Isabelle did not regain her strength after the birth of her child. She lay nerveless and white, so that her husband, her mother, the Colonel, all became alarmed. The celebrated accoucheur who had attended her alarmed them still more.
"Something's wrong,—she couldn't stand the strain. Oh, it's another case of American woman,—too finely organized for the plain animal duties. A lot of my women patients are the same way. They take child-bearing hard,—damned hard…. What's the matter with them? I don't know!" he concluded irritably. "She must just go slow until she gets back her strength."
She went "slow," but Nature refused to assert itself, to proclaim the will to live. For months the days crept by with hardly a sign of change in her condition, and then began the period of doctors. The family physician, who had a reputation for diagnosis, pronounced her case "anaemia and nervous debility." "She must be built up,—baths, massage, distraction." Of course she was not to nurse her child, and the little girl was handed over to a trained nurse. Then this doctor called in another, a specialist in nerves, who listened to all that the others said, tapped her here and there, and wished the opinion of an obstetrical surgeon. After his examination there was a discussion of the advisability of "surgical interference," and the conclusion "to wait."
"It may be a long time—years—before Mrs. Lane fully recovers her tone," the nerve specialist told the husband. "We must have patience. It would be a good thing to take her to Europe for a change."
This was the invariable suggestion that he made to his wealthy patients when he saw no immediate results from his treatment. It could do no harm, Europe, and most of his patients liked the prescription. They returned, to be sure, in many cases in about the same condition as when they left, or merely rested temporarily,—but of course that was the fault of the patient.
When Lane objected that it would be almost impossible for him to leave his duties for a trip abroad and that he did not like to have his wife go without him, the specialist advised California:—
"A mild climate where she can be out-of-doors and relaxed."
Isabelle went to California with her mother, the trained nurse, and the child. But instead of the "mild climate," Pasadena happened to be raw and rainy. She disliked the hotel, and the hosts of idle, overdressed, and vulgar women. So her mother brought her back, as we have seen, and then there was talk of the Virginia Springs, "an excellent spring climate."
A new doctor was called in, who had his own peculiar regime of sprays and baths, of subcutaneous medicine, and then a third nerve specialist, who said, "We must find the right key," and looked as if he might have it in his office.
"The right key?"
"Her combination, the secret of her vitality. We must find it for her,—distraction, a system of physical exercises, perhaps. But we must occupy the mind. Those Christian Scientists have an idea, you know,—not that I recommend their tomfoolery; but we must accomplish their results by scientific means." And he went away highly satisfied with his liberality of view….
On one vital point the doctors were hopelessly divided. Some thought Isabelle should have another child, "as soon as may be,"—it was a chance that Nature might take to right matters. The others strongly dissented: a child in the patient's present debilitated condition would be criminal. As these doctors seemed to have the best of the argument, it was decided that for the present the wife should remain sterile, and the physicians undertook to watch over the life process, to guard against its asserting its rights.
The last illusions of romance seemed to go at this period. The simple old tale that a man and a woman loving each other marry and have the children that live within them and come from their mutual love has been rewritten for the higher classes of American women, with the aid of science. Health, economic pressure, the hectic struggle to survive in an ambitious world have altered the simple axioms of nature. Isabelle accepted easily the judgment of the doctors,—she had known so many women in a like case. Yet when she referred to this matter in talking to Alice Johnston, she caught an odd look on her cousin's face.
"I wonder if they know, the doctors—they seem always to be finding excuses for women not to have children…. We've been all through that, Steve and I; and decided we wouldn't have anything to do with it, no matter what happened. It—tarnishes you somehow, and after all does it help? There's Lulu Baxter, living in daily fear of having a child because they think they are too poor. He gets twenty-five hundred from the road—he's under Steve, you know—and they live in a nice apartment with two servants and entertain. They are afraid of falling in the social scale, if they should live differently. But she's as nervous as a witch, never wholly well, and they'll just go on, as he rises and gets more money, adding to their expenses. They will never have money enough for children, or only for one, maybe,—no, I don't believe it pays!"
"But she's so pretty, and they live nicely," Isabelle protested, and added,"There are other things to live for besides having a lot of children—"
"What?" the older woman asked gravely.
"Your husband"; and thinking of John's present homeless condition, she continued hastily, "and life itself,—to be some one,—you owe something to yourself."
"Yes," Alice assented, smiling,—"if we only knew what it was!"
"Besides if we were all like you, Alice dear, we should be paupers. Even we can't afford—"
"We should be paupers together, then! No, you can't convince me—it's against Nature."
"All modern life is against Nature," the young woman retorted glibly; "just at present I regard Nature as a mighty poor thing."
She stretched her thin arms behind her head and turned on the lounge.
"That's why the people who made this country are dying out so rapidly, giving way before Swedes and Slavs and others,—because those people are willing to have children."
"Meantime we have the success!" Isabelle cried languidly. "Apres nousthe Slavs,—we are the flower! An aristocracy is always nourished on sterility!"
"Dr. Fuller!" Alice commented…. "So the Colonel is going with you to theSprings?"
"Yes, poor old Colonel!—he must get away—he's awfully broken up," and she added sombrely. "That's one trouble with having children,—you expect them to think and act like you. You can't be willing to let them be themselves."
"But, Isabelle!"
"Oh, I know what you are going to say about Vick. I have heard it over and over. John has said it. Mother has said it. Father looks it. You needn't bother to say it, Alice!" She glanced at her cousin mutinously. "John thought I was partly to blame; that I ought to have been able to control Vick. He speaks as if the poor boy were insane or drunk or something—because he did what he did!"
"And you?"
Isabelle sat upright, leaning her head thoughtfully on her hands, and staring with bright eyes at Alice.
"Do you want to know what I really believe? … I have done a lot of thinking these months, all by myself. Well, I admire Vick tremendously; he had the courage—"
"Does that take courage?"
"Yes! For a man like Vickers…. Oh, I suppose she is horrid and not worth it—I only hope he will never find it out! But to love any one enough to be willing, to be glad to give up your life for him, for her—why, it is tremendous, Alice! … Here is Tots," she broke off as the nurse wheeled the baby through the hall,—"Miss Marian Lane…. Nurse, cover up her face with the veil so her ladyship won't get frostbitten," and Isabelle sank back again with a sigh on the lounge and resumed the thread of her thought. "And I am not so sure that what John objects to isn't largely the mess,—the papers, the scandal, the fact they went off without waiting for a divorce and all that. Of course that wasn't pleasant for respectable folk like the Lanes and the Prices. But why should Vickers have given up what seemed to him right, what was his life and hers, just for our prejudices about not having our names in the papers?"
"That wasn't all!"
"Well, I shall always believe in Vick, no matter what comes of it…. Marriage—the regular thing—doesn't seem to be such a great success with many people, I know. Perhaps life would be better if more people had Vick's courage!"
Isabelle forced her point with an invalid's desire to relieve a wayward feeling and also a childish wish to shock this good cousin, who saw life simply and was so sure of herself. Alice Johnston rose with a smile.
"I hope you will be a great deal stronger when you come back, dear."
"I shall be—or I shall have an operation. I don't intend to remain in the noble army of N.P.'s."
"How is John?"
"Flourishing and busy—oh, tremendously busy! He might just as well live inNew York or Washington for all I see of him."
"Steve says he is very clever and successful,—you must be so proud!"
Isabelle smiled. "Of course! But sometimes I think I should like a substitute husband, one for everyday use, you know!"
"There are plenty of that kind!" laughed Alice. "But I don't believe they would satisfy you wholly."
"Perhaps not…. How is Steve? Does he like his new work?"
"Yes," Alice replied without enthusiasm. "He's working very hard, too."
"Oh, men love it,—it makes them feel important."
"Did you ever think, Belle, that men have difficulties to meet,—problems that we never dream of?"
"Worse than the child-bearing question?" queried Isabelle, kicking out the folds of her tea-gown with a slippered foot.
"Well, different; harder, perhaps…. Steve doesn't talk them over as he used to with me."
"Too tired. John never talks to me about business. We discuss what the last doctor thinks, and how the baby is, and whether we'll take the Jackson house or build or live at the Monopole and go abroad, and Nan Lawton's latest,—really vital things, you see! Business is such a bore."
The older woman seemed to have something on her mind and sat down again at the end of the lounge.
"By the way," Isabelle continued idly, "did you know that the Falkners werecoming to St. Louis to live? John found Rob a place in the terminal work.It isn't permanent, but Bessie was crazy to come, and it may be an opening.She is a nice thing,—mad about people."
"But, Isabelle," her cousin persisted, "don't you want to know the things that make your husband's life,—that go down to the roots?"
"If you mean business, no, I don't. Besides they are confidential matters,I suppose. He couldn't make me understand…."
"They have to face the fight, the men; make the decisions that count—for character."
"Of course,—John attends to that side and I to mine. We should be treading on each other's toes if I tried to decide his matters for him!"
"But when they are questions of right and wrong—"
"Don't worry. Steve and John are all right. Besides they are only officers. You don't believe all that stuff in the magazines about Senator Thomas and the railroads? John says that is a form of modern blackmail."
"I don't know what to believe," the older woman replied. "I know it's terrible,—it's like war!"
"Of course it's war, and men must do the fighting."
"And fight fair."
"Of course,—as fair as the others. What are you driving at?"
"I wonder if the A. and P. always fights fair?"
"It isn't a charitable organization, my dear…. But Steve and John are just officers. They don't have to decide. They take their orders from headquarters and carry them out."
"No matter what they are?"
"Naturally,—that's what officers are for, isn't it? If they don't want to carry them out, they must resign."
"But they can't always resign,"
"Why not?"
"Because of you and me and the children!"
"Oh, don't worry about it! They don't worry. That's what I like a man for.If he's good for anything, he isn't perpetually pawing himself over."
This did not seem wholly to satisfy Alice, but she leaned over Isabelle and kissed her:—
"Only get well, my dear, and paw some of your notions over,—it won't do you any harm!"
That evening when the Lanes were alone, after they had discussed the topics that Isabelle had enumerated, with the addition of the arrangements for the trip to the Springs, Isabelle asked casually:—
"John, is it easy to be honest in business?"
"That depends," he replied guardedly, "on the business and the man. Why?"
"You don't believe what those magazine articles say about the Senator and the others?"
"I don't read them."
"Why?"
"Because the men who write them don't understand the facts, and what they know they distort—for money."
"Um," she observed thoughtfully. "But are there facts—like those?Youknow the facts."
"I don't know all of them."
"Are those you know straight or crooked?" she asked, feeling considerable interest in the question, now that it was started.
"I don't know what you would mean by crooked,—what is it you want to know?"
"Are you honest?" she asked with mild curiosity. "I mean in the way of railroad business. Of course I know you are other ways."
Lane smiled at her childlike seriousness.
"I always try to do what seems to me right under the circumstances."
"But the circumstances are sometimes—queer?"
"The circumstances are usually complex."
"The circumstances are complex," she mused aloud. "I'll tell Alice that."
"What has Alice to do with it?"
"She seems bothered about the circumstances—that's all,—the circumstances and Steve."
"I guess Steve can manage the circumstances by himself," he replied coldly, turning over the evening paper. "She probably reads the magazines and believes all she hears."
"All intelligent women read the magazines—and believe what they hear or else what their husbands tell them," she rejoined flippantly. Presently, as Lane continued to look over the stock page of the paper, she observed:—
"Don't you suppose that in Vickers's case the circumstances may have been—complex?"
Lane looked at her steadily.
"I can't see what that has to do with the question."
"Oh?" she queried mischievously. He considered the working of her mind as merely whimsical, but she had a sense of logical triumph over the man. Apparently he would make allowances of "circumstances" in business, his life, that he would not admit in private affairs. As he kissed her and was turning out the light, before joining the Colonel for another cigar, she asked:—
"Supposing that you refused to be involved in circumstances that were—complex? What would happen?"
"What a girl!" he laughed cheerfully. "For one thing I think we should not be going to the Springs to-morrow in a private car, or buying the Jackson house—or any other. Now put it all out of your head and have a good rest."
He kissed her again, and she murmured wearily:—
"I'm so useless,—they should kill things like me! How can you love me?"
She was confident that he did love her, that like so many husbands he had accepted her invalidism cheerfully, with an unconscious chivalry for the wife who instead of flowering forth in marriage had for the time being withered. His confidence, in her sinking moods like this, that it would all come right, buoyed her up. And John was a wise man as well as a good husband; the Colonel trusted him, admired him. Alice Johnston's doubts slipped easily from her mind. Nevertheless, there were now two subjects of serious interest that husband and wife would always avoid,—Vickers, and business honesty!
She lay there feeling weak and forlorn before the journey, preoccupied with herself. These days she was beset with a tantalizing sense that life was slipping past her just beyond her reach, flowing like a mighty river to issues that she was not permitted to share. And while she was forced to lie useless on the bank, her youth, her own life, was somehow running out, too. Just what it was that she was missing she could not say,—something alluring, something more than her husband's activity, than her child, something that made her stretch out longing hands in the dark…. She would not submit to invalidism.
The Virginia mountains made a narrow horizon of brilliant blue. On their lower slopes the misty outlines of early spring had begun with the budding trees. Here and there the feathery forest was spotted by dashes of pink coolness where the wild peach and plum had blossomed, and the faint blue of the rhododendron bushes mounted to the sky-line. The morning was brilliant after a rain and the fresh mountain air blew invigoratingly, as Isabelle left the car on her husband's arm. With the quick change of mood of the nervous invalid she already felt stronger, more hopeful. There was color in her thin face, and her eyes had again the vivacious sparkle that had been so largely her charm.
"We must find some good horses," she said to her father as they approached the hotel cottage which had been engaged; "I want to get up in those hills. Margaret promised to come for a week…. Oh, I am going to be all right now!"
The hotel was one of those huge structures dropped down in the mountains or by the sea to provide for the taste for fresh air, the need for recuperation, of a wealthy society that crams its pleasures and its business into small periods,—days and hours. It rambled over an acre or two and provided as nearly as possible the same luxuries and occupations that its frequenters had at home. At this season it was crowded with rich people, who had sought the balm of early spring in the Virginia mountains after their weeks of frantic activity in the cities, instead of taking the steamers to Europe. They were sitting, beautifully wrapped in furs, on the long verandas, or smartly costumed were setting out for the links or for horseback excursions. The Colonel and Lane quickly discovered acquaintances in the broker's office where prominent "operators" were sitting, smoking cigars and looking at the country through large plate-glass windows, while the ticker chattered within hearing. There was music in the hall, and fresh arrivals with spotless luggage poured in from the trains. This mountain inn was a little piece of New York moved out into the country.
But it was peaceful on the piazza of the cottage, which was somewhat removed from the great caravansary, where Isabelle lay and watched the blue recesses of the receding hills. Here her husband found her when it was time to say good-by.
"You'll be very well off," he remarked, laying his hand affectionately on his wife's arm. "The Stantons are here—you remember him at Torso?—and the Blakes from St. Louis, and no doubt a lot more people your father knows,—so you won't be lonely. I have arranged about the horses and selected a quiet table for you."
"That is very good of you,—I don't want to see people," she replied, her eyes still on the hills. "When will you be back?"
"In a week or ten days I can run up again and stay for a couple of days, over Sunday."
"You'll telegraph about Marian?"
"Of course."
And bending over to kiss her forehead, he hurried away. It seemed to her that he was always leaving, always going somewhere. When he was away, he wrote or telegraphed her each day as a matter of course, and sent her flowers every other day, and brought her some piece of jewellery when he went to New York. Yes, he was very fond of her, she felt, and his was a loyal nature,—she never need fear that in these many absences from his wife he might become entangled with women, as other men did. He was not that kind….
The Colonel crossed the lawn in the direction of the golf links with a party of young old men. It was fortunate that the Colonel had become interested, almost boyishly, in golf; for since that morning when his son had left him he had lost all zest for business. A year ago he would never have thought it possible to come away like this for a month in the busy season. To Isabelle it was sad and also curious the way he took this matter of Vickers. He seemed to feel that he had but one child now, had put his boy quite out of his mind. He was gradually arranging his affairs—already there was talk of incorporating the hardware business and taking in new blood. And he had aged still more. But he was so tremendously vital,—the Colonel! No one could say he was heart-broken. He took more interest than ever in public affairs, like the General Hospital, and the Park Board. But he was different, as Isabelle felt,—abstracted, more silent, apparently revising his philosophy of life at an advanced age, and that is always painful. If she had only given him a man child, something male and vital like himself! He was fond of John, but no one could take the place of his own blood. That, too, was a curious limitation in the eyes of the younger generation.
"Isabelle!"
She was wakened from her brooding by a soft Southern voice, and perceived Margaret Pole coming up the steps. With the grasp of Margaret's small hands, the kiss, all the years since St. Mary's seemed to fall away. The two women drew off and looked at each other, Margaret smiling enigmatically, understanding that Isabelle was trying to read the record of the years, the experience of marriage on her. Coloring slightly, she turned away and drew up a chair.
"Is your husband with you?" Isabelle asked. "I do so want to meet him."
"No; I left him at my father's with the children. He's very good with the children," she added with a mocking smile, "and he doesn't like little trips. He doesn't understand how I can get up at five in the morning and travel all day across country to see an old friend…. Men don't understand things, do you think?"
"So you are going abroad to live?"
"Yes," Margaret answered without enthusiasm. "We are going to study music,—the voice. My husband doesn't like business!"
Isabelle had heard that Mr. Pole, agreeable as he was, had not been successful in business. But the Poles and the Lawtons were all comfortably off, and it was natural that he should follow his tastes.
"He has a very good voice," Margaret added.
"How exciting—to change your whole life like that!" Isabelle exclaimed, fired by the prospect of escape from routine, from the known.
"Think so?" Margaret remarked in a dull voice. "Well, perhaps. Tell me how you are—everything."
And they began to talk, and yet carefully avoided what was uppermost in the minds of both,—'How has it been with you? How has marriage been? Has it given you all that you looked for? Are you happy?' For in spite of all the education, the freedom so much talked about for women, that remains the central theme of their existence,—the emotional and material satisfaction of their natures through marriage. Margaret Pole was accounted intellectual among women, with bookish tastes, thoughtful, and she knew many women who had been educated in colleges. "They are all like us," she once said to Isabelle; "just like us. They want to marry a man who will give them everything, and they aren't any wiser in their choice, either. The only difference is that a smaller number of them have the chance to marry, and when they can't be married, they have something besides cats and maiden aunts to fall back upon. But interests in common with their husbands, intellectual interests,—rubbish! A man who amounts to anything is always a specialist, and he doesn't care for feminine amateurishness. An acquaintance with Dante and the housing of the poor doesn't broaden the breakfast table, not a little bit."
When Margaret Pole talked in this strain, men thought her intelligent and women cynical. Isabelle felt that this cynicism had grown upon her. It appeared in little things, as when she said: "I can stay only a week. I must see to breaking up the house and a lot of business. We shall never sail if I don't go back and get at it. Men are supposed to be practical and attend to the details, but they don't if they can get out of them." When Isabelle complimented her on her pretty figure, Margaret said with a mocking grimace: "Yes, the figure is there yet. The face goes first usually." Isabelle had to admit that Margaret's delicate, girlish face had grown strangely old and grave. The smile about the thin lips was there, but it was a mocking or a wistful smile. The blue eyes were deeper underneath the high brow. Life was writing its record on this fine face,—a record not easily read, however. They fell to talking over the St. Mary's girls.
"Aline,—have you seen much of her?" Margaret asked.
"Not as much as I hoped to,—I have been so useless," Isabelle replied."She's grown queer!"
"Queer?"
"She is rather dowdy, and they live in such a funny way,—always in a mess. Of course they haven't much money, but they needn't be so—squalid,—the children and the mussy house and all."
"Aline doesn't care for things," Margaret observed.
"But one must care enough to be clean! And she has gone in for fads,—she has taken to spinning and weaving and designing jewellery and I don't know what."
"That is her escape," Margaret explained.
"Escape? It must be horrid for her husband and awful for the children."
"What would you have her do? Scrub and wash and mend and keep a tidy house? That would take all the poetry out of Aline, destroy her personality. Isn't it better for her husband and for the children that she should keep herself alive and give them something better than a good housewife?"
"Keep herself alive by making weird cloths and impossible bracelets?"
Margaret laughed at Isabelle's philistine horror of the Goring household, and amused herself with suggesting more of the philosophy of the Intellectuals, the creed of Woman's Independence. She pointed out that Aline did not interfere with Goring's pursuit of his profession though it might not interest her or benefit her. Why should Goring interfere with Aline's endeavors to develop herself, to be something more than a mother and a nurse?
"She has kept something of her own soul,—that is it!"
"Her own soul!" mocked Isabelle. "If you were to take a meal with them, you would wish there was less soul, and more clean table napkins."
"My dear littlebourgeoise," Margaret commented with amusement, "you must get a larger point of view. The housewife ideal is doomed. Women won't submit to it,—intelligent ones. And Goring probably likes Aline better as she is than he would any competent wife of the old sort."
"I don't believe any sane man likes to see his children dirty, and never know where to find a clean towel,—don't tell me!"
"Then men must change their characters," Margaret replied vaguely; "we women have been changing our characters for centuries to conform to men's desires. It's time that the men adjusted themselves to us."
"I wonder what John would say if I told him he must change his character," mused Isabelle.
"There is Cornelia Woodyard," Margaret continued; "she combines the two ideals—but she is very clever."
"We never thought so at St. Mary's."
"That's because we judged her by woman's standards, sentimental ones,—old-fashioned ones. But she is New."
"How new?" asked Isabelle, who felt that she had been dwelling in a dark place the past three years.
"Why, she made up her mind just what she wanted out of life,—a certain kind of husband, a certain kind of married life, a certain set of associates,—and she's got just what she planned. She isn't an opportunist like most of us, who take the husbands we marry because they are there, we don't know why, and take the children they give us because they come, and live and do what turns up in the circumstances chosen for us by the Male. No, Conny is very clever!"
"But how?"
"Eugene Woodyard is not a rich man,—Conny was not after money,—but he is a clever lawyer, well connected,—in with a lot of interesting people, and has possibilities. Conny saw those and has developed them,—that has been her success. You see she combines the old and the new. She makes the mould of their life, but she works through him. As a result she has just what she wants, and her husband adores her,—he is the outward and visible symbol of Conny's inward and material strength!"
Isabelle laughed, and Margaret continued in her pleasant drawl, painting the Woodyard firmament.
"She understood her man better than he did himself. She knew that he would never be a great money-getter, hadn't the mental or the physical qualifications for it. So she turns him deftly into a reformer, a kind of gentlemanly politician. She'll make him Congressman or better,—much better! Meantime she has given him a delightful home, one of the nicest I know,—on a street down town near a little park, where the herd does not know enough to live. And there Conny receives the best picked set of people I ever see. It is all quite wonderful!"
"And we thought her coarse," mused Isabelle.
"Perhaps she is,—I don't think she is fine. But a strong hand is rarely fine. I don't think she would hesitate to use any means to arrive,—and that is Power, my dear little girl!"
Margaret Pole rose, the enigmatic smile on her lips.
"I must leave you now to your nap and the peace of the hills," she said lightly. "We'll meet at luncheon. By the way, I ran across a cousin of mine coming in on the train,—a Virginian cousin, which means that he is close enough to ask favors when he wants them. He wishes to meet you,—he is a great favorite of the Woodyards, of Conny, I should say,—Tom Cairy…. He was at college with your brother, I think. I will bring him over in the afternoon if you say so. He's amusing, Thomas; but I don't vouch for him. Good-by, girl."
Isabelle watched Margaret Pole cross the light green of the lawn, walking leisurely, her head raised towards the mountains. 'She is not happy,' thought Isabelle. 'There is something wrong in her marriage. I wonder if it is always so!' Margaret had given her so much to think about, with her sharp suggestions of strange, new views, that she felt extraordinarily refreshed. And Margaret, her eyes on the blue hills, was thinking, 'She is still the girl,—she doesn't know herself yet, does not know life!' Her lips smiled wistfully, as though to add: 'But she is eager. She will have to learn, as we all do.' Thus the two young women, carefully avoiding any reference to the thought nearest their hearts, discovered in a brief half hour what each wanted to know….
After the noisy luncheon, with its interminable variety of food, in the crowded, hot dining room, Isabelle and Margaret with Cairy sought refuge in one of the foot-paths that led up into the hills. Cairy dragged his left leg with a perceptible limp. He was slight, blond hair with auburn tinge, smooth shaven, with appealing eyes that, like Margaret's, were recessed beneath delicate brows. He had pleased Isabelle by talking to her about Vickers, whom he had known slightly at the university, talking warmly and naturally, as if nothing had happened to Vickers. Now he devoted himself to her quite personally, while Margaret walked on ahead. Cairy had a way of seeing but one woman at a time, no matter what the circumstances might be, because his emotional horizon was always limited. That was one reason why he was liked so much by women. He had a good deal to say about the Woodyards, especially Conny.
"She is so sure in her judgments," he said. "I always show her everything I write!" (He had already explained that he was a literary "jobber," as he called it, at the Springs to see a well-known Wall Street man for an article on "the other side" that he was preparing forThe People's Magazine, and also hinted that his ambitions rose above his magazine efforts.)
"But I did not know that Conny was literary," Isabelle remarked in surprise.
The young Southerner smiled at her simplicity.
"I don't know that she is whatyoumean by literary; perhaps that is the reason she is such a good judge. She knows what people want to read, at least what the editors think they want and will pay for. If Con—Mrs. Woodyard likes a thing, I know I shall get a check for it. If she throws it down, I might as well save postage stamps."
"A valuable friend," Margaret called back lightly, "for a struggling man of letters!"
"Rather," Cairy agreed. "You see," turning to Isabelle again, "that sort of judgment is worth reams of literary criticism."
"It's practical."
"Yes, that is just what she is,—the genius of the practical; it's an instinct with her. That is why she can give really elaborate dinners in her little house, and you have the feeling that there are at least a dozen servants where they ought to be, and all that."
From the Woodyards they digressed to New York and insensibly to Cairy's life there. Before they had turned back for tea Isabelle knew that the lame young Southerner had written a play which he hoped to induce some actress to take, and that meantime he was supporting himself in the various ways that modern genius has found as a substitute for Grub Street. He had also told her that New York was the only place one could live in, if one was interested in the arts, and that in his opinion the drama was the coming art of America,—"real American drama with blood in it"; and had said something about the necessity of a knowledge of life, "a broad understanding of the national forces," if a man were to write anything worth while.
"You mean dinner-parties?" Margaret asked at this point….
When he left the women, he had arranged to ride with Isabelle.
"It's the only sport I can indulge in," he said, referring to his physical infirmity, "and I don't get much of it in New York."
As he limped away across the lawn, Margaret asked mischievously:—
"Well, what do you think of Cousin Thomas? He lets you know a good deal about himself all at once."
"He is so interesting—and appealing, don't you think so, with those eyes?Isn't it a pity he is lame?"
"I don't know about that. He's used that lameness of his very effectively. It's procured him no end of sympathy, and sympathy is what Thomas likes,—from women. He will tell you all about it some time,—how his negro nurse was frightened by a snake and dropped him on a stone step when he was a baby."
"We don't have men like him in St. Louis," Isabelle reflected aloud; "men who write or do things that are really interesting—it is all business or gossip. I should like to see Conny,—it must be exciting to live in New York, and be somebody!"
"Come and try it; you will, I suppose?"
In spite of Margaret's gibes at her distant cousin, Isabelle enjoyed Cairy. He was the kind of man she had rarely seen and never known: by birth a gentleman, by education and ambition a writer, with a distinct social sense and the charm of an artist. In spite of his poverty he had found the means to run about the world—the habited part of it—a good deal, and had always managed to meet the right people,—the ones "whose names mean something." He was of the parasite species, but of the higher types. To Isabelle his rapid talk, about plays, people, pictures, the opera, books, was a revelation of some of that flowing, stream of life which she felt she was missing. And he gave her the pleasant illusion of "being worth while." The way he would look at her as he rolled a cigarette on the veranda steps, awaiting her least word, flattered her woman's sympathy. When he left for Washington, going, as he said, "where thePeople'scall me," she missed him distinctly.
"I hope I shall meet him again!"
"You will," Margaret replied. "Thomas is the kind one meets pretty often if you are his sort. And I take it you are!"
Isabelle believed that Margaret Pole was jealous of her young cousin or piqued because of a sentimental encounter in their youth. Cairy had hinted at something of this kind. Margaret patted Isabella's pretty head.
"My little girl," she mocked, "how wonderful the world is, and all the creatures in it!"
* * * * *
From this month's visit at the Springs the Colonel got some good golf, Mrs. Price a vivid sense of the way people threw their money about these days ("They say that Wall Street broker gave the head waiter a hundred dollar bill when he left!"). And Isabelle had absorbed a miscellaneous assortment of ideas, the dominant one being that intelligent Americans who really wished to have interesting lives went East to live, particularly to New York. And incidentally there was inserted in the nether layers of her consciousness the belief that the world was changing its ideas about women and marriage, "and all that." She desired eagerly to be in the current of these new ideas.
"What makes a happy marriage?" Rob Falkner queried in his brutal and ironical mood, which made his wife shiver for the proprieties of pleasant society. It was at one of Bessie's famous Torso suppers, when the Lanes and Darnells were present.
"A good cook and a good provider," Lane suggested pleasantly, to keep the topic off conversational reefs.
"A husband who thinks everything you do just right!" sighed Bessie.
"Plenty of money and a few children—for appearances," some one threw in.
Isabelle remarked sagely, "A husband who knows what is best for you in the big things, and a wife who does what is best in the small ones."
"Unity of Purpose—Unity of Souls," Tom Darnell announced in his oratorical voice, with an earnestness that made the party self-conscious. His wife said nothing, and Falkner summed up cynically:—
"You've won, Lane! The American husband must be a good provider, but it doesn't follow that the wife must be a good cook. Say a good entertainer, and there you have a complete formula of matrimony: PROVIDER (Hustler, Money-getter, Liberal) and ENTERTAINER (A woman pretty, charming, social)."
"Here's to the Falkner household,—the perfect example!"
Thus the talk drifted off with a laugh into a discussion of masculine deficiencies and feminine endurances. Isabelle, looking back with the experience of after years, remembered this "puppy-dog" conversation. How young they all were and how they played with ideas! Bessie, also, remembered the occasion, with an injured feeling. On the way home that night Lane had remarked to his wife:—
"Falkner is a queer chap,—he was too personal to-night."
"I suppose it is hard on him; Bessie is rather wilful and extravagant. He looked badly to-night. And he told me he had to take an early train to examine some new work."
Lane shrugged his shoulders, as does the man of imperturbable will, perfect digestion, and constant equilibrium, for the troubles of a weaker vessel.
"If he doesn't like what his wife does, he should have character enough to control her. Besides he should have known all that before he married!"
Isabelle smiled at this piece of masculine complacency,—as if a man could know any essential fact about a woman from the way she did her hair to the way she spent money before he had lived with her!
"I do hope he will get a better place," Isabelle remarked good-naturedly."It would do them both so much good."
As we have seen, Falkner's chance came at last through Lane, who recommended him to the A. and P. engineer in charge of the great terminal works that the road had undertaken in St. Louis. The salary of the new position was four thousand dollars a year,—a very considerable advance over the Torso position, and the work gave Falkner an opportunity such as he had never had before. The railroad system had other large projects in contemplation also.
"Bessie has written me such a letter,—the child!" Isabelle told her husband. "You would think they had inherited a million. And yet she seems sad to leave Torso, after all the ragging she gave the place. She has a good word to say even for Mrs. Fraser!"
Bessie Falkner was one of those who put down many small roots wherever chance places them. She had settled into Torso more solidly than she knew until she came to pull up her roots and put them down in a large, strange city. "We won't know any one there," she said dolefully to her Torso friends. "The Lanes, of course; but they are such grand folk now—and Isabella has all her old friends about her." Nevertheless, it scarcely entered her mind to remain "in this prairie village all our days." Bessie had to the full the American ambition to move on and up as far as possible….
Fortune, having turned its attention to the Falkners, seemed determined to smile on them this year. An uncle of Bessie's died on his lonely ranch in Wyoming, and when the infrequent local authorities got around to settling his affairs, they found that he had left his little estate to Elizabeth Bissell, who was now Mrs. Robert Falkner of Torso. The lonely old rancher, it seemed, had remembered the pretty, vivacious blond girl of eighteen, who had taken the trouble to show him the sights of Denver the one time he had visited his sister ten years before. Bessie, amused at his eccentric appearance, had tried to give "Uncle Billy" a good time. "Uncle Billy," she would say, "you must do this,—you will remember it all your life. Uncle Billy, won't you lunch with me down town to-day? You must go to the theatre, while you are here. Uncle, I am going to make you a necktie!" So she had chirped from morning until night, flattering, coaxing, and also making sport of the old man. "Bess has a good heart," her mother said to Uncle Bill, and it must be added Bessie also had a woman's instinct to please a possible benefactor. Uncle Billy when he returned to the lonely ranch wrote a letter to his pretty niece, which Bessie neglected to answer. Nevertheless, when Uncle Billy made ready to die, he bestowed all that he had to give upon the girl who had smiled on him once.
Thus Bessie's purring good nature bore fruit, Before the property could be sold, the most imaginative ideas about her inheritance filled Bessie's dreams. Day and night she planned what they would do with this fortune,—everything from a year in Europe to new dresses for the children! When it came finally in the form of a draft for thirteen thousand and some odd dollars, her visions were dampened for a time,—so many of her castles could not be acquired for thirteen thousand and some odd dollars.
Falkner was for investing the legacy in Freke's mines, which, he had good reason to believe, were better than gold mines. But when Bessie learned that the annual dividends would only be about twelve hundred dollars, she demurred. That was too slow. Secretly she thought that "if Rob were only clever about money," he might in a few years make a real fortune out of this capital. There were men she had known in Denver, as she told her husband, "who hadn't half of that and who had bought mines that had brought them hundreds of thousands of dollars." To which remark, Rob had replied curtly that he was not in that sort of business and that there were many more suckers than millionnaires in Denver—and elsewhere.
So, finally, after paying some Torso debts, it came down to buying a house in St. Louis; for the flat that they had first rented was crowded and Bessie found great difficulty in keeping a servant longer than a week. Rob thought that it would be more prudent to rent a house for six to nine hundred than to buy outright or build, until they saw how his work for the A. and P. developed. But Bessie wanted a home,—a house of her own. So they began the wearisome search for a house. Bessie already had her views about the desirable section to live in,—outside the smoke in one of "those private estate parks,"—where the Lanes were thinking of settling. (A few months had been sufficient for Bessie to orientate herself socially in her new surroundings.) "That's where all the nice young people are going," she announced. In vain Rob pointed out that there were no houses to be bought for less than eighteen thousand in this fashionable neighborhood. "You never dare!" she retorted reproachfully. "You have to take risks if you want anything in this world! How many houses in St. Louis that aren't mortgaged do you suppose there are?"
"But there is only about eleven thousand of Uncle Billy's money left, and those houses in Buena Vista Park cost from eighteen to twenty-four thousand dollars."
"And they have only one bath-room," sighed Bessie.
The summer went by in "looking," and the more houses they looked at the less satisfied was Bessie. She had in the foreground of her mind an image of the Lanes' Torso house, only "more artistic"; but Falkner convinced her that such a house in St. Louis would cost thirty thousand dollars at the present cost of building materials.
"It is so difficult," she explained to Mrs. Price, "to find anything small and your own, don't you know?" She arched her brows prettily over her dilemma. Mrs. Price, who, in spite of the fascination that Bessie exerted, had prim ideas "of what young persons in moderate circumstances" should do, suggested that the Johnstons were buying a very good house in the new suburb of Bryn Mawr on the installment plan.
"As if we could bury ourselves in that swamp,—we might as well stay inTorso!" Bessie said to her husband disgustedly.
Falkner reflected that the train service to Bryn Mawr made it easier of access to his work than the newer residential quarter inside the city which Bessie was considering. But that was the kind of remark he had learned not to make….
In the end it came to their building. For Bessie found nothing "small and pretty, and just her own," with three bath-rooms, two maids' rooms, etc., in any "possible" neighborhood. She had met at a dinner-party an attractive young architect, who had recently come from the East to settle in St. Louis. Mr. Bowles prepared some water-color sketches which were so pretty that she decided to engage him. With misgivings Rob gave his consent. A narrow strip of frontage was found next a large house in the desired section. They had to pay three thousand dollars for the strip of land. Mr. Bowles thought the house could be built for eight or ten thousand dollars, depending on the price of materials, which seemed to be going up with astonishing rapidity.
Then Bessie plunged into plans. It was a gusty March day when the Falkners went out with the architect to consider the lot, and spent an afternoon trying to decide how to secure the most sun. Falkner, weary of the whole matter, listened to the glib young architect. Another windy day in April they returned to the lot to look at the excavation. The contracts were not yet signed. Lumber had gone soaring, and there was a strike in the brick business, the kind of brick they had chosen being unobtainable, while hardware seemed unaccountably precious. Already it was impossible to build the house for less than twelve thousand, even after sacrificing Bessie's private bath. Falkner had consented to the mortgage,—"only four thousand," Bessie said; "we'll save our rent and pay it off in a year or two!" Bessie's periods of economy were always just dawning!
Falkner, looking at the contractor's tool shed, had a sense of depressing fatality. From the moment that the first spadeful of ground had been dug, it seemed to him that the foundation of his domestic peace had begun to crumble. But this depression was only an attack of the grippe, he said to himself, and he tried to take an interest in the architect's description of how they should terrace the front of the lot….
Of course, as the novelists tell us, the man of Strong Will, of Mature Character, of Determined Purpose, would not have allowed his wife to entangle him in this house business (or in matrimony, perhaps, in the first instance)! But if society were composed of men of S. W., M. C., and D. P., there would be no real novels,—merely epics of Slaughter and Success, of Passionate Love and Heroic Accomplishment…. At this period Falkner still loved his wife,—wanted to give her every gratification within his power, and some just beyond,—though that love had been strained by five hard years, when her efforts as an economic partner had not been intelligent. (Bessie would have scorned such an unromantic term as "economic partner.") They still had their times of amiable understanding, of pleasant comradeship, even of passionate endearment. But by the time the young architect's creation at number 26 Buena Vista Pleasance had become their residence, that love was in a moribund condition…. Yet after all, as Bessie sometimes reminded him, it was her money that was building the house, at least the larger part of it; and further it was all her life that was to be spent in it, presumably. The woman's home was her world.
Thus, in the division that had come between them, the man began to consider his wife's rights, what he owed to her as a woman that he had taken under his protection,—a very dangerous state of mind in matrimony. If he had discovered that her conception of the desirable end of life was not his, he must respect her individuality, and so far as possible provide for her that which she seemed to need. The faithful husband, or dray-horse interpretation of marriage, this.
If it takes Strong Will, Mature Character, and Determined Purpose to live effectively, it takes all of that and more—humor and patience—to build a house in America, unless one can afford to order his habitation as he does a suit of clothes and spend the season in Europe until the contractor and the architect have fought it out between them. But Bessie was a young woman of visions. She had improved all her opportunities to acquire taste,—the young architect said she had "very intelligent ideas." And he, Bertram Bowles, fresh from Paris, with haunting memories of chateaux and villas, and a knowledge of what the leading young architects of the East were turning out, had visions too, in carrying out this first real commission that he had received in St. Louis. "Somethingchic, with his stamp on it," he said….
The hours with the contractors to persuade them that they could do something they had never seen done before! The debates over wood finish, and lumber going up while you talked! The intricacies of heating, plumbing, electric lighting, and house telephones—when all men are discovered to be liars! Falkner thought it would be easier to lay out the entire terminal system of the A. and P. than to build one "small house, pretty and just your own, you know." Occasionally even Bessie and the polite Bertram Bowles fell out, when Falkner was called in to arbitrate. Before the question of interior decoration came up the house had already cost fourteen thousand dollars, which would necessitate a mortgage of six thousand dollars at once. Here Falkner put his foot down,—no more; they would live in it with bare walls. Bessie pleaded and sulked,—"only another thousand." And "not to be perfectly ridiculous," Falkner was forced to concede another thousand. "Not much when you consider," as the architect said to Bessie…. Time dragged on, and the house was not ready. The apartment hotel into which they had moved was expensive and bad for the children. In June Falkner insisted on moving into the unfinished house, with carpenters, painters, decorators still hanging on through the sultry summer months.
"I met your poor little friend Mrs. Falkner at Sneeson's this morning," Nan Lawton said to Isabelle. "She was looking over hangings and curtains for her house…. She is nothing but a bag of bones, she's so worn. That husband of hers must be a brute to let her wear herself all out. She was telling me some long yarn about their troubles with the gas men,—very amusing and bright. She is a charming little thing."
"Yes," Isabelle replied; "I am afraid the house has been too much for them both."
She had been Bessie's confidant in all her troubles, and sympathized—who could not sympathize with Bessie?—though she thought her rather foolish to undertake so much.
"We'll simply have to have rugs, I tell Rob," Bessie said to her. "He is in such bad humor these days, and says we must go on the bare floors or use the old Torso carpets. Fancy!"
And Isabelle said, as she was expected to say, "Of course you will have to have rugs. They are having a sale at Moritz's,—some beauties and cheap."
Yet she had a sneaking sympathy for Falkner. Isabelle did not suspect that she herself was the chief undoing of the Falkner household, nor did any one else suspect it. It was Bessie's ideal of Isabelle that rode her hard from the beginning of her acquaintance with the Lanes. And it was Isabelle who very naturally introduced them to most of the people they had come to know in their new world. Isabelle herself had much of her mother's thrift and her father's sagacity in practical matters. She would never have done what Bessie was doing in Bessie's circumstances. But in her own circumstances she did unconsciously a great deal more,—and she disliked to fill her mind with money matters, considering it vulgar and underbred to dwell long on them. The rich and the very wise can indulge in these aristocratic refinements! Isabelle, to be sure, felt flattered by Bessie's admiring discipleship,—who does not like to lead a friend? She never dreamed of her evil influence. The power of suggestion, subtle, far-reaching, ever working on plastic human souls! Society evolves out of these petty reactions….
The rugs came.
"We simply have to have rugs,—the house calls for it," asserted Bessie, using one of Mr. Bertram Bowles's favorite expressions.
"My purse doesn't," growled Falkner.
Nevertheless Bessie selected some pretty cheap rugs at Moritz's, which could be had on credit. In the great rug room of the department store she met Alice Johnston, who was looking at a drugget. The two women exchanged experiences as the perspiring clerks rolled and rerolled rugs.
"Yes, we shall like Bryn Mawr," Mrs. Johnston said, "now that the foliage covers up the tin cans and real estate signs. The schools are really very good, and there is plenty of room for the boys to make rough house in. We are to have a garden another year…. Oh, yes, it is rural middle class,—that's why I can get drugget for the halls."
Bessie thought of her pretty house and shuddered.
"We are planning to call and see the house—Isabelle says it's wonderful—but it will have to be on a Sunday—the distance—"
"Can't you come next Sunday for luncheon? I will ask Isabelle and her husband," Bessie interrupted hospitably, proud to show off her new toy.
And on Sunday they all had a very good time and the new "toy" was much admired, although the paint was still sticky,—the painter had been optimistic when he took the contract and had tried to save himself later,—the colors wrong, and the furniture, which had done well enough in Torso, looked decidedly shabby.
"It's the prettiest house I know," Isabelle said warmly, and Bessie felt repaid.
She was very tired, and to-day looked worn. The new toy was dragging her out. As the long St. Louis summer drew to an end, she was always tired. Some obscure woman's trouble, something in the delicate organism that had never been quite right, was becoming acutely wrong. She lived in fear of having another child,—the last baby had died. By the new year she was in care of Isabelle's specialist, who advised an operation. When that was over, it was nearly spring, and though she was still delicate, she wished to give some dinners "to return their obligations." Falkner objected for many reasons, and she thought him very hard.
"It is always sickness and babies for me," she pouted; "and when I want a little fun, you think we can't afford it or something."
Her hospitable heart was so bent on this project, it seemed so natural that she should desire to show off her toy, after her struggle for it, so innocent "to have our friends about us," that he yielded in part. A good deal might be told about that dinner, from an economic, a social, a domestic point of view. But we must lose it and hasten on. Imagine merely, what a charming woman like Bessie Falkner, whose scheme of the universe was founded on the giving of "pleasant little dinners," would do,—a woman who was making her life, building her wigwam, filling it with those she wished to have as friends, and you will see it all. It was, of course, a great success. Mrs. Anstruthers Leason said of the hostess (reported by Nan Lawton through Isabelle), "Little Mrs. Falkner has the real social gift,—a very rare thing among our women!" And when an invitation came from Mrs. Anstruthers Leason to dinner and her box at the French opera, Bessie was sure that she had found her sphere.
* * * * *
Falkner seemed to Bessie these days to be growing harder,—he was "exacting," "unsympathetic," "tyrannical." "He won't go places, and he won't have people,—isn't nice to them, even in his own house," Bessie said sadly to Isabelle. "I suppose that marriage usually comes to that: the wife stands for bills and trouble, and the husband scolds. Most people squabble, don't they?"
"Of course he loves you, dear," Isabelle consoled her. "American husbands always take their wives for granted, as Nannie says. A foreigner pays attentions to his wife after marriage that our husbands don't think are necessary once they have us. Our husbands take us too much as a matter of course,—and pay the bills!"
Bessie felt and said that Rob took life too hard, worried too much. After all, when a man married a woman and had children, he must expect a certain amount of trouble and anxiety. She wasn't sure but that wives were needed to keep men spurred to their highest pitch of working efficiency. She had an obscure idea that the male was by nature lazy and self-indulgent, and required the steel prod of necessity to do his best work. As she looked about her among the struggling households, it seemed such was the rule,—that if it weren't for the fact of wife and children and bills, the men would deteriorate…. Naturally there were differences,—"squabbles," as she called them; but she would have been horrified if any one had suggested that these petty squabbles, the state of mind they produced or indicated, were infinitely more degrading, more deteriorating to them both, than adultery. It never entered her mind that either she or her husband could be unfaithful, that Falkner could ever care for any other woman than her. "Why, we married for love!"
* * * * *
Love! That divine unreason of the gods, which lures man as a universal solvent of his sorrow, the great solution to the great enigma! Where was it? Bessie asked when Rob passed her door in the morning on his way to his solitary breakfast without a word of greeting or a kiss, and finally left the house without remembering to go upstairs again. And Falkner asked himself much the same thing, when Bessie persisted in doing certain things "because everybody does," or when he realized that after two years in his new position, with a five hundred dollars' increase in his salary the second year, he was nearly a thousand dollars in debt, and losing steadily each quarter. Something must be done—and by him!—for in marriage, he perceived with a certain bitterness, Man was the Forager, the Provider. And in America if he didn't bring in enough from the day's hunt to satisfy the charming squaw that he had made his consort, why,—he must trudge forth again and get it! A poor hunter does not deserve the embellishment of a Bessie and two pretty children.
So he went forth to bring in more game, and he read no poetry these days.