The Husband’s Story: A Novel by David Graham Phillips - HTML preview

XIV

THERE were but two in my party—Dugdale, the playwright, and myself. A more amusing man than Dugdale never lived. He was amusing both consciously and unconsciously. A mountain of a man—bone and muscle, little fat. He had eyes that were large, but were so habitually squinted, the better to see every detail of everything, that they seemed small; and his expression, severe to the verge of savageness, changed the instant he spoke into childlike simplicity and good humor. He made money easily—large sums of money—for he had the talent for success. But he spent long before he made. I think it must have been his secret ambition to owe everybody in the world—except his friends. From a friend he never borrowed. The general belief was that he had never paid back a loan—and I have no reason to doubt it. What did he do with his borrowings? Loaned them to his friends who were hard up. If the list of those he owed was long, the list of those who owed him was longer. If he never paid back, neither was he ever paid.

He could work at sea, or anywhere else—no doubt even in a balloon. On that trip he toiled prodigiously, crouched over a foolish little table in his cabin, smoking endless cigarettes and setting down with incredible rapidity illegible words in a tiny writing that contrasted grotesquely with the enormous hand holding the pencil. He labored altogether at night, after I had gone to bed. He was always astir before me. He slept unbelievably little, probably kept up on the quantities of whisky he drank. However that may be, he was as active by day physically as he was mentally by night. He was all over the boat, always finding something to do—something for me as well as for himself.

The only terms on which Dugdale would consent to go were that I should keep him away from New York not less than two months, and that I should take no one else. I promptly assented to both conditions. It was not the first time he had put me under a heavy debt of gratitude for congenial society. We had made several long trips together, always with satisfaction on both sides. Whatever else you may think of me, I hope I have at least convinced you that I am not one of those rich men who rely for consideration upon their wealth. I believe I am one of the few rich men who can justly claim that distinction. When I ask a man less well off than I am to dine with me—or to accept my hospitality in any way—I ask him because I want him. And I do not either directly or indirectly try to make him feel that he is being honored. I would not ask the sort of man who feels honored by being in the society of bank accounts or of any other glittering symbols in substitute for good-fellowship.

You will see, gentle reader, that my list was short indeed.

It is one of the not few drawbacks of riches that they rouse the instinct of cupidity in nearly all human beings. The rich man glances round at a circle of constrained faces, each more or less unsuccessfully striving to veil from him the glistening eye and the watery lip of the gold hunger. Probably you know how pepsin is got for the market—how they pen pigs so that their snouts almost touch food which they can by no straining and struggling reach; how the unhappy creatures soon begin to drip, then to slobber, then to stream into the receiving trough under their jaws the pepsin which the sight of the food starts their stomachs to secreting. As I have looked at the parasite circles of some of my friends I have often been reminded of the pepsin pigs. Some of my friends like these displays, encourage them in every way, associate solely with pepsin pigs. I confess I have never acquired the least taste for that sort of entertainment.

I have traveled the world over, and everywhere I have found men either industriously engaged in cringing or looking hopefully about for some one to cringe to them. Well—what of it?

I owe Dugdale a debt I cannot hope to repay. He, a light-hearted philosopher, made me light-hearted. He kept my sense of humor and my sense of proportion constantly active. There is a stripe of philosopher of the light-hearted variety who lets his perception of the fundamental futility of life and all that therein is discourage him from everything but cynical laughter at himself and at the world. That sort is a shallow ass, fit company for no one but the bleary, blowsy wrecks to whose level he rapidly sinks. Dugdale—and I—were of the other school. We did not—at least, not habitually—exaggerate our own importance. It caused no swelling of the head in him that his name was known wherever people went to the theater, or in me that I usually had to be taken into account when they did anything important in finance. We did not measure the world or rank its inhabitants according to the silly standards in general use. But at the same time we appreciated that to work and to work well was the only sensible way to pass the few swift years assigned us.

It takes a serious man to make even a good joke. A frivolous person can do nothing. That is why so many of our American women, and so many of the men, too, sink into insignificance as soon as the first freshness of youth is gone from them. Youth has charm simply as youth because it seems to be a brilliant promise. When the promise goes to protest the charm vanishes.

I shall reserve what I saw and heard in South America for another volume, one of a different kind. I shall go forward to the following spring when I was once more in New York. Edna and her daughter—so I read in the newspapers—were living in fitting estate in a famous villa they had taken in the fashionable part of the south of France, “for the health of the two young sons of the marchioness.” Frascatoni was gambling at Monte Carlo, Crossley was at his government post in London. I could fill in the tiresome details for both the wives and the husbands—and so, probably, can you. While some business matters were settling, I was turning over in my mind plans for making a systematic search for a wife.

I count on your amusement confidently, gentle reader. If you wished a fresh egg for your breakfast or a suit of clothes to be worn a few weeks and discarded, or an automobile, you would set about getting it with some attention to the best ways and means. But, saturated as you are with silly sentimentalities about marriage, you believe that the most important matter in the world—the matter which determines your own happiness or unhappiness and also the current of posterity—you believe that such a matter should be left to the lottery of chance! Well, I had long since abandoned that delusion, and I purposed to establish my life with as much thought and care as I gave all other matters.

“A dull fellow,” you are saying. “No wonder his wife fled from him.”

I do not wonder that you regard as dull anything that is intelligent. To ignorance intelligence must necessarily seem dull. When any subject of real interest is brought up, some silly, empty-headed pretty woman is sure to say, “How dull! Let’s talk of something interesting.” And there will always be a chorus of laughing assent—because the woman is pretty. So I accept your sneer at me with a certain pleasure. I wish to be thought dull by some people, including some women very good to look at. But out of vanity and in fairness to Edna I must acquit her of having thought me dull—after she had been about the world.

One evening at the Federal Club I fell in with my old acquaintance, Sam Cauldwell, the fashionable physician. He was something more than that—or had been—but was too lazy to use his mind when his gift for sympathetic and flattering gab brought him in plenty of money. Cauldwell was a trained, thoroughgoing sycophant and snob. But he saw the humorous aspect of the gods he was on his knees before—and saw the humor of his being there. He knew the kind of man I was, and liked to take me aside and make sport of his deities for an hour over a bottle of wine. Also—he liked the idea of being, and of being seen, intimate with a man conspicuous for wealth and for the social position of his family—the ex-husband of a princess, the father of a marchioness. Gentle reader, if you wish to see human nature to its depth, you must occupy such a position as mine. Believe me, you are mistaken in thinking the traits you shamedly hide are unique. There are others like you—many others.

Cauldwell was perhaps ten years older than I, but being a well-taken-care-of New Yorker, he passed for a young man—which, indeed, he was. I do not regard fifty as anything but young unless it insists upon another estimate by looking older than it really is. I shall assuredly be young at fifty, perhaps younger than I am now, for I take better care of my health every year—and I have health worth taking care of. But, as I was about to say, Cauldwell had a meditative look that night as we sat down to dinner together. And when he had drunk his third glass of champagne he said:

“Loring, why the devil don’t you get married?”

I felt that he had something especial to say to me. I answered indifferently, “Why don’t you?”

“Very simple,” replied he. “Not rich enough. To marry in New York a man must be either a pauper or a Crœsus.”

“Then marry a rich girl,” said I.

“I’d have done it long ago if I could,” he confessed with a laugh. “But I’ve never been able to get at the girls who are rich enough. Their mammas guard them for plutocrats or titles. But you— Really, it’s a shame for you to stay single. I know a dozen women who’re losing sleep longing for you—for themselves, or for some lovely young daughter.”

“Pathetic,” said I.

“I see that irritates you. Well—you needn’t be alarmed. You’re famed for being about the wariest bird in the preserves. And I know you don’t want that kind of woman. Why not take the kind you do want?”

“Where is she?” said I.

“I could name a dozen,” rejoined he. “But I shan’t name any. I have one in mind. A doctor has the best opportunity in the world to find out about women—about men, too—the truth about them.”

I laughed. “If I wanted misinformation about human nature,” said I, “I’d go to a doctor—or a preacher. They’re the depositories of all the hysterical tommyrot, all the sentimental lies that vain women and men think out about themselves and their sex relations.”

His smile was not a denial. “Yes, I’ve been rather credulous, I’ll admit,” said he. “And men and women do tell the most astounding whoppers about themselves. Especially women, having trouble with their husbands. I try not to believe, but I’m caught every once in a while.”

A gleam in his eye made me wonder whether he wasn’t thinking of some yarn Edna had spun for him about me. Probably. There are precious few women, even among the fairly close-mouthed, who don’t take advantage of the family doctor to indulge in the passion for romancing.

“But I wasn’t thinking of any confession,” he went on. “Several women have confessed a secret passion for you to me—with the hope that I’d help them. The woman I have in mind isn’t that sort. I don’t know that she cares anything about you. I only know that she’s exactly the woman for you.”

“Interesting,” said I.

“She’s young—unusually pretty—and in a distinguished way. She knows how to run a house as a home—and she’s about the only woman I know in our class who does. She’s got a good mind—not for a woman, but for anybody. And she needs a husband and children and a home.”

He must have misunderstood the peculiar expression of my face, for he hastened on:

“Not that she’s poor. On the contrary, she’s rich. I’d not recommend a poor girl to you. Poor girls can think of nothing but money—naturally.”

“Everybody, rich and poor, thinks of money—naturally,” said I.

“Guess you’re right,” laughed he. “But it looks worse in a poor girl.”

“I should say the opposite. A feeding glutton looks worse than a feeding famished man.”

“At any rate—this woman I have in mind isn’t poor. That’s not a disadvantage, is it?”

“Not a hopeless obstacle,” said I. “By the way, what are her disadvantages?”

“Well—she’s been married before.”

“So have I,” said I.

“But, on the other hand, she has no children.”

“Neither have I,” said I, without thinking. I hastened to add, “My only child is married.”

“And splendidly married,” said he with the snob’s enthusiasm.

“To return to the lady,” said I dryly. “Why don’t you marry her yourself?”

He had drunk several more glasses of the champagne. He laughed. “She wouldn’t look at me. She sees straight through me. She wants a man with domestic tastes. I’m about as fit for domestic life as a fire-engine horse for an old maid’s phæton.”

“Well—who is it?” said I.

“I’m afraid you’ll think she’s been at me to help her. But, on my honor, Loring, she isn’t that sort. We’ve talked of you. For some reason, ever since I’ve known her—well, I’ve never seen her without thinking of you. I often talk of you to her—not marrying talk—I’d not dare—but in a friendly sort of way. She listens—says nothing.”

“But she is sickly,” said I.

“Sickly?” he cried. He looked horrified and amazed. “Good Lord, what gave you that notion?”

“You said you saw her often.”

“Oh, I see. It was her brother who had the illness.”

“All right. Bring her round and I’ll look her over,” said I carelessly. And I forced a change of subject.

Had Mary Kirkwood been taking this agreeable, insidious doctor into her confidence? I did not know. I do not know. I have reasons for thinking he told the literal truth. And yet—women are queer about doctors. However, that’s a small matter. The thing that impressed me, that agitated me as he talked, was the picture he, by implication, was making of Mary Kirkwood, alone again, and evidently absolutely unattached—living alone in the country as when I first knew her.

I tossed and fretted away most of the hours of that night with the result that at breakfast I resolved to leave town again, to put the width of the continent or of the ocean between me and temptation to folly. But one thing and another came up to detain me. It was perhaps ten days later that I, walking alone in the Park, as was my habit, found myself at a turning face to face with her. I don’t think my expression reflected credit upon my boasted self-control. As for her—I thought she was going to faint—and she is not one of the fainting kind. We gazed at each other in fright and embarrassment, and both had the same child’s impulse to turn and fly—one, of those sensible, natural instincts for the shortest way out of difficult situations that the cowardly conventionality of the grown-up estate makes it impossible to obey. But—we had to do something. So, we laughed.

She put out her hand; I took it. “How well you are looking,” said I—and it was the truth.

“You, too,” said she.

I turned to walk with her. We strolled along cheerfully and contentedly, talking of the early spring, of flowers, and birds, and such neutral matters. I was fluent, she no less so. Our agitation disappeared; our sense of congeniality returned. Our acquaintance seemed to have lumped back to where it was before we had that first confidential talk together on the yacht. After perhaps an hour, as agreeable an hour as I ever spent, she said she must go home, as she had an engagement. On the way to the Sixty-fifth Street entrance the conversation lagged somewhat. We were both busily resolving the same thing—the matter of explanations. Now that I was seeing her again—a wholly different matter from inspecting my defaced and smirched and battered image of her—battered by the blows of my jealousy, and anger, and scorn—now that I was seeing her again, I could not but see and feel that she was in reality a sweet and simple and attractive woman. No doubt she had her faults—as all of us have—grave faults of inheritance, of education, of environment. But who was I that I should sit in judgment on her? I realized that I had judged her unjustly so far as her treatment of me was concerned. Assuming that she was tainted with snobbishness, assuming that her defects were as bad as I had thought in my worst paroxysms, still that did not alter the charms and the fine qualities.

“We are friends?” said I abruptly.

“I hope so,” said she. She added: “I know so.”

“Without discussion or explanation?”

“That is best—don’t you think?” replied she. “I am—not—not proud of some things I did.”

“Nor I, of some things I did.”

“I should like to forget them—my own and yours.”

“I, too. And explanations do not explain. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

She smiled and nodded. She said:

“The latter part of the week I’m going back to the country. Perhaps you’ll spend Saturday and Sunday there?”

“Thank you,” said I. “Let me know at the Federal Club if your plans change.”

At her door we shook hands, but both lingered. Said she:

“I am glad we are friends again.”

“It was inevitable,” I replied. “We like each other too well not to have come round. Bitternesses and enmities are stupid.”

“And sad,” said she.

When we met again—at her house in the country—there was no constraint on either side. We knew that neither of us had the power to breach, much less to remove, the barrier between us. We ignored its existence—and were content.

You may have observed that I have rarely been able to speak of Edna without resentment. I shall now tell you why:

The friendship between Mary Kirkwood and me presently set the newspaper gossips to talking. Our engagement was announced again and again—the announcement always a pretext for rehashing the story of the matrimonial bankruptcy through which each had passed. But as we were above the reach of the missiles of the scandalmongers the worst that was printed produced only a slight and brief irritation. This until the Princess Frascatoni began her campaign of slander.

I shall not go into it. I shall simply say that she ordered one of her hangers-on—one of the semi-literary parasites to be found in the train of every rich person—to attack Mary and me as keeping up an intrigue of long standing, the one that was the real cause of my wife’s divorcing me. When I read the first of these articles I believed, from certain details, that no one in the world but the Princess Frascatoni could have inspired it. But with my habitual caution I leashed my impetuous anger and did not condemn her until I had investigated. Is it not strange, is it not the irony of fate that in every serious crisis of my life, except one, I should have had coolness and self-control, and that the one exception should have been when I loved Mary Kirkwood and condemned her unheard? After all, I am not sure that love isn’t a kind of lunacy.

Why did Edna engage in that campaign of slander? Why did she say to everyone from this side the most malicious, the most mendacious things about my relations with Mrs. Kirkwood—that she had ignored the intrigue as long as she could for the sake of her dear daughter; that it had driven her from New York, had forced her to get a divorce, and so on through the gamut of malignant lying? There may perhaps be a clew to the mystery in the failure of her second marriage—as a marriage, I mean; not, of course, as a social enterprise, for there it was a world-renowned success. If the clew is not in Edna’s emptiness of heart and boredom, then I can suggest no explanation. I imagine she had been hearing and reading the gossip about an impending marriage between Mrs. Kirkwood and me until she had concluded that there must be truth in it—and by outrageous slander she hoped to make it impossible.

The first effect was as she had probably calculated. Mary and I avoided each other. Mary hid herself and would see no one. Armitage and I for a time kept up a pretense of close friendship, or, rather, publicly again pretended a friendship that had long since all but ceased. But when the talk both in the newspapers and among our acquaintances grew until the “at last uncovered scandal” was the chief topic of gossip, he and I almost stopped speaking. You may wonder why he or I or both of us did not “do something” to crush the absurd lie. Gentle reader, did you ever try to kill a scandal? It is done in novels and on the stage; but in life the silly ass who draws his sword and attacks a pestilent fog accomplishes nothing—beyond attracting more attention to the fog by his absurd and futile gesticulations. The world had made up its nasty little mind that the relations between Mary Kirkwood, divorced, and Godfrey Loring, divorced, were not, and for years had not been, what they should be. And the matter was settled. I think Armitage himself believed. I know Beechman believed, for he pointedly crossed the street to avoid speaking to me.

I stood this for a month. Then I went down to Mary’s place on Long Island.

You may imagine the excitement my coming caused among the honest yeomanry gathered at the station—those worthy folk who peep and pry into the business of their fashionable overlords, and are learning to cringe like English peasants. I found Mary setting out for a ride—through her own grounds; she was ashamed to venture abroad. I came upon her abruptly. Instead of the terror and aversion I had steeled myself to meet, I got a radiance of welcome that made my heart leap. But in an instant she had remembered and was almost in a panic.

“Please send the groom away with the horse,” said I. “Let us walk up and down here before the house.”

She hesitated, obeyed.

The broad space before the house was laid out in hedges and blooming beds with a long, straight drive leading in one direction to the highroad, in the other direction to stable, carriage house, and garage. When we were securely alone I said:

“Have you missed me?”

“Our friendship meant a lot to me,” replied she.

“I have discovered that it’s the principal thing in my life,” said I.

We paced the length of the drive toward the lodge in silence. As we turned toward the house again I said:

“I have chartered the largest yacht I could get—for a cruise round the world.”

A pause, then she in a constrained voice: “When do you start?”

“Immediately,” I answered. “Perhaps to-morrow.”

She halted, leaned against a tree, and gazed out through the shrubbery.

“You’ve not been well?” said I.

“I never am, when I lose interest in life,” replied she. “You will be gone—long?”

“Long,” said I. “Either we shall not see each other again for years—or—” I paused.

After a wait of fully a minute she looked inquiringly at me.

“Mary,” said I, “shall we take a motor launch and go over to Connecticut and be married?”

She began to walk again, I keeping pace with her. “It’s the only sensible thing to do,” said I. “It’s the only way out of this mess. And to-morrow we’ll sail away and not come back until—until we are good and ready.”

I waited a moment, then went on, and I had the feeling that I was saying what we were both thinking: “We’ve had the same experience—have been through the same bankruptcy. It has taught us, I think—I hope—I can’t be sure; human nature learns slowly and badly. But I see a good chance for us—not to be utterly and always blissfully happy, but to get far more out of life than either is getting—or could get alone.”

As we turned at the group of outbuildings she looked at me and I at her—a look straight into each other’s souls. And then and there was born that which alone can make a marriage successful or a life worth the living. What is the difference between friendship and love? I had thought—and said—that love was friendship in bloom. But as Mary and I looked at each other, I knew the full truth. Love is friendship set on fire. We did not speak. We glanced hastily away. At the front door she halted. In a quiet, awed voice she said:

“I’ll change from this riding suit.”

And what did I say, gentle reader, to commemorate our standing upon holy ground? I did no better than she. With eyes uncertain and voice untrustworthy and hoarse I said:

“And tell your maid to pack and go to town with the trunks—go to the landing at East Twenty-third Street. Can she be there by four or five this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll see you at the bay—at the launch wharf—in half an hour? I’ve got to send off a telegram.”

“In half an hour,” said she, and with a grave smile and a wave of her crop she disappeared into the house.

At seven that evening we steamed past Sandy Hook. At ten—after an almost silent dinner—we were on deck, leaning side by side at the rail, near the bow. We were alone on the calm and shining sea. No land in sight, not a steamer, not a sail—not a sign of human existence beyond the rail of our yacht. Her arm slipped within mine; my hand sought hers. Not a sail, not a streamer of smoke. Alone and free and together.

I forgive you, gentle reader. Go in peace.

THE END