Part 6

_These wide yards and that ruck of shabby yellow-and-black houses, begrimed and dirty externally, and internally no doubt, with souls in them nearly as drab, perhaps. How much better it was to be rich like himself and Idelle; only she valued her station so lightly!_

* * * * *

Always, wherever he went these days, and his affairs prevented him from being with her very much, she was in his mind—what she was doing, where she was going, with whom she might be now—ah, the sickening thought, with whom she might be now, and where—with that young waster Keene, possibly, with his millions, his shooting preserve and his yacht; or Browne, equally young and still in evidence, though deserted by her to marry him, Garrison; or Coulstone, with whom Idelle had had that highly offensive affair in Pittsburgh five years before, when she was only eighteen. Eighteen! The wonder year! He, too, was here in G—— now after all these years, this same Coulstone, and after Idelle had left him once! Yes, he was hanging about her again, wanting her to come back and marry him, although each of them had remarried!

* * * * *

_That flock of crows flying across that distant field!_

* * * * *

Of course, Idelle laughed at it, or pretended to. She pretended to be faithful to him, to tell him all this was unavoidable gossip, the aftermath of a disturbing past, before ever she saw him. But could he believe her? Was she not really planning so to do—leave him and return to Coulstone, this time legally? How could he tell? But think of the vagaries of human nature and character, the conniving and persuasive power of a man of wealth like Coulstone. He had left his great business in Pittsburgh to come here to G—— in order to be near her and annoy him (Garrison) really—not her, perhaps—with his pleas and crazy fascination and adoration when she was now safely and apparently happily married! Think of the strangeness, the shame, the peculiarity of Idelle’s earlier life! And she still insisted that this sort of thing was worth while! All his own station and wealth and adoration were not enough—because he could not be eight or ten people at once, no doubt. But why should he worry? Why not let her go? To the devil with her, anyhow! She merely pretended to love him in her idle, wanton spirit, because she could—well, because she could play at youth and love!

* * * * *

_Barkersburg—a place of 30,000, and the train not stopping! The sun, breaking through for just one peep at this gray day, under those trees!_

* * * * *

The trouble with his life, as Garrison now saw it, was that throughout it for the last twenty years, and before that even, in spite of his youth and money, he had been craving the favor of just such a young, gay, vigorous, attractive creature as Idelle or Jessica—she of his earlier years—and not realizing it, until he met Idelle, his desire. And this, of course, had placed him at a disadvantage in dealing with women like them. Years before—all of fourteen now, think of it!—there had been that affair between himself and Jessica, daughter of the rich and fashionable Balloghs, of Lexington, which had ended so disastrously for him. He had been out there on Colonel Ledgebrook’s estate attending to some property which belonged to his father when she had crossed his path at the colonel’s house, that great estate in Bourbon County. Then, for the first time really, he had realized the delight of having a truly beautiful girl interested in him, and him alone, of being really attracted to him—for a little while. It was wonderful.

* * * * *

_The smothered clang of that crossing bell!_

* * * * *

But also what a failure! How painful to hark back to that, and yet how could he avoid it? Although it had seemed to end so favorably—he having been able to win and marry her—still in reality it had ended most disastrously, she having eventually left him as she did. Jessica, too, was like Idelle in so many ways, as young, as gay, nearly as forceful, not as pretty, and not with Idelle’s brains. You had to admit that in connection with Idelle. She had more brains, force, self-reliance, intuition, than most women he knew anything about, young or old.

But to return to Jessica. At first she seemed to think he was wonderful, a man of the world, clever, witty, a lover of light, frivolous, foolish things, such as dancing, drinking, talking idle nonsense, which he was not at all. Yes, that was where he had always failed, apparently, and always would. He had no flair, and clever women craved that.

* * * * *

_That flock of pigeons on that barn roof!_

* * * * *

At bottom really he had always been slow, romantic, philosophic, meditative, while trying in the main to appear something else, whereas these other men, those who were so successful with women at least, were hard and gay and quick and thoughtless, or so he thought. They said and did things more by instinct than he ever could, were successful—well, just because they were what they were. You couldn’t do those things by just trying to. And gay, pretty, fascinating women, such as Idelle or Jessica, the really worthwhile ones, seemed to realize this instinctively and to like that kind and no other. When they found a sober and reflective man like himself, or one even inclined to be, they drew away from him. Yes, they did; not consciously always, but just instinctively. They wanted only men who tingled and sparkled and glittered like themselves. To think that love must always go by blind instinct instead of merit—genuine, adoring passion!

* * * * *

_This must be Phillipsburg coming into view! He couldn’t mistake that high, round water tower!_

* * * * *

Ah, the tragedy of seeing and knowing this and not being able to remedy it, of not being able to make oneself over into something like that! Somehow, Jessica had been betrayed by his bog-fire resemblance to the thing which she took him to be. He was a bog fire and nothing more, in so far as she was concerned, all she thought he was. Yet because he was so hungry, no doubt, for a woman of her type he had pretended that he was “the real thing,” as she so liked to describe a gay character, a man of habits, bad or good, as you choose; one who liked to gamble, shoot, race, and do a lot of things which he really did not care for at all, but which the crowd or group with which he was always finding himself, or with whom he hoped to appear as somebody, was always doing and liking.

* * * * *

_These poor countrymen, always loitering about their village stations!_

* * * * *

And the women they ran with were just like them, like Jessica, like Idelle—smart, showy and liked that sort of man—and so—

Well, he had pretended to be all that and more, when she (Jessica) had appeared out of that gay group, petite, blonde (Idelle was darker), vivacious, drawn to him by his seeming reality as a man of the world and a gay cavalier. She had actually fallen in love with him at sight, as it were, or seemed to be at the time—she!—and then, see what had happened! Those awful months in G—— after she had returned with him! The agonies of mind and body!

* * * * *

_If only that stout traveling man in that gray suit would cease staring at him! It must be the horn-rimmed glasses he had on which interested him so! These mid-Western people!_

* * * * *

Instantly almost, only a few weeks after they were married, she seemed to realize that she had made a mistake. It seemed not to make the slightest difference to her, after the first week or so, that they were married or that he was infatuated with her or that he was who he was or that her every move and thought were beautiful to him. On the contrary, it seemed only to irritate her all the more. She seemed to sense then—not before—that he was really the one man not suited to her by temperament or taste or ideas, not the kind she imagined she was getting, and from then on there were the most terrible days, terrible—

* * * * *

_That pretty girl turning in at that village gate!_

* * * * *

Trying, depressing, degrading really. What dark frowns used to flash across her face like clouds at that time—she was nineteen to his twenty-four, and so pretty!—the realization, perhaps, that she had made a mistake. What she really wanted was the gay, anachronistic, unthinking, energetic person he had seemed to be under the stress of the life at Ledgebrook’s, not the quiet, reasoning, dreamy person he really was. It was terrible!

* * * * *

_Tall trees made such shadowy aisles at evening!_

* * * * *

Finally she had run away, disappeared completely one morning after telling him she was going shopping, and then never seeing him any more—ever—not even once! A telegram from Harrisburg had told him that she was going to her mother’s and for him not to follow her, please; and then before he could make up his mind really what to do had come that old wolf Caldwell, the famous divorce lawyer of G——, representing her mother, no doubt, and in smooth, ingratiating, persuasive tones had talked about the immense folly of attempting to adjust natural human antipathies, the sadness of all human inharmonies, the value of quiet in all attempts at separation, the need he had to look after his own social prestige in G——, and the like, until finally Caldwell had persuaded him to accept a decree of desertion in some Western state in silence and let her go out of his life forever! Think of that!

* * * * *

_The first call for dinner! Perhaps he had better go at once and have it over with! He wanted to retire early to-night!_

* * * * *

But Jessica—how she had haunted him for years after that! The whole city seemed to suggest her at times, even after he heard that she was married again and the mother of two children, so strong was the feeling for anything one lost. Even to this day certain corners in G——, the Brandingham, where they had lived temporarily at first; Mme. Gateley’s dressmaking establishment, where she had had her gowns made, and the Tussockville entrance to the park—always touched and hurt him like some old, dear, poignant melody.

* * * * *

_How this train lurched as one walked! The crashing couplings between these cars!_

* * * * *

And then, after all these busy, sobering years, in which he had found out that there were some things he was not and could not be—a gay, animal man of the town, for instance, a “blood,” a waster; and some things that he was—a fairly capable financial and commercial man, a lover of literature of sorts, and of horses, a genial and acceptable person in many walks of society—had come Idelle.

* * * * *

_Think of the dining-car being crowded thus early! And such people!_

* * * * *

He was just settling down to a semi-resigned acceptance of himself as an affectional, emotional failure in so far as women were concerned, when she had come—Idelle—this latest storm which had troubled him so much. Idelle had brains, beauty, force, insight—more than Jessica ever had had, or was he just older?—and that was what made her so attractive to men, so indifferent to women, so ready to leave him to do all the worshiping. She could understand him, apparently, at his time of life, with his sober and in some ways sad experiences, and sympathize with him most tenderly when she chose, and yet, strangely enough, she could ignore him also and be hard, cruel, indifferent. The way she could neglect him at times—go her own way! God!

* * * * *

_Not a bad seat, only now it was too dark to see anything outside! These heavy forks!_

* * * * *

But to return to that dreadful pagan youth of hers, almost half-savage: take that boy who shot himself at the age of sixteen for love of her, and all because she would not run away with him, not caring for him at all, as she said, or she would have gone! What a sad case that was, as she had told it, at least. The boy’s father had come and denounced her to her parents in her own home, according to her, and still she denied that it had been her fault. And those other two youths, one of whom had embezzled $10,000 and spent it on her and several other boys and girls! And that other one who had stolen five hundred in small sums from his father’s till and safe and then wasted it on her and her companions at country inns until he was caught! Those country clubs! Those little rivers she described, with their canoes—the automobiles of these youths—the dancing, eating, drinking life under the moon in the warmth of spring and summer under the trees! And he had never had anything like that, never! When one of the boys, being caught, complained of her to his parents as the cause of his evil ways she had denied it, or so she said, and did still to this day, saying she really did not know he was stealing the money and calling him coward or cry-baby. Idelle told him of this several years ago as though it had some humorous aspects, as possibly it had, to her—who knows? but with some remorse, too, for she was not wholly indifferent to the plight of these youths, although she contended that what she had given them of her time and youth and beauty was ample compensation. Yes, she was a bad woman, really, or had been—a bad girl, say what one would, a child of original evil impulse. One could not deny that really. But what fascination also, even yet, and then no doubt—terrible! He could understand the actions of those youths, their recklessness. There was something about sheer beauty, evil though it might be, which overcame moral prejudices or scruples. It had done so in his case, or why was he living with her? And so why not in theirs?

* * * * *

_How annoying to have a train stop in a station while you were eating!_

* * * * *

Beauty, beauty, beauty! How could one gainsay the charm or avoid the lure of it? Not he, for one. Trig, beautiful women, who carried themselves with an air and swing and suggested by their every movement passion, alertness, gayety of mind! The church bells might ring and millions of religionists preach of a life hereafter with a fixed table of rewards and punishments, but what did any one know of the future, anyhow? Nothing! Exactly nothing, in spite of all the churches. Life appeared and disappeared again; a green door opened and out you went, via a train wreck, for instance, on a night like this. All these farmers here tilling their fields and making their little homes and towns—where would they be in forty or fifty years, with all their moralities? No, here and now was life, here and now beauty—here and now Idelle, or creatures like her and Jessica.

* * * * *

_He would pay his bill and go into the smoker for a change. It would be pleasant to sit there until his berth was made up._

* * * * *

Then, take that affair of the banker’s son, young Gratiot it was, whom he knew well even now here in G——, only Gratiot did not know that he knew—or did he? Perhaps he was still friendly with Idelle, although she denied it. You could never really believe her. He it was, according to her, who had captured her fancy with his fine airs and money and car when she was only seventeen, and then robbed her (or could you call it robbery in Idelle’s case, seeking, restless creature that she was?) of her indifferent innocence. No robbery there, surely, whatever she might say.

* * * * *

_Those fascinating coke ovens blazing in the dark beside the track, mile after mile!_

* * * * *

Somehow her telling him these things at first, or rather shortly after they were married and when she was going to make a clean breast of everything and lead a better life, had thrown a wonderful glamour over her past.

* * * * *

_“Gay Stories”! What a name for a magazine! And that stout old traveling man reading it!_

* * * * *

What a strange thing it was to be a girl like that—with passions and illusions like that! Perhaps, after all, life only came to those who sought it with great strength and natural gifts. But how hard it was on those who hadn’t anything of that kind! Nevertheless, people should get over the follies of their youth—Idelle should, anyhow. She had had enough, goodness knows. She had been one of the worst—hectic, vastly excited about life, irresponsible—and she should have sobered by now. Why not? Look at all he had to offer her! Was that not enough to effect a change? While it made her interesting at times, this left-over enthusiasm, still it was so ridiculous, and made her non-desirable, too, either as wife or mother. Yet no doubt that was what had made her so fascinating to him, too, at this late day and to all those other men in B—— and elsewhere—that blazing youthfulness. Strange as it might seem, he could condone Idelle’s dreadful deeds even now, just as her mother could, if she would only behave herself, if she would only love him and him alone—but would she? She seemed so determined to bend everything to her service, regardless,—to yield nothing to him.

* * * * *

_No use! He couldn’t stand these traveling men in this smoking room! He must have the porter make up his berth!_

* * * * *

And then had come Coulstone, the one who was still hanging about her now, the one with whom she had had that dreadful affair in Pittsburgh, the affair that always depressed him to think about even now. Of course, there was one thing to be said in extenuation of that, if you could say anything at all—which you couldn’t really—and that was that Idelle was no longer a good girl then, but experienced and with all her blazing disposition aroused. She had captured the reins of her life then and was doing as she pleased—only why couldn’t he have met her then instead of Coulstone? He was alive then. And his own life had always been so empty. When she had confessed so much of all this to him afterward—not this Coulstone affair exactly, but the other things—why hadn’t he left her then? He might have and saved himself all this agony—or could he have then? He was twice her age when he married her and knew better, only he thought he could reform her—or did he? Was that the true reason? Could he admit the true reason to himself?

* * * * *

_“Yes, make it up right away, if you will!” Now he would have to wait about and be bored!_

* * * * *

But to come back to the story of Coulstone and all that hectic life in Pittsburgh. Coulstone, it seems, had been one of four or five very wealthy young managing vice-presidents of the Iverson-Centelever Frog and Switch Company, of Pittsburgh. And Idelle, because her father had suddenly died after her affair with young Gratiot, never knowing a thing about it, and her mother, not knowing quite what to do with her, had (because Idelle seemed to wish it) sent her to stay with an aunt in Pittsburgh. But the aunt having to leave for a time shortly after Idelle reached there, a girl friend had, at Idelle’s instigation, apparently, suggested that she stay with her until the aunt’s return, and Idelle had then persuaded her mother to agree to that.

* * * * *

_That tall, lanky girl having to sleep in that upper berth opposite! European sleeping cars were so much better!_

* * * * *

Her girl friend was evidently something like Idelle, or even worse. At any rate, Idelle appeared to have been able to wind her around her finger. For through her she had found some method of being introduced to (or letting them introduce themselves) a few of these smart new-rich men of the town, among them two of these same vice-presidents, one of whom was Coulstone. According to Idelle, he was a lavish and even reckless spender, wanting it to appear generally that he could do anything and have anything that money could buy, and liking to be seen in as many as a dozen public places in one afternoon or evening, especially at week-ends, only there weren’t so many in Pittsburgh at the time.

* * * * *

_This must be Centerfield, the state capital of E——, they were now passing without a pause! These expresses cut through so many large cities!_

* * * * *

From the first, so Idelle said, he had made violent love to her, though he was already married (unhappily, of course), and she, caring nothing for the conventions and not being of the kind that obeys any laws (wilful, passionate, reckless), had received him probably in exactly the spirit in which he approached her, if not more so. That was the worst of her, her constant, wilful, pagan pursuit of pleasure, regardless of anybody or anything, and it still held her in spite of him. There was something revolting about the sheer animality of it, that rushing together of two people, regardless. Still, if it had been himself and Idelle now—

* * * * *

_How fortunate that he had been able to obtain a section! At least he would have air!_

* * * * *

There had been a wild season, according to her own admissions or boastings—he could never quite tell which—extending over six or seven months, during which time Idelle had pretended to her mother, so she said, to prefer to live with her girl friend rather than return home. She had had, according to her, her machine, her servants, clothes without end, and what-not—a dream-world of luxury and freedom which he had provided and from which she never expected to wake, and her mother totally ignorant of it all the while! There had been everything she wished at her finger tips—hectic afternoons, evenings and midnights; affairs at country clubs or hotel grills, where the young bloods of the city and their girls congregated; wild rides in automobiles; visits to the nearest smartest watering-places, and the like. Or was she lying? He could scarcely think so, judging by her career with him and others since.

* * * * *

_Ah, what a comfort to fix oneself this way and rest, looking at the shadowy moonlit landscape passing by!_

* * * * *