Part 24

It was about this time that I had my first suspicion of anything untoward in their hitherto happy relations. I did not see him often now, but when I did visit them at their small apartment, 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 emancipated 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 she had never dreamed of. She had reached the place where she was criticizing certain popular authors, spoke of a curiously enlightened history of France she was reading, of certain bits of philosophy and poetry which her new club were discussing. From the nature of the conversation being carried on by the three of us I could see that Wray was beginning to feel that the unsophisticated 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, as I noticed, she chose to question or contradict him as to a matter of fact, and I think he was astonished if not irritated by the fact that she knew more than he about the import of a certain plot or the relativity 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 superior 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—_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, however, he would confide the growing nature of his doubts and perplexities. 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 having long and unnecessary arguments that were of no consequence however they were settled, and yet if they were not settled to suite 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 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 detest. 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 enthusiasms 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 frequent 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 number of other things! Only think of it! And three or four years ago she had thought he was all wrong 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 “oldtime” 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 stubborn, 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 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 unraveled or adjusted save by nature—the accidents of chance and affinity, or the deadly opposition 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 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 separated—or so I said.

The thought appealed to him intensely. It satisfied his practical and clerkly nature. He left me hopefully and I saw nothing of him for several 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 could see herself as little other than a milch cow with an attendant calf, bound to its service until it should be able to look after itself. Another time she remarked 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 nearby, 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 formulate plans for little Janet’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 Janet could 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 because of the gap that lay between them intellectually. Dissemble 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 intellect 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, his the slower, hers 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 himself, compromise as he would. Observing them together one could see how proud he was of her and of his relationship to her, how he felt that he had captured 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 complained that little Janet 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-Ebbing and allied thinkers and authorities, men and works that he considered dreadful and shameful, even though he scarcely grasped their true significance.

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 him?”

“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, or kept from its contaminating influence, and those who are to be benefited will be benefited. I can’t discuss either books or life in any other way. I see worthwhile books as truthful representations 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, however.”

It was not long after 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 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. Its equipment was 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 Janet. 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 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 materially, 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 examining 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 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 she didn’t. She didn’t want a child and never forgave me for persuading her to have Janet. 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 did.” He paused and clenched his hands nervously 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 desperation 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. “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 occupy it, only he had re-sublet it, as I found out afterwards. And she had Janet 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 him open the door. But when I got back a servant 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. They weren’t inside. She had slipped out with Janet. 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 suspected there was a man—the man I thought she was going with, but it was some one 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—without ever a word.”

“Yes,” I said, “but the folly of all that. The uselessness, 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, can I? I’m miserable without her. I see the folly of it all, but I’m crazy about her. The more she disliked me the more I loved her. And I love her now, this minute. I can’t help it. There were days when she tortured me so that I vomited, from sheer nervousness. 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 slipped on his raincoat, took up his umbrella, and stalked out into the rain, to walk and think, I presume. 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 is 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.”

XI

FULFILMENT

Hearing the maid tap lightly on her door for the third or fourth time, Ulrica uttered a semiconscious “Come.” It was her usual rising hour but to-day she was more depressed than usual, although the condition was common enough at all times. The heavy drag of a troubled mental state was upon her. Was it never to end? Was she never to be happy again? After several weeks of a decidedly acceptable loneliness, during which Harry had been in the west looking after his interminable interests, he was about to return. The weariness of that, to begin with! And while she could not say that she really hated or even disliked him deeply (he was too kind and considerate for that), still his existence, his able and different personality, constantly forced or persuaded upon her, had come to be a bore. The trouble was that she did not truly love him and never could. He might be, as he was, rich, resourceful and generous to a fault in her case, a man whom the world of commerce respected, but how did that avail her? He was not her kind of man. Vivian before him had proved that. And other men had been and would be as glad to do as much if not more.

Vivian had given all of himself in a different way. Only Harry’s seeking, begging eyes pleading with her (after Vivian’s death and when she was so depressed) had preyed upon and finally moved her to sympathy. Life had not mattered then, (only her mother and sister), and she had become too weary to pursue any career, even for them. So Harry with his wealth and anxiety to do for her—

(The maid entered softly, drew back the curtains and raised the blinds, letting in a flood of sunshine, then proceeded to arrange the bath.)

It had been, of course, because of the magic of her beauty—how well she knew the magic of that!—plus an understanding and sympathy she had for the miseries Harry had endured in his youth, that had caused him to pursue her with all the pathetic vehemence of a man of fifty. He was not at all like Vivian, who had been shy and retiring. Life had seemed to frighten poor Vivian and drive him in upon himself in an uncomplaining and dignified way. In Harry’s case it had acted contrariwise. Some men were so, especially the old and rich, those from whom life was slipping away and for whom youth, their lost youth, seemed to remain a colored and enthralling spectacle however wholly gone. The gifts he had lavished upon her, the cars, the jewels, this apartment, stocks and bonds, even that house in Seadale for her sister and mother! And all because of a beauty that meant so little to her now that Vivian was gone, and in the face of an indifference so marked that it might well have wearied any man.