Part 3

Having regained her composure, my sister spoke without preface.

"I am in great trouble, Benjamin. Desire has made up her mind to leave her husband, and nothing I say has the slightest effect."

"Good Heavens! Lucretia! What do you mean?"

"Just what I say. Desire declares she isn't satisfied as Arnold Ackroyd's wife. So she proposes to put an end to the relation. I judge she intends, later, to contract another marriage, though she is n't disposed to lay stress on that point."

{68}

I continued to look at Lucretia wide-eyed, and possibly wide-mouthed. The things she was saying were so preposterous, so incredible, that I could not accept them. It was as if I had received a message that the full moon was not "satisfied" to climb the evening sky.

"Lord! Lord! Little Desire!" I muttered.

"She is a woman of thirty, Benjamin."

"What does she say?" I exploded. "What is wrong in her married life? People don't do these things causelessly--not the people we are or know."

"She says a great deal," returned her mother dryly. "Did you ever know a Withacre to be lacking in words, Benjamin? Desire is very fluent. I might say she is eloquent."

{69}

"But what does it all amount to, anyhow?" I demanded impatiently. Dazed though I was, my consciousness of being the head of the family was returning.

Lucretia lifted her left hand, which was trembling, and checked off the items on her fingers. Her hands were shapely, though dark and shrunken, with swollen veins across the back. The firelight struck the worn gold of her wedding ring.

"She demands a less hampered life; a more variegated self-expression; a chance to help the world in her own way; an existence that shall be a daily development; the opportunity to give perpetual stimulus and refreshment to an utterly congenial mate. Oh! I know her reasons by heart," said Lucretia. "They sound like fine things, don't they, Benjamin?"

{70}

"Who is the other man?"

"Fortunately, none of us know him. He is a Westerner with one of those absurdly swollen fortunes. Desire would n't have thought it a wider life to marry a poorer man. Such women don't."

"I wish you would n't put Desire in a class and call her such women, Lucretia," I protested irritably.

My sister looked at me strangely.

"You, too? Can money buy you too?" she said.

She rose and steadied her trembling arms upon the low mantle. She stood, a black-clad figure, between me and the glowing hearth, looking down into the heart of the fire as she spoke. I had begun to perceive, vaguely, that here was no sister I had ever known before. In a way she was beside, or rather beyond, herself.

{71}

We Raynies are self-controlled people. Lucretia had always been a silent woman, keeping her emotions to her self. But they say earthquakes, vast convulsion of regions beneath the lowest seas, will sometimes force up to light of day strange flotsam from the ocean-bed. Things that the eyes of men have never seen, nor their busy minds conceived, float up to face the sun. From Lucretia's shaken soul arose such un-imagined things.

Her words came forth swiftly, almost with violence.

"Benjamin, my daughter proposes leaving for Reno, Nevada, next week to procure a divorce.--I'm not saying that plenty of divorces are n't justified. I know they are. Plenty of remarriages too, I make no doubt. I've lived long enough to know that extremes are always wrong, and the middle course {72} is almost always right. I will admit, if you like, that every case is a thing apart, and stands on its own merits, and that only God and a woman's conscience are the judges of what she should do. But Desire's case has no merits!

"I know Arnold, and I know Desire; he is a busy man and she is an indulged woman. She might have entered into his life and interests if she had chosen; the door was as much open as it can be between a man and a woman. I don't claim it is ever easy for them to see clearly into each other's worlds. But they do it, every day. Here is Arnold working himself to death, reducing fractures and removing appendixes, and trying to make the people who swarm to him into whole and healthy men and women. That's a good way to help the world if you do it with every ounce of {73} conscience there is in you. Here is Desire, fiddling with art and literature and civics and economics, and wanting to uplift the masses with Scandinavian dramas and mediaeval art and woman suffrage. If she really wants to enrich life for others, and she says she does, why, in Heaven's name, does n't she hold up Arnold Ackroyd's hands? There is work that is worth while, and it would take more brains and ability than she owns to do it well! It is _her_ work; she chose it; she dedicated herself to it. Now she repudiates it for a whim."

"How do you know it is just a whim, Lucretia?" I interrupted rather shame-facedly. "Mightn't it be--er--a very violent attachment?"

Lucretia shook her head.

"These women nowadays are simply crazy about themselves. Are {74} self-centred people ever capable of great passions?"

I made no protest, for I had thought the same thing myself.

"When they have dethroned their God and repudiated their families, what is there left to worship and work for but themselves?" she demanded grimly. "Half the women I meet are as mad for incense to their vanity as the men are mad for money."

"Lucretia," I said with all the firmness I could muster, "I do not think you ought to allow yourself to take this thing in this way. It is regrettable enough without working yourself up to such a pitch of agony."

She looked into the fire as if she had not heard me, and went rapidly on:--

"Sixty years ago, such things were unheard-of; forty years ago, they were a disgrace; twenty years ago, they were {75} questioned; to-day, they are accepted. And yet they say the world advances! With all my troubles, Benjamin, I am just learning why men call death gracious--and my daughter is my teacher. Desire is at the restless age. I have seen a good many women between thirty and forty try to wreck their lives and other people's. You see, the dew is gone from the flowers. They have come to the heat and burden of the day. And they don't like it."

"You mean," I said, laboriously trying to follow her glancing thought in my own fashion, "that they miss the drama of early romance, and resent the fact that it has been replaced by the larger drama of responsibility and action?"

"That is a fine, sonorous way of putting it," she said bitterly, "but there are more forcible ways."

{76}

She laughed unpleasantly. I could feel the cruel words trembling on her lips, but she checked herself.

"Oh, what is the use of talking," she cried, "or of casting stones at other women? It doesn't help me to bear Desire's falling away. Benjamin, I would have known how to forgive a child who had sinned. I don't know how to forgive one who has failed like this! Desire is throwing away a life, not because it is intolerable, not because it is hard, even; but just because it has ceased to be exciting and amusing enough. But it is _her_ life that she throws away. She cannot make a new one that will be real and her very own. She says she has ceased to love. They always say that. But love comes and goes always. There is no such thing as perpetual joy. Love is the morning vision. We are meant to hide that {77} vision in our hearts and serve it on our knees. Good women know this and do it. That is what it means to be a wife. The vision is the thing we cherish and live for to the end. Desire is no cheated woman. She had young love at its best; she has her children's faces. There is such a thing as perpetual peace; life gives it to the loyally married. She might have had that, too. But she throws it all away--for novelty, for new sensations. My daughter is a wanton!"

_"Lucretia!"_

The energy of my ejaculation, the sight of my surprise, brought my sister back to her normal self. She dropped into her chair again, looking wan and shocked at her own violence of expression.

"You see how it is," she said humbly. "I am not fit to trust myself to talk {78} about it. I ought to apologize for my language, Benjamin,--but that is the way I feel."

I had regained somewhat of my poise and my authority.

"See here, Lucretia, if this thing is to be, you must n't be so bitter about it. Desire is your daughter. She belongs to us. She has always been a pretty good girl. We must n't be too hard on her now, even if she does n't conform to our ideas. Everybody must live their own lives, you know."

Lucretia threw back her head; her deep-set eyes were burning, and the color suffused her face again.

"No!" she said sharply. "That must they not. Decent people accept some of the conclusions of their forebears and build upon the sure foundation reared by the convictions of their own people. You say she belongs to us. That is the {79} worst of it! You childless man! Can't you guess what it would mean to bear, to nourish, to train,--to endure and endure, to love and love,--and then to have the flesh of your flesh turn on you and trample on all your sacredest things? It is the ultimate outrage. God knows whether I deserve it! God forgive me if I do!"

There was silence in the room. I had nothing more to say. I recognized at last how far Lucretia in her lonely agony was beyond any trite placation of mine.

After what seemed an age, she spoke. She was herself again. The violently parted waves had closed over the life of those far gray depths, and she offered her accustomed surface to my observation.

"I did not sleep at all last night, Benjamin. Desire was with me during {80} the afternoon and we talked this thing out. I ought not to have seen any one so soon, but I came here with the intention of asking you to reason with her. I see it would do no good if you did. Things are as they are, and I must accept them. I will go home now. I am better off there."

She rose, put down her veil, drew on her gloves, and picked up the shabby shopping-bag, quietly putting aside my hesitating protestations and suggestions of luncheon.

At the door she turned and proffered a last word of extenuation for herself. "You ought to understand, for it is our blood in me that rebels. I never thought when I married a Withacre that I might bring into the world a child that wasn't _dependable_--but I might have known!" she said.

{81}

III

Lucretia, departing, left me tremulous. The flame-like rush of her mind had scorched my consciousness; the great waves of her emotion had pounded and beaten me. I shared, and yet shrank from, her passionate apprehension of our little Desire's failure in the righteous life. For I was, and am, fond of Desire.

I spent a feverish and most miserable day. There were so many unhappy things to consider! The gossip that would rack the town apparently did not concern Lucretia at all. I am hide-bound, I dare say, and choked with convention. Certainly I shrank from the notoriety that would attach itself to us when young Mrs. Arnold Ackroyd took up her residence in Reno, as a first step toward the wider life. {82} Then there was the disruption of old ties of friendship and esteem. It would be painful to lose the Ackroyds from among our intimates, yet impossible to retain them on the old footing. I already had that curious feeling of having done the united clan vicarious injury.

Toward five o'clock my sister Mary, Mrs. Greening, tapped on the door.

Mary Greening and I are good friends for brother and sister. As children we were chums; we abbreviated for each other the middle name we all bore, Mary calling me Stub, and I calling her Stubby. We meant this to express exceptional fraternal fealty. It was like a mystic rite that bound us together.

She came in almost breezily. For a woman in late middle life Mary Greening is comely. There is at the bottom {83} of her nature an indomitable youthfulness, to which her complexion and movements bear happy witness.

"Well, Stub, has Lucretia been here?"

"Come and sit down, Mary. Yes, Lucretia has been here. Very much so," I answered dejectedly.

Mary swept across the room almost majestically. Quite the type of a fine woman is Mary Greening, though perhaps a thought too plump. She threw back her sable stole and unfastened her braided violet coat; she prefers richly embellished garments, though they are thought garish by some of the matrons in her set.

"You keep it much too warm in here," she said critically.

I made a grimace.

"Your hat is a little to one side, Stubby, as usual."

{84}

She put her hand up tentatively to the confection of fur, yellow lace, and violet orchids.

"I don't think Lenore ballasts my hats properly," she said plaintively. "It can't be my fault that they slide about so. But I did n't come to talk about hats."

I sighed. "No, you came to talk about Desire. Mary, how long have you known about this deplorable affair?"

"Oh--ever since there has been anything to know! Desire has always talked to me more than to her mother. You know, Ben, one would n't choose Lucretia as a confidante in any kind of a heart affair."

"Don't put on that worldly air with me, Mary Greening," I said crossly. "Lucretia is a little austere, but it seems to me that austerity has its {85} advantages. For instance, it keeps one out of the newspapers. Am I to infer that you sympathize with Desire?"

"Not at all," she protested. "You may not believe me, but I have suffered and suffered, over this thing. I can't count the nights I have lain awake thinking about it. At first it seemed to me I simply could not have it, and I thought I was going to influence Desire. But nobody ever influences people in matters of the heart. Of course this is an affair on the highest possible plane--so I thought they might be more reasonable. But I don't observe that they are."

"On the highest possible plane," I mused. "Mary, be candid with me. I would like a good woman's point of view on this. If a game of hearts ends in the courts, breaking up a home and smashing the lives concerned to {86} flinders, do you really think it matters whether that affair is on a high plane or a low one? Does it seem any better to you for being the finer variety?"

"Certainly it does," returned Mary Greening promptly; "though," she added reflectively, "judged by results, I see it is illogical to feel so."

She cogitated a little longer.

"You put the thing too crudely. Here is the point, Ben. The Devil never makes the mistake of offering the coarser temptation to persons of taste. You couldn't have tempted Desire to break up her home with any temptation that did n't include her intellect, her spirit, and her aesthetic instincts. And when one gets up in that corner of one's nature, people like you or me or Desire are so used to regarding all the demands emanating from there as legitimate, as something to be {87} proud of, to be satisfied at almost any cost, that it takes a very clear sense of right and wrong to prevent confusion. And, nowadays, hardly anybody but old fogies and back numbers, and people who have lived the kind of life Lucretia has, possesses a clear sense of right and wrong. It has gone out."

"What became of Desire's married happiness, Mary? I thought there was so much of it, and that it was of a durable variety."

"Oh, it leaked away through small cracks, as happiness usually does. It is hard to explain to a man, but if Arnold were a woman, you might almost say that he nagged. He is too detailed, too exact, for Desire. If, for instance, she said in May, I believe I will have a green cloth, embroidered, for a fall suit, about the first of November, you {88} might expect Arnold to remark, I don't see that green cloth suit you said you were going to have. What made you change your mind? Desire delights to say things she does n't mean and lay plans she does n't expect to carry out, so a constant repetition of such incidents was really pretty wearing. I have seen her when she reminded me of a captive balloon in a high wind.

"A woman in your position ought not to make unconsidered speeches was one of his pet remarks. He is scientific, she is temperamental--and each of them expected the other one to be born again, and born different by virtue of mutual affection and requirements. Arnold will go on wondering to the end of his life why Desire can't be more accurate, more purposeful. As if he did n't fall in love with her the {89} way she is! And then along comes the Westerner--"

"Where did they meet?"

"Bessie Fleming introduced them--at some silly place like Atlantic City. It was after Desire had that nervous breakdown two years ago. I know they were both in wheeled chairs at the time, and they rode up and down together, talking, like long-separated twin souls, about the theory of aesthetics and kindred matters. They did n't require diagrams to see each other's jokes, and that is always a strong tie. He was a man used to getting what he wanted, and when he became bewitched--can't you see how it would all work together? I know Lucretia thinks there is no excuse for Desire. But I see this excuse for her. None of us ever trained her to know she could n't have everything she wanted. Of course, we never {90} expected her to want anything but the finest, the highest. But she is human, and when she found a most wonderful thing in her path that she wanted more than she had ever wanted anything before--she put out her hand to take it, as she had taken other things when we were all applauding her choice. And I will do her the justice to say that I don't believe she has the faintest notion Arnold will really fight to keep the children. You see, she still thinks the world is hers."

"Perhaps it is," I offered. The comfort of Mary's presence was beginning to rest and appease me, and I was a little less conscious of my aching conscience. "The Westerner--is he--is he--"

"Perfectly presentable. Quite a scholar. Collects pictures. Has all kinds of notions. He and Desire are {91} ideally congenial. Very properly he is keeping himself at long distance and entirely out of it. No one but ourselves surmises that he exists. And it really is an enormous fortune. I can imagine Desire doing all kinds of interesting things with it."

"Do you know what Lucretia said to me, Mary?"

She shook her head.

_"You, too? Can money buy you, too?"_ I quoted. "I shall never forget how Lucretia looked as she said it."

"Stub--the world moves. It may be moving in the wrong direction, but if we don't move with it, we are bound to be left behind."

"Mary Greening," I retorted, "do you really mean that you detect in yourself a willingness to have an unjustified divorce and a huge, vulgar {92} fortune in the family, just because they are up to date?"

"Benjamin Raynie, if down at the bottom of my soul there is crawling and sneaking a microscopical acquiescence in the muddle Desire is making of life, it is probably due to the reason you mention. I am just as ashamed of it as I can be! I ought to be plunged in grief, like Lucretia. And I _am_--only--well, I want to help Desire, and I can't help her if I let myself feel like that. I suppose you'll think I'm an unmoral old thing, but I see it this way: if these affairs are going to happen in one's very own family, one might as well put them through with a high hand. I intend to stand by Desire. Of course the Ackroyds will do the same by Arnold. Desire will never be received in this town again with their consent. They are entirely in the right. But I shall {93} have to fight them for Desire's sake, just the same."

"Stubby! Stubby! There is n't a particle of logic as big as a pin-head about you, and I don't approve of you at all--but I do like you tremendously!"

Mary Greening rose abruptly, crossed to the window, and stood looking out for a time. Then she came back and, dropping awkwardly beside my chair, buried her convulsed and quivering face in the woolly sleeve of my jacket, while the tears dripped fast from her overflowing eyes.

"Stub," she brought out jerkily, between her sudden choking sobs, "I did n't make a long face and tell Desire 'whom God hath joined'--I--I tried to appeal to her common sense. Irreligious people often do have a great deal of common sense, you know. {94} But--I am the child of our fathers, too. I wish--I _wish_ she would n't do it!"

IV

I certainly expected that Desire would come to me before she went away. I don't know what good I thought it would do. But we had always (or I supposed so) been such friends, this niece and I, that I could not believe she would take such an important step without an effort to gain my approval--my toleration would be more accurate. I--well, I thought she cared for my approval. But it seemed she did n't.

Of course, when one came to think it over, she could hardly enjoy such an interview. No doubt she was already sore in spirit from interviews she could not shirk,--with her mother, for {95} instance, not to mention her husband. And my views on promiscuous divorce are as well known in the family as are those of South Carolina. They are simple, those views, and old-fashioned, but also, I may add, cosmic; they run about as follows: it is hard that John and Mary should be unhappy, but better their discomfort than that society should totter to a fall, since all civilization rests upon the single institution of the marriage tie. I will admit that my bachelor state doubtless helps to keep my opinions uncomplicated.

When I came to think of it in the light of these convictions, it was n't remarkable that Desire stayed away. And yet the foolish old uncle in me was hurt that she did so. I felt that she ought to come and take her medicine. Did n't thirty years of affection {96} and indulgence give me some rights in her life?

Perhaps Mary Greening told her how I felt. At all events, in place of a call I received a letter:--

DEAR UNCLE BEN,--

The reason I'm not coming to say good-bye to you is that I think you'll love me better if I don't. My self-control is wearing quite thin in spots, and I'm so tired of explaining myself (when there's nothing to explain except that I am doing what seems right in my own eyes) that sometimes I think I shall just die before I get started.

Uncle Ben, did n't you ever long for a life that fitted you exactly,-- a life that was the flexible, soft garment of your very Self? I am laying aside a life that is somewhat cumbrous for me, and going to one that, fits me like a glove.

{97}

And it is n't as if my case were like other people's, or as if Arthur Markham was n't the finest of the fine. He is as good in his widely different way as Arnold is. I think myself a highly fortunate woman that two such lives are offered me to choose from--but I must choose the one that belongs to me. Temperament is destiny. I am following mine. I am doing what I wish to do. But I don't like the way people hinder me with arguments that have nothing to do with the real content of the matter. So I am saying good-bye at arm's length to the dearest old make-believe cynic of an uncle that ever lived. Because you know, Uncle Ben, that if you had me there you could n't help preaching to me, and I am tired of preaching. It does n't get one anywhere. And it does n't keep one away--from Reno, Nevada.

{98}

I suppose it's a queer thing to say but, really, you'll like Arthur just as well as you do Arnold--if only you can bring your mind to it!

I am always, even in Nevada,

Your loving niece, DESIRE.