight beneath the serene moon, in this lonely
PURSUIT
139
place, wildly and primitively beautiful, through the
groves and among the crags sped the slim white-clad
wife, dark hair flowing after; and hard behind,
grunting and snorting, menacing, too, chased the
heavy-built man, her husband. Different from the
home life of the Queen indeed!
On the open path his clumsiness was neutralized.
She looked back, fearfully, over her shoulder; he was
gaining on her, no doubt of that. Instantly she left
the path, scrambling over the rough boulders which
flanked it here, plunging into the copses, if such they
were, bounding away through the virgin woods,
sure-footed as a fawn. With a wild bursting of
foliage and cracking of boughs Horace leapt after
her. On the difficult terrain her superior nimbleness
gave her the advantage; the distance between them
steadily widened. Once she heard his hoarse voice
panting, "Stop! I tell you, stop!" Now the
strange thrill of the chase, the throbbing excitement
of the quarry, set her blood afire. She thought,
"Pursue, and love!"-and laughing frantically to
herself, flew the faster. And then, as she sped across
a sweet open space, a glade no doubt, powdered with
bright moonlight, she glanced back again, unwisely;
alas, her foot caught in a trailing vine, and she pitched
to the sward. The misfortune, which wasn't rectified
in a second, cost her her lead. Releasing herself,
rising dizzily, she found the pursuer almost upon her
almost, but not quite. She just eluded his fingers,
140
MARRIAGE
breathlessly dodging; she doubled and turned; and
so, in a moment, suddenly, she found her feet set on
the winding path again. And lo, just ahead was the
old landing, and beyond, open water.
She had forgotten the water; she welcomed the
sight of it now. She was quite spent, and those reso-
lute feet were close behind. Flying over the loose
boards, the harried wife dove cleanly into the haven
of the lake.
That Horace would follow her in this manoeuvre
had not occurred to her. He was an indifferent
swimmer, and his sinus, as we know, was sensitive.
Never having seen him ang₁j Core, however, she
had no doubt underestimated the force of his rages.
In fact, the conquering male did not hesitate an in-
stant. His ponderous body, flying out feet first,
broke water hardly a second behind her own.
Unhappily for her, the lake was shallow here; a
tall man could stand on the bottom, and Horace was
tall. In fine, while she was still submerged, her foot
was roughly seized; coming up, spluttering, she found
herself effectually prisoned.
Thus the man, like Neptune with a mermaid, had
his way. The stars looked down upon the odd con-
jugal caress. Upon the woman's lips, gasping and
watery, the lips of Horace, just as gasping, came
waterily down. Though her heart hammered with a
wild excitement, there was now no strength in her.
After an instant her feeble struggles ceased; another
PURSUIT
141
instant, and, marvellously, resistance seemed no
longer of any importance. Under this masterful
embrace the wife's will, her whole being, indeed,
seemed all at once mysteriously to dissolve within
her.
"You witch! I will adore you forever," panted
Horace wetly.
And then her bare dripping arms, lifting, went
round his neck.
Under the impulse of his great love, the days and
the weeks that followed became for the wedded pair
like a new and richer honeymoon. Her elusiveness
faded; her reticences and reserves, all the provocative
withdrawals, learned after how much tribulation,
came to seem not only superfluous, but altogether
unworthy. Since Horace gave so lavishly, was it
not inconceivably mean-spirited to dole back to
him with a thrifty and calculating hand? Will-
ingly, young Laurel let herself go.
The new banns brought their unexperienced bless-
ing. Now God was ready, in the old phrase, to smile
upon this union. There came another June and then
another, and Laurel's first child was six months old.
Otherwise, perhaps, it would hardly have been
bearable.
She sat in her room near the screened open window,
nursing her boy, whom she had no thought of wean-
142
MARRIAGE
ing as yet. The sultry afternoon was quiet. From
the piazza below floated up the voice of her husband,
idly exchanging domestic news with his worshipping
mother, arrived the day before for her yearly visit;
but she did not need that sound to make her remem-
ber his nearness. On the stand beside her lay a note
from Howard Witheredge, who had lately "come
into her life" again; she had just been thinking that
nothing could be more symbolical than that.
Her name came presently drifting up to her.
"Laurel's stoutened," said her mother-in-law
comfortably, though with a touch of asthma. "It's
not unbecoming to her. I think she has settled—
somehow, Horace she has gained in poise?"
"Yes, she's matured very much since the baby
came," said Horace, and yawned a little.
“She is charming still. And a more exemplary
and devoted wife I never saw. That pleases me so
much. Do you know, my son," continued Mrs.
Seymour suddenly, "two years ago when I was here
—that spring—I was rather afraid she was-turning
away from you-just a little?"
No, I remem-
"Really! What an idea!
ber that summer on the lake particularly," said Hor-
ace thoughtfully. "We had a wonderful time."
"Oh, it's evident enough that I was mistaken!”
said his mother archly. "She simply adores you,
that's as clear as noonday."
"Oh, yes,” said Horace,
PURSUIT
143
There was a little silence. Down in the pasture
lot, behind the barn, the buxom new dairy-maid was
climbing over the stile. The lass had a trim leg.
Having adjusted his glasses a little, Horace satisfied
himself on that point.
"In fact, if the dear creature has a fault at all,”
he finished indolently, "I'd say that she loves me a
little too well."
THE MENTAL HAZARD
BY CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND
'M BEGINNING to think," said McDonald
Kent to his wife, "that marriage is like golf-
full of mental hazards.”
"I presume," said Jane icily, "that you're trying
to say something disagreeable.”
"I'm trying to be pleasant, I'm trying to get
dressed and out of this room without a row." His
voice gradually lifted with his irritation. "Thus,'
he finished, "setting a world's record."
Jane turned to look out of the window, and then
she began to hum. The sound of her humming bored
into her husband's ears maddeningly. He was a
reasonable human being; he knew nothing had been
done or said which warranted either of them in giving
way to anger and the usual morning quarrel, but he
could feel it coming on. There was an inevitability
about these morning rows, a silly inevitability.
Morning after morning he had arisen with good reso-
lutions, and so, he knew, had his wife-but the result
was always the same.
"Mental hazard," he told himself. "Like driving
a golf ball over the pond on the sixth hole. You
144
THE MENTAL HAZARD
145
know you're going to smash it into the water, and
you do." He turned to Jane with elaborate self-
repression and painstaking patience.
"I don't want to be disagreeable, God knows,
he said. “I don't want to start the day with a rum-
pus, but—”
"But you always do," she said provocatively.
He compressed his lips and stared at her, deter-
mined to control his tongue. "Honestly, Jane,” he
said, “I wasn't trying to say anything disagreeable
—that about mental hazards. What I meant was
that you can't play golf without believing you can
make your shots and that's just like marriage.
We're off our game. We're always topping our irons
or hitting out of bounds. Purely mental. We could
play the game as well as we did six or seven years
ago if we just thought so.'
وو
"I hadn't lived with you ten years seven years
ago," Jane said with finality.
"God send you're not living with me ten years
hence," he said, his anger suddenly ablaze.
"I wouldn't be living with you to-morrow," she
answered, "if there was any way out. Oh, why
haven't I money of my own? Why can't I be in-
dependent of you?”
"Well," he said shortly, "you haven't and you
can't—and there are the kids, so all we can do is
make the best of it.”
With that he jerked on his coat and flung out of
146
MARRIAGE
the room to eat a breakfast which had become flavour-
less for him as it had for his wife. Words, words,
words. He knew, as she knew, that what had passed
between them was really meaningless, was nothing
but sound and irritation. Both knew that, for the
most part, they lived amicably, comfortably-and
sincerely wanted to live together in peace and en-
joyment.
Then why? Why these quarrels
so easily lighted? Why this exasperation with each
other, this shortness of patience, this painstaking
search for cause of affront? McDonald could find
no answer to his questions.
Their marriage had stretched over eleven years,
and there were two children, nine and seven years
old. Neither McDonald nor his wife gave considera-
tion to the fact that the ages of their children might
have much to do with the steadily increasing inclem-
ency of their life together. The fact of the matter
was that the children had passed babyhood in safety.
They were in school; no longer were they monopoliz-
ing the attention of their parents, and, consequently,
after all these years Jane and McDonald had time to
think about themselves.
Jane was not the sort of person to think and ana-
lyze, but she felt. Her emotions were headstrong, and
she was undiplomatically frank in describing them.
She knew that some essential element had gone out
of their marriage, some element she craved. With
something of fear she realized that she did not love
THE MENTAL HAZARD
147
McDonald. The urge which had swept her into
marriage with him, and made their first years to-
gether very sweet and wonderful, had vanished.
This discovery was followed by a period of active
revolt. She worked herself into a state of mind in
which she believed her husband had become actually
repulsive to her, and, in her headstrong way, she told
him in a storm of tears.
McDonald stood aghast. That such a thing could
have happened to him was unbelievable. It was in-
credible until he sorted over his own feelings toward
his wife and found that he had reached a state of
indifference toward her. The glow was gone for-
ever.
They had reached a point which every married
couple must reach the moment of readjustment,
when they must rebuild upon a new foundation or
see their structure swept away by the rising storm.
They seemed unable to locate a stable foundation
upon which to lay a new cornerstone.
McDonald considered the practical side of the
question. The thing, he told himself, was a fact.
Apparently it could not be mended, so there was
nothing to do but try to make the best of it. The
children made any other course impossible, and
finances made this course necessary. It was all he
could do to support one establishment in comfort;
therefore, even had he been willing to do so, he could
not have allowed Jane to leave him as she seemed to
148
MARRIAGE
wish to do. He had not the money to allow her to
live separately in independent dependence.
Jane's reactions, however, were purely emotional.
She no longer loved McDonald, and to love seemed
to her the one essential to life-to love and to be
loved. She awoke bitterly to the realization that
the love which she loved had not been present in
their home for years. She craved the uplift of love,
remembering how she had been borne along blindly
upon a warm rushing wave of love during the first
years of her married life. She wanted that again,
wanted it to continue. The idea of the common-
place was abhorrent to her; the thought of continuing
to live with McDonald as his wife was repulsive.
She was young, vivid, lovelier even than she
had been ten years ago-and she felt somehow that
her loveliness and her life were going to waste; that
she was being cruelly, bitterly cheated.
Which, if you stop to think of it, is a dangerously
fertile state of mind.
The first sharpness of realization became some-
what dulled. Life continued. The household re-
mained intact, but always it perched upon the brink
of disaster. Everything was commonplace, habit,
humdrum. It was maddening, wearing, a constant
source of irritation. Bickerings were inevitable.
McDonald settled down grimly to the task of
holding his family together, of holding his wife.
was essentially fair-minded. He perceived, regret-
He
THE MENTAL HAZARD
149
ted, and tried to make the best of it but it was not
easy. A certain testiness of disposition added to
the difficulties. As for Jane, she went along think-
ing of herself, holding herself more or less in suspense,
craving, always craving for the return of that which
had vanished forever.
Jane had always done much as she pleased, and
McDonald had interfered little with her whims and
amusements. She had her friends, both men and
women, but, John saw with alarm, her men friends
were narrowing down to one. She golfed with John
Firth. John Firth took tea with her frequently.
More often than was, perhaps, discreet, she motored
with John Firth. McDonald was logical enough to
realize the danger of it, but also he had the self-
restraint not to remonstrate. There was in Jane a
headstrong, rebellious strata which drove her, some-
times against her own will, to do those things which
she was expressly forbidden to do, or to accomplish
that from which authority sought to restrain her.
McDonald knew his interference would only make a
bad matter worse.
He was more or less of a fatalist, too. "If she's
any good," he said to himself, "she'll stick. If not,
she'll go." And there he rested, hoping for the best.
These things happened in those unpleasant days
of Nineteen Hundred and Twenty when business was
ill with that epidemic which decimated the financial
population as the flu had decimated the human
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population of the country, and now, when McDon-
ald's mind and heart were full of the danger which
threatened his home, his business took sick of it, and
lay at the point of death. He dealt in silks, and
everybody knows what happened to silk in that un-
happy year.
For weeks at a time his presence was required in the
city day and night. For weeks at a stretch he car-
ried his load of worry into his home after midnight,
there to lie tossing, brain vexed almost to madness,
unable to sleep. It was during these weeks of what
Jane was pleased to call neglect that her incipient
affair with John Firth began to assume clear outlines.
He was bringing into her life again that thing she
craved-romance, the eagerness of those first days of
her marriage. He loved her. Vehemently he told
her of his love, and she delighted in the stirring of it
—and then, as must happen, being in love with love,
she imagined herself in love with Firth. Which is
exactly as bad as the real thing. Or perhaps it is the
same thing. And, too, there was the element of ad-
venture, secrecy, apprehension. Love flowers best
in such conditions. Here lies the chief defect of
marriage ease of access to the loved one. There
are no difficulties, no obstacles. If some method
could be invented whereby a husband would incur
risk in seeing his wife, or the wife have to plan, and
evade, and dare in order to see her husband, divorce
would disappear from the earth.
THE MENTAL HAZARD
151
For weeks now Jane had been holding Firth at
arms' length, reluctantly and more reluctantly, with
difficulty and with greater difficulty. She was happy
again, clandestinely happy, thrilled, poised on the
brink of the precipice.
He
Of a Friday night McDonald took an earlier train
than usual, arriving at his home shortly after ten
o'clock. He was at the end of his rope. The worst
had happened. He was smashed, beaten down, oblit-
erated. As he alighted from the train he was just
where he had started fifteen years ago-no, he was in
worse case than he had been then. Fifteen years ago
he had dared to embark in business for himself.
had possessed youth and hope, and about his neck
was no millstone of responsibility. He could make
or break and no damage done to any but himself.
It was different to-night. When his credi-
tors finished with him he would not have two nickels
to jingle together. Even the house toward which he
walked so slowly and heavily-that would be gone.
He dreaded the ordeal of breaking the news
to Jane.
Usually he rode home in a jitney-to-night he
walked, walked to save the quarter it would have
cost to ride. He took the short cut through a vacant
lot to his back door. The soft lawn deadened his
footsteps as he rounded the house to the low porch,
and he arrived unheard. So lost was he in his appre-
hension of the coming interview with his wife that he
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MARRIAGE
:
was unconscious of his surroundings until he stood
at the corner of the porch. Then the sound of a
man's voice arrested him. He paused, not intending
to spy, and the man's words came to his ears, vehe-
ment words, impassioned words.
John Firth
was making love to his wife.
McDonald hesitated. He did not think clearly;
was incapable of sharp decision.
"You must love me," he heard Firth say.
must. You must.
out you. Jane.
"You
I can't get along with-
Jane.
وو
There
was a brief silence. "Tell me you love me. Say
you'll go away with me.
Nobody, nothing
has the right to keep us apart if we love. It's a sin
to keep us apart."
"I- Oh, let me think, let me think," said Jane.
"Think! You've had time for thinking. Weeks
and months of it. You must know. You do know.
Oh, Jane, nobody ever loved you as I do.”
"It's sweet to be loved," said Jane. "But-oh, a
woman has so much to think of."
"Just think of you and me-of the happiness we
have a right to have.
Tell me, Jane, tell
me you love me."
"Not now, John," McDonald heard his wife say,
"not to-night. Let me have just this night to think.
To-morrow I'll-I'll tell you-how it is to be.”
"You'll tell me you love me? You'll tell me you
will go away with me?"
THE MENTAL HAZARD
153
Jane paused, while McDonald waited dumbly, un-
able to speak, unable to move. "I-I hope so,
she said softly.
McDonald turned slowly. Stealthily he walked
away. He did not want to be seen nor heard. He
wanted to get away and to face this new disaster, to
stare into its eyes and to demand its meaning. He
tramped. Hour after hour he tramped, his head
seething with incoherent thoughts.
So he
had lost everything, business, wife, home-all in one
débâcle! He tried to realize it, to peer ahead and to
picture his future. He could not.
He
groped for some plan to follow, for some action to
take but there was no light to follow, only the murk
of bewilderment.
One thing he knew, one
fact stood out. He did not want to lose his wife and
his home. Perhaps his wife might be a better wife
and his home a happier home—but they were his and
he wanted them. The thought of losing what lay
yonder was intolerable to him.
There were savage thoughts, too, violent thoughts,
but he fought them down. Somehow he did not
blame Firth, and he could not blame his wife. Cir-
cumstances, cursed circumstances, were at fault. It
was just the way things had happened.
And then, as dawn broke over the eastern tree tops,
fatalism came to his succour.
"I'm at my blackest hour," he said to himself.
"I'm broke.
If she's any good she'll stick
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by me.
she's better gone.
If she leaves me at a time like this
So, once again, he turned his footsteps toward his
home. The house was still as he admitted himself
and mounted the stairs to the room which was his
wife's and his own. He opened the door. Jane
heard the sound of its closing and sat up, startled.
"Oh, McDonald," she said, and then she sat more
erect and stared at him, at his gloomy, despairing
eyes, at his weary, haggard face. "What time is it?”
she asked.
"Nearly five."
"What-what is the matter, McDonald? Where
have you been all night?"
"Walking," he said. "Walking."
"Walking!" Alarm was in her voice. "What has
happened? What's the matter?”
He paused. Which calamity should he announce
first? Something, not reason, told him there was but
one calamity to announce. About his discovery of
last night he would be silent. He could not bring
himself to speak of it, and in that moment he knew
that whatever came, whatever should be the out-
come, he could never tell her what he had overheard.
It must be buried, buried in his heart, never to be
exhumed.
"I'm broke," he said baldly.
"Broke! What do you mean?"
"I mean," he said patiently, "that the business has
THE MENTAL HAZARD
155
gone up the spout. I've lost everything. Even this
house has gone. We'll have to get out of it.
I haven't a cent in the world. It's the end."
It's—the
She stared at him wide-eyed, and strangely enough
the thought that filled her mind was not of money
lost, of comforts departed, of possible poverty to
come-it was of McDonald's loss-that the thing he
had laboured so hard to build was destroyed. Her
heart cried out with sympathy for him!
"You poor boy.
worked so hard for?"
Everything you've
"Everything," he said dully. "I'm-done."
She got out of bed and walked to his side. "It's
wicked, cruel," she said.
He shrugged his shoulders. "You've been want-
ing to-to get away from me," he said in a low voice.
"There's no reason why you shouldn't now.
You'll be as well off away from me as with me.'
"McDonald!"
وو
"I tell you everything's gone. This house—
everything! You can't keep a servant. God knows
where I'll get money for food." He turned away.
"There's no use prolonging this.
Somehow
I'll fix things up for you to stay here until—you're
ready to go."
She clutched his arm.
"McDonald, what do you
mean? Do you want to get rid of me?"
He looked down into her eyes. "No," he said.
"And you think I'd-desert you when you're
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down and out! You think I'm that kind of a
quitter!"
"You've wanted to get away. You've-been so
tired of me."
"Poor boy," she said softly. "Poor boy.
I— Oh, McDonald, can't you see I couldn't go
now. If you were rich-if everything was all right
with you" She hesitated. "But not now, not
when-when you need me.
Sit down here."
She drew him upon the bed beside her. “I may
be a rotter," she said, "but I'm no quitter.
We'll start again.
Maybe it's all been
planned this way. Maybe it didn't-just happen.
We'll start fresh.
I'm not afraid. You-
you can find a job—or get a start somehow
and I'll-work.
Oh, Mac, Mac, don't you
want me to help you-back?”
"You don't love me,” he said.
She looked into his eyes a full minute before reply-
ing, and then she said, "No, McDonald
not the way you mean. But I do love you, and I
respect you, and I admire you.
Maybe,
dear, it's better than the other kind of love-more
Don't make
lasting, more to depend on.
me go-don't make me go. Let me stay and start
all over again, not from the beginning, but from a
new beginning.
She stood before him and held out her hand. It is
significant she did not offer her lips, but something
THE MENTAL HAZARD
157
told both of them that would be playing off the key.
She extended her hand, and he took it in his hand and
clung to it. Suddenly she burst into tears.
"Thank God you-you-busted," she said tremu-
lously.
THE ANTS
BY JAMES HOPPER
P
ETER left the studio, where he had been
painting steadily for hours, and stepped out
into the garden. It was full noon; he blinked
under the high sun and stretched, still a little dazed
from his long plunge in toil; he inhaled full the per-
fume of roses.
A short distance from him, on the edge of the
driveway, was a big hole-dug, he surmised, to re-
ceive some transplanted bush, lilac or magnolia.
Water, trickling from a hose that stretched like a
black snake across the lawn, was making of this exca-
vation a small lake. Peter stepped to the little
gurgling lake and sat himself contentedly near its
bank. A small lake sufficed Peter; he did not need
a big one.
It was lovely here. The water sang; slowly it
rose; the flowers perfumed; Peter's soul dilated de-
liciously. Far above, in the blue, a hawk circled.
But this did not last. Within Peter's carefully es-
tablished vacuum a small hard thing began to in-
trude. The rasp of a rake, there behind the hedge,
at his back. His face darkened and puckered.
158
THE ANTS
159
He knew who was raking there behind the hedge.
He not only knew; with that implacable vision given
to him with life he also saw.
It was his wife who was there behind the hedge
raking. And although she was behind the hedge,
which was at his back, he saw her.
He knew exactly how she looked, there, behind the
hedge. She had on the wrapper with the big flower
pattern; it was tied around her with a cord at the end
of which was a worn tassel. Underneath, the soiled
white hem showed of the gown she had worn in the
night—for from her bed she had gone to her garden.
Her bare feet were in old brown slippers; there would
be streaks of wet ground across the part of the feet
which showed between the flaccid slippers and the
soiled gown.
They pressed the earth, these feet, firmly; set down
well apart in a solid wide base; they pressed it fa-
miliarly. They might he had seen that-be sunk, in
their flaccid slippers, into soft manure, unshrinkingly.
Her hair would be tied in a small knot behind.
She squatted often over some seed, some weed. She
was like a strong, thick, short coolie of the rice paddies.
Peter's face puckered still more. Not with anger,
not with disgust, but with a sort of mournful help-
lessness. Then, abruptly, another picture came to
him. He saw her as she had been years ago.
She was waiting for him at a stile, on the far edge
of a golden field. She was slender, fragrant, and
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soft. Her pretty frock was cut low at the neck;
the beginning of her virgin breasts swelled gently
there. And her eyes, turned up to him, were a little
wet, as Venus is at dawn, and the red chalice of her
lips was slightly opened.
Peter squirmed uneasily; the helpless desolation
deepened still on his face.
But a sharp prick at his right calf made him de-
liver a large slap there. Life from all sides was at-
tacking the retreat of reverie in which so snugly he
had tried to ensconce himself. From beneath his
slap a small ant dropped crushed to the ground.
But she was not the only one about. An army of
ants was passing close to his feet; so close, in fact,
that they swirled about these extremities as a host,
following a valley, doubles some rocky El Capitan.
Peter hastily withdrew his feet. Kneeling down,
stretching his rather long neck, he proceeded to
observe what was happening. And observing, soon
had removed himself utterly from the rake's dry,
reminiscent scratching.
Across the drive, from the excavation of which
Peter's fancy had made a lake, from that hole to the
hedge the ants stretched a broad, rusty-red ribbon.
At first Peter thought they were marching one way,
then he saw that the movement was a double one.
Hundreds of thousands of the small carapaced crea-
tures were marching from the hole to the hedge, but
as many were marching from the hedge to the hole;
THE ANTS
161
they threaded their way in and out of each other's
course, the two movements interpenetrated each
other. And bringing his long nose still lower, Peter
saw that all this had a character of panic and dis-
may that, had this multitude not been denied voice,
a great confused clamour would be rising from it to
his high-perched ear.
Of these hastening from the vicinity of the excava-
tion every one was laden. Carrying it high in their
mandibles for short, exhausting runs, or dragging it
fiercely after them; over sticks that were great logs
to them, or pebbles that were Himalayas; skirting or
piercing clumps of grass which were impenetrable
jungle, they bore each a small whitish thing which
looked like a grain, which, in fact, was grain—the
grain, the life spark, the existence itself of this agi-
tated nation.
Peter ran a glance backward over their march and
found its starting point. The ants had all emerged,
they were emerging, from five small holes near the
excavation; five little holes smaller than the hollow of
a wild-oat straw. Out of them, ceaselessly, in a con-
stant trickle, they appeared into the sunlight, carry-
ing on high before them, as the monk does the cross,
the sacred larva; or, backing up, fiercely snatching it
along after them. Here those of the army who
marched the reverse way, and who were without
burden, met those that were coming out and, letting
these pass, after a moment's hesitation during which
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they seemed to be calling to themselves all their
courage, resolutely plunged head first down into the
earth. Peter now understood. He was the witness,
the god-like witness of just such a catastrophe as,
in the tenebrous past, again and again had nearly
wiped out his own kind. The water, which was fill-
ing the excavation dug in the garden, from below had
established communication with the city of the ants.
It was rising slowly down in there; slowly, myste-
riously, inexorably; filling the lowest chambers, rising
along the galleries, bursting into halls; and the popu-
lation, in mute uproar, was fleeing its crumbling city,
hugging tight to itself its life kernel.
Peter's heart thumped and his brain flamed. He
saw clearly the great underground city, its vast halls
and dim secret chambers, its interveined galleries
vibrant with peril and disaster. He heard the sullen
roar of sudden inrushing waters.
Walls fell in large
flakes, ceilings collapsed, floors sucked in, and thou-
sand upon thousand every second died.
He saw
the stubborn citizens, in this immense dissolution of
all they had ever been sure of, tenaciously toiling to
snatch from this cataclysmic threat the future of the
race, the grains which were the concentrated promise
of future generations. Down there, at every heart-
beat, thousands died a sacrificial death; down there,
under ground, a great martyrdom was taking place,
splendid with a myriad heroisms. Peter became
much excited; he shook.
THE ANTS
163
But a broom, a big, capable garden broom now
planted itself down at his side; and without looking
at more than the broom, which he could see out of the
corner of his eye, he knew that his wife was standing
by.
"Look, Daisy," he said, inviting her to share his
emotion. “Look at the ants.
">
There was a moment's silence up there. Then:
"Ants! I should think there were! Why, they'll
get into the house! Let's kill them!"
He stretched out his hand and turned his fingers
around the broom handle. "Get down here with me
and look," he said. "It's an extraordinary sight.
It's like Sodom, Babylon, Atlantis all rolled into
one!"
"Yes-and they'll be in the pantry next. It'll be
Babylon in the pantry. Come-let's sweep them
off."
The broom stirred in his hand; he detained it.
"Don't. They are the survivors of a terrible
disaster. They have seen thousands of their mates
swept to horrible death. They are safe, bearing
with them the future life of their nation. Why, it
would be as if men escaped from a city destroyed by
flood, standing at last on high ground, naked, ex-
hausted, but alive, saw now upon them the mountain
falling!"
"It won't be a mountain," she said. "It will be a
broom!"
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"Hold on; wait," he pleaded hurriedly, trying a
more intimate appeal. "Let me watch them.
Daisy-wait-I'm getting something out of it! Let
me watch it!"
But the broom was now out of his hand, and in
three or four scythe-like strokes, the thing was done.
Of the broad rusty-red ribbon of carapaced pullulat-
ing life stretched across the drive there was nothing
left but, here and there, a lone squirming small spot
indented into the ground; and on the surface of the
water in the excavation a film made of dust, dead
and mangled ants, and eggs.
For a moment, stupor alone possessed Peter.
He had, during his contemplation, shrunk himself to
the size of the ants; or, rather, he had swelled them
to his dimensions; so that the terrific completeness of
the execution performed by these three simple
sweeps of a simple broom left him profoundly amazed.
Then, as the daze left him, a violence took its place.
He faced her, he wanted to speak, and he knew that
what he wanted to say was something irreparable.
But no words came; his throat was altogether tight,
his mind a whirling blank.
Peter turned on his heel and walked away. He
walked out of the garden, and up the path which led
to the village. In the village was a place where one
could drink; the plan at the back of his head was
simple enough. He would go to that place and
drink; drink till he fell like an ox struck by the
THE ANTS
165
slaughtering hammer. But that fixed point of intent
within him was small within the turmoil he had be-
come. He felt as if poisoned, absolutely poisoned.
His head was hot, he trembled; and a singular part of
him, detached and wraith-like, hovering above him,
looked down with amazement at his state.
He had seen something so clearly; he had felt it so
poignantly the minute cosmic tragedy of the ants.
Had she seen nothing at all? Had she felt nothing?
A reservoir deep within him began to surge. It
was a reservoir which had been filling there in the
dark, drop by drop, for years. Several times it had
surged as it was now doing. But only with a tenta-
tive pulsing which did not reach the rim. Now,
each surge brought the accumulated reserve higher.
Like some alchemist's brew boiling on the fire, it
rose, neared the margin, collapsed, rose again. But
each of its ebullitions was raising it higher; nearer to
the film which curtained his consciousness from the
dark secrets beneath; nearer his clear consciousness,
nearer his mouth-his tongue, his lips.
And suddenly, with a new effort, it had done it—
it had brimmed! Clearly he heard the words spoken
in the silent sunlight. The little glade resounded to
them, spoken loud.
"Cruel-and stupid!"
That was it. "Cruel and stupid!'
Three times he heard the words spoken before
complete understanding searched out his heart.
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And then, to this full comprehension, he felt his legs
wobble, and abruptly sat down on a little mound of
grass.
He remained seated thus, immobile, his eyes fixed
ahead as if upon a ghost.
So this is what it had come to after all those years.
To this he had come, after all those years.
To these words, spoken not merely of the lips, but
explosively expelled by his entirely certain being,
every drop, every cell, every nerve.
These words, final judgment.
"Cruel-and stupid."
The glade was very quiet in the sun, and insects
hummed. Thoughts also hummed about his head,
vague, formless, buzzing thoughts, circling and
circling. But always, fixed in the centre, was the
kernel fact.
“Cruel and stupid”—that is what he had called
her.
It seemed to him that a long time had passed when
suddenly, like a mirage descended from the sky, an
image came clearly before his eyes.
It was that picture of her as she had been years
ago. Standing at the stile on the edge of the golden
field, with her red mouth, her dewy, star-like eyes,
her gentle breasts.
THE ANTS
167
He contemplated this long, and then was forced
to ask himself a question.
As she stood there, that time long ago, so pretty,
so tender, and so warm, and his arms ached, was she
then, already, what to-day he had called her?
If that were true, then Woman were indeed terrible.
But if not true-what then?
A strange new kind of discomfort took possession
of Peter; his mind, as if affrighted, shied to one side,
tried to bolt. He forced it back to the path. "Con-
sider," he said to his mind. "Consider you must
consider that.”
Her life, immediately, passed by him in one streak.
Her life since their two lives had been side by side.
He squirmed.
A drab life it was, a drab streak of life. Poverty
dullness-monotony-smallness.
And loneliness. Yes, very probably, loneliness.
He? He had been absorbed. He had been comb-
ing and brushing and sleeking and curling his soul.
He had been a coxcomb of the soul!
He had cultivated it, enriched it. He had coloured
it, chiselled it, cherished it. Like a diamond cutter
absorbed, without cease he had ground it to new iri-
descences.
He had climbed a hill, ceaselessly climbed a hill
carrying his soul. And left hers down there like a
stone. And Time had worked its will upon the
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abandoned soul. Duller and duller it had become
with layer upon layer of dull Time.
Peter did not go up to the village. When he rose
after a while, it was toward home he made his way, at
first on hesitant feet which little by little quickened
their gait as a foolish fear pricked him.
He found her lying across her bed, her head, face
down, framed within the intertwinement of her arms
and her long loosened hair. She was asleep; by the
gentle slow pulsing of her he knew she was asleep.
Her cheek was flushed and bruised; she had been
weeping.
One look at her, one glance about the room, and he
knew exactly what had happened; saw it as though it
had happened before his eyes.
She had come in hurriedly; hurriedly she had
bathed and begun to dress. She had laid out fresh,
best things. Some already clothed her; others were
about, scattered on chairs, across open drawers.
She had gone about doing this in a trepidation of
haste, as a child desperately hastens who has been
threatened by its parents with being left behind.
And hurrying, she had been crying; sobs had sounded
in this lonely room as she hurried.
Finally, to a larger burst of woe, coming probably
from some last small straw (perhaps one of her shoes
had refused to button, or some hook had been found
without any eye, or some ribbon had slipped back
THE ANTS
169
into its sheath) she had thrown herself across the bed
to give way, altogether uncontrolled. And weeping
thus, had fallen asleep.
Standing here, his eyes upon this past scene which
he saw so well, Peter remembered the thing which
he ever promised himself to remember and which
ever he forgot: That she was a child. After all, but
a child.
As in the days when she had waited for him at the
stile, so now she was a child. The rest-the robust
matron's ready, almost rough assurance; its firm con-
tempt for all that which was haze and halo and
opalescence and not core-all that was mere front.
She was a child.
He should remember that always. Of course, he
should always remember it.
Peter lay down by his wife, and found her hot lips,
and awakened her; she clutched at him convulsively.
They murmured together. "I'm sorry, Peter;
I'm sorry.
Then later: "But, Peter, you do so madden me at
times, dear. With your airs-no, I don't mean that.
But you do shut the door upon me, Peter-you do
shut me out so much!”
Still later: "And, Peter, you are of those that like
the flowers but not the gardening. Polished floors,
but not the polishing."
"I know, dear. I know."
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"Peter, listen: I am of the earth. I accept.
You're always somewhere up above."
“I know, dear. Not far above, either. A fool
place, in between. I know."
"I accept. I am getting old. Everyone does,
Peter. I am willing to grow old.”
She whispered now: "Peter-I'm even willing to
die!"
He pressed her closer, but in him the old desolate
helplessness had returned.
"You, Peter-you are such a rebel, Peter! How
you shut your eyes and fight! Trying to hold what
cannot be held. And hating me because I can't.
For I can't, Peter, I can't!"
This a child? A strange child! No-a child.
Since in children was a wisdom. Was this wisdom?
A spasm of revolt tightened his heart.
But she was weeping again now, softly, against his
breast. He re-gathered her in his arms, and with this
gesture felt a new and large tenderness fill him-a
tenderness which was not only for her, but for many
others for the whole world. The whole poor,
purblind, peering world which could not see straight,
which could not see clear, which suffered dimly, in a
sort of vague, hot delirium.
Near the end of the day Peter stood once more
alone in the garden. For what had passed in the
afternoon, he felt something like embarrassment, a
THE ANTS
171
slight distaste, that strange revulsion we feel when-
ever we have made the gesture of plumbing Life's
emotional depths. As if there were something wrong
about it, something unnatural; as if Life were meant
to be lived altogether on the surface, carefully on the
surface.
He felt the need of levity. That is what, perhaps,
made him remember the ants; the ants which had
been the beginning of the afternoon.
A slight breeze, ruffling the pool, had pushed to-
gether the dust, the ants, and the eggs in a pitiful
dead huddle against a bank.
Where did they come in? he asked himself.
He and his wife had this day made one of those
complete circles which, as if by some natural law,
recurred almost at certain intervals. From a state
of hostility into which they had slipped; through a
crisis; to a renewed gentleness of each other. They
were happy once more, Daisy and he. But what
about the ants? Where cid they come in? It was
over their backs that this had happened. They had
paid for it. Didn't they count at all?
An idea came to him. He raised his face to the
skies.
Whenever he did this, sensuous painter that he
was, he was much more apt to see the old familiar
Greek deities than any more abstract, single, and ter-
rible god. So he did this time.
A fog had come in from the sea; it made a low floor
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MARRIAGE
of the heavens, and on that floor Peter imagined the
gods walking-Zeus, Hera, the whole galaxy, demo-
cratic, familiar, with robes a little disordered and
wreaths a little askew. He hailed them.
"Heigh, up there, Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, all of ycu,
tell me please!
"When, down here, the earth shakes, mountains
slide, or the sea overflows.
"When, down here, there is a Noah flood, a San
Francisco earthquake; when China dances and Saint
Pierre, with one belch of its volcano, is blasted.
"Does this mean, merely, that up there, where you
dwell, some small marital difficulty is being re-
solved?"
But from the gray ceiling-ceiling to him, floor to
them there came no answer whatever. So, Peter
ended the day knowing not much more than he had
at the beginning. And in that state, smiling a
philosophical smile, turned his steps toward the
house.
"Dinner ready!" his little wife was chanting.
THE INDISSOLUBLE BOND
BY SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

N
INE minutes had passed since the tower
clock boomed high noon. The organist was
harmoniously killing time. The ushers
were striving to look easy and unconcerned. The
congregation was beginning to rustle and whisper,
and I was sharing the incipient nervousness since, as
best man, it was my responsibility to put the wedding
through without mishap, and the absence of the
bride was a decided impediment to my plans. My
cousin, Chester Lipscomb, who was supposably the
person most interested, was taking it coolly enough;
but Chester took everything coolly, in that im-
movably self-confident, self-satisfied manner of his, as
proceeding upon some superior assurance that noth-
ing in which he was concerned could go far wrong.
Well, nothing ever had. That is why the match
was deemed such a good one for Eleanor Jermyn.
If I maintained my private misgivings about the
mating of the girl's vivid, mirthful, adventurous ro-
manticism with Chester's solemn rigidity of spirit, it
was not my business as best man to voice them. My
business was to get that twain safely married.
173
174
MARRIAGE
At sixteen minutes and six seconds (by my stop-
watch) past twelve the sexton brought me a note
which read,
DEAR VIX:
It's all off. I simply can't go through with it.
NORRIE.
Through the agency of a hastily inspired usher the
news was gradually disseminated through the church
that the bridal gown had suffered a last-minute in-
jury of a serious though not necessarily fatal nature,
while I was speed-limiting to the Jermyns' house in a
car which I had commandeered from the end of the
line. The running board was unsuitably decorated
with a young man whom I had never seen until he
attached himself to it at the moment of starting.
He was spare and lithe and deep-browned by a sun
harsher than ours, and there was a hard-controlled
excitement in his curiously luminous eyes.
"She isn't coming, is she?" he demanded. Then,
reading my expression and in a flash of triumph, “I
knew she wouldn't."
"Where do you come in on this?" I retorted.
All the answer that I got, as he dropped with sure-
footed nonchalance from the speeding car was, "I'm
at the Pioneers Club when she wants me.
""
A flustered maid admitted me to the house and
piloted me to Eleanor's room. As I entered, a
strange expectancy died out of the bride's face.
"Oh! It's only you, Vix. I thought
""
THE INDISSOLUBLE BOND
175
"Think afterward. I'll give you three minutes to
be in the car."
"There isn't going to be any afterward. Go back
and get rid of them, Vix.”
"Oh, yes! Certainly! Just like that!" I re-
turned bitterly. "Including Chester, I suppose.'
"Especially Chester. I hate him.”
"A nice time to find it out! What's the idea,
Norrie?"
"Nothing," replied the bewildering rebel. "I
hate him for-oh, just for wanting to marry me."
"See here, Norrie Jermyn," said I authoritatively.
"You can't pull this sort of thing just on a hunch of
hate. You're either going to produce a sane reason
or you're coming with me now.
"Has it got to be sane?" she answered dreamily.
"Suppose I were married already?”
"You, Norrie! A secret marriage? I don't be-
lieve it." There is a clear honesty about Eleanor
Jermyn which makes anything furtive or underhand
in her attitude toward real things unthinkable.
"Not a marriage, exactly. But it might as well
be. I never could get away from it. Never! Not
if I married Chester a hundred times.
at the church?"
Was he there
That "he" never meant Chester Lipscomb; not in
that tone! I appreciated this and answered, before
I could catch myself:
"Yes."
ין
176
MARRIAGE
A swift radiance intensified the loveliness of the
bride's face. "Oh, Vix! Did he send me a mes-
sage?"
Suddenly I felt sorry for our wedding party; I
knew from that moment it was a hopeless case. I
also felt wrathful.
"So this is a put-up job," I accused her. "Don't
you think it's pretty raw to”
"The message; his message!" she besought.
Then, as I shook my head, she continued: "It wasn't
put up. I hadn't seen him nor heard from him.
Not for months. Oh, it's been long!" There was a
heart-wrenching quiver in her voice. "Then some-
thing told me he was here. That's the way it hap-
pened with us at the first. So I knew I couldn't go
through with it with Chester."
I surrendered. "I'll give you the message when I
come back," I promised.
"Come soon," she whispered.
A sort of well-bred social riot followed my return
to the church, in which the coolest figure was the
bridegroom. You might know he'd take it that way
and go off dignifiedly to Japan or Jugo-Slavia or
somewhere, which is exactly what he did.
When what was left of wilted Me got back to the
Jermyns', Norrie was after me instantly.
"Where is he, Vix?"
"At the Pioneers. What are you going to do
about it?"
THE INDISSOLUBLE BOND
177
"Send for him."
"To come here? The family will love that!"
"The family aren't speaking to me, anyway. Can
you blame them?”
"You might at least spare them an extra scandal.
If he comes here now, the reporters, massed outside,
will catch him and things will be worse than before,
if possible."
Norrie thought that over, not being wholly beyond
reason—yet. "Vix, will you be very good to me?”
"Me? I'd like to beat you to a frazzle!"
"You're a dear," was the singular interpreta-
tion she put upon this. "I want you to go and see
him.”
"I don't even know his infernal name."
"Calvin Sennett."
Which means nothing to me," said I, after con-
sidering it.
"It means everything in the world to me."
“Oh, dammit, I'll go!" I yielded.
"I knew you would, dear," she said; and she did
know. Norrie always gets her way. That's the
kind she is.
Calvin Sennett received me with a matter-of-fact
air which did not soothe my sense of injury.
"Since you had to come back,” said I, “couldn't
you have contrived to get here earlier?"
"Sorry," he returned composedly, "but I've only
just landed."
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MARRIAGE
"From where?”
"South America.
We were lost in the wilds."
"At least you might have sent word ahead."
"I wired yesterday. Her parents must have
intercepted it."
"They would," I reflected aloud. "Well, what am
I here for?"
"When I tell you, you won't believe it," said he,
smiling.
"After to-day's lunatic performance I could be-
lieve anything," I muttered. I did not add that,
after that smile, I could well understand why Norrie
couldn't marry Chester Lipscomb.
"The most blessedly sane thing that ever hap-
pened," he averred. "The other would have been
the lunacy. But it couldn't have happened. Not
again.” He leaned forward to me.
"Have you
ever heard of Scatcherdsville?"
"No. Minor geography isn't my strong point."
"Being a Vickert I thought you probably derived
from Central New York. It doesn't matter; Scatch-
erdsville has dropped out of the geographies this half
century and more. It doesn't exist except for the
dead. That is where Eleanor and I will lie some
day."
"The devil you will!" said I, startled by the calm
assumption of the announcement.
"Yes. Together. The faithful of our blood, hers
and mine, go back there at the last to sleep. You'll
THE INDISSOLUBLE BOND
179
see that it must be so when you know it all." And he
settled back in his chair and spoke.
This is their story, Calvin Sennett's and Eleanor
Jermyn's.
The Deserted Village lies asleep beside a singing
stream. Years and long years ago, before it had lost
its name and faded from the activities of men, there
were busy mills there, a group of sturdy mansions,
cottages, a church, and a brisk street of stores; there
were labour and ambition and love and warm hearth-
stones, until the newly projected railroad turned and
passed it by. Then its life waned. The mills crum-
bled, the cottages yielded to the slow encroachment
of tree and ivy, the mansions and stores stood empty
and lifeless. But the church, with its surrounding
graveyard, still maintains itself staunch against the
years, for the ancient blood that built and loved the
place comes back, by a gentle tradition, to bury its
dead there, even unto the third and fourth genera-
tions. Death alone gives to the Deserted Village the
transitory semblance of life.
Tiger lilies of July were swaying over the peaceful
graves when the stillness was invaded by the stiff,
mechanistic, and saturnine panoply of a modern
burial. The cars in the procession had driven out
from the nearest city, to bury old Mark Jermyn be-
side the others of his generation.
Through the compulsion of family loyalty, Eleanor
Jermyn, his great-niece, had been drawn most un-
180
MARRIAGE
willingly from a house party several hundred miles
away where she had been having a highly satisfactory
time. As she hardly knew Uncle Mark, she was
feeling decidedly peevish over it. But no sooner had
she crossed the boundary line of the stream which
divides the Deserted Village from the world of actual-
ities than the spell of peace enfolded her. Through
the soothing cadences of the burial service she stood,
half hypnotized, her face at once piquant and dreamy,
vivid and possessed, in the dappled movement of
shadows.
It was thus that Calvin Sennett first saw her.
Was there some signal that passed from him to her,
at once occult and compelling, drawing her gaze to
the spot in the far corner of the churchyard where he
sat leaning against the bole of a giant elm? She an-
swered that long, immovable look of his with the un-
conscious response of widened eyes and parted lips
of wondering. And after the last motor car had
lurched across the bridge at the close of the ceremony,
she remained, making the excuse to her family that
she was tired and wanted to be alone for a while;
they could send for her later. She stood studying,
with an eerie feeling of disembodiment, her own name
carved in the gray stone of a tall monument in the
Jermyn plot.
Eleanor Jermyn, Wife of Samuel Jermyn; Born, 1827,
Died, 1867.
THE INDISSOLUBLE BOND
181
And beneath it that tryst of invincible faith,
Whither thou goest I will go; thy people shall be my
people and thy God my God.”
Opposite stood the headstone of Samuel Jermyn,
dead three years before his wife.
A voice spoke quietly close behind the living
Eleanor Jermyn: "That pledge was not for him.”
"Not for Samuel Jermyn?" she queried. It
seemed quite in keeping with the place and the spell
that the voice of the stranger who had silently bidden
her to stay should be telling her secret things of the
past.
"You mustn't think it was for him," insisted the
voice.
"How strangely you say that! As if you were
angry. Or jealous."
Jealous? Perhaps I am. Do you want to know
the rest?"
She followed him to the corner under the elm
where he silently pointed out another stone inscribed,
Calvin Sennett, Born, 1822, Died, 1859. “Where
thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.”
There, then, was the clue to the dead. She sought
the clue to the living. "Did you come to the fu-
neral?"
"Not your funeral. Mine." Both laughed at
the implication and the tensity was for the moment
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MARRIAGE
relaxed. "My grandmother's. She was buried three
days ago. All of us Sennetts come back here. It's
in my great-grandfather's will that we shall.”
"And all of us Jermyns. I'm Eleanor Jermyn."
He nodded. "Of course. You had to be.”
"Did I? Why?"
"That's what has kept me here waiting, when I
should be home packing up for the interior of Brazil.
I knew there was something telling me to wait. But
I didn't know what. Until I saw you."
"Don't be absurd," she chided him. But there
was a tone of expectancy, of acceptance, of suspense
in her voice.
"Do I go too fast? I suppose I do. But, you see,
I've waited so long."
"So long? Three days by your own count.'
"Seventy-five years," he retorted with a gentle
but inflexible assurance.
“You talk like a ghost."
"Perhaps I am. Part ghost, at least. Aren't
you? Aren't we all?"
"Ghosts of past lives?" she queried thoughtfully.
"Like those lying here about us? Tell me about
them."
"I know only a little about those two, the only
two that matter to us two. My great-grandfather,
Calvin Sennett, left here when he was a young man
and went to the Mexican War. He never came back
here alive. He married my great-grandmother in the
.
THE INDISSOLUBLE BOND
183
South years later. But there was a broken romance
stronger than his marriage that drew him back here,
and all of us after him. I never knew what it was
until, at Grandmother's funeral last week, I read the
inscription on your headstone."
"I wish you wouldn't call it mine," she protested.
"It gives me such an uncanny feeling! The whole
thing is uncanny.
"Uncanny?" he repeated in a low voice. "Oh, no,
Eleanor. Not uncanny. It's-it's almost holy."
"That's worse," she complained. "I don't think
you're a pleasant companion for a graveyard at all.
And I've got to go, anyway. There's a frightful
storm coming up."
"Too late to get away," said he, as a few slow,
heavy raindrops sounded crisp on the leaves over-
head, through the stillness. "Come to the church."
The first flash seemed almost to overtake them as
they ran for shelter deep in the portico, gaining it
just as the rain whelmed everything in seething gray.
Then a million tons of light crashed down upon
them from the ruined roof of heaven, and the two
cowering figures, merged in the shock of that portent,
lay still.
Dim voices in the gray mist, voices out of a far
past, speaking one to the other in the soft sibilance
of wind and rain and troubled leaves, a man-voice
and a woman-voice.
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MARRIAGE
The man-voice said: "Eleanor! My beloved!"
Keen with dread and pain the woman-voice cried:
"Why did you come back?"
"To claim you before the world.”
"You come too late."
"Between us two no time can be too late."
"I am the lawful wedded wife of Samuel Jer-
"
myn."
There followed a long, straining hush; then the
man-voice, fiercely:
"After what we have been to each other?”
"That was our sin.
Oh, Calvin! Why
did you not write?"
"I wrote. My messenger died on the way."
"That was our punishment," said the woman-voice
fearfully. "You must go, Calvin."
"Go? Leave you? You are my wife, not his, in
the sight of Heaven."
"No," the woman-voice denied wearily and in-
flexibly. "I am bound in honour and in duty and
in law. He is a good man."
"Eleanor!" cried the man-voice. There was a
sound of sobbing, hushed sharply, a cry of the agony
of parting in the woman-voice, and the man-voice
once again, fading:
"I will go. But I hold you through time and eter-
nity. Ours is the true marriage. I will return to
claim you though it were a thousand years. I bind
you to wait for me."
THE INDISSOLUBLE BOND
185
The sun shot through between massed clouds, draw-
ing back to the world of the living the two still figures
in the church portico. The girl's eyes were heavy
with tears and passion and wonder as she turned
them upon her companion.
"Did you kiss me?" she murmured. "Or was
it-
""
"No." He shook his head. "It was in the
dream."
"The dream! The voices! You heard them,
too?"
"Everything."
"What does it mean?"
"What could it mean, except that we have come
back to each other!”
"Don't!" she rebelled. "You frighten me."
He smiled at her, and her breath quickened in her
throat. "Why should you be afraid, beloved?"
The blare of a motor horn brought Eleanor Jermyn
to a sense of realities. She jumped to her feet.
"Whew!" she whistled briskly. "We're lucky to
be alive after that close call. Look!"
A bough, riven by the thunderbolt from the great
elm, covered Calvin Sennett's mound as with a
massive wreath.
"There's the car, come back for me," she added.
“You're not going, now!" he said incredulously.
"Of course," she laughed. But there was a
tremor in her voice.
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MARRIAGE
"Eleanor!" He held out his arms. She swayed
to him, pressed to him, set her lips to his in a swift,
soft caress.
"That's for good-bye," she said breathlessly.
"It's all nonsense, you know. And we must forget
it."
He wrote her once, a long, passionate, yearning
letter, ending "I bind you to wait for me." Then
the land of vast forests and unmapped rivers swal-
lowed him up.
And Eleanor Jermyn told herself that it was only
a strange and sweet and finished episode.
"And now," said Calvin Sennett, "when may I
see her?"
By all the proprieties I should have consulted the
Jermyn family. But, what use? Those two would have
drawn together as inevitably as magnet and steel.
"To-morrow morning. At my apartment," I re-
plied.
"Not to-night?" he asked gently with the eager
compulsion of his eyes upon mine.
"You can talk with her," I partly yielded, "if any-
thing so modern as a 'phone will serve your purposes.
I called Norrie and relinquished the instrument
to him. What they said I can only surmise. Prob-
ably it could have been as effectually communicated
by telepathy!
THE INDISSOLUBLE BOND
187
He was at my apartment, waiting, when Norrie
came. I was there also. I might as well have been
in Patagonia for all that they reckoned when they
saw each other. He called her name, and there came
from her lips a broken breath like the sigh of respite
from long-borne pain of yearning and deprivation as
she ran to his arms. I found the street scenery suffi-
ciently engrossing until Norrie's voice notified me
that they were aware of my existence again.
"We're going away," she announced. "You must
tell the family, Vix, dear."
"Must I? When are you going?"
It was he who answered, "To-night.”
"Indeed! Where?"
"Does it matter?" said she.
I perceived that it did not; that nothing in the
universe mattered to those two but their rejoined
selves. To me, however, as representing the world
of hard actualities, there was a phase that did matter.
"Without ceremony?" I inquired.
They started, brusquely recalled from their ex-
clusive absorption in each other.
"We do have to be married, don't we?" said he in
a bemused voice.
"It seems absurd," said the girl; "but I suppose
we do."
"I suppose you do, indeed," I confirmed.
And so, as they say in the tales of everyday, pro-
saic love and mating, they were married, and by the
188
MARRIAGE
mechanical processes of a formal law, those two
strange, long-conjoined, long-parted spirits from out
a fateful past.
Was it true, that visioned encounter that had mark-
ed their pathway into each other's arms for them?
Or was it only the imagining of two young, ardent
minds, super-sensitized by their abrupt and startling
approach, by their instant and compelling conscious-
ness of one another? I do not know. I shall never
know. Not that it has the smallest importance.
What is and ever shall be essential in the lives of
those two is that they fervidly believe in it as their
ordained fate.
And so, in these days of change, of doubt, of ties
readily soluble, faith lightly foregone, that ancient
bond, I know, will endure.
THE TENTH MRS. TULKINGTON
BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER

Y ONLY excuse for throwing George Tithers
into the lily-pool at midnight is that I
thought he was my wife Susan. As a presi-
dent of a bank and a highly respected and weighty
citizen I most seriously object to being called
"Baldy," and I particularly object to being slapped
gaily on the top of my head with an open hand. Or
any other kind of hand. And I believed this Tithers
person-my wife's brother, I'm ashamed to say-
was in Europe. Naturally, then, when I had been
dreaming that my wife was standing above me in a
divorce court, denouncing me to the judge, and de-
claring that even the sight of my bald head had come
to be nauseating to her, my first thought—when I
felt the slap on the head and heard "What ho,
Baldy!"—was that Susan was attacking me.
In an
instant I had leaped from the marble bench and had
grappled with my attacker. George Tithers cried
out a moment too late, for I had already given a
mighty heave and had thrown him full length in-
to the lily-pond. As my mistake became apparent
to me as I saw George Tithers coming out of
189
190
MARRIAGE
the lily-pond on his hands and knees, I apologized
frankly.
"I beg your pardon," I said; "I thought you were
my wife."
"Rather! I should think so!" George said as he
emerged and shook himself like a dog. "But it's
not a nice way to treat a lady, Tulky; is it, now?
Wife-drowning isn't done in the best circles any more,
you know. But, I say! Has it come to this, really?
The little gray home in the West must be off its feed,
what?"
Now, my home is not gray and it is not in the
West; it is white marble and on Long Island; but I
let that pass. George Tithers had--in his silly way
-put his finger on the exact fact: our home was
"off its feed,” as he chose to say, and entirely off its
feed. I made George remain where he was while I
explained the matter fully and to its least detail.
Toward the end of the first half hour, as the night
grew chilly, his teeth began to chatter and a little
later he sneezed many times with gradually increas-
ing violence, but he listened patiently. This deep-
ened my thought that George and his precious wife
must be dead broke again, but I was glad to have
even a dead-broke brother-in-law hear the truth
about Susan and myself. That truth was that after
twenty years of married life we hated each other.
As a matter of fact, the reason I was on the marble
bench by the lily-pool at midnight was that I had
THE TENTH MRS. TULKINGTON 191
told Susan I would never again spend an hour under
the same roof with her and that to-morrow we would
begin seemly but immediate preparations for a sepa-
ration and divorce. I had meant to spend the night
on that marble bench.
"I say!" George exclaimed between sneezes, when
I had concluded. "The little old trouble has become
quite a snorter, what? Jolly full time the doctor
was called, yes? Arrived in the nick of time, didn't
I, Tulky? And, I say, do you mind if I ensconce my-
self in the pool a bit? The water seems a bit warmer
than the air."
The idiot, I do believe, would have gone back into
the pool, but that precious wife of his came out look-
ing for him. She seemed to take his lily-pool bath
as a matter of course, quite as if it was a habit of his
to bathe in lily-pools at midnight, fully clad-as I
have no doubt it is.
"Bathing, George?" she said, after she had greeted
me-kissed me, mind you! "Be sure to have a brisk
rub before you turn in. And you can come into
the house now, Augustus; Susan has explained every-
thing and the chauffeur is sleeping in the kitchen.
Susan has taken his room in the garage; tempo-
rarily, I hope, but it is a very comfortable room.
You do your servants well, Augustus. It is a lovely
trait."
ly.
"Susan attends to the servants," I said reluctant-
192
MARRIAGE
"Does she? She does everything so well, doesn't
she?" said George Tithers's wife.
I might have said, in reply to that, "Too con-
founded well!" but I did not.
"The trouble," said George, when he had poured
himself a chill-preventer, "is that Susan is a wife in
a million. I'll say in eight million. You told her
she was a wife in a million, didn't you, old top, when
you were a newly-wed?"
"None of your business!" I growled.
"Ah! He confesses!" said George Tithers. "And
now, Gussie, me lad, because she is just that—a wife
in a million wives exactly like her-you are sore.
What? Bored! Biting the old fingernails with
ennui! Dead sick of dear old Sue, and dear old
Sue dead sick of nice old Gustus! The trouble with
you and Sue, me lad, is that you need a couple of
stage-managers. That's Trouble Number One. And
Trouble Number Two hangs on it-you're both nat-
ural bigamists
"Stop right there!" I cried.
"Like all of us! Like all of us!" said George.
"Not another word!" I exclaimed, exceedingly
angry.
"Whoa up!" George said then. "Stop here! The
boss says stop. We're through, Amelia. I only
meant to tell him of Lord Algy and Lady Mercedes,
but he says 'stop!' and we stop!"
THE TENTH MRS. TULKINGTON
193
"Oh, Lord Algy and Lady Mercedes!" exclaimed
George's wife. "The happiest two people! Such a
happy pair!"
<<
'Always marrying! Always marry and gay,
what?"
The poor wretch laughed heartily at his miserable
pun.
"So cheery and happy! Always divorcing each
other and marrying somebody else, and marrying
each other again so gaily!" exclaimed Amelia.
"Because a man gets tired of the dear old wife
after twenty years, even if she is my sister," said
George.
"And of the dear old reliable husband, even if he
is the most respectable old baldy," said Amelia.
"Especially if he is the same dear old reliable
husband," George corrected her. "It's the blessed
routine that warps 'em, don't you think?"
"Rather!" said Amelia heartily.
"It's like being married to the bally old Westmin-
ster Abbey, what?" said George. "Act of Parlia-
ment needed to permit even the riotous innovation
of a new tombstone. Not a new hair on Old Bald-
Top in thirteen years! Not a new-style hiccough
out of dear old Susie since the wedding bells!"
"Stop it!" I cried irritably, for he was patting the
top of my head, the silly donkey. "Leave my head
alone! What about this Lord Algy and this Lady
Mercedes-if you must talk."
194
MARRIAGE
"Oh, they're just off-again, on-again, gay little
marriers, Augustus!" George said. "Tired of one
wife, get another; tired of one husband, get another.
It's done in their circle. A man does get tired of the
same old wife. Routine stuff, if you get me. Deadly
monotony, what? Sick of the sight of her; hate her
-what?"
“It's in us,” said Amelia placidly. "The bigamy
thing, I mean. Any man who can afford it and is
not restrained by convention or his ethics hops about
a bit; has a variety. King Solomon, the Sultan,
Henry the Eighth, Lord Byron. And Tithy, here.”
“In a way of speaking," said Tithers modestly.
"And myself, Tithy," said Amelia. "In a way of
speaking, as you remark, darling. And Cleopatra,
and the Queen of Sheba-by all accounts.'
دو
"Now, stop this nonsense!" I said. "You know,
both of you, that you do not run about after other
men and women
""
"Well, rather not!" cried George. "He don't
get us, Amelia; he's a bit dense. Tell him."
"Marriage," said Amelia, "is almost never a fail-
ure; married life is. Marriage is the first joining of
two people together, and jolly sport it is with the
getting acquainted intimately, rubbing sharp points
together, and all. Somethin' interestin' all the while,
what? And then, in a few years-five, maybe, or
ten, or twenty-comes married life: the routine stuff.
Awful bore, sometimes: same old wife; same old hus-
THE TENTH MRS. TULKINGTON
195
band; same old ways, and everything! Nothing new!
They get jolly well sick of each other, and no won-
der.”
“A man—a man with a business to attend to-
can't be running around divorcing his wife every
day or so,” I said.
"Crickets, no!" exclaimed George Tithers. "He'd
be doing nothing else; that's not the right card-
the right card is to marry the whole lot at the first
jump off, if you get me."
"I don't," I said drily.
"You did it, though," said Amelia, with a laugh.
"Susan did it, too. It's a poor stick of a woman
that isn't a dozen women, and a poor stick of a man
that isn't half-a-dozen men."
"What we mean," Tithers broke in, "is that you
and Sue need to be stage-managed, what? You two
have twenty rôles in you, between the two of you,
but you won't change. You, Augustus, keep the
middle of the stage forever and a day as the Heavy
Father, and Sue has been playing the Faithful Wife
twenty long years. 'Twentieth Year of The Appear-
ance of Honourable Augustus Tulkington and Mrs.
Augustus Tulkington in Their Disgustingly Familiar
Parts of Honourable Augustus Tulkington and Mrs.
Augustus Tulkington,' what? It's not a wonder you
want a divorce; it's a wonder you don't murder each
other."
Amelia Tithers was looking at me thoughtfully.
196
MARRIAGE
"You can't grow new hair," she said, "but you
might wear a wig occasionally."
"What ho, yes!" cried Tithers, jumping from his
chair excitedly. "When he stages himself as the
Conceited Elderly Ass, what? A toupee, what?
And white spats! And a monocle? No, not a mon-
ocle. A monocle can't be done."
But it was done. It was not a complete success,
it would not stick in my eye, but I dangled it from a
string and learned to swing it around my forefinger
quite well. Exceedingly well, I may say.
As anything seemed preferable to divorce, Susan
and I, after thorough consideration of the matter in
company with George Tithers and his wife, agreed
to appoint George and Amelia stage-managers of
our married life and I allowed them a liberal compen-
sation. After a long consultation George and Amelia
decided that it would be best for George to be my
personal manager while Amelia managed Susan.
I agreed to everything in advance, but I was sur-
prised when George presented me with a sheet of
paper at the top of which he had written "Cast of
Characters." On this sheet were written six varieties
of husbands, all men of my acquaintance, and no
two alike. At the head of the list was written
"January-Self, prosperous banker." And follow-
ing this was "February-H. P. Diggleton, clubman,
heavy sport," and "March-Winston Bopple, flirt,
THE TENTH MRS. TULKINGTON
197
lady-chaser," and so on down to "June-Carey S.
Flick, conceited elderly fusser, etc." July I was
again to be "Self, prosperous banker." And so on
for the second six months. As the month was now
August I was to be, not myself, but a person resem-
bling as nearly as possible H. P. Diggleton. For
the month of August Susan was to have as her hus-
band not myself but, to all intents and purposes,
someone equivalent to H. P. Diggleton. George
Tithers saw that I was fully equipped with the man-
ners and habits of H. P. Diggleton; when he could
not be sure what H. P. Diggleton would do he in-
vented something new for me to do instead—some-
thing Diggletonian.
I admit that as the day approached when I was to
become a practically new and unknown husband to
Susan I became keenly excited. This was not be-
cause I was to be another man but because I knew I
was to have in Susan an entirely new wife. I had
never been so interested in anything in my life.
When the thirteen trunks, containing the thirteen
complete sets of costumes Susan was to wear in her
thirteen impersonations, came into the house and were
carried to the storeroom I actually trembled with
excitement as I saw them and noticed the huge white
numerals painted on their sides. I say thirteen
trunks because Amelia Tithers had decided that,
month by month, Susan should be thirteen women.
She felt that Susan, being a woman, was equal to the
198
MARRIAGE
task, and by letting Susan be a different woman each
month for thirteen months while I ran, so to speak, in
a cycle of but six months, it would be many years
before the same husband could have the same wife.
If, for example, Susan should be Mary P. Miller in
August to my H. P. Diggleton, there would be no
danger that she would be Mary P. Miller to my H.
P. Diggleton the next August, because if Mary P.
Miller was wife No. 1, when August came again
Susan would be wife No. 13. And the next August
she would be wife No. 12.
novelty was assured.
Thus a continuous
On the glorious August morning when our experi-
ment was to begin I opened my eyes and raised myself
on my elbow to take a last look-for twelve months
-at the old Susan Tulkington. She was not there!
I leaped from bed, bathed, and hurried into the
clothes George Tithers had supplied for my Diggle-
ton impersonation, and hastened downstairs.
"Your wife?" Amelia Tithers said pleasantly.
"Oh, you'll not see your wife this month at all! She
is, this month, one of the gaddy ladies who fly from
their husbands in the summer. Susan has gone to
Newport, thence she goes to Alaska. You can ex-
pect her as the second Mrs. Tulkington on or about
the first of September."
I can assert that Susan and I did not quarrel that
August. In fact, I never loved and longed for Susan
as truly as I did toward the end of that month. I
THE TENTH MRS. TULKINGTON
199
wasted, so to speak, my H. P. Diggleton rôle on the
desert air, but George Tithers kept me spurred to the
rôle and I am sure I did well. I made use of all my
clubs and I did enjoy them. I played more auction
bridge than in all my previous life.
"Gus," one of my friends said, "I hardly know
you! You're like a different man. Maybe you
didn't know it, but you were getting stupid and
stodgy—you were getting in the 'old family man'
rut. Well, bid 'em up; bid 'em up!"
I met, toward the end of August, a banker from
Nome. He had met Susan at Portland.
"Some wife!" he said enthusiastically. "Some
lively lady, Mr. Tulkington! Just shows how folks
can be mistaken-Henry Torker who was down here
last year said your lady was one of these house-
broke ladies, one of the nice old family persons. Oh,
boy!"
It was with some trepidation that I awaited Su-
san's return in September. I was grateful to Amelia
Tithers for taking Susan far away while she was
impersonating such a lively lady as Mr. Hutchins of
Nome suggested she was impersonating, and I admit
that I was glad I was to give her tit for tat, so to
speak, since my September schedule called for me
to be a Winston Bopple, lady-killer and flirt. After
a few evenings of coaching by George Tithers I was
sure I should be able to carry my Bopple rôle in a
manner that would not cause Susan the least monot-
200
MARRIAGE
ony. Two or three of the ladies in our summer col-
ony seemed quite willing to assist me in giving the
part verisimilitude.
When Susan arrived she gave me one kiss and hur-
ried to her room, but Amelia Tithers paused a mo-
ment.
"You'll be surprised!" she whispered. "Susan is
doing it so wonderfully! And our little practise
trip came off splendidly. You'll never again think
of Susan as a stodgy, stupid, married-old-thing sort
of person. You just wait!"
When Susan came down to dinner I was indeed
surprised. I turned from Amelia Tithers, with whom
I had been doing my best to flirt, and gasped. Such
—well, such lack of clothes! Such abundance of long
ear-rings!
"The vampire type!" breathed Amelia Tithers.
"Doesn't she do it well?”
She did! For a few September days I did try to
flirt with some of our female neighbours, but before
a week was up I found I had enough to do in making
love to Susan and in trying to crowd between her and
the men who seemed to take her masquerading in
earnest. We had one row, with Susan in slithy coils
-so to speak-on the chaise longue, when I told her
what I thought of her conduct and she called atten-
tion to mine, but we kissed and made up like young
lovers. The next minute she was vamping old
Horatio Peabody, the silly old fool! And I had to
THE TENTH MRS. TULKINGTON 201
make eyes at his stuffy old wife in self-defense. It
was, indeed, a hasty and hectic month, as George
Tithers said.
"Thank heaven," I said to George, on the last
day of September, "this month is over. I hope
Susan is to be something respectable in October."
"I say, you know!" George exclaimed. "You
don't know that wife of mine. Up and doing, what?
Always a little bit more, what? Spread a bit more
sail-that's her motto, if you get me."
"You mean to tell me "I gasped.
"Well, rather!" exclaimed George Tithers.
ward and onward, so to speak.'
""
"Up-
He was right; Amelia must have told him. "Well-
educated show-girl who is not just sure she has
married the right man," was what Amelia had cast
Susan for in October. It was with the greatest
difficulty that I was able to maintain my rôle of a
man who regretted his past and was seeking his
solace in good books. It was indeed hard for me to
sit with the second volume of Henry Esmond and see
Susan making merry with half-a-dozen brainless
noodles while her clothes were practically an incite-
ment to unseemly familiarity.
“It has been a lovely month," Susan said at its
close. "I did feel so free. I hope you're to be
something retiring in November. I'm to be
"What?" I snarled. I do believe I snarled.
"Wait and see!" she said.
202
MARRIAGE
The next evening when I returned from my bank
and met Susan I fell into a chair and stared at her.
She, who had never used rouge, had used it too, too
abandonedly. Her gown-I can only describe it by
saying that even Mrs. Hinterberry, who goes what is
practically the limit, would have hesitated to wear it.
"Like the Countess of Duxminster!" Amelia
Tithers breathed in my ear.
"Chic, yes?"
I shuddered. I had read of the Countess of Dux-
minster; it was she who gave the notorious party at
which she lost thirty thousand pounds sterling and
then bet all her garments and lost! And this was but
November, and Amelia Tithers's motto was "Spread
a bit more sail," and there were nine more imper-
sonations on Susan's list!
I closed my eyes and groped for the stair bannis-
ters. When I reached the upper floor I dodged for
the stairs that led to the storeroom. There, in a
row, were the twelve trunks. Number 4 was not
there; it was evidently in Susan's boudoir. For a
moment I stood before trunk No. 5.
It was
unlocked; so were they all. I put my hand on the
lid and hesitated. After all, I could guess what
might be in trunk No. 5. I might as well know the
worst. I staggered to trunk No. 13.
Now, I trust I am not a coward, but I did not dare
open the lid of that trunk. A dozen times I drew a
deep breath and a dozen times I hesitated. I turned
to trunk No. 12, to No. 11.
THE TENTH MRS. TULKINGTON
203
"Augustus," I said to myself, "be a man! Face
this thing!"
I threw open the lid of the trunk containing what
was to be, in effect, the tenth Mrs. Tulkington. At
first the trunk seemed to hold nothing but a few red
artificial flowers and some hay lumped in one small
corner. I lifted these. There was nothing else in
the trunk! The red flowers, as I looked at them,
assumed a meaning they were a wreath for the
head; the hay was sewed to a narrow band. There
was very little hay and it was extremely short hay.
Visions of Hawaii and the South Sea Islands flashed
on my brain. I saw my Susan on a sandy beach. In
my imagination I could see nearly all of the beach—
and nearly all of Susan! I felt sick; suddenly and ex-
tremely sick! So this was to be my wife! This was
to be the tenth Mrs. Tulkington! I could feel the
cold perspiration oozing out of my pores. My Susan
in a hay lamp shade and a wreath of red petunias!
I hardly dared turn my eyes toward trunk No. 11.
I dared not raise the lid; I could think of nothing but
Eve-Eve in the Garden of Eden. I lifted the trunk
by the handle and shook it. Nothing! There was
absolutely nothing in that trunk! And beyond it
stood trunk No. 12. And beyond that stood trunk
No. 13.
I went down the stairs slowly. Five times I
stopped and stood, trying to overcome the trembling
of my limbs; trying to regain my usual composure.
204
MARRIAGE
This unseemly business had gone far enough; trunk
No. 10 might do for a Lady Mercedes, but for a
respectable American wife-no! The tenth Mrs.
Tulkington might please Lord Algy, but as for pleas-
ing Augustus Tulkington-no! I met Susan in the
hall. I grasped her arm firmly.
"Susan," I said, "I have had enough of this! I
have had plenty of Susans."
me.
"Augustus!" she cried, and threw her arms around
"Augustus, I have had more Augustuses than
I could bear. I want just my own old Augustus! I
want my plain old Augustus!"
"And I," I said briskly, "want nothing but my
same old Susan. This whole business has been noth-
ing but idiocy. We can vary the monotony of our
married existence without committing imitation big-
amy by retail and wholesale.'
I was tremendously relieved, for I admit now that
I had been tremendously frightened. The tenth
Mrs. Tulkington had upset me.
"Susan," I whispered firmly, for I was not going to
let her come under the influence of Amelia Tithers
another moment, "go up to your room and prepare
for a journey-a journey with your own husband.
You are going to Palm Beach with your Augustus, a
respectable banker and married man. In five min-
utes the car will be at the door. Hurry-for we
have no time to waste. But, Susan!" I added as
she turned to hurry up the stairs, "Susan! Will
THE TENTH MRS. TULKINGTON
205
you tell me one thing? What was in the eleventh
trunk?"
"Nothing, Augustus," she said, her hand on the
rail.
"And in the twelfth trunk?" I asked with a deep
breath.
"Less than nothing, Augustus," said Susan.
I shuddered to think of what a wife may be capable
when driven to it by deadly routine.
"And in the thirteenth trunk, Susan?" I asked
hoarsely.
"Why, you old silly, my own clothes," said Susan
with a laugh; "the clothes I was wearing when Amelia
and George came.
"Oh!" I said stupidly. "Oh! Well, you've no
time to pack anything; you'll take the thirteenth
trunk."
From Palm Beach I sent a large check to George
Tithers, and he and Amelia were gone when we re-
turned. That was several years ago, but I cannot
persuade Susan to allow me to have those twelve
trunks thrown out of the storeroom in the attic.
“No, Augustus dear," she always says, "I know
now that monotony is the one great curse of married
life, and I love you so dearly, Augustus, that I want
always to have a few of dear Amelia's trunks to wind-
ward.'
MRS. REDMOND'S SHAME
BY MAXIMILIAN FOSTER
T WAS a quarter to eight that morning—a full
I
fifteen minutes past the usual hour-when the
door of Redmond's bedroom opened and Red-
mond hastily emerged. In the same haste he hurried
toward the stairs. He was late, that was all there
was to it-late at breakfast; and as he reached the
stairs, his eyes on the hall clock as he brisked along,
his absorbed, somewhat boyish face wore on it a look
of concern not unmixed with guilt.
"Dear, dear!" he clucked.
To be late at one's own breakfast table is, of course,
not so heinous an offense; but as Redmond's haste
denoted, the case here was different. Time-and
with it promptness-naturally concerned a woman as
active and influential as Redmond's wife. At any
rate, in the life, the career she had made for herself,
Mrs. Redmond long had found it necessary to regulate
her day to a schedule, every minute of which was
actively employed. She was, in fact, that Myrta
Redmond whose prominence as president of the
Woman's State Civic Federation was statewide, if
206
MRS. REDMOND'S SHAME
207
not national; and with the demands this and her
other activities made upon her, it only was reason-
able that Redmond should do nothing to conflict
with her appointed plans. He was, it seems, the
minor official of an insurance company in the city.
An absorbed and reticent, self-effacing person,
Redmond seldom if ever came in contact with his
wife's official life. Even if he had, however, it is
unlikely that he would have made much of an im-
pression on her wide circle of acquaintances, her
social and political associates. Among people of
affairs, the selected active set that surrounded Myrta
Redmond, he would have been adjudged obscure,
perhaps ineffectual-in a word, one they termed
"domestic."
That, indeed, was the word. True, once in his
wife's career, though it was only once, Redmond had
appeared as honorary secretary of a meeting Mrs.
Redmond had convened, the original appointee
having succumbed at the final moment to a distress-
ing attack of migraine. His shy embarrassment,
however, his ignorance, too, of the mere fundamentals
of parliamentary law, at once had betrayed his unfit-
ness; and propelled from one embarrassing blunder
into another, the ladies, his wife's associates and her-
self included, had diplomatically relieved him of the
place. Afterwards, if ever he appeared at one of
the gatherings presided over by Mrs. Redmond,
it was in the rôle merely of that of one of the audi-
208
MARRIAGE
ence that, or in the back of the convention hall he
was to be seen hovering dimly, a shy and silent figure
mutely distributing the handbills, the dodgers, and
other “literature" Myrta Redmond had caused to be
printed. "A mere husband" was Mrs. Hattie Far-
rell Tupper's term for him. She was vice-president
of the Civic Federation, and a close political associate
of Mrs. Redmond's. It is perhaps shocking, though,
to reflect that the term she used fitted. Obscure and
self-effacing John Redmond filled the bill. A "mere"
husband! He essentially was that.
The hall downstairs was long and spacious. It
was, in fact, in character with all the house-spacious
not only, but even vast. However, though there
were only these two to occupy it-they, John Red-
mond and his wife-this, too, had its explanation.
Space or as Myrta termed it, "scope"-Myrta in
her active life needed naturally-and it was for this
the house had been selected—a habitation suitably
roomable for committee meetings, for caucuses and
the like. But then, this air of largeness, of "scope,'
was due not entirely to the size of the structure it-
self; the furnishings-that or, rather, the lack of them,
accentuated this; and as Redmond hastened along
the hall the sight of its present bare emptiness pricked
him with another thrust of conscience, a stab. To-
night a meeting, a committee caucus, was to be held.
Myrta's candidacy and her campaign for a state
office were to be discussed; and already the man-of-
MRS. REDMOND'S SHAME
209
all-work, prompt at the task, had begun to move out
the chairs, the tables, and other furnishings. Later,
they would be replaced by rows of folding stools
chartered from the local undertaker.
Redmond's concern grew more evident. He was
still hurrying; but as he reached the breakfast room
and stepped inside he stopped abruptly.
“Hello!” he exclaimed.
The breakfast room was vacant.
Mrs. Redmond
was neither there, nor, as it appeared, had she al-
ready breakfasted and gone; and staring at her empty
place, Redmond's astonishment grew.
The day was one of vital importance to his wife.
At eight P. M. the caucus would be called; and from
now till then every moment of her time would be
taken-planning, arranging, seeing fellow-members,
marshalling all her forces for the night. The office
she sought was that of State Supervisor, the peak,
the apex to all her present activities and ambitions;
and as Redmond knew, too, her candidacy for the
place was to be no easy victory. Already opposition
had reared its head; and his astonishment growing,
Redmond hurriedly drew out his watch.
He had made no mistake, however. It was a quar-
ter to eight-fifteen minutes past the usual hour; and
again Redmond shot a glance at his wife's vacant
place. The night before he had not seen Mrs.
Redmond; though that in itself was nothing strange.
They occupied separate rooms, he and Mrs. Red-
210
MARRIAGE
mond; and in her full, active life his wife was fre-
quently out at night long after he had gone to bed.
What was strange was, that on a day to her so vital
Myrta Redmond should let time dwindle beneath her
feet.
He was still standing there, watch in hand and
wondering, when the pantry door opened; and a
gaunt, angular figure in cap and apron appeared.
It was a maid, the Redmonds' waitress.
"You're late," she greeted abruptly, bluntly.
Redmond knew he was. That, however, did not
concern him now. Neither was he the more con-
cerned in the maid's brusque abruptness. Normally,
of his own choice, Redmond would have preferred a
different, less thin-lipped, sere and flint-eyed Hebe
to serve him his repasts; but Mrs. Redmond, natu-
rally, had made the choice. The woman, Harriet
Lipp, was a protégée of hers, a fragment, in fact, of
that human social-wreckage Myrta Redmond in
part with her career made it a habit to snatch from
troubled waters and relaunch again in life. The
waitress, in fact, owed not only her present place to
Mrs. Redmond, she owed also her liberty to her,
Mrs. Redmond's influence with the State Pardon
Board having obtained Harriet Lipp's release from
a three years' sentence in the penitentiary. As Mrs.
Redmond, however, had pointed out, it was for a
crime of violence, not one of ignoble meanness or
stealth, for which Harriet had been committed; but
MRS. REDMOND'S SHAME
211
of this distinction, a difference in Mrs. Redmond's
view, Redmond was not thinking now.
"Where's your mistress?" he inquired.
"Upstairs," the woman answered briefly.
The reply, too, was as blunt, as brusque, as it was
brief; and his distaste of her growing, Redmond
stared at the woman.
"When is Mrs. Redmond coming down?" he
asked.
Harriet Lipp's air did not alter.
"She ain't," she answered; and Redmond started.
"What?"
"She's breakfasting abed," said Harriet Lipp.
"In bed?" Raymond echoed.
“Uh huh,” repeated Harriet Lipp.
Wondering, vaguely perturbed now, Redmond
wandered to the table. In the same wonder, he
drew out a chair and seated himself, the maid
watching him with hard, aggressive eyes. It was
nothing new, though, that Redmond should break-
fast alone. Often, in her full, active life, Mrs. Red-
mond was up and away even before he had come
downstairs. There were days, too, often weeks,
when her official duties, public affairs, called her en-
tirely from her home. No, to be alone was nothing
new. But now
Mrs. Redmond break-
fasting in bed. That was new, yes.
A woman's trick, that-breakfast in bed. It was
a trick, too—a woman's trick-of a sort that Myrta
212
MARRIAGE
heretofore would have scorned. The soft, the indul-
gent, the femininely feminine things popularly pre-
sumed of womankind, Mrs. Redmond instinctively
and contemptuously disdained. To her they meant
but one thing—a confession of sex-of the weakness
a confession of sex involved. The parity of the
sexes the abolition rather of all sex-that was Mrs.
Redmond's watchword.
"Here!" Redmond said sharply to the maid;
"bring me my eggs and coffee."
He sat there, staring at his hands. Something
had happened he saw that; something visibly out
of the way. Redmond, in fact, in the twelve years
of his married life had grown, if only subconsciously,
too familiar with his wife's ways, her habitude, not
to sense that something unusual had occurred to her.
Its indications, however, were not merely the other-
wise trivial circumstance of her breakfasting in bed;
of late he had noted in his wife's usual calm, her some-
what complacent self-restraint, a hint of nerves, of
temperament a reaction as if she laboured under
some secret weight, a burden. Uneasy now, a frown
puckered on his brow. What had troubled her, he
wondered, his uneasiness gaining ground.
It was rarely, if ever, now, in these later years
that Mrs. Redmond confided in the man she had
married. Between the two, it was as if the usual
marital situation had become reversed-he, not she,
the dependent; she the master hand. The change,
MRS. REDMOND'S SHAME
213
however if such had happened-was not just equit-
able; for Redmond, if he were the inferior, bent under
what virtually was a double responsibility, that of the
provider, the one who brought in the living; with
that, he, to all intents and purposes, ran the house-
hold as well. Of that, never mind, however. With
all the other calls on Mrs. Redmond there might
have been no household, save that John Redmond
had stepped into the breach. He had not com-
plained. Overshadowed by his wife, submerged in
her growing prominence, the added task John Red-
mond had shouldered as if a duty, his.
He was not thinking of it now. He was not think-
ing, either, of how he himself had become submerged,
thrust inconspicuously into the background of their
married life. Wonder still reigned among his
thoughts; and in their confusion, his mind leaped
with a quick informality from one thought to an-
other. It is the way with those who mull things
over-solitaries.
Something was wrong,
wrong with Myrta Redmond; and his mind dwelt on
that-something wrong with Myrta.
With Myrta, yes, not just Mrs. Redmond. You
understand, no doubt. In other words, there were in
Redmond's mind two figures, always two: Myrta,
first; then-well, the other, Mrs. Redmond. The
two were vividly distinct. Myrta, the one he'd
married, had (to him) never changed; she still was
the one, the same; but the other, the Mrs. Redmond
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MARRIAGE
who had taken his name, still was using it—she and
Redmond were far apart. It was only at odd inter-
vals now, brief and far apart, that the Myrta he'd
married came back to him. She was still there,
Trouble.
though. She was there now.
A "mere" husband, an appendage. Well, the
term fitted well enough. It was queer, though, the
twist the moment gave to it. In trouble if she
were Mrs. Redmond was not merely Mrs. Red-
mond. He was a husband, yes; and instinctively to
him she became transformed. She was Myrta; and
as Myrta, his wife, if Myrta needed help.
Redmond, starting, had half risen from his chair
when the pantry door opened; and the woman,
Harriet Lipp, stalked forth.
"There's y'r eggs," she pronounced.
Redmond resumed his seat. To Myrta he could
have flown, offering aid. To Mrs. Redmond—well,
that was different.
He sat there, mooning. The Lipp woman had
withdrawn, and his eggs grew cold within the cup.
Mulling it over, his thoughts now were going at full
tilt, galloping. In the way with those who moon,
who mull, one thing ran into another, piling up in
magnitude. If something really was wrong, what
was it? A hundred thoughts raced into his mind.
Politics.
Schemes.
Plots
for place, for power.
With women, women
didn't differ much from men. Politics, too, were
MRS. REDMOND'S SHAME
215
Mrs. Redmond's daily pabulum. Had she done
something? Had she compromised herself? Un-
witting had she let herself into something ugly?
Vague stories, sinister whispers of politics, public
affairs, leaped into his remembrance. Her ambi-
tions he knew. He knew, too, that she-that is,
Mrs. Redmond-would make no distinction in meth-
ods. "In politics no sex!" was the watchword of
these women, Mrs. Redmond's associates, hers as
well. They fought with the same tool as the men's.
But if Myrta.
Myrta again-Myrta, not Mrs. Redmond. An
exclamation, sharp, explosive, escaped him. Shoving
back his chair, he rose abruptly.
Harriet Lipp, as if her eye had been glued to the
crack in the pantry door, at once shoved it open.
"Say! You ain't et y'r breakfus'!" she barked.
Redmond had flung down his napkin on the cloth.
He looked at the figure in the doorway.
"What did your mistress say?" he demanded.
Harriet Lipp's eyes narrowed defensively.
"Say when?" she countered.
"This morning, just now!" rapped Redmond, his
temper rising. "Is she ill?" he snapped again.
"No, she ain't," the woman answered.
"Then why isn't she coming down?” asked Red-
mond.
With direct finality the woman answered him:
"She's a-breakfustin' a-bed," said Harriet Lipp.
216
MARRIAGE
That ended it.
For a long moment afterward, the hard-featured
maid stood there at the pantry door, one hand at her
breast, her face strained as she gazed after him. A
breath escaped her. The mystery of all this, though,
was not revealed to Redmond. Already he was at
the stairway hurrying upward.
Mrs. Redmond's room was at the front of the
house, on the floor above. For years-four years
now, nearly five-she and her husband had occupied
separate rooms. As Redmond reached the door he
paused. His hand uplifted, he made as if to knock,
then desisted. Standing there, he put one ear to the
panel and listened.
It was only for an instant, though. The next in-
stant, without even the formality of a knock, he
thrust open the door and stepped inside.
"Myrta!" he exclaimed.
She lay there among the coverings of the bed, her
back to him; and as he entered, calling to her, she did
not move. Along the pillows the masses of her thick,
silky hair like ropes of burnished copper lay strewn;
and above the counterpane a limp, slender arm,
girlishly rounded and pink, revealed itself. She was
still young-a woman only a year or so over thirty;
and now, as Redmond looked at her, her figure
among the coverings seemed appealingly slight and
youthful. More than that, though, in its supine pose
MRS. REDMOND'S SHAME
217
at the moment there was a suggestion of laxity, of
helpless dejection that he was quick to see.
"Myrta!" he cried again.
She answered him then. It was, however, Mrs.
Redmond rather than the Myrta he called who
spoke. Nor did she turn. From among the pillows
her voice rose formal and precise—the voice of Mrs.
Redmond, the public woman's voice.
"What is it?" she inquired.
Redmond paused midway across the room. His
air, its look eager and anxious, altered, too.
"You all right?" he questioned.
A pause. She still did not turn, and in the pause
he stirred uncomfortably. Then from the bed came
her voice, its note, as before, still precise.
"All right?
Why do you ask, pray?"
Uncertainly, he took a step toward her.
"Why, you see, you didn't come to your break-
fast," he faltered.
Again she replied, this time with a change, a note of
petulance in her voice.
"I'm breakfasting here," she said.
"I know—but the meeting, to-night's—your time,"
he faltered again.
Another pause. Then from the pillows the reply.
It came slowly, as if, with the effort, ponderously.
"There is to be no meeting," said Mrs. Red-
mond.
"What?" interrogated Redmond.
218
MARRIAGE
A movement of restless impatience stirred among
the pillows.
"I have called it off-cancelled it."
Perplexed, he ruffled up his brows.
"You have postponed it?" he inquired.
There was again a movement among the pillows,
sharp, vehement, visibly emphatic.
"I have told you once," Mrs. Redmond said as
sharply; "there is to be no meeting. That is enough,
isn't it?" she uttered crisply.
"Myrta!" exclaimed Redmond.
Swiftly he hastened to the bed. In the same haste,
the alert alarm bred of his concern for her, he laid a
hand upon her shoulder.
"Myrta!
. My dear!"
“Let me alone, pray!" Mrs. Redmond directed
annoyedly.
The hand on her shoulder she shook away. With
the same movement she drew the coverings about her.
This, too, she did with a cold, formal deliberation
whose dignity was unmistakeable. Now, how-
ever, wonder, trepidation, too, had the better of Ray-
mond; and he missed the majestic rancour of the
gesture.
"Myrta, what's wrong? What's happened? Tell
me!" he cried.
She turned then, momentarily tense, her features
vital with the emotion she still strove to repress.
Her voice harsh, she spoke-Mrs. Redmond.
MRS. REDMOND'S SHAME
219
"You, of course, would not understand. It's
ended, that's all," she said.
Redmond gaped.
"Ended?
What's ended?”
"Everything, for the time, anyway," she replied;
"I'm done for, that's enough, isn't it?”
"Done for?"
Her lip for an instant curved bitterly.
"You heard me!" she returned. "You don't
suppose for a moment, do you, that I could run now
for that office?" She laughed harshly. “This
year?" She laughed again, the laugh more rasping,
and his jaw drooping, agape, Redmond stared at her.
"Myrta!"
Among the pillows she again gave her shoulders a
shrug.
"Bah!
Fancy facing those women now !”
The women she meant he knew. They were those
other women, her associates, public women like Mrs.
Redmond herself. Why, however, she could not
face them Redmond had yet to grasp. Startled, he
caught swiftly at his breath. Then as he stared
down at her, the thought, the suspicion already that
morning engendered in his mind, saw in her strained,
embittered face the answering echo, an affirmative.
Shame.
!
"Myrta," said Redmond, his voice thick, "what
have you done?"
"I?"
220
MARRIAGE
She looked up at him sharply, tossing from her
brow the thick bronzed masses of her hair.
"What! You mean you don't-don't under-
stand?"
"What's wrong, Myrta? Tell me," said Red-
mond stoutly; "I'll help you-I'll stand by you,
dear. If it's trouble, if even it's a wrong-
"Wrong?"
"Yes, if even shame
>>
He got no further. A laugh, sharp and intoler-
antly bitter and disgusted, came from among the
pillows. It caught Redmond midway in his words,
and left him, like a stranded fish, gasping impotently.
"You dolt, you numskull!" said Mrs. Redmond.
She told him then. It was to Redmond, too—the
news was as if she, Mrs. Redmond, had reached
from the bed and felled him to the floor. He stood
rivetted. Then into his face, his eyes, leaped the
light, transfiguring like a swift burst of sunshine
through a cloud.
"Myrta!" he shrilled. Radiant, quivering to his
feet, had he dared he would have reached down and
gathered her to his arms.
He dared not, though. It was Mrs. Redmond, her
face distorted with the bitterness of her defeated
ambitions, that gazed up at him from among the
pillows.
"Pshaw!" she said, her lip curled anew, "you're
like all men, all you husbands. That's all you think
MRS. REDMOND'S SHAME
221
about!" She gave her shoulders another disgusted,
embittered shrug. "Go away, leave me; I want to
sleep," she said.
Redmond went. It was as if he went, too, tread-
ing, treading the mountain tops.
E
PEACHBLOW
BY RUPERT HUGHES
I
VEN if it had not been set down in Holy Writ
for a fact, there would be no escaping the
truth of: “To him that hath it shall be given.'
In our dictionary, "him," of course, includes "her."
Which is more than he is able to do outside the dic-
tionary.
This is a bit of a story of a her that had—and
therefore got.
The Lord Himself, they say, was surprised when he
saw her. Her earthly father was so stunned with
pride that he called her “Peachblow," and with good
reason. He had never forgotten the excitement
created in America by the advent of the Peachblow
vase.
The unknown genius who was the author of that
masterpiece never dreamed when he put it in the
fire that it would come out so wonderful.
And so the mysterious Potter who places souls in
the furnace of human bodies was enchanted and
amazed by the curious, unforeseen, unintended beauty
of this girl when she was born. They had selected
222
PEACHBLOW
223
the name of Ellen Anne Green for her before they
saw her, but afterward they called her Peachblow.
Such a peculiar lustre she had with the glow of a
glaze yet the aura of a mist that the Potter longed to
show her how he loved her by endowing her with some
intentional gift surpassing even the fortuitous charm
she brought with her out of the kiln of mystery.
So He gave her a power He had never even granted
Himself that of annulling what had been and mak-
ing it as if it had never been. He authorized her
and empowered her to change her mind and try again
from the start! She could rub out the past and do
it over again!
She learned of her awful power only by accident
and not until she had passed through the animal
whims of childhood, and the parent-obeying, teacher-
obeying, custom-obeying years.
Then she found herself in the world of grown-up
women. They were thinking mainly about matri-
mony.
Some were not married and wanted to be but
dreaded it and could not find a satisfactory mate.
Mates were admirable, adorable, or advisable, but
rarely all three at once. The women who were
married seemed to be forever pointing out what
martyrs they were and how well they stood it; or,
else, were longing to try a new form of martyrdom
with somebody else.
It was amazing to Peachblow to hear the women
224
MARRIAGE
complaining of so many things in the wedded estate
and yet all conspiring to decoy the unmarried ones
into the trap that held them-like captured mice;
like misery in love of company.
Peachblow vowed that she would never get mar-
ried at all, but after a season or two of flying about
with all sorts of lovers, and involving herself in va-
rious entangling alliances with two or three fiancés
at once, she began to long for that ancient form of
monotony known as monogamy.
She was a good girl at heart—as such a beauty had
to be. For beauty cannot last long with an ugly
soul fermenting and going sour inside any more than
an apple can entertain a worm or a rose a canker
without a blemish finally transpiring.
Peachblow longed for the joys, the sorrows, the
burdens of a home. She wanted to do her share in
the world; to multiply, and all that sort of thing.
Her parents brought forward young men whom
they approved and warned her against others.
They encountered the inevitable.
She proceeded to despise the men they recom-
mended and to take an interest in the ones they
warned her against. But even then she found it
hard to choose among the men in her immediate
vicinity, each of whom had some marked flaw in his
make-up. She sighed:
"Love is so glorious a thing that I think I'd like to
be loved by the lovingest lover in all the world."
PEACHBLOW
225
She cast about for the person most worthy of that
distinction.
The man who seemed to be the leading lover in
respect to quantity and quality was known to all
the world as Claude Winsor. So she said:
"I think I'll marry Claude Winsor."
Her father and mother exclaimed aloud:
"But he's a movie actor and he's married."
"The first argues skill," she mused; "but the sec-
ond is an obstacle. I do wish he had never been
married."
There was an audible click and buzz, a peculiar
jolt in the universe, a dizzy feeling as if someone had
thrown the world into the reverse gear, then set it
back in high. The family said:
"That's funny! Did you notice anything?
Then they forgot it and returned to the popular
sport of denouncing the motion-picture people and
crediting them with inventing more novel sins than
situations.
Peachblow was blue for several days, and then she
chanced to read in the newspapers this:
Mr. and Mrs. Claude Winsor announce that a curious error
has been made in the public attitude toward their relationship.
They have never been married; never have lived together,
never have been anything but friends, which they still are, and
might not be if they had been married.
The children that used to play in front of their bungalow are
the children of a neighbour.
226
MARRIAGE
"Aha!" quoth Peachblow. "I will marry this
bachelor." And immediately began to pack her
trunks. She told her father to get her a stateroom
to Los Angeles and her mother to come along.
Her parents indulged in mental pinwheels when
they heard her decision.
They pointed out the precipitancy of marrying a
total stranger who had more than a million priestesses
already worshipping him. They drew their daugh-
ter's attention to the impropriety of loving a man
who sold his love by the reel and made love by the
day before a camera to any woman the company
selected. According to the papers he did not stop
making love when the camera was turned off.
But nothing could change Peachblow's mind. She
went out to Los Angeles, and sent one of her photo-
graphs to Mr. Winsor with a request for an inter-
view. That photograph was letter of introduction
enough, and she was invited to call at the great
man's studio.
When she stood before his eyes he said:
"Do you want to go into the movies?"
"Well," she said, "I'm going to marry into them."
"Indeed? And who is the lucky man?"
"You."
"Really!"
"Uh-huh."
Being used to the silent drama and hating super-
fluous titles, he said nothing, but took her by an
PEACHBLOW
227
elbow, her mother by an elbow, hurried them out to
his car, ran them to the nearest parson, and said,
"Shoot!"
The parson then did them the irreparable injury-
or what would have been irreparable in the case of
anybody but Peachblow.
For a time the marriage was happy and she revelled
in the luxury of being loved by an expert. But then
he went back to his profession, and mortification set
in.
Peachblow found herself the chattel of a husband
who left her arms early in the morning and hastened
to the arms of other women; who fought for them,
pursued them, risked his life to save their lives, gazed
into their eyes with an ardour that overpowered all
beholders; who faded out of every picture with a
dying-duck look of undying affection for some highly
artificial beauty—and then came home at night worn
out with love and wanted to go to the American
Legion prizefight.
After a few months Peachblow sent for her mother
and father and listened with great patience to their
"I told you so's."
They agreed with her that life with such a husband
was impossible, and engaged the best divorce lawyer
in Los Angeles. While they were bewailing the in-
evitable newspaper horror, the headlines, and all the
hideous details of divorce, Peachblow felt a renewal
of her occult power.
228
MARRIAGE
"Divorce nothing!" she said; "I'll just forget him.
I'll just unmarry myself quietly, and erase my mem-
ory from his mind."
She said this in the very presence of Mr. Winsor
who had called with his lawyer to confer with Peach-
blow, her parents, and their lawyer, John Elphin-
stone.
As soon as Peachblow spoke a curious look came
over Claude Winsor's face. Again the earth jolted
and spun backward, then raced forward once more.
"It's nothing," said Mr. Elphinstone, "but one of
our little California earthquakes. Quite nothing at
all."
He slipped his arm about Peachblow to sustain
her, and found the attitude singularly comfortable.
Together they watched Claude Winsor staring at
them with a look of bewilderment. Then he bowed
and said:
"Pardon me, I entered the wrong set-house, by
mistake."
He staggered out and the next thing he knew he
was sitting on his porch dandling his baby before his
original wife while the publicity man took snapshots
for the magazines.
Mr. Elphinstone clung to Peachblow until her
father intervened and said:
"What right have you to stand there embracing
my daughter as if you were announcing your engage-
ment to her?"
PEACHBLOW
229
"And why not?" said Elphinstone.
"I see no objection," murmured Peachblow who
felt a sudden emptiness in her life. "After all, who
could make a better husband than a lawyer?"
And so in a short time expensively engraved cards
conveyed the information that Mr. and Mrs. Greene
announced the marriage of their daughter Ellen Anne
to John Elphinstone, esquire.
II
Those who have experienced it say that there is
nothing like being the wife of a lawyer. For a time
Peachblow agreed with this in its simplest implica-
tion; then she amended it to: "There's nothing like
it because nothing else could be so bad."
She had a husband who tore himself from her so-
ciety of mornings and went forth to do battle for
women clients over whose wrecked lives he waxed so
eloquent that his tears were rivalled by those of the
jury, and strong judges bent their heads and wept
secretly on the papers where judges make idle marks
to pass away the time.
Elphinstone not only spent hours upon hours in his
office with exquisite clients whose hands he patted,
and whose charms he expatiated on before the courts,
but he came home and told his wife about it.
He wrote briefs as impassioned and as full of imagi-
nations as any scenario and then acted his own con-
tinuities with fiery enthusiasm. His cases often took
230
MARRIAGE
him to distant cities and it was not always convenient
for Peachblow to go with him.
There was such a strain upon her natural jealousy
that she had to consult a physician, Dr. S. Q. Lapius,
who had a charming bedside manner and soothed her
by suggestion rather than by knife or nostrum.
After one notorious lawsuit in which Elphinstone
wore himself almost to a wreck by his defense of a
wayward lady who had bankrupted her husband and
then sued him for alienation of her affections, Elphin-
stone came home to find his mother- and father-in-law
and the physician trying to restrain Peachblow's
hysterics. When Elphinstone approached her so-
licitously she cowered into the bosom of the doctor
and screamed:
"Go away; you are no longer a husband of mine; in
fact, you never were.
Elphinstone was seized as by invisible hands and
haled backward to his own office where he awoke
with a splitting headache and a strange gap in his
memory.
Peachblow, once more miraculously restored to
maidenhood, said:
"After all, a doctor is the world's most useful
citizen. I believe I should enjoy being a wife to one."
"Barkis is willin',"" said the physician, who was
unusually well read for a doctor. He persuaded
another physician to take care of his patients and
went away on a bridal tour of all imaginable bliss.
PEACHBLOW
231
III
When he came back Doctor Lapius found that his
overworked substitute had let all his patients get
well, and he had to buckle down to the task of restor-
ing them to a state of profitable disorder.
He had his office in the parlour of the home and
this made it necessary for Mrs. Peachblow Lapius to
entertain her friends in the upstairs living room.
The acoustics were such that she could hear what
went on in the office. The halest and heartiest women
constantly entered the parlour in a state of acute dis-
tress and after long, murmurous consultations went
away so much better that Peachblow grew frantic
with suspicion. She remembered all too vividly how
gentle and soothing her husband had been with her
when she was another man's wife. And she wondered,
till her wonderment grew to a bitter conviction.
Worse yet, he was the slave of the telephone. At
no hour of the day or night was he safe from the hate-
ful summons to hurry to the rescue of some distress-
ful patient. In nine cases out of ten it was a woman,
and in no cases out of ten was Peachblow ever urged
to come along.
She so lost her taste for material medicaments that
she longed for spiritual help, and went to her rector,
dear Dr. Clarence Yost, to confess her misery.
She was set upon a divorce, but he was horrified at
the thought.
*232
MARRIAGE
"Now an annulment would not be so bad," he
urged.
"All right, it's annulled," said Peachblow grimly.
And Doctor Lapius found himself back in bachelor-
hood. But Peachblow had come to depend upon
Doctor Yost. He lived in such an exalted sphere and
such a comfortable parsonage that she decided to
share both with him.
IV
To her intense confusion Peachblow discovered
that the feminine portion of the congregation took
her marriage to their dear rector as a personal inva-
sion of their rights.
For a time the attendance fell off noticeably. But
gradually the lonely women returned to their pews.
Next they resumed their habit of bringing their woes
to their spiritual adviser.
These were genuine woes beyond the reach of
scalpel or tonic, but Peachblow could not regard them
as anything but a hypocritical excuse for weeping on
her husband's shoulder and clinging to his rescuing
hands.
Whether or not she did them a cruel injustice, the
effect on her nerves was manifest. At last in a crisis
of unhappiness, she stormed:
"I'm sick of all the professions. I'm going into
trade."
She unwished herself from Doctor Yost and he
PEACHBLOW
233
once more assumed all the charms of an unwedded
clergyman, eligible and available.
V
A merchant was Peachblow's next first husband:
the handsome junior member of the firm of Wanafield
and Son, at whose great department store she had
long run up bills for her father to protest against, then
pay and pay and pay.
But when she called at his office she found him so
surrounded with stenographers, buyers, mannikins,
cloak models, designers, and other women customers
and aides that she could hardly get to him.
His heart was given to providing as many women
as possible with beautiful garments and embellish-
ments of every intimate sort, with perfumes and rib-
bons and lipsticks and what not. He thought about
fashions, and he was so weary of feminine charms and
their enchantment that when he came home to his
Peachblow he left at once for one of his exclusively
male clubs in order to keep his sanity.
VI
A small shoe shop man was Peachblow's next ex-
periment. But when she went by his store and
peeked in at the window, she always found him kneel-
ing before some woman and trying to crush a number
6-E foot into a number 3-A shoe; and she simply
could not endure it.
234
MARRIAGE
VII
A plumber she married was forever puttering about
other people's homes, in the most personal crannies;
and she gave him up.
An iceman followed him through her much-trodden
heart, but he, too, had his kitchen doors to visit.
VIII
Discouraged by her inability to find a husband
in town who did not have to spend a large part of his
time and attention upon other women, Peachblow
resolved to marry some homely old farmer who lived
in a solitude.
Ezra Hepple was the happy man-for a time.
And he was so content with Peachblow's society that
he would not even keep a hired girl to cook for the
hired men.
He rose at four A. M. and bragged about it. He
woke her up to brag about it. The fact that he had
gone to sleep at dusk did not abate his pride. The
only poetry he knew was something ending with
"healthy, wealthy, and wise." She knew he was
neither wealthy nor wise, but she was afraid he was
healthy.
Her jealous little soul had its wish at last.
But a wish ceases to be a wish as soon as it is
achieved. Like the candy in the bonbon dish it is apt
not only to turn sour but to wreck the appetite as well.
PEACHBLOW
235
Peachblow's latest instalment in her serial husband
never cast an interested eye on any other woman.
But this curiously made his interest in her unimpor-
tant; robbed him of suspense and her of the drama of
anxiety. He was unskilful, uncouth, illiterate in
femininity.
No other woman cast an eye in his direction. But
that was because he had nothing attractive about
him. And the man who is unable to interest any
other woman is unable to interest his wife, who is
also a woman.
Poor Peachblow, having no rivals to fear and hav-
ing a husband who made no perilous comparisons,
began to neglect herself. Her beauty wilted from
lack of attention. Her incomparable complexion
began to yield to farm food and farm labour in farm
weather.
She sighed: "It doesn't seem to make much differ-
ence what man a woman marries; every one of the
brutes has his own specialty in being impossible."
By this time Peachblow had so disorganized the
machinery of the universe that the world was in the
garage half the time; and all the angels were ex-
hausted.
It is not such an easy matter for even the angels
to keep everything going, especially when it goes
backward frequently. There was talk of a strike in
heaven and celestial society was profoundly dis-
turbed. The oldest angels were forever talking of
236
MARRIAGE
the last big revolution when Lucifer and his whole
party were thrown overboard.
But how was the dreadful situation to be changed?
The Lord did not want to cancel one of his own
generous gifts to one of his most beautiful creatures.
But heaven was ceasing to be heaven for all its de-
serving tenants. And Peachblow was ceasing to be
pretty. Even heaven was noticing that.
At the height of this dreadful cosmic crisis Peach-
blow, in a frowsy state of despondency, while slaving
in her kitchen, chanced to catch a glimpse of herself
in the casual mirror in the round bottom of a big
dishpan. She had long ceased to peruse her own
looking-glass.
The vision that stared at her from that tiny surface
shocked her into a sorrow too deep for hysterics.
She meditated on her own image:
"Every husband is worse than every other hus-
band. A woman might as well stick to the first
wretch she happens to marry. I was luckiest when
I had the most lovable of men, and I wish I had him
back again, movie actor though he be.
"This hateful power of mine has been my ruin.
It's best to let nature take her course. The one
thing I most wish had never been is my ability to
make things as if they never had been.'
""
As she exhaled this last sigh a distinct earthquake
was registered on every seismograph in the world. The
heavens shook, at first with surprise, then with delight.
PEACHBLOW
237
Peachblow herself was shaken. She found herself
staring at a dishpan as if under a hypnotic spell.
She heard her husband's voice from the dining-room
door. It was the voice of Claude Winsor, the star
supreme of the cinematic firmament. The world
might share his silent beauty with her, but his voice
belonged to her:
"What on earth are you doing in the kitchen, my
darling? It's no place for such exquisite grace. And
besides, I see that there's a ton of fan mail that you
haven't answered. You haven't autographed any
of my photographs for me in ever so long. We've
got to get busy or we'll lose our little public.
With a cry of rapture she flung her arms about his
universally admired neck and rejoiced in the fact
that at least a hundred million women of all ages and
races about the globe would have been glad to poison
her for her enviable privilege.
The moral, if any, has to do with leaping out of
the frying pan into the fire. The moral is ancient;
the fire is the same old inextinguishable blaze of dis-
content. But the frying pan is forever new. Each
one of us furnishes his or her own frying pan.
Selah!
MARRIAGE-FOR ONE
BY THEODORE DREISER

W
HENEVER I think of love and marriage I
think of Wray. That clerkly figure.
That clerkly mind. He was among the
first people I met when I came to New York and, like
so many of the millions seeking to make their way, he
was busy about his affairs. Fortunately, as I saw it,
with the limitations of the average man, he had the
ambitions of the average man. At that time he was
connected with one of those large commercial agen-
cies which inquire into the standing of business men,
small and large, and report their findings, for a price,
to other business men. He was very much interested
in his work and seemed satisfied that should he per-
sist in it he was certain to achieve what was perhaps a
fair enough ambition: a managership in some branch
of this great concern, which same would pay him so
much as five or six thousand a year. The thing
about him that interested me, apart from a genial
and pleasing disposition, was the fact that with all
this wealth of opportunity before him for studying
the human mind, its resources and resourcefulness,
its inhibitions and liberations, its humour, tragedy,
238
MARRIAGE—FOR ONE
239
and general shiftiness and changefulness, still he was
largely concerned with the bare facts of the differing
enterprises whose character he was supposed to in-
vestigate. Were they solvent? Could and did they
pay their bills? What was their capital stock?
How much cash did they have on hand?
Such was the nature of the data he needed, and to
this he largely confined himself.
Nevertheless, by turns he was amused or aston-
ished or made angry or self-righteous by the tricks,
the secretiveness, the errors, and the downright mean-
ness of spirit of so many he had to deal with. As
for himself, he had the feeling that he was honest,
straightforward, not as limited or worthless as some
of these others, and it was on this score that he was
convinced he would succeed, as he did eventually,
within his limitations, of course. What interested
me and now makes me look upon him always as an
excellent illustration of the futility of the dream of
exact or even suitable rewards was his clerkly and
highly respectable faith in the same. If a man did
as he should do, if he were industrious and honest
and saving and courteous and a few more of those
many things we all know we ought to be, then in that
orderly nature of things which he assumed to hold
one must get along better than some others. What!
--an honest, industrious, careful man not do better
than one who was none of these things—a person
who flagrantly disregarded them, say? What non-
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sense. It must be so. Of course there were acci-
dents and sickness, and men stole from one another,
as he saw illustrated in his daily round. And banks
failed, and there were trusts and combinations being
formed that did not seem to be entirely in tune with
the interests of the average man. But even so. All
things considered, the average man, if he did as
above, was likely to fare much better than the one
who did not. In short, there was such a thing as
approximate justice. Good did prevail, in the main,
and the wicked were punished, as they should be.
And in the matter of love and marriage he held
definite views also. Not that he was unduly narrow
or was inclined to censure those whose lives had not
worked out as well as he hoped his own would, but
he thought there was a fine line of tact somewhere in
this matter of marriage which led to success there
quite as the qualities outlined above led, or should
lead, to success in matters more material or practi-
cal. One had to understand something about women.
One had to be sure that when one went a-courting one
selected a woman of sense as well as of charm,
one who came of good stock and hence would be pos-
sessed of good taste and good principles. She need
not be rich; she might even be poor. And one had
to be reasonably sure that one loved her. So many
that went a-courting imagined they loved and were
loved when it was nothing more than a silly passing
passion. Wray knew. And so many women were
MARRIAGE-FOR ONE
241
designing, or at least light and flighty; they could not
help a serious man to succeed if they would. Every-
where, of course, was the really sensible and worthy
girl whom it was an honour to marry, and it was one
of these that he was going to choose. Yet even there
it was necessary to exercise care: one might marry a
girl who was too narrow and conventional, one who
would not understand the world and hence be full
of prejudices. He was for the intelligent and prac-
tical and liberal girl, if he could find her, one who was
his mental equal.
>
If you
It was when he had become secretary to a certain
somebody that he encountered in his office a girl who
seemed to him to embody nearly all of the virtues or
qualities which he thought necessary. She was the
daughter of very modestly circumstanced parents
who dwelt in the near-by suburb of O
and a very
capable and faithful stenographer, of course.
had seen the small and respectable suburb from
which she emanated you would understand. She
was really pretty, and appeared to be practical and
sensible in many ways, but still very much in leash
to the instructions and orders and tenets of her home
and her church and her family circle, three worlds as
fixed and definite and worthy and respectable in her
thought as even the most enthusiastic of those who
seek to maintain the order and virtue of the world
would have wished. According to him, she was op-
posed to the theatre, dancing, any form of night
242
MARRIAGE
dining or visiting in the city on weekdays, as well as
anything that in her religious and home world might
be construed as desecration of the Sabbath. I recall
him describing her as narrow "as yet," but he hoped
to make her more liberal in the course of time. He
told me with some amusement and the air of a man
of the world that it was impossible for him to win
her to so simple an outing as rowing on the Sabbath,
on the little river near her home; on the contrary,
he had to go to church with her and her parents.
Although he belonged to no church and he was mildly
interested in socialism, he kept these facts from her
knowledge. The theatre could not even be men-
tioned as a form of amusement and she could not and
would not dance; she looked upon his inclination for
the same as not only worldly but loose and sinful.
However, as he told me, he was very fond of her and
was doing his best to influence and enlighten her.
She was too fine and intelligent a girl to stick to such
notions, he thought. She would come out of them.
By very slow degrees (he was about the business
of courting her all of two or three years) he succeeded
in bringing her to the place where she did not object
to staying down-town to dinner with him on a week-
day, even went with him to a sacred or musical con-
cert of a Sunday night, but all unbeknown to her
parents or neighbours, of course. But what he con-
sidered his greatest triumph was when he succeeded
in interesting her in books, especially bits of history
MARRIAGE-FOR ONE
243
and philosophy that he thought very liberal and
which no doubt generated some thin wisps of doubt
in her own mind. Also, because he was intensely
fond of the theatre and had always looked upon it as
the chiefest of the sources of his harmless entertain-
ment, he eventually induced her to attend a perform-
ance, and then another and another. In short, he
emancipated her in so far as he could, and seemed to
be delighted with the result.
With their marriage came a new form of life for
both of them but more especially for her. They
took a small apartment in New York, a city upon
which originally she had looked with no little sus-
picion, and they began to pick up various friends.
It was not long before she had joined a literary club
which was being formed in their vicinity, and here
she met a certain type of restless, pushing, seeking
woman for whom Wray did not care-a Mrs. Drake
and a Mrs. Munshaw, for instance, who he con-
sidered could be of no possible value to any one.
But Bessie liked them and was about with them here,
there, and everywhere.
It was about this time that I had my first suspicion
of anything untoward in their hitherto happy rela-
tions. I did not see him often, but when I did
I was visiting them at their small apartment and
could not help seeing that Mrs. Wray was proving
almost too apt a pupil in the realm in which he had
interested her. It was plain that she had been eman-
244
MARRIAGE
cipated from quite all of her old notions as to the
sinfulness of the stage, and in regard to reading and
living in general. Plainly, Wray had proved the
Prince Charming, who had entered the secret garden
and waked the sleeping princess to a world of things
such as she had never dreamed of. She criticized
certain popular authors, spoke of a curiously en-
lightening history of France she was reading, of
certain bits of philosophy and poetry which her new
club were discussing. From the nature of the con-
versation being carried on by the three of us I could
see that Wray was beginning to feel that the un-
sophisticated young girl he had married a little while
before might yet outstrip him in the very realm in
which he had hoped to be her permanent guide.
More than once she chose to question or contradict
him as to a matter of fact, and I think he was aston-
ished if not irritated by the fact that she knew more
than he about the import of a certain plot or the rela-
tivity of certain dates in history. And with the force
and determination that had caused her to stand by
her former convictions she now aired and defended
her new knowledge. Not that her manner was su-
perior or irritating exactly; she had a friendly way of
including and consulting him in regard to many
things which indicated that as yet she had no thought
of manifesting a superiority which she did not feel.
"That's not right, dearest. His name is Bentley.
He is the author of a play that was here last year-
MARRIAGE-FOR ONE
245
The Seven Rings of Manfred-don't you remember?"
And Wray, much against his will, was compelled to
confess that she was right.
Whenever he met me alone after this he would
confide the growing nature of his doubts and per-
plexities. Bessie was no more the girl she had been
when he first met her than he was like the boy he
had been at ten years of age. A great, a very great
change was coming over her. She was becoming
more aggressive and argumentative and self-centred
all the time, more this, more that. She was reading
a great deal, much too much for the kind of life she
was called upon to lead. Of late they had been hav-
ing long and unnecessary arguments that were of no
consequence however they were settled, and yet if
they were not settled to suit her she was angry or
irritable. She was neglecting her home and running
about all the time with her new-found friends. She
did not like the same plays he did. He wanted a
play that was light and amusing, whereas she wanted
one with some serious moral or intellectual twist to it.
She read only serious books now and was attending
a course of lectures, whereas he, as he now confessed,
was more or less bored by serious books. What was
the good of them? They only stirred up thoughts
and emotions which were better left unstirred. And
she liked music, or was pretending she did, grand
opera, recitals, and that sort of thing, whereas he was
not much interested in music. Grand opera bored
246
MARRIAGE
him, and he was free to admit it, but if he would not
accompany her she would go with one or both of
those two wretched women he was beginning to de-
test. Their husbands had a little money and gave
them a free rein in the matter of their social and
artistic aspirations. They had no household duties
to speak of and could come and go as they chose, and
Wray now insisted that it was they who were aiding
and abetting Bessie in these various interests and en-
thusiasms and stirring her up to go and do and be.
What was he to do? No good could come if things
went on as they were going. They were having fre-
quent quarrels, and more than once lately she had
threatened to leave him and do for herself here in
New York, as he well knew she could. He was doing
very well now and they could be happy together if
only these others could be done away with.
It was only a month or two after this that Wray
came to see me, in a very distrait state of mind.
After attempting to discuss several other things quite
casually he confessed that his young wife had left
him. She had taken a room somewhere and had
resumed work as a stenographer, and although he
met her occasionally in the subway she would have
nothing to do with him. She wanted to end it all.
And would I believe it? She was accusing him of
being narrow and ignorant and stubborn and a num-
ber of other things! Only think of it! And three or
four years ago she had thought he was all wrong
MARRIAGE FOR ONE
247
when he wanted to go rowing on Sunday or stay
downtown to dinner of an evening. Could such
things be possible? And yet he loved her, in spite of
all the things that had come up between them. He
couldn't help it. He couldn't help thinking how
sweet and innocent and strange she was when he first
met her, how she loved her parents and respected
their wishes. And now see. "I wish to God," he
suddenly exclaimed in the midst of the "old-time"
picture he was painting of her, "that I hadn't been so
anxious to change her. She was all right as she was,
if I had only known it. She didn't know anything
about these new-fangled things then, and I wasn't
satisfied till I got her interested in them. And now
see. She leaves me and says I'm narrow and stub-
born, that I'm trying to hold her back intellectually.
And all because I don't want to do all the things she
wants to do and am not interested in all the things
that interest her now."
I shook my head. Of what value was advice in
such a situation as this, especially from one who was
satisfied that the mysteries of temperament of either
were not to be unravelled or adjusted save by nature
-the accidents of chance and affinity, or the deadly
oppositions which keep apart those unsuited to each
other? Nevertheless, being appealed to for advice,
I ventured a silly suggestion, borrowed from another.
He had said that if he could but win her back he
would be willing to modify the pointless opposition
248
MARRIAGE
and contention that had driven her away. She
might go her intellectual way as she chose if she would
only come back. Seeing him so tractable and so
very wishful, I now suggested a thing that had been
done by another in a somewhat related situation.
He was to win her back by offering her such terms
as she would accept, and then, in order to bind her
to him, he was to induce her to have a child. That
would capture her sympathy, very likely, as well as
insinuate an image of himself into her affectionate
consideration. Those who had children rarely sepa-
rated-or so I said.
The thought appealed to him intensely. It satis-
fied his practical and clerkly nature. He left me
hopefully and I saw nothing of him for sev ral
months, at the end of which time he came to report
that all was once more well with him. She had come
back, and in order to seal the new pact he had taken
a larger apartment in a more engaging part of the city.
Bessie was going on with her club work, and he was
not opposing her in anything. And then within the
year came a child and there followed all those simple,
homey, and seemingly binding and restraining things
which go with the rearing and protection of a young
life.
But even during that period, as I was now to
learn, all was not as smooth as I had hoped. Talking
to me in Wray's absence once Bessie remarked that,
delightful as it was to have a child of her own, she
MARRIAGE—FOR ONE
249
could see herself as little other than milk-cow with
an attendant calf, bound to its service until it should
be able to look after itself. Another time she re-
marked that mothers were bond-servants, that even
though she adored her little girl she could not help
seeing what a chain and a weight a child was to one
who had ambitions beyond those of motherhood.
But Wray, clerkly soul that he was, was all but lost
in rapture. There was a small park near by, and here
he could be found trundling his infant in a handsome
baby carriage whenever his duties would permit.
He would sit or walk where were others who had
children of about the age of his own so that he might
compare them. He liked to speculate on the charm
and innocence of babyhood and was amused by a
hundred things which he had never noticed in the
children of others. Already he was beginning to for-
mulate plans for little Marie's future. It was hard
for children to be cooped up in an apartment house
in the city. In a year or two, if he could win Bessie
to the idea, they would move to some suburban town
where Marie would have the country air.
They were prospering now and could engage a
nursemaid, so Mrs. Wray resumed her intellectual
pursuits and her freedom. Throughout it all one
could see that, respect Wray as she might as a dutiful
and affectionate and methodical man, she could not
love or admire him, and that mainly for reason of the
gap that lay between them intellectually. Dissemble
250
MARRIAGE
as he might, there was always the hiatus that lies
between those who think or dream a little and those
who aspire and dream much. Superiority of intel-
lect was not altogether the point; she was not so
much superior as different, as I saw it. Rather, they
were two differing rates of motion, flowing side by
side for the time being only, he the slower, she the
quicker. And it mattered not that his conformed
more to the conventional thought and emotions of
the majority. Hers was the more satisfactory to
herself and constituted an urge which he feared rather
than despised; and his was more satisfactory to him-
self, compromise as he would. Observing them to-
gether one could see how proud he was of her and of
his relationship to her, how he felt that he had cap-
tured a prize, regardless of the conditions by which
it was retained; and, on the other hand, one could
easily see how little she held him in her thought and
mood. She was forever talking to others about
those things which she knew did not interest him or
to which he was opposed.
For surcease she plunged into those old activities
that had so troubled him at first, and now he com-
plained that little Marie was being neglected. She
did not love her as she should or she could not do
as she was doing. And what was more and worse,
she had now taken to reading Freud and Kraft-Ebb-
ing and allied thinkers and authorities, men and
works that he considered dreadful and shameful.
MARRIAGE FOR ONE
251
even though he scarcely grasped their true signifi-
cance.
One day he came to me and said: “Do you know of
a writer by the name of Pierre Loti?"
"Yes," I replied, "I know his works. What
about it?"
"What do you think of him?"
"As a writer? Why, I respect him very much.
Why?"
"Oh, I know, from an intellectual point of view,
as a fine writer, maybe. But what do you think of
his views of life of his books as books to be read
by the mother of a little girl?"
'Wray," I replied, “I can't enter upon a discussion
of any man's works upon purely moral grounds.
He might be good for some mothers and evil for
others. Those who are to be injured by a picture of
life must be injured, and those who are to be bene-
fited will be benefited. I can't discuss either books
or life in that way. I see books as truthful represen-
tations of life in some form, nothing more. And it
would be unfair to any one who stood in intellectual
need to be restrained from that which might prove of
advantage to him. I speak only for myself, how-
ever."
It was not long after that that I learned there had
been a new quarrel and that Bessie had left him once
more, this time, as it proved, for good. And with her,
which was perhaps illegal or unfair, she had taken the
252
MARRIAGE
child. I did not know what had brought about this
latest rupture but assumed that it was due to steadily
diverging views. They could not agree on that better
understanding of life which at one time he was so
anxious for her to have his understanding. Now
that she had gone beyond that, and her method of
going was unsatisfactory to him, they could not agree,
of course.
Not hearing from him for a time I called and found
him living in the same large apartment they had
taken. There was an equipment better suited to
four than to one, yet after seven or eight months of
absence on her part here he was, living alone, where
every single thing must remind him of her and Marie.
As for himself, apart from a solemnity and reserve
which sprang from a wounded and disgruntled spirit,
he pretended an indifference and a satisfaction with
his present state which did not square with his past
love for her. She had gone, yes; but she had made
a mistake and would find it out. Life wasn't as she
thought it was. She had gone with another man-
he was sure of that, although he did not know who
the man was.
It was all due to one of those two
women she had taken up with, that Mrs. Drake.
They were always interested in things which did not
and could not interest him. After a time he added
that he had been to see her parents. I could not
guess why, unless it was because he was lonely and
still very much in love and thought they might help
MARRIAGE FOR ONE
253
him to understand the very troublesome problem
that was before him.
It was a year and a half before I saw him again,
during which time, as I knew, he continued to live
in the apartment they had occupied together. He
had become manager of a department of the agency
by this time and was going methodically to and fro
between his home and office. After living alone and
brooding for more than a year, he came to see me one
rainy November night. He looked well enough ma-
terially, quite the careful person who takes care of
his clothes, but thinner, more tense and restless.
He seated himself before my fire and declared that
he was doing very well and was thinking of taking a
long vacation to visit some friends in the West. (He
had once told me that he had heard that Bessie had
gone to California.) Yes, he was still living in the
old place. I might think it strange, but he had not
thought it worth while to move. He would only
have to find another place to live in; the furniture
was hard to pack; he didn't like hotels.
Then of a sudden, noting that I studied him and
wondered, he grew restless and finally stood up, then
walked about looking at some paintings and examin-
ing a shelf of books. His manner was that of one
who is perplexed and undetermined, of one who has
stood out against a silence and loneliness of which
he was intensely weary. Then of a sudden he
wheeled and faced me: "I can't stand it. That's
254
MARRIAGE
what's the matter. I just can't stand it any longer.
I've tried and tried. I thought the child would make
things work out all right, but it didn't. She didn't
want children and never forgave me for persuading
her to have Marie. And then that literary craze
that was really my own fault, though. I was the one
that encouraged her to read and go to theatres. I
used to tell her she wasn't up-to-date, that she ought
to wake up and find out what was going on in the
world, that she ought to get in with intelligent people.
But it wasn't that, either. If she had been the right
sort of woman she couldn't have done as she has
done."
He paused and clenched his hands ner-
vously and dramatically. It was as though he were
denouncing her to her face instead of to me.
"Now, Wray," I interposed, "how useless to say
that. Which of us is as he should be? Why will
you talk so?"
"But let me tell you what she did," he went on
fiercely. "You haven't an idea of what I've been
through, not an idea. She tried to poison me once
so as to get rid of me." And here followed a brief
and sad recital of the twists and turns and despera-
tion of one who was intensely desirous of being free
of one who was as desirous of holding her. And then
he added: "And she was in love with another man,
only I could never find out who he was." And his
voice fell to a low, soft level, as though he was even
then trying to solve the mystery of who it was.
MARRIAGE-FOR ONE
255
"And I know she had an operation performed
though I could never prove it." And he gave me
details of certain mysterious goings to and fro, of
secret pursuits on his part, actions and evidences and
moods and quarrels that pointed all too plainly to a
breach that could never be healed. "And what's
more, " he exclaimed at last, "she tortured me.
You'll never know. You couldn't. But I loved
her.
And I love her now." Once more the
tensely gripped fingers, the white face, the flash of
haunted eyes.
"One afternoon I stood outside of a window of an
apartment house when I knew she was inside, and I
knew the name of the man who was supposed to oc-
cupy it, only he had re-sublet it, as I found out after-
ward. And she had Marie with her-think of that!
our own little girl! I saw her come to the window
once to look out-I actually saw her in another man's
rooms. I ran up and hammered at the door-I tried
to break it open. I called to her to come out but she
wouldn't, and I went to get a policeman to make
them open the door. But when I got back a ser-
vant was coming up as though she had been out, and
she unlocked the door and went in. It was all a ruse,
and I know it. There wasn't anybody inside. She
had slipped out with Marie. And she had told me
they were going to Westchester for the day.
"And another time I followed her to a restaurant
when she said she was going to visit a friend. I sus-
256
MARRIAGE
}
pected there was a man--the man I thought she was
going with, but it was someone I had never seen
before. When they came out and were getting into
a cab I came up and told them both what I thought
of them. I threatened to kill them both. And she
told him to go and then came home with me, but
I couldn't do anything with her. She wouldn't
talk to me. All she would say was that if I didn't
like the way she was doing I could let her go. She
wanted me to give her a divorce. And I couldn't let
her go, even if I had wanted to. I loved her too
much. And I love her too much now. I do. I
can't help it." He paused. The pain and regret
were moving.
"Another time," he went on, "I followed her to a
hotel-yes, to a hotel. But when I got inside she
was waiting for me; she had seen me. I even saw a
man coming toward her-but not the one I believed
was the one-only when he saw me he turned away
and I couldn't be sure that he was there to meet her.
And when I tried to talk to her about him she turned
away from me and we went back home in silence. I
couldn't do anything with her. She would sit and
read and ignore me for days-days, I tell you-with-
out ever a word."
"Yes," I said, "but the folly of all that. The use-
lessness, the hopelessness. How could you?”
"I know, I know," he exclaimed, "but I couldn't
help it. I can't now. I love her. I can't help that,
MARRIAGE-FOR ONE
257
can I? I'm miserable without her. I see the folly
The more she dis-
And I love her now,
There were days when
of it all, but I'm crazy about her.
liked me, the more I loved her.
this minute. I can't help it.
she tortured me so that I vomited, from sheer ner-
vousness. I was sick and run down. I have been
cold with sweat in her presence and when she was
away and I didn't know where she was. I have
walked the streets for hours, for whole days at a time,
because I couldn't eat or sleep and didn't know
what to do. By God!" Once more the pause and
a clenching of the hands. "And all I could do was
think and think and think. And that is all I do now,
really think and think and think. I've never been
myself since she went away. I can't shake it off. I
live up there, yes. But why? Because I think she
might come back some day, and because we lived
there together. I wait and wait. I know it's foolish,
but still I wait. Why? God only knows. And yet
I wait. Oh," he sighed, "and it's three years now.
Three years!"
He paused and gazed at me and I at him, shaken
by a fact that was without solution by any one.
Here he was-the one who had understood so much
about women. But where was she, the one he had
sought to enlighten, to make more up-to-date and
liberal? I wondered where she was, whether she ever
thought of him even, whether she was happy in her
new freedom. And then, without more ado, he
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MARRIAGE
slipped on his raincoat, took up his umbrella, and
stalked out into the rain, to walk and think, I pre-
sume. And I, closing the door on him, studied the
walls, wondering. The despair, the passion, the rage,
the hopelessness, the love. "Truly," I thought,
"this is love, for one at least. And this marriage,
for one at least. He is spiritually wedded to that
woman, who despises him, and she may be spiritually
wedded to another man who may despise her. But
love and marriage, for one at least, I have seen here
in this room to-night, and with mine own eyes.
DRIFTWOOD
BY COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER
T WAS six-fifteen o'clock. In the kitchen the
I
last touches had been given a meal which was a
bit more extravagant than was customary in
the household of Mr. and Mrs. John Carrington.
The silver candlesticks were on the dining-room table
instead of the usual glass ones; the service had been
polished with extra care that morning. At the side
of each of the two plates was a sprig of orange blos-
soms, which had arrived, special delivery, from Cali-
fornia that morning. Just beyond the French doors
leading to the living room was a large basket of roses.
It was thus every year.
In the fireplace of the living room the flames
leaped in blue and green and violet colourings, the
offgivings of driftwood, sending their colorations
into the big, comfortable, shadowy room, and upon
the woman who sat, just within the range of warmth,
gazing into the flames. Mrs. John Carrington was
waiting for her husband to come home-to the dinner
in honour of their tenth anniversary.
Not that there was any doubt as to the time or
manner of his arrival. Mr. and Mrs. John Carring-
259
·
260
MARRIAGE
ton had a reputation; they were known as the happi-
est married couple of all their set-a set, incidentally,
which included every worth-while name in the di-
rectory. In five minutes, Mrs. Carrington knew,
there would sound the throbbing of a familiar engine
from down the street and the squeaking of brake-
bands which always announced the homecoming of
the best husband in town. John never failed, just
as he never failed to telephone her precisely at eleven
o'clock each morning, just as he never failed to re-
member her birthday, or to send the biggest basket
of roses which he could afford, on their anniversary.
Just as he never failed to take her to the theatre on
Tuesday night, to the Country Club for the Friday
night dances, or But the list is too long. John
was the ideal husband. He never failed in anything.
Nor did she. For Medaine Carrington also had
her place in the matrimonial sun. Even her enemies
admitted that she was a perfect wife. The serenity
of the Carrington home was something which could
not be denied. Everyone knew of it, everyone spoke
of it. John Carrington and his wife never had even
quarrelled!
Yet, as Mrs. Carrington watched the fire, it seemed
that an expression, almost of utter fear, was in her
eyes; the tapping of a shoe upon the soft rug gave
evidence of nervousness, the quick knitting of her
hands emphasized it. Now and then she turned her
head toward the window-as though fearful of his
DRIFTWOOD
261
coming, yet anxious that he be here. Then she would
resume her former position, her eyes fraught with
presentiment, gazing into the big fireplace where the
driftwood crackled and the flames leaped and scur-
ried in vagrant colourings. The minutes passed.
A car stopped protestingly. A step sounded.
The door opened. She turned with her usual smile.
"How are you, dearest?"
"Same as usual, sweetheart." He was hanging
up his hat and overcoat. A moment more and he
came behind her, to lay his hands on her shoulders
for an instant. "How's my sweetheart to-night?"
"Happy as always, John." She turned and kissed
him lightly. "You were a dear to send me those
roses. You never forget, John."
He straightened proudly.
"Why should I? Pretty fire.'
وو
"Yes-driftwood. I've been sitting here watching
it while I waited for you.'
For a moment he, too, looked into the blaze.
"Beautiful. Driftwood, eh? Rather hard to get,
isn't it?"
She smiled.
"Yes—but then, this is our anniversary.
"That's right. That's right. I suppose the din-
ner's waiting?"
It was a useless question-asked merely for the
sound of it. John knew that dinner was ready. It
always was ready. The home of Mr. and Mrs.
262
MARRIAGE
John Carrington was one in which nothing ever was
awry.
He went on:
"Yes, of course it's waiting. Just a moment,
sweetheart, until I tidy up a bit and I'll be with you.
Only a moment
""
He hurried up the stairs, while again the gaze of
Medaine Carrington sought the flames, the gaze of
one whose mind is peopled with anguish. But in a
moment more it had vanished. John was beside
her, bowing in mock over-politeness, and offering his
arm in an extravagant invitation to the table.
"Many congratulations to-day," he said as they
seated themselves. "Four or five of the boys
dropped in to tell me their troubles, and incidentally
to say how much they envied us. Strange what a
few little numbers will do, isn't it?"
"Marvellous." Her self-possession had returned;
with him before her she was again the usual Medaine
Carrington. "This is the tenth year without a
quarrel."
John laughed.
"And our idea may spread. Bentley's married,
you know-just last week. Came into the office to-
day. Told him all about our system, and how it's
worked out. 'All that you need for happiness, Bent,'
I said, 'is to learn to count to a hundred.' Then I
went on and told how it had worked with us, how we
simply schooled ourselves into the habit of counting
to a hundred before we said an unkind word, how, if
DRIFTWOOD
263
one of us was nervous or irritable, it became the duty
of the other to hold in, and the wonderful results
that we've attained. After all, dearest, it's all very
simple, isn't it?"
"Extremely so." For just an instant her eyes
clouded-only to brighten again. "I've never seen
prettier roses than the ones you sent to-day, John."
"That's what you're always good enough to say.
By the way, this roast is done to a turn. I never
tasted better."
The meal progressed to a perfect conclusion-as it
always did. Once more they were before the drift-
wood flame. She took his hand in hers.
"After all, it's remarkable that two persons could
go through ten years of married life without a quarrel,
isn't it, John?"
He nodded.
Then:
"Yes-in a way. Then, again, all that is necessary
is common sense.
"I suppose so. But haven't there been times when
I have tried you terribly, when I've made you so
angry that it just seemed that you couldn't hold your
temper?"
“No, not once, dearest. One simply couldn't lose
his temper with you.”
"There you mustn't say that. Besides, the
main point, I suppose, is the fact that it's been ac-
complished. Ten years of married life without even
a quarrel!"
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MARRIAGE
She rose then, and moved slowly into the shadows.
Again her hands knitted unconsciously. An ex-
pression, as of acute pain, came into her eyes. John
did not see he was gazing into the flames and watch-
ing the colourings as they came and went.
"Ten years without a quarrel! It's something to
be proud of, something to boast about to your
friends and-
""
"Yes, I suppose so.
وو
There was something in her tone which caused him
to look up quickly, to glance toward her as though
she had uttered a desecration. The flickering of the
fireplace caught her features, to display them as
singularly pale, singularly drawn, and indicative of
suffering. He half rose-but she motioned him back.
"Please sit there, John. I've something to tell
you."
"Why, dearest! You seem so————”
"Don't-please." She gripped the back of a chair
as though for support. "I-I want to say it as
quickly as possible. I'm going away, John." The
voice was faint.
He was silent for a moment. At last:
"Well, if you feel that you should-of course, it
would be better from a financial point if you waited
awhile, but if you really want to
"I don't mean that way, John. I'm not coming
back."
"Not?" He stared at her in nonplussed
DRIFTWOOD
265
fashion for a long time before he rose. "Why,
Medaine ! I don't!"
"I didn't think you'd understand."
"Not coming back? Why-
""
"Not coming back, John," she repeated, and this
time the voice bore a certain note of harshness.
"We're through!"
"Medaine!"
"Please!" She motioned him back. "I know
what I'm doing, I'm perfectly clear and sane, I've
simply put up with you as long as I can stand it, and
now I'm going away. You've become unbearable
to me, and when a thing like that happens, the best
thing to do is to get away. So I'm going."
She said it with more coolness than ever, and with
an incisiveness that cut deep. There was the slight-
est twitching of John's fingers-then he turned away,
and for a long moment was silent. At last, as though
eased in mind, he moved again to his chair.
"You're tired, sweetheart. Tired out-nervous.
Don't worry. Everything'll be all right. If you'll
just tell me what's wrong, we'll find a way to remedy
it. Nothing in the world that can't be remedied,
you know-
"Except this. I'm tired of you, John. Sick of
you.'
وو
95
"Sick? Tired?" He again faced her. "Sick
of— Then for a long time he was silent again.
“There, sweetheart, don't mind me. Of course
266
MARRIAGE
you're tired. Ill, too. We'll talk it over in the
morning
"There isn't going to be any morning, John. At
least, not with you." She laughed. "Ten years is
enough. I want someone else now."
"You?" He was on his feet in an instant, his
fingers stretching wide, his brow working convul-
sively. "You-Medaine?"
"Exactly what I said.”
"A man?"
"You don't suppose it would be any one else?"
"But, Medaine
"And I have your permission to go?" It seemed
that there was a little sarcasm in her tone. "Of
course, you know, I'd do nothing without your per-
mission. I want to be frank with you, you know.
You've supported me for ten years. You've given me
everything in the world I could ask for, you've sup-
plied me with all the money that any one in my cir-
cumstances could wish for, and you've really made it
possible for me to have the money to do what I
wanted to do when the time came, and so I really
should ask your permission. Especially when an-
other man is involved."
“Do you mean"-coldness had come into his
voice-"that you're going to take the money that
you've saved as my wife to go to some other man?"
"I've said something like that, John. Merely
frankness and fairness to let you know."
DRIFTWOOD
267
"Who is he?"
"A friend of yours. We needn't mention names."
"No?" There were no long pauses between John
Carrington's words now. The whiteness of his
cheeks, the lack of colour in his lips, turning them
ghastly blue in the light of the driftwood, the
glazed yet flaming appearance of his eyes, all gave
evidence that temper had gone beyond control.
"No? We needn't mention names? That's what
you say, Mrs. John Carrington, but I've a different
idea!"
"Your privilege! But the information won't
come from me.”
"I don't expect it. I can find out for myself,
without the necessity of running down any lies which
you might tell me. I'll find out.”
"I expect you to.'
"I will!" John Carrington, the perfect husband,
swung past his chair to face her, his hands gripped,
the muscles of his jaws bulging as his teeth gritted.
"Don't worry for an instant about that end of it!
I'll find out."
"And then?" A peculiar glint had come into her
eyes. "When you've found out? Murder, I sup-
pose?"
"Murder?" He laughed at her. "Murder? Over
you? Over a woman who has no more sense of
honour than to do the thing you've done? Murder?
Hardly! Merely the satisfaction of knowing the
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MARRIAGE
kind of a person that would take up with a conscience-
less woman. Nothing more.
"Very good excuses, John."
"For what?"
"The lack of backbone enough to even face a man
who could steal your own wife from you. You
wouldn't even have the strength to face him."
"No?" His hands worked as with a sudden
spasm. "When I face somebody, it will be for steal-
ing something-do you understand what I mean?
When I face a man it will be because he's taken
something from me that's worth while, and not
ridded me of a blank-featured incubus, a thing that's
hung on to me like a leech, given in to me at every
twist and turn merely that she could rob me, some-
one so sweet and gushing that she's sickening, that
herself hasn't any more strength than to take the
word of the first man who flatters her and who is
willing to run away with him simply because he tells
her any mass of lies that happens to come into his
head! That's when I'll face a thief-when he's
stolen something-do you understand that?
"And as for you"-he nodded toward the door-
way-"you can go when and where you choose,
and the sooner the better. I thought you were a
woman when I married you. I've found out in the
ten years that we've been living together that you're
merely a spineless, resistless, shapeless mass of human
putty. I didn't expect a thing like this-but I
DRIFTWOOD
269
should have known that it would come. It was the
only end possible, the only thing possible from a
person like you. Resistance? You haven't any!
Strength of character? It doesn't exist. Spineless!
It's the only word I can think of for you the
only-
Then he halted, gasping. A warm, impulsive
little form was close to him, her arms tight about his
neck, her lips seeking his, and kissing him again and
again.
"Oh, John, you're wonderful!" came all in a breath,
"just simply wonderful! I
He strove to push her away, and failing, merely
gasped the more. For she was talking again, her
words streaming excitedly, delightedly.
"That's just what I've thought about you, John-
what you've said about me—that you were spineless,
resistless. But you're not, are you, John? You're
"
"Please!" He strove to break from her, but
she held him tight, and there was a sudden pleading
happiness in her tone.
"I don't have to go away now, John. My 'other
man' has come to me. Don't you understand,
dearest-don't you understand? My other man
has come to me the other man that I wanted!"
"Huh?" It was the only word he could utter, as
he stood there staring at her, his arms flat at his sides,
his lips open, his expression one of combined anger,
270
MARRIAGE
dismay, and wonderment. The soft arms tightened
still more about his neck.
"Kiss me, John-please!"
"Hardly!"
"But don't you understand? I was just trying to
make you say the things you did say--it was the only
way I could think to do it! Don't you see? I didn't
know any other way in the world to make you quarrel
with me, to forget that eternal counting to a hundred
before you'd ever answer, to-to-John, please-
won't you kiss me? I don't love any one in the
world but you. I swear it-nobody in the world,
John! Don't you see? I-I——————’ Then the tears
came—“I just couldn't stand it any-any more."
“Stand it-stand what?”
"Why-why, everything, John. You just can't
endure things forever without salt and pepper. It
isn't natural. It-it just got on my nerves until I
thought I'd go crazy. I
"What's the-
Frank amazement was his now.
"I don't understand you can't make you out,
Medaine. Salt and pepper?"
"Just what I mean, John. Put your arms around
me, won't you please? Please, John?" She caught
a hand and raised it to her shoulder, where it hung a
moment, then dropped limply. But he did not re-
sist her now as he had done a moment before. "Tell
me, John-is this the first time you've ever thought
me spineless?"
DRIFTWOOD
271
He shook his head, saying silently what he would
not say in words. It seemed to please her. She
kissed him.
"And haven't you wondered often how on earth
you ever married me? Haven't you wondered if I
really had enough spirit even to have a quarrel with
a tradesman? Haven't you, John? I've thought
that about you-wondered how on earth you man-
aged to transact your business, how you ever got the
backbone even to discharge an employee. You've
never shown it at home. I've tried to nettle you,
anger you-and all you did was count to a hun-
dred."
"That was our bargain." He said it somewhat
grudgingly.
"Just the trouble-just what hurt me, that you'd
stay by a silly bargain like that. John," she looked
at him quickly, "during the time we've been married
have you really been happy?"
"I?" He paused. His lips pressed tight for an
instant. Then: "If you want the frank truth-I
haven't."
"Why?"
Again a pause. Then:
"Oh, never mind.”
"But I want to know, is it for the same reason that
I haven't been happy-because everything has been
just the same, just the regular monotony of sugar,
sugar, sugar all the time and never a bit of bitter
272
MARRIAGE
a
sweet? Is that the reason, John? And I have been
unhappy, John. I've known every minute what you
were going to do. I knew the minute you were going
to leave home, the minute you would telephone me,
the minute you'd get here at night, and what you'd
talk about at the dinner table. I knew to a dot what
you'd do and say and how you'd act. And, John
woman may say she wants that, but she doesn't.
She wants a husband who'll be good to her most of
the time, but who now and then-well, who won't.
We can't be superhuman, John. It isn't in us.
You've been on time to dinner for ten years. I
haven't even had the excitement of scolding you for
being late. I" Then, as if with an inspiration,
she looked at him. "John, did you ever notice
how an electrical storm clears the air? And how
sultry it has been beforehand? We've never even
had the chance to know how beautiful things can be
after the clouds have gone. We've had nothing but
sunshine—until it's blinded us, and we haven't been
able to see anything!"
Then she halted-suddenly beaming. A light of
understanding had come into the eyes of John Car-
rington. The tired expression faded, to give way to
one which Medaine had not seen in years. Slowly
his arms raised and clasped about the form of his
wife. He kissed her slowly, as one who tastes long
at a sweet he is loath to leave.
Ten years seemed to have rolled away, ten drab
DRIFTWOOD
273
uneventful years which now bore no more importance
in retrospect than the flatness of monotonous plains.
A soft hand touched his temple, and lingered there.
"We've just been driftwood, John."
He nodded and kissed her again. Then like a
streak he turned from her and bounded up the stairs.
Wondering, she heard him fumbling about in an
upper room, banging at drawers and uttering strange
things under his breath. A grunt. Another.
Louder. Then:
"Medaine," came in bellowing tones, yet ones
which seemed strangely fraught with happiness,
“where in thunder are my pongee shirts?"
In the room below Medaine smiled-the smile of
a woman who has fought and won. She knew in-
stinctively that it was not the shirts which John
wanted that he merely was yielding to a thing he
had put behind him for years, hurrying to that which
he had longed to do for time interminable yet a
thing denied him through the repression of a “sys-
tem” which now, happily, was a system no longer.
For they were on a different basis, a truer basis—that
of plain, honest naturalness, where real love could
thrive in both the sunshine of ineffable happiness
and the cultivating storms of normal disagreements.
She whirled toward the stairs and called upward
snappily—yet with a glint of merriment in her eyes:
"Right where they've always been," came her
explosive announcement, "right in the third drawer
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MARRIAGE
of the chiffarobe, if you'll only take the time to look
for them!"
Five minutes later a caller stepped on the veranda
of the Carrington home. It was inevitable that he
should glance through the window, to see within the
living room two persons sitting before a driftwood
blaze, heads together, arms about each other's
shoulders, two radiant sweethearts watching the
flickering of the flames. The caller sighed, in envy.
"They've got the system," he announced to him-
self as he rang the bell. "Happiest darned couple in
town!"
BIRTH STONES
BY GEORGE KIBBE TURNER

T
HESE jewel brokers are all over the city-in
Maiden Lane, on the Bowery, up around
Fifth Avenue-all kinds, for all kinds of busi-
ness-buying or selling! They're a wise crowd.
They have to be. They get some dangerous propo-
sitions put up to them—and some wild ones, particu-
larly in hard times.
They had some extra-wild ones in that financial
cave-in after the war-especially the Fifth Avenue
ones. Half the Upper West Side was fighting to
drive the wolf from the new limousine door.
It was a year ago last March-at the worst of it-
when this one I'm telling you of drifted into Harry
Volpe's place on Fifth Avenue in the late after-
noon. Volpe was alone in the office, staring down out
of his second-story front window on the two streams
of automobile tops on the Avenue.
"You the proprietor?" asked this stranger back of
him at the entrance—a big, red-faced husky, with big
shoulders and a small nose and a red necktie. Volpe
figured him right away then as some sort of a con-
tractor.
275
276
MARRIAGE
"Sure," he said, coming over, dusting his hands.
"What'll you have?"
"My name's Coogan-Dan Coogan," said the big
man, introducing himself.
"Glad to know you," said Harry Volpe, sizing him
up. "What can I do for you?"
"What would you say this was worth?" said
the stranger, reaching in and dragging out a big dia-
mond necklace that seemed to be lying loose, with-
out any case, in the right-hand lower pocket of his
coat.
"What you paid for it-or what you could real-
ize?" Volpe asked him, still sizing him up-the way
you have to in that business. And went over it with
his glass and told him what he might probably get—
if he got a buyer.
"But you'd have hard work finding one—just now,
for anything as big as that. I know I wouldn't buy
it-not now!"
"You couldn't-not if you wanted to!" said the
other man.
"I wouldn't sell it for all the money in
Wall Street."
And he looked as if he meant it.
"But here's the thing I want to know," he said:
"Could you pull out enough stones from this to stand
for a pledge for a ten-thousand-dollar loan?"
"Why, yes-probably," said Volpe. "Though we
don't generally want to handle unset stones. Be-
cause you know!"
BIRTH STONES
277
"They're apt to be stolen, huh? Is that it?" said
the big man.
"Yeah. They break them up out of their settings,
so they can't be identified.”
"But you've got your setting here.
99
"I wasn't talking about this,” said Volpe. "I was
just telling you.”
“Well, about how many would you say?" the cus-
tomer asked him.
And he told him about a third of them.
"Now the next thing," said the man, satisfied ap-
parently, "is could you take this, could you take
that amount of stones out of their settings, and put
back substitutes in their place good ones, so they
wouldn't be noticed?"
"No. Not by an expert.
"No-I mean just any ordinary person."
"Why, yes-probably. If I had the time."
"Now, then, another thing," he said, fixing his little
blue-gray eyes on him-as if this was important.
"How long would be the shortest time you could do
it in-if you had everything all ready and waiting to
do it with? Take these out of their settings and put
the phoney ones in? Could you do it in a day?"
“I might,” said Volpe, looking them over, seeing
they were a good standard cut.
"What'll it cost-the whole thing? Ten thousand
for three months," asked the man, his eyes boring in
still.
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MARRIAGE
And Volpe figured out a good thing on it—and told
him what he'd do.
Your mind acts quick in that business. You get so
you size your man up. So, finally, he said he'd give
it to him.
"But now it's understood," said the man
"you'll have to have it all done in a day-when I
bring it in!"
"Why-what's the great hurry?" asked Volpe,
looking at him, starting wondering a little then.
"It's my wife. She'll want to wear them. You
know how women are!"
Volpe nodded. He knew some things about the
women-and their freaks and whims. You do, han-
dling jewellery.
"And don't call me up at the apartment, either.
I'll bring them in some day soon-I can't be sure
just when. But I don't want you calling up my wife.
You know how women are-about such things!" he
said again, looking nervous-Volpe noticed at the
time.
He noticed that. You keep your eyes open in that
business and the deal was queer on the face of it.
But it was no queerer than others he'd had. And
the man didn't look like a crook to him-then.
that wasn't what decided him. It was something
surer than that-or it looked so then. If he had been
But
a crook, and he had the thing right there he
wouldn't be likely to try and cash in on only a third
BIRTH STONES
279
!
of it. It looked like a guarantee on the face of it.
And of course, if anything suspicious came up
when he came in again, that next week, Volpe would
be right there watching-before any money passed.
But next week when the big man showed up again
with his big necklace in his pocket, to get his money
and have the substitution made, Volpe was surer
than ever of the thing for one reason from the way
he acted about the stones that were coming out to
lie there as a pledge for the ten thousand.
"You'll have them all here-the identical same
ones-when I come after them?" he asked-looking
red and anxious. "There's no danger they'll get
mixed up any way?"
"Not a danger," Volpe told him.
"For it would mean something to me-if there was
a mix-up on this!" he said. "They're our luck."
"Lucky stones, huh?" said Volpe, and smiled to
himself when he had gone-surer than ever about the
thing-though curious, naturally, on what it was all
about.
But about two weeks afterward the man showed
up again and wanted another ten thousand on an-
other third of the stones.
That was different!
"I thought you said ten thousand was all you'd
need," said Volpe, studying him, thinking fast.
"I thought it was myself. And it will be this time.
But you know how the contracting business is-
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especially now. Up and down. Mostly down!
But it will be all right this time-I can promise you
that."
"I guess you can when you get it!" said Volpe to
himself getting under way behind that soft, sweet
jewellery salesman's smile.
"Have you got them with you?" he asked him,
smiling.
“No,” said the other man, getting red—and bring-
ing in a new idea now. "And I've got to get you to
do something else this time. I've got to have you
make that next substitution of stones for me some
night.'
"Some night!" said Volpe after him.
"Yes," he said, getting redder still.
how women are when they get an
head."
"You know
idea in their
"What's this?" said Volpe to himself, with a sud-
den sinking spell-wondering what it was he had run
into.
"All right," he said, aloud-smiling more sweetly
than ever. "Bring them in."
He couldn't make a motion that would scare
him—not if he was coming back. For that was
the first thing now: to get him back with the rest
of the stuff-to get his hands on it. Then he could
clear it up whatever it was! Force a real show-
down.
"What night?" asked Volpe, more and more polite.
BIRTH STONES
281
"I'll call you up-this evening-just before six
o'clock, and tell you," he said. "I might be able to
get in to-night. I hope so."
He was excited-Volpe could see that. If he
hadn't been, he wouldn't have thought the change
could be made there right away-without more
notice.
But that was a good sign. It made it look pretty
sure that he would be in again—that his mind was set
on doing it at the earliest possible minute.
"How'd he strike you?" Volpe asked his stenog-
rapher. She was about as wise as he was, seeing
them coming in and going out.
"He's like the rest of them-all over the lot like
the dandelions. He's got something on his mind,
all right. But he's straight enough, I'll say. He's
too thick to be anything else."
"Will he be back again?" Volpe asked her.
"He sure will. The battle fleet couldn't chase
him away. He's got to have that money. Right
now!"
Volpe thought the same. And the man still looked
honest to him, somehow.
“But why at night?" he said to himself, when the
girl was gone. "And why this stall about the wo-
man-having to have them? What does she—wear
them at breakfast?"
It was getting to him. There had been a lot of
husband-and-wife games in the jewellery line lately.
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It had him worried. And yet what could this one
be? Robbery by piecemeal? How? What for?
He sat and flipped away a lot of cigarettes out the
front window into the Avenue-looking down, think-
ing, as the lights came on-waiting for six o'clock.
"What could he be robbing piecemeal? A mu-
seum? Or a jewellery store?" he asked himself.
And then he jumped up on his feet—with a new
idea.
"Here," he said, getting hot in the head. "Sup-
pose this wife business was all a stall! Suppose he
was somewhere in a museum, or a store, where he
could have this thing just so long. And had to get
it back at such a time! That might be it!
"He might just have time enough to have just so
many changes made in the settings-at night, for in-
stance, like this and have it back when things
opened up in the morning. And then later he'd take
another bite of it," said Volpe to himself, staring at
his cigarette-starting figuring the chances of getting
any of that ten thousand dollars back if it was stolen
goods and they traced them back to him. He
might get a chance to dicker, too—if he got him back
in there and made him give up where it had come
from—get some reward in advance for turning up a
sixty or seventy-thousand-dollar-gem robbery.
"And yet," he said to himself, hope striking him
again, “how would it be a museum or a jewellery
store? He would never have got away with that sub-
BIRTH STONES
283
stitution for any two weeks! It might be a woman
yet!" he said to himself. But what woman?—that
was the question!
He was all up in the air on the thing-and it was
getting every minute nearer six o'clock. He was
just about to take up the telephone and call for the
detective bureau when the bell rang-just before six
—and this Coogan's voice came, saying he'd be down
around nine o'clock-as nearly as he could-and to
have everything ready.
"I'll have everything ready, don't fret!" said
Volpe which he did-down to the detective from
police headquarters that he planted in the next room.
They're all in close touch with the detective force—
those brokers in jewels. They have to be. The
police department keeps tabs continually on the
money lenders, with a big elaborate card-index sys-
tem of everything they loan on, to get track of stuff
that's reported stolen. And then the brokers want
to keep in touch-for their own protection-with
the department; and usually with some particular
member of it they get to know well.
There wasn't any missing diamond necklace re-
ported to the detective bureau-but then there
wouldn't be, not if this man was working some new
kind of a game. The detective from the pawn
brokers' squad from headquarters that Volpe stood
in with was as keen to sit in on the thing and look it
over as Volpe was to have him. So Volpe fixed him
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MARRIAGE
up to stay in the little side room he had for customers'
private conferences; and they sat together waiting
at the front window-watching the taxi lights slide
up and down the black Avenue, going over other
games in the jewellery business, and speculating on
what this one was likely to be.
"You'll find probably he's a bad one," said the
detective. "Most likely."
"He don't look so," said Volpe, “at that. And we
can't afford to force things-not till we know."
"I know."
"And he's a big husky brute, you want to take
that into consideration."
"Well. He don't want to get too gay," said this
McConnell-this detective from the headquarters'
squad, who was quite heavy around the shoulders
himself.
And just then the elevator door clacked and their
man's step came echoing down the hallway to the door.
He came in a hurry-still looking anxious and ex-
cited, wiping off his forehead with his handkerchief.
"Well, I'm here," he said to Volpe, as if he'd had a
hard time getting there.
Volpe looked at him again—anxious about him,
always, when he was out of sight; and puzzled more
when he showed up again. He didn't look like a
jewellery thief-anything but! And yet you can't
tell-some of the best of them are that way. Inno-
cence is their stock in trade.
BIRTH STONES
285
"Got it with you?" asked Volpe-and got the
thing in his hands again. It was all the same as he
had left it-the same fake stones among the real-
the same odd setting—everything!
He had it back in his hands again—and it felt good.
The least he could do now-with this, and the de-
tective in the next room, was to get a showdown.
"Now, I tell you," said Volpe, starting after it.
"I haven't had time to get that ten thousand yet.
It was too late when I got around to the bank.”
"You can give me your check for it," said the man,
gazing at him, "can't you?"
"I might, yes," he answered, working along.
"Only my balance won't let me-not just now. I'll
have to go and get the money myself-to-morrow,
maybe."
"To-morrow! Maybe!" said Coogan after him,
his voice rising.
"And besides," said Volpe, "there's another thing
come up. My workman didn't show up that I
counted on coming to do the resetting for me."
"Didn't show up!" said the big man, looking ugly
now.
"So I can't pull the thing off for you to-night."
“Not to-night!” said the man. "I've got to have
it to-night! That's all!"
"Say, listen," said Volpe next. "What's the hurry
in this thing?"
"I've got to have the money right off-that's
286
MARRIAGE
what-in my business!
To-morrow."
Or I
Or I go broke. Right now.
"I understand," said Volpe. "That's all right.
That's easy on that necklace. If everything is the
way it looks on the surface. But what I mean is-
what's the hurry about this work of mine on the neck-
lace? Why must I have it back always on the
minute?"
And he got no answer.
"In other words," said Volpe, coming stronger,
"what's the idea of your sliding in here by night with
this thing, and having to have it to take away with
you in the morning?"
"It's my wife," said the big man finally.
"Your wife!"
"I wouldn't have her know about this-now-not
for the world!"
"What is it—hers, and not yours?" said Volpe-
thinking now he had the trail.
"No. It's mine. That is, I paid for it, and gave
it to her."
"Oh!" said Volpe.
And just as soon as collections come right in my
business I'll straighten it all out."
"Maybe you will. Maybe you won't."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we'll know better-when we put that up
to her!"
"But you won't put it up to her!" said the big man,
BIRTH STONES
287
sticking out his jaw. "You'll let me have it back—
now!"
And Volpe stepped away from him.
"You'll let me have it," said the big husky—
stepping toward him. "Now!"
"Yes. I will. Yes," said Volpe-raising his
voice, so the detective in the next room would get it.
"When you put my ten thousand back in my hand."
"You'll let me have it! Right now!" said the big
man, getting red and reaching over and starting to
break off the hand Volpe had it in at the wrist.
That was the cue for the detective in the next
room.
"Just a minute!" he said, stepping out.
And the big roughneck looked back at him over his
shoulder.
"What are you," said McConnell, “getting threat-
ening?"
"Who are you?" said the man who claimed he
owned the necklace, setting his small blue eyes on
him.
And the officer showed him.
He stopped there, after a minute his breath
coming hard, and his face getting mottled—the way
those full-blooded ones do.
"You
"Now what's your game?" said the officer.
slip in here with seventy-five thousand dollars' worth
of jewellery loose in your side pocket. And you
want it replaced by other fake stuff. All in a
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night! So you can take these substitutes right back.
And when this man asks you for an explanation, you
beat him over the head, and start taking it away
from him-to run off with. What's the idea?"
The big man looked up at him, with his little eyes
red like a cornered bull's, and said nothing in an-
swer.
"What's the explanation?" the detective asked him
again.
But he wouldn't speak.
"All you say is your wife wants it in the morning.
Maybe she does. I don't know! But you're en-
titled to show us. This man's got ten thousand
dollars in there. He's entitled to something more
than a beating from you."
"On your own say-so, I've got to see your wife
now," Volpe came in. "You say it's her property!"
And when he didn't say anything yet, the two
others took a look at one another.
"Now, listen," said McConnell the detective.
"You can do one of two things. It's up to you.
You can show us take us around to your wife now,
at home. Or you can come with me, and have her
give her explanation to headquarters!"
And the big fellow gave a groan-too loud, almost,
to be natural.
"I won't. I can't," he said. "It might kill her."
"Kill who?"
"The wife."
BIRTH STONES
289
Ahah," said McConnell, looking over at Volpe.
"How's that?"
"She don't know anything about this. She thinks
we're on the top of the world yet-instead of just
scraping bankruptcy!"
'There's others,” said the detective, watching him,
"that have had to hear it before."
"Not the way she is," said the man, who had in-
troduced himself as Coogan, and went on and told
them how it was with her.
"I can't have her know," he said. "I won't.
Not till she's over with it!"
"At that," said McConnell, giving Volpe a look
again, "there's other women have gone through with
it without being millionaires.'
"I know," he came back. "But it's the sudden
bump, coming just now-when she's been thinking
up to date everything is going wonderful for us.
And then all at once a fall from the top of the world!
I can't have it—not now. You know yourself how
women are on luxury, and all that! How much
more it means to them--and all that!
"And then you've got to remember-another
thing," he said, going on when nobody answered-
arguing, with the sweat pouring down his face.
"You know how it is with the first one! They're
scared to death, afraid they'll die!"
"There's got to be a first at that," said McConnell
the detective.
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"I know," he said.
"But this is different. She's
not strong—not a bit! And she thinks she's going
to die! And she might, at that! You know how
women are how they see things ahead we don't at
all."
"What does the doctor say?" asked McConnell
the detective.
"He don't see it quite so bad as she does. But he
admits himself we've got to be careful. Help all we
can! You see you see how I'm fixed," he said,
arguing. "I wouldn't take a chance with that little
girl-for the world!"
And then he stopped for a minute.
"But where do the diamonds come in?" Mc-
Connell the detective asked him. "The necklace?"
"That's our luck, she claims."
"Your luck!"
"Our lucky stone!"
"Oh."
"You know how women are about things like
that! Superstitious-all of them. I never knew one
that wasn't yet. And especially now at times like
now-at
this. And then her father was a sporting man, too.
A kind of a high-class sporting man.
"I see," said McConnell, keeping his face still.
"And so?"
"So you see, don't you? You know how women
are over anniversaries and all that. Diamonds
were her birth stone. So naturally I gave her dia-
BIRTH STONES
291
monds. When I was way up, I gave her this-this
necklace. Just to show her and the rest of the
world-how she stood with me.
You know how the
women are how they've got to show the neighbours
-the other women-if things are going right—if
you're prosperous. And what their husbands think
of them!"
"I know," said the detective.
"So naturally she thought the world of it—and
what it stood for every way!"
"Sure. She would!" said McConnell.
Volpe sat all the time and watched them.
"They hitch up more to things like that than we
do."
"Sure."
"And there was another turn to it-that she
worked out in her head, besides what it meant to
her-good luck and all that!"
"And that was?" said McConnell.
"That was that I was born in April, too."
"April!"
"You know. Diamonds are the birth stone for
April."
"No," said McConnell the detective. "I guess
they forgot to tell me about that."
"And then again," he was going along, “you
know. Next month! That'll be April, too."
"I get you," said the detective, giving Volpe an-
other look.
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"So there's three times it's said to be our lucky
stone. You know the way they figure--the women
-on things like that!"
And the detective and Volpe swapped looks again.
"So that's how it is about the necklace. It's her
mascot. She's got to have it with her all the time
now. From now on especially! That's why I've
had to come sneaking in here when I saw the
chance.
"Oh, that's it," said McConnell the detective,
giving Volpe a comical side look.
"For she's got to have it with her. And more and
more every day now, of course. And then, naturally,
she's got to have it on her or she'll just naturally die."
"Well, she can have it, can't she-if you can prove
this up?" said the detective, looking over at Volpe.
"Sure," said Volpe.
"What good will that do-after she knew? She
might as well have glass bottles," said the man, and
wiped the sweat from his face. And McConnell
looked at Volpe and Volpe looked back.
up.
"That's a new one," said McConnell.
"Don't you believe it?" said the big one, bristling
“I might, and then again I might not. But that
don't make any difference what I believe. I don't
have to believe. It's simpler than that.”
"Simpler!"
"I'll know soon enough-when I see her!"
BIRTH STONES
293
"But you won't see her!" said the big man. "Not
if I know it."
"Oh, yes, I will—either with you with me friendly,
or with you down at headquarters—whichever you
like best!"
"You'll kill her," he broke out. "That's all."
"Probably I will," said McConnell the detective,
looking at Volpe, "if there's anybody there to kill!"
But the big man took no notice of that crack.
“And if you do—if you hurt her any way," he
went on. "If you harm her any way, I'll get you—
I'll smash you some day if I spend my life at it!”
"Come on," said McConnell the detective.
"Don't start getting careless again. You're not
fixed right to get rough. It's up to you," he said to
him. "You can start a war, or we can all stroll over
—like friends.”
"But she's in bed with a headache.'
"She'll have to get up, then," said McConnell the
detective.
And finally he gave up, and the three went over-
on the bus to Riverside-and up into the apartment
all parties watching their step, not knowing just
what was coming.
It was all right so far. It was his place, all right—
and he had it fixed up in style, too—servants and all
that!
"Tell your mistress I've got to have her come out.
Dress and come out and see a couple of friends,"
294
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he said to the maid-almost choking over the last
word.
For McConnell the detective wouldn't listen
naturally to his going in to seeing her alone to frame
up any story between them.
And finally, after some talk, she came out-all silk
and ribbons one of those light-hearted, henna-
haired ones, that roll their own! But her eyes were
kind of scared at that.
“Oh, Dan,” she said. "What is it? Is anything
wrong?"
"No, Hon," he said, patting her on the shoulder.
"No. Just some friends," he said, choking on the
word again. “All it is, I want you to just tell them
about your necklace."
"But what-what-
وو
she said, chasing her big
brown eyes from one to the other.
“It's all right, Hon," said the big fellow, calming
her-and looking over at the other two with red
murder in his eyes. "You go ahead-and I'll explain
to you later."
So she told them finally about the necklace-and
showed them the bill of sale, and the check she'd paid
for it. Her check-he'd given her the money!
And they saw finally-they were in wrong.
She stood facing them-looking like a frightened
kid.
"But who are you?" she wanted to know.
And her husband told her-looking first-degree
BIRTH STONES
295
murder at them while he talked, for she acted now as
if she was going to pieces. And they were afraid
they'd got in a mess-especially McConnell the
detective.
And suddenly she broke down-seemed to-
throwing her arms around the big man's neck.
"Don't, Honey," said the big contractor, patting
her with his big fingers. "We'll be all right. We'll
make it all back again.
"Sure," said Volpe, stepping forward with the
necklace in his hand-trying to fix it up with them.
And if he wants the money—the extra ten thousand
-it will be all right!"
66
And she didn't say anything, but just buried her
head deeper in the big boy's shoulders—and murder
burning redder and redder in his eyes as he looked
at them and patted her.
"And if you want it-the necklace to use-to
wear any time," said Volpe, holding it toward her,
like candy to a kid, "you can have it! We can fix
it up all right-if you want to wear it as your mas-
cot!"
He held it up to her-and touched her, and she
pushed it away.
"I don't want it!" she said. "Take it away! I
wouldn't wear the darn thing on a bet!"
And all three stood waiting for her.
"Don't cry," said the big man, like somebody talk-
ing to some young kid. "Don't cry. It's all right."
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At that she looked up, and she wasn't crying at all.
She looked up, hanging onto the back of his neck,
staring into his eyes.
"Did you do all that-for me?" she said, star-
ing.
"What wouldn't I do for you, Hon?"
"Take the chance of going broke and all that?'
"But he won't " said Volpe, breaking in again.
"He'll be all right. And for the necklace," he said,
offering it to her again, "we'll fix
وو
"Take it away!" she said, pushing it off again.
"The darn thing. I never want to see it again!"
And the big man looked queer.
"How foolish you were," she said in a kind of
sharp voice. "How crazy. To take a chance like
that just to keep me satisfied with that fool
thing!" she said in a kind of a harsh voice. "I
never want to see it again!"
And the big man stood there, holding her-kind of
dazed. And the other two with him! You'd think
she wanted to bite him and the necklace for what he'd
done!
Then before they got over that all at once-while
they stood around looking, she threw herself on him
again, and started crying as if her heart would break!
And he patting her, and trying to comfort her-to
keep her from tearing herself to pieces.
"Don't. Don't!" he said. "There's nothing to
cry about any more."
BIRTH STONES
297
And all of a sudden she stopped-and looked up
again!
"I'm not crying- "she said. "That way!"
"That way!" he said, looking down at her like a
man in a trance.
"I'm-I'm the happiest woman in the world,"
she said, and started in crying again—for the night
apparently!
And Volpe stepped up and laid the necklace finally
on the table, making signs to the big man where he
stood holding her.
"Come around to-morrow," he whispered to him
over her head. "We'll fix it up in the morning."
And then the two backed out-and let themselves
into the corridor.
They were out in the street before either of them
spoke again.
"You know how women are!" said McConnell the
detective, imitating the big man's voice.
"Did anybody? Ever?" said Volpe, the jewel
broker.
"I've got one just like her at home," said Mc-
Connell the detective.
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR
BY HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER
T
HE telephone rang for the third time since
they had sat down to dinner. The maid, in
her flurried haste to placate the tyrant, set
down the dish of fried eggplant from which George
had been about to help himself on the sideboard out
of his reach. George and his wife sat listening in
silence. The maid returned and said, "I think it's
for you, Mrs. Tait." George sighed and produced
the evening paper, which had been tucked under
his leg against this precise contingency.
He didn't particularly care about the news, of
which he had already read the unexciting headlines,
but he did want to register a not unamiable protest
against these continual interruptions of their dinner.
Emily insisted on making a more or less formal meal
of it. She'd have been mildly annoyed with him if
he'd gone to the sideboard and helped himself to the
eggplant while the maid was at the 'phone. Then
why couldn't she instruct Anna to say to these im-
portunate telephoners that her mistress was at dinner
and ask them to call her in an hour? It wasn't as if
they ever had anything to say.
298
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR
299
There was no use saying this to Emily. He knew
her argument as well as his own. Anna's morale
would be ruined if they short-circuited her services
by helping themselves, and then where would they
be when they had people in to dinner! But if he
didn't want the meal interrupted by telephone calls,
why did he insist on their dining at the bucolic hour
of six instead of at seven when most of their friends
did?
Of course Emily knew his answer to that, too. By
dining at six they could, whenever they felt like it,
go to the first show at the Alcazar and see the picture
right end to instead of from the middle of the fourth
reel. Also they could find a convenient place to
park the car. And they were home again by nine,
so that if George had any evening work to do there
were a couple of solid hours left for it. And as for
setting an example of propriety to Anna, George felt
it was rather hard. Ever since their first child,
George Junior, had been two years old, George
Senior had been submitting to innumerable small
infringements upon his personal liberty under the
plea of setting a proper example. But now that
Junior was in college and his younger sister in a
boarding school it seemed to George, at forty-three,
that he might be allowed to tilt back in his chair if
he liked and empty his pipe scrapings into the dessert
plate. There was no good saying any of that, either,
for Emily knew it as well as he did.
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Well, he knew her answer, too, though this last
word was one she had never said. After all, they
didn't live in New York nor in Philadelphia nor even
in Chicago. They lived in Avonia, Illinois. George
had a good law practice, in Harrison County, but the
great cities and the great corporations had never
summoned him, and it was becoming clear to George
-at forty-three that they never would. Avonia
and the movies and the bridge club and a month's
vacation at Mackinac Island was about his speed.
He doubted very much if Emily, as regarded her
own potential speed-granted a conjugal partner of
sufficient horsepower-acquiesced. Emily might
well believe she was born for better things. She'd
been a good deal of a belle in her day. She was too
loyal to lament lost opportunities in his presence, let
alone to fling them at him as missiles, but a conscious-
ness that they might be lying ready to her hand made
him walk warily. She should make the best of
Avonia in her own way, and if there was a faint fla-
vour of absurdity about some of the refinements she
insisted upon, and about the seriousness with which
she took her committees and her classes and her
clubs, it did not behoove her husband to rail, no
matter how often they called her from the dinner
table to the telephone.
He had had time to think as far as this, his mind
slipping rapidly past the familiar landmarks just as
his eye slid down the columns of the newspaper, be-
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR
301
fore he perceived that Emily was not, this time,
talking to any member of her drama committee, nor
to any citizen of Avonia, nor to any one she'd had the
slightest expectation of hearing from. It was a man
-George could tell that from the quality of her voice
-and he seemed to be throwing her into a good deal
of a flutter.
"Why-why, yes," she was saying. "Oh, but we'd
love to have you!
We certainly will.
won't find us very exciting.
Saturday, then."
Yes. That'll be fine.
Only I'm afraid you
Four o'clock
George, as she returned to the table, fastened his
gaze upon the paper. When she was rattled she
liked to be allowed to take her time. She sat down
a bit heavily in her chair, drew a couple of long
breaths, resumed her knife and fork, and then asked,
"Did you hear any of that?"
"Not much," he told her. "I thought you
sounded sort of surprised."
"I should say I was," she admitted. "When I
hadn't heard from him for nineteen years. Calling
up on the long distance to ask if he can come and
spend Sunday with us! Surprised!"
"Who?" George wanted to know.
"I don't know why he should want to. He cer-
tainly won't find any material for a play in us. Still,
it'll be nice to see him again. I don't suppose I'll
know him."
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"Look here," George demanded, "who are you
talking about?”
"Oh," she said, as if she had just heard his ques-
tion; but it was another moment before she answered
it. "Why, it's Charley Hawkins-Hawthorn Haw-
kins-George, you know who he is!"
"I know who Hawthorn Hawkins is, but why do
you call him Charley? And why does he call you on
the long distance and propose to spend Sunday with
us?"
CC
Why, he's giving the Sheldon lectures down at
the University this year, and he looked up Avonia on
the map and saw how near it was so he 'phoned to
ask if he could come."
“But why Avonia, and why us? If you know him
as well as that, why haven't you ever told me any-
thing about him?"
"George," she cried, scandalized, "I told you all
about Charley Hawkins when we were first engaged
-and you didn't even listen. He wasn't famous
then, of course. And I haven't heard from him since
the note he wrote with the wedding present he sent
us. Now, for goodness sake, don't ask any more
questions, but let me eat."
It was from preoccupation rather than obedience
that he let her alone until she rang for the maid.
Then, "You haven't been writing to him, have you
—telling him he was great and so on?"
Her eyes flashed at him, but the entrance of Anna
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR
303
procured him a polite answer: "I couldn't very well
write to him when I'd never seen one of his plays.”
"Ever read 'em?" he asked. "They are pub-
lished, I suppose.
"
She shook her head and waited until Anna went
out; then she swooped upon him. "I never thought
you'd be so silly," she declared, "as to be jealous.
And about a man I haven't—thought of for twenty
years."
"Jealous!" he retorted furiously. "I'm not."
"What are you, then?" she asked with an alkaline
sort of smile, and he found the question unanswer-
able. "Well, I hope you will be decent to him, any-
how."
"I don't know whether I will or not," he told her.
"That depends." She didn't speak to him again
that night.
Two days later, coming home from a rather stren-
uous bout of shopping, Emily found her husband-
home from the office a good hour earlier than usual
-reading a small green paper-covered volume,
which he put down hastily as she came in, and then
took up again and held out to her.
"Three plays by Hawthorn Hawkins,"" she read.
'Why, where did that come from? I tried to get it
at Street's, but they'd never even heard of it."
"Came in the mail," he said. "I found it when I
got home."
"Addressed to me?" she asked.
i
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"Why-yes. I believe it was. I opened the pack-
age without thinking."
"Charley sent them on, of course," she remarked;
"so that I'd have something to talk to him about."
“I don't believe he did," George said decidedly.
"Not unless he's an unusual ass.
ass."
She flushed angrily at that, but he went on before
she could speak: "I said I thought he wasn't an
ass, not that I thought he was. There'd have been
a card or an inscription if it had come from him.
Anyhow, I wouldn't thank him for it unless he gives
you a lead. Read 'em and say nothing. And don't
leave 'em out on the sitting-room table where they'll
be the first thing he sees, either."
Her smile conceded that this advice was both
friendly and intelligent. "But where did they come
from?" she demanded.
"Search me!" he told her. "They don't post-
mark this fourth-class stuff. No, I didn't mean any-
thing uncomplimentary. As far as I read in the first
one it seemed pretty good. I thought you might
have sent to Chicago for them." She pointed out
that there wouldn't have been time. "Oh, well,"
he concluded, "I don't believe it's much of a mystery.
Some old friend, most likely, that he told he was
coming, sent it along so that you could surprise him.
You'll read 'em to-night, I suppose."
She said she would, unless he wanted to go out
somewhere with her; but he said he must go back to
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR
305
the office and work. "I'm going to be pretty busy
between now and Monday," he added.
She looked at him sharply. "You're going to be
here to-morrow when he comes, aren't you?"
“Oh, yes, I'll he here you bet." It was so evi-
dent, though, that the last brace of words had escaped
him involuntarily that she forbore to remonstrate.
They kept rather carefully away from Charles
Hawthorn Hawkins as a conversational topic that
night. Next morning, however, just before he left
for the office, George uneasily broke the ice by saying,
"Don't count on him too much, Emily. He may not
come, you know. Send you a telegram this morn-
ing."
She asked hotly why he said that, and added, as the
suspicion struck her, "I believe you've been telegraph-
ing him, yourself, not to come." But this injurious
charge she at once retracted.
'They're supposed to be sort of temperamental
and changeable, that's all," he explained, "and I
thought he might change his mind about this.'
"You wish he would, I expect,” she observed.
"Yes," he answered unhappily, "I suppose I do."
She gazed at him a moment in mute exasperation.
Then her expression softened and she gave a reluctant
laugh. "I think you're the most ridiculous person
in the world," she said. "I suppose you think he's
coming out here to break up our happy home and get
me to run away with him."
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He looked so glum over this that she gave him up
as hopeless. "Oh, go along," she cried. "But I'm
going to kiss you first. And you will be home sharp
at four, won't you?"
It was an hour earlier than this that she found him
in the dining room unwrapping a package containing
two bottles, one of gin and the other of Scotch whis-
key.
"Got 'em from Walter Harbury," he explained
sheepishly. "Walter has a regular bootlegger—
comes around once a month. Been meaning to lay
in something like this for quite a while."
Her astonishment over this bit of unabashed men-
dacity made it possible for him to get on to something
else. He put the bottles away in the sideboard,
turned his back upon it, and gazed at her so intently
that she frowned inquiringly and presently asked,
"Well, what is it?”
"Nothing," he said, "only I think you're looking
great-just as you are.'
Now this was the unadulterated truth. At forty,
after two children and nineteen years of marriage and
Avonia, she still looked infinitely desirable to George,
and never more so than in the sort of clothes she was
wearing now, a small felt hat crammed down upon
her small round head (she'd been out doing some last-
minute marketing), a sweater, a sport skirt, low-
heeled shoes; her face moistly flushed, innocent of
powder. It was true and Emily knew it was true.
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR
307
All the same, she saw through him and smiled de-
risively. "So you want me to look like this when
Mr. Hawthorn comes?" she asked. "Well, I won't.
I'm going up to dress this minute.”
"I wish you wouldn't, Emily," he pleaded. “I
don't want you to dress up for that chump. I don't
want you to do anything-special for him. I don't
see why you should. You don't care anything about
him, do you? Nor about what he thinks?"
Her flush deepened as she met his look. She
reached out suddenly and took hold of him by the
ears. "Idiot!" she said. "Idiot!" But in the
interval between the two words she kissed him, and
she did not dress up for Mr. Charles Hawthorn
Hawkins.
The visit went off-started off, anyhow-a whole
lot better than Emily, who had spent the last hour
before the arrival of their guest in wishing petulantly
that she had never heard of him, could have hoped.
George behaved surprisingly well. Indeed, consid-
ered as a jealous husband, he showed powers of his-
trionic dissimulation she'd never suspected him of
possessing.
Perhaps because her husband's performance occu-
pied the first place in her attention, she found it hard
to remember what a celebrity Charley Hawkins had
become. It seemed natural to treat him just as she
had treated the boy he had been when he had made
her listen to his verses and his terribly tragic little
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MARRIAGE
short stories, and encourage and console him-and
refuse, with imperturbable friendliness, to fall in love
with him.
He was curiously unchanged through all his
changes. The twenty pounds or so he had put on
hadn't made him look older; had served only to ac-
centuate the plump, cherubic look of boyishinnocence
there'd always been about him. He talked about
himself a lot, just as he'd always done, taking the
same pleasure in his great adventures as he had in the
little ones of long ago.
Emily shot an uneasy glance at George now and
then; for instance, when Charley spoke off-hand of
the foremost American actress as Ethel. She won-
dered whether George was saying to himself, "Ass!"
But apparently George was not. He seemed to be
enjoying the gossip of the theatre as much as the tales
of Capri and Tahiti and other wondrous places the
playwright had inhabited.
Emily herself didn't talk much. They drifted
back occasionally into reminiscence, but since this,
of course, excluded George, they didn't go far with it.
George had spoken of being busy, of the amount of
time he'd have to spend upon a case that was coming
up Monday, but he showed no signs of going off and
leaving them to their own devices. She didn't know
whether she wished he would or not. Intrinsically
she wasn't specially anxious to be left alone with
Charley, but if George was staying away from his
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR
309
work in order to watch them she was furious with him.
Only, it didn't seem like that. The two men got
around to the war at last, and the humble but ab-
sorbing parts they had respectively played in it, and
after an hour of this she bade them good-night.
This was insincere, so far as it was addressed to
George, for she fully intended staying awake until he
came to bed, and asking him a few questions, but her
modest share of the unwonted alcohol made her
sleepy, and she never knew how late the two men and
the bottle of Scotch sat up.
She got no chance next morning, either, for a pri-
vate talk with George before they met their guest,
and, in consequence, George's calm announcement of
the day's programme and his total elimination of
himself from it fell upon her like a thunderclap. She
caught him alone a few minutes after breakfast and
asked him what he meant by it.
“I don't mean anything by it," he protested. “I
have got to work all day, just as I told you. Hawkins
understands it all right. I told him about it last
night. He's got to leave this afternoon and there's
no good Sunday train from here, so it seemed decent
to say that you'd drive him over to Rockport. You
needn't take him to the club to lunch unless you like,
but I thought it might be a pleasant change from
sitting around the house."
"You're simply-throwing me at his head!" she
protested.
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MARRIAGE
She detected a touch of bravado in the way he said,
"Nonsense! He came to see you, didn't he?" But
Charley was already coming downstairs with his bag
so there wasn't time for anything more.
Well, the events of that day were on George's head,
then, whatever they turned out to be.
George bade their guest a cordial, almost paternal,
farewell, and, clapping his hat a little too much on
one side of his head for a Sabbath morning and an
hour when he was certain to meet their neighbours go-
ing to church, strolled down the street in the direction
of his office.
It was seven o'clock that evening when she stopped
their car at the curb after her return, alone, from the
fifteen-mile drive to Rockport. George was reclin-
ing, very much at his ease, upon the Gloucester swing
on the veranda.
"Hello!" he called to her. "You back already?
Had a good day?"
She chose to regard his second question as of a
piece with the first, and she came up the front steps
before she spoke at all.
"I suppose you're famished for supper," she re-
marked, “if you've been working all day.'
"Oh, I got home about an hour ago and scrambled
myself some eggs. How about you?"
"I'm not specially hungry," she said. "I'll get
myself a glass of milk by and by."
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR
311
She sat down facing him. "George," she de-
manded, “why did you send for those three plays of
Charley's?"
He sat up. "Why did I send?"
"It was either you or Anna who sent for them,
she interrupted. "Charley swears he didn't send
them and that he didn't say anything to a soul about
coming out here.”
He lay back again. "Oh, all right," he conceded.
"I telephoned to Chicago for 'em the morning after
I found out he was coming.'
"But why?" she insisted.
"Oh, I don't know. How could I know what he
was going to be like? I didn't know what he was
coming for. So-well, I wanted you to be ready for
him."
She took a minute or so to digest this reply. "I
suppose you mean," she mused, "that you thought
he might be coming out here to see how much of a—
hick the girl was that he wanted to marry once.
After she'd lived twenty years in Avonia. And you
wanted to-fix me up so he wouldn't laugh. I sup-
pose that afternoon dress Miss Maitland made for
me doesn't look like much."
“Oh, damn!” he said, and got to his feet. "Look
here, Emily! You're all right in any dress. It
wasn't you I didn't feel sure about. But he might
have been any sort of ass. Of course, I saw he was
all right before I'd talked with him ten minutes."
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MARRIAGE
"No," she said. "You needn't have worried about
that."
She let the voltage accumulate during a longish
silence. Then she added, "He kissed me this after-
noon. He'd been rather-sentimental all day, and
when I said good-bye to him he kissed me.'
"Well," said George, after a silence of his own,
"he certainly is a darned nice fellow."
She stared at him, speechless.
"Oh, I'm not much surprised," he went on.
see, he told me about it last night."
"Told you, last night!" she echoed.
"You
"He didn't say he was going to kiss you," George
explained, “but he kept me up half the night telling
me how he felt about you. Said he'd always been
romantic about you, and all the more after he'd got
old enough to realize how kind you'd been to a ridicu-
lous, priggish kid. He said you'd contributed more
to his education than anybody else he'd ever met,
and he'd always felt grateful to you. Been wanting
to come to see you for years, but was afraid to.
Scared to death, he said he was, until he saw you were
just as you had been; hadn't changed a hair. Ac-
tually wrote a telegram to say he wasn't coming and
then tore it up.
"Well, then, why shouldn't he have a-day in
the country? I hope you showed him a good time.
I guess you did, or he wouldn't have kissed you."
He perceived now that she was crying. "I don't
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR
313
blame him for that a bit," he went on. "I think he
showed darned good judgment. Because you are a
peach, Emily, and that's the truth."
He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. "Come
on in, old lady," he concluded. "What do you say
to some scrambled eggs? You're hungry, that's all's
the matter with you.
THE PIE AND THE PAST
BY JOSEPH C. LINCOLN

M
RS. LURELIA ELLIS took the cranberry
pie from the oven and set it on the back of
the stove. It was a successful pie, if she
But, good as it
Nothing was too
said it as shouldn't; crisp, flaky brown crust; crimson,
juicy filling; a very good pie indeed.
was, it was not too good for Obed.
good for a husband like Obed Ellis.
They had been married but a month. She had
come from Cape Ann to Cape Cod to act as house-
keeper and companion for old Mrs. Bailey at Tru-
met. On the first of September she had taken a day's
holiday and, in common with at least one half of
Trumet's population, excursioned to the county fair
at Ostable. There, lonely in all the great crowd,
she had stopped before the booth where one might,
for the small sum of five cents, toss three rings at a
rack of pegs. These pegs were numbered. If one
were fortunate enough—or skilful enough—to ring
a peg, one received a prize. The prizes were more
or less valuable-principally less. A red-faced per-
son with pink and white shirtsleeves made strenuous
announcement.
314
THE PIE AND THE PAST
315
"Here y' are, ladies and gents!" he bawled.
"Here y' are! Toss 'em in and ring 'em out. A
genuwine guaranteed prize for each and every ringer.
Look at 'em, ladies and gents, LOOK at 'em! Au-
stralian solid nickel-silver scarf pins! Genuwine New
Jersey ivory napkin holders! Alaska diamond-
studded hair combs for the ladies! Three chances
for a nickel, half a dime, five cents! Toss 'em in
and ring 'em out!"
Lurelia noticed that while many tossed them in,
but few succeeded in ringing them out. Then a new-
comer laid down a nickel and prepared to try his luck.
He was, she thought, a striking looking man, thick
set, broad-shouldered, sunburned, wearing a blue
uniform with brass buttons and a blue yachting cap.
Like her, and therefore unlike the majority of the
people on the fair grounds, he seemed to be quite
alone. She had been on the point of moving on;
now she stayed to watch him make the trial.
Two rings he tossed and each shot, although close,
was a miss. The third, however, fairly encircled a
peg. The red-faced person lifted both pink and
white shirtsleeves in the air.
"LOOK at it!
"Look at that!" he bellowed.
The gent rings number thirty-two, winnin' the genu-
wine Alaska studded diʼmond lady's hair comb! He
lays down five cents and he takes away a hundred
dollars--more or less. There you are, sir! There's
the genuwine Alaska. Shall I hand it to you or will
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MARRIAGE
your wife put it on now and give the congregation a
treat?"
>
Lurelia was standing beside the winner of the prize.
The red-faced person was dramatically offering her
the comb. She blushed furiously. The lookers-on,
divining the mistake, cheered and laughed. She
hurried away. A moment later she felt a touch on
her elbow. The broad-shouldered man in the blue
uniform had followed her. His embarrassment
seemed to be as great as hers.
"Ma'am," he stammered, “I—I wish you'd take
it. I—I'd like you to have it first rate. I'm all
alone, and—and it ain't a bit of use to me, honest."
She drew herself up. Lurelia was nothing if not
proper. She had never flirted in all the thirty-five
years of her life. Having read a great deal, she knew
exactly what and how to reply.
"Sir!!" she exclaimed.
"Yes 'm," said the man, removing the yachting
cap. "I wish you would take it. That-that feller
was a fool and if you say so I'll punch his nose. Shall
I?"
She was momentarily startled out of her pro-
priety.
"Oh, no!" she exclaimed.
"I will if you say so. He's a smart alick and he'd
ought to be licked. But-but, honest, I do wish
you'd take this thing. 'Twould look nice on you,
and and I ain't got nobody of my own to give it to.
THE PIE AND THE PAST
317
I'm a stranger here. Won't you take it, please?
I-I don't mean it fresh nor nothin'.
Lurelia looked at him. He was about her age or
a little older. He had an honest face, if she ever saw
one. He was blushing and did not at all resemble
the bold, bad lady-killers of whom she had read in
her favourite romances.
She hesitated. Then
romance began.
well, then her own
Before she returned to Trumet that evening she
had learned much concerning the man in the blue
uniform. His name was Obed Ellis. He was a
bachelor, had been to sea in his younger days, had
since worked hard at various employments on shore,
and was now acting as watchman and caretaker in
charge of the property of the big hotel at Orham.
During the summer he was in command of the hotel
pier and boats, but now, as the season was over, had
more leisure. His wages, he informed her with satis-
faction, "went on just the same, summer or winter."
He was a Methodist, a Republican, and his life was
insured for two thousand dollars. He was alone in
the world, just as she was.
Together they inspected the poultry and live-stock
exhibits. He treated her to salt-water taffy, ice
cream soda, and a "shore dinner" in the refreshment
tent. They saw the trotting races and the balloon
ascension. Before bidding her good-bye at the rail-
way station he informed her that he owned an auto-
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MARRIAGE
mobile, and, if she "hadn't no objection," he would
kind of like to drive over one of these days and take
her to ride.
The following Saturday afternoon he did drive
over.
The ride was delightful; the little car rattled
and "skipped” but kept going. A week later he
came again, and twice during the week following.
A month later he proposed marriage. It was then
that she told him of her other love affair. When
she was eighteen she had been engaged to a man who
kept a billiard saloon at Pigeon Cove. Later she
broke the engagement.
"I found out," she said, with a shudder, “that he
was dissipated. He never told me, but once I saw
him drunk-intoxicated, I mean. He had been
drinkin' whiskey then, but when he couldn't get that
he drank Jamaica ginger. He'd been arrested and
in the lock-up two or three times. If he'd told me
I might have forgiven him; I was a girl and I probably
should have forgiven him and been sorry afterward.
But he'd never told me and I couldn't forgive that.
That's why I'm tellin' you this now, Obed. The
time to tell such things is before marriage, not after-
ward. There mustn't be secrets between husband
and wife. I've read too many stories in books about
folks with a past gettin' married, and nothin' but
misery ever came of it. If you've got anything in
your past life now is the time to tell me of it,
Obed."
THE PIE AND THE PAST
319
"Sure thing!" agreed Obed promptly. "What do
you say, Lurelia? Will you marry me?"
She said yes, and six weeks later they were married
and she came to Orham to live with him in the little
cottage at the rear of the hotel property. Now, a
very happy wife, she was making him a cranberry pie
because he liked it better than any other kind.
The pie baked, and the table in the dining room
set for dinner, she stepped to the kitchen door to see
if he was in sight. He was not, but someone else
was, a disreputable male, who was sauntering toward
her across the backyard. His clothes, his hat, his
unshaven face, classified him in her judgment as a
tramp. She was not afraid of tramps and asked him
what he wanted.
"Ma'am," he said, "does anybody name of Ellis
live here?"
"Mr. Obed Ellis lives here," she replied; "but he's
out. I'm Mrs. Ellis."
The tramp nodded. "They told me this was his
hang-out," he observed. "I thought I'd just stop
in and see him. So you're his wife, eh? I didn't
know he was married.”
She looked him over, and closer inspection did not
make her estimate more favourable.
“Did you wish to see him particularly?" she asked.
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
He grinned. "I shouldn't wonder," he said.
"'Course I'd like to see Obe all right enough, but
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MARRIAGE
you'll do. I'm out of luck, down and out, as you
might say, and I ain't had a square meal for a week.
If there's any grub around loose I could use it. I
know Obe would give me a hand-out if he was here,
for old time's sake."
She hesitated. This man did not look like the
kind of friend her husband would be likely to have,
but misfortune might come to any one.
"Come in and sit down," she said. He came into
the spotless kitchen and sat down upon one of her
freshly scrubbed chairs. He looked about the room,
crossed his dingy, ragged-trousered legs, and sniffed.
"Say," he observed cheerfully, "that pie over
there smells good to me."
She did not take the hint. "I can give you some
cold meat and bread and butter," she said coldly.
"Will that do?”
He grinned. “And a slab of that pie, eh?" he
queried.
"I should say not! That pie is for my husband.
If the meat and bread and a cup of tea won't satisfy
you, then
"Oh, they'll satisfy me all right, if there's enough of
'em. Just watch what I do to 'em. Trot 'em out.”
She filled a plate and put it and the cup of tea on
the kitchen table. "So you used to know Mr. Ellis?"
she observed. "What is your name?”
"What is
He grinned again, as well as one can grin with a
mouth full.
THE PIE AND THE PAST
321
"My name is Dugan," he said; "Mike Dugan, but
they don't generally call me that. Got any more tea?”
She refilled the cup. "Where did you and my
husband know each other?" she asked.
“Oh, over in the pen-the jail, I mean.
99
The teapot did not fall from her hand, but it came
very near it.
"The jail!" she exclaimed. "Why-why, what
jail?"
"The Ostable jail, of course. There ain't no other
in these diggin's. Obe and me were in there at the
same time."
She placed the teapot very carefully upon the
stove. Then she stepped to the window and pre-
tended to look out. The man at the table did not
look at her, he was too busy with the eatables, but
she remained at the window for several minutes, her
back toward him. When she spoke she did not turn,
being fearful that he might notice how pale she had
become, but she tried hard to keep the trouble from
her voice.
"When was this?" she asked.
"Eh? Oh, I dunno. Four years ago, maybe.
How about comin' acrost with the butter?”
She put the butter plate beside him.
"You and—and my husband were in-in the jail
together four years ago?" she asked.
"Sure, Mike!"
"What-why was he there?"
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MARRIAGE
"Eh? Oh, same thing that gets 'em all. Needed
the coin, I guess. Didn't he never tell you?"
She wanted to cry, but instead she tried to laugh.
"Of course he told me," she affirmed bravely.
"He he always tells me everything."
"Does, eh? Say-now! Haw, haw! Tells you
everything! That's good, that is. Did he tell you
about me?"
"No. Why should he?"
"Why not? Forgot it, most likely. He hadn't
ought to forgot me, though. We seen a whole lot
of each other them two weeks."
"Was-was you in there for-for stealin'?"
"Me! Not on your life! Rum was my ruin, same
as it's been a whole lot of others. Eh? Haw, haw!"
"How long was-was Mr. Ellis there?"
"I dunno. Year or so, maybe. I ain't seen him
since. He got his discharge a week afore they let
me loose.
""
A familiar step sounded on the walk by the side
door. Lurelia started.
"You-you stay right here," she commanded.
"Don't you go away. And don't you speak or—or
move. My husband is comin'. We-we'll surprise
him."
She hurried into the dining room, closing the kit-
chen door behind her. The familiar step came
nearer. The side door, that from the walk to the
dining room, opened. Obed came in.
THE PIE AND THE PAST
323
"Ship ahoy, old lady!" he hailed jovially. "Din-
ner ready? Ain't late, I hope, am I? Why, what's
the matter?"
She faced him, white and trembling, but firm.
"Obed," she said, "sit down. Dinner'll be ready
in a minute. Sit down. I want to-to speak to
you about somethin'."
He sat down, regarding her wonderingly.
"To speak to me?" he repeated. "For the land
sakes, what's happened? Is the cow dead?"
"No.
Oh, don't laugh!
feel funny just now.
"Eh?
I don't
Obed, do you remem-
ber that time when you asked me to marry you?"
Well, say! do you think I'd be
liable to forget it? Luckiest day in my life that was.
Why
"Hush! Obed, I asked you then if-if you had a
past."
"A which?"
"A past. Some secret in your life you hadn't told
me. You said no. I ask you again. Have you?"
He stared at her. "Have you?" she repeated.
What?" Say! No, of course I ain't.'
"Obed-oh, don't lie to me! I couldn't ever for-
give your lyin' to me.
"Lie? To you? Who said I'd ever lied to you?
I'll break the swab's everlastin' neck!”
"Hush! Sit right down again in that chair.
Obed, was you ever in the Ostable jail?”
324
MARRIAGE
He hesitated. Then he coloured.
"Why-why, yes," he admitted. "But I didn't
think"
"Oh, hush! Be still! You were there and-and
you never told me?”
"Why—well, no, I didn't. You see, I was kind of
ashamed, and-it didn't amount to nothin' much,
anyhow."
"Didn't amount to anything! Oh, my soul, how
can you talk so? Did you know a man there named
-what was it-Dugan?"
"Dugan? Yes, certain. Tough-lookin' critter,
reg'lar tramp. In there for bein' drunk and smashin'
windows and raisin' hob generally. Yes, I knew
him. He was the only one I had to look after for one
spell. We got to be kind of—well, chummy, as you
might say. 'Twas lonesome bein' janitor and keeper
and everything else in a place like that one-horse
Ostable jail, and a feller has to talk to somebody.
The sheriff, he only come around once in a while,
SO
""
"Wait! Oh, wait! You were a keeper there-
in the jail?”
"Sure! I suppose likely I had ought to have told
you about it, Lurelia; but, you see, I was kind of
ashamed, same as I said. "Twan't much of a job,
but I took it 'cause Mother was sick-'twas just
afore she died—and the boat shop where I'd been
workin' had shut down and I needed money. Then,
THE PIE AND THE PAST
325
another thing made me ashamed of it, was on account
of bein' fired. Politics 'twas. Jim Leghorn, he was
sheriff, and he give me my walkin' papers to make
room for another Democrat, same as him. Only job
I ever was discharged from, that jail job was. I'm
sorry I never told you, Lurelia, but
Eh?
How did you come to know about it and—and that
Dugan tramp?"
She did not answer. Instead she hurried out into
the kitchen, closing the door. The kitchen was
empty, so were the plates and the tea cup on the
table. So was the chair where her recent visitor had
been sitting. So, too, was the rack on the back of
the stove where the cranberry pie had been put to
keep it warm.
A moment later she entered the dining room. She
leaned over her husband and put her arms about his
neck.
“Obed,” she said, laughing and sobbing together,
"I-I'm awfully sorry, but you won't have any
cranberry pie this noon. I-
Obed interrupted. "Cranberry pie!" he repeated.
"Who's talkin' about cranberry pie? I want to
know why you-
you"
"Yes, yes, dear. Of course you do. And I'm goin'
to tell you. But first I want to tell you how bad I
feel about that pie. I—I'll make two for supper, and
you can eat them both, all of 'em, if you want to."
THE END

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