Part 4

If my wife had been interested in any of the important things of the world, I could have been of the greatest assistance to her and she to me. And we should have grown ever closer together in sympathetic companionship. But although she had a good mind--a superior mind--she cared about nothing but the things that interest foolish women and still more foolish men--for a man who cares about splurge and show and social position and such nonsense is less excusable, is more foolish, than a woman of the same sort. Women have the excuse of lack of serious occupation, but what excuse has a man? Still, she was not idle--not for a minute. She was, on the contrary, in her way as busy as I. From time to time she would say to me enigmatically: “You don’t appreciate it, but I am preparing myself to help you fill the station your business ability will win us a chance at.” It seemed to me that I was doing that alone. For what was necessary to fill that station but higher and higher skill as a man of affairs?

When we had made our entry in Brooklyn and had seated ourselves in the state in Bedford Avenue which she had decided for, she showed that she felt immensely proud of herself. We took the house furnished throughout--nicely furnished in a substantial way, for it had been the home of one of the old Brooklyn mercantile families.

“It’s good enough to start with,” said she, casting a critical glance round the sober, homelike dining room. “I shan’t make any changes till I look about me.”

“We couldn’t be better off,” said I. “Everything is perfectly comfortable.” And in fact neither she nor I had ever before known what comfort was. Looking at that house--merely looking at it and puzzling out the uses of the various things to us theretofore unknown--was about as important in the way of education as learning to read is to a child.

“It’s good enough for Brooklyn,” said she. She regarded me with her patient, tender expression of the superior intelligence. “You haven’t much imagination or ambition, Godfrey,” she went on. “But fortunately _I_ have. And do be careful not to betray us before the servants I’m engaging.”

The show part of the house continued to look about as it had when we took possession. But the living part went to pieces rapidly. We had many servants. We spent much money--so much that, if I had not been speculating in various ways, we should have soon gone under. But the results were miserably poor. My wife left everything to her servants and devoted herself to her social career. The ex-Brooklyn society woman at Passaic had not deceived her. No sooner had she joined St. Mary’s than she began to have friends--friends of a far higher social rank than she had ever even seen at close range before. They were elegant people indeed--the wives of the heads of departments in big stores, the families of bank officers and lawyers and doctors. There were even a few rather rich people. My wife was in ecstasy for a year or two. And she improved rapidly in looks, in dress, in manners, in speech, in all ways except in disposition and character.

Except in disposition and character. As we grow older and rise in the world, there is always a deterioration both in disposition and in character. A man’s disposition grows sharper through dealing with, and having to deal sharply with, incompetence. The character tends to harden as he is forced to make the unpleasant and often not too scrupulous moves necessary to getting himself forward toward success. Also, the way everyone tries to use a successful man makes him more and more acute in penetrating to the real motives of his fellow beings, more and more inclined to take up men for what he can get out of them and drop them when he has squeezed out all the advantage--in brief, to treat them precisely as they treat him. But the whole object in having a home, a wife, a family, is defeated if the man has not there a something that checks the tendencies to cynicism and coldness which active life not merely encourages but even compels.

There was no occasion for Edna’s becoming vixenish and hard. It was altogether due to the idiotic and worthless social climbing. She had a swarm of friends, yet not a single friend. She cultivated people socially, and they cultivated her, not for the natural and kindly and elevating reasons, but altogether for the detestable purposes of that ghastly craze for social position. Edna was bitter against me for a long time, never again became fully reconciled, because I soon flatly refused to have anything to do with it.

“They will think there’s something wrong about you, and about me, if you don’t come with me,” pleaded she.

“I need my strength for my business,” said I. “And what do I care whether they think well or ill of me? They don’t give us any money.”

“You are _so_ sordid!” cried she. “Sometimes I’m almost tempted to give up, and not try to be somebody and to make somebodies of Margot and you.”

“I wish you would,” said I. “Why shouldn’t we live quietly and mind our own business and be happy?”

“How fortunate it is for Margot that she has a mother with ambition and pride!”

“Well--no matter. But please do get another cook. This one is, if anything, worse than the last--except when we have company.”

We were forever changing cooks. The food that came on our table was something atrocious. I heard the same complaint from all my married associates at the office, even from the higher officials who were rich men and lived in great state. They, too, had American wives. In the markets and shops I saw as I passed along all sorts of attractive things to eat, and of real quality. I wondered why we never had those things on our table. Heaven knows we spent money enough. The time came when I got a clew to the mystery.

One day Edna said: “I’ve been doing my housekeeping altogether by telephone. I think I’ll stop it, except on rainy days and when I don’t feel well.”

By telephone! I laughed to myself. No wonder we had poor stuff and paid the highest prices for it. I thought a while, then to satisfy my curiosity began to ask questions, very cautiously, for Edna was extremely touchy, as we all are in matters where in our hearts we know we are in the wrong. “Do you remember what kind of range we have in our kitchen?” I asked.

“I?” exclaimed she disgustedly. “Certainly not. I haven’t been down to the kitchen since we first moved into this house. I’ve something better to do than to meddle with the servants.”

“Naturally,” said I soothingly. And I didn’t let her see how her confession amused me. What if a man tried to run his business in that fashion! And ordering by telephone! Why, it was an invitation to the tradespeople to swindle us in every way. But I said nothing.

As usually either it was bad weather or Edna was not feeling well, or was in a rush to keep some social engagement, the ordering for the house continued to be done by telephone, when it was not left entirely to the discretion of the servants. One morning it so happened that she and I left the house at the same time. Said she:

“I’m on my way to do the marketing. It’s a terrible nuisance, and I know so little about those things. But it’s coming to be regarded as fashionable for a woman to do her own marketing. Some of the best families--people with their own carriages and servants in livery--some of the swellest ladies in Brooklyn do it now. It’s a fad from across the river.”

“You must be careful not to overtax yourself,” said I.

And I said it quite seriously, for in those days of my innocence I was worried about her, thought her a poor overworked angel, was glad I had the money to relieve her from the worst tasks and to leave her free to amuse herself and to take care of her health! I had not yet started in the direction of ridding myself of the masculine delusion that woman is a delicate creature by nature if she happens to be a lady--and of course I knew my Edna was a lady through and through. It was many a year before I learned the truth--why ladies are always ailing and why they can do nothing but wear fine clothes and sit in parlors or in carriages when they are not sitting at indigestible food, and amuse themselves and pity themselves for being condemned to live with coarse, uninteresting American men.

Yes, I was sincere in urging her to take care how she adopted so laborious a fad as doing her own marketing. She went on:

“If I had a carriage it wouldn’t be so bad.”

She said this sweetly enough and with no suggestion of reproach. Just the sigh of a lady’s soul at the hardness of life’s conditions. But I, loving her, felt as if I were somehow to blame. “You shall have a carriage before many years,” said I. “That’s one of the things I’ve been working for.”

She gave me a look that made me feel proud I had her to live for. “I hope I’ll be here to enjoy it,” sighed she.

I walked sad and silent by her side, profoundly impressed and depressed by that hint as to her feeble health. I know now it was sheer pretense with her, the more easily to manage me and to cover her shortcomings. I ought to have realized it then. But what man does? She certainly did not look ill, for she was not one of those who were always stuffing themselves at teas and lunches, and talked of a walk of five blocks as hard exercise! She had learned how to keep health and beauty. What intelligence it shows, that she was able to grasp so difficult a matter; and what splendid persistence that she was able to carry out a mode of life so disagreeable to self-indulgence. If her intelligence and her persistence could have been turned to use! Presently we were at the butcher shop. I paused in the doorway while she engaged in her arduous labor. Here is the conversation:

“Good morning, Mr. Toomey.” (Very gracious; the lady speaking to the trades person.)

“Good morning, ma’am.” (Fat little butcher touching cracked and broken-nailed hand to hat respectfully.)

“That lamb you sent yesterday was very tough.”

“Sorry, ma’am. But those kind of things will happen, you know.” (Most flatteringly humble of manner.)

“Yes, I know. Do your best. I’m sure you try to please. Send me--let me see--say, two chickens for broiling. You’ll pick out nice ones?”

“Yes, indeed, ma’am. I’ll attend to it myself.”

“And something for the servants. You know what they like.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll attend to it.”

“And you’ll not overcharge, will you?”

“I, ma’am? I’ve been dealing with ladies for twenty years, right here, ma’am. I never have overcharged.”

“I know. All the ladies tell me you’re honest. I feel safe with you. Let me see, there were some other things. But I’m in a hurry. The cook will tell your boy when he takes what I’ve ordered. You’ll be sure to give me the best?”

“I’d not dare send anything else to _you_, ma’am.” (Groveling.)

A gracious smile, a gracious nod, and Edna rejoined me. Innocent as I was, and under the spell that blinds the American man where the American woman is concerned, I could not but be upset by this example of how our house was run--an example that all in an instant brought to my mind and enabled me to understand a score, a hundred similar examples. There was I, toiling away to make money, earning every dollar by the hardest kind of mental labor, struggling to rise, to make our fortune, and each day my wife was tossing carelessly out of the windows into the street a large part of my earnings. I did not know what to do about it.

Edna’s next stop was at the grocer’s. I had not the courage to halt and listen. I knew it would be a repetition of the grotesque interview with the butcher. And she undoubtedly a clever woman--alert, improving. What a mystery! I went on to my office. That day, without giving my acquaintances there an inkling of what was in my mind, I made inquiries into how their wives spent the money that went for food--the most important item in the spending of incomes under ten or twelve thousand a year. In every case the wife or the mother did the marketing by telephone. All the men except one took the ignorance and incompetence of the management of the household expenses as a matter of course. One man grumbled a little. I remember he said: “No wonder it’s hard for the men to save anything. The women waste most of it on the table, paying double prices for poor stuff. I tell you, Loring, the American woman is responsible for the dishonesty of American commercial life. They are always nagging at the man for more and more money to spend, and in spending it they tempt the merchants, the clerks, their own servants, everyone within range, to become swindlers and thieves.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said I. “You’re a pessimist. The American woman is all right. Where’d you find her equal for intelligence and charm?”

“She may be intelligent,” said he. “She doesn’t use it on anything worth while, except roping in some poor sucker to put up _for_ her and to put up _with_ her. And she may have charm, but not for a man who has cut his matrimonial eye teeth.”

I laughed at Van Dyck--that was my grumbling friend’s name. And I soon dropped the subject from my mind. It has never been my habit to waste time in thinking about things when the thinking could not possibly lead anywhere. You may say I ought to have interfered, forced my wife to come to her senses, compelled her to learn her business. Which shows that you know little about the nature of the American woman. If I had taken that course, she would have hated me, she would have done no better, and she would have scorned me as a sordid haggler over small sums of money who was trying to spoil with the vulgarities of commercial life the beauties of the home. No, I instinctively knew enough not to interfere.

* * * * *

But let us take a long leap forward to the day when I became president of the railroad, having made myself a rich man by judicious gambling with eight thousand dollars loaned me by father Wheatlands. He was a rich man, and in the way to become very rich, and he had no heir but Edna after the drowning of her two brothers under a sailboat in Newark Bay. Margot was in a fashionable school over in New York. My wife and I, still a young couple and she beautiful--my wife and I were as happy as any married couple can be where they let each other alone and the husband gives the wife all the money she wishes and leaves her free to spend it as she pleases.

When I told her of my good fortune, and the sudden and large betterment of our finances, she said with a curious lighting of the eyes, a curious strengthening of the chin:

“Now--for New York!”

“New York?” said I. “What does that mean?”

“We are going to live in New York,” replied she.

“But we do live in New York. Brooklyn is part of New York.”

“Legally I suppose it is,” replied she. “But morally and æsthetically, socially, and in every other civilized way, my dear Godfrey, it is part of the backwoods. I can hardly wait to get away.”

“Why, I thought you were happy here!” exclaimed I, marveling, used though I was to her keeping her own counsel strictly about the matters that most interested her. “You’ve certainly acted as if you loved it.”

“I didn’t _mind_ it at first,” conceded she. “But for two or three years I have _loathed_ it, and everybody that lives in it.”

I was amazed at this last sally. “Oh, come now, Edna,” cried I, “you’ve got lots of friends here--lots and lots of them.”

I was thinking of the dozen or so women whom she called and who called her by the first name, women she was with early and late. Women she was daily playing bridge with-- Bridge! I have a friend who declares that bridge is ruining the American home, and I see his point, but I think he doesn’t look deep enough. If it weren’t bridge it would be something else. Bridge is a striking example, but only a single example, of the results of feminine folly and idleness that all flow from the same cause. However, let us go back to my talk with Edna. She met my protest in behalf of her friends with a contemptuous:

“I don’t know a soul who isn’t _frightfully_ common.”

“They’re the same sort of people we are.”

“Not the same sort that _I_ am,” declared she proudly. “And not the sort Margot and you are going to be. You’ll see. You don’t know about these things. But fortunately I do.”

“You don’t seriously mean that you want to leave this splendid old house----”

“Splendid? It’s hardly fit to live in. Of course, we had to endure it while we were poor and obscure. But now it won’t do at all.”

“And go away from all these people you’ve worked so hard to get in with--all these friends--go away among strangers. _I_ don’t mind. But what would _you_ do? How’d you pass the days?”

“These vulgar people bore me to death,” declared she. “I’ve been advancing, if you have stood still. Thank God, _I’ve_ got ambition.”

“Heaven knows they’ve never been _my_ friends,” said I. “But I must say they seem nice enough people, as people go. What’s the matter with ’em?”

“They’re common,” said she with the languor of one explaining when he feels he will not be understood. “They’re tiresome.”

“I’ll admit they’re tiresome,” said I. “That’s why I’ve kept away from them. But I doubt if they’re more tiresome than people generally. The fact is, my dear, people are all tiresome. That’s why they can’t amuse themselves or each other, but have to be amused--have to hire the clever people of all sorts to entertain them. Instead of asking people here to bore us and to be bored, why not send them seats at a theater or orders for a first-class meal at a first-class restaurant?”

“I suppose you think that’s funny,” said my wife. She had no sense of humor, and the suggestion of a jest irritated her.

“Yes, it does strike me as funny,” I admitted. “But there’s sense in it, too.... I’m sure you don’t want to abandon your friends here. Why make ourselves uncomfortable all over again?” I took a serious persuasive tone. “Edna, we’re beginning to get used to the more stylish way of living we took up when we left Passaic and came here to live. Is it sensible to branch out again into the untried and the unknown? Will we be any wiser or any happier? You can shine as the big star now in this circle of friends. You like to run things socially. Here’s your chance.”

“How could I get any pleasure out of running things socially in St. Mary’s?” demanded she. “I’ve outgrown it. It seems vulgar and common to me. It is vulgar and common.”

“What does that mean?” I asked innocently.

“If you don’t understand, I can’t tell you,” replied she tartly. “Surely you must see that your wife and your daughter are superior to these people round here.”

“I don’t compare my wife and daughter with other people,” said I. “To me they’re superior to anybody and everybody else in the world. I often wish we lived ’way off in the country somewhere. I’m sure we’d be happier with only each other. We’re putting on too much style to suit me, even now.”

“I see you living in the country,” laughed she. “You’d come down about once a week or month.”

I couldn’t deny the truth in her accusation. I felt it ought to have been that my wife and I were so sympathetic, so interested in the same things, that we were absorbed in each other. But the facts were against it. We really had almost nothing in common. I admired her beauty and also her intelligence and energy, though I thought them misdirected. She, I think, liked me in the primitive way of a woman with a man. And she admired my ability to make money, though she thought it rather a low form of intellectual excellence. However, as she found it extremely useful, she admired me for it in a way. I have seen much of the aristocratic temperament that despises money, but I have yet to see an aristocrat who wasn’t greedier than the greediest money-grubber--and I must say it is hard to conceive anything lower than the spirit that grabs the gift and despises the giver. But then, some day, when thinking is done more clearly, we shall all see that aristocracy and its spirit is the lowest level of human nature, is simply a deep-seated survival of barbarism. However, Edna and I appealed to and satisfied each other in one way; beyond that our congeniality abruptly ended. Looking back, I see now that talking _with_ her was never a pleasure, nor was it a pleasure to her to talk _with_ me. I irritated her; she bored me.

How rarely in our country do you find a woman who is an interesting companion for a man, except as female and male pair or survey the prospect of pairing? And it matters not what line of activity the man is taking--business, politics, literature, art, philanthropy even. The women are eternally talking about their superiority to the business man; but do they get along any better with an artist--unless he is cultivating the woman for the sake of an order for a picture? Is there any line of serious endeavor in which an American woman is interesting and helpful and companionable to a man? I can get along very well with an artist. I have one friend who is a writer of novels, another who is a writer of plays, a third who is a sculptor. They are interested in my work, and I in theirs. We talk together on a basis of equal interest, and we give each other ideas. Can any American woman say the same? I don’t inquire anticipating a negative answer. I simply put the question. But I suspect the answer would put a pin in the bubble of the American woman’s pretense of superior culture. She is fooled by her vanity, I fear, and by her sex attraction, and by the influence of the money her despised father or husband gives her. There’s a reason why America is notoriously the land of bachelor husbands--and that reason is not the one the women and foreign fortune hunters assert. The American man lets the case go by default against him, not because he couldn’t answer, nor yet because he is polite, but _because he is indifferent_.

But my wife was talking about her projected assault upon New York. “I really must be an extraordinary woman,” said she. “How I have fought all these years to raise myself, with you dragging at me to keep me down.”

“I?” protested her unhappy husband. “Why, dear, I’ve never opposed you in any way. And I’ve tried to do what I could to help you. You must admit the money’s been useful.”

“Oh, you’ve never been mean about money,” conceded she. “But you don’t sympathize with a single one of my ideals.”

“I want you to have whatever you want,” said I. “And anything I can do to get it for you, or to help you get it, I stand ready to do.”

“Yes, I know, Godfrey, dear,” said she, giving me a long hug and a kiss. “No woman ever had a more generous husband than I have.”

I naturally attached more importance to this burst of enthusiasm then than I do now. And it is as well that I was thus simple-minded. How little pleasure we would get, to be sure, if, when we are praised or loved by anybody because we do that person a kindness, we paused to analyze and saw the shallow selfishness of such praise or such love. After all, it’s only human nature to like those who do as we ask them and to dislike those who don’t; and I am not quarreling with human nature--or with any other of the unchangeable conditions of the universe. My own love for Edna--what was it but the natural result of my getting what I wanted from her, all I wanted? I really troubled myself little about her incompetence and extravagance and craze for social position. No doubt to this day I should be-- But I am again anticipating.

“Generous? Nonsense,” said I. “It isn’t generous to try to make you happy. That’s my one chance of being happy myself. A busy man’s got to have peace at home. If he hasn’t he’s like a soldier attacked rear and front at the same time.”

“I know you don’t care where we live,” she went on. “And for Margot’s sake we’ve simply got to move to New York.”

“Oh, you want her to stay at home of nights, instead of living at the school. Why didn’t you speak of that first?”